Why do so many people in our country want and need to buy lethal combat weapons? What is the hole inside of their souls that needs to be filled in so violent a way?

I had a beautiful, peaceful, and meaningful holiday week. But it was not as peaceful as I had hoped; I didn’t choose to have the week in silence, cut off from the distractions and tragedies of the outside world. So there was the news.

Unless we crawl into caves, there is no escaping the bad news we hear and see almost every day and every night. I was very sorry to hear about more mass shootings; they are becoming so commonplace it is natural to see them as normal, just another day in America.

I  hope I never do.

I saw the news this morning and then sat silently, as I do every morning.

When I meditate, I never really know what I will end up thinking up, and this morning, shortly after reading a Thomas Merton essay, I started thinking about the mass killings in supermarkets, churches, schools, and dancing halls and bars – places where we all go dancing, learn, pray, eat and live, and never expect to die so horribly and brutally.

They just went to work. They just went shopping. They just went to school. They just went out to have fun. They just went to pray. We live in a country now with armed guards around mosques, synagogues, and churches. if that isn’t a national emergency, I’m not sure I know what the term means.

I understand that the people who do this are troubled and ill.

Still, it’s difficult for me to grasp the hatred, frustration, and alienation that makes it possible to slaughter one’s friends, co-workers, worshippers, and innocent people  – children and adults, men and women – as they go so innocently about their lives.

And our leaders’ callousness, cowardice, and greed are beyond my grasp.

As often happens, a Merton essay got me thinking about it.  Meditation time gave me the opportunity to cope with it. I want my blog to be a safe place, but I never want to think these killings are so normal they don’t need to be mentioned.

I am, like everyone, getting used to mass shootings, police tape, tortuous press conferences, flashing red lights,  and shattered families.

I look at the news and go about my business. I know of no good and human way to respond beyond sending money to those heart-breaking go fund me campaigns. We move on. The families, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and friends and lovers, and partners never do.

I always contribute to the inevitable one for funeral expenses.

How much attention can I pay to them and still go about my life?

The question that haunts me about guns in America is not the endless arguing about the Second Amendment or the greed and malice of politicians and the gun lobby. Why do so many people in our country want and deed powerful combat weapons in their homes and lives?

Living in a rural area has altered my understanding of guns. The hunters I know are careful, honest, and moral people. They very often hunt to eat and share the food they kill. When I lived in cities, only the bad guys had guns. Around here, all of the good guys have them.

But America is now the most heavily armed country on earth, and I wonder why?

The psychologist Eric Fromm points out the inner contradiction that he thinks is tearing America apart.

The desire for guns and the rising violence derives, he says, from the alienation and frustration, and pressures of life in America. He says this is the root of violence in America, the reason people buy guns to kill and heart other people, not just animals.

“When we live superficially,”  writes  Thomas Merton, “when we are always outside of ourselves, never quite “within” ourselves, always divided and pulled in many directions by conflicting plans and projects, we find ourselves doing many things that we do not want to do, saying things we do not mean, needing things we do not need, exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realize to be worthless and without meaning in our lives.”

He quotes Isaiah in the Bible (55.2): “Why spend your money on what is not food and your earnings on what never satisfied?”

We are at odds with ourselves, he says. It’s obvious. That is the story the news reveals but won’t really talk about. We are, in many ways, angry, frustrated, and disconnected people without purpose, moral guides, inspiring leaders,  or security.

Silence has helped me organize myself around my life’s purpose; it helps clear away the argument and distractions, and violence of our world. It led me to do good, not to kill.

Very few Americans have much silence or a chance to understand who they are and what they want.

Fromm writes that we are at odds with ourselves and seek release through fantasies and dramas of violence.

This makes sense to me.

No corporation in America has ever paid an employee to spend some time in silence and contemplation and draw together the scattered and dissipated energies of our fragmented existences.

We never get to try and correspond with our deepest needs and purpose.

I dread even thinking about what would have happened if I had not found a way to gather myself in silence and meditation and understand who I was and wanted to be.

I’m happy to leave the hunters alone. They care more about the environment than almost any politicians.

I have a rifle, and the rabid raccoons, squirrels, and skunks I’ve helped to leave the world to testify to its value. I don’t need or want a machine gun to live my life.

But the point isn’t just how to get rid of all these guns.

The real question is the elephant in the room: why are people living such disconnected and empty lives that they need one so badly?

I wonder if we can solve one without understanding the other.

Perhaps we won’t have to live in a world where frustrated and alienated young men with machine guns use them to storm government buildings and frighten librarians, government officials, and voting registrars.

Self-aware people who find the time and the will to look inside themselves for meaning and truth do not, I imagine, need combat machine guns to live their lives, do their work, and find their truth.

Are these the “woke” people Governor DeSantis and others are so anxious to “own,”  persecute and humiliate?

I can’t say since I don’t know what the world really means.

But I’m starting to understand it.