The Initial Shock and Fear of the Bondi Shooting Is Transitioning to Anger and Discord. It Is Imperative We Look For the Light.

While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial shock, grief and terror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Unity, light and love was the message of belief.

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear azure skies above ocean and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we require each other more than ever.

The reassurance of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this long, draining summer.