I’ve been thinking a lot about the shootings at the Virginia Tech campus. Thinking how one person was able to destroy so many people’s lives. For some reason I have been thinking about all the emails, and text messages, and voice mails that these students have left. Never to be opened and read, never to be answered. They have died, but their electronic ghost continues on, churning away on some server. Like digital memories of some massive electronic brain.

I wonder if they have unchecked mail from friends and family desperately trying to find out if they are OK. Text messages on cell phones that will be running out of batteries about now. Phone messages that will never be returned. The record of the anguish preserved for as long as those hard drives are left alone.

I am deeply disturbed as I listen to news reports of survivors talking about how the escaped death by pretending to be dead. The only way we are safe from death is if we are dead ourselves. I think of the pain that will radiate out from this event. Each dead student like the epicenter of a pain earthquake sending shock waves into their community.

I imagine a map, where each person is a dot of bright red, with concentric circles of anguish spreading out from them, the circles overlapping and intensifying. Seen from afar the Virginia tech campus would glow like the sun, zoom out further and you would see tiny dots of pain located in the home towns of each victim’s family.

Zoom out further still and you would see the flash of each death on the planet. The sheer immensity of the pain would be overwhelming. Iraq would glow like a supernova, and Darfur would look like a fire storm. Overwhelming the display and causing a bright flare out.

I hold back the tears every time I hear about another family ruined by violence. Another shooting, another car bomb, another genocidal slaughter. The pain map of my mind is being overwhelmed. There has to be some way to live peacefully on this planet. We must find a way to make violence something rare, something taboo. The only answer to such violence is love, compassion, and peace.

I would ask that everyone take some time over the next couple of weeks to find a way to live your life more peacefully. Our stance against violence a living memorial to the people lost in this tragic event. By making a better future we honor their memory.