As the year nears its close, who can fail to be troubled by the violence convulsing so much of the world? René Girard, in Violence and the Sacred, makes the chilling point that "When unappeased, violence seeks and always finds a surrogate victim. The creature that excited its hostility is abruptly replaced by another, chosen only because it is vulnerable and close at hand." Vulnerable and close at hand: that fits just about every victim, from the abused child to the abused adult (male or female, young or old). It is sickeningly true of what is happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur, Gaza, Tibet, wherever violence is being used to attain a political end, and it is the weakest and most defenceless who must pay the price. Currently the west is feeling queasy about the action Israel is taking against the Palestinians, and rightly so. No one condones the lobbing of missiles into Israel, but the use of sophisticated modern weaponry is exacting a hideous revenge on the Palestinian people and will solve nothing. I wish every politician would read René Girard whose reflections on the nature of violence and the way in which to stop passing the poison on seem to me so apposite. Perhaps it is no accident that this great thinker was born on Christmas Day, when the angels sang of peace on earth to those of goodwill. Let us pray that in 2009 we may hear the angels' song amid the din of our conflicting desires.