September 11, 2001 became our new “Day of Infamy.”The calls started at 6:00 a.m. PST. Mother’s voice shrilled into my not-quite awake brain. “Turn on ABC.” She hung up.
The devastation and
horror began with a flick of power to television. Hatred came to life before my eyes. With it came fear, a moment of panic, and then calls to everyone I loved and cared about. Like so many of you, I alternated between listening and watching “the news” to half-hearted attempts at work.
On day after this evil, I am compelled to write. Everyone reading this has also experienced both planned cruelty of humanity as well as its generosity. People stood in line waiting to donate blood. Firefighters and police officers gave their lives. Messages of support swirled across e-mail channels. And “safety” we thought was ours has disappeared in dense clouds of smoke that carried World Trade Tower, Pentagon, and four planes into destruction. All technology in world would not have prevented this attack. The human technology of hatred overrode all systems.
The question for me is deeper then “who did this?” Instead, question is “how can we use this evil to become wiser and more humanly connected?” How nation responds in aftermath of this horror will tell world just who we really are. I pray that our wise responses will be words of compassion and reason in midst of insanity. While cold inhumanity of terrorism is horrific, it cannot lead us into generalizations about a race, religion, or nation. The actions of a few do not denote mindset of all.
