9/11 turns 25: Recollections and Reflections

   I’d not thought ahead to realize this Friday will be the 25^th anniversary of 9/11 – the 9/11 – until I spoke the other day with my friend Geoff, whose brother George died in the Twin Towers. George had phoned his brother shortly after the attack, reporting that he was helping others to get out of the building, and not to worry about him. Geoff recalled to me with gratitude the love and care from his church and pastor that carried him through the intense grief which, of course, still lingers.

   His call prompted me to remember, and to reflect on all that has transpired, what has changed, how we are different, and the meaning of it all now at age 25. First, to remember.

Recalling 9/11/2001

   Like you (if you’re old enough to have been around then!), I know precisely where I heard the news, with whom I watched the unfolding horror, and the absolute urgency of needing to speak with and hug those I love but took for granted earlier that morning. The school announced it was fine to pick up your kids, or let them stay at school. I picked mine up, and immediately.

   We all felt helpless, watching the utter and devastating helplessness of the unrescuable; I wonder about the long-term paralyzing effects of these harrowing images etched in our souls. Things went from horrible to much worse – and twice, as one tower fell, then the other.

   By noon on 9/11, a steady stream of people with a crazed mix of emotions, numb, panicky, teary, enraged, and confused, not knowing what else to do, showed up at churches like mine, even though it was a Tuesday. Sanctuaries were packed on Friday in response to President Bush’s appeal for a day of prayer. Much was said that week about God. Many predicted a sweeping national religious revival, that we would rise up from the ashes like the phoenix. I was more sober, guessing church attendance would boom for two or three weeks, then settle down. I was wrong. By Sunday number two, we’d returned to the way things had been.

   I could not sleep that week, and spent the wee hours in my children’s rooms, watching them sleep, grieving that they would grow up in such a violent world, praying for children I did not know by name whose parents had died in the attacks, or in efforts to rescue others.

   On 9/11, I’d been at WBTV for a few hours on the local news with another pastor, as they wanted religious people on hand to offer commentary. When off camera, he and I explored what we might preach come Sunday. He’d chosen Psalm 46. My mind drafted toward Psalm 102:

   “Hear my prayer, O Lord. Do not hide your face from me. For my days pass away like smoke, my bones burn like a furnace. My heart is smitten. I forget to eat my bread. I am like an owl among the ruins. I lie awake. I am like a lonely bird on the rooftop. My enemies taunt me. I eat ashes like bread.” Days of utter destruction, evil, and terror are well-recorded in Scripture. I couldn’t rush to easy theological clichés. We dwell with the sorrow, like the Psalmists of old.

The Troubles of the World

   Sadly, instead of turning to hope in God, unity among Americans, and peace in the world, we rushed to payback and a swelling of national pride. President Bush vowed to rid the world of evil. We’ve not rid our own hearts of evil! And the world is, if anything, more widely haunted by evil. Today, we are mired in an unwinnable war in the Middle East – again – even though Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are long dead.

   The troubles of the world are so overwhelming we feel impotent. We are more judgmental of people who are different. And I suspect we are less willing than ever to ask hard moral questions about the way we pursue security. We may be meaner than we were 25 years ago; but if we are, it is because we are scared. Today we’re as angry with the other half of America as we were then with the Taliban or whomever else wrought terror from far away.

   Religion hasn’t helped. If anything, religion has been discredited. Wasn’t it a crazed, twisted faith that motivated the killers? And who looks more foolish? Those who say God orchestrated the events to judge us (as some did)? or those who’d naively believed God would always protect us? And now, as a reflex of our fears, insecurity, and malformed souls that perceive difference as danger, we have churches waving flags and worshipping a muscular, automatic-weapon-toting Jesus, as if God wishes us to fight terror out there and even in our own country with more terror.

   I’ve visited the 9/11 memorial a few times. We always find George’s name by the pool. I imagine survivors, widows who’ve grown old, those who were little kids then who have little kids of their own now. The grief that abides. And I’ve tried to puzzle out, in my mind, what might be any blessing to come from 9/11. Where’s the hope, the wisdom, the plan?

Wisdom from 9/11?

   Some theological lessons reside there. If there’s a God, this deity isn’t a genie who shelters us but not others. If there’s a God, it must be a God who cares about all people, all countries, and until we think about a good God in all places, and the way that goodness in God can and should manifest itself through all religions, we will shrivel into permanently frightened, angry victims.

   As a country, we now know what all other countries have experienced through history. Think about it: 9/11 was just a sip, barely a taste of what Ukraine, Gaza, and a great many other places have repeatedly experienced over months and years. Perhaps knowing, we can sympathize, and not intimidate so much as befriend, and maybe move toward the forgiveness and reconciliation that are at the heart of our faiths. We’ve learned that the immense power we wield (as our military still dwarfs all other militaries combined) cannot insulate us from harm; perhaps we can learn to ask how our bigness might foster understanding and peace. Perhaps it’s high time to reclaim the moral high ground.

   Where should 9/11 rank among the days? To me, 9/11 is like 12/7/41, or the day my grandfather died, or the day a tornado touched down and killed a friend, or a shooter rampaged through Virginia Tech – tragic days, solidly and thankfully in the past. Evil probably loves so much attention being lavished on such a dark, violent day. 

   More crucial, and hopeful world-changing days in the past for us Americans might be not 9/11 but 7/4, when the good of independence was declared, or 1/1/1863, when the unjustly enslaved were emancipated. My children’s birthdates merit pomp and circumstance, for they are days that celebrate life, not death. Is Ground Zero sacred ground – a place where evil pumped its fist? Or is it the labor and delivery room? Or our sanctuaries where we pray and hope? or the classroom where a student gets a bold idea?

   What dates changed history? Christians point to Easter, Jews to the Passover liberation from bondage in Egypt; other traditions have their sacred, life-giving days as well. A graduation?  A wedding?  These are days with a future, with hope and joyful optimism.

   After 25 years of grieving, fear and anger, might our next 25 become a season of a revival of courage and hope? Can we be the people who get back up, unified not by rage or apathy but by hope, the kinds of people envisioned by those who signed on 7/4, the noble who celebrate Easter, Passover, birthdays, weddings or graduations? We reached out for meaning and help, love and hope, on 9/11. Might the best memorial be a new reaching out, and forward, so the phoenix of goodness does finally rise from the ashes?

 

Fears for our Country, Exasperation with People: Is there Hope?

 Over and over, as I listen to my church people (and non-church folks too), I hear many expressions of fears for the country, and exasperation over the way others think and feel. Our United Methodist Publishing House asked me to write a book on Religion and Politics. I said yes, and began thinking up titles, like We’ve All Lost Our Minds or Jesus Must Be So Embarrassed. Easy to find fault and cast blame – but the publisher wants a book that analyzes what’s gone awry and yet clings to hope, and dares to suggest how we might fix some things and be healers. I won’t attempt to summarize a 140 page book here, but let me mention a few things.

People are in a deep funk about their country. But there’s so much to love. We can be grateful for the free space we have to disagree, to vote, to get involved (or not). We have traffic and other laws. We have brilliant founding documents on liberty, the separation of powers, and freedom of religion. We have national parks. We have my hometown and beautiful children. We have heroes who remind us of what actually is possible during times of fear and funk.

David Chappell’s A Stone of Hope, a book that demonstrates clearly that evil was held in check and the country was changed by the church, and nobody else, in the 1950’s, quotes a poem from Seamus Heaney: “History says, don’t hope on this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime, the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.”

Are we so cynical and jaded we can’t envision, anticipate, or even pray for some great tidal wave, something God can do? If we cling to and live into what God might just do, we’re liberated from our fears, and liberated to do something. I just finished a great book by my friend Vickie Barnett about “Bystanders,” that vast majority of Germans who knew what was going on but just shrugged and did nothing. They felt overwhelmed and powerless.

But were they? Barnett points to the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, population 3,000, which rescued 2,500 Jews, mostly children, from the Nazis. The silence of other towns was a thundering approval of Nazi atrocities. At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, there’s a garden celebrating the few who had courage and did something, with the inscription “Whoever saves one life saves the universe.”

We’re not called to be bystanders, or to fume in the privacy of our dens. Do some little something. Have some courage. Talk to somebody; listen to somebody. Don’t let your politics be your idol – a bad habit easy to spot in the other guys. Our God is above and beyond party divisions, and we can calm down and get busy if our trust is vested in the true God.

There’s so much damage from politics as waged in recent history. What gifts does the Church bring to healing? We are people with hope, not naïve optimism, but a long-range belief in that arc that bends toward justice. Reconciliation is supposed to be our strong suit, not blaming or cringing. We are supposed to know how to love, how to engage respectfully, how to bring faith to life in the real world, with resilience, tenderness, toughness.

My premise, which can’t be dismissed as naïve, or we’re toast, is that we aren’t stuck in an endless spitting match that feels like that nightmarish trench warfare of World War I, immense carnage to gain a few feet of turf, only to lose it the next day, everyone losing. There was a break on Christmas Day when both sides lobbed gifts to their foes before meeting in No Man’s Land to sing carols together. Fear for the country is paralyzing, and invites the very disaster we fear. Do a little something today, and something else tomorrow. Find a friend. Make a friend. Pray. Where else is there to turn just now except to God, and to others who love their country?