anniversaries

Today was Rally Day at our church (and many other churches), which marks sort of the beginning of the new church year:  summer is over, the programs are in place, the ministers and choirs are back.  The organist played, as he has for many years on Rally Day, an amazing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Bach on the pipe organ -- which always inspires the heck out of me.  And there was a message of peace and love on this date of incredible sadness.

I had a friend tell me that he and his wife picked September 11 to get married, one of those early years after 2001, to reclaim that date on the calendar as something positive.

I remember September 11, 2002 -- one year after the attacks -- I was at the airport in Amsterdam, about to get on an airplane to go home, and a reporter from Dutch television came up to me to interview me, to ask how it felt to be an American flying on that date.  I'm not sure how she knew I was American, but how to answer that question?  Did she expect me to say I was fearful?  I wasn't, not at all.  I said I was just sad, but the sadness of September 11, 2001, is something we have every day, not just on the one date every year on the calendar.  Nobody has forgotten.