Friday, August 26, 2011

As we approach the 10th anniversary of the attacks on Septmeber 11,2001, we all struggle for an appropriate response. Saint Matthew's is preparing to host a barbeque for all of the first responders of Glasgow, EMTs, firemen, police, sheriff's department. Afterwards we plan a service of Evening Prayer with a Litany of Remembrance. Remembering is what we do, but in remembering ten years later, we might find our anger has transformed into a deep sadness. Below is what I wrote during my first visit to ground zero.
If you take the N or R (Yellow Line) train from Times Square, it is a short ride to Cortlandt Street. Coming out of the subway, a half block down, is ground zero. The first thought I had, as a child of the sixties, was how empty it all seemed. Looking up, there is nothing. Looking down, there is a great empty hole.
My first thoughts were unbidden: “Those sons of bitches. Those sons of bitches.” The buildings around the site are still smoke blackened. Lots of people move past the guard fence. Hassidic Jews murmur together, lovers kiss outside the fence. The names are there. One waits for a feeling of, what? It is not like the Wall in D.C. There the loss is more personal, the feelings cramp your heart and force tears to your eyes as you read the names of friends, people you grew to maturity with at school. People, with whom you shared hardships and triumphs, people who fought and bled with you. Here it is different, but finally it comes: the sense of loss, the senselessness of loss. Why? How come?
We walked past the names and the flowers and the signs and the personal memories to the corner. Looking back, almost for the first time, I register the cross. The simple steel girders that are erected near the center of where the two towers stood. St. Paul’s Church, at the other end, is still covered with black. Restoration is in progress, but the emptiness is palpable. I come back to look at the cross again. It is Christus Victorius; an empty cross, like the emptiness of the space where I was so accustomed to see the towers.
Is there something in that symbol for those of us who look two years later? Is the absence of a body, a human form, on that cross, meaningful for those who mourn?
It has rained this weekend. Pools of water gather in the depths. I know FBI agents from Glasgow who spent time sifting the debris looking for human remains. What still remains? Signs on Trinity Wall Street and St. Paul’s celebrate the heroic efforts of everyone involved, and yet, somehow it seems so…?
Perhaps it is because I have just come from my 35th reunion (graduation from West Point) that I feel the soldier in me more clearly. We are attacked, we must respond. The intellect in me wonders if we have done so out of a need to strike anything or anybody, as a relief, a retribution that can never really heal, but must take place to … to what? No amount of destruction that we produce will assuage the feelings we have as we look at that emptiness. The cross is still there. What does it mean? Love your neighbor as yourself. An eye for an eye. Turn the other cheek. The friend of my enemy is my enemy. Is this really a “holy war?” Is there anything such as a “holy war?”
Rowan Williams, writing soon after 9/11, struggled to make sense of what is happening. His small book is a comfort that doesn’t get me through these moments. I cannot turn the other cheek. There are injustices that demand a human reaction. Maybe that is why the cross struck me as so empty. I want to see Jesus up there. I want to be reminded that God really knows about suffering.  In my head, I know. Right now, in my heart, I want no quarter. I want to somehow prove to “those people” that they cannot do this. I want to rebuild the towers even bigger. I want to say, “Come on. Try again.” If you do, we’ll build them again, because we can.”
Maybe that is the way to answer this. Rebuild. Demonstrate to the world that whatever is wrong with America in their eyes, the lack of faith in the future of ourselves, in the future of humanity is not one.  Maybe the empty cross is the best symbol at the site. It surely epitomizes that attitude: the future is good. God’s kingdom is coming. God’s kingdom, with all its human spots is coming right now. God’s kingdom is seen in the struggle, the words of love from cell phones at 20,000 feet, the selflessness of firemen.
But it is almost too hard. I cannot get pat answers. I cannot make this a sermon about the graciousness of God. I can only go down on my knees and weep. I can only cry for the loss, for the West Pointer, captain of the lacrosse team in 2001, who is now a double amputee from the war in Iraq, for the Iraqi children with no food or water, for the evil men who think that by dealing death they will somehow be justified before God.

Look at those names again: fathers, mothers, brothers, husbands, wives, and now saints. But don’t stop there. Look past them to the cross. Good. Evil. Darkness. Light.

Are we to be the dark, or are we to be the light? Do we have a choice?

Is this still true? Can we return to the light, to be the light? I hope so. I pray so.

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