For Paradise, Pennsylvania.

On monday, October 2nd,
one of our men stormed Paradise
and destroyed it.
He tore the products of the purest hearts
from every little thing they had.

They had gently, quietly abolished the modern society,
had existed beside it;
never had need for more than what they could create
by heart or by hand.
No adjective will suffice in my articulation,
my admiration, my alarm, my anguish.
For people who have not and want not,
who coexist without demand,
who represent morality, humility, modesty,
and peace;
who have suffered for their virtue.

Paradise has been slaughtered,
its integrity compromised in the negotiation
of one man's lost heart.
One of our men -
a product of our world -
has stripped Paradise of everything it was,
stolen from those who never felt greed,
wounded those who never inflicted,
and scarred those who never deferred righteousness.

Chosen without consideration of consequence,
selected merely because they were rich in innocence
and devoid of mistrust,
they were the target simply because they lacked
proper armor against our world.
-- -- -- -- -- --
How can a society serve to shelter people of such unfaltering goodness while simultaneously harboring a man so black-hearted as to strip from them that unrequited morality that we could all stand to share? How can we allow such crimes to pass without more horror, more sorrow, more guilt... more reaction than a news headline - nothing but a glimpse over our morning double-shot latte?

Nobody deserves such a fate, but the victims here are the most pure-hearted of the pure. The children of devotion, the most innocent of the untainted. They devote themselves to lives of non-violence, quietly separate themselves from our world... and we have succombed to such brutality as to attack the people who have everything that we don't. How devastatingly ironic for a society established on goodness and peace to be ruined by a man - so ruined himself - by the world they had sought to avoid. (His vengence toward God... how awful a motive for a murderer of children who were innocent of the emotion themselves.) How heartbreaking to realize further that not only have they suffered so deeply, but they will not hate this man for his crime. Devout in their religion, they "must not think evil of this man."
And for a man who took his own life, who, then, is left to feel the repercussion?

We must feel personal repentance for this crime.
We had a moral obligation to protect the innocent,
and instead, we created the fiend.
A community has faltered,
and now Paradise has fallen.
There must be more in us
than mild consideration.