It Still Stings

Have you ever had a splinter or a papercut, that, even after you've doctored it a bit, still stings? Or a bruise that lingers on and on, ever-so-slightly sore and noticable, long after you got it.

That's sort of how today is for me. It still causes pain to think about what happened to our country on September 11, 2001. I can recall with perfect clarity where I was and what I was doing when I heard those dreadful words, "A plane has hit the World Trade Center. We think it must be a terrorist act." That fist-in-the-gut feeling of fear and sadness, and so many questions: Who would do this? Why would they? How can someone hate us so much--just for being American? Is my family safe? Will they come to California, too?

Most of those questions are still unanswered, five years later, especially the "why." It's so much more than the American agenda in the Middle East. It goes deeper, beyond political and military acts, deep down into the impossible-to-understand mindset of religious fanaticism.

I can't imagine how it is for all of the many thousands of people who lost a loved one on 9/11. I can't imagine the grief and pain they go through on this anniversary. All I know is my own pain--so small in comparison, but still there, nonetheless.

Today, five years later, I can still feel that bruise on my heart, nagging me. I still feel anger towards the people who thought that killing innocent people--here, in Spain, in London--the world over--would bring them to a reward in heaven. Not in my heaven! Murder is murder, no matter how you spin it--September 11th was cold, calculated, and designed to show no mercy. The hurt and the anger might make me wish terrible harm on the men who delight in the death of innocent Westerners. But for one thing:

Hope.

I have hope. Such a simple thing, really, but so profound in its possibilities. I have hope that the terror will subside, and knowing that it will never die out completely, I have hope that We The People will stay united in our desire to keep terror out of our home. Hope that we will pursue peaceful solutions to violent problems, before we pursue retaliatory violence.