On your shows you repeatedly encourage your audience to be self reflective and to accept responsibility for their actions. You ask them to look below the surface of their actions. You encourage the care of the individual spirit and now more than ever there is a need for you to support the care of America's spirit. That requires that challenging questions be asked and answered. It is time for the thinkers to think, but of what? There is a danger that the significant cause of the attack on American may be lost in its effect and after effects. It is time to search together for the deeper meaning in this tragedy. It is the time to find the courage for collective self discovery the only true and blessed ground for hope.

There are ordinarily Americans who risk their of physical lives clearing the rubble from the attack site. There are also Americans whose courage is as great who go unappreciated. These overlooked heroes are involved in an important spiritual excavation into the psyche of America. Some of them are saying we must give those lost lives a deeper meaning than just the unity of the country, valuable as that may feel. They are prepared to ask how America's actions contributed to this sorrow. Some will answer, America is not the world, it is part of the world. When we choose to act in international relations always from our own values, and needs and desires, what surprise should it be that another's discontent may bring unforeseen consequences?

11 September has been awake at call for Americans to accept that being members of the most powerful nation on Earth means a requirement of the greatest consciousness of what that wielding of power may bring to fruit, for good and ill. To do otherwise will most likely provoke similar destructive actions from people and nations who feel that America is arrogant and isolationist.

True care of America's spirit requires consideration of the other as well as ourselves. We must understand the other and we must more fully understand ourselves as others see us. This alone holds the power of transformation of our country into its maturity and that alone will mean the many lives lost have not been lost in vain.

Madhu Ravenswood