There's nothing glorious about combat. I've been there and done that.
Young people across the country have grown up traumatized by the gun violence epidemic.
And as the hour approached for the execution, in his own mind, Collins became both the executioner and the victim. He would pace up and down, transformed in almost a kind of exorcism when he knew he was responsible for taking someone's life.
My favorite movie is 'The Outlaw Josey Wales' with Clint Eastwood, a guy who gets his family killed by the bad guys then goes on a journey of revenge, eventually discovering himself - very existential.
The unutterable violence of the Holocaust shook our confidence in the possibility of telling any story of faith at all.
We always knew how to honor fallen soldiers. They were killed for our sake, they went out on our mission. But how are we to mourn a random man killed in a terrorist attack while sitting in a cafe? How do you mourn a housewife who got on a bus and never returned?
The violence of war is random. It does not make sense. And many of those who struggle with loss also struggle with the knowledge that the loss was futile and unnecessary.
