From: Damian Nash damian@lasal.net
 
 Dear friends:

 On behalf of all who died today
 I would like to make a difference:
 I want to make the world a better place
 For their loved ones and their children.

 Tonight we lie restless in our beds
 Our hearts and souls ache
 As they try to stretch around
 The incomprehensibly huge tragedy
 That just crashed down on all of us
 Delivered in passenger jets.

 All of us are driven to know "why?"
 Watching news reports, scanning Internet headlines
 Looking for any clue that will make sense
 Out of something so senseless
 That will satisfy a deep, disturbing yearning
 And fill a numb, empty place in our minds
 Where the Trade Towers used to stand.

 Here is one little part of the answer,
 Please hear it, add to it, pass it along.

 I send this with the kind of compassion
 That appears briefly after a tragedy
 As we all work together, as we give blood, food
 Whatever we can offer
 For others we have never met.

 I mail this to you with the hope
 That you will make something with these words
 For the children and the loved ones
 Of all the beautiful human beings
 That perished today in the rubble and the flames.

 As we sit in front of our television screens
 Or newspapers, radio, the internet
 Numbed, sickened, enraged, grieving
 We have every reason as a nation
 To strike back
 To find those responsible,
 To punish and destroy.

 No one in the world would blame the United States
 For avenging such a heinous act:
 It is our right to revenge
 And we certainly have the power.
 The world is waiting and watching for our response.
 We are the most powerful nation on earth
 We are about to set an example
 Of international relations in the new millenium.

 In this moment
 We face an opportunity
 As never before in history
 To change the way of the world
 And put an end to this kind of tragedy
 Forever.

 To do this we must all open our eyes together
 We must wake up from the nightmare
 And bravely face our true enemy
 The Beast who wants us to keep sleeping.

 Our enemy is not a millionaire oil tycoon
 A military dictator,  a country, a religion, an ideology
 Or this month's political scapegoat.

 Our true enemy is the Cycle of Pain and Suffering
 And all of us in America
 Are facing the enemy today
 In a way we have never faced it before.

 Many of us are eager to avenge our suffering
 By inflicting more pain on anyone presumed guilty
 By feeding the flames, following carnage with carnage
 Taking an eye for an eye, a head for a head.

 In this way we win a battle and lose a war
 While the true enemy of humanity,
 The Beast that feeds on our pain and suffering,
 Grows larger and stronger.

 The people who carried out this incomprehensible act of
 terrorism
 Must have already endured a level of suffering incomprehensible
 to us
 A kind of pain that twisted the humanity out of their souls
 And left them unable to resist a hideous, twisted plot.

 Suffering loves to create more Suffering
 And these men wanted us to glimpse the hell they lived in
 In their neighborhoods, in their countries,
 In the privacy of their tortured souls and minds.
 So they passed the Beast from their shoulders to ours
 By sacrificing their lives
 And the lives of our loved ones

 If we decide to hit the suffering back into their court
 Do we win a battle and lose the war?

 By temporarily satisfying our need for vengeance
 By dealing out our own version of justice
 Do we really restore the balance or just push the pendulum  harder?
 Do we improve the world for our children?
 Or do we put them in line for the next retaliation?
 The next escalation?
 The next, larger, more hideous act of terrorism?
 Do we expose those we love to the risk of something even worse?

 When I look for any kind of solution, the only way I can see
 That we can ever be truly victorious over terrorism
 Is to discover and destroy the sources of terrorism:
 Poverty, ignorance, oppression, injustice, disease and the absence of hope.
 Let us work together to destroy its roots everywhere on the planet.
 Starting in our own backyards.

 On behalf of all who died today
 So that they will not die in vain
 I ask my friends and the leaders of the US
 To ask a deeper kind of "why?"
 To move beyond the posture of victim and outraged reaction
 To adopt a conscious response that will banish this kind of  horror
  From the face of the planet
 Forever.

 Instead of asking "why?" to satisfy our hunger for answers
 Let us ask that same question to mend what is broken in the world.
 Instead of asking "who were these men?" to scapegoat and punish
 Let us ask that same question to learn about the incomprehensible pain that destroyed them.
 Instead of looking for causes that we ultimately can't control and must fear
 Let us look for the ways we contribute to the Cycle of Pain and Suffering
 And have the courage to change what we can.

 Why did these men blaming the US for their suffering?
 Why did they target these buildings?  What did they hope to accomplish?
 Were they attempting to ease their own suffering, or the suffering of others
 By taking such extreme, merciless methods?
 Are they all completely insane, or is there some morsel of truth that gave birth to their insane plot?

 Only by asking these questions
 And facing the answers with strength and humility
 Can we ever escape the nightmare of suffering
 That has haunted human history.

 By seeing how our way of life promotes suffering elsewhere on the planet
 And by choosing to act differently for our sake and theirs --
 This is the way we can make sure that the children of these terrorists
 Are freed from the nightmarish kind of world that produced their parents
 And that drove them to such unthinkable levels of desperation.

 When that happens,
 When the US stands humbly among the other nations of the world
 Committed to making life better for everyone, everywhere,
 Using our freedom, knowledge and power for everyone's benefit,
 Only then can the war on terrorism be won.

 If we ever to evolve as a human race
 We must learn to see our only real war as the war on suffering
 And realize it can never be won with bombs, guns
 Tighter security measures or hijacked airplanes --
 With violence and a tighter fist suffering can only be perpetuated.

 The only way to win this war,
 The only way to stop the madness,
 Is by listening, truly listening to others,
 And especially those we see as enemies,
 Asking how we are contributing to their suffering
 And doing whatever we can do to alleviate each other's pain.

 To win this war
 Individuals must choose to fight suffering, not other people --
 And so must and nations and corporations.

 On behalf of all who died today
 I would like to make a difference:
 I want to make the world a better place
 For their loved ones and their children.

 ----------------------------------------------

 Please forward this message to all you love
 (Amend it as you feel compelled)
 And do whatever you can do, today
 To ease the suffering on this planet
 For yourself and everyone around you.
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