Innocence, hope, and redemption.  That were the words comprising the title of a symphonic piece I heard this morning.  The announcer played it because he thought that, on the anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001, such words would be appropriate.
     I agree.  Before that September 11, before international terrorism made itself known in the nation with such striking effect, America was, in some ways, ways akin to how it felt prior to the attack of Pearl Harbor:  innocent.  Set astride a vast continent, separated from the world by two wide oceans, the nation sat, comforted by its wealth, soothed by its ability to remain aloof from the troubles of the rest of the world.
     No more.  Yet in the aftermath of those horrifying events, Americans, and the world, found new reason to hope.  Sometimes, however, darkness harbors the deepest hope. Sometimes the coldest and bleakest night creates the brightest of dawns.  Life renews.
     And redemption.  To redeem is to set free.  Perhaps America was, in a peculiar way, redeemed by the events of that fateful September day.  Perhaps America was set free from the complacency it had nurtured over the decades, its blindness to the way that some of its foreign policies had contributed to the attack, its penchant to focus only on itself.  Perhaps 9/11 set America free to realize that it, and the watching world, could be more than the sum of its parts.  Perhaps the terror of the day planted the seeds of a better world.  Like biblical redemption, a redemption of unspeakable darkness that set humanity's hearts free, so did the darkness of that summer morning liberate us to see that yes, there really is something more to life and existence than simply living them.
     Pain endures, but hope conquers still.