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The Faith of September 10
By Edward Grinnan
Editor-in-Chief of Guideposts
The last thing I did at work that Monday, September 10, 2001, was make a plane reservation for a business trip the next week. I didn't think twice about it. Why would I? I flew all the time. All I really cared about was getting an aisle seat.
It had been a perfect, cloudless late-summer day, like the murderous day that was to follow. I'd had lunch with a friend and we sat outside at Bryant Park behind the library and watched our fellow New Yorkers go about their business, absorbed in the daily trials and rewards of life in the city. Dogs chased Frisbees in the park. One jumped in the fountain then shook off, sending pedestrians scattering. The baseball pennant races and various tawdry celebrity scandals made the front pages of the tabloids lining the newsstand. Julee, my wife, was up in the country with the dogs and I planned to go home that night, order some Chinese and watch the Giants on Monday Night Football undisturbed. In retrospect, life seemed very simple and uncomplicated. I'm sure I was not experiencing it that way at the time, but looking back across the divide of 9/11, it feels so innocent to me now.
I have written before about September 10, maybe even a bit obsessively. Most Americans, and especially most New Yorkers, can tell you exactly what they were doing when they first heard about the attacks on the Twin Towers the next day, and I am no exception. I was in the Guideposts offices about 40 blocks uptown of the Towers. When the news broke, my assistant, a part-time EMT and member of the city's disaster response team, looked at me and simply said, "I have to go." We didn't see her again for a week.
Still, it's the seemingly unremarkable 10th that haunts me, a day when the wheels of fate were silently in motion. And as the years pass it isn't so much that that day was a line of demarcation; in certain ways it very much was. No, it is more a reminder that tomorrow is always uncertain. We look to the future with optimism and hope but we never know exactly what will come to pass. We can predict but we can't be certain. I know I will probably get up tomorrow morning and walk my dog, and there is a 30 percent chance it will be raining, according to the weather report. And I would be very surprised if this were not to happen because it happens virtually every morning, rain or shine. The lesson of September 10, 2001, the one I remind myself of every year, is that I need more than my expectations to face the future.
I need faith, the belief that no matter what the next day or week or year or eternity holds, I am in the hands of a loving power much greater than my own hopes and dreams and even fears, greater than my power to imagine what happens next at any given moment of my life. It is only by recognizing that uncertainty that I can truly understand the nature of faith, and experience a deeper joy in knowing that the only thing that is certain beyond today, beyond this very instant, is the eternal presence of a loving God who exists beyond the mortal constraints of space and time. Faith, at its deepest, empowers us not only to face the future but to trust in it, and in my life there has perhaps been no greater test of that trust than the crystalline memory I hold of September 10, 2001.
Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief of Guideposts.
By Edward Grinnan |
September 10, 2009; 12:08 PM ET
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Posted by: ccnl1 | September 11, 2009 3:45 PM
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Part 1:
Remembering 9/11/01 on 9/11/2009 with an update on Our War on Terror and Aggression:
(or how we are spending or how we have spent the USA taxpayers’ money to eliminate global terror and aggression)
The terror and aggression via a Partial and Recent Body Count
1a) 179 killed in Mumbai/Bombay, 290 injured
1b) Assassination of Benazir Bhutto and Theo Van Gogh
2) 9/11, 3000 mostly US citizens, 1000’s injured
3) The 24/7 Sunni-Shiite centuries-old blood feud currently being carried out in Iraq, US Troops, 3,469 killed action and 871 non-combat and 93,040 – 101,537 Iraqi civilians killed, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ and
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf
4) Kenya- In Nairobi, about 212 people were killed and an estimated 4000 injured; in Dar es Salaam, the attack killed at least 11 and wounded 85.[2]
5) Bali-in 2002-killing 202 people, 164 of whom were foreign nationals, and 38 Indonesian citizens. A further 209 people were injured.
6) Bali in 2005- Twenty people were killed, and 129 people were injured by three bombers who killed themselves in the attacks.
7) Spain in 2004- killing 191 people and wounding 2,050.
8) UK in 2005- The bombings killed 52 commuters and the four radical Islamic suicide bombers, injured 700.
9) The execution of an eloping couple in Afghanistan on 04/15/2009 by the Taliban.
10) Operation Enduring freedom in Afghanistan: US troops killed in action 562, 176 killed in non-combat situations as of 9/02/09
Posted by: ccnl1 | September 11, 2009 3:44 PM
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After 9/11, people were asking "where was God?" and "why did God allow this to happen?" My answer is that the Divine (whatever you choose to call Him/Her/It) was in the first responders, the people that were helping others get down the steps of the WTC and out of the Pentagon, the ones that took back the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, and the sense of unity that the entire world (with some exceptions) felt against this hideous attack. God is in how we treat other people.
I also remember Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blaming liberals, witches, feminists, abortionists, etc. for angering God so much that He "allowed" 9/11 to happen. It was a disgustingly crass political ploy that unfortunately resonated with evangelical Christians.
Posted by: Athena4 | September 11, 2009 2:47 PM
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Edward Grinnan
You wrote, "I need faith, the belief that no matter what the next day or week or year or eternity holds, I am in the hands of a loving power much greater than my own hopes and dreams and even fears, greater than my power to imagine what happens next at any given moment of my life."
And I find it rather sad that some of the people that believe in God also believe that God is such a petty, vindictive, egotistical, revengeful piece of garbage.
God is a Being of Pure Love and God's Plan is not only for All of humanity but is for All of creation and God's Plan which is unfolding before our very eyes will come to Fruition.
Also God has had His Plan since before creation.
You speak of "tomorrow" as being uncertain, as in not secure, and it is and it always has been whether it is related to man-made or natural occurrences.
We will never have a "secure" world but that does not mean that we should not do what we can, however we can go to the extreme and make this world into a virtual police state and sad to say, it seems as if some would welcome that.
As I have said: God is a searcher of hearts and minds, not of religious affiliations or lack thereof and It is important what one does and why one does it and what one knows.
You also wrote, "there has perhaps been no greater test of that trust than the crystalline memory I hold of September 10, 2001."
America is not the whole world, there are many places on this earth that have had prior to and continue to have "9-11-01" incidences, these people are just as important in God's Eyes and yet since these "incidences" did not happen here, we sometimes seem to discount them, rather sad, don't you think?
Take care, be ready.
Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.
Posted by: ThomasBaum | September 10, 2009 5:45 PM
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Part II
Other elements of our War on Terror and Aggression:
- Saddam, his sons and major henchmen have been deleted. Saddam's bravado about WMD was one of his major mistakes.
- Iran is being been contained. (beside containing the Sunni-Shiite civil war in Baghdad, that is the main reason we are in Iraq. And yes, essential oil continues to flow from the region.)
- Libya has become almost civil. Recently Libya agreed to pay $1.5 billion to the victims of their terrorist activities Apparently this new reality from an Islamic country has upset OBL and his “crazies” as they have threatened Libya. OBL sure is a disgrace to the world especially the Moslem world!!! Or is he???
- North Korea is still uncivil but is contained. With the opening up of rail traffic between North and South Korea after 50 years and with the assistance of the US Navy in retrieving NK ships and personnel hopefully a fresh sense of civility is afoot.
- North Korea was taken off the terrorist country list recently.
- Northern Ireland is finally at peace.
- The Jews and Palestinians are being separated by walls. Hopefully the walls will follow the 1948 UN accords. Unfortunately the Annapolis Peace Conference was not successful. Unfortunately the recent events in Gaza has put this situation back to “square one”. And this significant stupidity is driven by the mythical foundations of both religions!!!
- Bin Laden has been cornered under a rock in Western Pakistan since 9/11.
- Fanatical Islam has basically been contained to the Middle East but a wall between India and Pakistan would be a plus for world peace. Ditto for a wall between Afghanhistan and Pakistan.
- Timothy McVeigh was executed. Terry Nichols will follow soon.
- Eric Rudolph is spending three life terms in prison with no parole.
- Jim Jones, David Koresh, Kaczynski, the "nuns" from Rwanda, and the KKK were all dealt with and either eliminated themselves or are being punished.
- Islamic Sudan, Darfur and Somalia are still terror hot spots.
- The terror and torture of Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and Kuwait were ended by the proper application of the military forces of the USA and her freedom-loving friends. Radovan Karadzic was finally captured on 7/23/08 and is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the law of war -- charges related to the 1992-1995 civil war that followed Bosnia-Herzegovina's secession from Yugoslavia.
- And of course the bloody terror brought about the Japanese, Nazis and Communists was with great difficulty eliminated by the good guys.