Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

     This time of the year always depresses me a little. It isn’t the long hours of harvest or the fact that soon I will be making daily trips into the basement to check the corn furnace. Rather, it is that for the next week, every time I turn on the television I sit and watch the towers of the World Trade Center fall over and over again, reliving that terrible morning.

     Now before anyone starts sending me pamphlets, dvd’s or crazy mail trying to convince me that there were two gunmen on the grassy knoll that morning, let me tell you this isn’t a column about the people who were responsible or if our government had anything to do with it. No, it’s more about the lessons that we learned that morning and seemed to have forgotten somewhere over the last eleven years.

     Take yourself back there in your mind to that day, and the first few days that followed, while millions of us were glued to television sets and tried to make sense of what we were seeing. What did you do in that first week? Were you one of the people who rushed to donate blood? Did you sit in the pew at church and pray for the victims and their families? Did you decide you owed something to this country and walked into a recruiter’s office? Or were you like many of us who started to reflect on who we were, and what we had done with our time?

     I don’t think any of us didn’t stop for a moment and think to ourselves that we should have taken time to be nicer to each other, to be more respectful, to speak kinder, to help someone shoulder their burden. Many of us went home and sat on the living room floor and played with our kids for hours. Even more people picked up the phone and called family and friends, trying to mend fences, and to just simply remind the people on the other end of the call how important they were to us. Do you also remember going to church and not just the first Sunday after, but for weeks and months following that day?

     What has happened to us these last eleven years? At what point did we forget the lessons of that day? Have we continued to be the people we were shocked into being that day, or have we simply swept it under the rug and moved on about our own lives as though we were an island where our main goal was making sure the sun shined brighter on us alone? Have you spoke kindly to and about people around you? Have you treated those you love as though you really do? Have you respected and cared for the people in your life? Has your community and country benefited from your involvement?

     Reread that last paragraph and answer those questions honestly to yourself. Oh sure, I haven’t kept up my end of the bargain and I’m sure many of you haven’t either. We have forgotten the lessons of that day, and have forgotten why we are here on this earth. Not for our own personal gain, not to be the one standing on top of the mountain with a laurel around our neck, but to help each other and to be there not just in the bad times, but when times are good.

     I challenge you today, to take stock in the lessons you learned that day. Make the effort to mend fences, to apologize, to be involved, to be less distracted and to stand up for the things that are right and to always live to serve your fellow man. For if we disregard the lessons we have learned history is bound to repeat itself. I for one, really hopes that never happens, for it isn’t the kind of world I want my children to grow up in.

See you next week….remember, we’re all in this together.