9 YEARS AGO

Nine years ago, I watched Denver Bronco Ed McCaffrey break his leg on Monday night football.

The following morning, I was awakened by a phone call at about 6:30 by my best Pal, Thom, asking me "Do you know what's going on?"  I had gone to sleep listening to Sports radio, so I said "Eddie's out for the season, his leg is really badly broken."  Thom responded that I had to get up and turn on the TV...that a plane had just flown through the first tower of the World Trade Center.

I'm not going to recount all the pain and horror of that day. We lost countless wonderful, bright and hopeful people of every faith, ethnicity, size, shape, color and ideology.  We lost every contribution these lost souls could have made to their families, their neighborhoods, their city, their country and their world. We lost our neighbors and our friends.  It was a horrific attack. However, one of the reasons that this attack remains so vividly raw, painful, abominable and unbelieveable is because we, as a nation, are so very fortunate.

We are not Europe...Spain, Ireland, London -  We are not Palestine,  Israel, Afghanistan or Iraq...We are not Africa...Darfur, Somalia...We are not Eastern Europe... I guess what I'm saying is that nine years later, we are the United States of America, still painfully grieving a single incident. Please don't misconstrue this statement as a minimization of what happened on September 11th, 2001.

However, as a mighty and powerful nation we have observed while other nations have endured daily attacks, multiple bombings, torture and other horrific wounds.   While our neighbors on this planet live with these painful and sometimes daily realities, we in America  look to this one terrible incident...the first such attack on our soil since Timothy McVeigh...a domestic terrorist who wanted to "water the tree of freedom."  This USA born and bred Iraq veteran slaughtered hundreds of innocent victims, including tiny children in a day care center, when he successfully detonated a fatal and deadly car bomb at the the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Timothy McVeigh was proudly white. In an interview before his execution, he maintained pride in what he had accomplished.  The victims were, in his own words, "collateral damage" and a means to the end of his statement against the intervention of the United States government upon our freedoms. Waco Texas was his inspiration.  The fact that David Koresh held his alleged followers captive and had sex with the children of the "flock" didn't seem to bother McVeigh.  Only the government intervention pissed him off.  At the time I was a youth minister and we worked on a project as to how things like this happen and how to deal with life in the aftermath.  We did this without blame or hatred.  We did this to try to understand what had just taken place in the middle of America.  I remember everything as if it was yesterday.

Funny...there's one thing I don't remember. I don't remember a backlash against young, male, white people after that horrific attack occurred in our homeland. I remember that upon each anniversary of this horrific attack upon our homeland, people rang bells and held memorials.  Honorable and meaningful gatherings of people who joined together to comfort and help one another through...even today these people band together in community and love.

The 9/11attack was exacerbated by the fact that only a few months earlier, the serving  president ignored a daily briefing that pretty much laid out the details of the very act that came to fruition on that day. This president scoffed and ignored it.  He couldn't be bothered.  He went on vacation.  He continued to bask in the longest and highest number of vacations that any president has ever enjoyed in the history of this country.  While a nation wept, purchased duct tape and gas masks (where available...another panic driven market that ripped off the frightened public thanks to Tom Ridge) and lived in shocked and dazed fear, the president played golf.  If you doubt me, here's the direct quote from the former president:

" I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now, watch this drive." 

We stand this day at such an important crossroad.  We can continue down the path that is being perpetuated by the Palins and the Becks and the Gingriches and the Limbaughs and the Hannitys.  We can continue to target and blame a particular group of people who share a faith that predates Christianity.  Since life is so often reduced to the path of least resistance, guided by the hate-mongers the country follows and funnels all of its hate and anger upon the Muslims. Unlike Timothy McVeigh, they are kinda tan and have an accent and dress differently so we have an easier target.

There is another road.  We can, first, remember the lost. We can remember and thank the heroes who ran into those buildings and lost their lives on that fateful day.  Even more, we can join the effort to provide medical and mental health care for the heroes who survived the onslaught and are now dealing with every illness, pain, and disorder as a result of what they experienced.  We can also get off our asses and try to build bridges in our country and in our world, utilizing the virtues of discourse, kindness and understanding as opposed to hatred, bigotry and blame.

We are so very lucky.  This big, bad-ass country is still standing.  And I'm flying my flag high as I have for years.  Yeah, all that crap you hear about us liberals hating America is a bunch of hooey.  I would just like to see us, as a country, deploying all that big, bad-ass strength to build a better, safer, and more generous world.

You can start with the burka-clad Muslim woman in the grocery store looking furtively without a friendly face and ask her if she might need some help.  You might smile and tell her that the canned vegetables are on aisle six. It begins there.  It's really as simple as that.

My life is no peaches and cream but it is Heaven compared to most of the rest of the world. Tomorrow I will get up in my safe house with my three dogs and two cats, my gardens, my canning jars awaiting another day of putting up my fall preserves and a weekend to care for my home.  So many of our brothers and sisters around the world are, tonight, sleeping on the ground.  They attempt to rest, fitfully, finally awakening and wondering if they will find a drink of water this morning. Perhaps a bite of rice for my failing child.  I, in turn, will probably have an invitation from one of my friends to go out to breakfast.

I struggle with the disparity and have many times turned down the invitation and then donated what I would have spent to a worthy charity.  But this isn't about me.  If I sold everything I owned to give to them I would become a burden upon my own community and that is not what I'm saying.  We need to enjoy our life and our friends and our families.  I only want us to realize how very fortunate we are and act upon that fortune rather than accepting it as a way of life.  It is not a way of life for so much of the world.

I also believe that we should forever commemorate this day. We should always bless and remember those we lost.

However, I believe that those angels, now watching over us, would want more out of us than countless recitations of names, throwing of roses in a pond and re-viewings of the planes flying through the twin towers.  I believe that they would tell us to count our immense blessings and get off our behinds to make this a better world.  How about it?  Are you in?

Will you still be writhing in the pain of this attack year after year or will you choose another course. The latter choice will mean turning off Fox News and turning on your inner moral compass.  The one that tells you to love one another.  You know...the thing that Jesus would have done.  He loved everyone.  How about you?

To view comments or to comment on this or any other postings, click on the blog posting title to the right. It will then give you a comments area where you can post your thoughts. Have fun. Don't be dicks or I will annihilate you.