Can’t change history, but we CAN do something today — go to this website and pledge a good deed for the day. And if you can’t get to it today, 9/12 has a nice ring to it … and every day thereafter. It is, in fact, a very American thing to do — not that we have the copyright on such as this, certainly.
Simple is always best — and this is just that; simple and profound. In fact, it’s the very kind of thing that made the Progressive party viable years back, accomplished through the Liberal churches and activist organisations, and what’s missing in the NOW. This should be a daily event, blessing both those who give and those who receive. Random acts of kindness, and like that.
Big Bill Clinton has a new book on giving [entitled same,] and that puts some energy into this elemental strategy for good. We’ll hear more about it in days to come, I expect — meanwhile … what will YOU do today?
Go ahead — it’ll make you feel better!
Jude
In 9/11 remembrance, a turning to good deeds
Alexandra Marks, Yahoo
Mon Sep 10
NEW YORK - On Sept. 11, Jacob Sundberg of San Antonio has pledged to make eye contact and smile at everyone he meets. Kaitlin Ulrich will bring goody baskets to the police and fire departments in and around Philadelphia. And 100 volunteers from New York – 9/11 firefighters and family members among them – are going to Groesbeck, Texas, to rebuild a house destroyed by a tornado last December.
This is a minute sampling of the hundreds of thousands of people who have pledged to memorialize those killed on 9/11 by doing something good for others.
The heroic acts of all those killed trying to save others that September morning has spawned a growing grass-roots movement. The goal is to ensure that future generations remember not just the horror of the attacks, but also the extraordinary outpouring of humanity during the days, weeks, and months that followed.
“It was the worst possible day imaginable, and in some ways, a remarkable day, too, in the way in which people responded,” says David Paine, cofounder of myGoodDeed.org. “We need to rekindle the way we came together in the spirit of 9/11: It would be almost as much a tragedy to lose that lesson.”
Sept. 11 has inspired dozens of philanthropic efforts – from groups dedicated to building memorials to foundations designed to improve education in the Middle East. But myGoodDeed has a more universal goal: to turn 9/11 into a day dedicated to doing good – from small, simple things like Lisa Scheive’s pledge to help stranded turtles cross the road in Pompano Beach, Fla., to lifesaving efforts, such as John Feal’s decision in New York to donate one of his kidneys to help a seriously ill 9/11 worker.
The idea has been endorsed by members of Congress, and at myGoodDeed’s urging, President Bush for the first time this year included a call for volunteering in his annual 9/11 proclamation.
After major disasters, Americans have historically tapped a deep reserve of compassion and reached out to others. But in the months and years that follow, those compassionate and civic urges tend to recede. Studies at Harvard’s Saguaro Seminar on Civic Engagement in America found that in as few as five months after 9/11, most Americans had gone back to their daily lives and were not more engaged as they said they’d hoped to be. Part of the goal of turning 9/11 into a national day of service is to remind Americans of the inherent joy of giving and to hopefully spur volunteering and charitable acts throughout the year.
“I don’t know of any research that’s been done on one day of service, but studies have shown that people who do volunteering in high school are more likely to volunteer throughout their lives,” says Thomas Sander, executive director of the Saguaro Seminar.
The idea of turning 9/11 into a day of service, charity, and good deeds came from the family and friends of one man: Glenn Winuk, a volunteer fireman and lawyer who worked a block and a half from the World Trade Center. After he helped evacuate his Broadway law offices, he grabbed a medic’s bag and ran toward the smoke pouring from the South Tower. That’s where his remains were found after the towers fell. Mr. Paine and Glenn’s brother Jay had been friends for years. They decided that turning 9/11 into a day of service was best way to memorialize Glenn.
“It completely reflects the way my brother lived his life, and it also specifically reflects how he died,” says Mr. Winuk, myGoodDeed.org cofounder. “He laid his life on the line for other people that day.”
In 2002, Paine and Winuk sent e-mails to friends and family and suggested they do a good deed, such as donate a day’s pay on 9/11. Then the idea evolved, and they founded myGoodDeed.org. In 2004, 100,000 visited their website and pledged to do a good deed on 9/11. This year, those pledging number more than 250,000.
“A lot of people don’t know what to do on 9/11,” says Paine. “This hits people in their heart and their soul. It connects with something that’s fundamental.” ++
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
September 11th, 2007
Well, here we are again. Happens every year — I suppose it will for decades to come; we are a Cancer country — we may heal, but we don’t forget … we are emotional but it comes with a hard shell, a side step and a fighting stance.
I don’t like this day, not because of the memories it stirs but because of what it’s done to us … what we ALLOWED to be done to us. Some day, perhaps, we’ll look back and see that clearly — but not today, at least not entirely.
As for me, I knew. I knew the day I stared in stunned silence at the televised horror and mayhem that turned out to be the equivalent of a virgin sacrificed at the alter of cynicism.
I knew that the reverberation of the shock would render us collectively senseless to an opportunistic government — that George Bush and his party would give us more, more, more of what he’d already begun to dish out, standing on the rubble of 9/11 with his bullhorn like a huckster stands on a corner pitching his game.
I knew, and was writing within hours, like hundreds of others, trying to stem the flood of vengeance, anger, and hoping to interject just a bit of actual thought into the mix; and so for us … those who saw so early … the resonance of 9/11 is memory of a dark day for reasons other than attack on American soil — it’s the day our country forgot itself in a blinding rush of madness.
And I didn’t count on the unreasonable power of the halo the wingnuts would paint on Dub’s pointy little head … it always amazes me that a country that should have long ago matured in its Christianity allowed itself to be carried off by the iconic, putting so MANY gods before Him. Making George Bush one of them is perverse to the point of insanity, morphing littleness and militarism into a fevered religious movement that, even now, we struggle to push back.
9/11 was the kick-off point in which death and blood would sweep the planet — and I do not grieve those who died that day; I grieve the families that are left behind, without answers, without comfort — I grieve a nation that bit the hand of an empathetic world in favor of the low road, spreading its pain across the globe like a tantruming child — I grieve the epidemic of darkness 9/11 prompted. I grieve that waking up to harsh realities is such a long and excruciating process.
When I think of all that’s shaken out of the Towers falling … the shredding of the Constitution, the wars and viciousness, the fumbling and hubris — I think of Stephen King’s The Green Mile, and its improbable hero, John Coffey … a hulking giant of a man who had the miraculous gift of a healer, but child-like and afraid of the dark, sentenced to death for a crime he didn’t commit. In the end, he wishes for it to end because of the weight of his empathy — in explaining the kidnap, rape and murder of two little girls, the crime for which he is unjustly accused, and exposing the true perpetrator, he says “He used they love against ‘em … that’s how it is all over this world, all over this world.”
And that’s why I dislike this day — because the cogs that turn us are cynical and cruel, they use our love against us … our love for this nation, for decency, for freedom; they orchestrate events to make us choose wrongly, and in fear. They stir our emotions with a stick when sanity demands that they pour a balm over the wound. They point us to hate when we have only one healing option — love and forgiveness. They use our love against us day after day, and … too often … we don’t see it.
Another thing we love in this nation is a good ceremony and there are a gazillion of them today — I caught the tail end of a CNN presentation this morning, with a high-ranking soldier rededicating the whole of the military to America’s defense. I was struck, once again, with the simplicity of that notion — the neutrality of it; how the military is a tool, 2 million strong, to be wielded by politicians, to be utilized for good or ill … imagine what our world would look like if it was the former, not the latter.
Imagine.
I’m putting out a list of links for you today — pick and choose your reads; I’m including one article [thanks, Airean] by our friendly sage, Swami Beyondananda. He says what I want to hear, today … he prays my prayer. He asks us to …
imagine.
Jude
A Prayer For the Heart and Soul of America
Time to Gather Under One Big Intent
Steve Bhaerman, WakeUpLaughing
September 10, 2007
As we approach the sixth anniversary of the day America lost her political virginity, there are many disheartened among us who fear the enlightened republic founded two centuries ago doesn’t have a prayer. To this, I offer two pieces of good news. America does indeed have a prayer, and we the people are the answer to it.
Looking at it from the perspective of six years, our loss of innocence has had as much to do with the choices we made (or more accurately, the choices that were made for us) in response to the event as the event itself. At a moment when we had the world’s attention and empathy, a great healing could have taken place. An enlightened leader could have used the tragedy as a breakthrough in promoting justice-based peace in the world, and isolating the sociopathogens that seek exploitation or destruction.
Well, that probably did happen in a parallel universe. In this universe, however, it was used to mobilize this country for permanent warfare and created a “safe” environment to institute fascism at home. According to a recent Zogby poll, 51% of Americans want Bush and Cheney investigated regarding the 9/11 attacks. As David Ray Griffin articulates so well, once the halo of “religious mythology” is lifted from the official story, it seems like an unlikely story indeed.
At the time, things happened so quickly and it was such a shock to our collective system that all we seem to remember is the video of the planes hitting the building, over and over again. And then over and over and over again until we could see nothing else. Didn’t see much of the aftermath of the Pentagon attack for some reason, the one where the plane came in at an impossible angle just so it could hit the most fortified and least occupied section of the Pentagon.
There wasn’t much conversation about how and why the most heavily armed air force in the world stood down, and ultimately no one was held accountable, and no one so much as lost their job. There was a little buzz about the “puts” placed on American and United airlines stock a day or so before the attacks, but it was never revealed who made a financial killing by selling off their stocks before they plummeted. No one questioned that the greatest crime of the new century was “solved” in less than 24 hours, before any investigation had taken place.
Instead we had a carefully planned and orchestrated ceremony where the President offered an unofficial declaration of war (remember, the Constitution tells us only Congress can declare war) from the pulpit of the National Cathedral, with representatives of four religious faiths stamping the “war on terror” with their “amen.” At a time of profound sadness and vulnerability, our so-called leaders used the attacks to start a war that had been planned long before any attacks took place. And a month or so later, anthrax was mysteriously sent to Democratic Congressional leaders and in the panic and fear, the orwellian “Patriot Act” was passed without very many legislators bothering to read the 342 page document. Another unsolved crime you never hear anything about anymore.
The bottom line is this: Whether or not you believe 9/11 was a “false flag” attack, even the most die-hard “coincidence theorist” has to concede that even if this wasn’t America’s Reichstag fire, it was sure used that way.
The Good News Is … We’re Facing the Bad News
OK. So where’s the good news, and where is the prayer? The good news is, we are finally willing to face the bad news.
Last month at the IONS conference, I had a frank and enlightening conversation with a woman who is a religious educator for a “new thought” denomination. In this particular group, every year they celebrate the “season of nonviolence” to commemorate Gandhi and Martin Luther King. I asked her if she knew anything about the civil case brought before a jury in Memphis in 1999 by the family of Dr. King. She didn’t. I explained to her that the jury found that King was killed not by James Earl Ray, but as part of a conspiracy perpetrated by the FBI, the Mafia, the Army special forces and the Memphis police. (As Casey Stengel used to say, “You could look it up.” There’s a book written by the attorney who brought the case Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King. I know. You haven’t heard of it. Nobody has. This book has never been reviewed by any mainstream media outlet, and probably never will.)
And that, my friends, is the problem. Not health care, not abortion rights, not even the war in Iraq. The real problem is we are not in control of our own government, and the media has used weapons of mass distraction to keep us from noticing.
The solution? I saw that in the eyes of the courageous woman I was speaking with. As she absorbed the devastating news, there was tremendous sadness in her face. Yet I could see that she had no doubt what I was saying was true. Facing this inconvenient truth took courage. She realized that to celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday publicly and not acknowledge he was murdered by forces in our own government, would be a lie and a disservice.
Many of those in the new age and new thought movements have gone out of their way not to “take sides” in “political” conversations. But as we are coming to see, there comes a time when not taking sides is … taking sides. It is taking sides with denial, and it empowers and emboldens the kinds of people who plotted Martin Luther King’s assassination and got away with it. At a time when our nation’s moral compass has gone south, we need spiritual and religious people to have faith in their faith and stand by their stand. Or, as the Swami says, “It’s time for the meek to boldly step forward and claim their inheritance.”
Gandhi was meek. So was Martin Luther King. But they were boldly meek, and that is how we need to be. This is not a time to use our religious faith or spiritual practice to run from the world, it’s a time to use that powerful energy to heal it. Doing so doesn’t even require having a faith, just an impulse towards love, harmony, coherence and goodness. As an opening exercise at this time for prayer, please check out this month long experimental prayer for peace at commonpassion.org. Rather than designing some uniform prayer, these folks encourage people to use whatever form of prayer and devotion they already practice — and imbue it with this particular healing intention.
It’s just one example of building the field of truth and clarity. Consider that the more we communicate with others — regardless of their professed political beliefs or nonbeliefs — the more we create a new field of awareness that opens up new possibilities. Regarding the dark side of our history and current events, the most powerful thing we can do right now is to create a safe space to speak and hear the truth. Perhaps you’ve known about these perpetrations for some time and have “metabolized” them in some way. Most people have not. On top of all the other things we are occupied with in our daily lives, having a criminal regime to deal with on top of that is just too much.
From Big Brother to Bigger Brotherhood
It’s too much for each of us, but not for all of us together. We haven’t even begun to measure our true power. We’ve been too fearful. Imagine a Zogby poll asking the following question: Do you believe it is appropriate for we the people to be disenfranchised from our own government, and our government to engage in criminal activity? Sure, it’s a leading question, but it’s not a misleading one. Would 75% to 95% of Americans agree that we should have genuine say in our governance and not have to be afraid of our own government? That’s good news. It means some 150 to 200 million Americans agree that regardless of how they feel about abortion rights or universal health care, they prefer to live under the rule of law.
America has been divided and just about conquered. What this next most challenging phase in our history will require is for us to rise above the “dueling dualities” in our heads, and focus on the humanity in our hearts. We do indeed have a prayer, once we realize we are praying for our own clarity and courage. The vibrations of those words establishing our right to “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” and the notion that all of us are “created equal” are still ringing in our collective awareness, faint as the reverberations might seem.
Our task is to rekindle that fire, finally establish those principles in reality, and be the beacon of example to the rest of the world. There is a reason why there are no leaders on the horizon today. It’s because the old form of leadership no longer serves. The new leadership cannot be assassinated because it is an idea that springs from 50 million souls at once. That is the super-duper power. Again, to quote Swami: “The only sure way to overgrow Big Brother is through Bigger Brotherhood.”
Here then is a prayer. Use it, modify it, make up your own. The importance is intent … so let us … as many of us who realize we are all in this together … may we gather together under one big intent … the healing of America, and the healing of the world.
May the power of love and courage be embodied in each of us as we face darkness as beacons of light. May we light the way for others with joy and laughter, the weapons the darkness fears the most. May we gather together locally with the global idea that we are each a precious cell in the body of humanity with a loving gift to bring. May this wildfire of truth burn from the grassroots up, and may it vaporize the structures that no longer serve us. May the new leaders arise — humble yet bold — and may the structures emerge to help us create the maximum happiness using the minimum resources. May we understand that heaven is a practice, not a destination, and may we practice heaven until heaven becomes practically real. May we also understand that we choose which game we play in life, and now we must choose the world game as the only alternative to the end of the world game. We cannot know for sure the outcome, but we can know in our heart of hearts that it’s the only game worth playing.
May we commemorate the next anniversary of 9/11 as a free people with nothing to fear from our own government, and may that government be a reflection of our highest aspirations for both good and freedom. May we do this for all humanity and for all our relations, and may we celebrate a new convenient truth … global heartwarming.
Even I question the ‘truth’ about 9/11
Robert Fisk, The Independent
08/25/07
Six Years of 9/11 as a License to Kill
Norman Solomon, Smirking Chimp
Sep 11 2007
Osama on 9/11
What the Perp is Saying These Days About the Empire, Capitalism, and JFK
Michael Dickinson, CounterPunch
September 11, 2007
A Case of 9/11 Fatigue
I’m tired of talking about it, I’m tired of hearing about it, I’m tired of Giuliani’s continuing relevance because of it
by Zuzu, Alternet
9/11 healthcare bill to be introduced to Congress
Will be announced on anniversary of 9/11
ABC Eyewitness News
Zogby Poll:
51% of Americans Want Congress to Probe Bush/Cheney Regarding 9/11 Attacks; Over 30% Seek Immediate Impeachment
Bradblog
American Airlines - “9/11 Didn’t Happen”
by Six Degrees of Aaron, Daily Kos
Sat Aug 25, 2007
[thanks, Christine]
U.S. Navy ‘Top Gun’ Pilot Questions 9/11
Alan Miller, OpEdNews via PrisonPlanet
Thursday September 6, 2007
NYC Fireman: Giuliani Running For President “On The Back Of My Dead Son”
Yahoo via HuffNews
Poor Rudy Giuliani
Cliff Schecter, Smirking Chimp
Sep 10 2007
Author under gag order assails producer, ABC for ‘Path to 9/11′
Peter Lance, Raw Story
Sunday September 9, 2007
Fox News’ Rivera ridicules 9/11 Truth activists, man arrested on camera
Raw Story
Sunday September 9, 2007
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
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September 11th, 2007
