Mankind has it in him to remember the exact time of a great joy or sorrow. Today is a time to remember the horror of that bright New York morning, when the planes crashed, buildings fell, our people screamed and died. We watched then in unbelief. We shuddered at the torturous waiting of the death toll. And we cried from fear and strapped on the flag to wave in defiance as patriot hearts are wont to do.

Where are we on this first of many emotional anniversaries? Some have buried the pieces of the dead. Some haven't slept an hour without the pain of sorrow and longing for their fireman to come home. Some are parents who are proud of their soldier children sweeping out the Afghan rat holes looking for Osama. But we are more...dangerously more.

Perhaps at last it is time now to take a deep breath and look calmly about us. It is time to think twice about the plans for expanding the presidential "dignitas" by spilling blood on Baghdad streets. It is time to take stock and ask the so-called "unpatriotic" questions we've been warned against asking aloud: Why do large sections of the world's people resent us? Has our government spent too much money on war machines and too much time rattling sabers evoking "patriotism"? Is it too late? I suggest that unless we stand in the light and see the reasons we were dealt this blow to our nation and pschye, we are destined to become even more scarred and more scared.

The ancient Romans too were proud of the world it created from chaos. Say what you will, the Romans did civilize and conquer much of the known world in their day. They deemed themselves superior and in many ways they were. It is in the ways they were not superior that bred their eventual fall. When Rome finally fell, a great darkness swept mankind's world and the suffering was long and harsh.

Let us not repeat Rome's folly. Let us retreat from the mind games our politicians use to whip us up into a frenzy. Cicero, Caesar and Seneca initiated the death of their world with Roman arrogance. Let us not be arrogant at this crucial time. Let us breath deeply of rational thought and reject the propaganda that repeats that those who do not blindly jump on the current bandwagon are unpatriotic. The most patriotic act any American can do is to speak up. To freely dissent is the great freedom America is supposed to stand for. To do so out loud is our right. Ask Nathan Hale. Ask Ben Frankin and our other founding fathers for they were not sheep led about by the notion of arrogant patriotic nonsense. They were radical and rational thinkers, and we must also be great rational thinkers now. For as we stand precariously on the brink of a war with Saddam, we are required by the laws of freedom to hold our leaders accountable. Freedom means taking the unpopular so-called "unpatriotic" stance if need be.

On September 11th, wave the flag. Sing the patriotic songs we all learned in our youth. But remember something else as you recall the fallen. It is now time to be neither Republican nor Democrat, Muslim or Christian. We must be wise without giving in to fatalistic cynicism and unwilling to bend to political fanatics here and abroad. We need to be brave enough to declare America's faults in the wake of this tragedy if we are to heal.

For the greater tragedy is to reject the reality of our own culpability. America, great though she is, is not infallible. She is young and proud of her great accomplishments, of which many can be named. But let us not be too proud to see our true image in the world's mirror. The great native peoples that were massacred to create this great nation, said it wisely and well: "To understand another, you must walk a mile in his moccasins."

Today is a day for national pride and remembered sorrow. But let us become a nation too that awakens now to the larger world that views us differently. Let each of us take a moment today to pray for those we have helped to scar as we have been scarred: the disenfranchised, disenchanted and despairing the world over. Let us grow in compassion and try to understand the world we live adopting a less childish isolated view. Chose for a moment to stand in their shoes to increase your understanding.

What better day could there be to "walk a mile in their shoes" than September 11. 2002?

© R. J. Fernalld