A Word Edgewise by Mary Joe Clendenin

Last Updated 01/20/06

For more literature go to Clendenin Books
Email: mjclen@our-town.com

               THE ATTACK ON NEW YORK HITS US ALL

God Bless America, on this day of horror. By the time you read this, written Tuesday, September 11, 2001, perhaps our minds will have begun to grasp the enormity of the destruction of   human lives, hopes, the unbelievable fact that it can happen here where  God has blessed us so abundantly.

          Or, perhaps what we have seen this morning is just the beginning of an enormous movement, fueled by hate, that will sweep across the country. I can’t help but think what a tremendous influence the television has upon us at this time. Without it we would never be able to imagine the forces of pain and destruction that would cause people to jump from, perhaps 80 floors up, rather than be burned in the fires we saw bursting from the buildings.

          By the time you read this, some questions will be answered. By that time the numbers of dead and injured may be closely approximated. Undoubtedly, people will still be searching the rubble for loved ones. By that time grieving for lost loved ones will shroud the country, indeed, the world. No life or death is alone. That is, someone knows. Someone is touched, even though in a few cases the touch is not one of love, but of hate. Unfortunately, it seems at times that we live in a world where hate rules. People in heavy traffic face road rage fueled with the fires of hate. Hate crimes fill the news. Hate invades the homes where children and spouses are abused. It invades schools where bullies and emotional attacks bring misery to particular students. Must HATE be the winner? No, I have hope that love will win out. In the case of New York City, as the preliminary reports and views indicate, the people acted with compassion. In orderly manner evacuations and rescues were begun immediately. Well trained police and firemen risked being in harm’s way to attend the fleeing, the wounded. These were not pictures of panic that we saw.  They were pictures of caring people behaving in orderly ways to help and be helped.

Blood donation sites were, within hours, being set up on the streets. Thousands of people of the city were lined up to give blood. And even in places far from the immediate site of the horror, like Texas, people answering the need for blood—led by, or at least including, Mayor Ron Kirk of Dallas, who reported to blood a blood center. Estimates, even this early, are that 20,000 people worked in the Trade Towers. Every one of them left someone. The passengers on the three planes involved in the disasters were human sacrifices to some group that hates the United States of America. Harboring hate makes it grow. Looking at the conflict in Ireland shows how that overpowering hate can fester and cling from generation to generation through 800 years, in the case of Ireland. Children are taught to hate. It happens here in America, too, still, every year.

          Certainly, this is a time, the hour has come, when we should examine our own hearts, cut loose the grudges, erase the presumed injustices, find the will and the strength to do things to help our countrymen. Since the end of World War II, we as citizens have not been truly united. Let this be a call to forget things of the past that have caused disunity. May we rise above petty differences and let love fill the voids in our hearts. God, Bless us, the people of a wounded country.

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