As of this publication date, 346 blank pages remain in 2002.
What will events etch on these pages of history?
What will bring joy or sadness to the United States during these days? What
will happen to further embarrass Louisianians, or bring us a dose of badly needed
self-respect?
As of this publication date, 346 blank pages remain in 2002.
What will events etch on these pages of history?
What will bring joy or sadness to the United States during these days? What
will happen to further embarrass Louisianians, or bring us a dose of badly needed
self-respect?
Perhaps we have never been more aware of what future pages of a year can harbor
than we are this year. Only the most evil-minded could have imagined that 2001
would explode with September 11. The terrorists acts were booby traps
that exploded when the calendar turned the page onto that bloody day.
We enter 2002 filled with thoughts about 2001. “We are worn out from looking
on the suffering of this (2001) year that is now dying with no last words,”
wrote Eugene Cullen Kennedy last month, “this long school term of daily
examinations less on what we have learned than on whether we have learned anything
at all.”
The world has certainly had the opportunity to learn that the force of evil
is real. Only an evil mind would conceive and carry out a plan that would, without
warning, slaughter thousands of innocent people. Regardless of a persons
political convictions, killing even one person, much less thousands, to vent
anger is nothing but evil. Such monstrous acts of 9-11 cannot be written off
as misdirected or misunderstood they are evil. Now, political leaders must admit
that in this modern world, evil motivates people, and to a greater degree than
we dared think.
We have been reminded that tremendous armaments cannot be trusted to keep a
nation completely safe from those who would harm it. No other nation on earth
has more military might to protect its borders than does the United States.
Yet, there will always be a tunnel under the wall, or a Trojan Horse, or a
Benedict Arnold or an Usama bin Laden.
Our ultimate trust must be in something beyond human strength.
We have also seen again that justice on a large scale, even the best intended,
cannot be administered with surgical precision. Usama bin Laden and most of
his top aids remain alive and un-captured while apparently thousands of his
foot soldiers have been killed by the massive air strikes and land assaults.
Certainly, the United States is the only nation that has ever dropped bombs
and aid packages on a nation at the same time. But our best intentions are difficult
to execute. Perhaps the parable of the difficulty of executing our desires is
the woman and her small child who were reportedly struck and killed by a falling
aid package.
The world has also learned that in the worst of times, some people rise to
perform the best of human acts. Firemen and policemen gave their lives trying
to save others. Billions of dollars of cash and in-kind services have poured
into efforts to help those who were injured or who lost loved ones by the terrorist
acts of 9/11. Nobility walked among the ruins of ground zero.
Humankind remains a mystery. As Eugene Cullen Kennedy wrote further, ”
. . . this mystery we can never solve, the pain and sorrow from which we are
never free, and the love that thrives on this imperfection. 9/11 symbolizes
the religious mystery of our being. How unlike an angelic choir we are. In this
. . . event we find everything that has ever happened in human history . . .”
Have we as disciples of Jesus Christ allowed our Master to teach us anything
from 2001? Will we live 2002 with any greater knowledge than we had before 2001?
The tragedies of 9/11 will be multiplied if we learn nothing from it.
How drastically and suddenly things change. As we entered the New Millennium,
our country was boundlessly optimistic. The stock market soared and our nations
enemies seemed unable to challenge us. Now, we enter 2002 with a stock market
that has lost significant percentages of the financial holdings of people of
all financial standings.
We have seen a vulnerability of our country we never dreamed possible.
After 2001, the words of the song, “I don’t know what the future holds,
but I know who holds the future” take on new meaning for 2002. We will
be wise to trust the stock market and bullets less, and Jesus Christ more.