The Day After

Warning -- Not a Knitting Related Post.

I couldn't bear to write yesterday, but I did a lot of reading, & a lot of thinking.

I thought of this day 5 years ago. I was driving when I heard about the first plane & the second one, & I was driving at the anniversary of those times. Later yesterday, I read a very American-centric post on an international knitting board, & thought of all the other additional innocent victims of terrorism, all around the world. I read a reply to that post, about how the person replying already had 9/11 as a tragic anniversary, but in her case it was a friend who died on 9/11/99, while trying to escape an abusive ex-husband. So I thought about domestic abuse being terrorism on a smaller scale.

I dedicated my knitting yesterday to remembering all victims of terrorism, & praying for their friends & families left behind.

Then I came across this blog entry. Very eloquent, & very thought provoking.

5 years ago yesterday, the thought that kept running through my head was how sad all this must make God. To have someone so misunderstand what God was about that they use God as an excuse for THAT???

5 years ago today, people who were stranded in NYC due to lack of transportation were waking up from the steps of buildings where they took refuge for the night. A picture of that is my favorite one from that tragic time period. It shows how life goes on. How even in the face of insane violence, people can perservere & set a better example, because when people can safely sleep outside in the middle of NYC, it is an amazing example of the best in humanity, rather than the worst.

That, afterall, is what God is really about. God functions to bring out the best in humanity, to give people the strength to do more good than they thought they could do, & the strength to continue to do & be good in the face of evil.

The Day After, there were so many examples of the best in humanity. There was a spirit of togetherness that could have been harnessed for so much good. Imagine if the politicians had used the events as a rallying point for alternative energy, how much less dependent on oil we might be today. The potential for good that could have come out of that day on a nationwide scale vs. the reality of the way people's patriotism was manipulated by politicians is very stark, if you think about it.