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Imagine a world without guns . . . if you can.





Imagine all the people


Living for today


Imagine all those children - dead -

who deserved to be playing today.

Imagine all the friends they would have made,

all the things they would have learned.

Imagine their parents spared the horrors of grief without end

for the child they loved.


Imagine there’s no countries


It isn’t hard to do


Nothing to kill or die for



Imagine Martin Luther King realizing his dream in real time.

Imagine President John F. Kennedy growing older in the White House.

Imagine his brother, Robert, raising his many children to follow in his footsteps.

Imagine Mahatma Gandhi becoming a wise elder on the world stage today.



Imagine words of those who survived a bullet:


"Getting shot hurts." President Ronald Reagan

"What I was I will never be again" press secretary, James Brady*

"Political violence is terrifying, I know". Congresswoman Gabriel Gifford

"I did stand, with a majority of the white people, for the separation of the schools. But that was wrong, and that will never come back again". Governor George Wallace

“Wait, wait, wait” then fist pumps to crowd. He mouths “fight” three times – a move met with cheers by the crowd".** Former President Donald Trump


Imagine words of those who pulled the trigger:


“Sic semper tyrannis” (“Thus always to tyrants,”)*** John Wilkes Booth upon killing President Abraham Lincoln

"I don't know why you are treating me like this. The only thing I have done is carry a pistol into a movie".**** Lee Harvey Oswald

"This was evil in my heart. I wanted to be somebody and nothing was going to stop that." Mark David Chapman.*****


On 8 December 1980, John Lennon was shot four times in the back outside of his apartment building in New York City.

He was 40 years old.


You may say that I’m a dreamer


But I’m not the only oneI hope someday you’ll join us


And the world will live as one




imagine if we had a real conversation about guns in America . . .

I wonder if you can?









*Federal Background Check law known as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act






 
 
 

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© 2023 by Marie Laure

​Six Stages of Pilgrimage:

  • The Call:

  • The opening clarion of any spiritual journey. Often in the form of a feeling or some vague yearning, a fundamental human desire: finding meaning in an overscheduled world somehow requires leaving behind our daily obligations. Sameness is the enemy of spirituality.

  • The Separation:

  • Pilgrimage, by its very nature, undoes certainty. It rejects the safe and familiar. It asserts that one is freer when one frees oneself from daily obligations of family, work, and community, but also the obligations of science, reason, and technology.

  • The Journey:

  • The backbone of a sacred journey is the pain and sacrifice of the journey itself.  This personal sacrifice enhances the experience; it also elevates the sense of community one develops along the way.

  • The Contemplation:

  • Some pilgrimages go the direct route, right to the center of the holy of holies, directly to the heart of the matter. Others take a more indirect route, circling around the outside of the sacred place, transforming the physical journey into a spiritual path of contemplation like walking a labyrinth.

  • The Encounter:

  • After all the toil and trouble, after all the sunburn and swelling and blisters, after all the anticipation and expectation comes the approach, the sighting. The encounter is the climax of the journey, the moment when the traveler attempts to slide through a thin veil where humans live in concert with the Creator.

  • The Completion and Return:

  • At the culmination of the journey, the pilgrim returns home only to discover that meaning they sought lies in the familiar of one's own world. "Seeing the place for the first time . . ."

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