Ground Zero

Notice - the following blog post may be offensive to some. You may not agree with what I have to say. That's OK.

I have been thinking this morning about the 'Ground Zero Mosque' which, as it turns out, not AT ground zero, but is a couple blocks away from the WTC site (see photo). I suspected as much - that the journalists covering the story had given it this moniker to feed the frenzy of post 9/11 America. First of all, I have no strong feelings one way or the other about whether this piece of property is developed. I am no more pro-Muslim than I am pro-Christian or pro-Pagan. All those faiths in their conception have beautiful life-affirming teachings. I'm good with that no matter what framework. So, why would I blog about something that doesn't matter to me? Dunno. Guess it does, on some level, bother me when people act out of a place of unconscious thinking or, even worse, hate. Maybe I want to believe that people are better than that, and if shown a way will choose a more elegant compassionate way of being.

Most people I know are not Muslims, so its easy to confuse all Muslims as the same, to group extremist Shi'ite or Sunni Muslims with the average Muslim. But if I extrapolate from what I DO know, Christianity, I find that it is an analogous structure. The vast majority of Christians are cool and loving individuals. But, there are those Christians with extreme beliefs who picket military funerals, blow up Federal buildings and bomb abortion clinics (BTW - killing people to prove your pro-life stance - major oxymoron). So, I ask myself. If a Christian group wanted to build a facility near the site of the Murrah Federal Building would I automatically assume that they want to do that to celebrate the victory of blowing it up? No. I wouldn't. I would want to know what group it is that wants to build - Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian - and whether the people seeking to build were associated with the bombers in some way. So maybe I just wanna know more about the Muslim group wishing to build there and what there intention is in doing so. Surely they know that this is a hot button issue.

Lastly, the land will remember 9/11 long after we who watched the towers fall are gone. We humans are ephemera to the land. Manhattan will burn with that memory for eons. Maybe having a place where Muslims can come and worship will balance that memory of destruction and death with one of compassion and love within the very soil of Manhattan. I am open to the possibility that the intention of the Muslims seeking to worship here is one of peace and healing rather than hate and celebration of that ugly day.