So we’ve begun to hit final exams, which, in addition to explaining why I haven’t posted in a while, explains why I haven’t been, shall we say, acting out the rituals of my forebears in a while.

This is problematic for a host of reasons. To me, Judaism is, more than a faith in any particular tenet, a habit, a practice of praying three times a day, or once a year, or not eating pork, or upsetting cousins when eating pork, or whatever. It has seemed to me not only that this habitual nature of Judaism makes it accessible to all sorts of Jews, but also that it is particularly healthy to have habits in the first place.

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We sat around at Minnies, a diner that was easily becoming our new favorite, holding onto a paper napkin. Scribbled on it was The Rules, a system we had devised to make sure we got what we deserved. That just because we were smart, funny, kind women doesn’t mean that we should lessen ourselves for anyone.

Clinking our glasses to the event, we decided that we would start being fair to ourselves the following morning. This was a revolution.

And I wondered how easy it would be to actually follow our own rules. Not at all, I suppose. Even though I feel women’s rights have come so far, we have so many more paths to run. And even though we may want to take a break for a minute and enjoy the scenery, we still have to climb mountains.

I feel the same way about faith sometimes. That when I make a breakthrough revelation, I suddenly become lazy again. I forget to think about Allah as I’m walking down the street on a Monday, but I remember on Friday afternoons during Jumu'ah prayer.

And that even though I’ve come far, I still have so much more left to learn, to discover.

This past weekend, Matt, the boyfriend, and I took to Shenandoah National Park. Since he, the outdoorsman, has endured musicals, dance performances, theological lectures and artsy films on my behalf, I reluctantly acknowledged that I owed him a spirited jaunt into nature. Plus, he had bought me a sporty new sleeping bag, and with my new sweat-wicking T-shirt and nature girl hiking boots on, I sure looked the part.

I was not a happy camper.

The hike in was fine enough, and I was surprised that I didn’t even mind wading through bacteria infested streams. It was an enlivening, sunny April afternoon, and having already applied Laura Mercier’s $40 a pop SPF 20 tinted moisturizer to my face, I knew my skin was being protected from UVA rays and also radiating a youthful glow. It was physically demanding, but it was refreshing to be away from D.C.’s ever-present congestion of traffic and people.

But night was coming.

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If you are what you eat, then I am not a dead animal.

Michael Pollen, author of the “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” wrote another stunning article in the New York Times, detailing the complexity of eating. This time, he took on the political implications.

In a March 2006 piece entitled “The Modern Hunter-Gatherer,” Pollen dealt with the individual morality of consuming food.

Georgetown’s own Woodstock Theological Center has been working on a project on “The Ethics of Eating,” which has been moderated by a former professor of mine, John Farina. As a vegetarian for more than half a decade, I know that making even small, intentional culinary omissions can radically change the way we view our most mundane moral choices. It happened to me.

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One week later, and it’s time to move on.

College students return to class in Blacksburg, Virginia. And the country goes through the next step in the grieving process. The sadness lies in the fact that someday this will be old news.

I feel a year older than I did on the morning of April 16th, 2007. I feel like incidents like this, as tragic as they may be, bring us together in ways I never thought possible. It shouldn’t take this to make us listen to one another. We should already be doing that. We forget the consequences of our actions too quickly.

And that is when we lose hope.

This weekend I made tacos with a group of lively children and teenagers. All of them were from Liberia, and they came to Chicago as refugees. As we, the volunteers, stood in our DePaul Interfaith Council T-shirts, we conversed with them. Once in a while, we’d laugh at them, and they at us. Afterwards, I learned about what brought them here. What tore them from their homeland.

And without hope, I don’t where they would be.

They taught me hope. Just the few moments I spent with them, I was reminded that life renews itself. That life moves on.

What does one do after tragedy? Classmates of mine were stopped on the street by a professor. He wanted to know whether students were changed by the shootings at Virginia Tech. “Not really,” they said. They said no more.

“Well, that’s a conversation stopper,” the professor said. But there was more. A friend of mine had been forwarded a prayer request, as his family’s neighbor was a student at Virginia Tech. Ten hours later, he found out she had been killed.

One sees signs, and hears mottos, such as “we’re all Hokies now.” And it’s true that we observed a moment of silence in our various clubs and societies for the victims of this attack. But the moment of silence ends. And those who, like my friend’s neighbors, lost a daughter may be left cold after the collective embrace of a nation is removed. It seems that without anything to do, we move on.

I asked the Professor whether he thought this would change the way the school operates. I am sure that committees will be called and meetings will be had and for a while we will think we are doing something, taking action, fixing the world. These are probably good. But maybe part of the faithful response, a response that I certainly won’t have, is to continue to hug.

There will be more articles and more news and more thoughts about more things, and if we’re all Hokies today, we won’t be tomorrow.

I woke up this morning to news about a “rambling” killer. Surrounded by ignored biology packets, studying for a forgotten midterm, I stared blankly at the television screen.

And for some reason, all I could think was, “He was an English major. I’m an English major.”

And that little commonality between us made him suddenly real to me. And it made the incident real. Before, it was just a haze.

It is so easy to separate yourself. It is so easy to say, “That is them, but this is us. We are not them.” But faith has told me otherwise. God, Allah, has told me otherwise. He has told me that we are all human. And humans, no matter their appearance, are the same.

And they are not the only ones with problems. They are not the only ones who are angry, depressed, violent. Because we have all been there, though many of us have not been driven to the point. That breaking point.

And there are things now that we have to solve. Things we cannot ignore anymore. There are problems the whole country faces, not just the few who are deemed anti-social.

There are deeply disturbed, destructive people in our world. This we know for sure. There are also everyday saints among us. This we have humbly witnessed.

In Blacksburg, Virginia, gunman Cho Seung Hui killed a Holocaust survivor. Professor Liviu Librescu, a 76 year-old professor of engineering, threw himself in front of a doorway into which the gunman was shooting and implored his students to flee. Liviu sacrificed himself for others.

What he did seems unnatural, superhuman. Liviu did not shirk, he did not cower. When a human should retreat, Liviu opened himself, becoming vulnerable to death. All his students, after jumping from a window, lived. "He saved my life," Senior Caroline Merrey said.

In Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, gunman Charles Carl Roberts killed an Amish schoolgirl last year. In the simple schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, 13 year-old Marian Fisher pleaded with her killer, saying “Shoot me first.” Emboldened by her sister’s witness, her 11 year-old sister Barbie added “Shoot me second.” Marian died of her wounds. Barbie survived hers.

I believe the violence done to Liviu and Marian was fleeting and small when compared to the permanent goodness they have shown. The example they gave us by reacting honorably, with dignity and purpose, even in the face of senseless violence, will live on. They have illuminated the darkest places on earth. May we too live their peaceful, resolute virtue.

Liviu and Marian did not wake up on those two awful days determined to do something heroic. They simply reacted as they had many other days: with a consideration of the value of others, and a belief that they could contribute to our world. I don’t need a seething killer in front of me to consider how I can contribute.

But if one was there, what would I do?

This week, Yale welcomes upwards of 1000 admitted students to campus in hopes of convincing them through a mixture of Dean’s talks and ad hoc alcoholic revelries. I had planned to write a letter arguing the reasons why I find these so-called Bulldog Days so disappointing. In light of the shootings at Virginia Tech, that discussion seems irrelevant.

I knew nothing of those attacks until today in Hebrew class when I walked in, late, to a class whispering in somber tones the Hebrew words for to kill, to die, to be injured, casualty, massacre. All day long internet news pages loaded and re-loaded seem to know nothing but how to count: 31 killed in Virginia shootings, 32, 33. At Passover, just passed, we sing, “Who knows one?” I know one, but who knows thirty three?

I find most interesting the adjectives used to describe this tragedy: senseless, insane, and beyond adjectives, the inevitable “Why?” And then, silence, only prayers. The students at Virginia Tech were sent an e-mail by school officials telling them to remain inside away from windows. What does one say during that period? There is nothing: concern, rumors, and silence. What we thought were central actions of learning: talking, questioning, reasoning, asking and answering “why” are reduced to the inactions, perhaps, of a different human experience: prayer, silence, asking and maybe answering, “how?” Reason is impossible, irrelevant.

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I will never forget April 20, 1999. I remember watching the news during lunch, something I would not do again in school until September 11, 2001. I remember the Columbine High school students running out of the building with their hands on their heads.

All I could think about walking around campus today was that image. Shuffling from class to lunch, then from lunch to club meetings, I couldn’t shake that fifteen second video out of my brain. It replayed over and over again.

This wasn’t supposed to follow us here. This wasn’t supposed to happen in college. Not anymore.

But it has, and it has made it one of those days. It was one of those days where you could feel the sense of confusion that had hung in the air. Discussing the incident with my friend, I think we both felt the fear that had first prickled through us eight years ago. And we voiced how that fear did not go away. It stayed with us for days, weeks, months, and years. It will do the same now.

And it is in times like this where I have never needed my faith more. My faith in God and the faith in humanity that God has taught me. That even though we as humans might have messed a lot of things up, we have a power in us to fix it. We have a power to fix all the things that we have done wrong. Because I believe it is that power that Allah has given us.

It is on days like today that I am reminded of how tenuously I cling to my own life. Despite every desperate desire to control my own safety, unthinkable events like the one at Virginia Tech, once again, prove that there is no such thing as security.

At any moment, our lives may be taken from us –whether by a ruthless murderer, an out of control car, or a natural disaster. Most of us, in fact, will be done in by our own failing bodies. Even in the worst of tragedies, I am grounded in the strange wonder of our fleetingness of our lives. This is a reminder for which I am grateful, for it is a liberating realization.

As a student, Monday's violence is particularly unnerving. The shooting proves that even the innocent act of attending class is unsafe. Yesterday's incident brought to mind a story I read about the threat that Iraqi students face, merely for attending class at Baghdad University. There, students risk their lives for the education that I, too often, take for granted.

As CNN's Kyra Phillips reported, "Since the war in Iraq began in March 2003, at least 70 security guards and employees have been killed and 100 professors have been assassinated, officials said. The death toll from car bombs on campus isn't even known because there have been so many." These students have experienced unyielding violence, and yet they carry on in a graceful protest of violence and destruction.

My paternal grandmother, who 27 years ago lost her young husband to diabetes after he suffered for many years, comments that she wakes up every morning grateful to God just to be alive. A few months ago, when she was hospitalized during a health scare, my father remarked about her unbelievable calm. "If it's my time, I'll go," she placidly insisted throughout the days of her hospital stay. Like a modern-day mystic, she has known death, and she accepts death, but every day she chooses life.

Last night, I read that in one classroom at Virginia Tech, a student survived by playing dead. In the tragedies that I have encountered, I have learned that the only way to proceed is to nod my head to death, and then lift my eyes to new life.

Welcome to Faithbook, a new blog dedicated to expanding On Faith's conversation on religion to a younger, curious and challenging audience: College students.

We've enlisted three students to get the blog rolling:

-- Elizabeth Tenety, a native of the Long Island area, is a senior majoring in government and theology at Georgetown University. She will be blogging at "Campus Catholic."

-- Hafsa Arain, who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, is a sophomore at DePaul University majoring in English with a minor in religious studies. She will blog under the name "Salaam Chicago."

-- Michael Pomeranz, also from the Chicago area, is a sophomore majoring in religious studies at Yale University. His blog will be called "Lox et Veritas" -- a reference to Yale's motto, Lux et Veritas, which means Light and Truth.

We hope you will find their posts interesting, enlightening and even inspiring. And we hope you responses will be the same.