9/11/2001 -- My thoughts

Today is a day of remembrance.

A flag was put up in my yard this morning in honor of a day that flags weren't put up on until about 9 years ago, which isn't a fifth of my life yet. And I'm not sure how I feel about it.

I know where I was and how I felt 9 years ago. I was dumbstruck. I was at the bank and the teller told me she had just heard things were going on in New York, and I rushed home, and kicked the kids off the television and sat and watched with the rest of the world as events unfolded... I got to the tv just moments before the first tower started falling, and then I watched all the destruction, and felt deeply for all the people, and I watched in horror as so much went to waste. Being an accountant, I was especially struck by how meaningless the work that we do can suddenly become. Maybe I noticed the papers flying around more because of what I do... but I didn't miss the significance of the loss of so much.

The next day, I had to drive out to Wyoming to work with a client, and I remember how exremely eerie it was to have nothing in the air. Nothing. I talked to my cousin who was flying for Life Flight a while after that, and he said that he was in the air on a flight, and it was the weirdest feeling to have nothing on the radio waves that was "normal."

I remember thinking though, that maybe our administration wasn't as guiltless in all of this as it suddenly was made out to be. I've thought much since then about what the target of these people were... these radicals that dared to die for what they believed in. They attacked the symbols of our financial world. They attacked the government that they believed was misleading the "Godless" people of the west, who worshipped the material over the spiritual.

Did I sanction their attack? Not in the least. Did I understand their attack? Unfortunately for me it seems sometimes... yes I did.

I was brought up in the public school systems learning all sorts of rallying cries... Remember the Alamo... Give me Liberty, or give me Death; and every day I stood up in the morning and we pledged allegiance to our flag, our God and our Nation.

I served my country right after high school for three years. And then I served it again as a reservist for another 2 or three years. It was a peace time army, in a time when the nation was trying to understand the outcome of Vietnam, and folks were passionate on both sides of the coin.

I was born with a musician's heart, and a writer's soul. I was drawn to the music and lyrics and movies that cried for peace. I understood the hippie movement, but was not one. I understood the patriotic movement, and served my country, but began to see the falacies of how government was running things in my little part of the world, and I didn't really care for the waste.

As an Army musician I played the Star Spangled Banner more times than most Americans will ever hear it. I still feel a tear in my eye when I am at a military funeral, and I see the flag draped over the coffin of a soldier who has passed on. These things still stir the blood and honor in me.

I love America, but America is not the pure and innocent country that was suddenly thrust upon me the day 9/11 hit.

In the aftermath, as I prayed for peace in my heart and with many that felt like me, the nation's administration and the general mood of Americans around me were bent on war. Did I sanction those feelings? No. Did I understand them? Yes.

I sometimes think it would be so much easier to see the world in black and white... to not think, and buy into the rhetoric of the times. It seems that the administration and many of the religions of the world really played the trump card and whipped up anger and hatred against each other. Ah, that same old same old way that the problems of the world are always dealt with... war.

I found myself on the wrong side of the general clamor all of a sudden. The president let it be known that if you weren't for his war, suddenly you weren't patriotic. And I felt that around me as well.

Did I honor the victims of 9/11 any less than the flag waving folks at the time? No. Did I understand their "righteous" anger?

No.

Support America. God Bless America. Support our troops.

Yes, I still honor those sayings, but only in part. The God I began to know on the day that so much came down in America... wasn't an American God. God was the creator of all things, of which this planet is such a small part.

So in my heart I began praying, God bless this earth, and all her people, and all her creatures, and all her beauty, where ever it is.

And then one day I saw a bumper sticker that said "God bless the World."

To be honest, I cringe even now when I see the slogan "God Bless America." To me, it is only the beginning. We can not be One if we are only going to recognize one point of view.

To me, the lesson of 9/11 wasn't so much a cry to become more patriotic, but a reminder that it was time to become a more spiritual people. Not a religious people... a spiritual people. A people that can finally begin to see how much more we have in common with the rest of the world than not.

God Bless our Universe, and all that makes such be.