I Thought 9/11 Was a Joke

 I need to make a disclaimer, if only to bring myself peace. I was probably less involved in the events of 9/11 then most anyone in the area. I had just moved to Long Island 18 months before. I didn’t know a lot of people. There is nothing that I did that was “heroic” or “spectacular.” I’m writing this from my own perspective. I’m not saying that anything I did was right or wrong. I’m not making any political statements. This is simply how I remember this event and its impact in the last ten years.

I just remember the morning was sunny. I was supposed to go to the office where I was the youth minister and do some office work, and I had stopped by my girlfriend’s house which was on the way.

“Turn on the TV! Someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center!”

My first reaction was to make a joke at my future mother-in-law’s comment. If you have spent any amount of time with me, you know that I make really stupid comments at the worst possible time, thinking them to be funny. I think I am helping to lighten the mood.

When we turned on the news, it wasn’t funny.  Smoke billowed out of the first of the two buildings to be hit. I think it was the North Tower. There must be something in the human condition that stops us from thinking things are as bad as they are. For some reason, I started imagining scenarios where no one was hurt.

That was impossible. There was so much smoke. And that hole. That giant, gaping hole in the side of the building.

We just stared.

I’d like to say that I started praying right away, but I didn’t. I was frozen.

I tried to think if I knew anyone in that building. I had lived in the city for about four years and spent some time as a temporary employee for places like Goldman Sachs, some other banks, and at one point spent a week working in one of the financial centers.

I couldn’t remember anyone.

“There’s another plane!”

My brain shut down.

I immediately called my brother who lived about a mile north of the towers. He said that he and his wife were okay. I told them to come out to Long Island if they needed to get away. I seem to remember him mentioning something about possibly going to a hospital to donate blood. A year later, he and his new wife moved to Chicago so she could get her PhD in Classical Studies.

My brain started running through every option possible in my head so that I could be prepared for something else. My biggest fear was a nuclear strike. The idea that some lunatic had gotten their hands on some device from the Cold War and there would be no George Clooney or Nicole Kidman that could save us.

“Would it travel the 35 miles from Manhattan to where I was on Long Island?”

“How long would I stay before I just left?”

“How bad is this going to get? The Empire State Building? St. Peter’s Cathedral?”

“Is this some plan to hit every single city?”

“Was I serious about wanting to get engaged to my girlfriend?”

“I shouldn’t be wearing shorts and a t-shirt.”

I went back home to change. It seemed at the time like the most logical thing to do. On the car radio, Don Imus announced that there were reports of the Pentagon being hit and unconfirmed reports of a plane down in Pennsylvania.

My cell phone rang.

It was the priest from our parish who ran youth ministry. “We have to get to the high school now. We have to just be there. In case kids have to talk.”

He was right.

I changed into jeans and a t-shirt, because somehow that made me more professional. I went up to the high school. There was no Twitter. There was no news. By and large the high school was keeping things quiet. If someone asked a question it was answered, but no one was making a general announcement. With the Long Island Rail Road, it was too easy for someone to simply live in our town and work in Manhattan as a fireman, policeman, or any one of a number of professions.

The high school students seemed to gravitate to us. They asked questions we didn’t have answers to because we weren’t watching the news. They asked us to pray for them. They just wanted to be around something safe, it seemed to me. We had the type of relationship with the principal at the time where our being on campus wasn’t an issue.

A gym teacher told us that one of the towers came down. I had no idea what that meant and in my mind I couldn’t comprehend it. These structures were massive pillars of steel that stretched to the sky, unstoppable temples of engineering and power. They were the anchor of the skyline. How could one of them just collapse?

Then the second one collapsed.

I didn’t see any of it. I just wanted to make sure that everyone around me was okay. I called my mom, my girlfriend, my brother in between classes.

That night there was a mass at the parish. It was mobbed. Standing room only and perhaps 1200 packed the church. I remember being hopeful that this would wake people up to the idea that they needed to get back to church on a regular basis. I walked around, looking for someone to minister to.

I still had no idea what I was doing or what was going on. I just kept putting myself in a position where if people needed someone, if a teen needed someone, they could talk to me. I had no idea what I was going to say. I had no idea what I was going to do. I just figured I would listen, pray, and hopefully have something good to say that wasn’t completely stupid.

I would like to say that I immediately sprang to action and coordinated a prayer night for the teens and an all out effort to relieve pain and sorrow in the best youth ministry reaction to terror ever.

That would be a lie.

The truth was at the time I was scared, lost, out of my league, and in a word… terrified.

The next morning I went to the bagel shop next to the youth ministry offices. It’s New York, we are big on bagels and they really are different here. I picked up a copy of the New York Times and there were pages of pictures. Pictures of horrible destruction, death, and chaos. One picture of a man falling is burned on my brain forever. For the first time, that morning, alone in a bagel shop, I wept. I sat facing the wall, my head buried in my hands and I just wept.

Then I prayed.

Then I went back to work. We had a youth ministry meeting coming and I don’t remember what we were going to do, but it was pretty obvious that this event wasn’t going to simply pass by. I don’t remember exactly what we did but I think it was a rap session (early 80’s youth ministry lingo) and Adoration. Our music minister was NYPD and he would be working for the next two weeks and we didn’t see him. I can't fathom what he went through.

I remember thinking that we were “fortunate” because none of the kids that were regulars at our program lost any family members. That is a really foolish thought. I lived and worked in a town that had a number of FDNY that lost their lives. Streets are named after them. The funerals were at my parish. I was like a deer in the headlights. I thought if I just put the sign out that people would come in if they needed anything. That’s like the firemen and police officers and rescue workers standing outside the Towers thinking, “if anyone needs anything, they will come out and tell us.”

That wasn’t my job. That wasn’t my ministry. My job was to go in if I saw a need and with disregard for my own self-consciousness. My own intimidation. I was so scared of saying the wrong thing, of doing the wrong thing, I was frozen and didn’t act with the boldness that someone empowered with the Holy Spirit would do.

Maybe today, ten years later, knowing what I know now, I would have acted differently.

Maybe I’m not the only one to think that.

A Fresh Coat of Paint

9/11 paints everything a different color. I don’t even know if I am fully aware of it at times, but impacts my worldview and has for the last ten years. That isn’t good. It is an unrealistic appraisal of risk. 

Statistically, I know that I shouldn’t worry about the things that I worry about, but I do.

Every time I am on a bridge, I wonder if this is the exact moment that the nutjob with the truck is going to blow all of us into the river. I secretly speed a little to get to the point in the bridge where I know I am okay. Before I go on a bridge, or even in a tunnel, I pray that God will have mercy on my soul because I am a sinner and I need that mercy if this is it.

A month or two after, lightning struck a house about 50 yards away from the house I was in. The noise was incredible. I imagined God had simply unveiled a small amount of power on the Earth.  I again prayed that God would have mercy on my soul thinking that a nuclear bomb had finally gotten through whatever layer of security existed.

I would have to plan youth ministry events around September 11. Students had parents that wouldn’t let them out of their sights on that day. An event at Six Flags in New Jersey was on September 11 one year and it became very difficult to get anyone to commit to bringing teens or even letting their kids go. I recall even having difficulty convincing parents to let their teens fly on a plane to the Leadership Conference at Notre Dame every summer.

It was frustrating and I started getting angry and burying it every time it came up.

I would pretend I was fine, that my heart wasn’t terrified, even though it was.

I would pretend that I wasn’t bothered by people from the Middle East, or even Muslims. Then I would swing to being completely unwilling to tolerate any opinion that suggested a Muslim would even desire peace.

You would think the best of the human race that manifested itself immediately after would stick around for a while, but the truth is it died off after about four weeks. Calluses grew on my heart and soul. At one point I wouldn’t care because we could all die at any second and then the next second I would smother people about their faith because they could die at any second. I was a pendulum swinging between an apathy due to the lack of control or seeking to control everything to protect myself.

I would lose my temper when people just wouldn’t get how important things were.

At least they were important to me.

Everywhere I looked someone was in pain because of this... this... THING that 9/11 had become.

Widows.

Kids who lost parents.

Parents who lost kids.

Bumper stickers every day reminded me to “never forget” and that was all I wanted to do.

One friend, who spent the better part of a few months digging bodies out of Ground Zero and then going through the debris for human body parts at the facility where they would dump everything in Staten Island suffered so much physically, emotionally, and mentally, that our friendship ended for about five years. I saw him again about five months ago and we just talked for hours. He seemed better, but his health is bad. He spent too much time breathing in the filth.

I look at my kids now, the kids who were born years later and I want 9/11 to be a history lesson in school. A museum that they visit in Manhattan when we go on a family trip. Like the Bronx Zoo or Museum of Natural History. It’s research for a project. I don’t want them to live it.

This evil, this pain, this terror never just leaves.

I think that is why I was so relieved, happy, and lighthearted when Osama Bin Laden was reported dead. The darkest part of me was angry that he never suffered in his death, never suffered the public humiliation, disgrace, and ultimate painful execution he deserved. I wish I could say that I hope God has mercy on his soul, like I guess I am supposed to do, but I don't. My friend Fr. Dan Beeman probably handled it in the best way, but I just couldn't find it in my heart.

It’s multi-generational.

That evil that was unleashed at 9/11 caused families to fall apart. People to collapse psychologically, physically, emotionally. Children whose only memory of a parent is a picture or a video and who bury their pain in bottles of alcohol, drugs, or sex.

That evil that was unleashed at 9/11 brought violence to the Middle East. Innocent people died all over the world because of that day. Young men and women who joined the military to escape poverty, pay for college, or as a part-time job on the weekends found themselves in countries they never thought they would be in. Some of them came home in pieces.

That evil that was unleashed at 9/11 brought a literal Hell on Earth in all parts of the Earth.

“Where was God?”

I have been asked that in the last ten years more than any question I have received on sex, morality, Catholicism, or anything else.

“Why didn’t God save those firemen? (soldiers, policemen, innocent people, etc...)

The truth is I don’t know because I am not God. My best response is that if God wasn’t involved it would have been much worse. 50,000 people worked in those buildings. 3000 died,

You hear terror stories now and then about some plot that was averted, about the near tragedy that was prevented. You never know if it is an urban legend, a myth, or a fact.

I know that Blessed John Paul II and Jesus said to “be not afraid.”

I guess I’m not holy enough to be not afraid. I pray for God’s mercy all the time because I have been successfully terrorized.

I wish I could be like Christ. I wish I could have been like the FDNY, the NYPD, the Transit Authority officers who rushed in.

Who gave their lives.

Who sacrificed everything they were so that others could live.

They never let the evil get to them. They faced evil and simply were not afraid. They saw a need and ran.

I think about the people I met who were like that. They sacrificed pay, luxury, their pride, so that they could help others to really truly live. They never wimped out of talking to someone that was hurting. They were never afraid to approach someone in pain.

The evangelizers.

The ones who loved, who made the concrete choice to love, even when it hurt. Even when the sacrifice was painful and deep.

The volunteers who gave up time with their families to help on a retreat.

To plan a prayer night.

To listen to a someone who was hurting.

To go outside of their comfort zone and pray with someone and risk rejection.

I think about the priests I know who love, serve, and are devoted to their spouse, the Church.

If there is no pain, then there is no sacrifice.

If there is no sacrifice, then how is it real love?

Yes, everything is painted a different color. It has to be. There is no way that it cannot be. Like real paint, in time the colors will fade. In the meantime, this pain is an opportunity to sacrifice, to love, and to look into the eyes of my children and pray that one day there is someone who will not be afraid to show them Christ, even if their world has been painted.

Thanks for the Prayers

I want to thank everyone for the prayers and well-wishes I have received over the last six months. Please know that you have all remained in mine as I continue to discern the future direction of this ministry.

Lenten Announcement

It was a year ago that I began to update the site daily.

This was scaled back to twice a week in Advent.

For Lent of this year, I've decided to give the entire site a "fast" from updates and most internet activity. I am doing this for a few reasons.

1. Quality Control. I am more concerned with generating articles that are genuinely going to help people rather than just generating articles to do them. I believe that in the last year I have put a great deal out there. I want to take the time in Lent to discern if anything more "needs" to be written on the issue.
2. The Sainthood Challenge. It is available for download here. I think that it is a pretty good exercise for Lent and for a year if you need it. As I was writing a Lenten Resource (Named "Terminal") I was unhappy with the amount of redundancy. I wasn't comfortable just pushing through another resource and wanted to do something that would genuinely help people in a new way. "Terminal" wasn't doing anything the Sainthood Challenge wasn't.
3. I'm being called to be more central in my vocation. I am not a priest or religious and my vocation is my domestic church, my family. While serving others is important, it isn't the most important thing that I do.
4. If it is God's will, a break during Lent from the Internet, the site, from Facebook, Twitter, won't change anything. If it isn't God's will, there won't be anything I can do to "force" more entries.

Know that I will be praying for you during Lent. I will be answering emails sporadically and checking messages as I can.

No Entry Today

I'm at Disney World with two Princesses and my Queen.

Ransom the Captive

I live in the New York area and the idea of a trial of "suspected" terrorists in New York City is about as popular around here as the Boston Red Sox. I read this work of mercy and my mind immediately goes to "the prisoner" and some translations have this as "release the prisoner."

The think the key difference here is the sense of "ransom" and "captive." Someone who can be ransomed is usually not a prisoner, but a person who may have been kidnapped, in a place that they don't want to be. Paying the ransom would release them.

We see this illustrated in Christ on the Cross. The ultimate ransom, paying the ultimate price, for the ultimate prisoner: our own soul as a slave to sin. God wants us to be completely and totally free and too many times we do not allow ourselves to embrace that freedom. We limit the capacity of the grace of Christ to overcome our human weaknesses.

Sure we bring our sin to the Cross. We bring everything that we are. If we really do embrace that ransom, then why do we walk around as if we are still slaves to sin? Why do I still succumb to the stupid temptations in my life such as my temper, my desire to overindulge, my desire to fit in, no matter the cost?

Yet, in the end this is something that we can do for others. Are we allowing others to be freed from sin or are we leading them further into slavery? Are we offering for people the ransom of Christ on the Cross? Are we being a transparent window, a stained glass through which Christ shines and illuminates our own gifts?

There is the spiritual captivity of those that are trapped in sin, thinking that it is the only way to live and never being offered a better way and then there is the very real captivity of those that are imprisoned unjustly. We are taught that our justice system works much of the time but with the fairly recent use of DNA evidence, there are countless court cases that have been discovered to be simply wrong. One project that I think lives this work of mercy out fully is The Innocence Project. By utilizing DNA evidence they have overturned the judgements on 250 cases where prisoners were convicted. That is a lot of prisoners that we are just finding out about.

There have been times when I have felt that someone was being "unjust" to me but to be the subject of injustice to such a degree that decades of your life are spent paying for a crime you didn't commit baffles my mind.

How many people in our world are living as prisoners when they don't have to?

Prisoners to sin?

Prisoners to addiction?

Prisoners in a very real sense?

Christ has come to set us free and he has paid the ransom. How great a work of mercy to share that news, to help when we can, and to pray every day for those who are captives!

Visit the Sick

This last weekend was an adventure. Albeit an adventure that most (probably all) parents go through. I returned home from one adventure to fall into another one that night.

First the youngest daughter started to throw up.

Then the eldest started to throw up.

Before it was over, the night was a sick-fest and neither my spouse nor myself had slept much. Now I don't want this to be a time where I simply complain about all the trials of being a parent. I take it that if you are a parent and you have read this far then there is simply that quiet understanding between us. If you haven't lived it, then you wouldn't know. Complaining wouldn't help and it wouldn't make much progress.

What I know is that when I sat down to write this, I know that the last thing that was on our minds the next day was the idea that someone should come and visit us. Why would anyone want to expose themselves to this sickness? Why would anyone want to be a part of this misery? We would be through it soon enough and that would be enough time for us to get things together and get ourselves cleaned up.

Then we could entertain visitors.

As for myself, why would I go visit someone in a house filled with sickness and put myself at risk of getting sick?

Maybe that is the point.

Visiting the sick is neither about visiting, nor about the sick. It is about loving so much that you are willing to put yourself at risk. Perhaps it is a risk of getting sick. Perhaps it is a deeper risk of being hurt, of being uncomfortable, of being challenged in a way that you hadn't been before.

To visit a sick person is to visit someone who is weak, vulnerable, possibly in the state of dying. The person visiting could take advantage of that, but they also open themselves to the same state. Notice that the work of mercy is not to "cure" the sick or even to "treat" the sick but it is to "visit" the sick. Visiting requires one thing and that is being in the presence of the other person.

We get concerned so many times that we are doing the right things for someone or that we are impressing them, putting our best foot forward, making a good impression. So many times we talk ourselves out of visiting someone or loving another because we are afraid we can't love the person on our terms, we can't do it in a way that makes us happy. If we are going to love another and be vulnerable, then it can only be about "being."

To visit is to love and to "be" is to simply allow ourselves to "be" with the other. To be in their presence, to be vulnerable as they are and to be loved in return.

This is where we see the joy on the missionary's face after returning from a mission trip.

The next day, after the sicknesses had passed, we as a family just relaxed and allowed ourselves to have fun with each other.

In the end, the sacrifice that we make, the more that we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, the more we allow ourselves to open up to receive that love. Who wouldn't desire that? Who wouldn't want that? Who wouldn't want to make the sacrifice that would allow you to open yourself up to be loved?

If perhaps we don't allow ourselves to love others, then maybe we are the ones who need the visit.

Shelter the Homeless

I was a teenager and one thing that my friend's family did every month was go to a homeless shelter early in the morning on a weekend and help to feed the homeless. Somehow my parents only allowed me to hang out at his house on those weekends. I did a lot of feeding of homeless people.

The reason I relate this story is because I wondered early on why these people lived in such a way. Why did they allow themselves to be out on the street? Why did they allow themselves to live "off the grid"? The person who ran the shelter explained that some were just mentally ill and had no real capacity to live in private housing and basically had no idea that they needed a home. They lived on the street because it was what they knew and they didn't want to break out of that.

I think that homeless shelter did a lot of good for a lot of people. Heck, most homeless shelters probably do. We are a paranoid type of people and I don't suppose my wife would be friendly to the idea of me bringing in any homeless person I met to the house, especially with two young daughters at home. There is a safety issue and the fact that we as a family are not equipped to handle the situations that would arrise in the same way that a shelter or charity would be able to.

So how do we shelter the homeless? How do any of us shelter the homeless? Are there different types of homeless besides the people that we see on television, or the people we see at shelters?

One could argue that any stranger that walks into a church is homeless. I've been a stranger in a number of churches. I don't like to go to the same mass every week so I will go to different churches at different times just to get a general flavor of things.

Some churches "get it" when it comes to sheltering the homeless.

They are welcoming. I don't just mean saying "hi" and the occasional wondering look. I mean there is a sense of embrace. An idea that you are part of the community even if you are only there for the first time. More than simply old lacrosse players who are good with the baskets, the ushers are inviting, comforting, yet at the same time challenging if someone gets out of line.

I've seen churches that don't "get it" and then wonder why they don't have more attendees. Could it be any more simple than this? To give shelter to the homeless? How do we even know who that is? Many times it is difficult. Many times the homeless are in disguise.

They could be seeking shelter from pain, brokenness, loneliness, and they wonder if they even deserve to be loved. To have a home in someone's heart.

They could be seeking a shelter so that they can worship God. A place that they can call home so from the safety of that home they can embrace the doubts that they have in faith.

The great thing about a community is that it provides that home. However, there is the fact that a community involves service to and from each other. There is each giving according to their ability and each receiving according their needs.

Some may not even be aware that they need a home. They wander, thinking that being outside of that community, outside of that home is the norm, the way that things should be.

I don't know where you stand as you read this. Maybe you need a home. Maybe you can provide shelter. Maybe you can point someone in the right direction.

Sheltering the homeless isn't as big as it seems.

Sometimes it's much bigger.

Clothe the Naked

I haven't seen many naked people wandering the streets. Granted there are a large number of people who need clothes because they are making do with clothes that are substandard due to their financial condition. It would be the easiest thing in the world for us to simply clean out a closet or two and fill a garbage bag and drop it at a dumpster for some organization of un-named people to distribute it as they see fit.

The harder thing, the more difficult thing, would be to give people the dignity they are starving for. To actually engage the human beings around us. Not just to engage them, but to actually "embrace" them with the embrace that Francis found himself in when he embraced the leper.

This was a man who wasn't naked, but naked in terms of his dignity. Cast out from society, seen as an "untouchable" and someone who was even unworthy of love. Here was Francis, rich, spoiled, and probably wanting to look his best and he simply hugged the leper. In that moment he gave the leper the dignity that he deserved.

Not because he was a leper.

Not because he was a beggar.

Not because he was poor.

Not because he was Francis.

Simply because it was a human being who needed the dignity of knowing that they deserved love as much as any other human being.

Who are the lepers in your own life? Who are the people who are naked? The people that no one else would embrace? The people that everyone has cast out because they somehow have offended their sensibilities.

They may not be actual lepers but they may be unclean because they are suffering from an illness that makes them unacceptable to others. Maybe it is an addiction, a mental illness, perhaps they suffer from a disorder that makes it difficult for them to interact with others socially.

They may not be beggars but they may be begging for attention. Not an unhealthy attention, but perhaps the basic attention from another person that you and I get every single day of our lives from the people we know and love. Perhaps they don't have that support system.

They may not be homeless, but it may feel like that when they get home. The loneliness may be overwhelming.

We may not be St. Francis of Assisi. We may have different gifts. We may not be Francis before his conversion.

The truth is that we have the same types of opportunities that Francis had. We have the opportunities to embrace lepers every single day. To clothe them. To give them dignity.

It would be a shame if we continued to let those opportunities pass us by.

The Sainthood Challenge is now available for purchase as an e-book. $15 per copy or a flat rate of $300 for groups over twenty, it offers practical exercises and advice on living the Beatitudes, the Fruits and Gifts, Heroic Virtue, a life of Prayer, and rejecting the Seven Deadly Sins.  Perfect for small groups, youth and young adult ministries. You can purchase the Challenge by clicking here.

Apologies on the Microsoft SPAM

There is a setting on the site where you can submit posts by email and for some reason it got on a list so the SPAM ended up on the site. Thanks to everyone who let me know.

The situation has been taken care of.

Give Drink to the Thirsty

I remember first hearing this as a corporal work of mercy and thinking that at least we had gotten this right. With running water and a 7-11 on every corner, it would be pretty difficult to find someone that was thirsty. Then I heard a statistic that over one billion people in the world do not have a fresh water source to drink from. This leads to illness and death, especially in children.

It pretty hard to give much thought to anything else going on in your life when you are just trying to find water to drink.

What was even more telling was the attitude that I had. The idea that we had already solved this issue. We tend to be pretty closed in, focused on ourselves, until something like an earthquake brings that reality home to us.

There is a gentleman that I know who sacrifices a great deal to help run a mission in Haiti. At this point he is trying to get a great deal of medicine there, but something that blows me away is that this person who runs their own business, still takes a great deal of resources to help others. The mission in Haiti dealt primarily at first with getting fresh, running water to the people that they served.

It just seems like the next logical step.

Get water to people who are thirsty.

So many times the logical, reasonable, and sometimes easy thing to do is not the thing that we do. We get caught up in ourselves and in our own ideas of what needs to be done and ignoring the basic needs that are around us.

We get too complex about serving others when we can remain quite simple in our approach.

Maybe the people immediately around us don't need a drink because they are not thirsty. Maybe they are thirst for something basic such as attention, love, or someone to listen to them. Perhaps they are thirsty for basic dignity.

In any case, this corporal work of mercy brings to mind that many times the needs of those around us can be quite simple and basic. Today, pray for the clarity to see those basic needs so that we can be Christ to one another.

The Sainthood Challenge is now available for purchase as an e-book. $15 per copy or a flat rate of $300 for groups over twenty, it offers practical exercises and advice on living the Beatitudes, the Fruits and Gifts, Heroic Virtue, a life of Prayer, and rejecting the Seven Deadly Sins.  Perfect for small groups, youth and young adult ministries. You can purchase the Challenge by clicking here.