Tomorrow we observe a painful anniversary: it has been 25 years since the attacks on 9/11 in New York City, Washington, and Pennsylvania. Like many things we grieve, the sharpness of the loss has faded with time, but when we pause to remember, the acute sense of loss returns.
I lived in New York City until about three months before the attacks in 2001. I was working in film production at the time, and remember many nights seeing the Twin Towers rising above the city blocks where we were filming. I remember working briefly in the restaurant on the top floor. I remember going through security on a daily basis during that job because of an earlier attack just a few years before.
Though I did not lose anyone close to me and had moved away by the time of the attacks, the tragedy of that day remains a major dividing line in my life between before and after. The photos from that day seem so grainy and distant, yet the memories remain sharp, as if it were just a few years ago. I still struggle to re-watch footage of the attacks on the anniversaries. The sense of loss is great and will always remain so, for me and for many who were far closer to the attacks than I was.
In a nation with fewer and fewer shared experiences or interpretations of major events, the anniversary of 9/11 rings with a familiar recognition that something dramatic changed for our nation, and for so many of us, that day. We may not all agree on what that change was, but I think that most would see that tragic day as a dividing line in our national consciousness.
The call for peacemakers is to enter this and all times of disruption and loss with a desire to bring about a reconciled world, and that so often starts with grief and lament. When we stop to pray and remember those who died, we might also hear God’s call to build a more peaceful and just world on the rubble of whatever edifice has been brought low. The work of peacemaking is ever before us. It is so often a work that begins with a broken heart, and moves toward healing only when we engage the work of reconciliation.
Faithfully,
