Redtree Times

Yesterday I tried to avoid the ceremonies and recollections that were part of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack. I didn’t write anything yesterday for that same reason. Plus I didn’t want to offend anyone by saying something about wanting to finally move past these observations on a national scale. 

And I did a pretty good job, immersing myself in a maintenance project at the house that has been patiently waiting for me for some time now. I didn’t see any of yesterday’s speeches or videos from that day in 2001 and I felt grateful for it.

But as my workday ended, I checked social media as I was closing up my studio and came across a video of the Welsh Guards at Windsor Castle playing the Star-Spangled Banner in honor of the 9/11 anniversary. 

Made me cry.

It also made me realize that maybe we needed yesterday’s observation more than any other past observation that has taken place over the past 20 years, except perhaps the first one in 2002. We are, after all, in the midst of several crises on a massive scale, a deadly pandemic and the widespread climate-change caused destruction among them.

Maybe we needed the examples of selflessness, a willingness to sacrifice for others, and to unite for a common good that we saw take place on that day. All seem to be lacking desperately among broad swaths of our population today where coarse selfishness rules the day. 

Maybe we needed to be reminded that there can be a common good, that though we all have rights and freedoms, we are not entitled to any more than the least among us. 

I don’t know if it can happen now. Our 2021 world is vastly different than it was in 2001. We unfortunately live much of our lives in a cyber world now. It is filled with angry opinion and misinformation, much of it from sources, some domestic and many foreign, whose aim is to profit in some hideous way from the division that comes from their work.

As a result, too many of us do not want to find any common good.

And that is a tragedy of monumental proportions. For all of us.

I still hold out hope and will continue to look for the common good that binds us. I may be a fool for that but I am willing to risk that.

What’s the alternative?

For this week’s Sunday morning music, I am playing a song from The Rising, the first post-9/11 album, released in July 2002, from Bruce Springsteen. It’s a powerful, emotional album and this song, Paradise, is a favorite of  mine from it. It’s portrayal of the sense of loss experienced by those personally affected by that day– or any loss, for that matter– is palpable.