I’m happy to welcome the first guest blog post to this site.
One of my goals in starting this blog was to further
conversation. I’ve been thinking lately about how hard it is to see what we
don’t already see, or to know what we don’t know we don't know, and reflecting on the
need to really hear each other, to hear those
“words half heard” that we’d rather ignore.
And I’ve been thinking about the call to live as witnesses of
the Living Word, to make real, in our own actions and choices, the words we
scarcely understand: mercy, grace, compassion, justice, love.
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Shanksville, PA Flickr Creative Commons, Tony, 2004 |
A week ago I invited someone to consider writing a post for
my current series, “God’s Green Equity.” And then, just days later, I received
a Facebook message from someone else: “Would you have time to look at this? Is
it something I can/should share?”
Yes. It’s something to share, and I’m happy to share it
here. It reminds me that loving our neighbor is never as neat and tidy as we’d
like. And it reminds me that obedience – in making odd phones calls, or sharing
incomplete stories, or letting our stony hearts be softened – is one way God
knits us together, and makes his own Word visible.
Geita, the author of the post below, worked at Camp Sandy
Cove with me in the 70s, and we’ve become reaquainted through several recent
weekend reunions. She’s the mother of four almost grown kids, director of a
summer camp in Maryland
The sheer curtains danced in the breeze as the
sound of the Sunday morning national news report
played in the background. I sipped my mug of warm coffee as I browsed hangers
to choose Sunday morning clothing for my four children. The date was September 8, 2002 and news reports were
highlighting the upcoming anniversary of the tragedies that occurred on
9/11.
The mention of
Flight 93 caught my attention as the news reporter shared information from the
Pittsburgh FBI. In the year that had passed,
no one had called the FBI to claim the remains of the terrorists that hijacked
that aircraft on a clear September morning in 2001. This information caused the wheels of my mind
to spin out of control.
We were living in
the area of the Flight 93 crash site. On the day of the attack the first
mention of the Flight 93 crash on the Today Show stated that a crash had
occurred in Windber , Pennsylvania
As I began my
morning tasks to prepare my children to attend Sunday School, I could not shake
the thoughts that were spinning in my mind about the men whose remains were
sitting unclaimed. As I washed small
faces, offered them scrambled eggs with toast and buttoned shirts onto wiggling bodies. I thought about mothers who lived on the other side of the world. Did those mothers know that they were
washing the faces of young terrorists? Did they raise their young sons to take the lives of others? Did they know what their sons were planning? My heart broke for those women.
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| Shanksville, PA, Flickr Creative Commons, Tony, 2004 |
There is no way
to dispute the evil that occurred on September 11, 2001 .
But Jesus did not call us to an easy task. He did not ask us to follow human nature that
calls us to hate those who launch evil against us. We are called to love our enemies.
As my children
took their afternoon naps, I could not break free from the thoughts of the mothers
who lived in a place far away. They were
mothers who could not approach the United States to claim the remains
of their children. I am certain that I
gasped as I considered that maybe I should claim the remains of those
terrorists.
The telltale
sound of a dial-up Internet connection was followed by typing the words
“Pittsburgh FBI” into the search bar on the Yahoo home page. In the back of my mind I hoped that getting
the contact information would be difficult, but there it was—a phone number. I
grabbed a scrap of paper and jotted down the number and tacked it to the
refrigerator.
The news reports
for Monday morning continued to review the events of 9/11 as we moved yet
another day closer to the one year anniversary, and they were a stark reminder
of the phone number that hung in my kitchen.
Nervously, I dialed the number.
Greeted by an answering machine, I hung up. I rocked back and forth first on one foot and
then the other trying to decide how to say, “I want to claim the remains of
terrorists” on the FBI’s answering machine. I made a quick decision, redialed
and said, “Please return my call.”
I was almost
certain that the FBI was not going to call me back. Then I would have done my part, and I could
drop this insanity. Honestly, what exactly was I going to do once I got those
remains? I was buttering toast and thinking of the possibilities when my
thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the phone.
In case you ever
wondered, the FBI will return your call.
The professional sounding gentleman on the other end of the conversation
listened to my request and responded, “Ma’am, you can’t just claim those remains.” Confused, I mentioned the story on the news
and wondered why they were announcing that no one came forward for the
remains. As the conversation continued,
I realized that they would not hand those remains over to a housewife in rural Pennsylvania who had no
relation to those men.
The morning of
9/11, 2002 was cool and slightly foggy.
An older gentleman with a flashlight directed us into a field that was
now a parking lot. My children and I got
out of our van and headed toward the bus stop.
A security check point was set up.
No bags were allowed, but we each carried a small blanket. The bus ride to the crash site was silent.
We stood near the
back of a large crowd watching the ceremonies of the day. My girls held
steaming cups of hot chocolate that came from a Red Cross truck. Family members
of those who were killed at the site were seated near the staging area. Throngs of patriotic music filled the air,
and huge news cameras danced over the heads of those in the crowd. The moment
was maybe the most solemn thing I have ever witnessed.
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| Flight 93 Wall, Flickr Creative Commons, A Meloney, 2007 |
I stood with my
blanket held close to me as I thought about the families that were now visiting
the crash site for the second or third time. They had made friends in the Shanksville
community, and in some way complete strangers were now neighbors.
Following the
ceremony we were able to walk by the large fence that had been constructed for
people to leave their thoughts at the site.
Girl Scout troops had hung cards; others
left stuffed animals, religious statues, and Bibles; a multitude of artifacts
covered the fence on both sides. I
remember looking at the fence and having a glimpse at the way people in our
country had become neighbors with each other during the weeks that followed 9/11/2001 .
I tried to block the mothers of the
terrorists from my mind, but they kept coming back to me. I knew for certain that God loved them, and
try as I might to hate them, I could not find anything in my heart but deep
sadness. I felt sadness that they would
never feel the love of the people of Shanksville. They would never know them as neighbors.
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| Cross for Flight 93, Flickr Creative Commons, A. Meloney, 2007 |
In the days that
followed I shared my story with friends, and I began to realize that my desire
to help the mothers of a group of men who completed acts of pure evil against
our country was very controversial. The first time someone used the words
“terrorist sympathizer” I gave a quizzical glance and then felt my face
transform into a reflective gaze. Am I a terrorist sympathizer because I try to love
my neighbor as myself?
As we approach
the 12th anniversary of 9/11, I once again think about the mothers
of those young boys who became the men that piloted planes to their destruction
on that fall morning. I no longer hear the sound of dial-up as I connect to the
Internet and type in the words “claim the remains of the 9/11 terrorists.” According to the latest reports, those remains still have not been
claimed.
As I sip my
morning coffee and I see sheer curtains dancing in the breeze, news reporters
speculate about the possibility of war, and my mind wonders what Jesus meant
when He said, “Love your neighbor.”
As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.
