Looking at 9/11 Memorials on the Day After

Each year since 2002, we have spent time remembering the tragedy at New York City’s Twin Towers that occurred September 11, 2001. On the first anniversary, I wrote a poem to commemorate that event that left its mark upon our national psyche. Garrison Keillor, in yesterday's The Writer's Almanac shared a beautiful and thoughtful poem by Charlotte Parsons titled, "9/11." 

Now, 16 years later, I wonder if we are indeed honoring those lives lost that day. I wonder if we are honoring our American ideals, In a tweet yesterday, President Barack Obama said that “No act of terror will ever change who we are.” When I look around at the state of our nation today, I can't help wondering if that is really true. Have we changed since that day when the towers fell?

We continue to launch campaigns of hate, and we fear the foreigner so much that we as a nation are threatening war on many fronts while our president seeks to dismantle hope for some of the brightest who happen to be Hispanic children of undocumented immigrants. Has terror caused us to forget who we are?

I must hasten to add that not everyone in our country is operating from fear and hatred. How we treat our immigrant neighbors, how we respond to the Islamic community, and what values we present to the world are currently being debated in the public square. While prejudice seems to be on the ascendency at the moment, we have not lost our hope for justice to prevail and for the common good to be our standard.

One of the best 9/11 commemorations that I have read is by Gary Furr, pastor of Vestavia Hills Baptist Church and blogger at The Flat Pickin’ Pilgrim’s Progress. You can read his essay here. I highly recommend it for its broad and compassionate look at what the anniversary of 9/11 means to us.

As we think on our history, our legacy, and our travails, may we always, somehow, look to the better angels of our nature, and not grow weary in our well doing.

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Photo: Two women stop to read the names of the victims lost at Ground Zero (FEMA photo by Lauren Hobart, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

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