What do we live for?

Christopher Dorner, What Did You Die For? 

We’ve watched a painful manhunt for 9 days.  Or should we say that the man who hunted down and killed others was himself hunted down and killed.  And for what, the rage over losing his job?  This was seem in his distorted mind as the equivalent of taking the life of two others, the one who fired him and his daughter. A deputy sheriff lost his life in the final firefight. 

How do we make sense out of the senseless?  The only way I know is to take our individual human stories and place them within a larger narrative.  This is Lent.  We give things up to gain life.  Whatever we give up can create the sacred space in which we can realize God in a new way.  Dorner turned that narrative on its tragic end.  He took life to inflict pain, a “final solution” to his outrage at his personal loss. 

Dorner dies in inferno

Is it true that fires purify 
what we cannot redeem 
with human hands?" 



Such is our challenge.  To find ways to give up our lives so that others live.  In acts of mercy and kindness—never random as the saying goes—we create a sacred space in the world for the Spirit to fill.  According to M Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, love is what we do to enrich the lives of others—to give life.  In a world that is never fair, declares Peck, we still have the choice of how to respond with our lives. How tragic the choice of Dorner.