It ain't about flags waving....

...or God "blessing" the United States or anything else for me.  The lesson of 9/11, and what I have tried to "remember" from it is this (Lifted from Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish - because it is PRECISELY what I have felt during and since):

Before he was killed in Algeria's civil war in the 1990s, Dom Christian de Chergé, a Trappist monk, wrote a final testament:

My life is not worth more than any other—not less, not more.  Nor am I an innocent child.  I have lived long enough to know that I, too, am an accomplice of the evil that seems to prevail in the world around, even that which might lash out blindly at me.  If the moment comes, I would hope to have the presence of mind, and the time, to ask for God’s pardon and for that of my fellowman, and, at the same time, to pardon in all sincerity he who would attack me.

That will always be my lesson, succinctly put by the good monk above. 

I am not denying the evil nature of the acts, nor have I ever.  I will for all times understand that innocent life was taken or altered, and that is, and always will be, something for which there should be consequence. 

But. 

To not take anything more than "tragedy" from it...is a tragedy.  I think the above statement is precisely the lesson we can take. 

I can't think of a more Christian thing for this non-Christian to believe.