Labor Day weekend many years ago, I drove to Bergan County, New Jersey, to spend the weekend with my then best friend. We made the trip into Manhattan – my first time being there – and the sheer size, absolute vibrancy hummed through me. First stop: World Trade Center South Tower for the Broadway ticket booth. We spent to day meandering through the streets and shops of the city until our show. Afterwards, we headed for Windows on the World in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. I remember loving the feel of the city, wishing I could stay longer. I remember as we left Manhattan, promising myself I’d go back. The year was 2001. Eight days later, the Towers had been attacked and New York decimated while the rest of us, well, the rest of us watched, paralyzed as we cried, screamed, even collapsed in utter disbelief.
25 years. A quarter of a century. An entire generation of children born, grown, having children themselves. But even this knowledge of reality fails to negate the sensation of fiction. I have sat upon the granite benches at the Pentagon’s memorial, my fingers tracing the names of the 59 passengers of American Airlines Flight 77 and the 125 Pentagon employees choking back tears even as I acknowledged the sense of peace pervading the site of these cantilevered granite markers. I have knelt at the bronze parapets in Manhattan and listened to the water cascade over the edge into the void, felt the absence of that which had been, the absence of those who had been. Lives lost to a war that we as a culture cannot understand. 25 years.
Do you remember where you were that beautiful early Autumn morning? I lived in Arlington, Virginia, and was in bed with a migraine, had disconnected the phone at the wall hoping the silence would mitigate the pain pulsating through my head, hair, even my teeth. When I gave up the futile attempt and reconnected the phone, immediately it rang. My father, panicked, asked, “Where are you?”
“Home, Daddy, I’m at home. Why? What’s happened?” My confusion was complete.
“Turn on your. Turn it on right now,” he insisted.
“Okay, hold on.” I stumbled out of bed to my living room and switched on the television. My mind had signaled no premonition, my heart had beat no warning, as I stood cemented in place as I witnessed the very moments that dissolved the world I recognized into ash. It was ten minutes to 9:00AM on September 11, 2001, 4 minutes after Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and I, as did millions of others, stood in struggled to comprehend what we were seeing even as smoke and flames consumed the landmark, smoke and flame consumed our hope even as we prayed.
In my head a tape played on a constant loop. “This is not real. This could not, did not happen here.“ And then, at 9:03AM, as our nation and the international community watched transfixed in horrified awe, the hijacked Flight 172 ensured we understood that this his was no accident, no fake. Flight 172 struck the South Tower.
Evacuation and rescue proved a possibility for many, but for those trapped above the crash sites help would never come. As those condemned souls reconciled themselves to their horrific reality – the impossibility of escape from the raging inferno and toxic smoke – some decided to choose their own manner of death. Hot tears wet my face as I stood immobilized by grief watching doomed men and women cast themselves from shattered windows to free fall to the earth below. I didn’t bother to wipe my tears; they’d simply be replaced by more, nor could I look away. These men and women had not chosen the terror visited upon them; these men and women were dying for simply being in America. The very least they were owed was that I – that we – bear witness to their sacrifice.
Even as the Towers burned, Flight 77 took off from Dulles Airport outside DC. At 0937, Flight 77 and rammed into the Western Façade of the Pentagon at 500 miles per hour penetrating 3 of the building’s 5 concentric rings. I ran to my front door, throwing it open. From 3 miles away, I could smell the Pentagon burning. Sometimes in my dreams I can smell it still.
That same day, terrorists also gained control of United Airlines Flight 93. The passengers, having learned about the WTC and the Pentagon, refused to allow Flight 93, their flight, to wreak the same havoc on their nations. From somewhere deep within themselves, they mustered their courage and stormed the hijackers. The terrorists crashed the plane into a Pennsylvania field rather than allow the passengers to regain control. It was the only one of the 4 planes not to reach its target. Leter analysis would show that the autopilot had been engaged targeting the U.S. Capitol Building where Congress was in session.
In the days following, patriotism experienced a resurgence. We declared that we would never forget. But each year it seems less as less real. Each year we move farther away from believing that those who planned and perpetrated the horror based on a religious ideology from a culture we simply cannot comprehend would gladly do it again. Each year we prove that we are foolish in our complacencies.
And I am afraid for us.
Who are we? What do we believe? What do we hold dear and at what cost? It’s increasingly unpopular to call Islam a violent ideology. It’s increasingly more likely to be labeled “-phobic” to suggest that a theology that calls for the death of anyone who fails to submit is antithetical to what America was meant to be. But there is a yawning difference between phobia and common sense, and increasingly I find myself asking, ‘How did we get here?’
My grandfather landed in Normandy in 1944. My father voluntarily left university to fight in Vietnam. My brother and I both served in the military because we believe in the America that should be, that could be. I believe in the Constitution as it was intended. I believe in the rule of law. I believe in the system of majority rule with protection of minority rights. In short, I believe in our that existed that day, and am repeatedly and irrevocably stunned every time I hear a young American adult (or anyone) proclaim that they do not believe the USA to be the best country in the world in which to live. I wonder what they’d rather face? I wonder how they that dare to embrace their stance while also calling for completely open borders. Logically, if the USA were not the best country in which to live, why are so many fleeing their homelands for ours? Why would we need open borders? But, then, logic often falls short of popular opinion.
Love and Mercy, compassion and forgiveness. Jesus and his Apostles taught of these: turn the other cheek, forgive your neighbor, walk in peace if possible, love those that persecute you. I know these, believe these. But I also know that there exists a bright red line between mercy and compassion and excusing sin while also harboring evil. We have come so very far in pushing individual “truths,” protection of “triggers,” redefining “genocide” and “racism” that we fail to see the part of love, part of mercy, part of compassion that involves holding someone accountable for harms already committed and protection of others for potential future harms. Had Israel believed Hamas when it said they were going to attack months before the October 7 massacre, the Middle East crisis may have been diverted or at least postponed. Islamic clerics now post videos on YouTube and other platforms clearly stating that they have every attention of an American invasion and destruction of Christianity and our lives as we know them. Regardless of your stance on Christianity or any religion other than Islam, take those clerics and Islamic leaders at their word.
25 years. Please remember.
The Unexpected Life 