Last year on September 11, 2016 I posted this. Since then many things have changed in the political world, but the words are just as valid a year later. Where do we find strength, and experience anger and fear? Let us consider the days surrounding 9/11.
“True strength is not about force,
but about conviction.
It lives at the center of belief where fear and uncertainty cannot gain a foothold.
Its opposite is not cowardice and fear, but confusion,
lack of clarity, and lack of sound intention.
Strength based on force is a strength people fear.
Strength based on love is a strength people crave.”
~~Kent Nerburn
“I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson is to conserve my anger,
and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy,
even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.”
~~Mohandas K. Gandhi
“The backdrop–
A brilliant starry night.
Tandem meteors hurtle towards Earth.
One will strike the surface leaving its mark,
the other burns just as mightily but falls short dying in its flight.”
~~ME
“When you find yourself overpowered,
as it were by, by melancholy,
the best way is to go out and do something kind to one another.”
~~Keble
“In Spring, hundreds of flowers;
In Autumn, a harvest moon;
In Summer, a refreshing breeze;
In Winter, snow will accompany you.
If useless things do not hang in your mind,
Any season is a good season for you.”
~~Mumon
“The inner voice–the human compulsion when deeply distressed to seek healing counsel within ourselves,
and the capacity within ourselves to both create this counsel and to receive it.”
~~Alice Walker
“Beware of all covetousness;
for a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
~~Luke 12:15
“The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all–powerful;
his presence should be felt everywhere, but he should never be seen,”
~~Gustave Flaubert
9/11 is a day we will all remember where we were as the Towers fell, the Pentagon was attacked, and the plane fell from the sky in Pennsylvania. I refuse to hate, but I will never forget.
