Relevant Spirituality

The words below were written for the first anniversary of 9-11. It seems appropriate to reprint them today on the 10th anniversary of that event that changed all of our lives.

They were human beings having normal Tuesday morning experiences.

They were men and women who had just stepped onto airplanes and out of subways and parking garages, busily packing their brains with thoughts of the work to be done. The were focused idealists and distracted materialists. They were cock-eyed optimists and grumbling pessimists and arbitrary agnostics and devout atheists. They were Christians and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Christian Scientists and Religious Scientists and Scientologi8sts and scientists. They were gay and stright and stright-laced and lesbians and labor leaders and hedonists and humanists and humanitarians and vegetarians and vagrants.

Chances are that no noble cause sent them to work or to the airposrt that day. No brass bands marked their march into that war zone. No parades heralded their sacrifice. They walked innocently, stumbled awkwardly, all the way to glory.

When the call came they were waiting for elevators, and email, return calls from clients they talked to on Monday, and seat belt signs to go off. They were laughing, and grumbling, and praying for raises, and telling bad jokes, and some, most likely, were even taking the name of the Lord, someone's God, in vain.

They were involuntary heroes. God bless them. And God bless the families and loved ones who mourn them. No one asked them if they were willing to make the sacrifice.

And God forgive the spiritual arrogance of those who, in the name of God, took their airplanes and stopped the laughter and interrupted the prayers, and the jokes, and the future. They thought they knew what they were doing but they could not have known. They could not have known; not one life at a time, one laugh interrupted, one punch-line left hanging. They could not have known the stories of the lives unfinished. It is too terrible a thing to know, too much for a human heart to hold.

They could not have known. And, if in the moment before impact, they were given a glimpse into that window through which all is seen and known, if they saw through the eyes of any God and they knew, then God bless them, for surely, in that moment they understood hell. It is a terrible thing to have to be right.

We are called now to pick up the banner, to say the prayers, to move forward. It is not they who call us, their voices are stilled; bhut it is their memory that unites us, and more. There is much to be done.

Let us pray. In prayer we will come to know what is ours to do and what is God's. Then let us do what we are called in prayer to do... to make this world a better place, not just for ourselves, but for everyone.

This I know, we are all called to be heroes and this time, we must volunteer.