World Peace-what Sept 11th now means to me

I've just returned home from the church where I am the organist-Allwood Community Church-I went there to practice the organ for tomorrow and I forgot that they were keeping the sanctuary open for anyone who wanted to come in for prayer and reflection.
Two of our board members were there-and we talked a little bit about what today means for all of us.

I have to say that for the first time ever-I actually felt that-yeah-maybe it's possible for World Peace.
I know that sounds like a tall order-but here's how I started thinking about it....we need to break that tall order down into little pieces. Here's the analogy I came up with (probably because I'm involved with this right now in my studio)....organizing tasks into smaller groups-like trying to organize one corner of a room-and not be overwhelmed by the entire room.

What if we sat down and looked at every area in our lives-and broke it down into smaller tasks-for example-the environment. Can we visualize what a sustaining environment really means-clean rivers-lakes-oceans-healthy forests-healthy critters etc.. What would it take to do that? I can visualize that.

How about poverty? What would it take to eradicate poverty? Can we visualize all the ways that we can help those who have no where to sleep, very little food and clothing? I can visualize that.

I have always maintained that world peace is not a possibility-but today-I thought about it differently. Today I thought about everyone who died on Sept 11th, 2001-and then everyone who has died in a war-and then everyone who has died a violent death....just thinking about all of those people, from the beginning of time, I thought we can't give up on the idea of world peace-we just have to break it down into more manageable segments.

Hatred-yeah-that's a toughie-but I do believe that we can find a way to help people to give up their hatred, their bigotries, their racists views and so forth. How do we do that-I'm not quite sure-but I know that it's one person at a time-it takes being committed to that idea-that small gestures can open the doors of the heart.

I had a friend who died in the collapse of the towers and I had friends who narrowly escaped-so I will be thinking about them today-along with other friends who have died violently.
But I will mostly be thinking of ideas that will contribute peace to our world, because my friends gave up so much.