9/11 seventh anniversary

There was no noticeable increase in the number of people coming into church to pray today, on the seventh anniversary of the WTC twin towers bombing in New York, although the commemorations Stateside were well covered in the news. There have been many morebombing outrages since then - here in UK too - and the uncovering of plots which reveal the willingness of young people to destroy themselves as well as others in the name of their cause. So many alienated people, in love with destruction and violence, placing so little real value on their lives. I find myself equally disturbed by the number of cases of domestic murder and suicide that are reported upon. Parents kill childen and / or spouses before taking their own lives, often because their lives are already in a mess, and can't continue the way they have done. And then there's the number of mainly young people knifed to death in street violence, people only prepared to communicate with each other violently, with the emotional maturity level of kids in an infant school playground.

We live in an age of technical marvels and superb human communications, as witnessed in the successful debut of CERN's Large Hardon Collider yesterday (must get a sermon out of that for this coming weekend), but we are far from successful in maintaining healthy human relationships in families and in community at all levels of society. 'Haves' and 'have nots' isn't only a matter of wealth of possessions and opportunities, it's about values, self respect, quality of relationships and above all, faith in God upon which these things rest. If the only things you believe in are material wealth and power, if you turn goods into gods (and you can do that whether you are poor or rich), they will become forces that consume your life and the lives of others.