Editorial

I am writing this on the anniversary of the London bombings of 7 July 2005. My consulting room is by a church in the City of London, close to Aldgate Underground Station, the site of one of the explosions. The church, St Botolph's-Without-Aldgate, acted as the emergency control centre in the first hours after the blast and for the next 10 days and 10 nights gave support and shelter to the emergency services working in the tunnel. St Botolph is the patron saint of travellers and this church, appropriately, stands on an island where eight roads meet. As it stood outside the city gate, it also became known as the Outsiders' Church, ministering to the homeless, the outcast and the forsaken. There has been a church of this name on this site for almost a thousand years, through wars, plague and fire. Today it is the container for a huge outpouring of emotions. The churchyard is full of flowers and all day hundreds of City workers have been going in and out, the church bell tolls, people stand together in the street and cry. Inside is an exhibition of paintings by Vaseem Mohammed, a young local Muslim artist. His paintings fuse Christian and Islamic symbolism with his personal associations. The exhibition is entitled ‘Unity’.

I wrote in my last editorial about how difficult it can be to hold what we have in common in the face of what divides us. Today in my room by the church, I am thinking about this yet again and about loss and grief, terror and rage, grievance and vengefulness, hope and reconciliation.

Many of these are involved in the complex and difficult matter of forgiveness. In this issue we publish three conference papers under the title ‘Forgiveness: Is It Really Possible?’. David Black introduces the section and asks a number of pertinent questions: is forgiveness common or is it rare? Is it desirable? What does it mean? Does it ever happen? Does it involve a betrayal of the past and of our grief for a future that will never now happen?

Chris MacKenna brings togeth