The First

For my first entry I copy something I wrote last week , the day after terrible bombings in London. The tone will lighten after that, I hope.

We were expecting yesterday. We have been expecting it for several years now. We suspect it is not over and there is more to come.That expectation does not make it any easier to know that there are so many lives devastated by injury and loss this morning. That expectation did mean that our police and emergency services were ready for the moment. Lives have been saved that would have been lost, and injuries made less because of their actions. However, the fact remains. That expectation has not helped to make today any easier to bear, as we count the cost.

What does make it easier, and gives us strength, are the expressions of sympathy and support received from our friends abroad, Thank you all, it means more than we can express.

Personally, I feel no hatred against the actual perpetrators. Men, probably young, who have been misled by manipulative leaders to behave in this way, and led to believe that this was an answer to the deprivations of their people. It is the manipulative old men, who use religion to their own ends, and who send their young to their deaths so callously for whom I reserve my hatred and scorn.

We cannot pretend we are not wounded and suffering, but it is a suffering that will only strengthen our fortitude to defeat this evil which stalks us. In some ways, it is an evil we have brought upon ourselves, but that makes it no less evil. It will not prevail.
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