As fate would have it, I was leaving New York on a jet flight that took off 45 minutes before the unthinkable happened. By the time we landed in Detroit, chaos had broken out. I couldn't respond at first. My wife and son were also in the air on separate flights, one to Los Angeles, one to San Diego. My body went absolutely rigid with fear. All I could think about was their safety, and it took several hours before I found out that their flights had been diverted and both were safe.
Strangely, when the good news came, my body still felt that it had been hit by a truck. Of its own accord, it seemed to feel a far greater trauma that reached out to the thousands who would not survive and the tens of thousands who would survive only to live through months and years of hell.
And I asked myself, Why didn't I feel this way last week? Why didn't my
body go stiff during the bombing of Iraq or Bosnia? Around the world
horror and worry are experienced every day. Mothers weep over horrendous
loss, civilians are bombed mercilessly, refugees are ripped from any
sense of home or homeland. Why did I not feel their anguish enough to call a
halt to it? As we hear the calls for tightened American security and a fierce military response to terrorism, it is obvious that none of us has any answers. However, we feel compelled to ask some questions.
Everything has a cause, so we have to ask, "What was the root cause of this evil?" We must find out not superficially but at the deepest level.
There is no doubt that such evil is alive all around the world and is even celebrated. Does this evil grow from the suffering and anguish felt by people we don't know and therefore ignore? Have they lived in this condition for a long time?
