1/50: Twenty years on from 9/11

Gonna lay down my sword and shield

Down by the riverside,

I ain’t gonna study war no more.

“Down by the Riverside”, African American Spiritual

I visited downtown Manhattan for the first time May, 2000, a visit that gave occasion to another first: a hot Krispy Kreme doughnut melting in my mouth. Something you could not experience where I lived at that time. I bought it at the World Trade Center location. 

Sixteen months later, that shop became the burial ground for thousands of bodies on September 20, 2001.

Today is twenty years on from that day: my generation’s first “Where were you?” moment. 

I was driving home from the gym after another early morning attempt to work off the extra weight from my first pregnancy. I was at the stoplight in our navy blue manual transmission Subaru Outback, just blocks from the private Christian high school I had graduated from twelve years earlier. I likely had a Peets coffee in the cup holder. My favorite drink then was an americano with whipping cream. I was preparing for another day of stay-at-home mommyhood with my nearly two year old sweet girl. (Note to former self: make the most of each of those days). 

I habitually tuned into NPR. The light remained red long enough for my imagination to see airplanes flying into buildings, bodies dropping in the sky, and to have the thought: “I don’t think I can bring more children into this world. “

A year later, my belly rumbled with another girl’s kicks and punches. That kid launched into the world with reality-rattling force in 2003. I wish I’d had a different nation, a different world, to offer her. We’ve been at war every day of her life. Before graduating from high school, her life was already marked by a pandemic, wildfires, relentless digital distraction, and a society that seems incapable of coming together for the common good.

Yet, I believe it is worthy, honorable, even beautiful, to bring children into a broken world. It was delusional to believe otherwise, though I was one of those privileged enough to hold that delusion for the first thirty years of my life.

I’ve come to locate hope in what Parker Palmer calls the tragic gap, which he defines as “the gap between the hard realities around us and what we know is possible — not because we wish it were so, but because we’ve seen it with our own eyes.” The tragic gap is relentlessly present in nations, families, religion, the complexity of personhood, with its ever present mix of shadow and sunlight. I think this is what Jesus may have meant when he said, “In this world you will have trouble.” But just as quick, he said, “But do not fear, I have overcome the world.” 

I want my life to be a witness to the possibilities. And in the next fifty days, before I turn fifty, I want to leave a few crumbs for you to follow into that holy space with me.

(This is the first of 50 things I have to say before turning 50, each in 500 words or less.)