This is what the end of a long race should look like.
Not horror, not blood, not confusion and hurt and death and more.
But joy and the fulfillment of a dream
and the end result of hard, hard work to get there.

But something happens.

Bombs at the Boston Marathon or the Olympic Park in Atlanta.
Columbine, Oklahoma City, 9/11.Is this an act of terrorism?

I wonder at that question mark.

There is no doubt: it is an act of terrorism
when people are made to feel terror for no reason.
It is an act of terrorism when bombs go off
at a crowded sporting event.
It is an act of terrorism when two students
shoot up a high school in Columbine,
when one young man slaughters first graders
at an elementary school in Connecticut.

They are all acts of terrorism.
All of them.
People are in terror.

But I know why that question mark exists.
It exists because the real question is this one:
Was this one of us? Or one of them?

What is this distancing?
Already the Muslim-bashing has begun.

Let us not throw the terror of racism at this horror.

Choose love, instead.

Open your heart doors as these strangers have in Boston:

This, This. This is what we urge toward,

like a plant toward the sun.

Community, helping, love.