Real heros come in all sizes

Currently in the news is a story about yet another deadly standoff, this one involving a deranged man who took a school house full of Amish school children hostage. As the gunman appeared ready to began shooting the children, on of the young Amish girls apparently asked the killer to be executed first, presumably in a last-ditch attempt to save her school mates' lives by having him take her life instead of the others. In this absurd world, perhaps it is the children who possess the true strength of character that so many adults seem to lack. It is a pity that so many of the best exemplars of honorable behavior come from little children. That says something about our society and that something (or lack of it) is lamentable.

Courtly love has at least one adherent

What happens when you love someone and you know that it can never be reciprocated? The logical action is to move on. Oh course, that is the story of modern society. We rush into love with the same passion that we choose colors for our new cars and flavors of ice cream. With the same fickle oblivion, we throw out our affections just as we'd abandon a pair of worn out socks. I choose a different path. I love someone who is oblivious to my affliction. However, I will not relent. I will go to my grave loving this person.

In earlier times, knights learned to bypass the monopoly of the Church by directing their religious love to a Lady who they would worship with the same passion that that others directed to the Lord. Of course, it is no mistake that the Church marketed the notion of the Madonna around the same time that courtly love became popular with the aristocratic classes of Europe. The Madonna became a kind of Church-sanctioned version of courtly love.

That is my mission... to worship with the same wonder, the same intensity, my Lady, with which others pray in ecclesiastical orgasm to their god.

Do I expect to find salvation in such devotion. Of course not. Salvation is for the weak of heart.

[Editor's note: The Schadenfreude Files does not promote or advocate stalking. It is illegal and really bad form.]