The Streets of Heaven

This morning 32 people were shot at Virginia Tech, the largest death toll of its kind in the history of the US. I have been walking in a fog for most of the day, trying to make sense of what is truly senseless. In some ways I envy those people who can turn to religion. However, as someone who looks at religion more as an escape mechanism than anything else, I cannot in good conscience turn to an entity that i believe to be fictitious for comfort. There are so many things that I cannot understand, and so many questions that can have no answers. Why were these students killed? How can someone justify to themselves such a heinous level of violence against his fellow men? fellow students? My away message for the day was taken from a West Wing episode, with minor modifications made by myself to reflect today's events as opposed to those invented for a television audience.

More than anytime in recent history America's destiny is not of our own choosing. We did not seek nor did we provoke an assault on our freedoms and our way of life. We did not expect nor did we invite a confrontation with evil. Yet the true measure of a people's strength is how they rise to master that moment when it does arrive. Thirty-two people were killed a couple hours ago at Virginia Tech University; a dormitory and a classroom were attacked and the students and faculty therein mowed down. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight. They are our students and our teachers and our parents and our friends. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we're reminded that that capacity may well be limitless. This is a time for American heroes. We will do what is hard. We will achieve what is great. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars.

A little patriotic for my general tastes, but it recalls in me that there may be hope for this world after all, that all is not necessarily lost, and that the actions taken by one troubled individual do not represent the whole. Times like these make me question my general assumption that people are good, that everyone has a common bond as a fellow citizen of the world. This gunman wouldn't even recognize his bonds as citizens of a common college campus. I wish I could say that the victims and their families are in my prayers, but since I cannot, offer a hope that from the chaos and pain of this tragedy comes a shape, a message from the universe, some hope for the future, because without hope we cannot live.