WTC.Candles.against.Darkness

Lighting Candles Against the Darkness I received this post the week of the WTC disaster: >>+++ Friday Night at 7:00 p.m. step out your door, stop your car, or step out of your establishment and light a candle. We will show the world thatAmericans are strong and united together against terrorism. We need to reach everyone across the United States quickly. The message: WE STAND UNITED - WE WILL NOT TOLERATE TERRORISM!! I debated how to respond to this for days, as everyone seemed to think that it was an appropriate response. Well, instead, this post saddened me even further. Thousands of our beloved people die - our sisters and brothers, parents, friends, and colleagues - and yet there is not a single word here about our sorrow, about our grief-stricken hearts. Though I understand the motivation of this post, rather than respond with vengeance and fear, no matter how united, could we not respond with mourning, with acknowledgment of the lives, rather than only the deaths, of our loved ones? I humbly request that we all please use this time to unite together to celebrate the lives of those who were lost, instead of focusing on those who have caused their deaths. We will address the crimes of the hijackers, we will bring them to justice, this will come in time. But now - is this not the time for us to unite with each other in the sadness that we all feel, at this devastating and senseless loss of potential in the world? Let us refuse to allow the names of our loved ones to be lost in the memory of their killers, or tarnish our memories of them with images of destruction against their attackers. Let us remember that those who have died would have wanted peace, love, and joy to fill us when we think of them. In sharing our memories of them, in seeing that their benefit to us can still shine within us we can still do this. We are lighting a candle, so let us focus on the light, not the darkness, and how those lives that were extinguished served as candles in the darkness for us all. It is too late to change what people did and thought this Friday night. But we have many nights ahead of us. And in those nights ahead, especially in the next week, I ask you instead to light a candle and to celebrate the lives that have been lost, acknowledging our sorrow so that we may remember the joy. Let us light a candle each night, and ask that we may face and release our own pain so that it not be turned against the world. In the names of our friends and loved ones who died amidst violence, as we light our candles and remember them, let us ask for more light and love in the world, for they are what, in the end, stand between us and the darkness.

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Insalnel 09/12/03 05:57:43 GMT