9/11 - a golden opportunity for spiritual learning - Music For Brockport, Where Have All The Flowers Gone?, Kingston Trio

9/11 was a golden opportunity  for spiritual learning. It was an opportunity for forgiveness which we missed by giving in to anger, fear, and retribution. Do we feel any better after 12 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, millions of lives, and a trillion dollars? As time goes on we may look back on this period of American history as a mistake in missing an opportunity to become our better selves. The moment called for forgiveness, compassion, and loving accountability. Instead we reveled in the pornography of "shock and awe" which we egotistically justified for insane reasons bombing a nation which had nothing to do with our sense of victimhood to begin with and engaging in attack for attack, eye for eye which has left more of us blind.

On this 12th anniversary I would like to think that we, as nation, have learned from these mistaken wars of vengeance and attack. We have to admit to ourselves and the world that we are no safer now than before,  and not only have done little to relieve the suffering on our planet but increased it.

As the old folk song says, "When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?"

While may cultural Christians profess that America is a Christian nation they seem to have forgotten, overlooked, or misunderstood Jesus' statement that we are to "Love your enemies". Jesus tells us that loving our enemies is the way to the Kingdom. We, as Americans, took a wrong turn. It's never too late to give up our bellicose tendency to attack anything we feel threatened by. To get ourselves on a better track, it will take a level of spiritual maturity that might be called miraculous.We can still learn our lessons when we recognize that we have had enough and there must be a better way.