I am sure with Hermetic's passing and the WTC disaster, the database is filling up with nodes, like this one, that are — um — less than strictly faithful to the rules. I know the editors will be patient and allow people to vent their feelings. They are good people; the support of the Management so far has been wonderful. I am sure some clean up work will have to be done later, but for the time being the community needs an outlet for its feelings. Everything2 is a great tool for that sort of thing. If you are growing impatient with all the nodes being published related to recent events, please be quiet for a little while and let those of us who need to lift our voices do so. Later we will clean up after ourselves. Maybe some enterprising soul will take the best of the best and amalgamate the best nodes into a single place and give all this stuff some organization. Who knows. Now back to our regularly scheduled daylog.

The dialogue I am having with myself is still between righteous anger and a plea for peace. I'm exhausted. I stayed up late at a Red Cross center, reading Mickey Spillane and waiting for my slot. Around midnight, the staff was circulating reminding us, ever so politely, that they would be open tomorrow. They had been going nonstop since they opened at 9 AM. I took the hint and went home. It was an amazing few hours at the blood bank. I got a sense of the positive that can come out of a thing like this. The grocery store donated food and water, as did a number of local restaurants. A guitarist played classical music and Beatles tunes. Folks were talking, watching television, sharing, comforting. Folks tired of waiting helped the staff sign people in, pass out literature, and keep things running smoothly. I left the center feeling better than I would have if I had stayed at home watching CNN.

Today I feel beat up. I have a mess of things to do that I cast aside yesterday as I vainly tried to gather information from the Web. I have meetings and emails to attend to. A senator was on television saying the wisest things I heard all day, and I am sorry that I cannot remember his name nor his exact quotation. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, that what we need to do is to go on doing our thing. When we give up our civil liberties, change the way we do business, and live in a state of constant fear, the terrorists win. So I am going to minimize my time on Everything2 today and try my damnedest to get some things done.

Plea for peace.

I know that noding your email is terribly bad form, but this message was so positive, I thought I would share it in the hope that it would lighten someone's load.

We can choose to create peace or war from the devastation that took place today.

If we focus on feelings of fear and anger, then war will grow. If we focus on peace and reconciliation, then war may be averted.

Let us remember that our focus determines our reality, and so contribute to peace and stability in the world by holding a vision of the world as we would like it to be.

Let affirmations of peace, unity and freedom among all peoples go out from us like a prayer, so the universe/God may respond with peace, unity and freedom.

Let us not escalate hate and fear, but plant seeds of universal brother/sisterhood everywhere we go.

Pray for all the people who were injured in this attack, for their families and loved ones, and for all people everywhere who have or will be impacted by this, that they will find peace. Also pray also for those who masterminded it, and for those who support them, that their conscience will allow them to see the horror of what they have done, that their souls will be convicted and they will understand the futility of the path of war.

With a certainty, the forces of karma will exact complete and perfect justice. But in our haste to right this wrong, let us be mindful of the effects that "an eye for an eye" has had in our world.

"An eye for an eye" will fill us with hatred and fear, like our attackers. Do we want that? Let us seek for justice in every way possible, but also take care to act from our Soul, rather than from our deep unconscious.

I will not cave in to the forces of unconsciousness. Rather than crying for war, I will pray for peace for all people, even for those who wish to attack us.

I have a concern for the treatment people of middle eastern descent in this country. I am praying that they will not be targeted because of this terrorist attack. Let us now show them a special kindness, and banish the possibility of anything like what happened in the past to our American citizens of Japanese Descent.

We need to show the world what we stand for in this time of testing: we stand for peace, for unity, for compassion, for tolerance, for freedom, for brotherhood and sisterhood among all people.

We are all members of the human race, and we are awakening to the unity of God that is at the core of our being.

This is how we will pass this test:

We will think thoughts of peace.
We will speak words of peace.
We will take actions that create peace.

We will embrace those who hate us, and make them our brothers and sisters.
We will care for those we have been hurt, in body and in spirit.


LET THERE BE PEACE ON EARTH
AND LET IT BEGIN WITH ME

"This is the way of peace.
Overcome evil with good,
Falsehood with truth,
And hatred with love."

—Peace Pilgrim