Five Years Later:
In Memory and Hope for Peace


This is the Heroes of September 11 listing at Ground Zero. Hanging by the fence by the gaping hole that was the World Trade Center, with the Roman Numerals "IXXI" in the background it may be as fitting a way to get the sense of what happened as anything else.

I have just finished reading the truly mesmerizing novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer in which nine-year old (highly precocious) Oskar Schell spends his weekends looking for the owner of a key that Oskar found in his Dad's stuff after 9/11. It is a book of healing and perspective, dealing with death and life from World War II to 9/11 with a sense of perseverance.

The book was a good way to remember on this 9/11. It was also a good way to remember that somehow, someway, far beyond our human capacity to understand or solve, even events like 9/11 can have hope built into them. We are still much too close to the event to understand what that might be. We are still embroiled in the politics of both sides to be able to pull ourselves out of the political rubble- the unfortunate but expected fallout of the event.

So perhaps the best way to remember today is to not forget.

• Not forget the people who died because they simply went to work that morning;
• Not forget the people who died because they were on the wrong plane on the wrong day;
• Not forget the people who fought back on another plane bound for even greater destruction;
• Not forget the people who went in to save others and gave their lives as well;
• Not forget the people who escaped and may live with that memory for the rest of their lives;
• Not forget that we are a nation of hope and promise and not allow these terrorists with their twisted plans and in-humane attitudes to make us become something we will not be proud of.

I could go on, obviously. But for me 9/11 will be the firemen, and one fire chaplain in particular.

Father
Mychal
Judge

Victim 00001

A Catholic priest, an out-of-the-closet gay priest, a recovering alcoholic who would have celebrated 23 years of sobriety on the date that was his funeral instead.

Here was a man who was an inspiration to all he had touched- and in death was able to do even more. He brings us all to a place where we can move into care and compassion because that is where we are supposed to go. Since I first heard it, I have had a prayer he used handy. It is a good way to move on from 9/11 into a world that we never thought existed, but which will take the same faith and hope that we have always needed. Here, to end this memorial of 9/11, is Father Mychal's prayer:

Lord, take me where you want me to go;
Let me meet who you want me to meet;
Tell me what you want me to say
And keep me out of your way.