This world...

Photo from LA Times http://www.latimes.com

Friday afternoon, I sat slumped in the bucket seat of my car as I snacked on a light lunch. My birthday was Saturday, so I'd taken Friday off. Paid time off from a job I really enjoy. Having gotten up late, I'd spent some time with the dogs, leisurely wrapped Christmas presents for my family, then headed off to a massage. During a brief break before heading in for a facial, I listened to NPR.

A BBC world news segment spoke with survivors of the Pakistani school massacre. The maturity and resolve of the young men they interviewed was sobering, vowing to fight against the violence meant to break their spirits.

And then, one recounted a teacher had begged the gunman to not shoot the children: shoot me instead, she pleaded.

The gunman shot all the children in front of her, then wounded her in the arm and leg, and said, "You will watch everyone you care about die," and walked off.

The shooter. The teacher. Me. Each of the children. We are the same in the most fundamental way that we inhabit this earth. How does one explain how one soul perpetrates such evil, one suffers unspeakably, another has it pretty good, and many young should never even get a chance, hardly, on this earth?

It is moments like these that prove to me, again and again, that there is no god. No supreme, all powerful being would allow such suffering to occur. Certainly not any one worth worshiping, anyway.