Tonight I sat on the porch and cried.

It is a beautiful night here in the Rockies. The skies are clear, for once. The stars are smiling. And only the breath between my tears can interrupt the silence.

Surrounded by a fortress of farmland and trees, I know that I can get as Mae-Westy as I must in order to lay this feeling to rest. It isn't as if the ruminants, rodents, or scattered feral cats (the only ones for miles with any ears to hear) will give me any grief for showing mine. But my tears too are quiet. Maybe the night and I are sharing in the act of listening again and again to the one phrase that has echoed over airways -- actual and electronic -- since their first utterance only moments ago.

Osama Bin Laden is dead.

The man behind one of the gravest crimes in living memory -- at least in mine -- is dead.

It is still sinking in. Whatever emotional clarity I can normally claim must still be in a refractory state, for I can't seem to nail down whatever this is. My tears... are they relief? Am I subconsciously reliving hours... DAYS of sitting rapt before the television, watching the towers crumble on infinite replay and desperately reciting the name of each casualty aloud as if to burn them into memory. As though it could somehow bring meaning to the senseless loss of life if only some no-name housewife, a world away, would dedicate herself to remembering it? Am I making myself a parody of the anguish that a madman ultimately bestowed upon himself, as well as those he sought to harm?

Do we rejoice at the death of another human being? Is it a sign of cruelty? Contempt? Misplaced priorities? Does it brand us as evil that we can take a life and call it justice?

I read a story not long ago of a monk unjustly interred in a Chinese prison. For years, he endured every torture, every harsh and dreadful thing one can imagine at the unyielding, unrepentant hands of the prison guards. Upon his release, the monk reported with shame having often felt a sense of grave danger when the guards were about. He was naturally told that was to be expected of a man who very certainly WAS in danger. Given the slightest inclination, the guards likely could have killed him, after all. "You misunderstand me," the monk corrected, gently. "I felt in danger of losing my sense of compassion. For the prison guards."

An odd story for an atheist to cling to as a source of inspiration, I know. We don't often come across as pacifists. That isn't quite the point I'm stumbling my way into making.

Compassion is everything to me. The greatest of virtues and the noblest of intentions. It is what pushes us to understand one another when we could just as easily turn away from the conflict that becomes injustice. It asks us to give of ourselves, tirelessly and without expectation of reward, when those around us suffer. To extend grace both to those with whom we choose to spend our lives, and those we meet only momentarily, knowing that, as Max Ermann stated, "They too have their story."

Love is an emotion. Compassion is a choice. It builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

But tonight... tonight I count my tears for the families torn apart by the murderous actions of one afflicted by the demons of his own choosing. I cry in the hope that they, along with the families of soldiers -- American or otherwise -- who've been ripped into war-ravaged worlds and political ploys alike will find peace. I weep for the notion of closure and the belief that maybe the nightmare inflicted on us all so many years ago can at last, in some small part, be laid to rest.

Tonight I cry because I am grateful for this end.

Tomorrow... I will grieve for my compassion.