Gratitude.

You know me. I'm usually a little overzealous and all-politics-all-the-time. But I can't be that way, today. Today, it can't be about use and abuse of references to 9/11 for political gain. Today, it can't be about my distaste for those who fail to see the brotherhood of the major Abrahamic religions. Today, it can't be academic.

10 years ago today was one of the worst days in American history. Thousands of people lost their lives, their livelihoods, their families, their loved ones, their homes, their spirits. Fortunately I have to work all day and therefore will not even have the chance to be bombarded with images and videos and sounds all over the news.

It's weird because 10 years ago today I was 13 years old. I was getting ready for like, week two of 8th grade. My life was not about politics or religion or activism just yet. My life was about walking to the bus stop and laughing my way to middle school with my best friends.

My parents are not news watchers. Never have been. That morning, a friend of my mom's called and said to turn on the tv. I was sitting at the table eating breakfast before getting ready for school. I have this memory of seeing the second plane hit. But I also don't remember knowing what it meant or what was happening. My mom sent me to school, and I told all my friends at the bus stop what had happened. We didn't know what it meant. A woman jogged by our bus stop and called out "Jesus Loves You!" to us as we waited. We didn't know why.

We didn't know about terrorism. We didn't know about radical Islam. We didn't know about radical Christianity, really, either. We didn't know what this meant.

I remember getting to my first period history class and watching the news for the whole period. I don't remember if we did anything in any of my classes that day. I recall watching the news.

AMERICA UNDER ATTACK, it said on every station.

Still, we didn't know what it meant.

I remember watching President George W. Bush speak to us. I remember, over the course of the days following 9/11 that words like "terror" and "axis of evil" and "weapons of mass destruction" flowed out of his mouth and into our living rooms. I remember being told that this was not a war on Islam and would never be a war on Islam. I still don't know what that meant.

What I am going to say today instead of anything about the GOP or about Islamophobia or about blame and conspiracy and all of the stuff that comes up when we talk about 9/11, is that today will always remind me to be grateful.

I am grateful, today, that nobodyI love has been taken from me in an act of terrorism, domestic or international. This may seem like something rather specific to be grateful for, but there are thousands of people in this country who cannot say the same. And I am thinking of them, today.

I am thinking of them and I am thinking of every member of my family and those friends of mine that are my family and how it would be the worst thing that could ever happen to me to lose even a single one of them. To lose you.

Today is not about waving American flags or holding rallies or even about preaching a certain way. For me, today is about falling to my knees in tears, thanking my God that my family is whole. That my heart is whole.

Today I will pray for everyone who lost anyone or anything in any act of terrorism anywhere in the world. And I will never stop praying. And I will never stop being grateful.

Turpins take DC, day one.

We're finally in the District! It is so fun to be here with my mom and my aunt Pam and cousin Amanda and my friend Fletcher, seeing all the sights and sites and eating all the amazing food and laughing and laughing and laughing. First laugh -- this is the complimentary companion goldfish that our hotel supplied us with. His name is AJ, like Aj Macnearney, fictional President Andrew Shephard's chief of staff in the best movie ever, The American President. So, here's AJ.

Today we saw like 9 billion amazing places in DC but I took most of my pictures on my real camera and those will not be uploaded until I get home. We went on a boat tour on the Potomac, and then dinner at the fabulously senatorial Old Ebbitt Grill (where I forgot my wallet [and therefore ID] and had to take a cab back to the hotel to get it and get back in order to be able to have a glass of wine at dinner hahaha), and then we went on a tour of the West Wing of the White House! Amanda, as a staffer, gets to take people on tours of the West Wing, which is probably the coolest job perk of all time. Standing in the doorway of the Oval Office, knowing that my dearest President Barack Obama spends a lot of time in it....breathtaking. And standing in the White House Rose Garden and staring down the corridor that he walks down every day...from the residence to his office. And every image of Barack Obama and George W. Bush and Jed Bartlet and Andrew Shephard walking down that hallway...I love America. I love American politics. This election season is going to be ludicrous, but I know how I'm going to survive it. Every time someone says something crazy and hurtful and slings mud at my candidate, I'm going to remember that hallway. Oh, I'm going to remember that hallway.

The World War II Memorial 

The Lincoln Memorial

The view from the Lincoln Memorial is of the Reflecting Pool and the Washington Monument. You've seen a lot of movies and TV shows where the characters sit up on those steps and look out over DC and talk about whatever feat they accomplished that day. I blogged once about wanting to live in DC so I could do that. I don't live in DC, but I sat there with my family and looked and loved it. And besides West Wing characters and Bones characters, you know who else spent some quality time there? The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And you know why that's super important to me? Because when I was a kid, my liberal Mama taught me about Dr. King, and I told her that I wanted to be a Rev. Dr. because MLK was a Rev. Dr. and I wanted to know what he knew so I could do what he did. I was like, 8. And you know what? Yesterday, I emailed in my last final to complete my first year of seminary. That's the Rev. part. I'm on my way, Dr. King.

Conflict/Resolution

May 1, 2011 will forever be known as the day the Navy SEALS killed Osama bin Laden. It will also forever be known as one of the most complicated days in my brain.

For the first 15 minutes of awkward CNN anchors stumbling over NOT saying what President Obama was going to tell us, I was afraid that we were going to war somewhere new. I knew nowhere had been attacked, because CNN and MSNBC would have known about that. So then it switched to awkward guessing about Libya, and then hilarious references to aliens...though, admittedly, most of the alien chatter was on Twitter.

Then, suddenly, someone at the New York Times tweeted that Osama bin Laden had been confirmed dead at the hands of US operatives earlier today.

Twitter went batshit insane. People were making jokes about "Mission Accomplished", bashing W, congratulating Obama, etc. And I'll admit, I participated in all three. This was quite a day for this country.

For about 30 minutes, it was all jokes. There are some clever people in this world. I was having trouble knowing what to feel. Was this a big deal? Like, in the grand scheme of things, worth calling my mother and talking about? I couldn't tell. Does it change a lot that he's dead? Won't his operatives just keep on keepin' on? I was still unclear.

But then, around the 45-minute mark, Wolf Blitzer panned to a shot of hundreds of people crowding around the White House, singing the National Anthem. I don't know what it means, but I cried, then. I'm not much for outspoken patriotism, because I think it is very quickly nationalism and then often warmongering. I'm aware that's a big leap.

It took an hour from the NYT leak to when the President finally took the screen. In that amount of time, every possible emotion had been expressed about the situation.

And, yeah, my facebook status congratulated the CIA for winning the 2012 election for Barack Obama. On his watch, a major goal of this war can be checked off this list. On his watch, the number one most wanted man in the world is dead.

Two friends of mine called me out directly -- one on Twitter and the other on Facebook -- for treating this event incorrectly. Many others showed their support for my thoughts on the matter. I'm stuck on their criticism, though.

It is never my goal to celebrate the death of someone, no matter how evil. But it's hard to not feel some sense of positive vibes being released back into the universe, now that this man will not be directly responsible for the deaths of any more people.

But what does this mean, for the world? New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, whom I love and respect, just called bin Laden's death a "triumph," which will lead to "new possibilities in Afghanistan." Read his piece, here.

Can we call it a triumph? Does being a seminarian mean I have to ask the question of whether Jesus would call it a triumph? I'm not trying to ask that question. I'm just trying to reconcile whether this is a great day or terrible day.

I want it to be a great day. Really badly I want it to be a great day. I want to be proud to be an American, today. I want to be proud of my fantastically eloquent President who stood up and declared that this would be a step forward in the fight against hatred in this world. And that this has never been a war on Islam -- just like W said it wasn't a war on Islam -- and that peace will prevail.

I know that killing people is wrong. I don't like that we kill people to show people that killing people is wrong. But what do you do when you are standing feet from a man responsible for the deaths of thousands? Do you want him to have even the slightest chance of killing even one more person? If you are that Navy SEAL, do you pull that trigger? Of course you do.

But what do I do? What do I say, here, now? I am not a Navy SEAL. I am not the President of the United States. I will never have to make that decision, but I will have to vote for people who will, and I will have to respond when they do.

I thought I was going to end up knowing how I felt about this. I still can't tell if this is the conflict or the resolution.

Peace be with you.