A nation waits for the next news in a long week of wreckage and wondering. I wave a peaceful banner in my heart and feel a traitor, nothing more than a bleeding heart burning flags when I've always feared the flames. I am starving on my country's hunger for retribution. I am troubled by the repercussions that vengeful actions will carry. I am heavy today with these thoughts which speak to the core of what I value.

In so many ways, we are witnessing the consequences of our history and of oppression in the form of military force, economic sanctions and deeper than that, nationalism, racism, religious intolerance, and on and on. Driving today, I heard John Lennon sing, "Imagine there's no country," and really heard him for the first time amidst the cries of people's longing to find a different way to confront terrorism. It's amazing to me how microcosmic this global conflict really is.

In my work, I deal with misused power and force on a regular basis. And though in the United States the majority of women who have survived sexual assault have never known the reality of rape used as a warfare tactic, I know in other nations women face a reality so grave it's diffigult to get your head around.

What turns our sons into rapists and our brothers into terrorists? What hemophiliac blood is on our hands as a country at this moment in our history? What of the woman in Afghanistan fearing for her children's lives? What of us, if we stoop to the level of violence we're facing? When assasinating political leaders and tying the hands of countries across the globe so they have no choice but to comply with our desires and deal with the consequences of their next door neighbors' wrath indefinitely, become the military practice of our day?

In a universe awash with wars of different shapes and sizes, it is always those seeking peace who seem least reasonable. Our retaliatory impulse runs deep. From the walls of death row to the borders of Afghanistan today, we steal through the night in search of a quick fix to the hard, intense, lengthy grief that is just dawning in our universe and in our hearts.

September 17, 2001