Wednesday, September 11, 2019

18 Years Later

I first saw the twin towers just before Christmas in the year, 2000, when I was in NYC for a couple of weeks stage managing a production of Art off-off-off Broadway at a theatre near Shea Stadium. I had tea in the Winter Garden one afternoon with a friend of mine before heading uptown with one of my college roommates for a visit.

On September 11, 2001, I was working at a temp job in Virginia Beach at some kind of computer company where I answered the phone that rarely rang.  On that day I answered more phone calls than most - wives calling their husbands to tell them the news.  I didn't have a cell phone then, so on my lunch break I ran to a pay phone in a nearby parking lot to call my friends at Virginia Stage Company to see if they were okay. They'd been evacuated because the theatre was next door to the Norfolk Federal Building.  I tried to call my parents, but I had forgotten they were on a tour for the day.  I could reach no one, so I headed back in and searched the internet for news.  I emailed everyone I could think of to see if they were okay.  I learned that my church would be holding a service that evening.

Earlier that year I had begun discerning a call to ordination, and I longed to be at the church.  Where I could pray with people, comfort people, be comforted myself.  I longed to be out of the temp job.  It never occurred to the men at the company that it might be a good day to go home.  It didn't occur to me to ask if I could leave.

That night at the prayer service at Christ and St. Luke's, we prayed Psalm 46 and the Prayer for Quiet Confidence.  "Be still and know that I am God."  To this day, I often use that phrase in contemplative prayer.

Eighteen years later, I watched the minute of silence on one of the TV morning shows, and I remembered that day again.  Hard to believe it was 18 years ago.  So much has changed.

After packing my lunch and gathering my work things, I drove to the hospital, where I climbed the stairs to the second floor - maternity ward.  Wearing clericals and carrying my battered travel prayer book with me, I entered the room where a new tiny human slept in a hospital crib beside his mother's bed.  Alexander William, born September 10, 2019.  One of the greatest joys of ministry is getting to bless babies.  For me, today, the experience of leaving the news program detailing the timeline of that terrible morning in order to hold and then bless one of earth's newest inhabitants was a microcosm of the paschal mystery:  life, death, new birth.

At 11am, I presided over the healing Eucharist at Bruton.  In my 11 years as a priest, I have never celebrated the Eucharist on September 11.  We commemorated those who died in the plane crashes and building destruction as well as the first responders who gave their lives to try to save others.  We remembered those who worked so long at Ground Zero digging out, those who ministered to the workers, those who lost their loved ones, those whose lives have been lost to cancers and other diseases that the dust and smoke carried inside their bodies.  We asked God to help us love one another, to love our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us.  We prayed for healing.

On that day and in the days afterward, so many people asked how God could let this happen.  Where was God?  Then and now I have always thought - God didn't do this.  Human beings did this.  God was with us in it and through it, weeping as we wept, and rejoicing when the good overcame the evil.  

I wonder if God is weeping again today, remembering the destruction caused by those made in God's image.
I wonder if God is weeping over the division and hostility that are devouring our country - a country that had pulled together for a sweet moment after the tragedy.
I wonder if God is weeping that America is turning its back on the people from the Bahamas in their time of tragedy when so many Americans received welcome when we were in the midst of ours.
I wonder if God is weeping because we still can't figure out how to love one another.

"Be still and know that I am God."  We prayed these words in the service today, in Psalm 46, and in the Prayer for Quiet Confidence:
O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and
rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be
our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray,
to your presence, where we may be still and know that you
are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Eighteen years later, I had a much better day.  I blessed a baby and celebrated the Eucharist and attended a delightful Women of Bruton meeting and offered resources to a woman with addiction and had dinner with Jan Brown.  I turned off the news and snuggled with my kitties and wept for how far we have to go and prayed that one day the good won't have to be a small light shining in the midst of darkness.