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Monday, February 16, 2009

Some Ironies We Could Do Without

We have read of the recent commuter plane that crashed, killing all aboard. Among the passengers was the wife of one of the 9/11 victims--those who had seized their jet from the terrorists before it crashed in Pennsylvania farmland.

How bitterly ironic this seems. So bitter, in fact, as to seem more than irony or accident.

How can such things be?

Do you remember the boy, Steven, who was kidnapped way back when, taken by a man posing as a reverend, sexually molested for years, until finally rediscovered by his family. Do you remember that some few years later, Steven was killed in a motorcycle accident?

What can it mean?

There was a movie about a Cambodian man who suffered at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime. Miraculously, this man escaped his captors, and while thousands were being slaughtered, the man made his way to freedom in the face of incredible danger and hardship.

Later on, living in America, he was knifed to death while trying to help a citizen who was being attacked.

What madman is in charge here? What must we do to reconcile such deadly irony with our own sense of what is proper and deserved?

One conclusion only can I find at this point, tired as I am, heartbroken, perplexed: Whoever is in charge, whomever he may be, he is certainly a long way from being us.

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