Fifteen years. In a way it doesn’t sound very long. I have lived four of those blocks of time, and one of them was post 9/11. Yet in a way it seems like a long time ago that I was in the office watching things unfold after planes crashed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. And just as it seems like it was a long time ago, and then not so long ago, that day seems to have changed a lot of things, and then not to have changed much. Okay, when I go through security at the airport today it is a lot different than fifteen years ago, and much in the news can be tied back to that day, but did that day really change us, change me?
Ultimately, I don’t know the answer to those questions. I am still trying to make sense of that day, and of the aftermath of it, and suppose I will spend a lifetime doing so. But the images are there — the photos of the planes headed to the buildings, the ash covered woman, those who jumped, those who fought, those are all etched in my brain, as is the thought of what was going on in the minds of those in the planes, all of them. What were they thinking?
To wash that away, I generally end up with the tune Show the Way from David Wilcox rolling in my head giving me some comfort, because while I can’t make sense of 9/11, I can make sense of the song. And whether it is a statement or merely a wish, “Love can show the way” makes sense. Lord knows we have tried everything else in the fifteen years since.
Show the Way – David Wilcox
You say you see no hope
You say you see no reason we should dream
That the world would ever change
You say the love is foolish to believe
‘Cause they’ll always be some crazy
With an army or a knife
To wake you from your daydream
Put the fear back in your life
Look
If someone wrote a play
To just to glorify what’s stronger than hate
Would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late?
He’s almost in defeat
It’s looking like the evil side will when
So on the edge of every seat
From the moment that the whole thing begins
It is love who mixed the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we’re alone
In this scene, set in shadows,
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote the play
For in this darkness love can show the way
Now the stage is set
You can feel your own heart beating in your chest
This life’s not over yet
So we get up on our feet and do our best
We play against the fear
We play against the reasons not to try
We’re playing for the tears
Burning in the happy angel’s eyes
It is love who mixed the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we’re alone
In this scene, set in shadows,
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote the play
For in this darkness love can show the way
It occurs to me... 