Iowa tot neutralizes ancient karma by dying in hot minivan

[Dear readers:  this piece is second in a series of three fictional articles about human loss and suffering.  The first two present actual religious rationales for dealing with suffering that I have heard from religious friends.  The final one stresses reliance on human aid and makes no attempt to explain away the loss and brutality that we sometimes face in life.]

The Divine Wheel of Karma ticked dramatically today as Zachary Sandvig, 2, paid a karmic debt by dying of hyperthermia in the family minivan after his mom forgot to drop him at daycare.  In a previous life, Zachary had been an Iron Age merchant named Hrothgir who mercilessly threw a slave child into a pot of scalding water when the child’s mother, a slave whom he had raped, struck him on the face.

By experiencing the same pain he had caused, Zachary/Hrothgir has ended his own wandering through 96 incarnations over a period of 2,495 years.  During that time, buffeted by his unresolved karmic debt, he suffered in myriad ways, including several lifetimes of insanity brought on by trying to avoid the consequences of his actions in previous lives.

As his body temperature slowly rose to 109 F, Zachary cried for his mother, suffered two seizures and lost consciousness before his major organs failed.  As he died, ripples of sublime karmic neutralization spread outward from the minivan as billions of divine beings rejoiced that Zachary can soon move on to a higher incarnation and continue his spiritual quest to escape the cycle of birth and death.  All that remains for this joyous liberation is for Zachary to be incarnated as a slave and suffer rape.

Zachary’s mother, Emily Sandvig, a 5th grade teacher in Johnston, Iowa, is in the Polk County jail pending an investigation.