Love Lives Here

September 11th: Love Lives Here - An open letter to All

Dear All,

Where were you on Tuesday the 11th September 2001?

I was sick and couldn't drag myself out of bed that day. It lasted until the Friday. It was one of those nasty doses of flu. It was gastric and I was either sat on the pan trying to push the waste out of my system or rolling about in bed shivering, drenched in alternate hot and cold sweats. In between I thought I was hallucinating as I watched on the portable TV the events as they unfolded in America. I thought I was trapped in some nightmare that I couldn't get out of. What happened was unthinkable evil beyond comprehension. I felt ashamed to be ill and about feeling sorry for myself. I kept on wondering, do I believe in God?

If I did, I asked myself where the fuck was he that day? How could he let such a thing happen? Then it came to me that if he did exist he wasn't in New York City that day. He was out of town. He must have been looking in on events like all the rest of us because he is all seeing right?

Left to my own devices, I had to try and work out for myself via CNN and Sky why such a dreadful fate had come to pass on the people on the planes, in the buildings and on the ground. I wanted to bury my head under the duvet. So, I did, it became my personal and private sepulcher of continental quilt.

Entombed, I considered faith versus fanaticism. Christianity versus Islam. Decadent western society versus unadulterated scriptures and prophetic traditions. Who had what view of whom? Who was right and who was wrong? I couldn't come up with any answers. All these years further down the line, I still can't.

Apart from those that hijacked the planes, the people who died and were injured were innocent folks of different nationalities and different faiths. So it can't have been a religious thing no matter who tries to dress it up and whatever fit they try to put on it. People who are true to the Islamic faith are not evil and it was pure evil that made this happen. The dead don't care, they only wanted to live and it was their right to live. They were murdered and evil bastards carried it out. It wasn't done by a group with God on their side. It was proven to me that day that he surely doesn't exist but the weirdness of it all though is that in moments of despair, darkness, depression and most probably desperation I still talk to him in my head.

Stalin was an atheist and Pol Pot abolished religion but both of these fuckers were responsible for the deaths of many millions of innocents. No, this was not about religion that's an easy out; it was about good versus evil.

I had hoped that America and the rest of their allies would take stock and gather real evidence before lashing out. Don't get me wrong, something had to be done for the sake of the murdered and their families but they had to punish those that deserve to be punished. However, it seems to me the USA and her allies have gone for an eye for an eye with so many innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan being wiped out that the danger really is we are all most likely going to end up blind. Are you an optician God? It's Tuesday 11th September again in 2007, can you make it any better?

People will probably be pissed off at me and say, God does exist, look at the miracle escape stories that came from the events of the 11th September such as those who got out from Stairwell B and that this could only have been by God's good grace. They will say he allowed it to happen for reasons we can't understand. Others will say that he doesn't intervene because we have to undertake within our hearts to do his good will. Aye right!

I'm sorry but I find that type of view hard to reconcile. How can I spend any faith I have left in you? It seems to be one bad thing after another.

I’m left thinking that we take destiny in our own hands and have a choice about whether we do good or bad. It's about spiritual issues within our own hearts. We live in a catastrophic world where life is cheap for many and priceless for others. An imbalance like this will always cause hatred and leave a divide that allows evil to thrive

So c’mon big yin, tell me, what's in your heart? Because love lives here in mine.

Wattie.