Welcome to The Light, your quiet hour of reflection.
In San Diego, a tragedy that asks us to sit with something difficult. Two teenagers attacked the Islamic Center of San Diego, killing three people before taking their own lives. Investigators are treating it as a hate crime, and we are left, again, with the question of what turns a young mind toward violence and away from the world.
From violence on the ground to wonder above it — a NASA astronaut aboard the International Space Station filmed a fireball streaking across the Earth's atmosphere, a brilliant arc of light against the dark curve of the planet. There is something humbling in that image — how fragile and luminous the world looks from that distance, how briefly things burn.
And here on the ground, two acts of desecration — a Sacred Heart of Jesus statue beheaded at a New York church, and in the Czech Republic, the skull of a medieval saint stolen from a basilica and sealed in concrete. Different countries, different centuries of faith, and yet the same impulse to unmake what others hold holy. These stories ask us what we protect, and why, and what it costs when we stop asking.
That is this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
