By Mary Cristy

A View from the Hills

There is an aura of unreality about a disaster of great magnitude, a feeling that since this never should have happened in the first place we can go back, stop time in its flight and prevent the blasting of a world of hopes and dreams that have been lifetimes in the making.

We stand transfixed by fear, marooned on an isle of darkness from which there seems no hope of return. Too numb to find release in tears in the first shock of the awful news, we hear only the question that reverberates within us. WHY?

What have we done to create this? What might we have done to prevent it?

How could we be limited enough in our perception to fail to interpret the danger signals that must have flashed at myriad intervals along a way that led to the destruction of America’s biggest, proudest and best symbols of power, prosperity and military might?

What must happen before men can grow so bitter or misguided or hopeless that they are finally desperate enough to become destroyers who are willing to go down in ruins with their targets?

The effects of such deeds are far-reaching, and roll like waves of thunder across our nation, and beyond, where others are shaken and disbelieving.

For a long, secure time, we in America have taken comfort in two oceans that acted as buffers against attack. For ages, men who decreed that others should take up arms and kill their countries’ enemies could, if they chose, stay safely out of the line of fire and issue their decrees from behind walls that could not be breeched.

On Sept. 11 in New York and at the Pentagon, all illusions of safety for noncombatants were exposed as what they indeed have always been … illusions. The playing field has been leveled. You, or I or any civilian, presidents, and policy-makers, politicians and children are as likely to die at the hands of terrorists, as infrantrymen in the trenches were a war or two ago.

The rules have been changed. The voice of reason must prevail. A humble carpenter in a rough robe that soldiers cast lots for after his death gave the world a message so simple that the race of men failed to see it as the most profound ethic ever offered before or since. Because it has been trivialised by sentimentality and scoffed at by those who see it as a silly, if not impossible dream, we haven’t quite gotten the hang of it yet.

But tearful rescuers who worked in the rubble, even-tempered citizens who stood beside Afghanistans and pledged their support, men and women who attended candlelight services in churches throughout the land to pray for victims and terrorists alike, and asked blessings on the families of the very men who did the deeds have heeded the call. Out of the debacle a groundswell of goodness and eagerness to help, raises a hope that, now, at last, there seems to be a solid core of human beings who have heard and understood and are aware that responding to hatred with more hatred spells doom. And they are willing to try to seek, and find, another dynamic.

A little boy whose firefighter uncle died in a New York rescue operation was asked how he felt about returning violence for violence. He cried quietly and shook his head. “I lost my uncle, but I don’t want any other kid to lose his uncle because it hurts too much.”

Let us pray for a way to make the rest of us as wise and forbearing as this little child who, in his short life, has learned so much about the power and invincibility of a heart full of love.

Cristy, a Los Altos Hills resident, has been writing for the Town Crier for more than 40 years. Her column is published the first week of the month.