Jack’s Winning Words 9/11/13
“What separates us from animals…is to mourn people we’ve never met.”  (David Levithan)  Last Sunday, 60 Minutes had a segment about the 9/11 Museum in NYC, set to open next year.  An interactive display will allow visitors to see pictures of each of the almost 3000 victims.  None who died are known to me, but I’m sure that I’d shed a tear, seeing their faces.  These hymn words have meaning:  “We share our mutual woes, our mutual burdens bear, and often for each other flows, the sympathizing tear.”    :-(  Jack

   FROM ED IN CALIFORNIA:  you know, one of these nights i'm going to get to bed before you send out the morning's Winning Words...====JACK:  That's what happens when we live in different time zones.  My  Grandson John is studying in Australia.  In about 4 hours it will be tomorrow there today.

 FROM BLAZING OAKS:  I saw that report, and the pictures they plan to line the walls with, and of course you think of ALL the repercussions of those  lost  lives, in family grief, lost potential, and loss to what they would have contributed, had they lived.  It is a crushing realization!  This week a little 7 yr. old girl in  our area disappeared, and was later found dead, apparently killed by her uncle!! I shed tears for that family, who must mourn the victim and the culprit, when  the news was  broadcast.  David L. is right, tho I hadn't thought of it before.====JACK:  The Friday before Easter was, at first, not thought to be a good day.  But, with the passage of time, we see things in a wider perspective.  We still wonder (humanly), "What if....?"

 FROM MICHIZONA RAY:  Maybe what "distinguishes" us from other animals is a better way to put it. I don't think we are separated from them at all. We are in relationship with everything. We mourn what we have lost because we know of death. We know of good and evil, light and dark, right and wrong, having and losing...maybe we should have listened and not eaten of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If we would not know of death, how would we know of loss, or of destruction, or the like? ====JACK:  The quote is David Levithan's.  He's a noted writer/editor in his early 40s who writes for a younger adult audience.  As an older adult, I focus in on the thought about "mourning for strangers."  Why do I do that.  Perhaps it relates to what Jesus said...."Whenever you see the sick, the hungry, the naked, those in prison, you see me in disguise."  Maybe I mourn for the stranger because of that.====RAY:  My point is that mourning is a function of awareness, and by itself, it is not something meaningful beyond our own experience of it. Mourning is a responsive function of awareness; not of service. The "why" of one's mourning doesn't make any of us more or less noble. I am not righteous because I mourn for those who die, or who are sick, or who are poor  Mourning doesn't "do" anything to relieve poverty, death, or general suffering; it identifies what we know about our own preferences regarding the world in which we live -- we mourn just as much for what "could be" as we mourn for what is. My mourning is an expressive fruit of that awareness.
More importantly, charity is my best response to mourning because that actually serves another. I can only hope that our mourning leads to something fruitful like Charity, and that we don't simply feel good about the fact that we mourn for others!  In my uneducated opinion, this is what is suggested by Jesus being "in disguise" as those whom you referenced. I doubt very much that in the end of Time, all of our "mourning" will amount to a hill of beans; nor will it be greeted with much fanfare! Rather, our Charity will serve to see the Christ without any disguise, as we love one another as we have been loved by Him. This is what comes to my mind -- and precisely what I would convey to young adults if I were a notable author and editor.
Thanks again for the soulful stimulation!====JACK:  I've read that elephants mourn like us and shed tears over the dead.  They even bury their dead.  Why is that?

 FROM FACEBOOK LIZ:  so very true...====JACK:  Or as it says in the Bible, "Yea verily."

 FROM SHARIN' SHARON:  Interesting WW. We were just talking Monday night at Bible study about whether animals are separated from us humans a lot spiritually. When we're with them they seem so close to us. I have a close Chaldean friend and, knowing her, the grief she has for her homeland, the sorrow for the people there who are still living in such a dangerous and insecure part of the world, this after years of life now since 9/11, I've learned to mourn the whole country of Iraq and before 9/11 I guess I was more or less like an animal, hardly having the capacity of mourning the people of that country whom I'd never met. All the mourning for all the victims of violence. This morning, I am remembering all the dead all together. Thanks for the WW.====JACK:  More than 4 million people visit the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery.  Why do so many "mourn" for those they do not know?

 FROM TARMART REV:  I'm reminded the same this morning of the Holocaust Center in West Bloomfield . . . always a reflective moment of solitude and broken heartedness of what man is capable of doing and the suffering that has be experienced by people who are the objects of another's scorn?!?! 0:-/ ====JACK:  I saw a picture today of a large box full of wedding rings taken from victims who died in concentration camps in WW 2.  Each one represents a family unknown to me, but I mourned, just the same.

TAMPA SHIRL:  This is a day that will live in infamy.====JACK:  FDR had a way with words.  I sort of knew the meaning of the word, but, upon looking it up, I see that it has a Latin origin and means: "grossly evil."  I see its connection with the words, famous...in-famous.  The 9/11 event is exactly that.