We are still in shock, a reaction to the Metrolink-UP freight train collision. So many dead; so many critically injured; the interior of the first Metrolink car splattered inside all over with bright red blood. Just horrible.

The company I work for has regularly scheduled deliveries in the area where the trains crashed and burned, and Friday night (also first football night for local high schools) was a nightmare for us, diverting deliveries to other locations and notifying recipients of the alternate locations, cancelling other pending events and notifying them, and on and on.

Our hearts were breaking for the immediate victims of the crash but we had to keep focused on the huge task of taking care of our own people, keeping in touch by radio and cell phone, and getting everyone where they needed to be. Frantic customers flooded the phone lines; employees who had gone home for the day were recalled to handle the emergency; everyone fought back tears and fears in order to stay centered on the tasks at hand.

There was time for shock and horror later, waking up Saturday morning in a quiet peaceful house, a silence that reverberated with the remembered chaos and pain of the day before.

I stopped by my Unitarian Universalist Church on the way to Trader Joe's, and discovered that several others of the congregation--and people from the neighborhood too!--had done as I did, paused in the church for a while to say a prayer or meditate or light a candle (I put some out from the store kept for Sunday services) or sit quietly, drawing comfort from a safe place and close friends.

None of us had lost a family member or friend directly, but as John Donne wrote, "every man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Yesterday was a day we felt this very keenly.