Columbine, VT, and a bit of compassion...

How can you know of a quiet person's deep-seeded anguish, if you never ask? How can you see a tragedy coming, if your eyes are always closed? Can you see the treasures around you, if you can see no farther than your own socially-conditioned preferences?

Throughout this week, I've been rather deaf to all the headlines describing "a disturbed killer" and "a dark picture of a madman." All my thoughts, rather, are centered on human dignity, compassion, and patience.

Unless you've been on the other side, you don't know what it's like to be shunned, abused, and pushed away. A person who experiences such things for many years, even when suddenly faced with a positive environment, will not suddenly see the world through rose-colored glasses. Add an unstable psyche or the lack of a supportive family, and you may have the recipe for tragedy.

Nobody is perfect, and I'm sure I've missed many opportunities to help others. Throughout my time, however, I have found that the strangest, most awkward, and most "uncool" of people have become the biggest blessings in my life. I've learned to intentionally seek these people out, and help pull them out of their shells. Along the way, I can count two averted suicides. I can also count the time the burden became too much, I began to ignore the person, and they soon found themselves in a violent encounter.

It seems that lack of concern for those outside of our immediate social-circles is an inbred social characteristic of the times. To be shallow is to be hip. To be selectively uncaring seems to be part and parcel with "coolness." Even in the wonderful Church environments I've worked in, the tendency to establish exclusive cliques sometimes reminded me of high school. I can't count the amount of times attempts by others and myself to have deep conversation, inclusive social gatherings, and overall quality time were shunned or ignored. Not surprisingly, many of the most guilty are now falling like flies, leaving their faith and showing how thoughtless, spineless, shallow, and self-centered they are. These are the "cool kids", in a different guise. As soon as that guise became inconvenient, it was cast-off like an out of style garment. If you can cast-away people, why not ideas? Apparently, nothing and no-one is sacred in our culture.

Columbine, for instance, is a many-sided tragedy. The death and carnage was tragic, to be sure. But so was the rash of irresponsible parenting that led to it. So were the uncaring and cruel bullies who pushed these kids to the edge. Surprisingly, nothing seems to have been done -- on a large scale -- to deal with the needless phenomenon of peer-cruelty. I'm not talking about simple bullying and teasing -- I'm talking about full-fledged cruelty. It's there, everyday, stirring the pot in an easily repeatable recipe for tragedy.

In the case of VT, it's impossible to say whether such a tragedy could have been prevented. There is certainly no way that those who died deserved such an end: it was purely senseless, and completely tragic.


...But yet, I can't help but wonder if one persistently caring person could have prevented the tragedy at VT, or at least seen the warning flags that something was seriously wrong. Perhaps somebody tried... who knows? I can't help but wonder, if I were around such a situation, could I take the time out of my busy life to embrace this person? Would I gather them in and hear them out, or would I go on my oblivious way?