Dealing with September 11, 2001

[BJ Peters]

I want to deeply thank everyone on this list - those who have contributed with
messages and those who have contributed by being in and holding the sacred
space of our collective grieving. Until now, I needed to be one of the latter.
Like many, I have been staying with my confusion while attempting to sort
through my feelings and reactions and connect with my own inner wisdom about
how to respond. So many of your words have touched my being, made me weep and
think and feel our connection and love, even when I did not necessarily agree.

What is there for me today is an emerging awareness of the various levels on
which I sense we are all dealing. The two that keep showing up as part of my
own confusion are: 1) my personal choice options for response, and 2) the
global or national options for solution. When I allow myself to contemplate and
discuss the latter, I am often at odds with the former.

And I have many more questions than I have answers:
- How can I support a solution that calls for more hate and violence when my
choice for life is love and non-violence?
- How do I hold the terrorized and the terrorists, including individuals and
our government leaders who want to - and do - retaliate, with love in my heart?

- How can I respond to friends who say their choices for life are, like mine,
for love and non-violence and in the next breath utter a wish for seeing a
bullet in the forehead of Osama bin Laden?
- How can I respond to friends who believe it right to hate individuals who
commit despicable acts?
- How do I hold onto the belief that good and evil are only the "spin" we put
on things in light of this massive deliberate destruction of human life?

In my meditation on this the other day, the word "listen" came to me. Perhaps
my lesson is to learn to live in the questions without immediate (or ever)
answers. And I'm thinking that my struggle is probably that of a spiritual
novice who has not yet attained the ability to live beyond the snare of
polarities. I thank you for letting me air my humanness in this safe space.

May we all be blessed with wisdom and acceptance in these troubled times.

BJ Peters, Consultant
bjpeters at amug.org

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive
out hate; only love can do that." --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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