Betsy and I sat on our patio sipping our afternoon tea. It was an idyllic afternoon. The sun shone from a clear Colorado blue sky and the late summer flowers glowed gold in its reflection, while a few late hummingbirds buzzed the feeder. It was very quiet, with little traffic and few people about. It was one of those times the poet Robert Browning must have had in mind when he wrote that God is in His Heaven, and all’s right with the world.
It was September the 11th, 2001. Sitting on the peaceful, peace-filled, patio, we couldn’t seem to come to grips with the reality of what had happened, was happening, in New York. We, like everyone else, had been glued to the TV, watching in horror as events unfolded. Then we switched it off and it simply went away. And we sat outside, in our silent oasis, and tried to believe, or not to believe, what we had just seen. We wanted to go back in, turn on the TV, and see cheerful mindless commercials followed by the credits rolling as the awful movie we had been watching came to an end. But that was not to be.
That day changed this country, and us, in so many ways. We gave away our rights and freedoms in exchange for promises of a security that can never be a reality. But the changes we wrought on other countries half a world away were so much more, and so much worse.
After the horrors of the 2013 Boston Marathon, an editorial in an Afghanistan newspaper said, and I’m paraphrasing to the best of my memory, here, Welcome to Our World. Welcome to the fear, and the reality, we live with every day. Where will your drones strike next, and how many innocent people will be maimed and die, and how will we try to make sense of it?
My dream for the world is that it may be filled with September Colorado afternoons rather than September New York mornings. But why is that so hard to imagine?
© June 2013
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