It's Still There...

...that cold feeling in the pit of my stomach when I think about that day.

When I looked at the date yesterday, I did a gut check and found nothing more than sadness and resolve. And so I thought maybe this time that feeling would be gone, that awful fear-tinged emptiness I felt when I knew my world had changed. But I woke up this morning, read this and this and this... and now I know it never left.

I still hate them for robbing me of my blissful innocence, for making us ask our best and brightest to sacrifice themselves and their families of us, for doing something so heinous that when we consider the possibility of a "mere" suicide bomber in a mall, in some sick way it almost seems like small potatoes.

And yet the very fact that we can so lightly acknowledge the possibility of suicide bombers in the heartland, of chem/bio attacks, of a missile aimed at a commercial airliner, of someone spraying a crowd of everyday Americans with bullets... is evidence of how much has changed.

The Christian God admonishes us to forgive--not to pardon, but to forgive--to release the hatred in our hearts against those who have done us wrong.

I guess I'm still not ready to do that. My hatred does not guide my decision-making or my politics or my views on military policy. But it sits as this cold little spot on the edge of my stomach, a quiet anger at those inhuman bastards who lived lives hypocritical to the very ideas in which they cloaked themselves as they committed their demonic deeds. And in so doing they not only killed innocents, but set off a wave of violence and turmoil that leaves circles of personal, national and social devastation in its wake around the world... and it still rolls on.

Bastards! Bastards! Evil, despicable-beyond-description bastards!!!