We all seem to be on various paths whether we know it or not which indicate to us that there are great heights and abysmal depths possible along the road to realization, whatever that realization may be. And I would argue that for many of us, the path on which we tread encourages us to identify ourselves with the heights (if those heights be indeed supernal, or if they represent the fulfillment of human potential for the Good) or to identify with a beautiful balance. In any case, I would imagine that there would be some consensus for the assertion that humanity is called to a beauty which it has not yet realized fully, but that it has glimpsed many times through the centuries as a reality that can be lived and experienced: moments of aesthetic joy, moments of a feeling of oneness with nature, moments of intense communion with another, moments of love.
I would argue that if this vision is a relatively common vision, then the various and venial ways (as well as the great and monstrous ways) in which we fail to touch or comprehend this beauty (however we may understand it) are occasions more for pity and compassion than anything else. These failures demand a response, sure. But this response must be tempered by mercy. And I think the harder it is to temper the response with mercy, the more valuable it is to do so.
I say this as one who was absolutely flabbergasted by what happened in that Amish schoolhouse. It was stunning. And when the depths of the possibility of human depravity are opened and plumbed like that, it's just jaw-dropping. What that man did was monstrous. But that this monstrous act was done by a human being is not surprising, given how truly far away we can be from the beauty to which we aspire.
And so I think that things like this should be heartbreaking. On every possible level--when you think of the enormous loss to that community, when you think of the pain those children endured in that room, when you think of their parents and their anger, when you think of the twisted byways of the soul that man walked to lead him to believe that we he was about to do was inevitable. I think we should be broken by this. I don't think you can honestly live in the world without being broken.
And I think this broken-ness is what reveals what human nature really is, and what allows us to say, "I identify with the humanity of that little girl, and I identify with the humanity of the man who killed her, because I have to. Because if I don't, I deny my own humanity, my own broken-heart, which is perhaps the most precious thing I have, and whose cracks are perhaps the most beautiful things I can call my own because they admit so much of the pain and beauty of the world." I think the whole point of being human is to be broken by love. Finally and ecstatically. And I think that somewhere in that brokenness is the beauty to which we aspire and the fulfillment of our humanity.
Rumi wrote a beautiful poem that expresses this, I think. It says:
Tonight, the image of
That Beautiful One came swiftly,
Looked for my hearts place.
When He found it, He drew His knife
And plunged it into my heart.
Bless that Most Beautiful One.