I wrote this on the afternoon of 9/11, still in shock from the morning's events. It expressed my deepest fears about the consequences of those events: fears about the spiritual dangers that confronted the world and my country on that day.
It seems fitting to reprint it now.
Letter to a Terrorist
We are ordinary people.
We are not leaders,
Not politicians,
Or generals,
Or priests.
We are not professors in a think tank,
making policy that affects your country.
We are ordinary people,
Like the painter on the hundredth floor.
Like the man who cleaned the toilets on the ninety-first,
Or the secretary who answered the phone,
Who only wanted a paycheck
To put food in her baby's mouth.
We are ordinary people,
And even we know
That it is not reason enough
That you hate our country,
Or that you believe,
Even with all your heart,
That it is evil.
It is not reason enough
For the bodies of brothers,
The twisted broken bodies of wives,
The charred remains of fathers and friends.
It is not reason enough
That you think we have done you enormous harm.
It is not reason enough
For the weeping of families
And the weeping of children,
For the screaming and panic and pain,
For the deaths of ordinary people
Who never wished you any harm.
They never wished you any harm.
We are like them. We are them.
We know.
It is not reason enough
That you think you're on the side of God,
And believe we are the devil.
We ordinary people have a certain wisdom, too.
We are not stupid or unfeeling.
We understand
That your anger may be real,
We understand this even in the midst of our own.
We understand that you may have lost loved ones,
That you may blame us for the loss.
We have felt pain
And anger,
Even before you lashed out at us.
We know what it is like to rage with righteous anger.
We feel it now,
Toward you.
But don't you see?
Don't you see
That even if you were right,
Even if we were all those things you hate,
That by this act,
By slaughtering these innocents,
You would only have become like us?
Have become the thing you hate the most?
Even if we were like that?
Even if you were right?
The next time you plan to lash out in anger,
The next time you are tempted to vent your rage
On the custodian with a mother to support,
Or the fireman searching for a stranger to save,
The next time you are tempted in your righteous fury,
To wage war on the innocent to punish the guilty,
Remember.
You will only become the thing you hate.
You will only become the thing you hate.
Remember.
And pray,
For the sake of the innocents around you,
Pray,
As we pray,
That our leaders, too, will remember,
That our leaders
Will
Remember.
