Ten Years Later

I don't think any of us will forget what we were doing when we realized that a plane had hit a tower and it wasn't a horrible accident. I was driving to seminary, listening to a pair of DJ's who never take anything seriously and assumed the reports were another of their jokes - a sick joke, but how could that be real? Then reports came of a second plane, and I realized not even Kevin and Bean were that irreverent. My seminar teacher tuned the TV to CNN and we watched the chaos unravel first in New York, then in DC. I watched a tower fall. I saw a plane downed in a field, heard the passengers took the plane down themselves to prevent a fourth attack. It looked like a movie, not real life. And that was from 3000 miles away. I can't imagine the trauma up close.

Five years later I was in New York for a journalism conference. My friend Stephanie and I won a contest to ride along with the NYPD for a night. The officers we rode with offered to take us anywhere in the city. Steph suggested Ground Zero. One of them went ghost-white and said, "Anywhere but that." His partner explained that he'd been there that day. Their unit had been called in to get stranded people out of the elevators in Tower 1. They hadn't succeeded, had barely escaped with their own lives as it crumbled around them. Tears filled his eyes at the memory, the guilt, of saving his own life and leaving others to die. To this day he won't get in elevators.

Ten years later I wonder if we've changed. Oh sure, for the first while we came together as a country, flew our flag from every corner, clung to our God and pledged to be better. But how quickly that unity dissipated into the usual pettiness, bickering, even hatred not only for our enemies but also for each other, for anyone who thinks differently than we think. For all the daily reminders of that September morning - taking off shoes to walk through airport security, dumping out water bottles at any public event, wars half a world away - we have already forgotten the one benefit from it all: the simple truth that when we come together and turn our hearts to God, healing will come. The way we look at others, the mistrust of darker skin, the fear of certain accents, the hatred of other faiths, is not going to restore the innocence and security lost ten years ago. Those of us who lived through it will never forget what we saw. But we can choose how we react and where we turn for peace.