Hate.  Anger.  Confusion.  Loss.  Agony. 

We all felt those emotions and more thirteen years ago.  It is one of the days that will forever be etched in our memories.  I can still feel the disbelief that it was really happening as I was called upstairs at my office after the first plane hit. We huddled around the TV and watched in horror as the second found its target.  It was if I could hear the cries of all those in the buildings and airplanes. 

For a great many of us we experienced a loss of innocence.  Our world would forever be changed.  Our peaceful exclusion to the horrors of the rest of the world ripped out from under us like a rug.  Later that night as I struggled to contain my emotions my daughter, just shy of her third birthday, asked me what was wrong. Oh, the uncanny perception of the young.  I told her some bad men had done some very bad things and made a lot of people hurt and sad.  She looked up to me with her big blue eyes and asked did they need a spank?

After the events of that day too many of us learned to hate; hate anyone that wasn’t exactly like us.  Hate anyone that didn’t believe exactly like us.  Hate anyone that didn’t look, live, whatever, exactly like us.  Hate seemed to become a badge of honor to wear and color every action.   I am ashamed to say that my little corner of the world embraced the hate and cultivated it into a full blooming garden.

But are we in the right to hate?  Are we not in a way joining the ranks of those we hate because they in turn hate us? 

We should never forget that day.  Never forget the actions of the wicked.  Never forget the innocents and heroes that lost their lives because of the actions of a few.

But to respond with hate, in my humble opinion, is not the way.  Some people in the world will hate us no matter what we do.  The point I am trying to get to here in my muddled way is to not spread the hate.  Just because our neighbors may be different from us does not give us a free pass to hate them.  Yes, some of our neighbors come from the very parts of the world that hate us and are actively trying to bring us to ruin but that doesn’t mean that our neighbor is also in league against us. 

I struggle with hatred on a person level.  Some is directed on a person or two and yet some is also directed back at me.  I am not proud of it.  I am ashamed to admit it openly.  There is even one person that I am in quite a bit of contact with that makes me really have to dig deep to be calm.  I am a constant work in progress to cultivate kindness and love.  Some days are easier than others.      

Let us not respond in kind when met with hate or anger or fear.  Let us rise above.

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ~ Matthew 5:43-45