Taps To Reveille Witnessing our man-made technology fly into the pillars of our freedom and peace stopped the entire World for a moment. Within that one moment the angels came out with their mighty trumpets and began to play taps. Taps is a musical piece symbolizing the end of a day, our work is done. But, before the last breath of air of the last note was pushed from their lungs, the angels began to play one more musical piece. They began to play Reveille. Reveille is a musical piece which exemplifies to awake, get up, let's get going.
During that moment, we reacted. There were lives to be saved, loved one to reach, and decisions to be made. What many of us could not take time to do before, was about to be all that we could do. The arguments we had just hours before would fall silent and new causes would emerge.
While many now sit and talk about what could have been, what should have taken place, they are missing what IS taking place. While others talk about how could it be, they are absent from what is happening.
We are all being called to stop bickering about what is not important and take on the only things that really matter. Have you heard the call?
Though many may say it sounds cliche, this writer, person and observer sees something that has been absent from our daily lives reappear -- it is love, unconditional love. Though the mere word itself cannot describe what it truly is, it is what we are left to work with. Describing "love" with words is a daunting task. Passion, commitment and devotion are just some other words which all refer back to love. Poets and writers have tried for centuries to describe this feeling, and have failed.
Many know it is not the words themselves that describe love at all, but actions. What we do when we love. The risks we take when we step forward when no one else does. When we reach out to someone we have never met, have never known, and say, "Take my hand. I'll pull you up." We know then that someone has done something extraordinary.
As Americans, what do we love? Do we love our tall buildings and the power they seem to represent? Do we love the creations we have invented? As Americans, what we love most is human life, and freedoms of living that human life, that very human life. There is no mistaking our value of life. You can hear it clearly in the true American voices which now cry out, which now pray, and which now whisper.
No one is saying, "Sorry we lost a building," or that "Our planes are not what we thought we created." What holds our hearts is the loss of life and the miracles surrounding all those whom survived.
There is a man who was nearly on the 90th floor of a tower when the tower collapsed. As though in movie, as if to defy the evil, in an unexplainable journey, he rode the building down to the street and lived to tell his story.
People crawled on their hands and knees from room to room, floor after floor, to help others escape the fiery infernos. Several passengers in a plane decided it was better to risk their lives and overpower the hijackers than to let them succeed to their target.
It's in the numerous phone calls to loved ones saying "forgive me for any harm I have ever done," or "I will wait for you in heaven," or the simple heartfelt, "I will always love you." That is what puts life back into perspective.
As the media attempts to capture the scene, or as they show families pleading for loved ones lost in an effort to ease pain, they are incapable of giving a true picture of "Love." It is not their fault. It's the medium in which they are left to use.
Step outside and look around.
Neighbors are holding each other for the first time. Churches are packed on Sunday. Bibles are open and prayers have not stopped. Donation lines taking hours where just last week they could get hardly anyone. Did you see it? Were you part of it?
National games not being played out of respect of the lost. Voices are being lifted. People, no matter who they are, or where they are, stopping at a given hour to stand together with burning candles and moments of silence. Can you hear it? Did you do it?
Communities, across the great nation known as America, as well as foreign lands, are packing up goods and sending them to ground zero. Groups are organizing and bringing lunch, dinner, breakfast to weary workers. Can you feel it?
What is it that you hear? Can it be love? What is it that you see happening? Can that be love too? What is it that you feel? Oh, it is Love. It is the greatest and most powerful weapon ever created. It is at the center core of our being. What may have once been buried, has been revealed. It is strong and it is bold. Nothing else ever associated with human life can even get close.
Love is the very sword we seek. Love is our hope, or guide. It is healing. It eases our darkest moments. Love is the shining light that removes darkness. For it is, known that light and dark cannot share the same space. But, if light and dark cannot, then can two other foes? No, they cannot. Love and evil, as light and dark, cannot occupy the same space.
For in that moment evil had its hand ready to rise in victory, but in the next, it was defeated. Death is not the victor here. Evil has already lost this battle. Love, unconditional devotion, overwhelming passion, and undying commitment have conquered that very moment.
C. K. Gold
Beverly Hills, CA
