As with so many of us, I ache with the remembrance of the horrors and losses that occurred 20 years ago today. And what I hold in my heart and prayers doesn't end there, but rather with all humans and all beings who have been impacted by the continued violence, trauma, devastation, and death that has followed ever since that heartbreaking day.
I grieve for all who died on September 11th, 2001. I grieve for the loved ones they left behind. Yes, of course I do. Millions of us are grieving today. Deeply.
AND I also grieve for the Afghani and Iraqi peoples who've gone on to experience their own 9-11s when my nation began dropping bombs on theirs. I grieve for all who've been radicalized into belief systems that war and violence and revenge and killing is the answer. I grieve for all who justify "collateral damage" and for all who've been its victims. I grieve for everyone who has experienced endless assaults on their homes and villages and cities and nations. I grieve for the babies who've died because of those who believed that their deaths were just the inevitable costs of war. I grieve for our soldiers who've died and for the fighters from far away lands whose mothers and loved ones are also crushed with unbearable grief. I grieve for all warriors of war who bear the scars of war internally and in their bodies and in the devastating traumas that haunt them day in and day out and long after they've returned home. I grieve how war comes home to haunt our nation in addictions, domestic violence, poverty and inequality, polarization and propaganda, lies and lives lost.
I grieve for all who believe that war will bring peace and who are blind to the fact that war is itself terrorism.
I grieve for lessons lost, lessons squandered, lessons distorted and perverted and propagandized into the toxic messages that were then believed, absorbed, and acted upon by countless Americans and beyond. Lies that took us to war. Again and again and again.
May we learn the lessons, the true lessons of 9-11. The true lessons of war. The true lessons of why 9-11 happened. And it was never because "they hate our freedom." It is my belief that this is how we truly honor all who died 20 years ago today.
There are many visionaries, truth-tellers, wisdom keepers who have long been illuminating vital teachings about peace and war. May we listen to those voices whose lives model for us love, courage, wisdom, integrity, truth, and peace. Another world is possible.
It is up to each of us to heal, to shed our illusions and indoctrination, and to awaken and transform ourselves individually and collectively into our greater wholeness. May we increasingly and truly and deeply come to embody that which adds to the healing of our world rather than its harm, destruction, suffering, and death.
This is, to me, the only path forward which truly and authentically honors the great losses that occurred on September 11th, 2001.
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