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The Sunday Sermon
Good morning, St. Paul’s family.
Today is September 11, a day with many memories rushing in. A day of tragedy and hope.
I would like to share some of my personal experience and reflection. Twenty-one years ago today, I was in Manhattan. My usual commute was from Nanuet to Hoboken on the train and then the PATH to WTC. I had an office at 225 Broadway, one building down from the Woolworth Building.
However, that day, my commute was changed. I had a committee meeting at 830 am on 44th Street. So, I had taken a bus to Port Authority. My path was directed a different way.
My brother was also in town and visiting Manhattan the same day. David, the Marine, Heidi, Tony and Carla. From Hoboken, they took the PATH to 33rd St around 930 am. The PATH to WTC was already closed. They were wandering around from the SONY Center to the Library to Times Square wondering why everything was closing. They heard snippets of news. A plane hit the world trade center (well, it’s a tall building, probably happens now and then)….thousands of people are walking over the Brooklyn Bridge (well, NY is big, probably happens everyday). So, they followed the crowd to get back to New Jersey. They ended up on a ferry line to Weehawken and getting hosed down to get the ash and contaminants washed off them. They then had to walk from Weehawken to Hoboken to get a train home. They were fine.
So, my suburban life was interrupted. I was over 40, living in Nanuet with two kids. Yes, I had even taken golf and tennis lessons at the local adult education program.
But let’s go back a little further. When I was 17, it was a very good year! I ran track my senior year of high school. I ran the two mile and half mile events and had run up to 13 miles in practice.
As life went on, I did a little jogging, but not a lot. So, in 2001, I decided to prepare to run the Rockland Half Marathon. I went from zero to nine miles in about two months. Runners know about something called shin splints. On September 9, I went to Urgent care and was told no more running on the road.
Two days later, I was limping from 44th Street uptown. My spouse was paging me, but my cell phone was not working. There were TV’s in store windows playing. A taxi was stopped to watch the news. Two planes had the hit the towers. One building collapsed. Then the second. I stopped at a friend’s office, to use a landline to make a call. I kept walking uptown. I had a friend at 100th and Columbus. I was walking up the east side with the crowd almost silent. As I walked past many glass buildings, I thought-- any building could be a target, nothing was safe, what kind of a world would my kids find. I was able to get a taxi at about 96th street across the park and shared the taxi with someone. I went to my friend Jordan’s apartment for the day and watched the news. I saw 7 World Trade Center, the Verizon building fall.
All the subways were closed, but the news said some uptown lines were reopening for a while in the early evening. I made it up to 170th and the Concourse to my friend Lennie. He was able to drive me home to Nanuet before all the bridges closed. It felt good to find refuge in Harlem and the Bronx away from the downtown targets.
The impact was widespread. Rockland has a lot of FDNY living there. Three dads were lost from my son’s elementary school. Our babysitter knew someone who lost both parents. The hospitals were standing by for trauma and no one came. The site became a crematory.
So, it seemed that the world was about to end and some of us went into midlife crisis. I noticed that older persons handled the damage better. I talked to an 80-year-old, who had lived through the depression and WWII. They believed that we could survive things like this.
So, who was the enemy? The US declared war on terrorism.
Flashback to 1987, my first job in New York. I attended interdisciplinary meetings at St. Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan (an Episcopal Hospital, next to the Cathedral). There was a nurse named Clorette Forbes who was quite proud of her nephew, Colin Powell. (so, I have two degrees of separation from CP). She was one of the aunts in the Bronx who kept him on the straight path as a kid.
Later, there was an interview with Colin Powell; and he was asked if Barack Hussain Obama was Muslim. General Powell answered that Obama was Christian, but the real answer to the question is that there are crescents on stones in Arlington Cemetery. Muslims have given their lives for the USA in the past. And Muslims died on 9-11.
The comparison has been made that Al Qaeda is about as Muslim as the KKK is Christian. A gross distortion.
Four years ago, we attended my nephew’s wedding in Maryland. It was a two-day Pakistani wedding. The ceremony was presided over by Imam Dendi, the Muslim chaplain of Georgetown University. So now, I have a Muslim niece.
Three years ago, I attended commencement exercises at Manhattan College. The valedictorian was a South Asian Muslim woman from the South Bronx. One of our neighbors from Rockland booed at mention. Where does this animus come from?
We have a faith based in hope and in loving our neighbor. Only love can overcome fear. And yes, we have Muslim neighbors who are part of the fabric of this country. A couple weeks ago, Luke and I visited the 911 Memorial in lower Manhattan. There are thousands of names. There are two pools. The water seems to go down and disappear, but it comes back. And our hope is in the living water.
Go in peace to love and serve one another and all our neighbors.
Amen..
--Mark Goodwin
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