Small Gesture
What pain, what hatred could seethe in a man for twenty years? What made this milk trunk driver show up at an Amish school loaded, not just for murder, but for a massacre?
Everyone is trying to guess why Charles Roberts executed these Amish girls. "This isn't the man I married," his wife wrote in a letter that has been read hundreds of times. No, I suppose he wasn't, but who was he?
He held a grudge against women.
A grudge? Is that it?
Amidst the corn fields and coal mines of Pennsylvania a simple slaughter took place yesterday. A man committed a crime against all of us, and it begs the question of how this is different from the bombs and bullets in Baghdad.
It's not really, but what haunts me is that a single person decided to do this. A single person, who could be living next door to any of us, methodically butchered the daughters and sisters of peace. Simple souls caught up in a complex, dark world were bound and executed.
Boys.
Men.
What flaw do we carry that seems capable of fracturing when enough pressure is applied. What domino tips us into such incomprehensible evil?
Sitting here today, I look at my son and I look at my own hands. How can I explain this to him? How can I explain the pictures of 50 tortured bodies being carried out of a warehouse in the outskirts of Baghdad?
I can only be honest. I have no answers. I only know that the power of small gestures can doom us or save us.
Small gestures.
What was the small gesture Charles Robert's never received? What is the small gesture I can offer to my son?
Everyone is trying to guess why Charles Roberts executed these Amish girls. "This isn't the man I married," his wife wrote in a letter that has been read hundreds of times. No, I suppose he wasn't, but who was he?
He held a grudge against women.
A grudge? Is that it?
Amidst the corn fields and coal mines of Pennsylvania a simple slaughter took place yesterday. A man committed a crime against all of us, and it begs the question of how this is different from the bombs and bullets in Baghdad.
It's not really, but what haunts me is that a single person decided to do this. A single person, who could be living next door to any of us, methodically butchered the daughters and sisters of peace. Simple souls caught up in a complex, dark world were bound and executed.
Boys.
Men.
What flaw do we carry that seems capable of fracturing when enough pressure is applied. What domino tips us into such incomprehensible evil?
Sitting here today, I look at my son and I look at my own hands. How can I explain this to him? How can I explain the pictures of 50 tortured bodies being carried out of a warehouse in the outskirts of Baghdad?
I can only be honest. I have no answers. I only know that the power of small gestures can doom us or save us.
Small gestures.
What was the small gesture Charles Robert's never received? What is the small gesture I can offer to my son?