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6am – waking up to Wednesday. By 8am I’m bowling along on my bike, surrounded by Lakeland peace and fresh air – endorphins racing and chasing.
And I’m remembering ‘9/11’.
I can smell the slight mustiness of the spacious lounge in the house in which I was living at the time, and the slant of afternoon sunlight through old glass. The smaller, squarer tv in the corner seems old-fashioned to me now – but it carried those world-changing images to my disbelieving eyes anyway.
Odd, how little things come to mind in the face of enormity.
But it’s the little things that we must look to as we seek to lessen the importance of boundary walls and work to build a better world and a more generous and humane society.
Little things, like remembering to cast a kinder gaze upon our fellows – all of them, everywhere. And lending a more readily listening ear, and hearts opened wider.
Little things, like even a slightly more generous hospitality.
Little things, like refusing to be drawn by the often quite ridiculous allure of oppositional rhetoric among politicians – knowing, as we should, that our own quietly spoken – and lived – words of decency, equality, fairness and love are every bit as important.
Little things, like acknowledging that our own blustering and hot-headedness can be as dangerous and as excluding as those of even the loudest and least attractive political movers.
Little things, like knowing our own need of the kindnesses and the open-hearted hospitality of other humans, and of that better instinct at the heart of all of us that would really like to mirror some of that back.
What will I be remembering a year from now? … ten, twenty? For whom do we wish peace, fresh air and endorphins racing on this day of remembering, and of being brought a little nearer to our senses once again?
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