Forgiveness?  As Americans the world over continue to weep over the recent shootings in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, we might also ponder what about various subcultures of American society produced a person like Dylann Roof.  How did he come to nurture such a deep hatred for African-Americans?  What was it in his life, what was it about his life's patterns, what was it about the cultures in which he moved or to which he was exposed that led him to draw such perverse and horrific conclusions?  We rightly weep for the survivors, and are in profound awe over their ability to forgive Roof for his deed, yet we also wonder about Roof.  Though we cannot in any way excuse his action and the enormous pain it has sent rippling through too many families, we must also realize that he, too, is a person wrestling with enormous pain, pain so biting that it led him to kill nine people in cold blood.  His darkness is almost beyond fathoming.
     And roughly a week ago it came upon us, cutting through our lives like a knife, once more wrenching us out of whatever assumptions we may have made about the state of humanity and the societies they create, tearing apart mercilessly our picture of our fellow human beings.  It makes us close our eyes even as it makes us open them.
     What can we do?  It seems facile to say, trust God, although that is what the survivors are trying to do.  On the other hand, this is really the only response we can make when the cold underside of the metaphysical pushes into our lives.  It's also facile to simply chalk Roof's actions off to sin, although sin has been done.  When we look at ourselves, we see magnificent creatures who have been created by a magnificent God.  Yet we also see creatures who too often wander from this magnificent God, trying, over and over, to make the metaphysical do what we want it to be rather than letting it make us who we should be.