WORDS ARE TOTALLY INADEQUATE …

at times like this. What in the world can anyone say to make what happened at Virginia Tech this morning make any sense? Any? Any at all?

It doesn’t make sense. It’s not supposed to. If it did, I suppose, we’d really be in trouble.

As I’ve watched the death toll climb each time I’ve logged on to CNN.com — from two, to 20 to 30 to 33 and, please God, no higher — something Elie Wiesel once told me came to mind. It’s hardly a salvo, but it’s been on my mind and I thought I’d share it.

He’s talking about 9/11, but I believe the good professor is probably wondering the same thing today.

“The question that kept working itself through my mind was,’What does it mean?’ What does it mean? How could some man just do that? … Strangely, I had thought the 21st century was going to be a good century, better than the last that was so fraught with danger.”

Later in the same conversation, Professor Wiesel, now talking about his time in Nazi concentration camps during World War II said:

“Look, God, by definition is everywhere. That means he was there, too. So I have a choice to believe he was on the side of the perpetrators or on the side of the victims. I want to believe he was on the side of the victims. So therefore, the pathos of God, the sorrow of God, can move one to tears. Look what they have done, what the killers have done, not only to us, but to God.”