Ten Years

It’s been ten years.

Ten years since a crude, yet monstrously effective, bomb ripped the life from 168 souls who were just going about their lives…working in offices, running errands, delivering packages, playing and learning in the daycare center…in the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.

Here in the United States…a place not often touched by the inelegant attentions of those who would use mass destruction and mass murder as political statements …we were stunned and numb and, naively, we couldn’t really imagine anything more devastating.

We were disabused of that notion come September 2001.

It’s been ten years. And, as these things go, it really doesn’t seem like it’s been that long.

It’s been ten years. And, as these things go, it seems like a distant lifetime ago…like another, much less dark and foreboding, world ago.

Ten years…

In the cool, soothing twilight,
In the soft, warm glow of the dawning sun,
America sings…

We sing of joy and hope, of pain and forgiveness,
We sing of sins gone but never forgotten,
Of sins to come, ready to be weathered and overcome.

We sing of bright souls lost and redemption found,
We sing of blood spilled and new life dawning…
Of life renewing, sure and fertile and ready to soar.

In the complex shadow of our history,
In the burnished glow of complex days to come,
America sings…

We sing of our days of glory, our dreams of tomorrows,
We sing of peace from war, liberty from chaos…
Of passion never-ending, God’s grace blessing us all.

In the cool, soothing twilight…
In the shadow of our history…
America sings…