...And no, I don’t mean Glenn Beck’s pathetic attempt to take over the idea. I mean something that truly happened on Sept. 12, 2001, something that has inspired me ever since.
Yes, I do have memories of 9/11. I was driving a van load of church women to an assembly when I faintly heard the news, and when I turned up the radio to hear further we ended up driving the rest of the way in silence. I remember the pastor at whose church we were meeting throwing out her devotion and turning to “Do not return evil for evil, but repay evil with blessing” (1 Peter 3:9, for those who watch these things). I remember being one of a handful of people who knew absolutely where President Bush was headed: this same pastor, a chaplain in the Nebraska Air National Guard, was being called up to protect someone at Offutt AFB in Bellevue. (I told her to tell W hello for me.) Because of the meeting, I saw no video until about 6 pm; everything else was over the radio, where imagination offered no improvement over reality.
But to be honest, my most important memory is of the next day and what came from it.
Wednesday, Sept. 12, was the first time our church youth group would meet after summer. This was already an important meeting. A year before, while on a mission trip to Kansas City, we had been invited to come do a similar trip to NYC. On the drive home, our youth were persistent. “Can we go? How can we do it? What can make this happen?” We let them do some dreaming, see where this might go. When the summer of 2001 had come, they were still talking, even doing a little bit of preliminary fundraising for “our next mission trip.” Site TBA.
So now here we were. We had a site in mind—and it was almost exactly one mile from Ground Zero. Our youth had spent the previous day watching the adults around them lose their composure. The awful videos kept playing and playing and playing. And remember—we’re dealing with rural Nebraskans, some of whom had never been out of the state, even though Yankton, SD, was only an hour away. One had never seen a building more than five stories tall. And now here, in living color, was the nadir of urban hell made even more hellish. Who would want to go there?
I went into the meeting unwilling to give up altogether on the possible trip. We hadn’t made any commitments yet, and if they really wanted to back out I would have understood it. I planned, though, that if they showed hesitation I would say something like: “Let’s give it a month, see how things shake out.”
So when we got into the meeting, I asked the question, “Do you still want to go on a mission trip to serve in New York City?” And I braced myself for refusal.
Instead, there wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation. “Yes,” they said. “Now more than ever.”
I must have looked stunned. I had NOT planned for this.
One young woman summed it up: “We saw people running away from trouble. But we also saw people running toward it, trying to help. Even though some of them died, we want to be like them.”
On 9/11 we saw evil. My kids also saw good at work. They wanted to emulate it, at least a little. On 9/12, they made the conscious choice to do so.
The trip was a good one. When I went to scout the location, I found that the church we would serve had been an important provider of help to those seeking refuge from disaster. But it was brutally shaken by the tragedy, and our friend the pastor whom we had met in KC would soon leave, brought down by health issues and PTSD. While visiting the UN building that January, I saw the memorial plaque that listed the countries who had lost citizens in the attack, a reminder that this was not just an attack on the US, but on the World. I walked streets in lower Manhattan that had not yet opened up and which had no traffic.
By the time we came to NYC in May/June 2002, the debris had been removed and the site had been officially closed. But the observation deck was there, with memorials and with graffiti everywhere.
And my intrepid, inspiring kids had one more little inspiration to offer. On one of the railings someone had written: “Love is the answer.” Someone had scratched it out, amended it: “Love REVENGE is the answer.” One of my youth had a marker and fixed this: “Love REVENGE LOVE is the answer.” They had seen the end result of revenge and didn’t like it.
We fed some homeless people. We explored a really big city. We ate strange food, at least once a day. We listened to people tell stories about that day and where they were and who they lost. And then we went home to find that Omaha is such a small town!
The kids are all well. I still hear from them on Facebook. One was confirmed in her belief that she can’t stand cities, and that’s okay; she’s doing fine on her farm. Another was confirmed in her love of travel, and she has worked internationally for years. My daughters were on that trip, and they are both now city people, working in helping professions. That trip may or may not have changed things for these people; it's hard to tell.
But it made a difference for me. When some tell me--as they were telling me in 2001--that there's a generation of selfish, lazy people who have no heroes, I tell them this story. One day after we all looked evil in the face and while the twin temptations of fear and anger swirled around us, I was in the presence of young people who saw clearly a different kind of response and who then overcame obstacles to pursue it.
None of us who was on that trip is young any longer. But I still tell the story in hopes that they--and all of us--can pass that clarity of vision onward. We need clarity now more than ever. Fear and anger still swirl, and there are many who deliberately make them swirl. We don't have to run, and we don't have to lash out. We can face evil and return a blessing, however small.
I've seen it happen, on 9/12 and after.