Boston.

The Boston Bombing had me turning away from the television screen
‘Some of you may find the images disturbing’ said Sophie the newsreader.
It wasn’t so much the images I found disturbing as the incredulity of fifteen seconds of devastation that has ruined the lives of hundreds of people. Domestic, Foreign, Al Quaeda, or Right Wing Fanatic, it makes no never mind.
We have arrived at a point in our civilised society that we take it for granted that pictures will be beamed around the world. Images of death and destruction. That earthquakes, famine, flooding and bombing are so much part of the fabric of our lives, and that they are reported so graphically means we no longer flinch.
Writing the menu of the news, deciding which horror should go first in the running order, almost as flippant as writing a shopping list.
We have to be responsible for each other lest we care less and less about each other. As one hurt follows another we must be reminded that each hurt is our hurt.
‘I am you , and you are me and we are us together…. ‘
How ever that song goes.
If we cannot be responsible to and for the World around us then what hope have we?
When I was small we HAD to say the Lords Prayer, every day in school assembly. All of us, the boys with big ears that stood in front of me, the teachers, the prefects, the pianist who played the accompaniments for our hymns. I sung along with the Christians, the Catholics and the other Jews.
I could have been exempt but I liked the singing together, the praying together. Not that I ‘m religious in any way, but with one voice we praised breath and life and sun and seeds. We harmonised about morning breaking and those in peril on the sea.
Standing at the wooden lectern we read to each other and listened to messages of hope and humanity.
We sung together, listened together and shuffled out into the corridor together.
If we do away with a sense of communal bonding, if we continue to hide behind screens, earphones, laptops and lies the likes of the Boston Bombing will become ever more commonplace.
When the security services are omnipresent at funerals, marathons, marches and gatherings then we have lost our way.
Condolences to everybody who came within an inch of that blast. And may the families of the dead and wounded be comforted that millions of us do not approve of a society that has become so utterly care-less.