For the last two months, I've been working on the next piece in my series of answers to the question I poised in "The Burning Controversy": "Why can't we get organized?" This answer was going to be "a total unawareness of our resources." I was going to wax poetic (or at least highly sarcastic) on how we ignore the fact that we have the history of dozens of American minorities to draw from for advice, and how we seem to be unaware of the fact that every struggle they undertook for themselves resulted in a slight change of attitude that in the end benefits us, as well.

I intended to go into a lot more detail about it, but it always came out rambling, and recent events have caused me to abandon that line of thought in favor of another. (Besides, looking at the paragraph above, it now seems that the above says it succinctly and I don't need to go into it in further depth.)

The "recent events," of course, refer to the tragedy of September 11. While, yes, you're stuck with yet another editorial on the terrorist attacks, I will at least spare you yet another Pagan lashing out at Falwell and Robertson for their normal tactic of taking credit for everything that goes right and blaming anything that goes wrong on the people who are not like them. I'm actually kind of glad they did it-- the end result was the exact opposite of what was intended. (I really liked The Onion's response, though.)

And I'm not going to talk about the similar failure of the terrorists to put a dent in our pride as Americans. If you've left your home since the attacks, you've seen the homemade freeway banners that seem to be hanging from every overpass and the American Flags that are everywhere.

And most importantly, I am not going to try to turn this disaster into a Pagan issue. I saw a posting to one of the e-groups I'm in from someone who was unsatisfied with the fact that we haven't tried to get attention to the Pagans who undoubtedly died in the tragedy, and I disagree. Actually, I'm quite proud of the fact that we haven't done anything like that. This is not an event to be exploited for our gain.

I've been moved and astounded by the Pagan Community's response to the events. Rather than shamelessly trying to get publicity out of it (excepting the appropriate responses to Falwell's inanity), what I've seen is that the Pagan Community is actually behaving like a religious community. The e-groups I'm in have been flooded with notices of prayer vigils, magical workings, blood drives, fund raisers, and the things that churches do.

I've often felt that our Community suffers from too little religious activity. I'm not diminishing the need for the social events-- not only is a good thing that we can meet and mingle with others like ourselves, it's vital. But a religious community should also help fulfill the spiritual needs of its people, and act in such a way as to promote its religious values in the world. But when disaster struck, I was pleased to see that I was wrong.

These events occurred during the time that Pagan groups across the nation have been staging "Pagan Pride Day" in their individual communities. Many of these groups took up the challenge and did fund raisers and/or blood drives in conjuction with their events. (I attended the event in DC, which raised close to $500 for the Red Cross.)

I was also thrilled to see that we did not attack the leaders of our nation for their religious statements. (I saw one complaint, and I believe it was in the same message as I mentioned before.) These statements were made by spiritual people as a natural response to this tragedy, and not as an attempt to force their religion down our throats. The collected leaders of our nation singing "God Bless America" was not about religion, it was about pride. Even I got goosebumps.

That which does not destroy us, makes us stronger, as Nietzsche said. Perhaps it was tragedy that made our Community-- and the whole nation, in fact-- stand up and move forward, but I think the whole country will learn from this and emerge more united than ever.

Well, maybe not Falwell, but you never know; magic and miracles do happen.

© 2001 by Cather "Catalyst" Steincamp