25 years ago a friend called and told me to turn on my television. Like the rest of the nation, I sat in disbelief for hours, glued to the screen, watching the terror unfold in NYC, at the Pentagon, in a field in Pennsylvania. In many ways I’m still trying to wrap my mind around what I witnessed; people leaping into space, the towers collapsing.
I remember it like it was yesterday. This morning, the moment that haunts me, a moment that haunts me every September 11th, is the moment I turned off the television. The early morning existed in a “before”. I found myself standing in an “after” and I knew that this world, this “after” would be more devastating than I or we imagined. The lid had popped off of Pandora’s box.
There is a direct line from that day to this. Playing on our wound, the nation has now twice elected a xenophobe, a unapologetic racist and misogynist who wants us to see enemies everywhere, exploits the fear of “outsiders” while promoting a fanatical isolationism and stoking our ugliest impulses. He thrives on our division. He’s managed to turn our fear on each other. We need not fear foreign terrorists since we are passionately destroying ourselves. He – and his party – feed our anxiety so they might feed on our angst. They profit mightily from our discord.
They are no different than the men who flew airplanes into our twin towers. That is not hyperbole: they intend to bring down the nation. They work to make the tower of democracy collapse. They corrupt and dismantle our Constitution. They rob the poorest to profit the wealthiest. They spew misinformation and spin propaganda to keep us distracted while they destroy our system of checks and balances. They would have us become a an autocracy or worse, an extremist Christian theocracy.
My other memory from the initial days following 9/11 are of people coming together. A memorial spontaneously appeared at The Seattle Center. People checked in with their neighbors. People checked in with strangers on the street. For a moment we existed in a unified story. We came together. The assault on our nation brought forward our humanity. We cared for the well-being of others.
That is my pie-in-the-sky hope for what happens when the horror of this administration crumbles. We see each other again. We stop each other on the street and ask, “Are you okay?” We prosecute and hold accountable all those who assaulted our system, who betrayed their oath to the Constitution, who robbed from the poor and gave to the rich. We return to our humanity and our senses.
As the story goes, after all the ills were released on the world, only Hope remained in Pandora’s box. Hope: wanting something good to happen and – more than wanting – expecting that it will happen.
There will be an “after” to this era. Change is the only constant. Maybe, just maybe, the “after” that follows this “before” will be more restorative, more healing and constructive than we – or I – can imagine. Maybe a return to our senses will bring revival of our humanity, recovery of our moral compass, rejuvenation of our spirit of generosity.
More than want it, I expect that it will be so. There’s Hope.
(do yourself a favor on this 9/11 and give yourself 3 minutes to rest and breathe-in Kerri’s HOPE)
Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora
read Kerri’s blog post about THE FULL MOON
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