On the Boston Marathon Bombing

Waiting and watching

Sense of 911. Boston Marathon bombing feels the same to me.

What’s the same? How different?

For me? For others?

Boston Marathon bombing -- ground level. World Trade Center -- high in the sky, other hits airplane high hits too.

Me – blind, seeing “911” as if through a waxed paper veil.



To see or not
to see.

This time, I see full well.

Still I avoid “seeing” the carnage. This time on purpose.

9/11 – immediately I knew who hit us, without even knowing “who.”

This time clueless, until later.

9/11 “of” the tragedy but “not in it”; blindness had taken me out of the world.

This time lost, not “in” or ”of.”

Lost, loss, somehow mine, yet not mine. 9/11 – immediately “our’s”

Young bomber terrorist; a mere child when identified.  Vulnerable, child of his parets, controlled like the young D.C. sniper?

The death penalty? For one so young?

No! Wrong! No more death penalites.

Tragedy.

Devastation.

But, this time, people sticking together better.

Interfaith connections – improved since 9/11.

Muslims; one of “us.”

If this is the work of Islamic extremists, we, the “others,” are not quite so reactive against them, the “others” that are non-extremists.

Still there are after shocks; an emotionally charged time.

Lives cut down in mid-flight, destroyed.

It is ok to cry, to grieve. And, to be mindful that the high intensity of media reports need not take us away from the pain to our hearts and souls. This is the wisdom of a country maturing under pressure.

Personal phone calls help; those who are more distant from the trauma, stabilize and heal. Thus we can contribute more to the victims of Boston; a whole city and more.

Reflections:

• More cultural upheaval;
• In the midst we are reminded that life is with people and that we should not allow pettiness to divide us.
• Survival is a tribal concern. Tribes have rituals and traditions. Must they come only with death on American soil?

• We, on American soil, are a new tribe, gathered from the ends of the earth and all places between.
• The touchy process of assimilation, in this melting pot of our’s, must be strong enough to the good to allow us to be a tribe of new Americans; united we stand, divided we fall.