Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

I was reading in bed this morning, when the phone rang, telling me that the bulletin info I'd e-mailed to a church hadn't arrived, so I fired up the computer and was merrily sending e-mails and responding to LJ comments before I thought to turn on the news. Now I'm just wondering how I could have been happily chattering on about Georgette Heyer novels when so much destruction and suffering was going on.

So glad that many LJ people in the London area have reported in safe, but can't help grieving for all the people we don't know who've been hurt or killed, and for the reminder, once again, that no place in this world is safe from human evil and the will to bring terror and pain.

I know London will survive, and many Londoners will behave admirably and generously in response to the needs and grief around them, but I'm wondering how humanity as a whole can ever grow beyond the hatred and violence that make such terrible acts even thinkable.