Triggers

Triggers announce forthcoming pain. The trigger clicks. If one hears the click, it is a split-second warning. Is there time for avoiding being shot? I remember when age 13 and being shot. I heard the trigger click. I saw the rifle protruding from an upstairs window. I heard the shot. No, there was not avoidance time. My mind clicked a split-second after, each sequence, including the pain reality.

I wonder now about mental triggers. Mental triggers have silent clicks. Once the shot fells its prey, the woundedness determines pain depth and breadth. Visuals trigger the mind. Emotions trigger the mind. The mind is gun of the memory.

Should a person recently shot and wounded avoid shooting ranges? Should he avoid wild animal parks and safaris? Woods, game preserves, dark alleys, gang neighborhoods? Churches?

What if the wounds are long-since scarred over? Why do reoccurences occur? What can control the triggers? Why do the smallest details become lethal trigger-points of big guns?

We heard this morning from the Book of Samuel. Hannah prayed a long time for a child. She and her husband, but mostly she, were shunned because they were different. They didn't have children. She offered a child to God and God alone, if He would grant her a child. Samuel was born, and she gave him to Eli the priest to be reared in the temple, when he was two or three years old. I suppose for Hannah, just the sight of other women and their children, or the women's dark glances in her direction, triggered the agony with which she prayed to God for a child. She prayed with such agony that Eli thought her drunk.

My head clicks with triggers. How can I be rid of them? Is there something I can do to recognize the clicks in order to duck or run for cover? Or, should I avoid the places and people who hold smoking guns?

Avoiding is not freeing. Soon the mind is figuring out where not to go, who not to speak with, who not to think of.

Creating is freeing. The mind creates a new dimension in which to exist without triggers, guns, and those who shoot. But it does make sense to avoid, also. Don't go back into bullet holes old or recent. The wounded soul is weak, wan, and frail. Resistance is low. Confusion is high.

And, what strength is strong enough to sustain it? What refreshment refreshes the wounded soul?

Catholics believe the Eucharist and other sacraments are food and balm for such souls. Scripture the ointment of the mind and spirit. But one has to believe. Belief must counter gun triggers.

All I know for now is that the things of the world are not strong enough to sustain a trigger-clicked, gun-shot, wounded soul. Impure Cathoilcism is not enough. Pure Catholicism surely is more than enough to sustain a soul in this botched world. Silence the triggers, but how? Pure Catholicism. Purely Christ in His Church the way He purely intended, spoke, lived, taught, expected.

Avoid impure Catholicism. Live in a cave like Santa Rosalia in a time before firearms? The soul may be a cool, refreshing cave, rock-strengthened walls impervious to bullets and trigger-clicks echoing warning into the chamber of the mind. Cave-dwellers peer out at the world from camouflaged entry holes. Elijah, from barely within the entrance to his cave, heard God.
Pure God.

And I am determined to find and live pure-cave Catholicism.

A baby is growing in its warm, secure cave. In 7 months, God-willing, he or she will peek into the world and come forth. This morning at Mass I saw a woman praying like Hannah. She didn't wail in drunkenness prayer. But she prayed, and I know she'd like a child. I echoed her prayer to God, asking Him to put a new soul in a new body in the cave He gave this woman when she was a soul in a new body in her mother's cave.

Trigger-points are powerful mind-clicks. Controlling the trigger-finger is not always possible, if it ever is. Often the trigger-finger belongs to someone or situation outside the target mind. Is it possible to avoid guns? What about snipers and drive-by shooters? How about self-inflicted gunshot wounds? Develop a cave dwelling beyond the womb for protection from the world and its triggers. When shot--and this happens when foraging outside the cave's entrance--return to the cave for relief, rest, resuscitation and refuge.

For pity's sake, don't hold guns. Don't risk putting your finger on a trigger, even if there is no target other than your own foot.