The sun is rising here and we realize that this is the morning after the death of a hateful bigot, so we allow cautious hope to bloom again in our souls!
by Charlie Leck
“We learned when the planes landed safely, when the malls stayed open, when the commencements came and went, when one baseball season gave way to another.
“Day after day, hour after hour, we learned that we were strong and they were weak.”
[Ross Douthat, NY Times (2 May 2012)
It’s a mixed up morning. I can’t pump my fist into the sky and cheer wildly. The death of a man – even an evil man – brings no great elation to me. Yet I am stirred that some sense of justice has been accomplished. My wife comes up from the farm for breakfast. She hasn’t heard the news. I tell her.
“Osama bin Laden is dead. They killed him last night.”
She, too, is silent and says nothing. I know she is remembering the morning. She was at the airport. I had just dropped her off. I was driving across town, toward my office in St. Paul. The report came in on the radio. It was confusing. Then the news became clearer. She called my office and we spoke. I went back to the airport to get her and we hugged as we hadn’t in a long, long time. We brought home a stranded traveler who was to become a dear and close friend. We wept for the families of the dead. We couldn’t understand such savagery and hatred.
I still cannot comprehend it.
If you read anything today, go to Ross Douthat’s column in today’s NY Times and read in through. It says something important about our nation.
Osama bin Laden is dead
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