Since the tragedy of Pittsburgh, the question has niggled at me. “I’m so sorry for your loss” is so inadequate. Surely, I mustn’t imply any “you people” presumption of separateness. “It wasn’t me” clearly won’t do. “Try to forgive”? Sorry, I guess I’m just not that evolved. I search for words that will comfort.
Disclosure: I am an 84-year-old white guy, raised as a vague Protestant who, decades ago, settled into a vaguely Buddhist view of the universe; that compassion is the highest of the virtues, that “What is?” is a better question than “What ought to be?” and “To live a proper life” is a better goal than “To make the world a better place.”
I think that poor, sad demented louts like the one in Pittsburgh are a menace to us all because of the disease they carry. His is a particularly virulent strain of an infectious virus that, under different names, occasionally sickens the human family everywhere. Sadly, that disease will likely never be completely eradicated, and holding it in check will remain the highest personal work that any of us can ever do.
Looked at one way, our society has been moving in the correct direction. The worst manifestations of the disease, measured in gross terms of sanctioned exclusions and murders, have been checked and will not likely reappear except when given a temporary jolt of stimulant by some transient demigod in the service of his own warped reality. The larger, abiding, truth is that we are better than that. The person is more than the cancer.
In the end, the best this old goy can do is one inadequate word, your word, to neighbor, Jew, friend, fellow human: shalom.
— Brooke Elgie
Tenakee Springs
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