The past few months, the topic of 9/11 has come up in our household repeatedly. Our kids are all younger than the event, so for them, it's simply historical and not existential.
I'm writing all this down in order to share it with them.
My wife and I had, in 2001, just returned from two years serving in Slovakia as missionaries with our denomination. That summer, we moved into missionary housing at the bottom of the hill below Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.
My wife signed up to volunteer for three months at Holden village, a Lutheran retreat center on Lake Chelan in Washington State. The retreat center is very remote, and they normally have very limited access to televisions, telephones, and of course, Internet, because the internet was still kind of rolling out slowly in some places. Locations that were low tech would not have adopted it.
While she volunteered, I started my last year of seminary.
I would walk up to campus every day for class, and 9/11 was no different. However, when I got to the main campus building that day, there was an emerging sense of alarm. People had heard that a plane had flown into the one of the World Trade Center buildings.
Some of the faculty found two televisions on roller stands and rolled them out into the lobby, plugged them in and turned them on, and so as a campus, we started milling around, watching as the tragic events unfolded.
It was truly awful. The tragic loss of life, the sense of war coming into the borders of our own country, a sense that you didn't know who your enemies were, but some guilt knowing you knew why we have enemies.
Then we had to head off to class. My education professor was wise and sensitive to the fact it would be almost impossible to focus on the content for the day. So we simply sat together in shock and processed. We cried a lot. We were numb.
I can still remember the feeling of concern I had for my own family members. It wasn't necessarily rational for me to think that my family in Iowa or my wife at Holden village were in any kind of direct danger, but nevertheless, I wanted to connect, make sure they were okay. I tried to call. I had to go back to the apartment because there were no cell phones.
I remember connecting with my family, and I couldn't actually reach my wife right away because of their technology setup, but I think if I remember correctly, we sent postcards to each other.
That semester, I was registered for Introduction to Islam, and although I sort of understood that the attacks could be from anywhere, there was a basic assumption that the attackers represented a violent faction of people who professed that faith. And so, because of my internal posture as someone who wanted to understand my interfaith neighbors better, and who had recently lived abroad in Eastern Europe, and was regularly engaging people of religious traditions outside of Christianity, I felt some kind of responsibility to show support for people who might feel threatened or be profiled or experience retaliatory acts.
Around the corner from our apartments was a small Muslim-owned grocery, and I stopped in to see how they were. I I began looking for ideas and resources within our seminary and within the Twin Cities community to stay aware of the impacts this was having on our Muslim neighbors.
That evening, I remember getting together with some friends at their house, sitting in their living room, wondering if there was something we could do together. I remember a lot of organized vigils the next few days, and because my seminary hosted daily chapel, I remember powerful sermons and hymn selections and prayers as a community. We sat together and grieved.
9/11 became a rallying cry for Homeland Security. In fact, a whole department in the US government was created and named that (with widespread bipartisan support). The historical overtones of the word “homeland” were and continue to be overlooked.
And then, of course, not many years later, Bush and his cabinet, through lies and deceit, actually organized an invasion of another country to retaliate for 9/11. It's a classic example of something we've seen repeated throughout history, that revenge is a deep human motive, and often the revenge and the scope of it far outstrips the initial act.
As horrifying as the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11 was, so was “Shock and Awe” on Baghdad, and the killing of so many civilians there. Witnessing our bombing of Baghdad has seared as indelible a scar on my vision as watching the Twin Towers fall.
For many years after 911 it became crucial for communities of faith to commemorate the day. Churches would put together committees to plan 9/11 observances. Communities did the same. And these observances, at least for a time, rose to the level as the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, the Pearl Harbor commemoration, D Day and so many others. It appears this has waned somewhat, although even in our tradition, we still include some memorials related to 9/11 in the prayers of the church on the Sunday closest to the date.
When I think back on the attack on those towers, when I remember watching them fall, part of me still can't believe it. That's partially because New York City has been so resilient in the aftermath of the attack. It's incredible how they rebuilt, how they mourned, how they've designed memorials, how the skyline has changed.
At least in part, it's because I can hardly believe that the terrorists successfully accomplished what they accomplished.
At least in part, it's because in one of the planes, the passengers fought back.
And at least in part, it's because we haven't seen such an attack or tragedy again comparative to that day. So the distance in time makes it somewhat surreal.
If I were to offer a few insights from 9/11 for my kids or anybody else reading this, it would be: a) watch out for the impulse to revenge that comes after having been attacked. It can control you, and you can take actions you will later regret. b) look out for your neighbors and try to understand them better. Be present with them in moments of need, especially if they are unjustly targeted. And c) keep in mind that there are many people living it today who still live with the tragic loss of that day, the loss of husbands, wives, children, coworkers, loved ones. Even if it's now just a historical event 23 years in the past, it's still very existentially real for everyone who lived through it.
I remember that morning vividly to this day. I was preparing to take food to a friend who was headed back to his home in Kansas. He had been visiting another friend after the loss of his wife to cancer a few months before. We had a small TV in the kitchen that I watched the news on. I couldn’t believe my eyes as I saw the first plane hit the Tower and immediately thought of the people in there and on the plane. When the second plane hit the next Tower I cried for all the people who were in this horror they were in. It was hard to leave the house to deliver the food to our friend and of course the home he had been visiting, they all knew and we shared a prayer of grief for the devastation that followed. It’s been a sad reminder on 9-11 again of the loss, grief, determination of survivors and families dealing with that loss again. Losing a loved one to illness is a hard cross to bear, but losing one to violence is unimaginable for those who experienced that and still do in mass shootings and war.
Another powerful reaction also needs to be repentance for our complicity in the world as it is.