In her book, Stitches, Anne Lamott quotes C.S. Lewis. She wrote “C.S. Lewis famously said about forgiveness, ‘If we really want to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo.’”

Lamott also wrote, “To use just one Christian example: Christ really did suffer, as the innocent of the earth really do suffer. It’s the ongoing tragedy of humans. Our lives and humanity are untidy: disorganized and careworn. Life on earth is often a raunchy and violent experience. It can be agony just to get through the day.

“And yet, I do believe there is ultimately meaning in the chaos, and also in the doldrums. What I resist is not the truth but when people put a pretty bow on scary things instead of saying, ‘This is a nightmare. I hate everything. I’m going to hide in the garage.’

“I asked a wise friend, ‘Is there meaning in what happened in the slaughter at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown?’ He said, ‘Not yet’.”

“Part of this is that we witness such terrible suffering here. Children suffer so; Christ suffers. Then there is the hope of the resurrection. Death is not necessarily the enemy, or the end of the story. I assue tha the murdered children in Connecticut were welcomed home at the moment of their deaths. I know in my heart that somehow their families have come through and begun to live again. Yet we have to admit the nightmare and not pretend that it wasn’t heinous and agonizing. It wasn’t a metaphor; it was the end of the world.”

…”It’s the worst, even if you are the mother of God. Mary didn’t say, ‘Oh, he’ll be back in a couple of days.’ She didn’t know this. She stood with her son in the deep unknowing as he died.”

Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair, by Anne Lamott, Thorndike Press, 2013.