Writing a blog entry on 9/11 is I’m sure a common event today. As it should be. The events of September 11, 2001 are indelibly etched in our memories and in our hearts.
At the moment, I am out of town, as I was on September 11, 2001. Then I was in Atlanta, Georgia attending a trade show across the street from the CNN Center. There was speculation that the communication giant was a potential target. The Nation was on high alert generally and individually. My colleagues and I were for the most part trapped in the city. Airplanes were grounded. Many people from my company jumped on a bus and began a long ride back to Utah. They had no confidence in the airlines.
My bet was, that once we were allowed to fly, we would be safer than every before. I flew with confidence once we could several days later.
Reflections: I remember gathering for prayer in an old red brick church in downtown Atlanta. It may have been a Baptist, or Methodists, it didn’t matter. We didn’t gather as registered parishioners, we prayed as brothers and sisters who knew less about the world than we did a few days before. What we knew for sure was there is a God and that we were his children. How the prayers were offered or how the church was decorated mattered little.
I remember public prayers offered in groups outside office buildings. People dressed in suits or jeans circled in prayer, calling upon the almighty to understand and heal the might event unfolding before us. As groups huddled in prayer or stood trying to make sense of the events, it reminded me of terrible events and serious reflection from Nephite survivors as they listen to a still voice in the dark. Perhaps those days in Atlanta was a preview to scenes we’ll see when the still voice sounds a second time.
I remember looking for my expression of the Red, White and Blue. Suddenly pins, and hats and t-shirts were in high demand and worn be all who could. I finally found my version, a Red, White, and Blue New York Yankees hat with the N and Y spangled with stars. I wore it proudly on the plane home, and for many days after that.
New York is a sweet spot for me. I worked in Manhattan for four years, had business meeting in the twin towers, took scouts to a high rise office to watch 4th of July fireworks in the New York Harbor. I spent many days in many of the surrounding buildings also damaged on 9/11 that day. It was hard to imagine that these two giants were down, their neighbors shook too hard and so many people went with them. I don’t have the capacity to comprehend what really happened that day. The individual stories of heroism and hell. It is too big. Too many lives ruined, too many futures disrupted.
But I admire the great spirit of New York. The spirit of rebuilding the beautiful out of the smoldering ashes. The spirit of not letting despair break them forever. The spirit to fight back. It is more than just ignoring the past, of just putting it out of mind as though it had not happened. It is taking what happened and making that experience meaningful by not being enfeebled by it, but somehow being empowered by it.
© Shayne Clarke 2008
