Yet we often cheer violence, support it and make heroes of those who foster it and commit it. The contradictions in our position on this issue are astounding.

Some years ago I came upon a press photograph of a grieving mother and father who had lost their daughter in a terrible tragedy. There have been many such photos that we have grown accustomed to seeing...That particular photograph did not come from a major international centre of crime or from a war zone. Rather it was from a massacre of innocent people in Australia, in Melbourne--a peaceful city under the Southern Cross.

What do we do with the law abiding bigotry; the law abiding intolerance; the law abiding promotion of gratuitous violence in the media; the law abiding institutionalisation of poverty and homelessness; the law abiding environmental destruction; the Christian affront of a just war?

I am afraid for my children that the violence, anti-semitism, racism and sexism put forward under the guise of patriotism, honour, religion and power might grow rather than diminish.

Events of human violence raise questions of who we are in relation to one another...Social systems require trust and faith in others. To not trust is to not love. To not love is unthinkable. To not be loved is intolerable.

Events like these remind us how vulnerable and fragile we are, when one person propped up by all the systems and individuals who exploit weakness and bias can wound so many of us so thoroughly.