I Am Like Fire-The Transformation of a Lifetime

A Certain Silence 09/10/2011

While walking this morning, I found myself amazed that though music piped through my earphones, a certain silence enveloped me.  Yes, I was grateful for the sun’s warmth after an astounding cool down this week, and I basked in its glow.  Yet with each step, I pressed through a gossamer veil…into silence.

Tomorrow marks an anniversary no one in America wants to celebrate.  Into our beloved nation’s history now stands another stark reminder of what our brothers and sisters around the world endure more frequently, the rebuilding of lives after terrorist attacks.  The relational brokenness that permeated my life that fateful September 11, 2011 Tuesday morning as I worked in a community pharmacy melted into near-nothingness as my heart ached with my nation’s at the loss of thousands of lives in New York City, Washington, DC, and above the sky near Shanksville, PA.  The sinewy fingers of death sought to silence us, but it failed.  Resoundingly. Failed.

A prescient silence fraught with the untold miracles, stories, love, and potential of lives whose earthly sojourn ended that day rewrote the song of the universe forever.  Silence, yes, but also the song of sacrifice.  Oh that we could have more gracefully entered the dance, but sacrifice is never so convenient.  Two thousand nine hundred and seventy seven people laid down their lives, and thousands of others bear in their souls the indelible mark of the sacrifice of their beloved.  How dare I attempt to write of a sacrifice so great?  I must lay down my pen, still my typing fingers, for I have no idea of what I attempt to speak.

So I step, no, I kneel, with my nation and the world…in a certain silence, and I remember.  No matter the mode by which we journey, the sting of death is always surpassed by Life.  Every race has a purpose greater than us.  Truth never changes.  Therein is the beauty of sacrifice and freedom.  We live on and are the blessing…and so are they.

I am empty,

Empty like the tomb.

I am light

That leaves the day too soon.

I am dark,

As the third watch of the night.

I am song,

With wings your soul takes flight

I am freedom,

Encased in pots of clay.

I am life,

That can never be taken away.

© 2006.  Roxanne E. Barnes. All Rights Reserved.