Bloomfield College News & Events - BLOOMFIELD COLLEGE REMEMBERS 9/11

In times of sorrow, loss and even fear, we each feel the need, as caring and sensitive human beings, to reach out to one another and identify with a larger community.  We reach out to share through commemoration, as we commemorate today the events of September 11.  Two years ago I recall watching in horrifying real time, the destruction of the second Tower, aware that my law firm had an office in that building on the 88th floor and imagining that people I had known for over 25 years might have perished in an instant.  I am so thankful that, almost by a miracle, all of my colleagues escaped serious injury, some by the most amazing of circumstances, but also turn to remember and mourn for the many who did not have such good fortune, who lost husbands, wives, lovers, children, friends and colleagues.

          It is said by social scientists that we started our earliest journey in pre history in small, isolated tribes.  That through time those clannish bonds and loyalties were transferred to larger tribes, then towns, then provinces, then cities, then nation-states.  We must remember, as we look not only to our sorrow, but to our hopes for the future, that we are an evolving species, both physically and politically.  We must realize that events such as 9/11 instruct us that we must continue to work to the day when loyalties are to the entire human race, to the planet itself.  Only when we find the balance in our lives, our world view, our sense of justice, love and acceptance can all the world’s peoples live in peace.

          We are an impatient people.  We think the battle must either be won or lost in a few months, certainly a few years.  But our journey to a world where future 9/11s are no longer possible may take centuries.  We make progress only with hope and faith that we share a common destiny with all humanity and that we bear our share of the responsibility to make it happen.  As President John Kennedy said in 1961, contemplating our human obligation to act, that we must go forth “asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own."