Again!
Where does one begin a piece like this? The false hope that we were a safe people has been shattered by the events that occurred in Boston yesterday. Some nut or group of obviously misguided nuts packed a couple of bomb laden instruments with BB’s and other easily purchasable items and killed at least three people and injured at least 125 on a day that the city of Boston looks forward to each and every year perhaps more so than any other day.
Americans are such a forward looking people deep at their core. They work hard and they play hard and yesterday was one of those days of hard play as over twenty thousand souls took to the streets of Boston to run a grueling twenty six mile marathon that tests the endurance of each and every person who participants in it. Marathons are not easy! In the days of the ancients, the marathon was named after what one runner did to bring word of an important event back to those who needed to know what had happened. He died in the arms of those that he told after running the last race against time of his life. We are blessed as a people that no runners died in the events of yesterday. But we are cursed that an eight year old boy and his family were killed and maimed by what these bombs did. It is almost as if the message was sent that these deranged and misguided souls were trying to kill our future on a day that was dedicated to the memories of twenty children and their teachers who had died just over three months ago in Newtown, Connecticut. Members of the families of Newtown were at the finish line helping to congratulate and help the runners when the bombs went off!
I remember September eleventh so well, but, for some strange reason, this event reminds me of Oklahoma City back in 1995 more than anything else! Perhaps that is so because of the proximity of the dates and the time of year. Oklahoma City occurred on the nineteenth of April, just four days from this new and horrible anniversary that will join it in our memory banks.
My wife and I were in Boston in April, just thirty years ago! We wandered the city in search of the Kennedy library that we never found and ended up out in Lexington, site of the battles of Lexington and Concord. Freedom and its quest lives long in the memories of those brought up in Massachusetts and in New England and the celebrations of those precious things are taken seriously there.
Most days live anonymously outside of our memory banks as life passes by. April fifteenth will no longer be one of them. It had been previously known to us as the day that Titanic went down and that Abraham Lincoln died from his gunshot wound, and as the day that we must pay our income tax bill that comes due. But now, this date will be joined by the violence and death in Boston and we hope that, like Oklahoma City, that it will not be superseded by some even more horrific event that will wipe it from us. All we need now is for some group bent on destruction to set off some sort of small nuclear dirty bomb that kills hundreds or thousands in a similar crowd. What has happened in Boston brings that into the realm of possibility to a people who thought that they were safe in the new environment after the horrible events of a September just over eleven years ago. Copycats are very real and whomever did this has shown others the inevitable way forward.
It is so morbidly fascinating to realize that some of the aircraft who hit the World Trade Center originated at Boston’s Logan International airport! And now, in full circle, the violence has come home to Boston on its most special day! We grieve for you Boston but we also grieve for ourselves and our future. Our world is again not as secure as we thought it was. And we thank God that more did not die and we pray for those perhaps not yet born who will feel, as the eight year old boy did yesterday, terrorisms future bite! What we have seen in the Middle East and other places around the world has finally come home to us. They will find those who did this horrible deed. The surveillance that the trillions spend since September eleventh bought should insure that. But we have been rattled again and no amount of money can ever buy that back for us again. And, like the events since November 22, 1963, it has been shown that if someone wants to kill badly enough, very little can really stop them. It is not a comforting thought!
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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