Five years

I don't want to dwell today on what has happened since then. I thank God that the people I know or whom my friends know who could have died but didn't are still here. I mourn for those who are not.

My reaction that day and now is that I worship a God who created human beings, and we, made in God's image, in turn create things: poems (literally made-things), music, gadgets that make life easier and more pleasurable, skyscrapers...And I know that the peculiar sect of Islam in which the hijackers believed is false because they were certain that their God endorsed destruction of what God and human beings had made.

There are times for pluralism, for nuance and shades of gray, and there are times to cling to your beliefs with everything you have and proclaim their superiority. What we believe, we who grieve today, is better. The things we mourn, we mourn because they are the opposite of the things that are good, and that we take joy in because God takes joy in creating and sustaining them.

I can't read anything or watch anything or go anywhere without having to filter the memory of that day through the intervening wars and conspiracy theories and political posturings...I wanted to do one of those meaningful/futile? commemorations today, light a candle or stand in silence beside people of every color and faith or something, but it seems so difficult for anyone (even for me) to let the memory stand on its own and be, and yet I don't believe I can do it justice otherwise.

So I want to nurture this anniversary and keep it pure, for now. Tomorrow is soon enough for it to be 2006 again.