Bandaging our wounds, mourning our dead and loving our enemies

I’m away from my usu­al haunts on work-related duties but the news sites have plen­ty of arti­cles about the hor­ri­ble bomb­ings in Lon­don; there is no need for yet anoth­er list.
It is always trag­ic to see the cycles of vio­lence, ter­ror­ism and state-sponsored war feed­ing one anoth­er to new acts of vio­lence. Our prayers that the new round of heart­breaks in Lon­don don’t lead into a kind of retal­i­a­tion that will only hard­en hearts else­where. We need to envi­sion a new world, one based on love and mutu­al respect. It’s impos­si­ble to nego­ti­ate with the kind of ter­ror­ists that would bomb a packed bus but we can be a wit­ness that hate can be con­front­ed with love. We must ban­dage our wound­ed, mourn our dead and con­tin­ue to build a world where the occa­sions for all war have been transcended.