One whole of many parts

Patience: it takes time to travel to places of the heart. Cassandra Frear @ MoonBoat Cafe

I am sitting in bed this morning, my laptop open, the windows open, the blinds raised. Outside birds twitter and poke at the grass, eating, flitting about, chirping. Marley, The Great Cat sleeps at my feet. He's not allowed out in the mornings. Too many tempting 'treats on a wing' enticing his feline mastery of the hunt.

Today is September 11th. It is a day of remembrance. Of linking back to a day nine years ago when the skies quietened across north America. A day when terror hit home changed our world.

It is also a day of celebration.

It is my nieces birthday. My friend Jane's daughter, Christie's birthday and it is the ninth anniversary of the opening of the 'new' DI -- the shelter where I work.

It was not an auspicious day to have an opening celebration nine years ago. The focus of the world was on two towers crumbling in New York. On a plane barrelling into the Pentagon and another crashing into a cornfield, a plane from which cellphone calls chronicled the horror of what was unfolding and spoke to the power of the human spirit to remember Love.

The shelter where I work had not yet opened its doors to guests -- the old building was still in use, the 'new' quarters to be filled the following week. And then, the planes crashed, the skies closed and passengers were stranded at airports across the country. Passengers stranded at Calgary International needed a place to stay. Some came to the shelter. 84 of them. And on that horrific day, they found a place to call home until the skies opened up again.

Lives changed. Lives ended. Lives began on that day. No matter the events that transpired on that day nine years ago, today it is Love we must remember, must hold onto, must breathe into if we are to heal, to grow, to evolve beyond the anger and fear and revulsion of what happened. To grow beyond hatred we must shift into that space where it is not man against man separating our thinking into us and them -- but man for man connecting us through love into this place where we are one planet, one people, one universe, one whole of many parts.

It is love that makes us whole.