September 11, 2001 was an epic event in the lives of many people around the world, especially Americans. The painful and tragic stories of the victims and their families and friends have been torturously documented and absorbed by a collective American society which continues to be divided about the causes, actions, issues and responsibilities pertaining to the event. The latest controversial firestorm centers around ABC's fictional docu-drama
The Path to 9/11, which has renewed the divisive
discussions.
The raw emotions of 9/11 are deep wounds that have never fully healed for many. Indeed, we don't need big scale items such as the wars in Afganistan and Iraq to keep us constantly reminiscent -- every day insignificant events such as glancing down at my watch and seeing 9:11 triggers flashbacks to our generation's "Day of Infamy."
I can't lay claim to harrowing tales of escape from the WTC, but it is human nature to imagine one's connection with the "what if's" of fate. It is probably unavoidable for all of us to think about our
personal connection to 9/11, and how our lives and outlook has been changed by it. One of our friends who lives in Michigan, for instance, will forever be impacted by 9/11 even though to my knowledge she did not lose anyone. Her son's birthday happens to be September 11th, and after that day he cried and told his mother that he was afraid his birthday was never going to be a happy day again. It's been a number of years since we've spoken to this friend, and hopefully her son has been able to transcend this emotional trauma. A former colleague who lived in a high-rise near the towers was cursed with an unfortunate ringside view of the unfolding events. Whereas most of us watched from the removed separation of our television sets, he probably witnessed the horror from his window, curled up hugging his own knees and crying uncontrollably. At least that's how I imagine he saw it. Later I heard how he was permanently traumatized by seeing people jump from the towers, and how he turned more and more to alcohol and drugs, showing up to work trashed when he showed up at all. He soon left the company and dropped off everyone's radar.
Five years ago today I woke up late - around 8:45 - because Helen was scheduled for a doctor's appointment later that morning. As was my routine, I turned on the morning news while making coffee. I remember the TV signal cutting out for a few seconds, replaced by a screen of snow. Before I could finish cursing the cable company, the picture came back showing the World Trade Center with smoke coming out of one of the towers. At first there was some uncertainty about what had happened. The broadcasters talked about a plane hitting the tower. I woke Helen and we watched helplessly as the world quickly spun completely out of control and comprehension.
Just the week before I'd been laid off from my job along with 400 other people caught in the latest ripples of the tech bubble implosion. I'd signed up for an outplacement workshop to be held at the World Trade Center on September 13th, but at the last minute finagled a change to an earlier session held at a different location. I think I just wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. In the days after September 11th, I couldn't help but play through the "what if's" in my mind. What if I didn't change my outplacement session? What if there wasn't room in the earlier session and I had to keep my originally scheduled date? What if the terrorists had chosen September 13th or 14th instead of the 11th? What if on one of those days I arrived early to go up to the observation deck to take in the views or to have breakfast at Windows on the World? Although I'd lived in New York most of my life, I'd never been to the World Trade Center. It was not past the realm of possibility that I would take advantage of having to be there. My mind and imagination spent many dark hours measuring the cosmic distance between my small insignificant life and this apocalyptic event.
As everyone in New York talked about 9/11 in the months following, I heard many stories of people who were supposed to be in one of the towers that day but for one reason or another were not. These stories from the news and from people I actually knew made me realize how many had been going through the same feelings and helped to create the emotional distance necessary to bring life slowly back to something approaching normal. The road to normal was a long one for New York. There were the never-ending updates that filled the media channels. Weekly bomb scares caused evacuations of entire areas and flashbacks of panic. Every lamp post and community area had posters and pictures of missing people. New Yorkers couldn't help but talk about 9/11, and the energy and spirit of the city's people and public places were abnormally subdued for months.
I don't really remember when life returned to a sense of normal for me - probably because I left New York before it happened. I do remember that when we first arrived in Washington, everyone we met who learned that we just moved from New York wanted to talk about 9/11. They couldn't help but ask and in some odd way I felt as if we were soldiers returning from the front lines, sharing our first hand accounts. For us, it became an eerie and immediate connection to people, and reinforced the scale and reach of 9/11.
On this significant anniversary of 9/11, I was again taken back to that time by all the new and recycled documentaries and programs that seemed to fill the TV schedule. I must admit I sought them out. One of the most compelling was PBS's
Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero, which examines 9/11 not through the typical lenses of intent, culpability, causal history or statistics, but rather by attempting to answer the unanswerable questions: Where was God on September 11th? What is the nature of evil? Is religion to blame, or is it all we have?
There were many many thought-provoking moments in that program, moments that shocked as well as enlightened my own belief and faith:
* Dr. David Benke, a Lutheran minister who participated in the interfaith
"Prayer for America" held at Yankee Stadium on September 23, 2001 was accused of heresy and expelled from his post by the New York Area Lutheran Church. His "crime" was leading a prayer in a forum with leaders from other faiths, thereby lending credence to the notion that all religions are equal. It caused Dr. Benke to question his own
religious beliefs as well as the concept of religion itself.
* Margo Adler, an NPR Correspondent, talked about a single line spoken by Vladimir Putin during an interview which chillingly epitomized how the hijackers could carry out such atrocities --
Vladimir Putin came to National Public Radio and gave an interview. And this became a big affair, and there were news articles about it all over the place. But the one thing that he said that I haven't forgotten- and it was never quoted anywhere. It was in no news story. But when I heard it, literally, the hair on the back of my wrists just stood up straight.
He was asked, "Well," you know, "what do you think about- what do you think when Regan said `the evil empire?' " You know, "What was your attitude?" And he said, "Well, I thought it was- you know, it was sort of a way of speaking. It was an exaggeration." And then the interviewer said to him, "Well," you know, "when George Bush talks about the"- you know, "Usama bin Laden as evil," you know, "do you think it's also a turn of phrase?" And Putin said, "No. I think that is really mild language. I have many words for them, but I couldn't say them on the air." And then he said, "We are as dust to them." That was the line that got me, "We are as dust to them."
So maybe what evil is, on some level, is when you get- when you believe in something so utterly that you lose your sense that a human being is a human being, when you feel that you can go into a building and kill 3,000 people and it doesn't matter because you are so focused on what you think is perfection and good, maybe that is a definition of evil. It's a kind of estrangement, though. It's an estrangement from your connection that these other human beings, the ones that are jumping out the window to the bottom, are just like you.
And that is probably the deepest religious perception that liberal religious tradition puts forward, that we are, you know, all human beings together on this planet in the same way, with certain kinds of values. And that's clearly what was lost.* Dasha Rittenberg, a Holocaust survivor, pierced at my belief in God with unparriable words of experience --
I can only describe evil by giving you what I remember. Not what I read in books, but what I with my own eyes and ears heard and saw. Evil. What happened to my parents? They were the last people to leave the ghetto and they were taken to Auschwitz. I know that they were burned into ashes. My mother, my father, my three brothers, my younger sister, my uncles, my aunts, their children, burned into ashes. That's all I have seen in humanity is evil. I have seen hangings. I have seen shootings. I saw one man, his name was Mischka. He was a Ukranian. He was drunk. He would just go killing every single day. He had to have his blood on his hands -- Jewish blood. Evil. You want to hear more? So? All the ghetto life, the hunger, the poverty, the lice that were crawling on my body. Evil. Evil people just patting their dogs and then killing a child because it was Jewish. Evil? OK? Hitting, slapping, for no reason, because you were not even in line with the next person. Being hit by dogs and bitten -- the blood running out of your feet. Evil. People would go to sleep every night and get up in the morning and eat and drink and be evil. Were they too created in the image of God? I don't know. What does it say about God?* I marvelled at Brian Doyle's
essay and Ian McEwan's
interview which showcase an inspiring ability to extract the message of love from the inconceivable horrors of seeing people jump from the burning towers.
This anniversary has affected me much more than I would have ever imagined. I have spent more time and energy in reflection and remembrance than at any time since 2001. The past few days have certainly revealed that the wound is still raw and deep. The answers are still not clear.
