Umpqua: Stopping the Spear
These were the notes for my mediation lecture on October 1.
There was another random act of violence today, several people killed at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. We don't know the details yet, don't know who did it or why. But usually when you have a crime like this, what you find is someone who's given up on their own life. They expect to die in the attack, or else spend the rest of their lives in jail and so effectively end their life as it exists now. There's an occasional exception, someone who acts from a political motive, but usually you find someone in who's completely disconnected from everyone else, lost and hurting.
And they're so full of rage, they just want to take some other people with them. They think this is the only way they can leave a mark on the world: with bloodstains.