This morning something extraordinary occurred. It actually took me more than an hour to let it sink in before I could capture a bit of it here.

I was sitting with my breathing - inbreath Clear Mind, outbreath Don't Know. Gradually, I noticed how comfortable I was in my body. No urge to move. No itches or facial ticks. None of the twitching that has continued of late. I was just sitting with my breathing and watching my thoughts pass through me. From nowhere to nowhere.

Then I began to notice the sounds around me. The patterns of the birds chirping. Wonderful staccato rhythms. And then more melodious ones. I had an unusual sense that I was somehow expanding to incorporate these sounds. As if I were somehow reaching out beyond this small self. As if all that I was hearing was inside a larger self. Not at all like listening to the sounds. More like listening into them. Into this larger container that was me, yet more than me.

Then I began to notice more sounds. The painter sanding the windows of the big house across the commons. At least that is what it sounded like, although I "saw" no one like that inside the container. I heard a woman talking on her cell phone on the commons as well - a neighbor, although I didn't know who it was. I didn't hear the content, only the happiness in her voice. Since her happiness was now within this container, I was now happy. I felt more and more expansive. In touch with all that was around me, even though there was no longer any around to be around me.

Then I noticed the trees in the commons. I felt a connection to their roots and their ancient rootedness. I felt in touch with their breathing through the very ground itself. In that moment there was no difference between me and "them". Their roots were inside this container as well.

All of a sudden I felt a shudder go through me. It began in my feet and legs, and then moved up into my chest and shoulders. There was no mind. No meaning. No trauma. No joy. Or sadness. No reflection and no echo. Just a shudder that moved through me followed by a profound stillness. I lost touch with parts of my body, and yet didn't mind. I recall thinking that I still must have a thumb on my right hand, even though I couldn't feel it. The same with my feet. Not sensing. Not knowing.

Yet, it all seemed fine by then. The shudder had moved through and had a completeness to it such that even the memory of it now has so little hold on me. It occurred and then it was over.

At some point in there - I cannot recall how long after the shudder - I heard the sound of something crashing down. A really loud cracking sound. It seems odd to me now that I did not open my eyes to see what was happening "out there". It was a loud crack and then it was over. The woman on the phone was still chirping and so were the birds.

It was only later - after I had finished sitting - that I saw the arborist outside working on one of the large trees on the commons. What I had thought was the sound of the housepainter sanding the windows was actually the arborist sawing off the limb of that great, incredibly old tree.

I realized then that the shudder I felt was my experience of tree consciousness within the container. There was no mind, so there was no pain. And since there was no story and no preference, there was no suffering. There was only the shudder, which was like the reflection of the geese flying over the smooth surface of the lake.*

The tree was not trying to teach me anything. It just became my teacher by allowing me to feel its own consciousness. And even that thought is creating a layer of meaning that was not there at the time. The tree did not invite me to experience this deep awareness of no awareness. The tree just is an invitation. Just as the lake is. And the wild geese. Just as the river of diamond water where the coin got lost** - the river I am so afraid to go into.

Invitations all.

*The koan is:
The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection,
The water has no mind to receive their image.

** This koan is:
The coin that is lost in the river is retrieved from the river.
(You can read more about about all this koan business here.)

This morning I was sitting with this word margin. It may have been in response to an e-mail I received from a dear friend this morning. Among other things she wrote about her relationship with her son and daughter-in-law. She wrote:

...I am trying to matter as well as create a world I want to live in...some combination of being in the third act, feeling the curtain going down, and coming to terms with the fact that I do not matter to my son and his wife the way I had hoped I might...

I guess this whole piece about "mattering" got me to thinking once again about being in (or on) the margins. At first I noticed a kind of almost contentment, as I thought about being on the margin. I even visualized this line:

Soon enough I found myself thinking about times when I have felt invisible...and angry. Like the several times when I've been on the train to Center City and the conductor walked by without collecting money for a ticket. The first time this occurred I remember saying something to him to get his attention. When it happened again, though, I said nothing. I silently fumed as a reaction to feeling invisible. And it has happened at least four or five times over the past two years or so. And each time I found myself less angry. Maybe I am becoming resigned to that feeling of invisibility - horrifying thought!

Strange, now that I think about it, how most times when this has happened I've given the uncollected money to a homeless person. I told myself that it was my way of feeling that I had not stolen something. Now, I realize - actually it came to me while meditating - that it was my way to attempt to be seen. I recall how careful I was to be sure that the person saw that it was a five and not a one-dollar bill I was putting into the cup. And I made sure they looked directly at me.

There was a time when I would have felt ashamed to admit this simple truth, this need to be seen even by someone who can barely see. Now it is just so.

The sadness is true. So is the anger and resignation. And so is the need to be seen. And so is this creeping sense of my own, my own what? Desubstanciation, or dematerializing, maybe are the apt words. A kind of slow unmattering.

This may be what the three acts are all about.

We strive so hard to become solid and substantial when we are young. Daddy, Mommy, look at me! Look at me! How many times did we say that in so many ways as children? How many times did we hear that as parents?
Act 1: Water becoming earth.

And then we "become somebody". We have substance. We have standing in the world. We become, as a friend says, human doings, rather than human beings. Someone once said that good parenting is love in continual action. We are vibrant; full of purpose. Striving to create meaning.
Act 2: Earth becoming fire.

I guess as we age we do begin to dematerialize in some ways. Maybe we just don't matter as much in this act, or in the same way, because we are not made of the same matter as we once were. And yet, I do have those moments when, just like in Act 1, I feel like screaming, Look at me! Look at me! Who am I screaming to? My parents? My son? The world? Myself? I have no idea.
Act 3: Fire becoming air.

What's the fourth act I now wonder. Does air become water again? That nice, tidy cycle that allows me to go to sleep in the face of pain and suffering. Pain and suffering on the revolving installment plan. No, there are no acts, I suspect. Only transformations. What is left is to let go of the struggle - the struggle to stay, or leave, the center of the page.

And the struggle to stay out of the margins.

Yesterday I found myself in a dentist's chair undergoing a root canal "procedure". It did not go well. The specialist working on me spoke of "tortuous canals", and an "unusual anatomy". Then there was the "calcification" he had to contend with. That did not sound pretty. Not the sort of thing I wanted to hear about my canals, and my anatomy - especially from a man in a mask with a drill in one hand and a sharp pointy thing in the other. Oh, and there was another thing I didn't want to hear. After more than an hour into the ordeal he said, "Well, I've managed to get two of the nerve roots, but the third one is really very difficult to get to."

I recalled the Buddhist proverb: On a journey through three roots and three canals, count two as half way...or something like that.

Forty-five minutes later it was over. Two hours and fifteen minutes all told, but who's counting?

The procedure lasted twice as long as both I and the dentist had expected. While I was not in physical pain (that came later...as in now), it was emotionally grueling, and to some extent, given my own personal history, somewhat traumatizing. Yet, it was bearable because I was not alone. Yes, there was a skilled dentist doing his best to minimize my torment. And there was a very nice assistant with kind eyes, and a welcomed efficiency to her every motion. They were there, but not in the way that a boy from Uganda, Stephen Batte, was there with me through it all.

As it happened, just prior to the procedure I was reading an article about this boy, Stephen. He is nine. He spends his days breaking rocks in a quarry near Kampala. All day long he breaks small rocks into smaller rocks. Like the convicts in the old movies, he has been sentenced to a life at hard labor. Only no court has passed judgment on him. Rather, he is the collateral damage from a civil war. For five years now - more than half his life - he has been working on this rock pile. Perhaps no diamond cutter, yet he does tap his homemade hammer just so onto a larger rock splitting it into smaller bits. A five-gallon bucket full of newly minted gravel garners him the princely sum of six cents. He fills three buckets during each twelve-hour day. Stephen's mother died not long ago in an accident at the quarry, and after that his stepfather abandoned him. So, he is alone now.

A few minutes after seeing the image in the paper of this boy sitting on the small pile of rocks, his stick hammer poised for another strike, he came into my mind again while sitting in the dental chair waiting for the next quick injection of novocaine. At first it was a ...well, if he can sit in the hot sun all day and break rocks without complaining, I can sit through this... kind of thought. I quickly realized how that sort of objectification was terribly self-serving, and not at all useful.

As the procedure proceeded, though, the image of this boy returned again and again. Finally, I began to feel myself in the presence of an enormous wave of compassion. It wasn't that I was being compassionate. Instead, I felt that somehow we were both enfolded in a larger mantle of compassion. That his suffering and my torment lived in the spaces well beyond, and also in between, the tapping and the drilling - in the empty spaces where we are all connected.

When I was able for a moment to let go of comparing one suffering against another, my pile of rocks compared with his, I was able sit quietly in those folds and hold him in my mind as another being in the world, another co-conspirator in this illusion of our distinctness and our differences. I found myself with tears in my eyes when I thought of the comment he made to the reporter, "Life has always been hard here..." Just so.

It's just that in that moment the here was there. And now here is here again. And I notice that the opening, that space between spaces, is still here, still open. I may not be able to do anything today about that rock pile in Uganda, but perhaps I will come upon another child today, or another being of any age for that matter, with a rock pile of their own that I might help diminish. And who knows, perhaps my own pile will diminish as well.

We can make meaning of our lives only when we open ourselves to all the joys and sufferings of the world - our own and those of others we will never know.

What I do know now is that a root canal is just a procedure, just dharma.

Update: On the way home from the office this afternoon a boy turned to me at the bus stop, and said, "Aren't you Mr. Edd, the man who traveled all over?" I looked quizzical for a second, and then I recognized him. (His name escaped me - still a little foggy from the medication. Oh, I think it is Saleem.) We had met several months ago at this same spot. Back then he had asked me if I had ever traveled outside the country. I said that I had, and then we talked about my travels in the past and his dreams for the future. This afternoon we picked up that conversation about his dreams for the future. My rock pile was smaller by the time he got off at his stop.

Here is a link to the newspaper article. And here is another one.

The call was a brief one, but everything seemed to change by the end of it. Matthew had only been away from home for a few weeks. School had just begun. But now his school, Eugene Lang College, was temporarily not a school. The slightly worn paper sign on the door said "Triage St Vincent's Hospital". The college became the place you could go to find out if a loved one was in one of the area hospitals. If their name was not on the list, then you would go to the Lexington Avenue Armory to fill out the missing per-sons forms - those are the forms that create the steadily rising number of "missing". But I'm getting ahead of myself. First there was the phone call.

Are you all right?
Everything is OK. I'm with some friends from school.
No. I asked you if you are all right.
Well, mostly. I'm a little freaked out. This morning there was a body in the street in front of the dorm. I went out and talked to a policeman and he said that the man died of smoke inhalation. Pops, I don't think it is a good idea for you to come up here. It's too dangerous.

As parents we secretly try to prepare for this day. With each ritual, each rite of passage - large or small, from moving up to the bluebird reading group, and each pencil mark on the door jam, right through to prom pictures and graduations - we prepare for the day when our children are no longer chil-dren. I suspect deep down we know it is futile, but we do it anyway. The day comes and it catches us by surprise. That day came for me when my son tried to protect me from the horrors that he had seen, instead of me trying to shield his eyes in one last equally futile attempt to hold on to the child that is already becoming a memory. In that moment it was as if the hand I held not so long ago to cross a busy street had suddenly become larger than mine, and was now gripping my hand. It all happened in an instant.

But I went anyway.

The train ride from Philadelphia to New York was eerily uneventful. It was like every other one I have ever taken. Until we got past the Newark Sta-tion. I sat at a table in the club car on the right side of the train. That's the side facing the city on the northbound route. Friday morning was gray and overcast. Nevertheless, the Manhattan skyline suddenly appeared off a bit in the distance. The outline of the city was barely visible, but then as I looked closer - the way you look at a face that seems almost familiar, and then you recognize an old friend who seemed to have changed over time - I could see the smoke billowing up through the hole where the towers used to be.

I remember thinking how the sky and the skyline now seemed to be oddly intermingled. Then I thought of that cartoon character, the one who kept saying the sky was falling. Only this time it was no cartoon. The sky had fallen into the space that had opened up.

The first thing I noticed approaching Seventh Avenue up the stairs from Penn Station was the smell. It was a subtle smell of smoke, but more like the smell of burnt charcoal with too much lighter fluid. The smell that is barely noticeable, yet impossible to ignore. Of course, I thought, it's the jet fuel. And then just as quickly I grew accustomed to it, and the smell seemed to recede quietly into the background.

And then there were the sounds of sirens. They seemed to be everywhere. Police sirens off in the distance. And then the sirens from two fire engines traveling against traffic on this busy one-way street. In any other place this scene would have seemed bizarre. On this day, in this city, it already seemed normal to me.

The cab ride to the Lower East Side was uneventful except for the radio, which was set to a religious station with someone reading from the Old Testament. The driver's dashboard was filled with small religious icons. It looked as though they had been there for a while. This was not some fox-hole conversion. This dial was probably permanently set to that station. I was already beginning to feel some of the familiar sights and sounds that compose this city.

Matt and I met outside his friend's dorm. It was wonderful to get my arms around him again. To feel his substance, the thickness of his back and shoulders. To feel how easily he bends his tall frame to meet me without in any way diminishing me. I've seen him do it from afar to others. For the first time it occurs to me that this has been happening with me for a long time as well. Everything is changing.

He took me over to his new place, his new home across from Union Square. We were about a mile from Ground Zero, as they were calling the site of the disaster. It occurred to me that we must be at Ground Plus One, but I doubt if anyone else there counted that way. On the way we came upon a shrine - one of many we would see this day. Off to one side in the park an impromptu collection of momentos lay in display as a large group of people huddled together in the cool drizzly morning. I went over, as if I were a visitor to a church I had never been to before. Not sure of the right thing to do. Not sure if I belonged. And then someone made room for us and we folded into the circle effortlessly.

Some of the candles were still burning - defiantly almost in the dampness. Others had gone out, the water having pooled in the wells submerging the wicks. It's only temporary, I thought to myself, as soon as it is dry, some-one will relight those candles. Then I began to look at all the various objects within the circle. Besides the candles I saw a woman's black shoe. How fitting, I thought, just one shoe. Even now I don't fully understand the truth of that thought, but it still stands. Several books lay open. Several were bibles, others looked like favorites someone wanted to share. I wanted so much to go into the collection to see what pages they were opened to, but I didn't. Leaning against a makeshift monument draped in a flag was a red teddy bear, nearby another hand made sculpture, a sprinkling of beads and bangles. Each one individually would have looked like so much litter strewn about the city streets, but clustered together as they were, I marveled at how pro-found the mundane becomes when it is in such sharp relief. Bits of stuff that have been left behind, that had been touched just a few days before, nestled there as a way to let the living say good-bye to their dead.

After prayers, lunch. A short walk from the park led to John's Deli, a wonderful little corner place made deceptively larger with strategically placed mirrors. The owner, the latest iteration of "John" I suspect, is a delightfully rotund Greek gentleman. He greeted us as if we were regulars. I had the sense that if we return again, next time we will be regulars. He greeted others - the real regulars - as they straggled in during lunch. Each time was a quiet reunion, an unspoken prayer of thanks that another one had made it, another was safe.

We ordered sandwiches.
Have it on rye, it's best with rye.
Thanks.
Fuggeddaboudid...

In some cities a "thank you" is followed by a "your welcome", or a "my pleasure", but in New York it is fuggeddaboudid. Some things even crises can't affect.

There was talk about how the Lexington Street Armory had become the place to file missing person's reports and that there were grief counselors on hand. I know from personal experience how draining this work can be and had the thought that they might need some help. So after lunch Matt and I took a cab up to 24th Street to see if maybe I could lend a hand.

Everywhere we looked outside the armory we saw leaflets and flyers with pictures and descriptions "Missing... 5'10, 160 pounds... last seen leaving the WTC..." Loved ones walking about the street with larger pictures. It seemed as if every inch of wall space was papered with such posters. I thought immediately that the fatality estimates are way too low. Then I thought maybe this was a good thing, to slowly allow us to let the enormity of it all to sink in.

What I didn't see was an angry face. Just oceans of sadness and concern. What I didn't see was stinginess. Instead we were met with kindness and civility everywhere. People were taking an extra minute with each other making sure they were getting to the right place. Not sure who was who, everyone was treated as the vulnerable beings they were and are. It was a strange contradiction - this city that was founded on a real estate deal and, in addition to the incomprehensible loss of lives, a city that has suddenly lost so much of its real estate, is acting with generosity and a sense of abundance. I wondered what this city (or any other one for that matter) would be like if it sustained that way of being with each other even after the pile of debris is removed, even after the last body is recovered.

A police officer gave me a phone number to call to volunteer. I called from the street. It rang about thirty times with no answer. It seemed as if they had plenty of help, so we thought it best to leave the area to make room for the people who were slowly migrating up from Matt's college after not finding the names they were searching for on the hospital lists.

So off we went back to the Lower East Side to meet up with Jim and Jane, my brother and his wife. We packed up for the trip down to Philadelphia. As poignant as the scenes were on the streets, I was relieved to be leaving, to give them a break from all the reminders around them.

We snaked our way north to the bridge - the George Washington I guess it was. Then before I knew it we were on the New Jersey Turnpike. Traffic slowed as people looked over to the east as the smoke rose as if from some gigantic, invisible eternal flame. Matt was in the back seat next to me. I couldn't resist the urge to put my arm around his broad shoulders. The sounds of the drumbeat of war were slowly receding from my mind. The fears I have about the two facts I know for sure about war - that young people get killed and that civil liberties get curtailed - were put away for an-other time. Perhaps for another letter. Right now, I thought, my New York family is a bit frayed around the edges, but they are safe and sound. For now, I thought, and that's all I can hope for.

Then as we left the city behind us the conversation began again. Talk of family and friends and food. A few jokes. It all seemed so normal.

*Originally published in The Journal of Creative Non-Fiction in 2001

This morning I sat at my desk and was about to write my Morning Pages. Before I began I decided to read some previous entries from that day. I came upon the following entry from 2003.

11 September 2003 - Thursday

It was on a Tuesday two years ago today. When it happened, when the towers came down. It was on a Tuesday. I don't know why that is so important to me at this moment, but it is. It's as if each detail is important.
Exactly two years ago within a few minutes from this moment as I write this, I was sitting on Alison's porch writing my Morning Pages when she called me into the house and turned on the television. That event may have changed my life more than I realize.
Thinking back now, I wonder if in that moment she began to see herself and Tamar as other. As not belonging somehow. Or maybe it was her maternal instincts taking over. I cannot know this for sure because we never spoke of it - one of the many aspects of that day that triggers enormous sadness. And of course this feeling of being "Other" is one that I know well, so it all may just be projection on my part.
Oddly though, that feeling of being an outsider was one I was just beginning to let go of, as I allowed myself to fall deeper in love with Alison, and made room for Tamar in a heart that I thought was too closed to be touched again by a child's laugh.
Strange how the two events - the dramatic falling of the two towers and the gradual erosion of that relationship(s) - seem so intertwined. Maybe it is all about endings. All about letting go of the illusion of control, letting go of knowing with any degree of certainty that I truly know what is real. It is also about the letting go of the illusion of permanence.
And maybe that is what sustains me these days. Just as those months of joy came to a close, so too will these months of sadness. This, too, will end. A time will come when I am happy again. A time will come again when I feel there is abundance, rather than scarcity in the world.
Letting go used to be easier. I wonder why it is harder now. I would have thought, with so much practice, I would be better at it, or at least somehow more comfortable.
What makes cataclysmic events like 9-11 easier to take in over time is the very definiteness of it all. There is no doubt when you see the catastrophe before your eyes. Most other catastrophes in life seem more subtle in the gradual erosion of intimacy until it becomes distance; like the small imperceptible changes in a "healthy" person until "suddenly" an illness appears.
And on the other side of the catastrophe there is no more hurt, no more anger. Just moments of sadness now and again about what could have been - and even those "could have beens" are as illusory as those eerie ghost images of the towers, as if they still soared into the sky - like two great exclamation points writ large on pale blue paper.
Soon it will be three years ago since Nick died. Just now I decided to look back at the entry from around that time. I wrote about the illusion of permanence, but I also wrote of myself as a kind of pilgrim.

I must own the truth of my own pilgrimage, of my own pilgrim-ness. I'm also on my way to somewhere else. Or nowhere else. A new Here. A new Now.

I wonder if deep in my psyche I knew that this pilgrimage was on the horizon. I wonder now what new pilgrimage awaits me. The fact that I can see the possibility of a new journey heartens me.

It's all tied into memory for me. Remembering where I was. Who I was with. Who I was not with. So many details are still clear to me. For me now I know that the experience had a global quality to it as well as an intensely personal quality. When I revisit moments like that day, I have the odd sense of experiencing a kind of wobble.

All is moving nicely. Predictable. The rotation of the planets. The steady orbits. A symphony of precision. I have had periods in my life like that. Brief ones to be sure, but there nonetheless. Everything is moving along nicely - just as it is supposed to.

And then comes the wobble.

The wobble can be a slight one, where it is so subtle that I hardly notice. Or the wobble can be so great that I feel that I'll be tossed off into the abyss of space with no chance of survival. When I looked up this word "wobble", I found it curious that it is related to music. Seems that it originally had to do with moving from and to the Upper, Middle and Low G note. Someone once called it "a low, barbarous note."

This origin from the acoustical world does resonate for me. The wobble begins so low, so close to the ground, so deep in the soul, that it cannot be heard all the way up into the spirit realm.

I think now of the low hum from the plane engines as they roared toward their targets. How all of a sudden the sound was deafening. The wobble began much deeper in the ground, deep in a toxic soil that was watered with hatred, and then carefully nourished with poisonous dogma.

Even when the first plane hit the tower, there was a wobble. The base of the building standing firm as the upper floors wobbled absorbing so much energy in such a short time. But this wobble was harbinger of things to come. Though not known in that moment, this wobble was an indication that a catastrophe was looming. A catastrophe - literally a great overturning - is a churning of the very ground of the soul.

So, what is true for me today and how do I feel about that truth?

What I notice is that in the intervening years since I wrote that entry so much has happened that now I can see how what I thought was a catastrophe for me personally was actually a wobble, a harbinger of catastrophes to come.

Yet, what is also true for me now is how value-laden I have held this word "catastrophe". It need not lead to suffering. Indeed suffering is just one choice among many that I can make in the face of "great overturning".

A wobble is a gift that I sometimes leave unopened. Were I to open it, though, I might find a love note from my soul telling me to pay attention, another message less subtle is coming - probably sooner than later.

After the buildings wobbled and then finally fell, we were faced with a great opening. There was a hole in the city and in our hearts. There was also an opening for reconciliation, and an opportunity to release old hurts, and longings. There was a moment as we stared - riveted to the screen slowly making sense of the images - when we could have re-created ourselves and our world all over again for the first time.

Catastrophes - be they personal, national or global - do one thing. They open up the ground we walk on, and invite us to drop in.

Of all there is to like about the 4th of July (and there still are a few things left), the one that stands out above all others for me is that this day celebrates a national conversation that led to a good bit of writing.

Other countries – some much older than ours ¬– trace their origins to a decisive battle. In England one can make a solid case (as my friend, Barry Coleman, did on one spectacularly beautiful summer day as we walked across a lush field) that the England we know today can trace its origin to the Battle of Naseby in Northamptonshire. France to the great upheaval in the first, riotous days of the Revolution. Germany, well I have no idea where to stake out the beginnings of modern Germany, but I suspect it was also a battle with a remarkable amount of bloodshed.

This United States, though, traces its beginning to a one page divorce decree. A document in the form of the most powerful kind of speech that can be captured in the written page – a declaration. Declarations draw their power from the fact that they stand alone on their own truth with no referent. Our independence is so because we declare it to be so. Jefferson did not offer an explanation that we are now free because of this or that. Rather he declared such causes. His language was descriptive, almost matter of fact:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Library bookshelves are crammed with treatises, almost theological in their reverence and careful attention to each word of the document. So I have nothing of consequence to add to the profound and inspiring words from the Founders. Instead, my thoughts today have settled on the conversation and dialogue that came before. And what I am taken by is how transparent it all seems now. How each held a position, and was eager to claim it. How much we know of the whole deliberative process because so much was recorded during the days and weeks of that dreadfully hot early summer heading into July. We know of the remarkable agreements they made that bind us still, and later the shameful compromises that to this day leave a bitter aftertaste. Yet, so much was out in the open. So little classified, and codified. So little sealed and sanctified.

Jefferson’s ability to write plainly and clearly spoke of a curious mind that went to the nub of the matter.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Then he makes out his laundry list of grievances. A few ripe cherries:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good…

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records…

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices…

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power…

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences…

A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people…

Oh that we would have such a list maker today! And imagine what this country would be like if we could have a national conversation to match the one created by those fifty-six delegates to the Second Continental Congress. Then imagine leaders so devoid of cynicism that they willingly risked not only their lives and fortunes, but the lives of their families as well.

I suspect that, without such conversations, there can only be cynicism, cronyism and greed.

Finally, though, this morning my thoughts turn to a small piece of real estate here in Philadelphia just a few blocks from where that declaration was made. My favorite spot in the city actually – originally called Southeast Square. It is worth noting that much of this country is the result of various real estate deals. Stories abound of kings granting lands they did not own to loyal subjects often not all that loyal, and Native Americans happily trading real estate that they knew none can own to businessmen who no doubt thought they had bested the deal. A few of these stories may even be true.

One real estate story is true. Well before such notions as open space trusts and nature conservancies, and early on in the planning of the city, these new Philadelphians set aside five squares of open space centrally situated on the grid that became the blueprint for modern Philadelphia. Each bore its geographical reference to “Center Square”, which eventually became the site of City Hall. Much later, each of the four was given a name to remember an important figure – Logan (NW), Rittenhouse (SW), Franklin (NE) and Washington (SE). Southeast Square became Washington Square.

This is my favorite square because it more than any place I know sits in silent witness to so much that occurred after that particular 4th of July two hundred and thirty-one years ago. There are some who say that Washington Square is our first national cemetery. Their case for this is a good one. Beneath the generous plaza and inviting park benches lie the bodies of as many as three thousand American soldiers. Some died of battle wounds in nearby hospitals. Many died in a British Abu Ghraib of the time, where they were treated harshly. (Lest we too quickly claim the moral high ground, we must recall that, when the Americans took over the prison, British soldiers fared no better.)

Years later, as the country grew and matured, it suffered a terrible plague of yellow fever, the HIV of that day. Again Southeast Square became a field of open trenches filled with bodies no one wanted to touch. And then still later, the city leaders wanted to “beautify” the square. After World War II a new monument to Washington was added. It is a wonderful statue of Washington looking across the square in the direction of Independence Hall, as if keeping vigil on where it all began.

And then an idea emerged to also build a monument to the fallen soldiers who still claimed this square as their own. So they built the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier that lies just beneath Washington’s statue. The designers were thoughtful enough to add stone benches at the soldier’s head and feet. And this became my favorite place within a favorite place to sit and rest and watch the flickering eternal flame, and think about sacrifice and hope, about the dreadful power of the written word held true, about what was done here, and about what still needs doing.

The final reason this place within a place is my favorite place is because the soldier who lies there truly is unknown, or as some would say, known only to God. You see, as the tomb was being erected, the archeologists went looking for the body of an American soldier buried in the square, but they came upon many civilian bodies all mixed in. Finally, they found the body of a young soldier in his twenties with what appeared to be a musket ball wound to the head. So, he was their man. Just one small thing. They could not be sure if he was an American, or a British soldier.

And so the deeper meditation for me, when I sit next to the remains of this one unknown, but not unremembered, I am reminded that enemies on this 4th of July are allies tomorrow, and how well the dead accept the uncertainties of the future, just as easily as they accommodate their neighbors in the square – both the living and the dead.

Be well, and be careful out there.

This phrase “all things considered” is crucial in any conversation about this because most of us do not know what to consider. We do not know what consideration to make for the overburdened caseworkers. We do not know how to consider the magnitude of the shredded social contract that we, as a society, have abrogated with the poor in our midst. And we certainly do not know how to consider factors like high school dropout rates, and multi-generational incarcerations, and babies having babies.

So, instead of considering all things considerable, instead of doing the heavy lifting of renegotiating a social contract that supports the common good, as a society we lazily recoil into the disingenuous language of “accountability”. We do what societies have always done when they are unwilling, or unable, to acknowledge that they have allowed the binding social structures and nurturing relationships that feed and support their society to erode and degrade well past any semblance of a tipping point. We blame. We focus on the last set of fingerprints to touch the catastrophe – the social workers and child welfare workers, and the agencies themselves.

Yet, who among us has met a social worker who chose the field because they lacked all hope for the future? Who among us knows a child welfare worker who is apathetic about the welfare of children? Probably none of us has.

At the same time who among us knows a child welfare worker who is bone tired at the end of the day? Who over time begins to succumb ever so slowly, fighting every inch of the way, to the cynicism and hopelessness that surrounds them all day long? Probably all of us.

In a sense working in child welfare agencies is a bit like working for the phone company or the Post Office– the stakes are higher to be sure, but the measure and methods of accountability are not all that dissimilar. There was a time, long forgotten now, when a person would pick up a telephone and listen for a dial tone and then begin dialing. There was a time when people would drop a letter in a mailbox and have no idea how long it would take to arrive at the destination, or if it would arrive at all. Those times are so long ago that such memories will die with the earliest of the boomers.

Now, except for some major natural disaster like an earthquake, or hurricane and the like, the land line telephone system’s dial tone is up and running for all but less than four seconds a year. More than ninety percent of all domestic first-class mail arrives at it destination in four days or less. Our stories, though, are different. More dramatic, more conspiratorial. The phone line needed to make an emergency call was dead. The check that never arrived, and so on.

Technological systems as they mature become more predictable. One day soon dropped cell calls will be as rare as no dial tone. Human systems, infinitely more complex human relationships, do not necessarily share this evolutionary pattern that we have instilled in our cybernetic brothers and sisters. For certain, we do develop systems to predict behavior, especially on a large scale. Modern pollsters and marketers are testament to that. On the level of the individual, however, such tools are rudimentary at best.

There was a time not so long ago, perhaps three or four generations ago, when news of a dead infant was hardly news at all. There were too many mouths to feed, and so infants were abandoned – the whole was greater than the one. There were mythical explanations for such things as SIDS, and seizure disorders. Actually, in some parts of the world that is still the case. Today, in this country anyway, the death of an infant is news, often big news. And that is a good thing.

Modern child welfare workers are professionals armed with many assessment tools backed by years of solid research. They are well trained, and are earnest about their work. But not unlike medicine, their expertise is as much or more an art as it is a science. They sometimes must follow a hunch, even as they analyze the data. And they often have to make incredibly difficult decisions in unimaginably difficult situations. They must find this particular child at risk of drowning, a child who is swimming in a sea filled with thousands of other children all barely able to swim. And when that child’s hand slips from their grasp, rather than saying: What happened? What can we learn from this? How can we tighten our grip? we ask instead: Who is to blame? Why did you let this happen?

When these children die, it is often those working in the system who mourn most deeply for their loss. They often have fabricated loving and caring bonds with those children. Yet, who cares for them? Who comes to them and puts their arms around them to console them? Who sits with them to witness as they grapple with their guilt? Who listens with compassion as they sit with their grief? Who heals their wounds? Probably none of us.

Merely writing at the top of this page that today is Veteran’s Day invites images of the two veterans I know best – my dad, and my friend, Steve. They are veterans of two very different wars. One from World War II, and the other from Vietnam. Yet, the images I hold are oddly similar. I hold images of both of them as young men, as very fit, and at times as very frightened. I also hold the image that they both endured.

Maybe this is the better word than “survivor” – an endurer. Sounds somehow stronger, less victim-like. Even victorious in a peculiar way.

Yes, endurer is a better word, I believe. It is more active, more choiceful. Endurance is worked at – each day, each minute, each step forward, every step back. Every time we fall down and pick ourselves up again. All part of a regimen, the work of building endurance. I also like the fact that endurance doesn’t just occur. Rather, it is built. I like the scaffold and frame of it, the brick and mortar all crafted over time.

Survivor has a passive quality to it for me. Surviving just happens. A person walks away from a catastrophic event – a plane crash, a bombing, whatever – and everyone else has perished. Why me? What does this mean that I survived and the others didn’t? The inevitable questions. An aftershock occurs then as two thoughts collide. Both thoughts balance on a razor thin seesaw – our survival doesn’t mean anything, and our survival means everything. One possible outcome happened, and anything except that outcome might also have happened. Limit and limitlessness echo the first catastrophe, the first overturning. So, try as we might, the unvarnished truth gains no purchase in our minds. So, we create a story. We make it mean something.

“Survivor” then is too gratuitous a word for a day like today. Too much in the realm of the gods, where the Fates continue on with their mindless spinning and cutting. Even the very roots of this word speak to its passivity. It comes from supervivere, and it means “to outlive”.

And I suspect that not all endurers are survivors. Many endurers endured for as long as they could, even as long as they lived. Maybe they endured, maybe they built their endurance day after day until that moment when the Fates capriciously stopped spinning and cut the thread that tethered them to this world. And that may well be why it is an irrefutable assertion by every veteran I have ever encountered that the very best of them did not survive their ordeal, that the very best of them were either laid to rest there in the ground that they sanctified, or they were carried home to sanctify another place. Even thye endured.

Perhaps that is what I admire most about Dad and Steve. Each in their own ways have endured, and continue to endure. And here the roots of this word, endure, serve as valuable informants – indurare is Vulgar Latin meaning “to harden”.

Perhaps now the next time I see a homeless veteran with his telling tattoos and equally telling gaze, I will see an endurer. Perhaps now I can let go of some judgments, and when I encounter anyone, I will see an endurer.

The truth of it is that I do not know what a veteran looks like. Is it that man in his late fifties pushing his shopping cart toward the freeway overpass? Is it the nurse in the ER who looks more than tired, who looks weary? Or is it the old man alone in the wheelchair who has but one leg, and whose crisp white shirt is now a size too big? And a veteran may well be the man in his thirties driving a massive SUV with those ribbony "Support Our Troops" magnets on the back - still armored, still vigilant. Maybe these are veterans all. They have long since abandoned their uniforms, yet they may not have left their units.

All we can know with any certainty is that they are endurers. We can know that they have been hardened, and perhaps even tempered, by the hammer and anvil moments that have crafted so much of their lives.

All I can know is that these veterans are an inspiration to me. They are a reminder that building endurance is also one way to make meaning of our suffering.

And some words are smeared.

For a time there was an attempt to shackle the word “compassionate” to “conservative”, and in the process was almost smeared. This word, compassion, which for a while was in some danger, fared better than many. Maybe because it is such a powerful word on its own that it was able to break free from such limitations, and now we are all free to be compassionate again. Or perhaps in light of the images of New Orleans after the storms the word “conservative” was diminished, and could no longer hold the binds. Compassion survived. Compassion endures. I hold small hope for its recent cellmate.

There is another word that has not fared so well. And this word is one that we will be hearing repeatedly, the staccato rat-tat-tat so often part of any smear campaign. And the word is appease.

What does it mean to appease? What exactly is an appeaser? What is at the root of this urge, of this word? Why is it so maligned, especially now in these troubled times?

The taproot of appease comes from Latin by way of the French. Deep in the soil is the Latin word, pax. A bit closer to the surface is the Old French, pais, and then closer still to the topsoil is apaiser, and then just beneath the surface is the Old English word apesen. They all mean the same – peace. A common thread even to this day. The modern definition of appease is: to make quiet; to calm; to reduce to a state of peace; to still; to dispel anger.

It is for me a tragedy to witness such a wonderful word maligned so frequently by those who know nothing of its history, of its ancestors, of its deep inner life.

Much these days is made of “appeasing the Nazis” before the war. But what if we were to look at history with a little less judgment for a moment and let it speak to us with a clear voice of what was? The times then in Europe in the 30s were quite different from our time. Less than two decades before their lands and their people were decimated in a war of unimaginable savagery. Memories, no less than lungs, were seared with the poison fog that blanketed their lives for a time. Some had little stomach for more. Others saw that conflict led to more conflict, that hatred only amplifies itself, and never diminishes of its own accord.

And still others took a great risk. They risked being forever maligned by future generations as “appeasers”. But all such labels are merely artifacts of hindsight. Who can know in the moment the wisdom of any path, of any choice? There were times when my child was small, and he was crying, and I appeased him. I held him close, and stroked his hair until he was still, until he was calm, until he was himself again. There were other times when I didn’t. Any parent in rare moments of vulnerable self-disclosure will say that they do not know for sure what is the best thing to do. Often they do what they think best, and hope that it turns out to be the “right thing”.

Every moment when we choose to appease, we choose a path of great risk. We choose a path that is not dependent on the actions, or reactions, of others. It is a path of non-contingency. When we choose such a path, it is one of stillness. A path of calmness. A path of hopefulness and moderation. There are also times when this path proves to be a dangerous one, and sometimes it even proves to be a deadly one.

But not always.

Now may not be the best time to reclaim this beautiful word, this word that can only be uttered by using the whole mouth. It is a word that begins in the back of the throat with a strong vowel, and then forces our lips together midway, and then invites our tongues forward to complete the sound. It is a good word, a clean word.

I will wait patiently for its safe return.

Yet, I have no doubt that this word will endure, and that in time, like compassion, it will prevail.

“I am a citizen of Rome” once was the magic incantation that unlocked doors and thwarted potential foes. “I am an American” for a brief time in the world acted with similar magic. The incantation in this case was short-lived, however.

Perceptions, though, often lag behind the facts. We often do still feel “special”. Tragedies that befall us are, well, more tragic. Three thousand lives lost here are somehow different than the one hundred thousand lives lost there. The lives lost here mattered more appears to be the unspoken sub-text. Not uttered because were it to be, then the offensiveness of such an assertion would be unavoidable.

And then there are the very special among the merely special. They are beyond elite such that their status is also unuttered, lest it be then acknowledged to be so. Many of these beyond elites are wealthy, but not all. What they do share is the ownership of power, and the ability to exempt themselves from much that is onerous in everyday life.

Full disclosure here before I offer an example - I am on the progressive side of the liberal spectrum. And while I see much of this exceptional exceptionalism operating within the current conservative enclaves across the country, it is by no means exclusive of them.

I first began thinking about this exceptional squared phenomenon a number of years ago while walking through Chinatown in San Francisco. The light turned green. I was about to cross California Street when a motorcycle policeman with lights flashing pulled up to stop all cross traffic. I asked him what the emergency was. He said that Senator Ted Kennedy’s limousine was headed up to the top of Nob Hill. I asked the officer why the senator’s car couldn’t stop at the light like everyone else. He did not respond.

While I like the senator’s position on a number of issues, he does not represent me in Congress. He has no standing in the state of California, and ought to wait at a light from time to time like the rest of us. The thought occurred to me that, if more people in power actually had to wait in traffic, instead of tying up traffic with their motorcades, then perhaps there would be substantial improvement in public transportation. Just a thought.

Examples of this kind of special treatment are too numerous to delineate. Who does not have some story about being inconvenienced because some powerful figure needs some “VIP treatment”? I am not talking about legitimate security concerns. Obviously, there are times when it is necessary to inconvenience the many to secure the few. There are other times, however, when there is no legitimate concern. These times are just another entitlement program.

So, this takes us to some more current matters, specifically these latest absurd restrictions on carry-on items for air travel. Is there anyone who actually believes that such restrictions like not bringing deodorant or toothpaste into the aircraft cabin would have been introduced, if they were also applied to those making the rules. Imagine Air Force One devoid of hair gel and mouthwash. Or the wealthy who lease “flex jets” on occasion having to toss their perfume in a plastic container before they board. And why not? Such restrictions would have the same impact on safety as they do on commercial flights. Besides couldn’t they have terrorists on board? Couldn’t terrorists carry lethal liquids on leased planes and enhance an explosion as they fly them into commercial airliners? We cannot be too careful. We cannot be too vigilant.

Actually, we can. When it actually inconveniences the truly exceptional, that is.