It's Unacceptable.

We cannot continue as we are.

Time was that the greatest existential threat to the American college student was booze. Drunk driving, alcohol poisoning, accidents, “misadventure”: I remember once reading in my school paper that a young man disoriented by drink either got lost or passed out somewhere in his college town – some northerly campus whose exact location I no longer can recall – and died of hypothermia.

Some of the people who suffer or create dire consequences from excessive drinking do indeed have “a problem with alcohol,” – what I know as alcoholism and what some people now refer to as “substance use disorder.” Whatever you call it, however, if you have known, loved or even been a person living inside the fist of addiction to any chemical, behavior or process, you know that the afflicted risk not just the aforementioned perils, but actually following their seductions to literal death. People literally die with bottles and pipes and needles and pills in their cold, dead hands (if you recognize that last motif, surely you see where I am going).

But perhaps you also know that the people who are lucky enough to survive their brushes with addiction are sometimes inspired to pursue recovery – life! – thanks at least in part to interventions. And though interventions often contain expressions of love and fond wishes and prayers for the target’s restoration, their engine is distinctly and most importantly the immediately cessation of resources – cash, harbor, the favor of hearing any explanation or excuse by the addict. The philosophy is that offering any cooperation will assuredly hasten the addict’s demise and continue to tear their personal ecosystem apart.

However, what do you do if the addict in your life is your culture, and the “substance” is guns? Though there is probably no manual or clinician capable of diagnosing for an entire nation, if you adjust the DSM-V definition and criteria of addiction for sense, we the people actually overqualify: using more than intended or longer than you’re meant to; trying to cut down or stop but being unable; continuing to use despite problems to your mental health; neglecting responsibilities at home, work or school. Yes, yes, mournfully yes. That last one in particular: we have neglected the most sacred responsibilities of school –

That.

They.

Be.

Safe.

I mean no disrespect to the tireless advocacy groups like Moms Demand or Everytown, particularly because they make sure the stories of those lost and affected by guns are not forgotten. But maybe it is we who are upholding the definition of insanity, expecting changed results with the same behavior; that passion alone moves the needle when in truth the only thing that reliably gets an addict’s attention is making things a lot more uncomfortable, and fast. Running out of road.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe our marches don’t need to be about critical masses and soothing, soundbyte-able words. Maybe our posts should no longer be memes and graphics but the names, faces and office phone numbers of the politicians in the pocket of the NRA. We could leave messages for them while we are on the treadmill, or set our email programs to send them a repeating message. Maybe – a horrifying thought – we should share images of bodies riddled with bullet holes so we see exactly what the deal is when a person gets shot. Especially — a just sent a shiver down my own spine — a high velocity bullet, or a small body. I’ve heard interviews Maybe we also humiliate actors on the red carpet who are there to juice movies with relentless shooting, and boycott companies who manufacture assassin games. Disobedience and confrontation worked for the Tea Party, who chased and shouted at politicians until they were exhausted or cowed; the people who showed up to picket clinics dedicated to providing women’s healthcare got what they wanted, didn’t they? Even the miscreants who stormed the Capitol eventually walked free. I’m not suggesting violence or the statutory standard of mayhem, but how is it that Liberals – a group fairly obsessed with exile, moral purity, and shame – aren’t showing up at statehouses and the offices or NRA partisans and delivering – at the very least – some really heated, really embarrassing pressure campaigns? MAGA has shown us that nothing is off the table, intimidation works. Our job might just be harnessing it for good? Can we get used to being a nuisance, a menace, a scourge to the people who make laws? In the words of the professionals on the long-running A&E show Intervention, how do we communicate that there is nothing we won’t do to recover from our nation’s gun addiction – and nothing we will do to let it continue?

Here is where I tell on myself. I felt the news of the shooting at Brown University in a deep and immediate way, but it is when I thought how could this happen?! that I realized that I too had been an enabler, under the spell of one of the enabler’s favorite tools: Denial. The fantasy that the epidemic of gun violence would one day not just be a story I read a book about (Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland), happen in a place I visited after the fact (Charleston) or wept piteously over (all of them), but rather in a community that shaped my entire adult life, in a building I once entered several days a week when I had little job on a high floor of Barus & Holley fieldling the written queries of those requesting applications to the engineering Masters program to subsidize my 12 (actual number) magazine subscriptions and indulgences from the J. Crew catalog. I remember distinctly where and how I first learned the news of some of the deadliest shootings of the just the last decade, including Orlando, Vegas, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Uvalde – a list that I was able to cite in perfect chronological order while forgetting Virginia Tech, Parkland, Walmart and Lewiston, which themselves account for a staggering SEVENTY deaths. How was it that I felt like guns had “finally come home” on Saturday night when in truth, they have been with me and every citizen of the United States all along? And I wondered, are we all unwittingly waiting for the tragedy that feels personal to us before we demand action? If that is the case, prepare for this all to get much, much worse.

As you probably know, Providence is not just a place name, but a word that refers to the protective care of God (“divine providence”). I know that this definition probably sounds quaint and maybe even useless right about now. But if you’ve ever spent any time in church halls (or basements), perhaps you’ve heard the parable of the Drowning Man, who rejects all the offers by rescuers in the misbegotten belief that God will save him; when he reaches the Gates of Heaven, he cries out, but I waited and waited on you, God. How could you let me drown? God’s reply: the frogmen? The boat? The helicopter? It was I who sent them all. This, too, is providence, for the word is also defined as “timely preparation for future eventualities,” not “waiting on miracles.” We are providence. We are Providence. May providence inspire, then guide, then save us all.

My deepest condolences to all those affected by the shootings at Brown and in Bondi. May peace exist and come to reign on Earth.