'A voice is heard in Ramah': a prayer

Helpless, near-speechless horror and again as I hear the news...
2 campus shootings on the same day.
The ever-present questions:
How many more?
How long until preventative action is taken
not repetitive excuses given?
And so, tired, and angry, and helpless prayer:

'A voice is heard in Ramah,
mourning and great weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because her children are no more.' Jer, 31:15

Lord,
How many more?
How many sacrificed on the altar of violence,
of obsessive fetishistic gun idolatry
that puts 'my right to carry'
before a child's right to live?
How many hopes and dreams,
how many cherished ones
will perish
on campuses,
in high schools,
in kindergartens
while the endless circle of debate
and statistical manipulations
and justifications
are trotted out once more?
Even one life is one too many.

Lord,
How long?
What does it take to break
the cycle of violence
and hate?
But more so:
to break into an apathy
so inured into the psyche?
We are tired from weeping.
We are bent with grief
and sorrow and hopeless despair.

Lord,
Enough.
Teach us again
and again
and again
- until we get it -
of the preciousness of life;
to champion grace and kindness,
to seek your perfect love
that casts out every fear -
those fears that create a fortress mentality,
a neighbourhood arms-race in miniature.
Comfort the newest members
of a club not willingly joined:
the mothers, fathers,
sisters, brothers,
lovers, and friends
who mourn
and cry out
like Rachel.
Lord,
in your mercy...
hear this prayer. Amen.