Many people remember exactly what they were doing when shocking news unfolds in the world. The day John Kennedy was assassinated I was in study hall at high school and watched as they lowered the flag to half staff, not really knowing what that meant, never seen that occur before. When Elvis Pressley died I was shoveling cow manure out of the bed of a truck onto a garden. I was sitting in a law school class when O.J. was acquitted, and when the tornado hit Tuscaloosa in 2011, I was in New Orleans, desperately trying to find out if my was house was still standing.
None of these incidents in any way measure up to the memories of that September morning in 2001. At work we all watched the second plane hit tower number 2, shocked, scared, mesmerized by the tragedy. I watched it again this morning with the memorial services from New York, Pennsylvania and Washington. And once again the fullness of our vulnerability hits hard, the senseless cruelty shatters goodness, and the sorrow envelopes our souls. We are still learning to live with those memories as we struggle to fight the forces that breed evil and hatred to humanity. September 11th is now marked as a memorial day named Patriots’ Day, a tribute to those who lost their lives by the hatred of others and to those who lost their lives in love by saving others.
And we, the self-proclaimed “righteous people,” begin looking for someone to blame; after all, the devastation is not ours if we did not cause it. Someone else or some other world would dare to throw our society in our face, mocking us and taunting us in humiliation. We do what we have always done over the course of history; we pull together, hang tough, and pray to a God that we do not believe in anymore. Suffering is unexplainable, especially when the God we once believed in is good, caring and forgiving. In the aftermath of September 11, I remember watching a news program, a panel discussion on the tragedy, and among the guests were a Rabbi, a Protestant preacher and a Catholic Priest – not intended as a joke. The commentator asked the priest the question, “where was God on that day.” The priest said that God was in the faces of the first responders, those who ran toward the burning buildings in order to save others.” His explanation is comforting, God is there, we do not have to search for him; we just let him find us where we are in time.
Following the memorial services, the news immediately went back to coverage of Hurricane Irma. We continue to face disasters, natural and “man-caused” — hurricanes in Texas and Florida, earthquakes in Mexico, nuclear threats, Middle Eastern bombings, terrorist attacks and a permissive society that is being taken over by drugs and violence. It does indeed sound like an approaching doomsday – something that no quantity of Patriot Days will ever alleviate. I think our forefathers felt the same burdens when faced with aggression and two World Wars. We too are at war against evil forces, a fight that many feel cannot be won. But like our history has proven, we pull together with a patriotic fervor, even though it may be short lived, and we pray that God Bless America.
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