The Darkest Week...

We are in the darkest week of the year right now. Sunrise in Portland is at 7:45 and sunset at 4:30. Give or take a few minutes. We'll start to gain a few minutes on either end starting soon. But right now we are in the darkest stretch.

That's what I was thinking about on Saturday when Brent and I went out for our sunny afternoon walk. The sun was already getting lower in the sky and it was only mid afternoon. Just the darkest time.

And then there was the shooting at Brown University. Followed by the horrific shooting in Australia.

And yes, the shooting in Australia is horrific while the shooting at Brown is another American shooting.

This past weekend was the anniversary of Sandy Hook. That's the one that broke me. Where I realized that nothing was going to get better. That we in America loved our guns and our rhetoric more than we love our children. For the most part I stopped arguing at that point. Stopped writing about it. Because nothing was going to change. It was just going to be "too soon!" and "don't politicize a tragedy!" and "thoughts and prayers!" No action. No change. No realization that it's the guns. The only difference between America and every other country without gun violence on our unbelievable levels is the guns.

But in Australia? Horrific. Unthinkable. Shocking. Terrifying. Devastating. Not at all business as usual. And they will do what they did in the 90s when they had a mass shooting. They will review their current laws and make the changes they need to make to keep everyone safer.

Mass shootings aren't common outside of war zones. Unless you live in America. Then they are so common that one of the children that was at Sandy Hook that terrible day 13 years ago grew up to be one of the young adults at Brown on Saturday. And she wasn't the only student at Brown for whom this isn't their first school shooting.

And that's insane.

When Sandy Hook happened I posted a message about how we should be shocked, that we are horrified because of how rare such things are. How we needed to maintain our horror when faced with something as unthinkable as that. When the shooting at Brown happened this past weekend I thought how terrible for their parents and friends. But I wasn't shocked. I'm saddened but not shocked. Not anymore.

We made our choice. We said we will protect our guns and the best we can do for your kids is pray.

Australia will make another round of changes to protect their people.

It's the darkest week here.

And as sad and horrified and devastated as they are in Australia over the hate crime that left so many dead, it's not the darkest week there. They will look at the crime in the clear light of day and make the changes they need to.

I still hope that someday America crawls out of the dark but until then I won't be shocked when the next mass shooting happens.