Only 25 years ago, Earth’s humans held a collective breath while watching morning news reports of two speeding jet airplanes crashing into two of the tallest towers ever built.

As years have passed, we have seen filmed recordings that let us experience explosions that destroyed walls of our military arsenal, and through a camera’s lens, we watched a building disappear into nothingness.

Recorded voices have let us participate in the final explosion of that day, when the passengers of Flight 93 stopped what was to be an attack upon the Capitol.

The day’s events have become a memory already being passed down to a new generation. The towers have been rebuilt.

Hope rises above flowing fountains, and real goodness has lifted darkness that has clouded our memory of that September day. We Americans can stand with pride above the quarreling that blasts into our morning news, and most of us continue waking up, unshadowed by political bickering. Ideas become bigger than buildings.

Something is growing within this Earth’s circular travel around the sun, a newness that its humans are beginning to grasp, each small piece becoming part of the infrastructure that supports what will exist in the future.

Children slowly learn that feeling good comes by living within the rules of their household. Growing older, they realize they can build their own structures and make themselves happy. Freedom becomes more and more appreciated as individuals make their way into the world that reaches past childhood limitations.

Through connections between and among ourselves, a way to go forward has taken shape in this marvelous something we have named America. It is the best way, configured to allow and support what lies ahead.

It will be discovered by relying upon our inner sense of right and wrong. For a brief moment on September 11, evil made us stop and think. Today brings us together and reminds us to rise above the smallness of petty quarrels and join together in finding our way into this 21st century.

This idea named America voices the best way yet developed to build what is needed to accomplish the next step into a future that will welcome our children and grandchildren. We must learn to come together and rise above today’s threats of hostility and negativity.

Let us join together and call the names of the nearly 3,000 people whose lives ended on that day 25 years ago. This idea that is America stands at the forefront of human progress. It is up to us to pass on what we have learned.

Looking up at the sky, we search for the North Star as a physical pointer that directs our travels.

Looking out into the world we live in, our Constitution becomes a similar pointer in the history we are writing. “Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light.”

Harriet Freiberger has lived in the Elk River valley since 1982.