06July06

Nervous Students:

I make it a habit of gently, informally probing the motivation of my students, and I've detected a trend lately, a trend that is not unique to my school: Students tell me they're seeking our instruction because they're "n ervous." We haven't seen so many simultaneous, worldwide hotspots in many decades.

My students, particularly those getting involved with serious guns and the ontogenesis of purposeful shooting skills for the first time in their other wise etiolated lives, tell me that they want, they desperately want, some capacity for "independent action," an issue that scarcely c rossed their collective minds, until recently.

It may be mostly a symptom of natural, societal maturation, yet I hear it over and over. "I'm scared," =80=9CI'm worried,=E2=80 and "I don't want to be helpless any more" are typical refrains, as we all wrestle with the persisten t, jittery, but unmistakable perception that world history is plummeting headlo ng into another Great Dark Age!

Other institutions are experiencing similar phenomena. Churches that, in the process of pursuing fashionable trends, had compromised the most, are the very ones that are now shrinking the fastest! "Gun control,=80 as a political issue has, once again, become an unmentionable topic. With only a few, notable exceptions, Democrats and Republicans alike refuse to discuss it o penly. They both fear a public that has grown weary of being told they are too stupid to own guns. That fraudulent refrain may have scored points, at lea st among the naive, when the future looked bright. It falls on apprehensive a nd uncharitable ears now!

I'm not in the crystal-ball business, but I think there is good reason for the chilling motivation that sends students to us for the first time, people

who wouldn't have dreamed of it as little as a year ago. They're scared!

Right now, we're all a little scared.

"God and soldiers we adore, In time of peril, not before!"

/John