Once again, tragedy strikes the American dream.  This time, it struck, of all places, Las Vegas, long a destination for those in search of quick riches.  Ten minutes destroyed countless dreams, leaving hundreds of households in psychological ruin, reducing too many human beings to mere plops on a radar screen.

     Of course, as anyone who scans international news knows, killings on this scale killings occur on an almost daily basis in many parts of the world.  Most of us read about such things, mourn, then go on with our daily affairs.  Some of us pray, others send money to help victims and survivors.  But we rarely factor the event into the flow of our lives.  Most of the West lives in splendid isolation.
    Multiple (and, to me, largely unfounded) fears of some about the specter of a world government notwithstanding, one benefit, albeit somewhat perverse, of globalization is that people all over the world know, almost instantly, when tragedy befalls others in the global community.  We have more capability to care about our fellow human beings than ever before.
     While I could criticize the seemingly cavalier attitude of various organizations in the West about the proliferation of firearms or lament the steady fracturing of the corporate psyche in the First World, both of which, to me, contributed to this latest debacle of violence, I instead invite people to pray.  God may appear distant, yes, but if we do not believe he's there in the worst of times, we may as not well believe he is there at all.  If God is God, he is God all the time.  Indeed it is in this darkness, this darkness of divine indifference and human folly, we come to see this most clearly.  Shorn of our hope, ripped from our moorings, stunned and broken, we have nowhere else to turn.
     Always, always:  love remains.