For all the lip service we like to pay from time to time about mercy, forgiveness and humility, I believe Hutchmo is right:

And they came to him again, and said, ‘No really, who IS our neighbor’?

And He said, ‘that bag lady on the corner inexplicably talking on a cell phone’

The more leftist of the group kind of liked that answer, but they all wondered how in hades the bag lady could afford an honest-to-god flip-top cell phone.

But, then He had more to say, ‘Jerry Falwell was your neighbor’…

One of the more vocal of the bunch exploded: “you’re f***ing kidding me.  That jackass set the movement back three hundred years.   He is the poster child of how people confuse the church with your message.  I’m glad that guy finally bit the big one’.

He said, “I didn’t say you had to like him.  Do you want to hear more about your neighbors”

Suddenly they all had appointments and things that must be tended to and left the mountaintop.   One of them was heard muttering as he descended to the valley, ‘If that prick was really my neighbor, I’d move’.

It ought to be easy enough to have compassion for a bag lady or anyone else in rough circumstances, though sadly for those of us who aren’t named Charles Strobel, it often isn’t. There are plenty of worse people on this planet than Jerry Falwell, and I hope forgiveness lies in the future for every single one of them.

Even the ones we think we’re better than. Thanks for the reminder, John.

Great words here from the authors of the Egonomics blog:

During [yesterday's Virginia Tech] assembly, Dr. Nikki Giovanni, Professor of English at the University, delivered a powerful poem. One line of that poem read: “We are better than we think, and not quite what we want to be.” That is a near perfectpainting of humility. Humility reminds us how far we have come, and at the same time how far we have yet to go. Our progress, and the difference we can make whether measured individually or collectively, largely rests on ourdevelopment of that one trait. If we miss the first or last phrase in the poetic line from Dr. Giovanni, then we fail to understand the real power of humility. Our prayers and thoughts are with those student’s families, friends, and everyone affected by a tragedy that there is no language or vocabulary to adequately describe.

I agree. The challenge of authentic humility, I think, is to balance courage and compassion at the same time. It is a high calling and a worthwhile challenge.

I support this idea:

Silence can say more then a thousand words… On April 30th, 2007, the Blogosphere will hold a One-Day Blog Silence in honor towards the victims of Virginia. 33 died at the US college massacre… This day shall unite us all about this unbelievable painful & shocking event and show some respect and love to those who lost their loved ones… The Blogosphere is in deep mourning.

Update: Steli Efti is one of the people behind this creative and heartfelt effort.

A student blogger is weighing in on this morning’s events:

Right now the number is 22 dead and 28 wounded and that includes one shooter dead. They believe he/she acted alone, but that is not confirmed. There is no apparent motive currently other than they believe the shooting at West AJ this morning was a man shooting his girlfriend and Resident Advisor.

From all reports, this is the worst school shooting ever. School is closed today and tomorrow and there is supposed to be some type of service in Cassell Coliseum tomorrow at noon.

If you have family or something that you want to reunite with, they are telling everyone to go to the Inn at VT off Prices Fork Road. Also, if you call someone and do not get them; do not be automatically alarmed. The cell towers are jammed like crazy, so it may be difficult to get through.
I will keep everyone updates as much as possible, but it hard to say how long it will take to fully grasp what has happened.

The Virginia Tech student newspaper, The Collegiate Times, is publishing text updates via its parent company Web site.

Update:A Nashvillian who visited Blacksburg over the weekend has shared her thoughts. A graduate student at VT is also blogging. The Tennessean is looking for local VT alumni to interview.

I have visited Blacksburg, Virginia, a few times in the past and found it to be a sleepy college town in the midst of lovely countryside between Roanoke and Bristol. The scene there today is much different, and I can’t imagine what it must be like for those who are there. From Charles Steger, President of Virginia Tech, via the Wikinews page now attributed to this tragedy:

Today, the university was struck with a tragedy we consider to be of monumental proportion. There were two shootings which occurred on campus. In each case, there are fatalities. The university is shocked, and indeed horrified. I want to extend my deepest and most sincere and profound sympathies to the families of these victims, which include our students.

At about 7:15 this morning, a 9-1-1 call came to the university Police Department concerning an event in West Ambler Johnston Hall. There were multiple shooting victims. While in the process of investigating, about two hours later, the university received reports of a shooting at Norris Hall. The police immediately responded. The shooter in Norris Hall is deceased. There are multiple fatalities. The number of fatalities has not been confirmed, victims have been transported to various hospitals in the immediate area and the region to receive emergency treatment. We will proceed to notify the next of kin as the victims’ identities are available.

Based on the lives lost, this incident is already beginning to remind me of Columbine. I hope that the proximity of its anniversary (April 20, 1999) has not factored in this event. I am saddened to see so many lives change so suddenly for such a senseless reason, and I am saddened to see another community arriving at “one-word” status when it comes to invoking memories of terrible events.

Fred Vogelstein at Wired shared his own thoughts on his blog about being the subject of an internal Microsoft memo:

As journalistic windfalls go this is about as good as it gets. There I was writing a story about how Microsoft is on the cutting edge of using the Internet to become more transparent, and there in front of me are the briefing documents they are using to manage the story. The timing was so fortuitous that I wondered whether it was intentional. When I told Microsoft about it, they convincingly told me it was not.

But after I was done reading all 5,500 words I no longer felt elated at the prospect of an interesting scoop. I felt downright peculiar. I’ve been a journalist for more than 20 years and always assumed that the people I interview do as much homework on me as I do on them. So the existence of a document like this didn’t surprise me. But that still didn’t make it any easier to read lines like, “It takes him a bit to get his point across so try to be patient.” I know my long-windedness drives my wife nuts occasionally. I didn’t know it had become an issue for Microsoft’s pr machine too…

Should I be flattered that they worked so hard, or should I be embarrassed at being co-opted by their spin machine? I’d like to think I would have written the same story no matter what. But now, through the miracle of transparency, you, the reader, get to decide that too.

Here’s the story Vogelstein wound up publishing, if you’re curious.

[Thanks to Todd Bishop at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for Vogelstein's blog info.]

Transparency is a popular buzzword and a valuable concept in public relations and in the news these days. This New York Times story reminded me this week just how transparent all our technology and connectedness has made nearly all of us, virtually overnight:

In February, during the course of reporting on a video blogging initiative at Microsoft called Channel 9, Fred Vogelstein inadvertently received a 13-page, 5,500-word internal memo from Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, a firm that represents Microsoft. The document, which was meant to prepare Microsoft executives for interviews, contained frank details, including some less-than-flattering observations (“Fred’s stories tend to be a bit sensational, though he would consider them to be balanced and fair”), scripted responses to questions and a strong-arm list of the points the agency expected to see in the piece.

It only made matters worse that the original Wired story was intended to focus on Microsoft’s corporate transparency in allowing its employees to blog about their work.

Noting that the article Mr. Vogelstein wrote was about a Microsoft project that permits employees to blog about the company’s corporate doings — a concept called “radical transparency” — Mr. Shaw said, “In a lot of ways, it was irresistible to Wired to bring attention to it. To show it as the polar opposite of the transparency piece they were working on.”

Mr. Vogelstein said in a telephone interview that the memo, which made its way into an e-mail message about appointment scheduling, gave him a weird sense of voyeurism.

“We all want to know what everybody thinks about us, but I think most of us, if we found out, would be sorry,” he said. “Some of the stuff I was totally fine with, but I objected to being called ‘tricky’ and I thought, ‘Wow — they really think that?’ ”

I would argue that there is radical transparency in our culture now, but not the kind engendered by Microsoft’s blogging initiative (which sounds like an admirable idea, for what it’s worth). This reminds me of advice I’ve heard around the office from time to time, usually when writing a news release: “Don’t write it unless you’d be comfortable seeing it on the front page of the newspaper.” Or in the next issue of Wired magazine.

The thing is, I’d expect that most of us have emails or private documents we’d rather not arrive in the harsh light of public view. The challenge, I think, is to remember that the next time we’re sitting in front of the keyboard.

[Thanks to Bulldog Reporter for pointing out this news.]

Actually, Paul already did. I spotted this story on active.com yesterday, and it is well worth the read. Inspired by school kids rather than Forrest Gump, Paul Staso (don’t miss his photo gallery either) ran across the United States unassisted over four months last year:

Paul Staso completed a 3,260-mile run across the country. He began his trek at Cannon Beach, Oregon and ended 108 running days later at Cape Henlopen State Park on the Deleware coast on October 20, 2006. Staso, of Missoula, MT, became the seventh person to successfully run across the continent without any type of support crew.

Averaging 30 miles a day, Staso trekked along, pushing all of his gear, water and food in an Ironman jogging stroller. His route took him through 15 states, including Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland (and Washington D.C.) and Delaware.

Staso began running to honor his pledge to students in his hometown. He challenged them to maintain a walking/running exercise routine and track the distances their classes covered as a virtual trek across the country. If they succeeded, Staso said, he’d answer their activity by running from sea to sea for real. (By the way, that stroller he’s carrying included all of his supplies and weighed 65 pounds.)

Wow. This is definitely putting your money where your mouth is, and it is an amazing testament to physical and mental endurance. Way to go, Paul!

If you can resort to this, you really have zero shame left:

Here’s a tip for the guy who beat up a 101-year-old woman in a walker and took off with her purse: Get out of New York.

The vicious mugging, caught on surveillance tape, has sparked outrage in a city where people are accustomed to hearing about strange and violent crimes. Police have launched an all-out manhunt, but it’s not just the cops who want the villain’s head. “I could hold him, and let the woman beat him up,” said Joe Sarju, 59, who lives in the Queens neighborhood where the attack occurred. “I’d love to beat him, but then they would lock me up.”

The heartlessness of the March 4 attack is clearly conveyed on the grainy, black-and-white videotape, which has now been broadcast well beyond New York. In it, 101-year-old Rose Morat is trying to leave her apartment building to go to church. The mugger, a man who looms over the senior citizen and is holding on to a bicycle, pretends to help her get through the vestibule.

Then, he turns to grab Morat’s head and delivers three hard punches to her face, and swipes her purse. The dazed victim tries to reach for her purse when the mugger hits her again, pushing her and her walker to the ground.
He got away with $33 and Morat’s house keys. She suffered a fractured cheekbone and spent time in the hospital. The attack didn’t break Morat’s spirit, though: She has said in the days since that if she had been just a bit younger, she would have gone after the guy. “I’m a very strong woman,” she said. “I’ve been that way my whole life.”

The New York Times reports that the city’s entire police force has been briefed about the incident and the assailant:

Every officer working yesterday in all 76 police precincts in New York City was shown the same thing: a grainy 45-second video of a 101-year-old woman being punched and robbed in the lobby of her Queens building on March 4.

Showing the video at roll calls to a patrol force of about 25,000 officers — including those assigned to the subway system and public housing complexes — was part of the Police Department’s intensifying effort to catch the attacker before he strikes again, the police said.

I trust that the officers are continuing to go about their other duties as well, but I sure wouldn’t want to be this guy.

The Tennessean picked up an interesting Los Angeles Times story today regarding conflict among evangelical Christians over their political agenda. Jim Wallis, who has recently challenged Focus on the Family leader James Dobson to a debate, had the following to say:

“Are the only really “great moral issues’ those concerning abortion, gay marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence?” Wallis asked in his challenge. “How about the reality of 3 billion of God’s children living on less than $2 per day? … What about pandemics like HIV/AIDS … (and) disastrous wars like Iraq?”

Dobson and other evangelical stalwarts are claiming that issues such as poverty, environmentalism and health care are overshadowing traditional issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Though I disagree with Dobson’s stance on these two issues, I don’t expect him and his colleagues to abandon their focus on them. At the same time, what is wrong with adding other relevant and serious concerns to the conversation? Even the evangelical right won’t address Iraq, wouldn’t addressing poverty, health care and global warming be compassionate and worthwhile things to do?

By criticizing other evangelicals who are focusing on these issues, it appears to me that Dobson and others in his camp are only reinforcing negative stereotypes. Isn’t there a chance that lending support for other worthwhile issues might help the general public better understand evangelicals and their core social issues? If it were solely up to Dobson, we might never know the answer to that question.