Of guns and hospital beds

         What'd I miss? I was in the hospital for five days with pneumonia, anemia, general body breakdown or break-up or something-the-heck other, and other than learning there is an inordinate amount of television shows about Alaska, (how does one go about auditioning for those shows, I wonder?) I missed out on much. I'll try to catch up.

         There must be a solution to the gun crisis in America. There must. It is not acceptable that because two ideologies and more than five hundred knuckleheads can't come together and do, well, something.  Heck, anything at all. I’ve been in Coushatta for less than three months, and this is the second time I’ve had to write about mass shootings.
     I read a lot about gun laws, and I conclude that they can be tighter and it still might not help. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Of the 11 shootings that prompted President Obama to give a public address after the shooting in Oregon, eight were committed by gunmen who’d bought at least some of their firearms legally, some just days before their massacres. Several had histories of criminal behavior and mental illness that fell just shy of prohibiting their gun purchases—and in one case, a bureaucratic slip-up in the routine FBI background check was at fault.

            I pray that reasonable Republicans could at least see that persons with a criminal behavior history and any, ANY,  person with a mental health issue should be banned. The problem is our own privacy laws might prevent anyone from knowing. One side says we should bat assault rifles, the other side says we must give everyone a gun.

            But we now live in a society in which kids practice lockdowns the way we used to duck and cover for the nuclear bomb threat. Somewhere in the middle, which a good leader would push us toward instead of getting mad on national TV, there is an answer. Somehow arming teachers doesn’t seem it.

            Would someone tell me how parents in Congress can’t figure out some way to do something, anything about this mess we find ourselves in with guns. I could write much, much more, but there is a word limit. I’ve written a daily blog for six years, and I have written many times about it. Nothing has been done. Nothing.   

            On a lighter note, which anything would be, I missed all the gloom and doom about the Saints after the Carolina game. I was out of my mind late Sunday so I simply did what I always do when the Saints start 0-3, I curled up in a ball and moaned.      

         I missed the change in weather from summer to fall, darn it. Temps fell and so did I.

         I missed a scheduled trip to Kansas City for the Leadership Institute at Adam Hamilton’s church. Seeing photos of friends who went didn’t help me heal, I’ll tell you.       

         I missed food, real food, recognizable food.    

         I missed my wife, my help in times of distress and pneumonia, who has come to recognize my sickness early as it comes on.

         I missed my dogs (especially little Paris who looked for me all week), and even the cats, who never missed me.        

         I missed good health. This is starting to wear on me. My voice is a mess, still, and I am still, STILL, STILLLLLLL, not completely over the pneumonia. Amazingly, I’ve discovered that preaching requires breath and a voice.

         That’s it.

         That’s all I missed, but it was enough. I’m on the backside of my stumble. I pray I will not get pneumonia again, but I suspect one day it might get me. That’s fine. I’ll have lived till I didn’t. That’s the ticket.