Thread by @jeffblack945

#RevThread #190
9/11 Reflections

1/ I was already at the office of our church plant in Austin, Texas. My sister from NYC was visiting, watching the Today Show with Barbara at home.

2/ My associate, Mike, was doing a service at a local school. Barbara called and said a plane had crashed in NYC. She called again and said my sister was really upset because Tom Brokaw was saying it was an attack.

3/ Mike was on his way to the office and could tell something was wrong. He called and asked me if I knew what was going on. I said we had been attacked. I told him to go home to his family...

4/..Then I called the staff still in the office to pray together briefly and we all went home. I asked them to be ready to come to a prayer service that night.

5/ The church office was near my home, so I was there in minutes. My sister was watching the towers, which she saw every day from her home on Staten Island. Suddenly she yelled, “That’s not a little plane! That’s a great big plane!” as the second tower was struck.

6/ We watched the firemen go in, saw the aide come and whisper in President Bush’s ear in front of the children he was reading to. Tom Brokaw was saying that we were watching some heroic firemen go into those damaged, burning towers to save lives.

7/ Then there were hours of just trying to take it all in. Mike, a perceptive man, quietly said, “We’ll never be the same. This will change the country. This is a very dangerous moment.”

8/ We decided to call for a prayer meeting. I think that service was the next night. Many in the congregation came. We had quite a few active and retired military service men and women in our congregation, including a major general and a colonel.

9/ We also had a lot of immigrant families from Mexico and from Africa. Each of us prayed for the victims and their families and for our country, and I read from the beatitudes.

10/ Not far from our storefront there was small mosque. I said that we would take up a collection and then the next day take it to the mosque, because our neighbors would be so scared, and they needed to know that they were welcome in the neighborhood....

11/... The congregation nodded and walked to the little altar table and put their money on the plate. We held hands in a circle and I said the blessing.

12/ I went home, grateful to be serving such people, and pondering the intimate connection in our world between crime and war. Maybe now enough time has passed that we can together imagine a better response to private international criminals.

13/ On this day we can cherish the memories of ones we have lost, and honor those who responded to the crisis of that day with such heroism.