Musings from a Minister’s Mind
I know exactly where I was 25 years ago on September 11 when four planes of victims and perpetrators of heinous acts changed our lives forever. Do you remember where you were that day? I know that it broke our hearts in one day. Then it built resilience and resolve the next day. This communal experience was not just for those in New York City, or Washington, D.C. or Pennsylvania – it was for the world. I can still feel the weight of pain and sobbing in my chest that I shared with everyone around me.
In 2016, just before I moved to Aquidneck Island, I spent three days with other advisors and a group of 10 high school youth in the heart of Manhattan. We worked in inner city missions, we rode the subway (a first for most of our youth!), we walked Central Park, and we visited the memorials/museum where those testimonies to architecture and skyline landscape no longer stood. One of the most revealing moments on that emotional day was the realization that only two of our youth were born in or before 2001. And they were just toddlers. Their outlook on the timeline of events of all the destruction, the fear, the heroism, the disbelief – was completely that of observer not participant. They asked questions and shed tears with those of us who had lived through this time. They helped me find one of my friend’s names who had been in Tower 1 and another who had been on flight 93 in Pennsylvania. They comforted the adults, walked through exhibits, and offered respect for history’s challenge to humanity. And then they did something that made me chuckle through my tears…they asked if they could get ice cream on the way back to where we were lodged.
In the midst of horror remembered, they chose to continue to live. That is resilience and resolve. So much has been said and written of that infamous day. Reaction became our response as a nation and as a global community to bring accountability. But the most important response was that we continued to remember and then to live our best lives in respect and response to the lives that were sacrificed. We are also called to live out faith and belief in something better so that it never happens again.
I remember and honor the lives that left this world that day. I remember and honor the lives of families, friends, and colleagues that were left behind to live. I remember and honor where I was that day, its grief and disbelief, its tears, its fear. I remember and honor the rising from the rubble to embrace life anew. I remember. I honor.
Pastor Laurie
Wednesday Weekly Word
Calvary United Methodist Church ©