Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 12:25:26 -0400 From: "cpmcnel@usit.net" To: "terry@www.spring.net" Subject: RE: WTC - How do you feel? [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Hi Paul, Carol Nelson here. I am in south Florida baby sitting my grandchildren. We drove down The Farm last week through hurricane Gabriella. My Daughter Kim McCusker and her husband Paul are in NYC, ground zero. They are part of the search and rescue team deployed from the Miami-Dade Area. They are both highly trained K-9 search and rescue fire fighters.They have been there about a week already and will probably not retutn until the end of next week. So we are getting first hand info on a daily basis. Not Good! I have a friend that works around the block on Broad street. She called me after the first hit and we were on the phone when the second plane hit. You could hear and feel it thru the phone lines. I heard Michael Gavin's cousin was in one of the bulidings and is missing. All the talk of WAR is so bad. So hard to hear and think about. All I can do is continue to pray for peace. Peace Carol

Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 15:23:33 -0700 From: Gerald Wheeler To: Paul Terry Walhus Subject: Re: WTC - How do you feel? it is now about midnight sept. 21, 2001...autumn equinox, i am in oakland california, i just finished watching the a's beat seattle in the first game of a three game series, between innings i flipped over a channel to watch what most everyone else that was watching television tonight was probably watching, the fund-raiser and tribute to those who died ten days ago in the attacks on the wtc and the pentagon and the final plane that was brought down most likely by a group of courageous passengers who took on the hijackers and crashed that plane in a field in pennsylvania, so many heroes keep emerging from the center of the tragedy, and what a powerful assembly there on the tv, i am moved by the sense that we as a nation, for the first time in my memory, have been brought together like never before, and it's real and it's full of power and authenticity and i catch a glimmer of something inside of me that suddenly says that america really is worth saving, and i let that glimmer grow into more of a flame and i see that for all of its' faults, there just isn't anything or any other place like this place and the freedom that it provides everyone of us who share its' soil...i think about what to do about achieving justice and how it is a good idea to take the time to let things settle in the mind and calm that which cries out for revenge, because revenge is knee-jerk and full of anger and confusion and does not offer real satisfaction because its' results are uneven and because an uneven response creates more suffering...i think about who or what the enemy really is and i come to the conclusion that the enemy is not the taliban or hezbollah or the islamic jihad or osama bin laden or fundamentalist christians or fundamentalist jews or fundamentalist moslems or jerry falwell or yassar arrafat or north korea or chevron oil or suicide bombers or the bible or the koran...it is evil...the real enemy is simply evil, evil in whatever form and shape it may incarnate into at any time or place, and i think about how it is imperative that we learn to recognize evil in all its' forms and whenever and wherever it appears, and that we take sufficient care to respond in ways in which its' effects are cancelled and diffused, and this applies to the everyday, right under our nose kinds of evil, out to the broader, affecting all of humanity kinds as well, and that how we respond will determine the outcome of events in the future, and i think about what that means to me individually and i am reminded of how grateful i am that i have a way to get calm, that i learned how to meditate thirty years ago and try to practice on a regular basis, oh it doesn't always prevent one from getting caught in the cross-fire but sometimes it seems like it helps slow down the bullets so that you can see where to not step, non-action thru action, and makes you aware that everything begins in the mind, everything, so the key is to tame the fury of the mind, and transform pain and hardship into compassion and real strength by doing so, we individually hold the answer to our situation but to see that clearly we must first conquer the fury...om mani padme om! --all the best, gerald wheeler

Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 15:19:32 -0700 (PDT) From: Steve Brady To: Paul Terry Walhus Subject: Re: WTC - How do you feel? Hello Paul, Thank you creating a forum for people to post different ideas. I have been very disturbed by the developments over the past two weeks and needed to hear some people speak with a voice of reason while the media and Government beat the drum of War. I think America needs to take a long look in the mirror and try to understand why people would want to do this to us. We have always had a heavy-handed, arrogant approach to the rest of the world when it comes to "our interests" - the latest display being when we walked out of the conference on human rights in Durban, South Africa. The War, I am afraid, may be inside us - we have never come to terms with our brutal past(and present), and sooner or later it will catch up with us. I also think we need to be very careful how we respond to this latest attack in order to avoid setting off a pattern of violence that could drag on for years to come. To go blindly bombing Afghanistan will not solve the problem, and will just get more innocent people killed - some of which are already starving to death. I do support the extradition of those responsible and have them brought up on War crimes. We may never be able to rid the world of terrorism because it is a faceless entity. I believe the best approach would be to try change our relationship with the rest of the world. As Ghandi said: "Be the change you want to see in the world" - I try to remind myself to do this. I hope you're well... Hope and Peace, Steve Brady Occidental, Ca

Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 16:41:24 -0500 From: Kathleen Rosemary To: terry@www.spring.net Subject: Re: WTC - How do you feel? Now is the time According to every teaching I honor, and The Farm founders' vision, the vibration of Love and Peace is the strongest force in the Universe, and we as humans have the capacity to affect the planetary vibration by being generators and amplifiers of this vibration. Studies on the power of prayer, such as The Isaiah Effect by author Greg Braden, say that the power is in the emotion, the passion, behind the conscious intent, and visioning the effect as already created. This belief was held by the Essenes, the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and by Tibetan Buddhists from ancient times. This is the greatest opportunity in the history of the planet. More humans are alive on Earth than ever before, and are linked through the media and Internet. Unique in the history of mankind, this time of devastation and world-wide prayer can, if we keep our focus on our own inner peace and on universal love, create the quantum leap into the time of peace that we all deeply want to see on Earth. Let's do it! Kathleen Rosemary, on The Farm

From: Suzanne Hope Suarez Still stunned. Life becomes more precious as we are forced to contemplate our own mortality. Such an incident is too stark to "grok." Let us live and appreciate life. I want to express my love and respect to everyone my current life, my husband, my daughter, to my old Farm friends and to my old friends at San Francisco Zen Center. Suzanne Suarez