September mourn!

It has now been twelve years since 2001 and the fateful September day that will live on in so many memories. It has become our self appointed duty to pen something in commemoration of this date most every year since it occurred. We were deeply affected by the events on this date a dozen years ago and we cannot seem to let go of it, perhaps out of fear that those who were lost on that date might no longer stand for what they came to stand for any longer. In the aftermath of the attacks, those lost came to represent bravery and heroism and other fine ideals. Now, like so many of our national icons, they have begun to recede to names carved on monuments whose touch with the rest of us seems to fade with each passing year. Many of the widowed have remarried and the fatherless and motherless have grown older as they proceed on with a life without the guidance of those that they loved. And some have died carrying the unique memories of the lost that only they possessed with them. It is the way of death as memories pass away.

Certainly, as September eleventh began, all they stood for was a group of Americans on their way to work or whatever they were about that morning. They had no idea that within a few hours they would join a fraternity of the lost and would be commemorated annually on the site in New York individually by name by those, like us, who simply do not want to let them go. It is not that we want to rehash negative things just for the doing. It is just that so much of what went on was so touching, tender, and tragic that we want the world to know and continue to remember that those things did not go on in vain and that there was some meaning to them far greater than the instigation of a bunch of mindless and cruel terrorists actions. If the terrorists celebrated the night before they died, we shall continue to commemorate those who perished because of what they experienced and what they came to symbolize.. We do not do this to give immortality to the terrorist but, rather, to give meaning to lives that we lost as we crossed over into a new age. So many who perished that day did so voluntarily in the line of a duty that called them to the tragedy in an effort to save other human beings in distress. Those are among the brightest and most enduring memories that we should take from that day. We should also remember those who called their loved ones from the doomed towers and aircraft so that the last thing that they might hear from them were words of comfort and love. And we should never forget those who jumped to their deaths from those heights who led us into the new world in which we reside. Trying to cling to a few more seconds of a life well lived in such a basic human trait.

Oil leaks, to this day, from the battleship Arizona out in Hawaii as many still go there to commemorate what happened on a similar day back in 1941. We were there in 1986 and the tour guides stated that the United States government would do nothing about that seepage until the last survivor of Pearl Harbor had passed from the scene. After seventy two years we are sure that is closer at hand. But September eleventh is different from that. Most of those killed at Pearl Harbor knew, in theory anyway, that they had signed an oath that included dying for their country while those in New York were merely reaping the continued benefits of what countless generations before them had fought and died for--life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The radicals who pulled off the New York attacks would tell you that all Americans are equally guilty of raping and pillaging the supposed purity of their faith and way of life. They would tell you that the pursuit of oil and other material things has defiled a sanctity and a way of life that has gone on for centuries, if not millenniums. They would also, by demonstrations of their faith, like to take the entire world back to the eighth century or thereabouts to a time when iron religious rule dominated the scene and any one who deviated from that norm would be instantly put to death. Those who instigated the September eleventh attacks despise all things that they consider modern but if you read the Holy Quran it does not espouse anything similar to what was done to New York and America that day in September of 2001.

Like the Bible and so many other basis for religious faith, the Quran is a book of love at its core and that is what it teaches. But, there was no love in the hearts of those who did what they did twelve years ago today, only hate.

So many lost so much on September eleventh and we have all had to go forward in our own individual and collective ways toward a future that looks far less bright than it did before that first plane hit that first tower and changed our world forever. Many events have transpired since that day twelve years ago. Others have been killed but not in the numbers that died on that one single day. But more have collectively died because of what happened that day. Over five thousand people have perished in combat from the two wars that started, in one way or another, from what went on that day. And almost countless numbers of civilians have either died or been displaced since that time came and went. And then we have the maimed who live in a world all their own but not of their own choosing. Only those like the terrorists would choose a world like that for themselves and for others. It says in the Christian Bible, judge not lest yea be judged. Those who did what they did on September eleventh not only passed judgment on others who were, in the eyes of much of the world, innocent of the charges against them, but they also carried out the self imposed sentence of their own volition on the promise of a ticket to a paradise that seems so meaningless in light of what they did. So many have died, through the ages, for causes far bigger than themselves, but, to die for hate is a very belittling thing indeed.

To say that September eleventh marked a watershed in our collective history is to make a great understatement indeed! What has been facilitated by what transpired that September day and the losses in lives and treasure are almost too voluminous to record.

There were those, including ourself, who had some realization that things were going to be different going forward than they had been in the past. It took no genius to figure that out. But we do not think that anybody had any real idea of the magnitude of the world that we were so abruptly thrust into by the dramatic and heartbreaking events that occurred on that beautiful September morn. The world of innocence that we knew was gone and was replaced by something that we still have not really completely defined. Now, and all too often, we seem to be collectively in search of a definition instead of a life. Revelations by individuals such as Edward Snowden merely put a punctuation point to that fact.

There still has not been a day to replace what happened on September eleventh, and, God help us if there ever is. Like the day of infamy in 1941, it remains with us in more or less complete form. But, like the day in 1995 when they bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, the opportunities for supercision are always there. On the site of the New York attacks today, a great new structure has arisen and a commemoration of what occurred has been built. But what we should never forget is the simple fact that what man builds, other men can easily tear asunder and cast us even deeper into tomorrows that will dominate what has passed. That September eleventh could be eclipsed is incomprehensible to us today but we should remember that September eleventh was incomprehensible to us before it occurred.

So, we cling to our September eleventh and pray that there is not another even more horrible day as yet unnamed. And we hope and quietly pray that it is not so terrible in nature that we will not be able to even count or name the lost.

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe

To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.