all this

[kerry napuk]

Dear Friends

I have tried to absorb some of this outpouring.  It is difficult,
because all we have is words and the words never seem sufficient.  At
times like these, there is a great feeling of frustration.  What can
I do?    Will it make any difference?  Perhaps the only thing we can
do is live our lives as an example, being responsible and true to
ourself and humane values.

As an American living in Scotland for the last 28 years, I see the
world differently from most Americans living in their splendid
isolation,  There is a growing polarisation between Western values
and Islamic values, yet we all share the same increasingly vulnerable
world.  Words of revenge and war and victory will not bring these
poles closer together.

In order for people to understand and accept each other and the
diversity therein, they have to talk, not commit acts of destruction.
Diaglogue is the only thing that will bring any semblance of peace
and healing.  For this to happen, both sides have to find a way past
their mindsets and vilification of one another, finding what they can
share.

Theodore Zeldin (An Intimate History of Humanity) wrote:
"Conversation demands equality between participants .. Its enemies
are rhetoric, disputation, jargon and private languages, or despair
at not being listened to and not being understood .. Only when people
learn to converse will they begin to be equal."

As for the victims of terrorism around the world, not only in
America, this poem by an unknown poet was left for his parents by
Stephen Cummins, a victim of a terrorist bomb in 1989:

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush.
I am the swift uplighting rush
of quiet birds in circle flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

Peace and love to you all.

Kerry

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