Guns! Hunh! What Are They Good For?

In one day, the proposed federal assault weapons ban runs out of breath and the Arizona Senate passes a bill allowing teachers to carry guns in school.

I’ve written before of my antipathy toward guns. That I’m not a fan is no secret. But here’s a basic question seeking earnest answers: what is the value of a gun?

Clearly guns are valuable. Their production, sale, and possession is vigilantly protected by the most powerful lobbying outfit in the land. But in what does their value consist? I’m asking you, dear reader, to post an answer in the comments. Here are a couple of ground rules:

Defense against others with guns doesn’t count as value. That’s simply a circular argument.
Flameouts against guns and their defenders aren’t helpful.
Answer the question: what is the value of a gun? Then stop.

Somebody, please, make the case for the value of a gun. I’m eager to hear it.

Monday Morning Quarterback

Note: Monday Morning Quarterback is a weekly post reviewing Sunday, the busiest, most stressful, most gratifying day in the week of a pastor/parent/spouse/citizen.

Song of the Day:

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K_6Bcg

6:00. Alarm. Seriously? Snooze.

6:18. Awake two minutes before expiration of snooze alarm. Consider the relative value of two minutes of sle–alarm again.

6:33. Open laptop to finish the morning’s confirmation lesson. Face down reality: The Heidelberg Catechism, Ann LaMott, Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the story of the Rich Young Ruler, and the Presbyterian Study Catechism won’t all fit in 45 minutes. Curse the space/time continuum.

7:12. Practice sketchnoting with the cribnotes from a talk by danah boyd. Plan blog post on the talk for later in the week.

7:53. Completely rethink final confirmation project assignment and write up a new description. Plan to post it to blog later in the week.

8:11. Second cup of coffee.

9:27. Expose confirmation students to Ann LaMott and her profoundly theological profanity. Brace for retribution.

10:09. Acolyte jogs to the lectern to lead Call to Worship like he’s being introduced as part of the starting lineups.

10:10. Chest bump the acolyte.

10:17. Recognizing new crosses decorating sanctuary during Children’s Time. Tell kids that the big paper one with their handprints on it hanging in the back is to remind us that the cross is for all of us. Kid looks at me like, “For me? What did I do?”

10:29. Getting schooled on the water situation in 1st century Laodiceia by my brilliant colleague. Mentally rehearse the putdown, “Ima spit you out my mouth like Laodiceian water, fool!”

11:22. Ask adult education committee members to introduce themselves by answering the question, “What are you learning?” Listen carefully as people share thoughtful, sensitive, yearning to grow.

11:58. Schedule six weeks of adult education programming in four minutes. We done here?

12:38. Return home to playdate with four year-old and her bestie. Realize I haven’t eaten yet today. Devour a pizza.

12:45. Wife is screening new show, “Preacher’s Daughers.” Hey, this could be interesti–nope nope nope nope nope. Plan blog post on horrors of the show for later in the week.

12:53. While watching show about promiscuous pastor’s daughters, serve as the groom in my four year-old’s wedding, officiated by her playmate. Riff terrifically with the hashtag #fouryearoldwedding.

1:39. Set up play tent, sleeping bag, and lawn chair for daughter and playmate on the lawn. Claim the lawn chair for myself.

2:46. Taxes. Done.

2:52. The week’s meals. Planned.

4:14. Tearful end to the playdate. Literally have to pry the crying girls off of each other. Assurances of “You’ll see her next week” are met with “But that’s too long!” Broken up.

4:37. Facing group of 14 people–junior high students and their parents–explaining with as much pastoral adroitness as I can that there’s no telling what will happen at the meal we’re all about to go serve at the local transitional housing shelter. Thinking they’re taking it well.

5:07. Sit down to banquet of chicken enchilada casserole, fruit salad, mac n’ cheese, caesar salad, brownies, and gallons of beverages. There are 15 from the church and a single shelter resident. Awkward. Reeealy awkward.

5:24. Shelter resident and church families devolve into knee-slapping laughter around the table. Catch a glimpse of the truth: we’re called to share our community and our humanity; food’s a useful tool to do that.

5:51. Dishes. Dried.

6:32. Waiting for high school students to arrive, building to-do list for the week.

6:41. Youth group volunteers arrive with coffee for me. Kiss them both on their mouths simultaneously.

7:43. “Game of Things” prompt: “Things you shouldn’t lick.” Answer from volunteer: “The Pope.”

7:52. Student tries to tell me her mom needs her home early. Text mom. Nope. Busted. Student fumes.

8:08. Soul Pancake check-in prompt: greatest fault, greatest strength. Observe students struggling to talk about their strengths. For some it’s not a pose; they really don’t know they have any. Wince.

8:38. Celebrate student who’s question was featured on Questions That Haunt. Note this is a student who couldn’t identify his own strengths.

9:02. Practice “Yes, let’s!” improv benediction I learned at NEXT 2013.

9:05. Fuming student to me: don’t text my mom behind my back. Me to fuming student: don’t lie to me.

9:12. Whipped in foosball. Again.

9:18. Locking up, notice fuming student’s parent wandering around, looking for her. She just left. Didn’t wait for parents to pick her up.

9:22. Driving home, looking for fuming student along the way.

9:38. Texting fuming student’s mom: is she home?

9:41. Flustered response full of apologies for student’s behavior.

9:42. “Better to have her than not.”

9:43. “Goodnight.”

9:44. Plan fuming student blog post for later in the week.

NEXT, Galvanize, and Institutional Change

Reading this article about alternative tech education a day after John Vest lamented NEXT Church’s apparent unwillingness to “rethink theology and ecclesiology in the rapidly changing contexts of ministry in 21st century postmodern, post-Christendom North America” is making some synapses fire.

First, John’s objection: three years into its existence, NEXT seems no more willing to grab hold of the institutional levers of the PC(USA) than it did at its inception. Leaders in the organization continue to recite a “we don’t know” mantra when asked hard questions about what they want to build. What it is contributing–and this is undeniably valuable–is “a platform for innovative and creative leaders to share ideas and best practices” (just hours after John’s post went up, NEXT’s blog published a post by D.C. pastor Jeff Kreibehl celebrating that very thing).

My first thought was to wonder why such a platform can’t be considered a tool for the rethinking John is eager to see. I wonder how else that “hard work” gets done? Position papers? Overtures to GA?

Now come to the Time article about start-up tech schools. Here’s the money quote from Jim Deters, who started Galvanize in Denver:

“In most cases, people are wasting their money on traditional education. The future of employment is small businesses that will be forced to figure things out for themselves.”

This sounds a lot like the “they-didn’t-teach-me-this-in-seminary” you hear from pastors of all stripes. Deters threw a ton of his own capital into a new school–one that teaches techies how to figure things out for themselves (my “traditional” theology professors would have said they were doing the same thing: “thinking theologically” they called it).

Let me land this plane. The platform that NEXT is constructing has lots and lots of space for men and women in theological training; the national gatherings have scholarshipped seminary students every year, and seminary presidents are prominent participants and speakers at these gatherings. John’s desire to see a more assertive direction from NEXT mixed with Roya Wolverson’s description of these new schools makes me wonder if NEXT couldn’t galvanize this kind of thing for Presbyterians.

What if:

NEXT grew its partnerships with Presbyterian seminaries to develop courses that help students practice the kind of relational and innovative “figuring it out” today’s context requires?
NEXT cultivated communities of students on seminary campuses to lead within the organization?
NEXT held one of its regional or national gatherings on a seminary campus?
NEXT inserted itself into the emergence of new seminaries, like the one sprouting in my neck of the woods, to offer courses and seminars and other events?

These are just a few ideas sprouting in the slowly fading afterglow of NEXT 2013. Of all the things NEXT is offering to today’s church, an infusion of practical and entrepreneurial learning into Presbyterian education may be the most valuable.

Monday Morning Quarterback

Note: Monday Morning Quarterback is a weekly post reviewing Sunday, the busiest, most stressful, most gratifying day in the week of a pastor/parent/spouse/citizen.

Song of the Day:

6:00. Alarm! Smash! Daylight Savings! Smash! Wife’s annual company banquet last night! Smash!

6:22. Planning adult education session about “family.” Opting against the suggested “draw a self-portrait” activity.

7:11. Compiling afternoon junior high youth group plan. One of the adult leaders had her wisdom teeth out two weeks ago; plan for her to do the meditation on suffering.

7:56. Slather leathery neck with Aquaphor, cursing dry air and eczema.

7:57. Notice Aquaphor ring coating the inner collar of my freshly pressed shirt. Wordsmith a few explanations in my head before chucking it in the laundry bin.

8:24. Printing reams of paper–adult ed. handouts, youth group lessons, 30 Hour Famine planning materials, adult ed. handouts (again: I misplaced the first stack). Wonder what the recent energy audit of our church office will find.

9:06. Standing in an empty high school sunday school room with the two teachers I cajoled into teaching one extra day. I was supposed to start confirmation today, but I double-booked myself and threw myself upon the mercy of my volunteer teachers. Their graciousness is being rewarded with empty chairs and a full box of donuts.

9:12. Ask adult ed. participants to conduct introductions my mutual invitation.

9:13. Realize mutual invitation only works when people already know one another’s names.

9:34. Someone suggests parenting is “like a calling.” Practically come out of my shoes to quote Martin Luther on family and vocation. Class swoons at the breadth of my wisdom.

10:09. I gave my order of worship to the acolyte. Now I need one to lead the prayer of confession. Ask Head of Staff for hers during the opening hymn, and she looks frantically for it on her seat before I point out that she’s holding it in her hand.

10:16. Successfully employ the words “cross,” “door,” “metaphor,” “peace,” and “supralapsarian” during the Children’s Time. They don’t know how good they have it.

10:43. Fall asleep during the Prayers of The People. Seriously. Like, out cold.

10:52. As acolyte is collecting the offering, I steal her order of worship to look up the final hymn. Don’t judge me. I had it first.

11:12. Conversations on the patio: depression, death, SAT’s. I am useless.

11:58. Sit down to lunch of salad and crepe to find a Facebook notification:

11:59. Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike

11:59. Show notification to wife. No response. Insist, “It’s, like, a thing.” Four year-old throws crepe to the floor.

1:07. Recline on couch hoping for badly needed nap. Four year-old using my elevated shoulder for a chair. Channel Maryann McKibben Dana: “It’s resting time.” Daughter leaps from my shoulder as if from a diving board, exclaiming, “It’s play time!”

1:09. Four year-old covers me with a blanket and pats my back for a nap. Drifting . . .

1:50. “Daddy! When is resting time over?” Awake. Guilty.

2:00. Daughter wants to watch “Anastasia.” John Cusack and Meg Ryan? What’s not to like?

2:42. Planning games for jr. high while listening to Hank Azaria’s Russian accent yields strange game ideas.

4:37. Invite junior high student to babysit next weekend. In front of the other students, who, of course, voice their interest in babysitting as well. Marvel at my stupidity.

4:47. Listening to jr. high student respond to the question, “What’s the most difficult thing you faced last week” by recounting the plot of a movie he saw. “It was sad.”

5:22. Watching students respond to The Youth Cartel’s “Stations of The Cross” meditation making my day. They’re quiet and observant. A little uneasy.

5:59. [pant] Win [gasp] capture [wheeze] the [choke] flag [vomit]. Yep. Still got it.

6:23. Planning the 30 Hour Famine with group of 10 students from two different churches. Student next to me asks, “Wait. We don’t eat?” Funny you should mention that . . .

7:38. Decide chair basketball with high schoolers in the Fellowship Hall is a keeper when playing requires the directive, “No putting your hands directly in the trash can!”

8:16. High school student chooses prompt from Soul Pancake: what’s one thing you would un-do if you could? Stirring moments ensue as students and adults offer their failures and regrets to one another. Handle with care.

8:32. Questions That Haunt prompt:

Students share experiences of God from work trips and retreats. Gratified. Students share their lack of experience with God. Grateful for their permission to one another to be honest.

9:32. 30 minute impromptu debrief with adult leaders come to an end. “I’m glad you guys are here,” I tell them. It’s more true every week, people.

11:04. Put the finishing touches on Monday Morning Quarterback.

My Sketch Notes from NEXT 2013

NEXT 2013: Invitation and Creation

In my last post I briefly reviewed two thematic threads that ran through the NEXT Church gathering in Charlotte, North Carolina earlier this week, namely worship and failure. Since then, Maryann McKibben Dana has very helpfully posted a blog roundup of the event.

This post will share two other prominent ideas at the gathering: invitation and creation.

Invitation

The great strength of NEXT gatherings is that they invite participants to experience the things they’re talking about. There’s lots of talk about new practices for worship–as we worship–, and we’re invited to practice new things (like improv) before anyone says a thing about the importance of invitation.

Which they do. Patrick Daymond gave a great talk about one-to-one conversations in the church as a vehicle not only for building relationships but also for inviting God’s people to take specific actions. He decried a culture of mass email invitations and insisted that people must re-learn the art of the face-to-face personal invitation.

I was coming out of my seat during Patrick’s talk, because my church is pushing all our chips to the center of the table on this. It’s part of a “listening campaign” made up of one-on-one meetings between church members. The Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and its philosophy of relational community organizing is the backdrop for all of this. IAF language has been part of NEXT from the beginning.

Creation

Dr. Paul Roberts (see tweet above) gave the first talk of the event and enjoined the church to fulfill its vocation of creation. This wasn’t a simple repetition of the harmless plea for “creativity,” though. It was a plea to create: to make stuff, try new things, even if those things don’t seem particularly “creative.” He drew upon the parable of the talents (Matthew 25) to say that refusing to create draws God’s judgment.

Given this, we created. Again led by the inqonquerable Theresa Cho, we made stoles for ourselves. Armed with Sharpies and a cloud of words, we penned our callings and then shared them with a stranger who placed it on us with the benediction, “Your calling is to . . . ” I posted mine to Twitter:

This calling to create is a gift from the first Creator. I, for one, am happy to be chasing down this calling with this company of folk. Thanks to Jessica Tate and all the event organizers for seriously inspiring, useful, transformative stuff. See you in Minneapolis!

NEXT 2013: Worship and Failure

The NEXT Church gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina, last week. After a 2011 inaugural gathering in Indianapolis and a Dallas follow up in 2012, many people were eager to see in Charlotte what a more organized (and much bigger) NEXT Church would feel like.

I’ve been to all of these gatherings now. I wrote about the first one here and here and here. Posts about Dallas can be read here and here. It should be obvious that I’m a fan of this movement and its emphasis on sharing life-giving practices to move the PC(USA) into the future. NEXT is built to create, not complain. I love that.

Here’s what NEXT 2013 suggested in next:

Worship
Failure
Invitation
Creation

Worship

Ashley Goff from the Church of The Pilgrims in Washington, D.C., described liturgy as “Improv,” a force for creating spontaneity, unscripted moments, and newness. We watched video clips from her church where worshipers were led on a walking meditation around the Lord’s Table and then constructed, en masse, the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving.

Casey Wait Fitzgerald became Mary, Jesus’ mother, as she showed the gathering what Biblical storytelling can do to a worship service.

And the gathering worshiped. NEXT gatherings are worship services. In fact, a person who could only come to the structured worship times at a NEXT gathering would get as clear a glimpse into what’s “next” as a person who attended every workshop. The incomparable Theresa Cho and a team of musicians, preachers, and liturgists curated four distinct liturgical events that embodied the most enduring formations of Presbyterian worship heritage as well as the most exciting emerging practices.

[A caveat: one of the preachers actually raised some hackles. Good, good, good, I say. My hackles were raised, and I was made to think, listen, protest, and then catch my breath. That’s what worship should make you do.]

Failure

NEXT wants to speak to the undeniable failure of Presbyterianism to thrive as an institution since, say, the 1960’s. “Why don’t Presbyterians build hospitals anymore?” was the question that practically gavelled the 2011 event to order.

But for all of its clear-eyed analysis of the demographics and statistics and . . . sins that have hobbled the denomination, the organizers of NEXT are offering something useful and constructive to the church: encouragement to fail. What’s more, NEXT wants to show in these gatherings what failure can do to re-birth the church.

“If you’re not failing, then you’re not learning. And if you’re not learning, then you’re not progressing in the work,” said Frank Yamata, President of McCormick Theological Seminary, on a panel exploring Shared Leadership.

The Administrative Commission has come to embody failure as much as anything in the contemporary church, and yet Bill Golderer and Aisha Brooks Lytle told the compelling story of how they have embraced and empowered an AC to do amazing work through Broad Street Ministries. Aisha took it a step further, recommending that pastors–for the sake of growth and accountability–ought to consider forming their own personal AC’s.

I’m on board. I wonder if Aisha would be on mine.

The next NEXT post will share the Invitation and Creation insights I gleaned from the gathering.

Monday Morning Quarterback

Note: Monday Morning Quarterback is a weekly post reviewing Sunday, the busiest, most stressful, most gratifying day in the week of a pastor/parent/spouse/citizen.

Song of the day:

http://rd.io/x/QEq_KwbNnw

6:00. Awake to alarm. Wonder why it’s ringing on a Saturday. Silly alarm. Snooze.

6:30. Arise, unnerved by the mysterious acceleration of time.

6:52. Sit down to continue outlining the all-church retreat I’m leading next weekend. Subject: The Trinity. What could be weird about that?

7:24. Contentedly chewing Grape Nuts. Or, rather, the Ezekiel 4:9 brand equivalent, while flipping through Michael Pollan’s Food Rules. Allow myself a moment’s congratulations for breakfast.

7:54. New shoes on. Ready to tackle the world.

8:12. Out the door, bag stuffed with Trinity books that have been strewn around the condo over the weekend.

8:13. Listening to some sort of God-denying anthem en route to church (see Song of the day). Smirking at my defiance (of the anthem, not church).

8:43. Standing in the sanctuary with Head of Staff and Children’s Director, gazing up at the chancel cross, now studded on each side with shelves, massaging the finer points of a lenten art project that will see those shelves hung with handmade crosses of clay. Or foam core. Or plywood. Painted. Or colored. Or glued. I’m useless in these discussions.

9:05. Cajole an adult ed. forum attendee into the room. He’s standing outside, looking longingly toward the parking lot for promised coffee. A puppy at the window.

9:06. Introduce Jane Dempsey Douglass to the adult ed. forum. Stammering, telling dumb jokes. Facepalm.

9:13. Deliver coffee to adult ed. forum attendee, to no applause.

9:22. Poke my head into junior high Sunday school to recruit an acolyte. He’s hesitant. “Uhhhh, do you need me to?” Consider that the coercion of a pastor is the worst of all motivations for Christian service. Consider also the spectacle of unlit chancel candles. “Yes. I absolutely need you to.”

9:41. Sitting in now with the high school Sunday school class. At my suggestion, they’re doing the Youth Ministry Architects “Spice Rack” lesson called, “Bonehead Bible.” Its best feature is a pneumonic for remembering the major narrative blocks of the Bible: “P’Pej K. Dersgee.” We’re writing our own pneumonics for those letters now. Pretty Porcupines Engineer Jelly Kites Down Every Road Since Getting Extremely Envious. Boo ya!

[COMMENT CONTEST!! ENTER YOUR PNEUMONIC FOR “P’PEJ K. DERSGEE” BELOW FOR A CHANCE TO WIN . . . LIFE!]

10:15. Wife escorts four year-old up front for Time with The Children. Four year-old’s got a doll tied around her in a sling. Wife’s not feeling well. As kids scramble up the chancel steps, husband and wife rearrange their schedule for the rest of the morning: she’s going home. He’s bringing daughter home after post-church meeting but prior to post-post-church training. How easy was that?

10:17. The chancel is full of children. It’s lovely. That is all.

10:22. As children file out the sanctuary door for their programs, The Choir Director whispers congratulations into my ear about the four year-old’s doll sling. Take all the credit.

10:26. Reading Luke 4 (the temptation of Jesus by the Devil in the desert), resisting the temptation to replace every instance of “The Devil” with “Elmer Fudd” and “Jesus” with “That Wascally Wabbit.”

10:47. During Head of Staff’s sermon, cross my legs to show off my new shoes to the congregation. Uncross them after four seconds. Did you see them?

11:26. Leading my first meeting of the Adult Education Committee. A woman I’ve invited to join us is the daughter-in-law of the late Chair of several years. Only just now realizing that, as she’s congratulated warmly by the rest of the committee.

12:11. Collect four year-old from nursery, where the Director has graciously stayed over for the meeting. Not only that, but she’s given the children cupcakes wrapped in cellophane. Four year-old spends the walk to the car negotiating the precise terms under which she will be allowed to eat her cupcake. “After lunch,” I say. “After all of lunch, or after half of lunch? And can I have a piece of candy before lunch, since I can’t have the cupcake til after?”

12:33. Sit down with four year-old’s lunch: leftover deli sandwich from the day before. She wants PB&J instead. Get up from my lunch to make her PB&J. Sit down again. Now she wants water. Get up from my lunch to get her water. Each time I rise from the table to meet one of her requests, she flees the kitchen for her bedroom and must be recalled again.

12:51. Eat the leftover deli sandwich.

12:53. Leaving for afternoon training. Wife asks, “So you’ll be gone until . . . late tonight, right?” Yes. “Good luck with that.”

1:33. Sitting in a “Listening” training, texting youth group members and volunteers about evening programs.

1:42. Practicing a one-on-one conversation with another trainee, a college junior. He’s describing his six month job at McDonald’s, causing me to recall my one week job at Taco Bell. Clearly, he’s a better youth than I was.

2:43. Conversation with a trainee who reads Monday Morning Quarterback. She says she laughs out loud in her office when she reads it. Wondering if I could prompt her to laugh on cue. Say . . . NOW?!

3:12. Making jokes with the person next to me about the “three sheets” we’ve just been handed. I’m so tired.

5:12. Training ends in time for me to join the last half of junior high youth group, being led expertly by my three adult volunteers. I only sit in the back of the room with my feet propped up on a couch, fist pumping the air at student comments.

5:43. Prompted by the Stations of The Cross curriculum we’re using, a student relates the death of her Black Labrador with emotion and restraint. The room falls silent.

6:02. Team Youth Pastor loses game of Pictionary when Team Adult Volunteer successfully guesses “Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.” Between you and me, that drawing featured a giant “W,” which makes it bogus. But I ain’t bitter. Team Adult Volunteer dances in celebration, showering cheese puffs like confetti.

6:07. Disgruntled youth vacuuming up cheese puffs.

6:34. Using the hour between youth groups to introduce Intern to “The Harlem Shake.” The mantle of leadership is heavy indeed.

7:08. Adult Volunteer arrives for high school youth group carrying a box of Speculoos cookies from Trader Joe’s. Fall to my knees and weep sugary tears of cookie joy.

7:10. Confused by the celebration, Youth Choir Director tastes a Speculoos. “It’s a graham cracker.” Vision turns red. Hands begin to shake. Blackout.

7:38. Using new Soul Pancake book for discussion starter (hat tip to Adam Walker Cleveland for this): “What would you try if you knew you couldn’t fail?” Student answers, “Engineering.” Me: “You’re going to do that, right?” Student: “No, I’m not good at math.” Me: “Bologne.”

8:12. Adult Volunteer now teeing up conversation from Theoblogy series, “Questions That Haunt Christianity.” Soliciting “haunting” questions from students: why do we need Old Testament laws? Is it true that in heaven you’ll forget everyone you knew if life? Why is the Bible down on homosexuality? Where did God come from?

8:14. Student eagerly volunteers to lead next week’s conversation. Happy.

8:21. Not content to let a good thing last, wonder to myself if this Big Issue Discussion format keeps other high school students away, though the ones here knock my socks off with their thoughtfulness and engagement. Push that thought aside.

8:43. Crouching in the Fellowship Hall, downed by foam football. Scatterball has broken out. Trying not to bend the toes of my new shoes.

9:10. Third game of Scatterball ends with winning student running exultant laps around the Fellowship Hall. If I could, I would hoist him onto my shoulders and parade him through town.

9:48. Home. Grateful as ever for the Presidents who have granted us a day off tomorrow.

A Post on Guns And Mother

I hate guns. My mother made me hate guns, and I’m glad she did.

In the charged up climate of debates over gun control measures and second amendment rights, I’ve come to realize the controlling part my mom has played in my views and sensitivities and to believe the world would be better if more people were like her.

She and my father are both veterans of the Air Force. They’re both evangelical Christians who were as swept up in the Reagan Revolution and the Moral Majority of the 1980’s as any suburban middle class evangelicals could have been. She was a Den Mother.

Yet, as my boyhood friends in the neighborhood played “guns,” using their newest shiny plastic AK’s and pistols, I wasn’t allowed. My older brother and I were the kids who’s mom wouldn’t let them play with guns.

Looking for ways around this restriction, we would still play guns with our friends, interlocking our middle, ring, and pinky fingers, pressing the sides of our thumbs together, and fashioning our aligned pointer fingers into a barrel. “Bang. Bang.”

Mom heard the “Bangs,” and came outside to declare a ceasefire. And our grounding.

Even though we were in Cub Scouts and fired rifles every year at scout camp; even though dad bought us a b.b. gun and set up cans along the back fence to shoot; even though grandpa was a hunter and Uncle Bill was a cop: Mom didn’t entertain guns.

Movies and TV shows featuring gun battles got switched off.

And toys? Transformers? Forget it. G.I. Joe? Are you kidding?

The result is that I am a 36 year old red-blooded American man who hates guns. It’s not a reasoned, analytical stand; it’s a gut-level revulsion to guns, their core function, and the genre of entertainment that traffics in them.

[A caveat: I have actually fired guns. My best friend growing up and his dad were goose hunters. They took me hunting one weekend when I was 15. We spent the whole time hunkered over in a plywood-covered hole in the ground with a space heater. Every 30 minutes or so, the hunters would pop up and fire at flocks of geese flying overhead. I didn’t have a license, so I could only watch. Yet late in the afternoon of the second day, off on a walk by ourselves, my friend allowed me to fire his shotgun. I took aim at a yucca plant about 20 yards away and squeezed the trigger. BANG.

My shoulder hurt for a week. I’ve never fired another gun since.]

The mass shootings that have plagued this country since Columbine have only deepened my antipathy toward firearms. But it was firmly established in my youth by a woman who had served in the military and who knew boys killed in Vietnam, a woman who therefore refused to allow her own boys to swim in gun-infested waters, especially the imaginary ones. The imaginary ones are, in fact, the more sinister, since they lull people into an acceptance of shooting and killing as routine. Mom made sure her kids knew that guns and the death they inflict are real, real, real.

All this as she voted Republican, fretted over the corrupting influence of “secular” school, and defended the second amendment.

She cried when we spoke on the phone the day of the Sandyhook shootings. “This is it for me,” she said. “This is too much.” By which I took her to mean that her reasoned support of gun rights has finally lost to emotional aversion to them.

I hope it’s some comfort to her that, for the son she raised to hate guns, it was never a fair fight. Guns lose. Always.

New Music Tuesday: Scottish Self-Loathing Edition

Note: New Music Tuesday highlights something I’ve been listening to regularly during the week prior. I like it. I include critical comments both positive and negative to demonstrate my independent ignorance of musical convention.

Del Amitri is the love of my musical life. I fed on their ironic, narcissistic, self-loathing for most of my 20’s and am a better man for it. Since they broke up, I’ve had to content myself with a couple of fine solo albums from their frontman Justin Currie, but those just aren’t the same. I’m always on the lookout for some whiskey-soaked deprecatory literary Scottish rock. Always.

Thank God for Frightened Rabbit.

Album:Pedestrian Verse

Artist: Frightened Rabbit

Label: Canvasback/ATL (Grouplove, Fanfarlo, The Joy Formidable)

Release Date: February 5, 2013

Where I Found It: Their previous two albums have put me on their watch list. This one was on my radar for awhile.

What The Critics Are Saying:

The tightly constrained rhythms and miserable lyrics that make the tracks catchy are also what make the album something of a downer. (Consequence of Sound)

Over the years, the group has been lumped in with the proud tradition of sad Scottish bastards, and Pedestrian Verse’s moody “Nitrous Gas” shows why. “Leave the acute warm-heartedness / Go where the joyless bastard lives / He’s dying to bring you down with him / Suck in the bright red major keys / Spit out the blue minor misery / I’m dying to bring you down with me.” (A.V. Club)

Frightened Rabbit’s major label full-length debut is a triumphant album. It expertly expands on their previous work with a big, muscular series of anthems that investigate faith, masculinity, and Scottish identity while sharpening their increasingly identifiable brand of wry, thoughtful songwriting. (Under The Radar)

Here are a few highlights, starting with the aforementioned “Nitrous Gas”:

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0LCSFw

“Holy” is another terrific track, although its irreverence is wearing self-righteous the more I listen to it.

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0LCS10

And finally, “The Woodpile,” which just makes you want to light something on fire.

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0LCS3A