Compassion is our safety net
Just back from Bermuda. A little bit of paradise. No newspapers for five days. No TV. Just the world as I saw it.
And I saw it in all its beauty: white-roofed pastel houses, pink/white sand, blue/green water, coves, beaches everywhere, flowers, birds, sun. ``Have a good day, Ma'am." An escape from real life.
Except that one of our group was robbed. Someone bumped into him at a bar. And then his wallet was gone.
Another, a young woman, was injured body surfing. A wave slammed her headfirst into the sand and she couldn't move. Her companions saved her, dragged her from the water, laid her on the beach, and ran for help. An ambulance raced her to the hospital. Her spinal cord was bruised. But she could walk and talk.
In the midst of paradise people get robbed, people get hurt.
Things can look safe and not be.
That's what strikes me when I return home to the news of the Amish schoolgirls shot by a 32-year-old milkman. A quiet countryside. A one-room schoolhouse. A father of three.
Things can look safe and not be.
Dunblane, Scotland. Beslan, Russia. Columbine, Colo . Montreal. Wisconsin. Colorado again. We've been down this road before. We know. We've learned.
So why are we shocked? And what saves us from despair? And how can we continue to get out of bed in the morning, go to work, send our children to school, board buses and planes, dream and plan, put our hearts on the line by loving one another, when we don't know what the day will bring? How is it that most of us are able to live in this crazy world, cheerfully, even optimistically, despite all the sadness and madness around us?
I think about the Zantops, both Dartmouth professors, who opened the door of their home to two boys on a Saturday morning, nearly six years ago, and invited them in, trusting that they were there to conduct a survey. The boys stabbed the couple to death.
I think about the Clutters, remembered on the big screen in ``Capote": the Holcomb, Kan., family killed in their farmhouse -- mother, father, son, and daughter -- by two young men 47 years ago.
And I think how these people and these things linger in our minds: school shootings, bombings, Jonestown, the Texas tower massacre, 9/11, the Kennedy assassinations, the deaths of all the innocents over all the years.
Because evil is still the aberration, despite its front-page status.
You'd think we'd be hardened to it. Violence is brought to us every day from all corners of the world. You'd think we would shrug off tragedy. So someone else is killed. So what?
But it is never ``So what?" It is always ``Oh, no." ``Oh, my God." ``Not again."
Every death feels like a first death; it doesn't get easier, not even a little, to see the faces of men and women and children, so many children, who are the victims of madness and violence and evil. That our hearts continue to break for people we don't know -- this is our salvation.
A guy gets robbed and people say, ``Here's some money. Let me help." A woman is drowning and others save her.
A man, deranged, unhappy, unbalanced -- who knows why -- lines up and shoots little girls. And there's no fixing this. No happy ending in this story.
But police and doctors and neighbors and strangers do all they can to help, to comfort. Anything -- that's what people say when something bad happens. ``Please let me know if there is anything I can do."
And they mean it.
And in their meaning is hope that things can look safe and be safe, too.
Canton resident Beverly Beckham can be reached at bbeckham@globe.com. 
