Wooden crosses are placed at a memorial dedicated to the victims of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

School buses have always been part of my life. Beyond my days as a student, I spent many hours with transportation staff as a Ballston Spa school district administrator.

After retirement, however, I found school bus delays annoying —  the frequent stops, the long wait while the flashing lights insist I stay put. But this morning, I willingly waited as I watched a father walk his young son across the street to the open bus door where they lingered for a long goodbye.

The hug was mutual, before the boy with his backpack climbed the steps of the big yellow bus that would take him to school. And, hopefully, bring him home again. A final wave before the bus pulled away.

I thought of the song "A Whole Lot of Rain" written by Bob Warren after the horrific Sandy Hook massacre. "When you drive them to school and you kiss them goodbye, you must always believe that you’ll see them again."

I wondered again why nothing of consequence to stem gun violence has been done in the 23 years since Columbine.

During my tenure as an administrator, I helped students learn how to hide from a possible armed gunman. I assisted with lock-out and lock-down drills. We'd lead little kids to the school basement and tell them to be very quiet so no one could hear them.

Like Anne Frank hiding in the attic.

Although only practice, the kids were nervous. We adults still believed Columbine was a freakish one-off perpetrated by high school misfits.

Since Columbine, there have been 14 mass shootings in American schools, with more than 311,000 children experiencing gun violence in school. Yet "thoughts and prayers" seem to be all some elected officials are willing to offer, blocking even minimal legislation to protect kids. That’s a sinful deflection of human responsibility. Like the friend who offers to pray for me when I’m sick but doesn’t bring me soup.

Ken Olin, director of the television drama "This is Us," recently tweeted, "We don’t need moments of silence. We need relentless noise."

A cardiac nurse, correlating current events with blood pressure, confessed that she was unaware of the Uvalde school shooting for several hours, despite having a school-age son. It happened so soon after the Buffalo tragedy that she didn’t realize there had been yet another abominable occurrence. She was ashamed of her ability to tune it out. That’s the insidious danger —  not having to vomit when we hear another child was blown apart in school by an AR-15.

How have we become so inured to gun violence in this country? Or has that always been the case?

Even though modern-day guns and bullets weren’t yet invented when the Second Amendment was written, any effort to curtail their use is viewed as a violation of our Founding Fathers’ intent. Despite what we know about their character flaws, they’re currently held in higher esteem than our children.

In America, guns hold sanctity over children’s lives. Over human life. Somehow, God has been correlated with the right to kill the other. Consider the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, the Holocaust. On television, we witness insurrectionists with weapons intended to kill elected officials, proclaiming it’s God’s will. What a perversion of the divine nature that’s in each one of us!

When watching the memorial service for the victims of the Buffalo carnage, I was struck by the mourners’ ability to still praise the Lord while in the depths of despair, no doubt well-cultivated faith after years of unjustifiable oppression.

I suggest we now lift our eyes to Capitol Hill to pass legislation that will help us feel safe in our schools, churches, malls, movie theaters, streets. 

I don’t distinguish between God and other life forms; for me, there’s no separation of spirit. It’s up to our collective divinity to bring justice to our world. We can pray that humanity chooses a better way, but that isn’t enough: We must demand Congress pass life-saving legislation, vote, attend public meetings, and speak up. Make a "relentless noise."

Jesus’ disgust with the money changers, turning over their tables, is the perfect image for us to hold in our minds during prayer. Decisive action is mandatory unless we’re willing to say a long goodbye to our kids every morning and kiss human decency goodbye forever. Patricia A. Nugent is the author of “They Live On: Saying Goodbye to Mom and Dad” and editor of the anthology "Before They Were Our Mothers: Voices of Women Born Before Rosie Started Riveting.” Her latest book is "Healing with Dolly Lama: Finding God in Dog" about an unwanted puppy that became a muse.