Consumed
September 11, 2001 will have occurred five whole years ago.
The weather forecast for New York City for both Monday and Tuesday will be partly cloudy. The skies in NYC, Washington DC and Stonycreek Township, PA on Tuesday five years ago started crisp and clear, cloudless and glorious. By 9am NYC skies were plagued by a hanging blanket of arid smoke and grey particles. Then Washington, then outside of Johnstown, PA.
Praying and thinking about this sober commemoration today a word kept coming to my consciousness: consumed.
The hijackers were consumed with a combination of zeal, righteous fury, and single minded purpose.
The bodies of the airline crew, passengers, unsuspecting workers and rescue teams and hijackers were consumed by oil, heat, metal, debris.
The psyche of many survivors was consumed with horror, terror, pain and guilt.
The nation became consumed with grief and outrage.
...... and yet.... and yet.....
groups, individuals, families, partners, businesses, towns, schools, countries mobilized to send workers, supplies, prayers all to those who had died and all who had lost their way because their loved ones had been killed.
Like many clergy in the area, I signed up for shifts at Ground Zero as a volunteer chaplain. My shifts went from from 10pm to 6 or 8 am. I held hands, said prayers over remains, used a shovel, massaged necks, sometimes just walked around with my eyes open but smarting from the fine grey dust that permeated everything and everyone.
Walking in the ashen streets at 3am in November I found a postcard postmarked from Jamaica addressed to a man in a brokerage firm in WTCII. Tropical trees and a hammock on one side with the cursive message in ballpoint ink "Wish you were here!" I brought the card to the lost and found. I felt in my inmost being that the ground I was walking on was sacred and holy.
Yes, I too wish you were here - living your life with your partner or wife and family. Watching things grow and change.
I have prayed every day since then that those left on this side of the veil would fight the urge to become paralyzed or consumed by bewilderment, sorrow and despair. I pray for those who move on, never forgetting the lives who had been closely linked to theirs and hoping that memory would be more than the sum of a single day in this country's history.
Be merciful Divine and loving God. If we must be consumed, let us be consumed in your love. Hold tenderly those who mourn and continue to heal. Bless the children who have since been born, support the day long those who are growing up without a parent or sibling, and share your bliss and peace with those who have come to you, in Jesus' name. Amen
The weather forecast for New York City for both Monday and Tuesday will be partly cloudy. The skies in NYC, Washington DC and Stonycreek Township, PA on Tuesday five years ago started crisp and clear, cloudless and glorious. By 9am NYC skies were plagued by a hanging blanket of arid smoke and grey particles. Then Washington, then outside of Johnstown, PA.
Praying and thinking about this sober commemoration today a word kept coming to my consciousness: consumed.
The hijackers were consumed with a combination of zeal, righteous fury, and single minded purpose.
The bodies of the airline crew, passengers, unsuspecting workers and rescue teams and hijackers were consumed by oil, heat, metal, debris.
The psyche of many survivors was consumed with horror, terror, pain and guilt.
The nation became consumed with grief and outrage.
...... and yet.... and yet.....
groups, individuals, families, partners, businesses, towns, schools, countries mobilized to send workers, supplies, prayers all to those who had died and all who had lost their way because their loved ones had been killed.
Like many clergy in the area, I signed up for shifts at Ground Zero as a volunteer chaplain. My shifts went from from 10pm to 6 or 8 am. I held hands, said prayers over remains, used a shovel, massaged necks, sometimes just walked around with my eyes open but smarting from the fine grey dust that permeated everything and everyone.
Walking in the ashen streets at 3am in November I found a postcard postmarked from Jamaica addressed to a man in a brokerage firm in WTCII. Tropical trees and a hammock on one side with the cursive message in ballpoint ink "Wish you were here!" I brought the card to the lost and found. I felt in my inmost being that the ground I was walking on was sacred and holy.
Yes, I too wish you were here - living your life with your partner or wife and family. Watching things grow and change.
I have prayed every day since then that those left on this side of the veil would fight the urge to become paralyzed or consumed by bewilderment, sorrow and despair. I pray for those who move on, never forgetting the lives who had been closely linked to theirs and hoping that memory would be more than the sum of a single day in this country's history.
Be merciful Divine and loving God. If we must be consumed, let us be consumed in your love. Hold tenderly those who mourn and continue to heal. Bless the children who have since been born, support the day long those who are growing up without a parent or sibling, and share your bliss and peace with those who have come to you, in Jesus' name. Amen
posted by Joanna Depue | 5:30 AM
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