“I was starting to make progress in seeing people’s inner light. I felt that I was getting closer to seeing humanity in people — even in people who didn’t see me as fully human. Yet I still felt that I was stagnating. While I believed Page [Wade Michael Page, the 40-year-old man who murdered six people in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012] was a vessel of divine light like everyone else, I didn’t feel that in my heart. My goal of recognizing our shared humanity still seemed far out of reach.
“So I decided to take small steps. I began rereading all the writing I could find about him, including articles written about his rampage, features examining his life and outlooks, and the white supremacist message boards he frequented. It had been more than a year since I had examined these message boards, and this time I was studying them less as research material and more for personal reasons. I thought that understanding Page’s life and psychological makeup might bring me more clarity about who he was as a person, which in turn would help me see his humanity…”
