It is …

I can only imagine the agony of being a parent of a Virginia Tech student, waiting to hear if your child is safe … or not.

It is not right. It is not fair. It makes no sense. There is nothing — no hurt, no injury, no frustration, no injustice, no rage — that can justify, or even account for, the blasphemous act of ceding to oneself the right to take another human life.

It is a tragedy of monumental proportion …

… the slaying of thirty-three human beings in Blacksburg, Virginia, no more able to enrich the beauty of the world around them or to be enriched by the beauty of the world around them,

… and the myriad ways we — you and I — cede to ourselves power of the same sort, choosing to impose our will and our way, to work out our frustrations or to satisfy our appetites, without regard for the injury done to other human beings along the way.