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I didn’t know how much of a Londoner I was until the experience of what became known as 7/7; 10 years ago today. In 2005, I was one of the priests at St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London: itself a symbol of resilience in time of violence, and the gathering place for the 10th anniversary service later today. On this day then, in about an hour’s time during the rush hour, news started to filter out that not far from us at St Pauls, at Aldgate, and Kings Cross, there had been some kind of explosion. What I remember vividly is that our mobile phones stopped working, immediately isolating us from each other, and in the streets, gradually large numbers of people starting walking about, directionless. Famously curt Londoners started talking to strangers, asking them if they knew what was happening. Just as four years before, New Yorkers had watched in real time events they could neither control nor understand, for Londoners, the thought of what was happening to our fellow citizens 40 metres below our feet was too horrifying to imagine. And so incongruous – after all, we were the city that had just got the Olympics. We were up. We were great. For the individuals whose lives were irrevocably changed by this wicked act, sudden relationships were formed between paramedics and injured, and later relationships developed between bereaved relatives and survivors who, despite the strength of these new friendships would surely wish they had never had reason to meet. For those of us in the city that day, our task was to make decisions in the light of what had happened; should we close the cathedral to visitors? No. Should we continue with Evening Prayer? Yes. That night we prayed the prayer that is prayed every night, at the end of every day, whether that day has been a day of celebration or, like that day, a day of appalling grief. Defend us from all perils and dangers of this night. In the darkness of the London underground, this prayer became less a petition and more an accusation. And for many, God was indicted. Julie Nicholson, the Anglican priest whose daughter Jenny was killed at Edgware Road wrote this: Faith, to me is a mysterious thing. I think what I rejected absolutely was the easy language of faith that, actually, just doesn’t measure up when times are tough. So, today, no easy language will do - from any faith tradition. But in the face of toxic violence both then and now we can whisper over and over again the resolute and defiant affirmation found in the Scriptures; that love is strong as death. The Reverend Lucy Winkett First broadcast 07 July 2015