Hell Yes – Come on up for the rising.
I prepared this post to get out there as the clock struck 9/11/11. At this point I don’t know if there has been another attempt to bring us to our knees. I don’t care if there has. Terrorists can try to shed our blood if they like. If America went down, it would never be because of them. It would be because of us.
“Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless. We’re frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae – a singer’s revealing dress, a ball team’s misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We’re wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement. We are fundamentally decent, though – peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God.”
“What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that’s the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don’t know my people. You don’t know what we’re capable of. You don’t know what you just started.
“But you’re about to learn.” — Leonard Pitts Jr., Sept. 12, 2001.
“May their precious blood forever bind me
Lord as I stand before your fiery light” — Bruce Springsteen, The Rising.
