9/11 in New York
The days leading up to September 11th, while in New York City, have been quietly charged with the shared memory of the day in 2001.
I had been in California that morning, getting ready for school when my parents called me into the living room to see the news of the World Trade Center on fire, and I watched in real time as the second plane hit.
I’d never been to New York until this year, and it has been very remarkable to experience the feeling in the city. The pain of the loss is still here, the place where the towers stood feels like teeth knocked out, with a searing pain that ebbs and returns at intervals.
I went to visit 1 World Trade Center last week as part of my first venture into Lower Manhattan. I realized while I was there that, while we felt the loss in California, it spread much further than that. New York City, as I heard it recently in a sermon at Redeemer Presbyterian, has approximately 60,000 people per square mile. It is also so diverse; so many people from many places in the world. It is absolutely impossible to imagine the reach of that loss.
I also decided to go explore a few days ago & went up to the Upper West Side. There I happened upon the Church of the Good Shepherd, a ministry of the Capuchin Franciscans. They have a memorial garden to remember those lost on 9/11/01 and have as part of it the iron cross that was found intact at Ground Zero that became a symbol for many who were grieving of God’s love in the midst of loss and suffering.
I also had an opportunity today to watch a wonderful documentary on the life of one lost on 9/11, Father Mychael Judge, called Saint of 9/11.
If you have Netflix, I highly recommend it.