An icon of the English mystic, Julian of Norwich.
Special to United Methodist Insight | Aug. 28, 2025
I’m thinking about guns again. I hate this liturgy that we go through. Children die. We rant. Nothing happens. Children die. Ad nauseam. It is an unholy rite.
I wrote the following for Richmond Hill’s electronic newsletter…
I really don’t know where to begin.
Once again, gun violence has garnered the attention of every news outlet in the country. Children. Guns. It is heartbreaking beyond comprehension and yet it is an almost daily occurrence. Annunciation Catholic School is now on the map of American gun violence.
I’m new to many of you, so I need to make my stance on this clear.
Our nations love affair with firearms is sinful. We have made it too easy to kill under the illusion of freedom, the illusion of a “right.”
The Imago Dei has become a target for our individualistic hubris.
In Living in the Question: Meditations in the Style of Lectio Divina, Basil Pennington wrote: "We do not know how precious we are in ourselves. As Dame Julian of Norwich, that delightful English mystic declared, we are God's dream, his homiest home. We have too little respect for ourselves, too little esteem for our own importance. God sees things otherwise."
When will we see as God sees? When will we too see otherwise?
Friends of God, we have been given a gift, the gift of choosing to love one another. Love is the nature of God. It is our nature as well. But we have to choose it. Divine love is an active, willful love. It soothes the weary and emboldens the ready. We need that love more than ever. But we have to choose it.
It is at moments in history like ours that the choice is a stark one. We also know that it isn’t always so. We must aspire to cultivate divine love no matter what the season, no matter what the news outlets tell us.
We are God’s dream.
Choose love.
I hate that all I have in moments like these are words. I hate our nation’s politics around this “issue.” There is no grace in this politic.
The Rev. Tripp Hudgins is pastoral director of Richmond Hill Retreat Center in Richmond, Virginia. This post is republished with permission from his Facebook page.