Where Does it End?

About three blocks from where my wife and I used to live in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago a judge's husband and mother were executed. U.S. Judge Joan Lefkow had been threatened in the past by a hate group. Her life was thought to be in danger, but from the newspaper reports (Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times) it appears that with the man who threatened her life in jail under the terrorism guidelines for incarceration, that the level of security was decreased. Now there is a woman who lost her elderly mother and her husband of 30 years, Michael. I know the type of building. A two-story greystone much like the one my wife and I lived in for five years. The Edgewater neighborhood is replete with these types of buildings. The area has long-established families and young professionals. The Lefkow's have four daughters. The youngest is still in high school. She will not have her father to walk her down the aisle, because her father is now dead. What message is sent to our society? The BTK mass murderer desperately sought attention to his gruesome deeds. He longed for notoriety. Now we can hope that he rots away in solitary confinement for the rest of his days. Let him languish in anonymity. Suicide bombers in Iraq and Israel kill dozens or more than one hundred. Each day seems to bring new attacks. Someone is shot in a radio studio or another rapper is killed and we don't blink an eye. Are we that desensitized to the violence? Why does it take a 9/11 to create communal outrage at the killing in our society? Each life is worthy of something. We are so concerned about putting people to death like Terri Schiavo , who has done nothing wrong except to be in a coma, that we cannot be bothered with real crimes unless they capture the headlines. I don't know where we start, but a good place may be to respect life from the beginning. Mother Teresa had the right frame of mind when she said, "But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child - a direct killing of the innocent child - murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?" at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1994. We need to reflect on her words and her message. We need to pray fervently as she did for an end to the taking of innocent lives. We need to pray for life and peace. We need to pray for an end to the violence. Some days it seems to be our best hope.