From:   Jan, [email protected] A Nation of Heroes  (from the Sunday Afternoon Rocking series) Tuesday "someone" thought to weaken us.  Instead, our strength, the strength "they" do not possess, is shining across a nation. We have seen heroes this week.  Heroes that will forever go nameless, heroes that will never grace the pages of history books or a newspaper, heroes that we will never be able to personally shake the hand of or thank.  Heroes that were not trained at West Point, or any other prominent institution.  Heroes that left home one morning with no intention of ever being one. Heroes that dropped in a moment purses and briefcases, bags of groceries and the threads of their lives and rushed to help in whatever way they could.  Some quite literally dropped the threads of their lives and never emerged from the moment they reached out.  Some survived their time of reaching out, and returned home, but will never proclaim themselves heroes.  Heroes emerged on the scene and in short order, heroes emerged all over the country.  Heroes began to line up to give blood, to send money and help in any form needed.  If they could not be on the streets of the tragedy, they would be heroes just the same, unsung, unlauded.  For a hero has no thought of glory, but only of the compassion and caring that instigates the act.  And the amazing thing? Those heroes were from all walks of life.  They were of all ages, all races, all creeds, all cultures, all socioeconomic levels, all religions.  They had to be, for we are a melting pot of all of them, and yet representatives of all of them responded.  No one stopped to ask another what their personal beliefs were before they went scrambling through the rubble to find a living body, any living body.   No one stopped to ask those victims who their God was or what political party they belonged to, before they pulled them from the rubble and began to bind their wounds.  It did not matter.  All that mattered was the response to pain around, the need for help.  And that is amazing.  Or perhaps not. For over two hundred years we have proven that a blending of cultures and beliefs is possible, that whatever our internal bickerings over differences, the bottom line is that we all believe in what was built in this country.  America took in us all.  She opened her arms wide and promised a nation big enough to hold all of the cultures, the creeds, the religions, the races.  All she asked in return was commitment to that concept, and willingness to preserve it.  And so it has been, and so it is. We have been underestimated. It seems this terrorist attack may have been from sources that can't get past the idea of "differences" being able to cohabitate in the same country, under the same stars, within the same boundaries of land and sea, and caring about one another.  It seems those folks, who ever they are, don't understand that idea any more than they understand the folks of their own religion who do not espouse their violent ideas.  They may never understand it, but if they sought to divide us, they found out this week that we don't just pay lip service to our beliefs.  And they found out that the symbolism of the buildings they sought to bring down are just that: symbols.  In reality the heroes of our country are across this nation, in folks they never suspected, in beliefs so deeply entrenched and a part of who we are, that they cannot ever root it out.  We are a culture who seems to outsiders to "have no heroes", for we are very open about the leaders we choose.  We are open with their flaws, their faults, our criticism.  We seem to worship no man and we don't hang great wall size posters of any man.  We still choose them, and chips down, we will be right behind them. If "someone" thought that we had no heroes, were not capable of deeply entrenched beliefs, "someone" was wrong. You see, our heroes are of quite a different caliber.  We may belong to different walks of life, we may worship differently, some may choose not to worship at all.  We may be of different colors, we may celebrate different holidays, we may back different political parties.  But bottom line, when America is attacked, the man and woman on the street is going to drop everything and come running.  Yes, we have been underestimated, all right.  We have countless heroes, millions of them.  Those terrorists, whoever "they are", forgot to study our history books.  We have always had countless heroes, men and women on the streets, and when the chips are down they remember they are Americans, and that means all of us, differences go by the wayside. Tuesday "someone" thought to weaken us.  Instead, our strength, the strength "they" do not possess, is shining across a nation. Just a thought, jan