"May God Bless Your Souls, and give your families strength to carry on.  May you find peace in your heart.

Although I'm not from New York, I feel connected to it.  I've been to New York City (Manhattan), since I was ten years old; I visit New York at least once a month and have done so since I was in my teens.  I love New York, and feel shocked to see what has happened to our Biggest City.  Yes, I am angry because of the attack on our land.  I too feel pain....

In Sympathy,

Barb

"Spirit Song"

If you sit still and calm your mind
Perhaps at the ocean's edge
  where waves rush to caress your ankles

Where you sift star grains through your fingers and touch prisemed colors in abalone shells where you hear seagulls cry and the ocean sigh
Yes, here you'll hear it.

Or perhaps tucked in a forest niche
  where pine needles form your rest
Where light rendezvous with whispering ferns and blue jays spring from place to place with agile grace and squirrels own the trees Yes, here too, you'll hear it.

Or perhaps amid a high sierra meadow
  where weeds reign in primal hues
  and the ground gives beneath your weight  Where you find a fallen redwood halfway returned to the land, yes, here perhaps most of all
  is where you'll hear it best.

This is where you'll notice another hiker and wave That -- but nothing more, because here, that person is no more important than the hawk signing its initials in the sky or the newt blinking into the noon sun

A human being here is no more than the wind you only see when it brushes against another living thing
No more than the buck grazing on blades of free grass
  no more than the grass.
No more -- but no less.

Yes, here, in this moment, if you sit still and calm your mind, you'll hear
The song of your spirit
  connecting all of Heaven
    with all of Earth

  -Poem by Ingrid McCleary