A little-known country western singer named Darryl Worley wrote a song called "Have You Forgotten" not long after the events ten years ago today. How things change. Darryl became a little more famous and we finally got bin Laden.
Now if we can, as a nation, keep from forgetting why we went after OBL in the first place, we'll do ourselves and our children proud. Oh, and our soldiers who are still a long, long way from home fighting and dying. . .
I hear people saying we don't need this war
But, I say there's some things worth fighting for
What about our freedom and this piece of ground
We didn't get to keep 'em by backing down
They say we don't realize the mess we're getting in
Before you start your preaching let me ask you this my friend
Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?
They took all the footage off my T.V.
Said it's too disturbing for you and me
It'll just breed anger that's what the experts say
If it was up to me I'd show it everyday
Some say this country's just out looking for a fight
Well, after 9/11 man I'd have to say that's right
Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And we vowed to get the one’s behind bin Laden
Have you forgotten?
I've been there with the soldiers
Who've gone away to war
And you can bet that they remember
Just what they're fighting for
Have you forgotten all the people killed?
Yeah, some went down like heroes in that Pennsylvania field
Have you forgotten about our Pentagon?
All the loved ones that we lost and those left to carry on
Don't you tell me not to worry about bin Laden
Have you forgotten?
Have you forgotten?
Have you forgotten?
("Have You Forgotten," Darryl Worley, DreamWorks Records, Nashville, 2003)
Wordly discourse on everything from the sad state of public education, politics and world peace to vegetarianism, breast vs. bottle, religious persecution, bad media, and all manner of life's vagaries.
September 11, 2011
September 10, 2011
It's not enough to simply remember 9/11
In the hours leading up to the 10th anniversary of 9/11 terrorist attacks, I've been listening to different perspectives about the day and its significance, and I've been thinking a lot about my own. My children helped me put the American flags out in the yard. We started to put up our white cross, too -- the one we use at Easter and on Memorial and Veterans days.
Looking at that clean, smooth, blank, white cross, I was compelled to do something to it. The compulsion came from something I'd heard on the radio a couple of nights ago.
An author and speaker named Pamela Geller has written a book about how Islam has infiltrated America in ways almost too numerous to believe. Geller is not a paranoid, she's actually a well-educated and well-documented researcher of cultural and political change and, judging from the interview I heard, she's very plain-spoken.
Geller said many things that gave me pause, things I want to research and verify for myself. But one thing she said really stood out and needs no verification.
"It's all well and good -- and very important -- to remember the victims and the heroes of 9/11, but one thing I'm not hearing or seeing in the media is any mention of the ideology that brought about the events of that day," she said.
The ideology that spurred the 9/11 hijackers to do what they did, the ideology that prompted Nadal Hassan to go on his shooting spree at Ft. Hood, the ideology that fueled the destruction of the huge, priceless and irreplaceable Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan, the ideology that accepts the stoning or live burial of women who are raped -- instead of meting out these punishments to their attackers -- the ideology behind the bombings of embassies throughout the Middle East, the ideology that caused writer Molly Norris to give up her identity and her career to protect her life, the ideology that says if Christians and Jews cannot be converted then they must be killed, THAT ideology that no one dares name aloud for fear of having a death sentence placed on their heads, that's the ideology that is responsible for the terrible events of 9/11/01.
It has a name.
Islam.
There, I said it.
When we talk about 9/11/01 to our children, we should tell them the truth. Those men who hijacked the planes didn't just wake up one day and decide to forge a career in terrorism. They trained, planned, rehearsed, and carried out a plot of near-epic proportions one beautiful blue day in September. They committed their own insane, pathetic lives to a mission that, they believed, would propel them straight to heaven and into the arms of a crowd of virgins.
They did all of this because of Islam.
Islam made those terrorists who they were. Islam made the Twin Towers come down. Islam gave the first responders something to respond to. Islam forced the passengers of Flight 93 to drive that plane hard and fast down into the ground of a Pennsylvania field. Islam put the smoking, gaping hole in the side of the Pentagon. Islam did all that and much, much more and none of it has been good.
None of it.
With all of these things in mind, I took up my clean,smooth, blank, white cross and brought it in the house. I laid it out on the kitchen table and using big bold markers I inscribed it with the following:
9/11
NEVER FORGET
God
blesses
the
HEROES
After I was done, I stood back and looked at it. Something was still missing. Something else needed to be said.
Then I remembered Pamela Geller's remark.
Underneath the words "NEVER FORGET," I wrote, "what Islam did." Then I took the cross back outside and stuck it in the ground amidst the flags waving in my front yard so that it could speak the full truth.
When we remember 9/11, its perpetrators, its victims, its heroes, we must also remember what made those people perpetrators, victims and heroes.
When it comes time to tell your children the story of 9/11/01, I hope you'll find the courage to tell them what kind of terrorists Mohammad Atta and Co. were.
If you don't, you're not telling them the truth.
Looking at that clean, smooth, blank, white cross, I was compelled to do something to it. The compulsion came from something I'd heard on the radio a couple of nights ago.
An author and speaker named Pamela Geller has written a book about how Islam has infiltrated America in ways almost too numerous to believe. Geller is not a paranoid, she's actually a well-educated and well-documented researcher of cultural and political change and, judging from the interview I heard, she's very plain-spoken.
Geller said many things that gave me pause, things I want to research and verify for myself. But one thing she said really stood out and needs no verification.
"It's all well and good -- and very important -- to remember the victims and the heroes of 9/11, but one thing I'm not hearing or seeing in the media is any mention of the ideology that brought about the events of that day," she said.
The ideology that spurred the 9/11 hijackers to do what they did, the ideology that prompted Nadal Hassan to go on his shooting spree at Ft. Hood, the ideology that fueled the destruction of the huge, priceless and irreplaceable Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan, the ideology that accepts the stoning or live burial of women who are raped -- instead of meting out these punishments to their attackers -- the ideology behind the bombings of embassies throughout the Middle East, the ideology that caused writer Molly Norris to give up her identity and her career to protect her life, the ideology that says if Christians and Jews cannot be converted then they must be killed, THAT ideology that no one dares name aloud for fear of having a death sentence placed on their heads, that's the ideology that is responsible for the terrible events of 9/11/01.
It has a name.
Islam.
There, I said it.
When we talk about 9/11/01 to our children, we should tell them the truth. Those men who hijacked the planes didn't just wake up one day and decide to forge a career in terrorism. They trained, planned, rehearsed, and carried out a plot of near-epic proportions one beautiful blue day in September. They committed their own insane, pathetic lives to a mission that, they believed, would propel them straight to heaven and into the arms of a crowd of virgins.
They did all of this because of Islam.
Islam made those terrorists who they were. Islam made the Twin Towers come down. Islam gave the first responders something to respond to. Islam forced the passengers of Flight 93 to drive that plane hard and fast down into the ground of a Pennsylvania field. Islam put the smoking, gaping hole in the side of the Pentagon. Islam did all that and much, much more and none of it has been good.
None of it.
With all of these things in mind, I took up my clean,smooth, blank, white cross and brought it in the house. I laid it out on the kitchen table and using big bold markers I inscribed it with the following:
9/11
NEVER FORGET
God
blesses
the
HEROES
After I was done, I stood back and looked at it. Something was still missing. Something else needed to be said.
Then I remembered Pamela Geller's remark.
Underneath the words "NEVER FORGET," I wrote, "what Islam did." Then I took the cross back outside and stuck it in the ground amidst the flags waving in my front yard so that it could speak the full truth.
When we remember 9/11, its perpetrators, its victims, its heroes, we must also remember what made those people perpetrators, victims and heroes.
When it comes time to tell your children the story of 9/11/01, I hope you'll find the courage to tell them what kind of terrorists Mohammad Atta and Co. were.
If you don't, you're not telling them the truth.
September 2, 2011
My daughter in Greek and Russian
I wish you could hear what I hear, the sound of an 11-year-old girl reading ancient Greek. As the words of Matthew tumble from her nimble tongue, I am amazed at everything she knows -- and everything I don't.
This is the child diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, the fancy name for high-functioning autism.
She and her sister decided to learn the Greek alphabet a year ago as part of a unit study of ancient Greece. They read, wrote, drew, sculpted, painted, and cut and pasted their way through endless projects on everything from Aesop and his fables to Pericles and the Golden Age of Athens. They explored the inventions and the brilliant mind of Archimedes and together we marvelled at Eratosthenes' ability to measure the circumference of the earth with neither mapping satellite nor the internet to guide him.
I printed out a chart from an online site with the Greek alphabet characters and the girls learned their names and their phonetic sounds. Then they learned to write them. Then they wanted to write them in meaningful ways.
So I went out and bought a very elementary introduction to the language known as New Testament (koine) Greek. I figured the first book (of a series of eight) would be enough. It would be fun for awhile and the girls would move on.
I had no idea, and maybe that's the way it was supposed to be.
Book One of the strangely titled, but highly effective series, "Hey Andrew, Teach Me Some Greek" quickly segued to Book Two and that led to Book Three. The books are each intended to take anywhere from six months to a year to complete, I'm told.
My oldest did just the opposite, completing the first six books in one year. Her younger sister isn't far behind, having completed four of them in the same period of time.
As my older daughter headed full bore into Book 7 a couple of weeks ago, with her sights firmly set on finishing Book 8 sometime next spring, I was left to wonder, "what next?"
I got my answer this afternoon.
I wrote to the author of the "Hey Andrew" program to ask her whether a Book 9 might be in the works. I neither read nor write nor speak Greek, ancient or otherwise, so I cannot tell by looking at Book 8 where it leaves off. At what level IS a student once they're done with the series?
The author kindly wrote back to explain that upon completion of Book 8, a student is ready for a text used in colleges at the sophomore through senior levels. They are ready to begin reading the New Testament in Greek.
When I read this, I caught my breath. What if my daughter could do that now?
I found a NT Greek text online and brought up the first page of Matthew. Calling my daughter over to the computer, I asked her whether she saw anything on that page she could read.
"Yes!" she said, emphatically. Softly, she began to read.
In a language I cannot ever hope to understand, my daughter read to me the beginning of the genealogy of Jesus. In ancient words, the ancient names of Abraham, Isaac, Jesse, David, and many others rolled off her tongue.
Could she tell me what she'd just read, I asked. She could. Would she like to read more? Yes. Did she want me to order her a New Testament written in ancient Greek? Oh yes, please.
So what's with the Russian?
Some years back I'd bought a fun little book that depicts objects from the Hermitage art museum in St. Petersburg alongside the Cyrillic alphabet characters that begin their names. Unbeknownst to me, my Greek-speaking daughter memorized the Russian alphabet at some point but never bothered to share this with anyone.
Back in April she came to me one night and said she wanted to learn Russian.
At the time she'd just begun her fifth book of Greek and I asked whether taking on Russian might be too much. After all, she still had to study math, writing, history, etc.
No, she said. Russian would not be hard and I should order her some things to study. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find Russian-language learning materials, with instructions in English, for someone not even in high school? Most Americans don't tackle this language until they go to college, so I could not find anything at our local homeschool store. I finally found an audio CD-based program for her to use. A 10-week worktext lasted three weeks with virtually no mistakes. . .
Today we drove an hour or more to pick up a Cyrillic-language typewriter I bought on eBay and had to have serviced before it could be used.
My daughter is ready to type her thoughts in Russian and has spent the better part of this evening doing just that. She told me she'd translate for me any time I want to know what she's written.
There's no way to predict how she will make use of her skills in Greek and Russian, but I have to marvel at God in His infinite wisdom. We never knew, but He always did.
"For God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty." (1 Corinthians 1:27)
This is the child diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, the fancy name for high-functioning autism.
She and her sister decided to learn the Greek alphabet a year ago as part of a unit study of ancient Greece. They read, wrote, drew, sculpted, painted, and cut and pasted their way through endless projects on everything from Aesop and his fables to Pericles and the Golden Age of Athens. They explored the inventions and the brilliant mind of Archimedes and together we marvelled at Eratosthenes' ability to measure the circumference of the earth with neither mapping satellite nor the internet to guide him.
I printed out a chart from an online site with the Greek alphabet characters and the girls learned their names and their phonetic sounds. Then they learned to write them. Then they wanted to write them in meaningful ways.
So I went out and bought a very elementary introduction to the language known as New Testament (koine) Greek. I figured the first book (of a series of eight) would be enough. It would be fun for awhile and the girls would move on.
I had no idea, and maybe that's the way it was supposed to be.
Book One of the strangely titled, but highly effective series, "Hey Andrew, Teach Me Some Greek" quickly segued to Book Two and that led to Book Three. The books are each intended to take anywhere from six months to a year to complete, I'm told.
My oldest did just the opposite, completing the first six books in one year. Her younger sister isn't far behind, having completed four of them in the same period of time.
As my older daughter headed full bore into Book 7 a couple of weeks ago, with her sights firmly set on finishing Book 8 sometime next spring, I was left to wonder, "what next?"
I got my answer this afternoon.
I wrote to the author of the "Hey Andrew" program to ask her whether a Book 9 might be in the works. I neither read nor write nor speak Greek, ancient or otherwise, so I cannot tell by looking at Book 8 where it leaves off. At what level IS a student once they're done with the series?
The author kindly wrote back to explain that upon completion of Book 8, a student is ready for a text used in colleges at the sophomore through senior levels. They are ready to begin reading the New Testament in Greek.
When I read this, I caught my breath. What if my daughter could do that now?
I found a NT Greek text online and brought up the first page of Matthew. Calling my daughter over to the computer, I asked her whether she saw anything on that page she could read.
"Yes!" she said, emphatically. Softly, she began to read.
In a language I cannot ever hope to understand, my daughter read to me the beginning of the genealogy of Jesus. In ancient words, the ancient names of Abraham, Isaac, Jesse, David, and many others rolled off her tongue.
Could she tell me what she'd just read, I asked. She could. Would she like to read more? Yes. Did she want me to order her a New Testament written in ancient Greek? Oh yes, please.
So what's with the Russian?
Some years back I'd bought a fun little book that depicts objects from the Hermitage art museum in St. Petersburg alongside the Cyrillic alphabet characters that begin their names. Unbeknownst to me, my Greek-speaking daughter memorized the Russian alphabet at some point but never bothered to share this with anyone.
Back in April she came to me one night and said she wanted to learn Russian.
At the time she'd just begun her fifth book of Greek and I asked whether taking on Russian might be too much. After all, she still had to study math, writing, history, etc.
No, she said. Russian would not be hard and I should order her some things to study. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find Russian-language learning materials, with instructions in English, for someone not even in high school? Most Americans don't tackle this language until they go to college, so I could not find anything at our local homeschool store. I finally found an audio CD-based program for her to use. A 10-week worktext lasted three weeks with virtually no mistakes. . .
Today we drove an hour or more to pick up a Cyrillic-language typewriter I bought on eBay and had to have serviced before it could be used.
My daughter is ready to type her thoughts in Russian and has spent the better part of this evening doing just that. She told me she'd translate for me any time I want to know what she's written.
There's no way to predict how she will make use of her skills in Greek and Russian, but I have to marvel at God in His infinite wisdom. We never knew, but He always did.
"For God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty." (1 Corinthians 1:27)
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