Once again the news is filled with tragedy. A campus shooting, an attack on a Chanukah celebration in Australia, reminding us of the terrible level of violence in our world.

It was magnified for me by having been to a major exhibit on Auschwitz, just yesterday. We spent almost 2-1/2 hours steeped in the history and tragedy of the Holocaust. We listened to video testimony from survivors, we saw artifacts that showed lives violently cut short, we shook our heads as tears filled our eyes.

Our conversation, as we left, was the one we have all had so many times, baffled and sickened by man’s inhumanity to man, unable to comprehend the total lack of concern or respect for human life.

As I reflected on both the exhibit and the news of last night, I sat for a few minutes in the quiet. I felt my breath going in and out, I felt my heart beating and the ache that surrounds it. And I thought, once again, that I cannot understand anyone believing they have the right to stop someone else’s heart from beating.

How anyone can see someone else’s life as meaningless is beyond me and I believe it is beyond most of us. How anyone can characterize another human being as “less than” or “disposable” is just incomprehensible and yet it is the case.

I won’t pretend to know how to change the world, how to stem the tide of violence, how to create safety and put an end to fear. All I know is what I can do—lead with my heart in all that I do and pray that is enough, pray that it matters to keep putting my full heart forward.