About a week ago a white man in Detroit hit a black boy with his car.  The man stopped the car and got out to check on the boy who didn’t have any life-threatening injuries.  Then a group of 5 black men approached the white man and proceeded to beat him until a black retired nursing home worker stopped the men.  The white man was beaten so badly he slipped into a coma and is still recovering in the hospital.  The nursing home worker has been honored for her intervention and rightly so.

This story is heart-breaking to me for many reasons…the racial tension, the out of control anger, the violence, the assumptions and, most of all, the lack of humanity and compassion.  All because of a terrible yet unintentional event.

I can’t help but think if we were a more compassionate society, things like this could be avoided.  Maybe it’s naive but I think more compassion in the world would give individuals and communities a more peaceful existence.