ten years

Ten years ago, during our pre-children days, Julie and I were sailing Alaska's inner passage on a cruise with my parents, sister and brother-in-law. We were celebrating my dad's retirement. As with most of American life after 9am on September 11, 2001, the cruise took on a surreal feel.


Julie and I got on one of the first of the resumed domestic flights after the cruise ended, making it from Anchorage to Minneapolis-St.Paul. The flight crew that was to ferry us to Philadelphia did not make to Minneapolis-St.Paul so we spent a night in MN and the next morning checking out the Mall of America.


We had probably been to the Top of the World at the World Trade Center half a dozen times, including youth trips. The view from there was spectacular. That NJ Transit ran into a terminal under the WTC made it a familiar spot for us.


I knew a woman on flight 93. We weren't close but had collaborated on a Habitat for Humanity house in South Trenton. She was an advocate for the visually impaired and on her way to Las Vegas for a convention. We built a house for a blind couple and she helped make sure our specifications were appropriate.


Sunday, 9/16, 2001, stands out in memory too. I had lined up a guest preacher, Evelyn Oliveria, as Julie and I, co-pastors at this time, weren't expected to get in until late on Friday; in reality we arrived on Sat afternoon. Evelyn and her husband Bill Stanfield are good friends (and currently doing fantastic work in South Carolina); she preached ably. It was Women's Sunday but that theme quickly lost center stage. A dear soul, one of the pillars of the church, asked to speak at the conclusion of the service. As she was also a woman, we had her come on up and give a word. Her word was an unholy wedding of nationalism and Christianity. I'm not judging her now, nor did I then. Everyone worked out their grief, anxiety, fear and shock differently--for her it was to issue a call to arms to beat back the barbarian horde. She didn't have the last word that Sunday--I ran up to the pulpit as soon as she finished to offer a different word on the Gospel.

I later officiated at this dear lady's wedding. In some ways, those dualing renditions of Jesus brought us to a deeper relationship. She passed some years ago at home with her husband; I had the privilege of officiating her send off to glory.


Exactly one week after 9/11, I was in a board room at the corporate headquarters of Merrill Lynch with a couple of vice-presidents and other employees. We had scheduled 9/18 as the day on which I would make a pitch to the brass about sponsoring a Habitat house in South Trenton, not anticipating what would happen a week earlier. The idea was to have ML provide funding but more importantly to utilize employees in the construction aspect to do some team building within the corporate organization. Many of these folks knew people that had died, employees from other financial firms or former classmates, at Ground Zero.

I led into the presentation by noting the dichotomy of building a house shortly after witnessing the destruction of much of lower Manhattan. Some might have called this venture cathartic, others therapeutic but I called it civic. With the vision of smoldering ruins in our mind's eye, we talked about providing housing and opportunity for a neighbor.

Ten years later, the house stands and provides shelter for a family; parts of Manhattan and Pennsylvania are shrines; and my kids know to take their shoes when we get in line at the airport. Reflecting back, I learned about the spontaneity of life--it's here and perhaps here only for a brief time. Use it appropriately for it may run out.