Can you concentrate yet? I think I’m beginning to be able to reason abstractly again for the first time in two days.

Through the amazing and terrifying power of technology, I witnessed the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center in real time on television. It felt to me as if Satan were laughing and saying, “You thought I only had the power to tempt people in small ways but look at what I can do. You humans are powerless before me.”

And we have all felt powerless in the face of such evil. It seems that the face of evil was as enormous as the biggest buildings in the world with a fiery mouth and a deafening voice. Long, filthy arms of devastation reached out and took thousands of lives and wreaked lifetimes of sorrow and loss in the blink of an eye.

Feels personal

Unlike natural disasters or private tragedies, this feels personal to all rational human beings and it should because it is.

The enormity of hate required to commit these atrocities on such a scale is larger than any political agenda or religious bias. It goes beyond national animosities or racial bigotry. We have entered the realm of pure evil where the overriding goal is ever-increasing hate and violence.

It doesn’t make sense to us because there is no logic to hatred. The bus to hell careens headlong toward the annihilation of all that is good and beautiful, reasoned and ordered. It does so with abandon and it is strangely fascinating.

Disbelief and horror

First we experience disbelief, and then horror as our human minds recoil from the assault of evil aimed at innocence. There are no adequate answers to our questions of why. Evil doesn’t need a reason. Senseless waste of life and the sheer power of being able to do a terrible wrong at will must be reason enough for evil.

As targets of this attack, and all humanity was such a target, we feel violated. After shock, disbelief and confusion pass we begin to feel the need for action. Anger, a positive emotional response when it is measured and protective, is becoming the preeminent emotion across the world.

For those who survive there is great loss. Many have lost those closest to them, mothers or fathers, husbands or wives. The grief is evident, even for those whose loss consists only of a way of life that didn’t allow for evil directed at all of us just because we exist.

What kind of response

Thoughts of anger and revenge begin to surface as we try to decide what to do. What action could possibly balance death and destruction like this? What kind of response could be adequate to the immensity of the affront?

Everywhere people ask, “What can we do?” Heroic rescue and recovery efforts continue. Ordinary people line the streets and clinics to donate blood and do what they can.

Whenever the question has been directed at me, I have answered honestly, we can pray. We need to invoke a power higher than ourselves. We need God.

I have seen the face of God in all the caring people who have been quietly working and doing whatever they could, suffering with those who were hurt or killed, suffering with those who have lost loved ones or those who have family members missing.

We have the strength to overcome evil

We are wounded and hurting but we have the strength to overcome evil.

It is not by military might that we will make this all come right — although surely some measures to defend humanity must be taken. It is not by revenge or wrath that we will overcome the forces of evil.

We must affirm our connectedness to God through prayer — prayer for the dead, the wounded, the grieving, and for our leaders that God grant them the wisdom and strength to act justly. We must pray that each of us be given the grace to do just a little more good each day because that is the only way to overcome evil.

We must root out whatever evil we find in our own hearts and replace it with small and great acts of love and goodness. That way we can make a world where there is no room left for evil. It’s really is up to us.

Kathleen Toohey is a freelance writer from Sea Girt.