Profound, heartfelt sorrow....

for the victims of Beslan, Russia, after the horrifying 52 hour seige. I am still getting caught up on this one, as I just spent 2 days with a close friend who is grieving the death of her mother. My friend is enveloped in her own agony, and she banished the television from our midst. She especially did not want to hear any news programs, "no news of any kind, good or bad," and so I missed many details of the standoff and of the suffering of humdreds of victims. What I saw in my friend's face, I now see magnified a thousand-fold in the faces of the Russian parents. It is so far beyond what I can imagine, that I am left utterly speechless.
This wordless, terrifying sorrow has become too familiar. I had not thought we would see so much tragedy, so often, so appalling, so senseless. (And then, the inevitable question, "What next?" ----the question, I think, that the conventions were trying to answer.)