Rosebud

The rosebud that never flowers is still a rose. It is a perfect rosebud. It will never be anything else.

There is so much that I could tell you about from this weekend, and maybe will, later. Today, the shadows of New Town Connecticut are too long to let me write about anything else.

But there is nothing anyone can say about it. There is a shared revulsion and sorrow all round the world, but it doesn't come near the unimaginable pain of the families. The children and adults who won't come home. The children whose teachers died protecting them. The empty places. How can anyone bear it.

In March 1996, in the pleasant little Scottish town of Dunblane, a crazed man with a gun burst into the primary school, entered the hall and killed sixteen little children, their teacher, and himself. For days, all the UK was in a state of shock, trying and failing to imagine what it was like for the community.

Somehow, through horror and tragedy, we go on and find life again. We have to. But there is a demand on all of us to love, patiently, wisely, sacrificially and continuously, to feed on love, to give love and go on giving love, if we are to have sane and compassionate societies where the rosebuds can bloom.