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Honoring All Affected By The 911 Tragedy...that Includes All Of Us


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Honoring Those who died, their families, and all of us on this sacred day.

Thank you, Marty, for posting this on FB. I believe it brings back memories for every single person on this planet...we all grieve that day. I also think it probably brings back memories specific to our journeys here. When I think of the day I remember that Bill and I were in Canada...coming down the St. Johns River in New Brunswick in our RV. We pulled into a sort of shabby looking coffee house for coffee and a break and when we got inside there were two men leaning over the counter watching a small black and white TV. They were the only ones in there. We had no clue what was going on but were soon informed as well as the fact that they knew we were from the USA and they expressed their sorrow for us and our country. We stayed there for many hours glued to this sorrowful event and watched as that second plane came in. That night at our camp ground Canadians saw our license plate and once again expressed their sympathy to us and invited us to their RVs to watch TV because we were out of range with our DISH. I think of the fun we had in that RV for close to 2 years, the sorrow of that day, and now the sorrow of our loss then and now.

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It was a day that to this day seems unreal. It is real to all who were affected, all who lost a loved one, all who helped, and to all of the rest of the Americans standing by, helplessly watching, tuned in to the news, praying, holding vigils. It was a significant day in history by which everything is from all time defined as "before" or "after"...9/11. It is a day that made us look again at our security and make changes accordingly. I don't know if the rest of the world ever fully realized the magnitude of this event for all of us.

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First time I saw the Budweiser clip. Memories for all of us. I found your link, Marty, September 11: Coping With Aftershocks very excellent. It is so true how memories whether good or bad can have an affect on us. I remember having to go to school and teach all day and we could not bring up the tragedy to our 7th & 8th grade students - District orders. I guess they did not want the kids to be upset!! I never did understand it and I know I didn't teach that day either!

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One of the flight attendants had her children in the Westport schools. She loved tennis, so when the community raised money to fix the tennis courts they were named for her.

A former student was working in the Pentagon that day. He left his office to have a cigarette just before the plane hit. Everyone in the office died. He ran his car into a bridge abutment a few days later in an apparent suicide. Survivor guilt.

Some other teachers had friends in the WTC that day who were never heard from again.

One of my former communications students grabbed his camera and ran to the WTC to film it.

A former journalism student was working in a building nearby as a reporter. She got through the day, wrote her stories and came home to Westport. It was a long time before she went back to reporting, but she did. She now works in marketing and PR.

The biggest practical joker in our building came into my classroom that morning. He told me a plane had crashed into the WTC and that I should turn on the TV. I told him, "Don't even joke about something like that." "Really, I'm not joking."

I put the TV on just in time for all of us to see the second plane crash into the building. My day disintegrated into trying to help kids understand something beyond all understanding. Neither my wife nor I had the luxury of dealing with our own pain until after the last student had gone home.

I also spent time relaying the events of the day to high school teachers across the country whose administrators forbade them to look at a TV or tell their students anything about what was happening. It was a precursor to the Patriot Act and all the other government efforts to control what people saw and knew. I watched two tragedies unfold that day--and both defied my efforts to put them into words.

I stood on the front porch that night with a candle in my hand. Night fell. A dozen years later, I am still waiting for the dawn.

Peace,

Harry

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Are you kidding? How can you shield kids of that age to events of that significance? Not like they all didn't learn about it as soon as they left school!

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Guest babylady

john was in chicago on business. he called and woke me up to tell me what happened (time difference). he kept the rental car and drove home to phoenix -- stopped in texas for a few hours sleep and was back on the road. he got home around 6:15 pm on the 12th. he called me every few hours, but was fearful of running down the battery in the cell phone.

my friend michael's cousin died in the towers. he worked for cantor fitzgerald. they lost all of their employees. he left a wife and 3 little girls. michael was living in LA at the time. he flew home for the memorial service and then decided to move back to NY to be near family.

michael's brother was a NYC cop at the time. can only imagine what it was like for him.

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I think all of Humankind was traumatized that day.

I was recently back from the Middle East (archaeology) where I had also met with so very many lovely people, kind and gentle. I know many of them have since died in one attack or another. I was here, in my home, having people over for brunch. I was crying as we watched the news, for I had just come from a region where many people were severely affected by embargoes against food for their families, the use of depleted uranium, and other horrors. There were volunteer Cathollic Peace workers there, helping to distribute food, knowing they could not return to the USA after having been so very visible in relief efforts in some of the areas under that embargo.

Yet, instead of pursuing reconciliation and peace, I have watched leaders in this nation responding with more violence, as if violence ever ended violence. No, while self-defense may be justifiable at the individual level, warfare is not self-defense, and no one can pretend that it is. The people who sent this shock-wave around Earth and through all of Humankind died in those explosions, victims of having been taught the same anger, hatred, and war-thinking we teach our own children here, with war games and righteous anger, making heroes instead of weeping as our children are sent off to wars


How do we end this? You and I are not fighting each other. We may have anger, but we have learned to punch pillows. I see violence rising from the same police I learned to trust as a child. I see people abroad who hate all Americans. I know Americans who pretend to be Canadians when they travel.

If each of us, as individuals, devote only fifteen more minutes each day to working for peace and reconciliation, we can help to change things. I encourage all of us to see this day, feel this day, as a day when we dedicate ourselves to finding more ways to practice peace and reconciliation, or at least to refrain from feeding the anger and hatred of warfare. Can we resolve to remove ourselves from the trauma far enough to instead dedicate to peaceful and reconciliatory actions each day? To do a few more acts of kindness and to refrain from seeing any other human as our enemy, unless they are pointing a weapon at us? We must not give in to being taught to hate.

I lay this before us all this day, as an alternative to the litanies of death and destruction. Can we instead pick up a banner for peace and reconciliation, each our own, and in our own way, carry it into our daily lives?

I do not mean to lay any blame on any side, but only to ask that we try to see each other as we truly are: each a human spirit, to be greeted with "Namaste" as we seek reconciliation. Humans cannot go on this way.

fae

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Dear Kay,

I wish I were. I guess they figured it was a problem they (the school) would not have to deal with. That most of the kids were going home to empty houses with no adult to help them process it just never occurred to them--or didn't matter. Most school administrators have few brains--and less heart.

Harry

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Harry said: I stood on the front porch that night with a candle in my hand. Night fell. A dozen years later, I am still waiting for the dawn.

I do not know when or if it will be in my life time but dawn WILL come. Evil will not triumph. IMHO

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I was comforted by this and I actually may have posted it already but I am distracted this week.

Scroll down to Segment 2 on this page. The Book of Job

This is an interview on Tapestry (public radio) with Harold Kushner on his newest book:

The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happen to a Good Person

http://www.cbc.ca/tapestry/episode/2012/10/05/coping-part2/index.html

Amazon link to the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Job-Things-Happened-Encounters/dp/0805242929/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378936265&sr=1-2&keywords=kushner+bad+things

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Who can ever forget that day. I know I can't and Kathy was just as upset as I. Bad things do happen to good people. I always wondered how that many souls going up at the same time must have been like. How many families were and still are grieving. It makes my simple grief seem almost insignificant every time I think about it. Like I was the only one left behind?

The one thing that I will never forget is how , for a brief moment in time, we Americans all hugged each other. For a while we forgot our petty angers and treated each other kindly.. How we seem to have forgotten that way of being.

Those of us in grief seem to hold on to it a little bit though.

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Who can ever forget that day. I know I can't and Kathy was just as upset as I. Bad things do happen to good people. I always wondered how that many souls going up at the same time must have been like. How many families were and still are grieving. It makes my simple grief seem almost insignificant every time I think about it. Like I was the only one left behind?

The one thing that I will never forget is how , for a brief moment in time, we Americans all hugged each other. For a while we forgot our petty angers and treated each other kindly.. How we seem to have forgotten that way of being. Those of us in grief seem to hold on to it a little bit though.

Yes, I do remember so well how we came together as a nation during those days and during the days of the Columbine shooting, the school shooting last Christmas in Vermont, and more. How I pray that we can come together like that when it is not a time a tragedy. Those of us in grief do hold on to it because our own grief and loss is so real and it never goes away. Everyone grieves but I think losing as we here have makes us more sensitive to the losses in our lives and world....wounded healers that we are.

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I was comforted by this and I actually may have posted it already but I am distracted this week.

Scroll down to Segment 2 on this page. The Book of Job

This is an interview on Tapestry (public radio) with Harold Kushner on his newest book:

The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happen to a Good Person

http://www.cbc.ca/tapestry/episode/2012/10/05/coping-part2/index.html

Amazon link to the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Job-Things-Happened-Encounters/dp/0805242929/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378936265&sr=1-2&keywords=kushner+bad+things

Mary, dear, I took time to listen to the Kushner interview (which begins at about 18 minutes into Segment 2) and I agree with you: It is very comforting. Rabbi Kushner's insights are profound ~ and of course he speaks from his own experience as a bereaved parent as well as a theologian: that people would rather feel guilty than powerless; that we cannot have an honest relationship with God without the freedom to feel anger at Him; that theology is learning about the Divine, whereas religion offers us the opportunity to encounter God; that God's job is not to make people well but rather to make people brave; that God is the force that inspires us to help others; that God is moral, but nature is blind, and He does not control the laws of nature; that instead of blaming God when something bad happens, we ought to blame those who made it happen and those who let it happen; that faith can't prevent tragedies or disasters, but it can give us the resources we need to manage them. Just outstanding! Thank you so much for leading us to this wonderful material. Although his When Bad Things Happen to Good People is one of my very favorites, I am eager to read his newest book!

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Mary, dear, I took time to listen to the Kushner interview (which begins at about 18 minutes into Segment 2) and I agree with you: It is very comforting. Rabbi Kushner's insights are profound ~ and of course he speaks from his own experience as a bereaved parent as well as a theologian: that people would rather feel guilty than powerless; that we cannot have an honest relationship with God without the freedom to feel anger at Him; that theology is learning about the Divine, whereas religion offers us the opportunity to encounter God; that God's job is not to make people well but rather to make people brave; that God is the force that inspires us to help others; that God is moral, but nature is blind, and He does not control the laws of nature; that instead of blaming God when something bad happens, we ought to blame those who made it happen and those who let it happen; that faith can't prevent tragedies or disasters, but it can give us the resources we need to manage them. Just outstanding! Thank you so much for leading us to this wonderful material. Although his When Bad Things Happen to Good People is one of my very favorites, I am eager to read his newest book!

Yes, Marty, you captured it all...the very thoughts that comforted me. I, too, am anxious to read this new one. I think it is over at the post office in my mailbox...i.e. according to my cell phone alert from Amazon. :) I will go to the PO soon....I am resting today and tomorrow in preparation for my next trip to the eye doctor very early Saturday a.m. Somehow I hope to spend time reading this new book at least a bit today and tomorrow. I have always believed that we were given free will and because of that, bad things will happen (human as are). Expecting God to interfere with the gift s/he gave us (free will) does not make sense but hoping for courage and faith is another story...that is ours for the taking. Peace to your heart today, Mary

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From Francis Weller's website: Wiscombridge.net. Francis' book on grief is outstanding.

To speak of sorrow
works upon it
moves it from its
crouched place barring
the way to and from the soul’s hall.

Denise Levertov

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I just learned that a former student was supposed to be on the plane that hit the south tower. She even still has the boarding pass. Woof.

H.

An as we treasure her life...we also ask why her? why not the others? why anyone? No answers to be found now. So glad for her.

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I've learned it does no good to ask "why", but of course, we still do it sometimes, we're human. Instead, I think she should celebrate every day of her life for the gift she's been given, and make it count. The truly hard question for those that lost someone in this tragedy would be "why weren't they spared as well?"...but there usually is no resounding answer, only silence in the face of questioning. Loss is a hard thing...nigh impossible to understand.

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I knew a guy when I was at the Globe. He was a WWII veteran. Three days before his unit left for France he was pulled out of the line to be part of a training cadre. A week later, his unit was wipe out in the Battle of the Bulge. He said he looked at every day of his life after that as pure gravy. He was always smiling no matter what small--or large--aggravation came up.

H.

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