September 11 2001

My prayers are for the living

It is perhaps altogether fitting that the tenth 9/11 since that day,
  that has changed so much should fall on a Sunday,
a day when many many Americans spend with family and in sober reflection.

It is often said that in all tragedies it is the children that suffer first, if not most. 
Therefore, first and foremost on this day our hearts and prayers must go out to those whose hearts were broken on that day,
when a wife or husband, father, mother, sons and daughters, brother or sister, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews vanished. 

It is only natural that we miss them and wonder what life would have been if these horrible events had not taken them from us.

My prayers are for the living.

Our Republic has survived, but that survival has been hard won. 
We, as a nation have had to ask some difficult questions,
and answers have been few and fewer still have been wholly satisfactory.

What do you do when you have been attacked? 
Do you dim the beacon of liberty in the name of security?

Or, alternatively do we let that beacon of liberty which this great country represents shine brightly,
and remain that symbol of a way of life that has given much,
and at the same time requires so much of its citizens.

I choose liberty.


Eric LaMont Gregory
11 September 2011