In 15 years of writing these weekly columns, I’ve learned that there are three subjects that always get up people’s noses. Anything I write about abortion, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, and/or gun control provokes a heated response.

                   These responses often come from people who don’t subscribe to this  column, people who live in Germany, or Brazil, or Indonesia. I assume someone has forwarded my words with a comment like, “Isn’t this SoB outrageous? Tell the author what you think of him!”

                   Today's column is about guns. (I can see hackles rising already.)

                   Guns are not the problem. (I expect the National Rifle Association to forward that assertion all over the world.)

                   Gun owners are the problem. (I don’t expect the NRA to forward that part.)

It’s one week after the Easter Day bombings in Sri Lanka, which killed 359 people. It’s two weeks after the Christchurch shootings in New Zealand/Aotearoa, where 80 people were murdered.

            I hang my head in despair.

            I want to do something about it. I want to lash out, to rid the world of the kind of people who do this kind of thing.

            But I don’t know how to identify “this kind of people.” Media reports claim the Sri Lanka bombers belonged to a fanatic Muslim sect, but I’ve seen no proof -- yet. The Christchurch shooter has been described as a far-right white supremacist, which I suppose makes him nominally Christian.

            Nor do I know how to define “this kind of thing.” Is it more reprehensible to bomb people at worship than to kill them at work, in the World Trade Centre, for example? Is it worse to shoot people at prayer than to blow them up in a classroom or hospital or orphanage -- as happens in Yemen?

            In this storm of wind and fire and earthquake, a still small voice penetrates.: “The real purpose behind these actions is to sow discord and hatred, so that we are all reduced to the same level as the perpetrators of these crimes.”

Today is, officially, Holy Saturday – the empty space between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It might better be called Holey Saturday. It is a hole, a hiatus, an abyss between the two strongest days of the Christian calendar. 

           Unlike Christmas – which has very little biblical evidence to support a date of December 25 – the date of Jesus’ crucifixion can be quite precisely identified. It happened at the Jewish Passover, which came about according to a 1000-year-old formula based on the spring equinox and the full moon.

            The crucifixion is also one of the few facts in the Bible that cannot be challenged. Every gospel, every letter, agrees that Jesus was crucified. No other world religion claims a leader who was executed as a criminal. 

            And the traditions agree that on the “third day” – counting Friday as Day One, because the counters didn’t have zero, yet – on Sunday morning, he was no longer in his tomb. 

           But Saturday is the day between. When nothing happens. 

            Because nothing could happen. Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath. The laws of Moses made it a day of rest. Jews were commanded to emulate God, who – according to Genesis – created the universe in six days, then rested on the seventh day. That’s why the women had to wait until Sunday morning to come to the tomb, 

By the end of this year, all B.C. schools will have to provide free menstrual tampons and pads for students.

            The announcement begins to end a prejudice that seems to have been around as long as civilization. The Bible, an authority for three world religions, considers menstruating women unclean. They must be segregated. Anita Diamant built that exclusion into her best-selling book, The Red Tent.

            Half of human population have, or have had, menstrual periods. Yet it remains a taboo subject.

            Although most schools do make pads and tampons available for emergencies, “many young women feel awkward asking for menstrual products at a school office,” said Rebecca Ballard, a Grade 11 student in the New Westminster school district. 

            And if that’s the situation in Canada, imagine what it must be like in more traditional countries like Uganda.

            Erika van Oyen went to Uganda in 2008 as a volunteer. She quickly realized that many girls got short-changed on their education. Unable to afford disposable sanitary supplies – indeed, often unable even to afford underpants – they missed a week of schooling every month.

            “Before we started this program,” van Oyen says, “schools taught about women’s biology, about menstrual cycles. But a girl in her period is ridiculed. Teased if she soils her clothes. Humiliated. So they stay away. They fall behind in their classes, and eventually they drop out.”

The first thing budding writers learn is to “avoid clichés like the plague.” Unfortunately clichés sometimes describe the current political situation better than a host of well honed words.

            In Ottawa, Justin Trudeau has spent weeks stuck on the horns of dilemma.

            On the one horn, he represents a Montreal riding. He has a right -- even a duty -- to lobby for his constituents, many of whom work for SNC-Lavalin. He also needs SNC-Lavalin’s services for his $187 billion infrastructure renewal program.

            On the other horn, he should not pressure Justice Minister and Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to interfere in a criminal case.