...it's victims, that is, in your own way, but do remember. Many have chosen silence and prayer, and that's good too. Poor at silence while bereft of insight...I often wonder if a day goes by that memory of that day does not cross my mind. I don't think so.
I was patrolling old posts at my own website, looking for memories, and found that from 2009, including a link to this program, 102 Minutes That Changed America.
And from 2005:
For me what brings home the essence of that day is not only the sight of the planes slicing into the towers, or word of the ones that crashed into the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside, but also of the actions of still living people on those latter two flights, and the reactions of the people on the ground at the sight of the former - the screams of horror and the tears of plain pity and empathy for what had been done to their brothers and sisters.
There was a link to the National Geographic program Inside 9-11, both of parts of which can be seen here and here.
On that Nat Geo main page is a link
to an archive of video interviews, among them Ted Olson describing his cellphone conversation with wife Barbara, who died when her plane hit the Pentagon. In another, New York TV reporter Mike Sheehan describes looking up to see a woman in her late twenties, perhaps thirties (this estimate verified by his camerman's zoom lens) crawl out a window to stand on a jagged beam of some sort while the windows behind and around her exploded. The smoke from the inferno billowed out and upward. Sheehan couldn't help but think that this was someone's wife, or daughter, or sister. The woman blessed herself, then looked up to the sky, stretching her arms out to it. Then she jumped.
It was an image that won't leave one's head:
The angels will be busy today,
their charges take flight
with pigeon and dove;
I see them lifting
to left and right,
with the fire behind
and Heaven above...
My people await me way down there,
and steady me
With upturned eyes,
who'll sift my ashes
with the city's dust -
once this wind has ceased to blow -
and honor me
with ragged cries
once they see
I've placed my trust
in the fire behind
and Heaven below.
Take my hand now, Guardian dear,
the time has come
to embrace them all,
people, streets,
the buildings tall -
wait - Remember,
in my husband's ear
to whisper
as he sleeps tonight
I put my trust
not in the air
but in your wings
designed for flight
(with fire behind
and Heaven out there),
for all I've left
is the God of love,
Who will forgive
this willing fall,
which tells the fire
and Heaven above
of nothing
but how I love you all.
In any case, I ask (along with my teammates here at W4) that you remember always, and forever.
Comments (8)
Thanks, Bill. Excellent. That poem is top-notch.
Posted by Lydia | September 11, 2010 10:46 AM
Okay, I've been watching videos the last couple of hours, thinking and praying amid the horror, and that remarkably beautiful poem finally wrenched the last bit of emotion from me. I am trying to type through tears to say thank you. It's somehow what I've been looking for; it says what I didn't even know I wanted to hear.
I fear for our country, because I fear that too many have forgotten, and too many more have turned to appeasement, and yet others seem to actively aid and abet our enemies, either through ignorance or actual hatred of America's hard-won liberties. Yet, this is the image that holds out hope. We just completed reading The Wreck of the Deutschland in my Hopkins class this week, and this woman reminds me of the nun who cried out to Christ in the midst of that horror and, Hopkins believed, must have thus been the instrument of bringing many perishing souls to Him in their last hours.
Christ have mercy.
Posted by Beth Impson | September 11, 2010 11:39 AM
One of the most ominous trends to note is that appeasement has gotten far _greater_ since 9/11 and, bizarrely, partly as a result of 9/11. There is a very definite "bend the stick backwards" trend: The worse our enemies behave, the harder the left makes us work to prove that we are their friends, that we don't hold it against them, that we will do whatever they want to prove our niceness.
What we should say instead is this: Islam is the problem, and we do not submit.
Posted by Lydia | September 11, 2010 12:40 PM
Lydia,
You are correct. The problem is that the Left believes that everyone is made in their image. Since they believe that is true, the only reason why someone is violent or hateful is because they are one of two things:
1.) They are actually Republicans, or worse - Christians. Every utopia needs an excuse for why it doesn't work. Of course, they don't look deeply into the religion of Islam or they would be horrified, that is, if they could ever comprehend of something more horrifying that Christianity. However, they feel safe with Islam, because it is emphatically NOT Christian.
2.) They are legitimately wronged by the US. Throw in the ocean of national self-guilt and self-loathing, and there you have it. Multiculturalism is only an excuse to patronize and project a liberal's own assumptions on others.
There is also a possibility that they think they can control a Muslim nation better than a Christian one. Little do many of those liberals know that they will not be treated as kindly as they think, once Sharia is the law of the land.
Posted by Patrick | September 11, 2010 12:56 PM
Patrick, one thing I think all my fellow conservatives should and must understand thoroughly (which is implicit in your comment) is the notion of liberalism and Islam as incommensurable evils. Both are anti-Christian. Each group is using the other as a weapon against Christianity and hoping to "win" in the end after they have eradicated the last vestiges of Christian culture.
I am embarrassed at the thought of some posts I wrote years ago (comments--I don't think ever a full post) on a now-defunct blog in which I insinuated that somehow liberalism and the culture of death are worse evils than Islam. It was only as I reflected more on it (fortunately, pretty rapidly) that I realized that this is wrong. They are rotten apples and rotten oranges, and hence cannot be compared in some absolute fashion. I was, I think, motivated in the mistaken comments by the suggestion from a fellow blogger, one who was not pro-life, that American social conservatives should set aside their social conservatism to join with more liberal Republican types in fighting Islam, which is the "true enemy." But that, of course, is wrong as well.
Both are true enemies, and nothing makes this clearer than the continual cooperation between moral and political liberals and libertines and the Muslims with whom one would think they would have nothing in common. It is truly a sight from which we could learn a valuable lesson.
Posted by Lydia | September 11, 2010 3:39 PM
Amen, that is all I can add to the prayers and words of those who proceed me.
Thanks Mr Luse
Posted by johnt | September 11, 2010 4:57 PM
I have heard of plans of building a gay bar next to the Rabat (It is in form and function neither a mosque nor a cultural center) at Ground Zero. I understand the reasons behind this, but certainly there can be a far more effective witness.
As a Catholic, the first thing that comes to mind is a shrine to "Our Lady, Help of Christians", as that is the title invoked during the Battle of Lepanto.
Posted by Patrick | September 12, 2010 12:29 AM
Thanks John, and Beth, for reading.
Posted by William Luse | September 12, 2010 6:08 PM