“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and then all human hearts… And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil.”

-Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

I don’t know if it was a mistake, or a point of sobriety for which to be thankful, that I followed a link to the story about Heath Ledger’s death. But what I found there grieved me: A picture of dozens of photographers, piled on top of each other, ravenous, flashing their cameras at Ledger’s body wrapped and rolling away on a gurney. Grieved because they did not gather to pay homage to a human life, but to commodify its end. Grieved because they do not feel sting, but satisfaction at possessing another story to tell. I am grieved because we have created them to do this. And how eager they are to give us what we want.

I had no great affection for Ledger or his work. Please understand, I mean him no disrespect or disservice. But as far as the vast millions of us are concerned, he was not a great leader to mourn. With his passing a great cause did not suffer (as far as I know). We did not know him but on screen, in magazines, in gossip. He was an entertainer, an actor, and soon more actors will take his place. As such, I have no loyalty to him except for this: Heath Ledger, fellow human, made in the image of the Living God, son, father and friend. His film credits matter nothing. As far as I’m concerned, this is what’s greater: that he was loved by the One called Love—a distinction we all share. Certainly he deserved more respect in his passing than he was afforded.

I take the events surrounding Heath Ledger’s passing as a reminder of the dignity of all human life and how our culture so quickly debases and denies that which is sacred. It’s a reminder to turn my attention from celebrity to the flesh and blood beside me—my wife, family, friends and neighbors both near and far. It’s a call to live apart from Hollywood gossip and talk about things that truly matter; to look less into screens, glossy magazines—all that seeks to disgrace our being—and look into living and breathing faces.

In anything less than looking into each other’s eyes, hearing each other’s voice, and taking each other’s hand, life is but a shadow of what it is meant to be. Let us run from turning one another into mere functions or products to be consumed. Let us love instead.

I’m aware that only a few of you will think what follows is of interest, yet I post this poem anyway in good faith that someone else will find it meaningful or, at the very least, beautiful.

As though an aged person were to wear
Too gay a dress
And walk about the neighborhood
Announcing the hour of her death,

So now, one summer day’s end,
At suppertime, when wheels are still,
The long barn suddenly puts on the traitor, beauty,
And hails us with a dangerous cry,
For: “Look!” she calls to the country,
“Look how fast I dress myself in fire!”

Had we half guessed how long her spacious shadows
Harbored a woman’s vanity
We would be less surprised to see her now
So loved, and so attended, and so feared.

She, in whose airless heart
We burst our veins to fill her full of hay,
Now stands apart.
She will not have us near her. Terribly,
Sweet Christ, how terribly her beauty burns us now!

And yet she has another legacy,
More delicate, to leave us, and more rare.

Who knew her solitude?
Who heard the peace downstairs
While flames ran whispering among the rafters?
Who felt the silence, there,
The long, hushed gallery
Clean and resigned and waiting for the fire?

Look! They have all come back to speak their summary:
Fifty invisible cattle, the past years
Assume their solemn places one by one.
This is the little minute of their destiny.
Here is their meaning found. Here is their end.

Laved in the flame as in a Sacrament
The brilliant walls are holy
In their first-last hour of joy.

Fly from within the barn! Fly from the silence
Of this creature sanctified by fire!
Let no man stay inside to look upon the Lord!
Let no man wait within and see the Holy
One sitting in the presence of disaster
Thinking upon this barn His gentle doom!

-Thomas Merton