This is a picture just texted to me by a very close friend in Watertown. This is the view from my friend’s front door.

 

(This friend is a well known peacemaker. I’m not identifying my friend for now in an abundance of caution.)

 

Ten swat team members searched my friend’s house a short while ago. My friend said they were as young as the young man they are trying to catch. My friend said they looked very frightened. My friend told them to be careful. They asked my friend to pray for them.

 

Early this morning I tried to make my way to Logan airport to get a flight to Denver. I learned yesterday that my best friend from college is on life support, in a medically induced coma, in a hospital there. I want to be at his side. Traffic ground to a halt around Quincy, and I knew from the developing news story that I wasn’t going to make my flight. Now the FAA has closed the airspace over Boston.

 

As if this situation — the manhunt, my friend’s serious condition — weren’t strange and scary and sad enough, the place where the marathon bombing suspects lived in Cambridge is on the same street as the Greater Boston Zen Center, just a couple of blocks away. I’ve walked by their home any number of times. Our sangha sits and chants for peace a short distance from where this tragedy seems to have been planned.

 

Strange. Scary. Sad.