Why does it happen, we ask out loud. When it does, we feel a gnawing pain in the pit of our stomachs. Even after digesting the facts, we can't wrap our brain around it.
What would motivate someone to walk into a church in Charleston, S.C. - or anywhere, for that matter - and start shooting?
Authorities talk of a "hate crime," we hear the gunman made an outlandish statement to the pastor before opening fire, and we believe we're in the middle of a bad dream that just won't end.
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For those who go back that far, the months since the Ferguson, Mo., shooting through Wednesday's night's horror in an historic African Methodist Episcopal Church feel much like 1968, the year in which racial and civil unrest roiled so many larger American cities, in which rioting tore apart the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and the year in which both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated.
It was a nightmare that made people wonder if the country was falling apart and could ever find its way back together.
Into that milieu came a poster by 13-year-old Vicki Lynne Cole that was created to be seen by then-presidential candidate Richard Nixon. It said simply "Bring Us Together."
That's what people wanted then, and that's what they want now.
Not necessarily because of Nixon, but the country did not experience another similar year of violent racial turmoil such as 1968 until the past 10 or 12 months.
To suggest that the current president or one hoping to win the office in 2016 can restore trust between police and citizens on the street, can erase hate in the hearts of evil people or can say racial issues are all-pervasive or non-existent is to grab at the wind.
No, healing the pain of nine slain in a church, in the midst of Bible study, people minding their own business, will take time, it will take education and it will take people building trust with other people as happened gradually, carefully and mindfully after 1968. We are a people created for social intercourse, and in our hearts we want to be brought together, not kept apart. May we individually make the effort.