Thoughts in the light of the Bucha Massacre

 Easter is late this year but Good Friday has come early – Christ has been crucified again, this time on the streets of Bucha in the Ukraine and not just once but time after time as people of all ages lie dead in the streets with their hands tied behind their backs and a bullet in the back of their heads or strewn over a bicyle or shopping cart where they fell or in black sacks in hastily dug trenches. 

I can't get these images out of my head as I go about my daily tasks. They overshadow everything, as they should for this is all they have left on this earth and I cannot deny them that – I cannot turn away – I must see them and acknowledge that they too were only days ago like me living breathing people who even amidst the horrors of war had hopes and dreams of a better future. 

Everything I do today seems hollow and empty – I am in the supermarket choosing something for dinner and I wonder were some of those lifeless bodies out looking for food when evil men on a whim decided to end their lives. I am not sure what I bought in the shop and it doesn't really matter because it seems somehow wrong that I should take pleasure in eating food that others may have died in the pursuit of. 

 I consider going for a walk and perhaps to take a few photographs of some of the beautiful countryside near where I live but I realise that this is not a day for beauty – I and we have to live with this terrible brokeness and horror – While these bodies lie on the street there is no beauty anywhere! – There is but a terrible darkness and for a time I and we have to be in this darkness alongside our sisters and brothers who are still being murdered and raped and tortured by the forces of evil. 

I want to see an end to this Good Friday and look forward to Easter Hope and Resurrection but at the moment that seems a long way off and too soon to contemplate – While this slaughter continues part of me wonders would it be blasphemous to celebrate Easter in less than 2 weeks time? 

Can we proclaim the Resurrection while children and women and men are being slaughtered on our doorstep? I truly do not know how to do that and yet honour those whose corpses lie rotting on the streets of Bucha, while they and their families are still living Good Friday.