Fear
As a big old atheist there is a point I’d like to make, but disclaimers first.
Tim (and all others who seek their religion at this time of grief), I as always support your personal desire and need of that solace and hope that your religion gives it to you. I support what ever people need to do to seek solace in these times. Any difference of opinion on what that is is a meaningless detail that I let fall by the wayside. I rec’d your post, it was appropriate.
What bothers me is the government officials telling me I should pray. Whenever I hear or see one I’m not unified in solace but reminded that when many of them speak they don’t consider me among “all Americans.” A day like yesterday and today is frustrating above and beyond all the horror, it is frustrating because in all the calls for unification it is forgotten that we are different. It is forgotten that we all deal with this is our own way, it is forgotten that we don’t all speak with one voice, but each of us has our own sounds and only the sum of them make us strong.
It is exactly times like this that fill me with dread. I don’t fear the terrorists, not really. I fear the panic, I fear the thousands of threats Arab Americans are already getting. I fear those who destroyed the front window an Islamic bookseller right here in Old Towne and left threats. I fear that times like those ahead of us are exactly when we lose the ability to speak with a different voice. We lose what it means to be American. This is the sounding of the drums that lead to McCarthyism (at least in my fear).
It is the intuitive knowledge that this will be used to ostracize those who are different in whatever way. I fear that I will be considered different.
We each find solace in our own way. I think in the coming months and years we need to remember that we are different. The acts of individuals are not the will of millions of people who happen to be of the same race, religion, nationality, etc. We also have to not fear those who are different in the coming months and years.
We must be unified in difference, not uniformity.
–Zafkiel