Patriot Day Thoughts

It is September 11th, 2010. Here in Chicago, it's a very rainy, foggy, messy day.

9 years ago: we awoke to images on our televisions that we only expected to find in epic catastrophe movies like Volcano, or maybe from some far off place called Iran - or was it Iraq ("Isn't that the same place?", someone might comment). My younger siblings hardly remember it, since they were so young, and yet I wonder if they attach any more importance to it that do a lot of people my age, or even older. The graphic images certainly won't be forgotten fully, but are suppressed almost out of existence. "We will never forget" stickers used to be common place. Now, they are relegated to the rusting bumpers and dirty windows of the "red-neck" population - and those crazy, fundamentalist right-wing wackos called who drink to much tea.

I checked for any events going on here in the city as a remembrance of 9/11.  A few suburbs had moments of silence and such at fire stations.  There may well be something happening in the city today, but it certainly wasn't readily found via the internet.

Today:  Should we spend the day thinking about it, holding candle light vigils, rewatching the footage?  Honestly, we probably shouldn't.  But, should we expunge it all-together?  I think not.

Of course, I didn't do anything about it either, but next year is the 10th anniversary, and I intend to do something.  We need to pray for our country.  Pray for those who are leading it, and those who are trying to bring it to it's knees.  Pray for Muslim countries throughout the world that ultimately serve as breeding grounds for the organizations and ideologies that undergirded the attack on our soil.  If we do not pass the memory and its implications on to those who were too young to understand the geo-political, religious, and national importance, in another 10 years, if not much sooner, we will be right back where we were on September 10th, 2001.