In Memory of those who died on 9/11/01

Many spirits transitioned on this day 11 years ago.  It was a day that the nation and the world stood still in utter shock and pain.  Today, I honor the memory of the 2,973 victims, of men, women and little children of all ages, color, religions, and nationals from over 90 countries, who died that fateful day.

The act of terror was probably designed to strike terror into our hearts and cause chaos instead it brought the best out in us as we came together to console and heal as a nation.  For a brief period, we put aside our superficial differences and behaved with love and compassion towards, our neighbors, friends and family.  We became more tolerant of others differences (unless they were Islamic.)

How we have forgotten the lessons learned of 11 years ago.  Today our nation is a battlefield of our own making.  Far too many people with extreme views on both sides are driving the middle views into silence.  The compassion has been replaced by hateful lunacy.  Closed ears and even more closed hearts exist today, what happened?  We managed to do to ourselves what terrorists could not do – divide us and cause chaos.

We are no longer a democratic society where every voice and every vote counts.  Now only the most selfish and hard hearted rich who desire only to protect and grow their own stockpile of money have a voice.    They control the airwaves but they need not control our vote.  

We need to find a way to return centrists to the halls of governance.  We need to bring people into government who are willing to honestly work together to help each other and every one of us be successful and healthy.  The people who lost their lives on 9/11 were just ordinary people – like our own families.  Can we use their memory and the memory of what it was like to be a nation and family to close the schism between us?  Use the memory to pull us back from the extreme fringes into a common middle ground where we can once again value each other and honestly work together to solve the nation’s problems.

History tells us that all great nations eventually peter out and become obsolete.  We have not been conquered from outside but are imploding from within.  The incendiary devices used are selfishness, intolerance, greed, materialism, elevated sense of superiority, ego, hopelessness, disillusionment and fear.  We must reach out to help others up, not step on them to keep ourselves falsely elevated.

The values must change from the greed of purchasing the second, third and fourth homes when others have none; from spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on cars- when others have no legs and no chance of obtaining substitutes; from hiding millions in offshore accounts to avoid sharing a mere fraction of one percent of the wealth with those that need it most. 

Let us all vow, right now, today, on the most sacred of days – to change our behavior, change our hearts, change our minds away from glorifying ME and MINE to raising up and helping the nation as US; for we truly are all in this together.

Namaste to those that passed out of this world on 9/11.  Namaste to those left behind.

(Namaste means “I honor the light within you.”)