Dear Friends,

I haven't gotten enough sleep in the last few nights, as like so many Americans I haven't been able to lure myself away from TV. Thoughts of various forms of terrorism kept bombarding my mind, disturbing whatever efforts I made to establish for myself some inner peace in the midst of all this madness. By this morning, my prayers for peace were answered, as I saw some things I hadn't seen before. We all know that America's heart has been broken this week. But I am reminded of a Carly Simon lyric: "There's more room in a broken heart." Millions of us are hugging our kids a little tighter, treating our friends and loved ones more tenderly, and counting our blessings for real this week. Also, I don't think that any woman ever again will walk up Madison Avenue in New York City and think that a Gucci bag is all THAT important. In short, we have been shocked out of a collective stupor this week, and there is benefit in that for all of us. God can bring good out of anything, even evil. There is nothing that cannot be used to take us closer to the love in our hearts. For in a state of full despair, of streaming tears and painful sorrow, we become the soft and pliable beings that in fact we truly are. As it is said in Alcoholics Anonymous, 'Every problem comes bearing its own solution.' If we allow this crisis to transform us personally, then our country will achieve a badly needed shift in our collective ground of being: spiritual issues will take primacy over material things, love will take primacy over money, and hope and faith will take primacy over cynicism and apathy. We had become a complacent nation, registering deeply neither the blessings nor the dangers which surrounded us. And now we are complacent no longer. We have awoken, among other things, to how precious this country is to us, and this week it is not unhip to say so. Democracy had become to us just one more thing that we took for granted, even as we watched it slide further and further away from a living, breathing system into an abstract concept more hypocritically revered than vitally practiced. Well now, Mr. and Ms. Terrorists -- whoever you are and wherever you are -- we have remembered what this amazing thing is that we have inherited from our ancestors, and have every intention of bequeathing to our children. Yes, you were powerful, in a way, for a minute - but only because you caught us sleeping. You woke us up. And you are powerful no more. Whatever it is, Mr. and Ms. Terrorist, that you think you can destroy - our buildings, our communications systems, our monetary system, even our bodies - what we truly are, you cannot destroy. For what truly defines us are the ideals at the core of this wounded nation. Buildings can fall and bodies can perish - but those ideals are alive as long as they are alive in any of us. They are alive in many of us now more powerfully than they had been in years: yes, this is a nation - for all our problems and hypocrisies and mistakes - which has good reason to be on this earth. Which has a destiny yet to fulfill, and gifts still yet to contribute to this world. It has been a blessing on our parents before us, and promises to be a blessing on our children and theirs. We love that idea. We embrace that idea. No bombs, no terrorism, can kill it or diminish it. It lives in us. And it will live on. Amen.

Love, Marianne