Anyone can hear the dragon roar...

I had started this out to be a little bit about the coven motto, which was another homework assignment. Anyone can hear the dragon roar. Only the chosen will learn to hear the dragon whisper.

But then I got to thinking... what has the Dragon been trying to whisper to me of late? What are the secret bits of knowledge and insight that I'm missing due to the overwhelming cacophony of the world around me? I need to make some quiet time to be with my thoughts, and my Dragon, and truly hear.



I've been thinking about recent events. Going home, seeing Manhattan, going down to Ground Zero, where I'd gone many times before. We'd go shopping, grab a bite to eat, or just check out the views. The Towers were the way you knew you were looking at Manhattan. While going over the GWB this weekend, I had to really think about what I was looking at, rather than just knowing that NYC is over there, and Jersey's over there, and the Bronx is behind me. From my grandmother's apartment in the Bronx, you could see the GWB at night, sparkling in the distance, and the glitter of the Towers and the rest of Manhattan behind it.

I've never known Manhattan without them. Sure, the Empire State Building is fun to visit, and it absolutely has the pulse of the city. But they were special. They were unique. They were a symbol of what we could do if we put our minds to it. At least, they were for me. They were still pretty new when I was born, so they didn't have the "antiquity" of the Empire State Building. Then again, the Towers were never "belittled" in my mind. Hell, there's no movie with an ape holding a blond climbing up either of them.

I'd always heard my parents talk about knowing where they were when Kennedy was shot. I always equated that to where I was when the Challenger exploded. That was such a pivitol moment in my life. I wanted to be an astronaut, and a teacher from my school was one of the "alternates" if something happened to Christa. We were watching the shuttle launch live on TV. When it exploded, we were in such shock. I remember going to the bathroom in my school and crying. I remember writing pages and pages about it in my diary. I remember thinking that it had to be all over, because they'd never try to send another shuttle into space and possibly let it explode. I asked God why He had let that happen. She had children all over the country who were her "students", waiting for their first lesson. We all grew to love her, and then she exploded over the Atlantic. Why. It was so unfair.

And God was silent.

That little bit of 12 year old terror came back to me as we listened to the news reports of a fire at the Trade Center. That a prop plane had veered off course and struck the building. Then another one. Then the Pentagon. Then the Pennsylvania field. The ground wasn't just ripped out from under me, but the entire universe. I knew people who worked downtown. My aunts both worked downtown at the time, and I wasn't sure if Elaine had started a job at the Trade Centers like she'd mentioned. I've got friends who still live in NY/NJ who work down there. And we couldn't get through to anyone, and no one could call out. All I could do was sit up with my roommate and watch. Her brother was a firefighter. My cousin worked in the ER out on Long Island and got called into the city. They were both there taking care of people.

And we wept. We wept for the people who died. We wept for the people who were hurt. We wept for the people who were late to work and lost friends and co-workers. We wept for the families of the people in the building. We wept for ourselves, because who knows who could be next. It might be Disneyworld. It might be the White House. It could be anything.

It was in the following weeks that I could understand how people talk about "innocence lost" when Kennedy was shot. That's exactly the way to explain how I felt. My city. Where I'd walked a million times. It was in pieces floating in the breeze into Jersey. I couldn't stand it.

I sat down and I cried. And I asked the God and Goddess why. Why do they hate us? Why did they do this? Why. It was so unfair.

And They were silent.

But it was a silence that was filled with noise. Does that even make sense? It was a silence that could fill the void that was left in my heart. It was a silence that wrapped itself around me to protect me from all the stimuli of CNN and ABCNews and all the other sources. In that silence, you could hear the voices of those who died. In that silence, you could feel them reaching out to their loved ones one last time. In that silence, you could taste the bitterness of lives cut too short, but not without purpose.

They listened to me whine about how unfair everything was, then showed me a Nation united in a common cause. They showed me the true New Yorkers, who came back to their city with more resiliance than anyone might believe. They showed me people banding together to help strangers. They showed me communities rallying to send aid and support to people they've never met. They showed me a world who stood up and said "No, we will not allow this again."

It was beautiful.

Too bad it didn't last. But in those moments, I felt renewed. I felt like They cared about what happened to us. That we weren't just amoebas who managed to congeal into monkeys and learn to walk upright in the middle of an experimental crap shoot. We are Their children, and They love us.

The world will never be perfect - there'd be no lessons to learn if it were. And if we all just learned to look past our differences and see that spark of Divine energy that is the same in each of us, then maybe we wouldn't have such devistating events.

It's sad that it takes a moment of such horror to shock you into silence.