9-11: She Stands

 

 

I will never forget that day. It marked me just as surely as Pearl Harbor, Gettysburg and Valley Forge have marked previous generations of Americans.

 

I close my eyes and I see the images: 
A tower burning in a clear, blue September sky.
An airplane flying into a building.
People falling along the side of a building.
Towers falling, one floor into another.
People running through what were once streets.  
Papers falling from the clear blue September sky.
All in silence. Like a dream.

 

And out of the dust and ashes, I see the image: 
She stands.
“Just when you think it might be over
Just when you think the fight is gone
Someone will risk his life to raise her
There she stands  . . .” (10
I remember this as if I had been there.

 

Twelve years. And the tears still come. 
We are wounded in spirit. 
For a clear September sky still evokes
the frozen images as if no time had passed. 
But through the tears we see another rising
to a new and taller stand.
For Americans still rise to greatness, and there she stands. . . (2)

 

There she stands.
It took longer than expected.
And we look back and count the cost.
1776 feet she rises,
There she stands. (2)
The greatest monument to American dead
is to rebuild the alabaster cities of their dreams.
Out of the rubble, we raise them up:
higher, prouder, stronger than before.
She stands.

When evil calls itself a martyr
When all your hopes come crashing down
Someone will pull her from the rubble
There she stands. (1)
Both of them--
the flag and the Freedom Tower (3)
we raise to remind ourselves of
who we are
and to what we commit ourselves.

 

 

“Oh, beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years.
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
undimmed by human tears. . .” (4)

Click through to see a time-lapse video of the rise of the Freedom Tower. (3)

NOTES:
1. There She Stands by Michael W. Smith
2. My words in the spirit of There She Stands, with apologies to Michael W. Smith.
3. I know they changed the name, but for me, it is and will always be Freedom Tower.
4. America the Beautiful by Katherine Lee Bates.

Technorati Tags: 9-11,Memory,American Exceptionalism,Times and Seasons

Murder in the First Degree: Remembering 9-11on 9-12

Yesterday, I was quiet. I did not write of it.


I remembered that day of ash and smoke, come out of a clear blue sky. It came out of the blue, but it came not by accident. It came by the intention of evil men. Murder by malice aforthought.

And the wound is still raw now, nine years later. I still feel ripped open, vulnerable and I still experience the red fire of anger behind my eyes. ( I who witnessed it by television from a thousand miles and more away).

And I wonder at those who want me, want us to curb our anger, to worry about what those who did this think about me, about us. About US.

A person who does this-- who brings buildings down upon the heads of the people of a city--who plans ahead the murder of innocents and innocence with such extravagence;
A person who does this deserves no thought, no consideration, no concern. A person who does this deserves nothing but to have destruction rained down upon him. He has chosen to become not a human being and has forfeited any consideration from human beings.

And those who would use the liberties vouchsafed for them by the Constitution in order to bring about the destruction of the cities and people who protect that Constitution, even to bring about the destruction of the Constitution itself, deserve no protection, no consideration and no concern. They deserve nothing from the people who look to the Constitution for the protection of rights.

Let us not forget who did this and why they did it. Anger is an appropriate response to such an intrusion upon the rights of the innocent people who were murdered on 9/11. Hatred of the evil deed and of those who deliberately took over 3,000 lives, and of those who supported it, cheered it, and approved of it, is a proper response to the murder of innocents.

This was no accident. It was no tragedy--no consequence of the exegencies of nature, no coming together of random chances. It was murder in the first degree.