An Elliptical Glory: A Collect Against Gun Violence

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

A Collect Against Gun Violence

A Collect against Gun Violence

All nurturing God, you cannot bear the violence of your creatures and have promised with a rainbow to keep your creation safe. Turn far from us the violent, and keep us from vengeance, anger, and fear. Heal us and help us to love. Remove from us the root of bitterness and bigotry. Help us to find ways to reduce and eliminate the scourge of violence in our society, especially the harm wrought through firearms. This we pray for your tender mercy’s sake, Amen.

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This web log is intended to share homilies, some liturgical materials I have prepared or adapted (prayers, litanies, etc.), and occasional journal entries.

"Elliptical" can mean "fragmentary, with words missing," or "in the shape of a flattened circle." While "glory" refers to the brilliance surrounding the Deity, it can also refer to the grace that reflects such radiance in life. In Christian iconography, a "glory" is the whole body halo around the Christ or the Blessed Virgin in paintings and statuary.

According to Kepler’s First Law of Planetary Motion, an object in orbit follows an ellipse, with the center of mass as one of the foci. The ellipse was called “imperfect” by theologians who originally objected to its use by Kepler to refine Copernicus’ heliocentric model of the solar system, as opposed to the “perfect” circles of Aristotelian geocentric cosmology. "Elliptical" can thus also imply the 'imperfect' path between two centers, or falling toward the true center, but moving forward fast enough to avoid collision, but slowly enough to prevent escape.