The Heart Attack Patient

So the bond tradesmen of Cantor Fitzgerald have been working through the night to bring their company back, and there's talk of rebuilding the towers and "not letting terrorism win" by going right back to the aggressive, arrogant, action- and profit-oriented way of life that may have landed us in this mess to begin with.

It's like a heart attack survivor saying, "I won't let death win--I'll go right back to smoking, drinking and eating red meat, just to show everybody who's boss!"

Well, OK, go ahead, but you're not healing the problem, you're just flying in the face of it to satisfy your ego.

No disrespect intended towards the Cantor people--in their hearts they probably feel like they're doing the heroic or at least stoic thing. But when I hear the story of that CEO of Cantor going up to the payphone, cutting in line, and just wrenching the phone away from another person to call his wife, I think, "Well, has anything changed? You obviously still think you are more important than anyone else." That's the attitude that needs to go before we make any progress with eliminating violence and aggression and the humiliation that causes terrorism.

This whole world needs to heal, not to just keep cutting out the pesky tumors and eliminating the symptoms of the disease.

In a Land before Time, One Man...

If Gore were president....or Clinton (possibly--he's not exactly a peace-keeper)...or Nader...or Giuliani! Maybe the focus would be on creating a new world order that emphasizes peace, cooperation, respect and authenticity. Maybe a world with...jeepers...one benevolent government. That's a teenage dream on my part, but we have to hold some kind of vision of what's best for everyone.

This has changed my way of thinking about the political process. We've already seen how every vote does count, and now we're seeing the massive impact one person can have on the country's mood and attitude.

Theocracy

What the terrorists have on their side is their firm belief in God. It results in destructive behavior, but at least they have some kind of vision and the motivation to carry out that vision.

Our Regularly Scheduled Program

Came home last night after a very nice time seeing the gang at Freddy's, and instinctively turned on the TV. We were back to our regularly scheduled programming. Instead of the insipid chatter of the Channel 2 kids, or the fatigue-inspired beatnik poetry of Dan Rather ("...bucket...by bucket...the night drags on....here in the Naked City....now called...the Wounded City...."), it was the ultra-insipid chatter of the "anchors" on Entertainment Tonight! Shocking...it made Ernie Anastos seem deep. Back to normal, now.

I liked only having one channel, and all news.

AMA reminds me that in addition to waking up Tuesday with the pervasive feeling that our lives were about to change forever, and my life-long nightmares about planes falling to the ground and killing innocent bystanders, that I'd also had a dream right before the elections of 2000: "Gore had won, but nevertheless, something really awful happened to our country and their were mixed feelings about our choices." I may not be a prophet, but I am a skilled paranoiac.

In the serenity of the yoga center yesterday, I had a thought that came like a cool breeze: "All is well." Not on the surface, perhaps, and not in our minds, but in God's reality, all is well, and always has been, and always will be. The people who died on Tuesday had their reckoning, and the people who didn't die, and are traumatized, are also having their living reckoning. So our human selves need to cry and mourn, but we have to reserve a little space in our consciousness for the knowledge that what we see is an illusion, and the reality is something else. This doesn't keep me from feeling a seering pain every time I read an account of escaping the towers, of course. But all is well.

Matthew 9: 17

Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.