I search for meaning and lessons to hold onto. The aftermath. I wasn't at the World Trade Center or the Pentagon or with those brave souls who fought to prevent the terrorists who hijacked their plane from reaching a third target. The bullet missed our close friends and family. But the bullet hit us all. We were all, not just Americans, but all civilized human beings, in the crosshairs of the September 11th attack on our country. We were all wounded. We all experienced death in one or more of its many guises. But we are alive and we can heal and, necessary to that process, ensure to the best of each of our abilities that this will not happen again - to any people in any nation.

We have declared a War on Terrorism. There is another war, however, with far more at stake that each of us we will fight in the days and months and probably years to come: our very human struggle in times that manifest our worst fears to feel hatred and the need for revenge but not to act on it.

Sorting through the rubble of my emotions, I come upon gems of hope that we will win this war. I find news that our police here in Maine vow to protect innocent Arab Americans from those made senseless by hatred and fear. I read in the editorial sections of some of our newspapers, letters justly admonishing those who seek to demonize and lay blame on these same ethnic groups for the September 11th attack. A new awareness of the enormous and terrible consequences that words of hatred and dehumanizing labels can wreak on us may emerge from all this. I hope so.

Our nation did not respond immediately with missiles and guns and soldiers, unleashing the beast of hatred, to run unchecked throughout the world. This was exactly what the terrorists had hoped for. Perhaps they hoped for this because of the very nature of the terrorists themselves, who could only accomplish what they did in secret cells made of misguided humans hiding in caves and suburban apartments, disguised as our neighbors. Horrors rained upon us because of their nature. Worse horrors were spared us because of their nature. There was no easy target to bomb in our first moments of anger.

In this, time or God or whatever you wish to call the greater, unknown design, was on our side even as the Twin Towers imploded upon themselves and the thousands who worked within them. I hope that our alliance with the greater good our universe never fails to offer to us will grow stronger in the days to come and that these misguided humans will not reap the rewards of senseless death and destruction that they seek, but rather a just end to their mission to make hatred our God.

A friend of my legislative aide was stranded in London after the attack. It was her good fortune. She was able to witness first hand the grief, the horror, the fear and outrage that were shared universally by all compassionate human beings, not just Americans. A cab driver, when he saw tears in her eyes, asked if she was all right and when he heard her American accent in response, he said, "We cry with you. We thought it could never happen to you."

She saw London, its streets filled with people, stop and go silent as church bells tolled the hour of eleven. On every corner, in every store, at every juncture and alley within her view, no one moved, no one spoke and many wiped tears from their eyes. Hundreds came to the U.S. Embassy each day to write their condolences and lay flowers with notes on them at the feet of the statue of FDR in Grosvernor Square. She saw Briton and American, Asian, Arab, African weep as they heard "The Star Spangled Banner" during the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and weep again as they heard its strains pour from the open doors of Saint Paul's Cathedral.

We have many friends in many countries. We shared a common bond of what is good in human beings and that bond still glistens brightly in every tear shed by those who mourn with us around the world. It can be a great and formidable power, this gift of compassion that we humans have been given -- a universal truth that unites us and is revealed by the very people who seek to defile it.

I hope that as we rise from the ashes and chaos, that our leaders will also see these lessons, great and small, and understand that the fate of not only Americans, but of all humanity, rests on their ability to be compassionate and wise. This does not mean allowing misguided humans to do whatever they choose or to continue to exist in cells that grow hatred as their culture.

Actions taken in the name of hatred and revenge are acts of fear and cowardice. Make no mistake, the misguided humans who used the freedom of a nation they claim to deplore to murder unsuspecting men and women and children have no great and formidable power on their side. They are riddled and crippled with fear and cowardice. We must not become like them.

Our strength and greatest power will come from being brave enough to feel hatred and the need for revenge and not to act on it - to be brave enough to be compassionate and wise enough to take deliberate, considered action so that what happened on September 11th will never happen to any people in any nation ever again. God Bless us all.