After a lead up of weeks the 10th anniversary of 9/11 arrived. I had difficulty with the endless radio programs featuring call-ins or special guests talking about where they were, what they were thinking and feeling, on 9/11.
I got tired listening to simplistic statements about the fallout of that day and what we should or should not be doing in Afghanistan. As with anything else, the more you immerse yourself into something the more complex it becomes. I can’t give people my opinion about Afghanistan in one sentence. It would take me days, maybe even weeks, to do that.
Axel and I bicycled to Quaker Meeting. The bicycling is for me part of the meditative experience and something I have missed so much in Afghanistan. Feeling the wind on my arms and legs and marveling at the most wonderful vistas that lie between our house and the school where we hold our meeting for worship. It was the same beautiful fall day as 10 years ago.
Axel bicycled along with some difficulty; his lungs are still not in great shape, neither were his bicycle muscles. We had to take a few breaks along the way.
The hour of silence was difficult for me – my thoughts going everywhere. During my two years in Afghanistan the image of God as a bearded men sitting up in the sky on a throne had come back – a childhood image that took me years to shed. Before I left I was a great believer in the Great Spirit, the Life Force, that which the Chinese call Chi. But Afghanistan religiosity has brought back the man image. “What am I doing here?” I wondered. At times like this atheism beckons.
Someone in meeting mentioned an article in The Onion, re-issued 10 years later. It does have a picture of the man with the beard in it and the message did resonate.
In the afternoon we went out in boat and kayak to check Axel’s lobster traps. They were full of sea weed, wrought loose from the ocean floor by the storms that have come by in the last 2 weeks. In one of the traps a large lobster was hiding in the sea weed; in another one adolescent and a toddler, which we threw back to grow up a little more. The big one became our lunch.
Sylvia's Journal 
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