9/11

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

~Benjamin Franklin

After all, why do they hate us? If it's really because of our freedom, they don't they win when we abandon those freedoms?

And besides:

"God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ's. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love." ~ 1 John 4:17-18

and is it a war between a so called "Christian Nation" and Islamist extremism? Okay, than ask yourself WWJD?

"If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."~Romans 12:20-21

Two Tragic Anniversaries

Two Tragic Anniversaries

Page 3 Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper & Schleswig Leader- Thursday, September 7, 2006

As I write this column, the airwaves are saturated with documentaries and analysis of last year's hurricane Katrina. When you receive your copy of this paper, next Tuesday will be the fifth annual observation of "Patriot's Day."

Katrina left at least 1,605 fatalities, directly effected 5 states, and cost something in the neighborhood of $75 billion in damage.

Military, law enforcement and medical workers agree that there were about 30,000 evacuees at the New Orleans Superdome and somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 at the city's Convention Center.

America hasn't seen a natural disaster of such scale. When the levees broke, flood waters poured into the soup-bowl of a city- much of which is ten feet below sea level. Disease, starvation and exposure probably wreaked as much havoc as the storm itself.

It revealed much about America, both our strengths and our sin. Thousands of volunteers left the comfort of their homes all over the country to help. The city of Houston Texas, much to its credit stepped-up to offer refuge, shelter, and jobs to displaced Gulf citizens.

Katrina spurred some of the greatest demonstrations of love, compassion and sacrifice America has ever seen. There are still volunteers scooping trash and black mold out of houses and helping rebuild.

Needless to say, Katrina also revealed some huge faults in our country. Negligence and failure of leadership to plan and to act decisively and effectively were exposed on city, state, and Federal levels.

According to one report on National Public Radio, to date, 17,000 households from Biloxi Mississippi have applied for help in rebuilding, but a year later, the state of Mississippi have issued only 41 checks.

Like it or not, it did reveal our tacit, institutional racism. We wanted to believe that it hasn't been a problem since the 1960's, but while it may not be hot, angry and overt, it is still very real and very hurtful. Had those tens of thousands at the Superdome and Convention Center been middle class whites instead of poor blacks, there would've been busses, helicopters, doctors, fresh water and everything they needed.

But instead, lets face it, we middle class, comfortable, complacent, supposedly "compassionate-conservatives" look at Katrina as a form of welfare reform and urban renewal. The lower 9th Ward won't be rebuilt, but condos, resorts, and casinos are already being built. If you can't see Katrina as shedding light on racism, you can't escape that is tore the facade off of our indifference toward and aversion to poor people.

It would be too easy to level blame on agencies or administrations. When we lost our apartment in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, we had nothing but good experience with FEMA. Many have speculated that their problems came when they were placed under the auspices of Homeland Security or from incompetent political appointees.

I for one think that the City of New Orleans, Louisiana and Mississippi, and the Bush administration could all learn from what FDR did to help us out of the Great Depression, in the middle of major drought. Three simple steps; Relief, Recovery, and Reform.

FDR's New Deal took courage and risks, but it did so with intelligence and pragmatism. What worked kept working, what didn't was scrapped and replaced by something else. Either way, at least SOMETHING was being tried.

An estimated 3,000 people were killed in the World Trade Center attacks. If Katrina kicked America in our soft underbelly, 9/11 was like a surprise blow to the back of the head.
On that sapphire blue sky day in September, the world was shocked with us, grieved for us and wanted to come to our aid. Five years later, we have never been so feared, resented or loathed.

Maybe that's because, like a school kid who wants to get even on the playground, we lashed out spastically, indiscriminately, and frantically. Instead of carefully, patiently, and systematically.

Best case scenario, our leaders had the best intentions of "taking the war on terror to the terrorists," but their efforts were poorly planned and severely mismanaged. Worst case scenario, the tragedy of 9/11 was cynically exploited to advance some other agenda. Either way both Republicans and Democrats are frustrated with the results.

Worst of all, we are divided against ourselves as we haven't been since Vietnam. Rather than standing united as we did on September 12, 2001, our anger and partisanship and fear have begun to tear us apart.

We need to remember that patriotism is not when we say, "My Country, right or wrong, love it or leave it." True patriotism is when if we see our country and believe that it is wrong, we dare to speak up and help to make it right again.

Some think we should listen to the pleas of the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 and make the reforms called for in the 9/11 Commission's Report. Others believe nothing is so important as supporting our troops in Iraq, still others believe the best thing to do is to bring them home. Somehow we need to listen to each other even when we disagree.

As Lincoln once said, "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

If we don't the terrorists win.

Patriot’s Day

“Patriotism;” Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines it simply as “love for or devotion to one's country.” Oddly enough, they date it’s creation as 1726, just fifty years before our country came into being. “Patriot is an older word, 1605. It’s taken from the Greek roots for Patriarch, as in your fathers. Webster’s defines a patriot as “one who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests”

The question is, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

The Boys Scouts of America taught me to love you less than God and almost as much as my immediate family.

What are you? Who are you?

Is a country a place? I love your terrain. I love your panoramic views, your horizons and highways. I love the searing heat of my native Arizona and the cool, damp, subtropical sea breezes of the California coast. I love the aroma of pine trees in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I love the dramatic landscapes of Colorado, the serenity of Wyoming and New Mexico. I love the chilly waters and pebbly shores of the great lakes in Michigan. And I’ve sure come to love the rolling hills of Iowa that seem to embrace you and the aromas that come from the fields when the corn and soybeans are ready to be harvested.

Is a country a political entity? I’d have to admit to having a love-hate relationship with you then. Sometimes I feel like I’m the rebellious teenager, other times I feel like you’re the impetuous, sometimes annoying child and I’m the exhausted parent. Why can’t we always see eye to eye?

As much as I HATE to admit it, there have been times that I’ve been embarrassed to claim you. Like when your own people were enslaved or hanging from your trees, or when thousands of them were cut down in one day in Oklahoma City, not by outsiders, but by one of your own. Or when we are millions are never born because others think of them as decisions, rather than as people. Or when I reflect upon how much how few of us horde and consume while so many others starve and suffer. There have been so many times when your way was not the right way.

But, there are other times when I couldn’t be more proud of you. Like how much how many suffered and sacrificed for others on this awful day two years ago. When I think of how much how many suffered and sacrificed to literally save the world sixty years ago when evil incarnate walked the earth. There have been so many times, so many times when your way has been the most right way, when you led the way, even when others refused to follow.

Is a country songs and colors? Pomp and ceremony? Is a country the sum of it’s symbols? I love red, white and blue. Your anthems bring a lump to my throat, even more since this awful day two years ago. But while I venerate your flag, I will not bring my self to worship it. In the end it is only cloth and ink. Rather, we should “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

It is not the red of thirteen stripes of a banner, it is the red of the life blood of your patriots that matters. Deep in the ground of Lexington and Anteitem, of Normandy and Sicily and Glaudal Cannal, and yes, of Manhattan.

What is a country? Is a country a system? Laws and processes and precedents? Is it a shared ethos? A morality, founded on God’s eternal laws?

I love that you still work. Through abuse and corruption, investigations and scandals, swings of the pendulum, the system that is America still works.

I love that you promise me that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

So that no denomination is corrupted by the power of being your “official” religion. So that I can seek God as I understand Him and as He reveals Himself to me in His Word. Even if that means that false religions are free to flourish here too.

So that I can speak my mind without being jailed or fined or murdered or persecuted.

So that people can read this.

So that we can gather peaceably for social, political, or religious reasons. So that thousands could gather in 1963 to hear a black preacher with a dream.

So that we can complain about you, complain to you, and “throw the bums out.”

Is a country a people? We are so many. So different. So imperfect. So angry with each other, so disrespectful of each other, so selfish. So human.

So warm, so giving, so caring, so committed, so daring, so intelligent, so powerful, so patient, so helpful, so important, so united. So sewn together not by race, not by creed or color, not by language, not by song or culture, but by choice, by commitment, by conviction, by country.

I love you to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach. I promise to do my best to do my duty to God and my country. I’ll help, I’ll give, I’ll vote, I’ll volunteer, I’ll hope, I’ll continue to believe in you.

I’ll pray for you.

I’ll remember.

I’ll remember all my fellow patriots who were lost this awful day two years ago.

I’ll remember, will you?

September 11- one year later

My daily commute has to be one of the biggest perks to living back here instead of LA. In LA, we’d get on the freeway and plug along through traffic till we merged with another freeway and get off in time to sit through several traffic lights before we finally got to school. The colors we saw concrete gray and smog beige. Now, when I take L-51 South to Dunlap at sunrise, the colors are different every day. If I encounter any traffic it’s farm equipment or deer. Plenty of time to think and prepare for the day.

This morning (9/11) as I drove in I listened to live coverage of the memorial services at the sight of the World Trade Center on National Public Radio. New York Governor George Pataki recited the Gettysburg Address. He reminded people at the memorial that Lincoln was at the dedication ceremony of battlefield that was to become a war memorial. Pataki noted that he had the same responsibility 139 years later.

Consider Lincoln’s words with new emphasis:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

I was crying. As I passed Dunahm’s barn and headed for the railroad tracks, I was crying. That place that used to be the capital of the financial world is now a holy place, a resting place, and a memorial. No matter what they build there, a statue, new offices, a park. It will always be "Ground Zero."

It is for us the living to be dedicated to the task before us. How long until unity, service to others, volunteerism and patriotism go out of fashion again? So many returned to Church at this time last year, but how many have continued to attend? We’re resolved as a nation to not be pushed around, to not be attacked again, but how has our foreign policy changed? Have we taken up the mantle of responsibility that only the most affluent society, the only remaining super power can take up? Have we changed? Every Christmas there’s a cliché about living every day as if it were Christmas. Will we make every day ‘Patriots’ Day?’

The weekend before you read this, I traveled to Phoenix for the baptism of my brother’s first baby. I have to admit that for the first time in my entire life I’m nervous about flying in an airplane. I hope that that’s not the only kind of change we experience. I hope that we’ll take our freedom less for granted. I hope we’ll make an effort to get to know the people who live around us. I hope we’ll be more likely to give and less likely to make demands on others. I hope that we’ll not only show more appreciation for policemen and firemen but for postal employees and pilots too. I hope we’ll volunteer more. I hope we’ll try to find solutions together, rather than sticking to party lines. I hope we’ll pray more.

Looking at books of photos of 911 in Wal-Mart one is struck by how much Ground Zero resembled a volcano for weeks after the attack. The landscape was irrevocably changed

Where were you?

I was in my in-law’s living room watching the American Country Music Awards when a husky voice I was used to hearing sing ‘feel-good’ songs stopped me in my tracks and brought me to tears. That was the live premiere of Alan Jackson’s "Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning)." If you’re like me, that was the cathartic moment you needed to put you over the edge. Weeks of pent-up anxiety, anger, and anguish gushed out.

Where were you when the world stop turning on that September day
Teaching a class full of innocent children
Or driving down some cold interstate
Did you feel guilty 'cause you're a survivor
In a crowded room did you feel alone
Did you call up your mother and tell her you loved her
Did you dust off that bible at home

I was about to begin Drawing class. The kid who came in and first announced that "they crashed a plane into some building in New York" was nonchalant, as if he was cooler than the rest of us because he knew something we didn’t. He acted as if it was just an exciting scene in a movie or a video game, he wasn’t shocked or horrified at all, he was excited.

At first I assumed that it was a small private plane, either a freak accident or a bizarre suicide. Since I teach Journalism and used to teach History, I felt that it wouldn’t be out of line to take some time from Drawing class to look the news item up on CNN.com. I had been in Journalism class as a Sophomore in high school when the space shuttle Challenger blew up. Our teacher turned the radio on for us all day so we could witness history. Now was my turn to do the same. What I saw on the internet shook me to the core.


Did you stand there in shock at the sight of that black smoke
Rising against that blue sky
Did you shout out in anger, in fear for your neighbor
Or did you just sit down and cry
Did you weep for the children who lost their dear loved ones
And pray for the ones who don't know

One thing that struck me was what a beautiful day it was. It was beautiful here, but the sky was just as clear and just as blue over New York City. That made the American Airlines luxury liner even more striking. You see, my father had worked for American Air Freight for 45 years. He wore a blue American Airlines uniform years before he was married, years before I was born. There had never been a time I could remember when the shiny aluminum planes with patriotic red, white, and blue lettering hadn’t been a part of my life. Like John Deere green for many people around here, those planes represented America for me. They symbolized my Dad, family, security, everything right and good and fair. That made it like using a policeman’s own gun to shoot him to death

Did you open your eyes, hope it never happened
And you close your eyes and not go to sleep
Did you notice the sunset the first time in ages
Or speak to some stranger on the street
Did you lay down at night and think of tomorrow…

Did you go to a church and hold hands with some strangers
Stand in line and give your own blood
Did you just stay home and cling tight to your family
Thank God you had somebody to love

I remember driving home that afternoon and thinking, again, about what a remarkable beautiful day it was, and yet I had never known such a terrible, ugly day. I felt claustrophobic under a wide-open sky. I couldn’t escape that fact that there were no planes in the sky- as if there are ever many noticeable over rural Iowa anyway, but it still felt overwhelming. All the cold-war fears of WWIII that I grew up with came back, compounded by all the end-of-the-world fears from TV Evangelist’s false prophesies. That was compounded by a new fear, that I hadn’t ever had as a child or a teen. Fear as a parent for my children.


I watch CNN but I'm not sure I could
Tell you the difference in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus and I talk to God
And I remember this from when I was young
Faith, hope and love are some good things He gave us
And the greatest is love

Pastor Gebhardt was at a pastor’s conference, so our Elders and St. John’s asked me to speak at a memorial service. All I could think about was FDR. Not so much what he said after Pearl Harbor, but what he said when he was first inaugurated. He was talking about the Great Depression and essentially he told Americans that if facing this makes us reevaluate our values, if it forces us to come together and help each other, and if it leads us to seek God for His help and His sovereignty, then it will be a good thing, not evil. Sure enough, Romans 8:28 has played itself out in our nation over the past year.

Yesterday, Charter Oak’s American Legion organized our churches to ring their bells in honor of the victims of September 11, 2001.From now on, each time you hear the bells, why not take a moment to pray for our nation and for your neighbors? Next Wednesday (9/18) morning at 7:30, why not join together around the flagpole at Charter Oak-Ute High School and spend a few more minutes praying. The third Wednesday in September is "See You At The Pole Day." (For more information visit www.syatp.org.)This year it comes one week after the first anniversary of what Congress has decided to call "Patriots’ Day." What better way to show our patriotism than to pray for our nation and it’s leaders?

And I remember this from when I was young
Faith, hope and love are some good things He gave us
And the greatest is love