9/11 Never Forget

It is at once hard to believe that seven years have gone by since that horrible attack on innocent people trying to go about their lives, and still hard to imagine how folks got through such trauma and grief. My first response when hearing the news was to check on my family, first my immediate family and then all my relatives and friends living and working in New York and DC. Then, living in Delaware, serving as a parish priest and it was very personal. My cousin, who was on his was to work in the financial district, ran from the imploding buildings and all the way home across the Brooklyn Bridge. My sister and brother in law, both had New York meetings but stayed home because of a sick child. And an old friend, lived because although she should have been in one of the towers, was working the primary and was not at her office. Now, living in North Jersey, it has become even more personal. I have met folks all over my community who lost daughters and sons, parents, and relatives in that attack. That brief but completely cruel moment changed history, but it also changed us all personally. It broke our hearts and there was an outpouring of love. Then, we got angry and went to war – with terror, in Iraq and Afghanistan and finally with each other. The trauma still has a potent effect and we are suspect and challenging when we were once intrigued and curious. It is at once personal and universal for Americans, this anger bubbling up from grief, this destroyed trust of outsiders and one another. Individuals and communities can only take so many traumas before lashing out at others.

Today, I want to pray for all of those who were directly affected by 9/11, for their healing of body mind and spirit. I want to pray for all of us, still wracked with grief’s anger, that we might find new ways to be instruments of peace. In the past seven years we have consumed energy at an alarming rate, ignored the needs of children and the elderly so we might go to war, and had significant losses in freedom and trust. Our anxiety level has risen sharply and our trust level has plummeted. I pray that our anger and trauma can be transformed by God into compassion and empathy. I ask God to help me not run from my grief and anger, but cling to that real hurting place until it is transformed by God. May God transform us all into instruments of peace, healing and hope that we might reach out to the rejected, suspected, detained, refused and neglected in our communities and share the home we have been given by a loving Creator.