I've Never Had to Knock on Wood...

A song by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones starts out with this line: "Have you ever been close to tragedy or been close to folks who have?" For a while, I could identify with this song, but one day five years ago, it seemed that it lost some of its impact. When I heard what had happened to the Twin towers and saw America's reaction I realized we had all been close to tragedy then regardless of how far we were from the Pentagon, New York City, or the Pennsylvania field where the one plane went down.

I suppose there will be memorial posts all over blogs today, after all, it was one of the most significant events in recent American history and it literally rocked the world. We are still dealing with the aftereffects today, including a war currently on two fronts.

It is hard not to feel a little sadness when we reflect on such things, even though we may not have personally suffered any loss as a direct result of an attack by people committing violence in the name of their religion. We are lucky in the West to see this occur on a very limited basis and most events -- such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre (which also occurred on a September 11th) are in a distant past.

While I do not think we will ever live in a world free of violence, perhaps we can stop killing each other because our God or gods tell us to someday. Maybe I just should have gotten permission from the Onion to reprint their classic story of "God Clarifies 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' Rule" which they ran shortly after September 11, 2001.