9/11
Water’s Soul
October 8, 2021
Jersey City.
The 80 feet tall sculpture in question is called Water’s Soul created by international artist Jaume Plensa.
The sculptural portrait, though monumental in scale, humbly gestures for quietude, a beckoning towards empathetic self-reflection. “With great ethereal beauty, Plensa’s site-specific installation serves as a tribute to the Hudson River, aligning with the artist’s ongoing interest in bodies of water as proxies for humankind.”
Jaume Plensa, a Barcelona native, is the artist behind some of the world’s most recognizable sculptures. He has installations in major cities across the globe including Calgary, Chicago, San Diego, Montréal, Los Angeles, London, Dubai, Bangkok, Shanghai, and Tokyo. Some of his recent pieces include Laura in Century City, Los Angeles, Dreaming in downtown Toronto, and Voicespermanently installed at 30 Hudson Yards in New York City.
His goal is to always “evoke inward reflection, silence, and intellectual engagement, often relying upon the relationship between the viewer and the object to complete his works.”
“Water is a marvelous metaphor for humanity,” Plensa said in a statement. “One drop of water is quite alone, like a single person, but many drops together can create a tidal wave and form immense rivers and oceans. When individuals come together to exchange ideas and create community, we can build something incredibly powerful.”
“As climate change already threatens to take hold of our beautiful planet, we must join together to protect water as one of the most precious elements in nature. It is not owned by anyone but belongs to all of us. Water is the source of life, and Water’s Soul is a celebration of life. It is my wish for Water’s Soul to become an icon for Newport and a landmark that visually connects it with New York City across the Hudson River. Just as Water’s Soul acts to unite the city of Jersey City and New York City, we are reminded that water is the great public space that unites and embraces communities as well as people around the world,” said Plensa.
Plensa was chosen by the LeFrak and Simon families, developers of Newport’s waterfront community, in hopes to convey a message of hope for humanity’s future.
‘Silent Contemplation’
On Thursday, October 21st Water’s Soul will officially debut in a ceremony to be held at the site.
[Source: hobokengirl.com]
#911Remembered
September 11, 2020‘Dear darkening ground, you’ve endured so patiently the walls we’ve built, perhaps you’ll give the cities one more hour.’
~Rilke
Coronado, California
We don’t get over loss or tragedy.
“We learn to hold them both at the same time. in an open mind and heart, at the same time. In an open mind and heart, there is room for both.”
~Sharon Saltzberg
Dalai Lama about 9/11: ‘It happened.’ 📿
‘Don’t try to see or force yourself to see the traumas of your past as gifts. They are givens.’
-Roshi Joan Halifax
‘An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive, abusive, unjust, unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy.’
~Bryan Stevenson
Unmerited Grace.
Redefine.
April 17, 2020
Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the UN from 2013 to 2017, writes for TIME that “the shared enemy of a future pandemic must bring about a redefinition of national security”:
The 9/11 attacks gave those wanting to justify American engagement abroad a sense of purpose: preventing future terrorist attacks. But for the U.S., the “post-9/11 world” became defined by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that cost more than 7,000 service members their lives and drained vast resources.
Those wars also diverted high-level governmental attention that should have been focused on China’s rising power and Russia’s military and digital aggression. … [T]he national-security establishment concentrated on terrorism, dedicating paltry resources to battling climate change or preventing pandemics, the deadliest threats of all. …
[W]e need to unite behind ending our decades-long over-reliance on the military, and building national and international mechanisms to protect people not merely from the last threat, but from the coming ones.
“You can do good if you care.” -Michael Specter
17 years ago today.
September 11, 2018‘Only wisdom confounds Satan and all his wickedness. Pure holy simplicity confounds all the wisdom of this world and the wisdom of the flesh.
-St. Francis, Salutation of the Virtues
Prayer: The wisdom that comes from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, and considerate, full of mercy and good fruits, without any trace of partiality or hypocrisy.
[photo: 9/11 memorial in NYC captured from above]
9.11
3,000 died that day, and many more since the terrorists struck, the first responders and those who stayed for weeks and months trying to repair the city.
The Guardian
September 11: nearly 10,000 people affected by ‘cesspool of cancer’
By Erin Durkin in New York
“Tens of thousands of people who lived or worked in the neighborhood at the time found themselves breathing in air thick with toxic fumes and particles from the pulverized, burning skyscrapers. Many have since become sick, many have died and new cases are still occurring all the time that are linked back to the poisons that were in the air around the wreckage.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/10/911-attack-ground-zero-manhattan-cancer
“Yes, it still hurts, and we still mourn. Our beliefs do not change the fact that we suffer from the experiences of our human existence. We should mourn our dead and feel horror at violence. We should seek justice, commemorate the bravery of first responders and honor the sacrifices of the many people who pulled together in countless small ways to comfort and support each other.
As metaphysicians, however, we do not stop there. We set our eyes and hearts to looking beyond what happened to what can come from it. For there is always something good that can be belated, whether or not we can see it in the moment. There is always love, showing up in ways big and small. We saw it for days, weeks and months after 9/11. Surely, we can keep that movement going even after 17 years. As for me, I intend to feel the pain, honor the courage, seek the path to forgiveness the best I can and always, always return to love.”
Affirmation: I remember those who died, those who save others and those who were so misguided on this day 17 years ago. I hold them all in my heart and remember that I am one with them all in the One.
-Rev. Katherine Saux, Science of Mind
September 11, 2016
15 Septembers later.
‘There is a Native American tradition that says we stand on shoulders of seven generations and seven generations will stand on our shoulders. On whose shoulders do you stand?’
Dr. David Goldberg
︶⁀°• •° ⁀︶
‘If there is nothing to move save Mind — and if the individual is a thinking center in Mind – – nothing is going to happen TO them that does not happen THROUGH them, whether it be the result of their own erroneous conclusions, those of their grandfather or those of the race to which they belong.’
Science of Mind