Grieving Over The Bombings

Today it hit me.

The grief over Thursday's bombings in London.

Today was a beautiful sunny day - a perfect day. I walked down to our local market filled with fresh fruits, vegetables and flowers. Happy people wandered, drank coffee and chatted with each other.

I felt so fortunate to be alive and part of such an idyllic scene. Then a quartet of four young women set up and began playing violins.

It was then that it hit me. Those notes dipped deep into my being and suddenly the photos in the newspaper came alive. The pleas for missing friends and loved ones became real. It could have been us. In a very real sense it was us.

I wept.

Life can be so beautiful.

And life can rip you apart.

Last night I watched an interview from - I think it was from 2002 - of a Muslim cleric who lived in London and was happy over 9/11.

He said any Muslim who did not admit he was happy over 9/11 was a liar. He said the United States has been menacing the Middle-East and disrespectful of her people for decades. He saw terrorism as the only possibility of stopping a rogue state from taking over the world.

Rogue state. That's us he was talking about.

Or, more exactly, it's our government he was talking about, the one we like to ignore as we go shopping. The one that has waged a war somewhere in the world every year for the last fifty years. The one that does these things in our name, supposedly to keep us safe.

But all that aggression is coming around now to bite us - you and me and others - in the ass.

Yet, although government policies are backfiring on us now, we continue to allow our government to do these things.

Why? Are we are too busy watching American Idol or CSI?

Those running this dog and pony are counting on it.

They ratcheted up the terror index to orange.

A lot of good that does.

What a pathetic joke. It's just a lot of crazy making.

Thursday's tragedy and its message was this: we need to back off and work for peace instead of war.

Our leaders are way too disconnected from the real pain of what is happening in this world. They don't get that they share responsibility for it.

They ought to listen to some violin music.