Remember that the more specific you can be, the more the rest of us will get from your comments–KSH.
Remember that the more specific you can be, the more the rest of us will get from your comments–KSH.
Honestly, I’m avoiding the day. I just can’t take it any more. There is a new World Trade Center and it is beautiful. No one will forget the people who died there and the people who gave their lives trying to save others, but I drove by the WTC a couple weeks ago and for the very first time in 13 years I had happy thoughts looking at the new tower. I did not feel the overwhelming sense of dread and terror that I’ve associated with the place for the last 13 years. Where I live was 9/11 all day every day for a long time. We have a piece of the towers in special little 9/11 chapel at our church. There’s a special mass there today. I just can’t bring myself to go back to 9/11 again this year.
I was right on the other side of the river when it happened by the way. Which is the only vantage point that you can actually see the whole WTC from. I was attending a conference. We all went up to the roof and watched it all day because we couldn’t leave.
By early afternoon we shut our office down because nobody was getting anything done anyway. At that time I was still heavily involved in the heirarchy of TEC. When I went home I told my wife I had avoided the HoB/D webpage that morning because I was sure they were saying awful things. My wife expressed that I couldn’t possibly be right, so we checked and, sure enough, almost almost of the comments from the usual commenters on the site were about what an evil country we live in and how we deserved what we got. (In fairness a few people challenged those commenters, but the prevailing comments on HoB/D were anti-American). This rather unsavory experience caused me to wear a USMC tee shirt under my polo shirt, to the August 6 General Convention session in 2003 in Minneapolis because it had been announced that at noon air raid/tornado warning sirens would sound out and the House of Deputies would rise and have a minute of silence for the victims of Hiroshima. When the sirens started I took off my outer shirt and a women from the Iowa delegation turned around and told me I was being disrespctful. I told her “I will pray for the vcitims I want to pray fror and you can pray for victims you want to pray for.” It may be hard to understand but I felt I had made some blow on the floor of the House to repay those horrible comments on 9/11/2001.
I was Catholic chaplain (part-time, being a pastor also) to a local hospital just north of London. I was called to an elderly person in the who was dying. After anointing her and praying with her I turned round and was puzzled to see virtually the entire ward staff clustered around a television. It was around 2 pm UK time. I asked what on earth the staff were doing and was told about the attack on Manhattan. I went home to watch the news myself and to call American friends in Michigan and Arizona. Always a sombre memory.
David Keller, before this moment I never had any idea that the Episcopal leadership board was filled with hate-America comments on that day. What an enduringly shameful thing.
My husband and I were in southern France on a belated thirtieth anniversary trip. We left our hotel, a beautiful 14th-century building in vieux Lyon, and climbed the hill to the Roman ruins above. I sat in the amphitheater wondering if St. Irenaeus and the martyrs of Lyon had been near what we saw that day. And then we returned to our hotel where the concierge excitedly told us to run to our room and look at CNN. We saw the second tower fall. Evil has no boundaries in space or time.
Katherine–Irenaeus was the patron of my Cursillo when I was lay rector in July 2001, just before 9/11. I have often thought about how much the world changed from that Cursillo and just 8 or 9 weeks later. I was scheduled to go to the Diocese of Texas Evangelism Conference in November 2001 and that was the first time I had flown after 9/11. It was a pretty harrowing experience. When we drove in the airport our car was serached and my bag was searched in the airport. Coincidentally, the same USMC shirt I wore in Minneapolis was in my bag and when the checker saw it, he sent me on through.
David Keller, we flew home as previously planned on Sept. 23, having used my school French to keep up with the news from home on TV and French newspapers. When we arrived in Atlanta the terminals were almost empty. We were the only people on the underground transit train. On arrival in Raleigh I kissed the ground.
In the spring of 2002 I attended an event here at which Michael Curry, the Episcopal Bishop of NC, spoke of the attacks in terms which did not recognize any evil other than American evil in the event.
Perhaps because my Father grew up in the big Apple, or my son now lives there, this day has a special resonance for me. I try to take it very seriously and in so doing every year I get a different vantage point.
This year it feels different in this way—9/11 is becoming part of the past and being sifted and adjusted to, both in a good way and in a not good one.
The clear memory of today was watching the NY ceremony live and seeing and hearing and noticing so many other venues proceeding to business as usual.
The not good part of this is the degree to which it comes from denial. It was so awful so in one sense I too like to deny it (wouldn’t we all?)—to go back to the pre 9/11 world. But the terror, the evil, the spiritual malevolence, the metastasizing cells of darkness, they are all there nonetheless. There is no going back.
Part of this denial is because there hasn’t been an incident on American soil since—yet (there have undoubtedly been attempts of which we do not know, and there are a few of which we do).
At another level this “heading back to a new normal†is a good thing in the grief process. You never recover from real losses, life and your heart grows around them by the grace of God. There are aspects of the fading of the intensity of 9/11 this year that reflect this and it is a good thing. We must move forward, however haltingly.
For myself, I always remember that day being at the desk with the TV on because I had the day off. And then wham.
I am helped only by prayer, music and poetry—and by reading threads like this one.
A friend called and told me I must turn my TV set on. I sat transfixed, bewildered and horrified. Among those lost were some seconded from firms in the City of London and other capitals.
My thoughts are with the families who have grown up without parents, spouses and children, and those in the emergency services who had to deal with the aftermath of what they witnessed that day.
I suppose we live with 9/11 every day in news from the Middle East and the way our lives, societies and our freedoms have been changed by that one dreadful day, and its aftermath in England, Spain, India, Indonesia and elsewhere.