by Kevin Anderson, Ph.D.

Psychologists call it "flashbulb memory," the fact that our recall for emotionally intense experiences is often unusually detailed, burned into our brains forever. September 11th was one of those days that you can probably remember exactly where you were, maybe even what you were wearing, when you heard the news.

I don’t remember what I was wearing, but I do remember the first thought that came to mind as it became clear that the first plane crash was no accident: "What kind of world are we raising our children into!?" I suspect that as the great grief cry of humankind went out that day, almost everyone on the planet had a similar question form in the deepest layers of his or her consciousness.

I visited my father in the hospital the day after the attacks. It had seemed enough until then for him to deal with his own dying process, but from the look on his face, I could tell he was dismayed about the kind of world he was leaving to his thirty-two grandchildren. When our sense of security is attacked, we think of the most vulnerable among us, those who we know are entirely innocent, those who radiate beauty and hope for the future, those who will be here when we are gone.

Our own three-year old son asked me several weeks after the attacks, "Dad, are there nightmares in this world?" When I tried to tell him that nightmares are just dreams, he replied, "No, I mean in the real world." What could I say? I felt the aftershocks of that dark day rumble through my soul again, and I wanted to pinch myself in hopes that it was just a bad dream.

We all sensed instantly that our world had changed forever on September 11th, but we tend to assume that means forever for the worse. Must we now go about our daily lives merely blocking out the anxiety that found its way into the innermost core of our souls that day? I recently asked a friend, a deeply spiritual man, how he’s been dealing with all the talk about weapons of mass destruction, the warnings about possible terrorist attacks. He said he just tries not to think about it, which is, I suppose, how most of us are coping. But that won’t get the job done. What job? The kingdom, of course. Jesus told us that the kingdom of God is among us, but most of us still think of it as a place far away from this earth, a place we hope to go to when we die. People are blowing themselves up, murdering fellow human beings hoping to get to that place. Somehow we still don’t get what Jesus was trying to say.

Every parent on the planet wants the same thing, a world in which our children can live in peace. If we let this deepest hope for our children be reduced to rubble by the September 11th attacks, we have allowed those planes to topple far more than buildings. We could choose instead to focus on the idea that the darkest hour of night is the one just before dawn.

What kind of wishful thinking is that, you say? Was Jesus just a dreamer out of touch with reality? Can we not hope as he did? People often don’t change until they "hit bottom." Alcoholics and drug addicts sometimes need everything to fall apart before the reality of their illness penetrates their denial. Could it be the same with the human race? Could we finally realize that we’d better start treating everyone as children of the same God, not as separate people divided by imaginary borders - or face even darker days than the one we now commemorate?

I don’t have much faith in the war on terrorism. Violence follows violence like the harvest follows the planting season. I hope our leaders are starting to get that. I pray that there are more people working on a solution to the political and religious tensions in the middle east than there are on the war in Afghanistan. But all the politicians in the world won’t get the job done either. Every person on the planet has a role to play. "Forgive us our trespasses," Jesus prayed, not "Forgive them their trespasses."

Since Dad died, life is different. I still turn away from his picture, so deep is the longing to see him face to face again, but my life is curiously more joyful since his passing. That has nothing to do with his absence and everything to do with the focusing power of his death. It’s as if a basic message got through to my spirit as I tried to absorb his loss: "If this is where life leads, then I will live now with hope and joy and purpose. I will live less for money and "success" and more for service, less for what others think and more to do my part in ushering in my small corner of the kingdom."

I wonder if the collective spirit of humankind could get a similar message from September 11th. Maybe it is circling the globe with the dust particles still suspended in the atmosphere from the events of that terrible day. Perhaps a message of hope could settle down gently upon every living person: "We are all one. We are all one step from the edge of the annihilation. We are all one step from the edge of the annihilation of all hatred."

Kevin Anderson is a psychologist, writer, and founder of the Center for Life Balance, an organization committed to improving the quality of marriage and family life.