9/11/14 Memorial Service – The Rahway Fire Department
For some, the question of a generation was, “Where were you when Pearl Harbor was attacked?” For others, the question is, “Where were you when President Kennedy was assassinated?” For us, today, for this generation, our question is, “Where were you on 9/11?” This question is pervasive and powerful because in answering it we tell a story, a culturally shared memory of a national catastrophe, a trauma. It has been my experience that whenever the question of “Where were you on 9/11?” is posed, an impromptu memorial service takes place wherever the question is asked. When we tell our stories about 9/11 the distinction between the sacred and profane become blurry, as we share our experience of 9/11 we memorialize those whom we have lost and the bar stool becomes a pew, the check out line at the grocery store can become a chapel, the walls of the PTA room become walls of a cathedral adorned in brilliant stained glass, a business lunch can become a confessional, a stranger can become family. Our stories, our shared memory of a national tragedy can bring two or more strangers together who otherwise had nothing in common other than the horrors of 9/11. Life after 9/11 is different for all, for those who lost loved ones and to those who lost a sense security. The world, on and after 9/11, due to violence and loss, got smaller. The world got smaller because there were fewer people in it after 9/11, and smaller still because the terrorist attacks of the nature of 9/11 seemed like they only took place in places very far away. As traumatic as the day was, perhaps the biggest trauma this nation suffered was a profound sense of loss. Loss of loved ones and the loss of a national identity that perhaps naively believed that we were beyond the reach of violence and lunacy on the scale of the 9/11 attack. We share our memorials in bars, grocery stores, work, and home, and part of remembering is the recognition that the world can never be the same after the loss of one life, let alone 3000. When just one person dies I want the world to recognize their absence, the subtle hole in the world, and that we can never go back to living the way we did before because one life is simply too precious to lose, a witness so valuable that they cannot be replaced, especially given the circumstances of a violent death too deplorable to repeat. But, perhaps the hardest part about loss is going back to work the day after a funeral when we are faced with the reality that nothing has changed. We carry our grief around with us as the world continues business as usual. Sadly, the world continues to turn as it did before.
The world before 9/11 was violent and had its own Ground Zeroes scattered throughout our streets, Ground Zeroes in our homes, Ground Zeroes in our classrooms, Ground Zeroes in our churches, and Ground Zeroes in our hearts. My hope for 9/11 is that the world would change in the aftermath of a tragedy which words alone can hardly bear. In the years that followed 9/11 my feeling of a need of a world changing recognition of loss has been largely the same, I wanted the world to change because we know first hand what violence begets, I wanted the end of business as usual where business is violence and usual is its ubiquity. Part of our witness to the dead is not only asking “where were you on 9/11,” but what have we learned since then? How has the world’s heart been broken by acts that not only should never have been but, by the grace of God, never happen again? We, each of us, our living memorials to the lost, what, if anything have we learned?
Sadly, just like when you go back to work the day after a funeral, life after 9/11 has largely returned to what it was before. Our national sense of loss took shape in the form of a living memorial of endless wars, civilian casualties, torture, back room trials, a growing police state and military funding that trumped nearly all other areas of the national budget. Today, thirteen years later, we are on the verge of re-entering the fray in Iraq and Syria. Time and time again, we address the monsters of our own making with weapons that seem to eventually end up in the hands of our once ally now turned foe. Our headlines are littered with litanies of violence and deceit. Why is it that there are simply so many Ground Zeroes in America and abroad today? Now, just as before 9/11, there are Ground Zeroes on our street corners, in our homes, and in our classrooms. In our impromptu memorials when we recount the details of our whereabouts on 9/11, what have we learned? It is an unavoidable conclusion that our actions post-9/11 are part of our perpetual memorial to the people we lost on 9/11. How we have lived since 9/11 is part of telling our story of 9/11.
Today, as we memorialize four people who lost their lives in 9/11, as we answer again where we were on that day, my hope is that somehow, as we look back to one of our nation’s most tragic mornings, we fill the void of our losses with something more profound than violence and a proportional response. It is my hope that we honor the dead by feeding the living, it is my hope that on account of the fallen who have been silenced we raise up those whose voices have been quieted and forgotten. It is my hope that the impromptu memorials that happen when we answer where we were on 9/11 take place in soup kitchens instead of battlefronts, in town hall meetings instead of shooting ranges, in firehouse memorials instead of coroner’s offices. The gravity of our loss of loved ones should be matched by our perseverance in honoring the living, not with violence, but with a love rooted in the hope of a more peaceful tomorrow. Today, as we honor those from our community who perished in 9/11, as the world symbolically stops as we observe a moment of silence, it is my hope that we honor those who have gone on ahead of us to heaven by making this life a little bit more heavenly. It is not enough to ask “Where were you on 9/11?” This question necessarily leads to others like, “Where have you been since 9/11?” “Where are you now?” “Where are you going?” Today, as we honor the lives of those from our community who were lost in 9/11, I pray for the grace that is as profound as the depth of our losses and I pray that our hope out weighs the force of our despair. It is my prayer that we honor the dead by making the lives of all the living better. Amen.
