I confess, I wasn't going to write this. But there are some compulsions you just go with. Here is my most vivid memory of 9/11.
Standing in horror watching the TV at the convent where I was working and hearing the president of the Congregation on the loudspeaker calling us all to the chapel.
Fighting an almost atavistic impulse to just go home and try to "feel safe" again.
Standing in the chapel with almost 100 nuns plus about 30 lay employees, tears universally streaming down our faces, male and female.
Looking at the faces of the elderly nuns who were surely as stunned as all of us. God knew that many of them were old enough to remember other horrors that humanity has perpetrated on itself for generations - watching them pray with an intensity that I don't know I've ever felt before or since.
Feeling as if something -- I wasn't sure what -- had just been yanked out of my soul.
Knowing that nothing - NOTHING - would ever be the same again, and feeling a fear deep within myself at what this would mean for my kids - and everyone's kids.
The cloud graphic? I don't know why; I just know it makes me feel peaceful. And God knows we all need peace now. Now. And always.
It's starting again. The 24/7 news-punditry-overload.
And that's compounded with the overuse of the words "terrorism," "tragedy," and all those other "let's be afraid" buzzwords.
And President Obama is either "over-reacting" or "not reacting fast enough" even though he's just held a news conference wherein he asked us all to "not speculate ahead of the facts." For which the extreme right will excoriate him, calling him a "closet Muslim who sympathizes with terrorists."
Look. For all we know (and we don't know a whole lot) this may be an act of an international group. The experts are saying there was no chatter about that. But then again, I kind of like that they're not telling us everything. We aren't them. We aren't charged with finding out who did this, so unless you know something material to the investigation, you should not be spreading hate and discontent by going on Facebook or Twitter or wherever and blaming "them." Because right now, we don't know who "them" is. Or are. Whichever.
For all we know otherwise, it's a crackpot who's got a grudge. Or a home-grown crazy. Or someone who was recruited on this soil and took the message the wrong way.
Whatever the scenario, we are not entitled to know everything. And the fact that some in the bloggosphere, twittersphere and punditocracy were screaming about an hour after the fact, WHO DID THIS??????? -- really??? Are you serious? This isn't CSI or NCIS. You don't get a resolution 20 minutes after the dust has cleared (not counting commercial breaks).
We have for too long eked away at our ability to let things take their course. We are a society comprised of a pitiful faction who need to know EVERYTHING. And they must know it RIGHT NOW. Or there's a COVER-UP by the GOVERNMENT.
All of this fear-mongering is not only lessening our ability to let things move along as they should, but it's making us more and more paranoid. Part of our strength as a nation includes the ability to live our lives without overwhelming paranoia and fear. But some of the hacks on the airwaves insist that we must all be Henny Penny, crying at every moment that "the sky is falling."
Till one day, when it actually does fall, we're so weary of the constant level of fear and rising "terror levels" - that we miss the thing we're supposed to be paying attention to!
We need to be calm. We need to let the authorities do their job. We need to pray for those who are involved, whether you wish that to be a formal prayer, a wish for good karma, or whatever that means to you.
We need, in other words, to shut up and get out of the way.
