9/11/01... A portrait of needless human suffering (from encore-editions.com)

Like many people I have a personal connection to the events of September 11th, 2001. Every year I have pretty much no desire to relive the actual events of that day, which I find to be a needless and morbid exercise. It doesn’t mean that remembering the needless suffering of 9/11 isn’t important.

Needless human suffering was not invented 10 years ago. And yet, today is an important opportunity to reflect on just how much of it exists in our world, and the great moral calling that we all face as members of the human race to remedy it.

Here is a stirring passage from Baha’u’llah which I find apt. Rather than interjecting my own interpretations I will let the words speak for themselves.

Say: O men! This is a matchless Day. Matchless must, likewise, be the  tongue that celebrateth the praise of the Desire of all nations, and  matchless the deed that aspireth to be acceptable in His sight. The whole human race hath longed for this Day, that perchance it may fulfil that which well beseemeth its station, and is worthy of its destiny. Blessed is the man whom the affairs of the world have failed to deter from recognizing Him Who is the Lord of all things.

So blind hath become the human heart that neither the disruption of the city, nor the reduction of the mountain in dust, nor even the cleaving of the earth, can shake off its torpor. The allusions made in the Scriptures have been unfolded, and the signs recorded therein have been revealed, and the prophetic cry is continually being raised. And yet all, except such as God was pleased to guide, are bewildered in the drunkenness of their heedlessness!

– Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, v. XVI, p. 39.