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Her friends would say the prayers were answered. Converted at a Christian summer camp, Cassie was soon working with inner-city gang members, attending Bible study and wearing a WHAT WOULD JESUS DO bracelet; she thought about cutting off her long blond hair, so she could give it to a charity that makes wigs for kids undergoing cancer treatment. The day after she died, her brother found a poem that suggested she was already on her journey "to find out what it really means to suffer and to die with Him." Her mother was in the shower a few days later, says a family friend, and received a message, so clearly: "For this reason, Cassie was born."
And so Cassie's church friends now talk about kids who were once awkward about the whole subject of faith coming up to them in the halls and asking them about it. The youth ministries are flooded with calls and new visitors. At a Denver prayer lunch last week, faith and practice sat down together: everyone attending was asked to agree to mentor an "at risk" kid. "That would change the city," said organizer Don Reeverts. "Let's put some shoe leather on our prayers."
Conservatives have argued that liberals are unwilling to acknowledge the possibility of evil, which is another way of saying that they resist even engaging in the religious conversation that Littleton invites. But if we imagine how the talk-show version would go--a Crossfire shouting match on the nature of Satan--we may be grateful that the conversation is flourishing in private, at the dinner table, walking to work. If we wander a while now through more haunting places, if we read the news of the latest massacre in Kosovo and see more than geopolitics at work, if we suspect that saints may sit beside us in the library and devils may drive BMWs and work in the pizza parlor and leave no telltale trail of ash as they go about their work, if we just find ourselves asking questions we haven't had occasion to ask before, we will know more than we did three weeks ago, and be wiser for it.