nmah229.xml

nmah229.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-19

Living in California, I witnessed it "from afar", only to gradually come to know of friends whose experience was much closer. Thankfully, I know of no victim who was a friend or relative, but some friends were and are very much involved.

As a minister, it was my decision to have services of remembrance and support for people who just wanted to gather. We'll do that again this year.

My life hasn't changed too much, except that my understanding of Islam has deepened considerably. I was pretty ignorant of the varieties of Islam, and as a result of 9/11, I have worked on remediation of that lack. As a Christian minister, I am not naive about human nature, but it was not clear to me until studying just how different the origins of Islam were from those of Christianity or Judaism. These discoveries helped me understand what happened to a degree; though the willingness of the terrorists to target noncombatants directly is still a mystery to me.

I have become much more aware of the many ways people seek to get their way and force others to do things their way - not just through terrorism, but through controlling who gets to speak, write, and influence others. The notion that there are no noncombatants is something we had better take seriously, because Muslim terrorists are not the only ones who believe it.

Yes. We flew the flag.

No. My feelings haven't changed. It symbolizes a country whose most important ideals are freedom and tolerance of differences with which one dies not agree.