Tell us your 4 for 4/4

Let’s make our plans for tomorrow

Tomorrow is 4/4. A day to do something against gun violence and school shootings. A day to take a step (or 4 small ones) to show what we are FOR.

Pray. Talk. Act. Give.

Before Tuesday dawns, I want to invite you to reflect on what you might do tomorrow—and the next day/week/month after tomorrow. 

We aren’t done after 4/4. We know we have heaps of work to do to stop these tragedies from happening over and over and over. 

Every one of us has a role to play.

Remember why we’re doing this together

Plenty of powerful pieces have been written since the Covenant School shooting in Nashville. But I keep thinking about a short essay written by Brian Doyle that I share every year on the anniversary of Sandy Hook. If you need to remember why this hard work of slow change is critical and calls each of us to act, please read his words:

“...if we ever forget their names, if we ever forget the wind in that hallway, if we ever forget what they did, if we ever forget that there is something in us beyond sense and reason that snarls at death and runs roaring at it to defend children, if we ever forget that all children are our children, then we are fools who have allowed memory to be murdered too, and what good are we then? What good are we then?”

(From “Dawn and Mary” by Brian Doyle)

Just a reminder: this is a non-partisan effort. I know that you are Republicans and Democrats and Independents. I also know that you are here because you are sick and tired of the murder of children, and you want things to change. 

My hope is that whatever part of this terrible situation you think is most important—access to guns or responsible gun ownership or mental health or school safety or violence prevention—you start to work there. 

We do not have to reach perfect consensus to start to work on this complex and complicated crisis. But we do have to do something if we want anything to change.

Studies show we’re more likely to act on a resolution if we write it down. So I hope tonight you’ll take a moment to jot down your 4 steps for tomorrow. If you’d like to share them here, I’d love to hear it. I’ll share mine in the comments, too.

Let’s actually do what we want to do.

(p.s. If you share about 4/4 on social media with #forchangeforkids I’ll share your posts.)

A personal note & a prayer

I was grateful that one of you reminded me of a prayer I included in the collection To Bless Our Callings: Prayers, Poems, and Hymns to Celebrate Vocation. It’s called the Prayer of Good Courage, and for those of us who are celebrating Holy Week right now, these are prophetic words to spur us into action tomorrow:

O God, you have called your servants
to ventures of which we cannot see the ending,
by paths as yet untrodden,
through perils unknown.
Give us faith to go out with good courage,
not knowing where we go,
but only that your hand is leading us
and your love supporting us,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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