Remembering 9/11

The answer is: in a carpet shop in Staines, UK. 

The question has been posed on at least three media forums this week - the 'where were you when ...'. A man called Barry (whom I had not met before and not seen since, as I was only in Staines for the day), came into the shop to tell us all that two planes had flown into the World Trade Centre. Our response was in the perhaps understandable vein - "don't be stupid". People just didn't do things like that. 

But they did. 

By the time I had driven from Staines back to Crawley, the Towers has fallen on top of the rescue services and had vapourised many hundreds of innocent people. In the aftermath, a mere ten percent of the bodies were recovered. Oddly, at the time, the terrorist attack on New York's financial heart was too great to take in so, so I received the images like so many Schwarzenegger films. I took it in a little and never really absorbed it. The image above was the first of the hours of news-fed imagery that I saw of the terrible events unfolding. 

As a decade turns fully, I find myself more affected by the event than I did on the day itself. 9/11 did change the world and many many thousands of people have died in its wake, with declarations of war, their reprisals, and the ripple-effects that accompany them. The planes that were flown full speed into the WTC are the same as pass by my house now, so close to my home and my children. I have found myself wondering what must have passed as thought for the poor souls unto whose windows those planes were directed. Then there were those who, so desperate as they were, threw themselves over a hundred stories to their deaths - falling for countless seconds, seeing their end approach them at terminal velocity. 

So many innocent people. So many innocent rescuers caught up and killed by their duty and their love for their fellow humans. So many families left to grieve. 

I once stood at the foot of one of the Towers and looked up. They touched heaven, I thought. Tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of the day when the world turned differently. It seems that Bin Laden did his work well as it is quite clear to me that this catastrophe was merely the Overture. Ours is, in many ways, a frightened and suspicious world where people's visible differences are cause for concern. Ours is a world where anything is now possible - even terrible and audacious things. Without doubt, ours is a more violent world where the near-three thousand deaths of 9/11 will eventually (if not already) seem small by comparison with the continuing deaths that happen in the name of the events all those years ago.

I pray earnestly that we can take the example of the fire-fighters, the ambulance crews, the sole chaplain, the passers-by - and remember that even in the darkest of moments, light can be found. It is the light that will, in the annals of history, be the remarkable story to tell. 

May God bless those who died on that darkest of days, or in the days that followed. I pray for their families too, for whom the next few hours may be among the worst - again. Amen

Not in My Back Yard

Once upon a time, if someone asked you a question, one of the first responses would have been:

'What can I do for you?'

In 2010, it seems that this statement is changed, archived, redundant. We appear, at certain times, to be an increasingly inhospitable world where the urge to resist or destroy overides any instinct to encourage and create. 

The most notable case this week was the abhorrent case of Mr Terry Jones (he calls himself 'Pastor', but I don't recognise his right), a minister of a small baptist church in America. Upon the impending anniversary of 9/11, a day in history when pure hatred killed the innocent, rather than having  day of prayer for the witnesses, he guided his flock to another place of hatred. 'Burn the Koran Day', proclaimed his website and church. Words fail me (and that takes some doing). Arguably the most toxic and inflammatory act of the year, had it gone ahead, Mr Jones would not have just offended the religion blamed for 9/11, but every Muslim in the world, and also every person who hold scripture as special and sacred. Potentially, the act he proposed could have resulted in a greater mortality, and would certainly have been considerably injurious to innocent people. Hate responding to Hate - the sum of that can only be 'hate'.

We also have a case in New York where an Islamic Cultural Centre is being built in proximity to Ground Zero, much to the resistance of so many. I can understand the concerns of those who are protesting, but it is (a perhaps inevitable) emotional reaction, not a thought-out one. Once upon a time, one Mr A Hitler authorised the killing of millions, and he once started to train as a priest. Does that mean, by implication, that churches should not be built anywhere near the homes of Jewish people? Of course not, because the actions of Mr Hitler were not the fault of Christians, any more than the action of 9/11 were the fault of ordinary Muslims. If we start to make normal, ordinary, run-of-the-mill people pay for the crimes of an extreme minority, it is our very civilisation that suffers. I will be making all the people from Yorkshire pay the price for the Ripper next, and that would be absurd.

We need to learn how to allow things to heal. They heal only when we let them, and by our efforts. Territorialism creates little islands of isolated individuals - we need, I think, to return to that old saying, wherever it is from:

'Love thy neighbour as thyself'