My first day of divinity school was September 12, 2001. The train ride into Boston that morning was silent. Usually the Wednesday morning commute was a lively affair: people chatting about the latest Sox game, friends sharing stories about their weekends or commiserating about grind ahead, newspapers rustling. But now a veil had descended. Still burning with the images of yesterday’s chaos and horror, my eyes felt unfit for reading. Looking others in the eye gave a kind of comfort, an assurance that we were not alone in our confusion, our fear, our soul-weariness. Mostly I just looked out the window, content to watch the world go by, relieved to be going somewhere, anywhere, with some sense of purpose. But this gave no respite, offered no escape, invited no daydreams. As we drew nearer to South Station, I saw the Hancock and Prudential towers and instinctively scanned the skies, worried what new sorrows might fall.
When I arrived at my New Testament Greek class, the professor introduced himself and immediately started teaching us the Greek alphabet. His voice broke from time to time, but he did not say a word about what had happened the day before. I did not blame him. What words were there? We took refuge in our textbooks, and in the alien letters of an ancient world. There was a way to escape from our world, after all. Fifty minutes was not long enough.
I don’t recall the subject of my next class. I was shopping around, mostly because the professor was famous. He bravely ventured a few words affirming our feelings of common loss, and then pressed play on a portable CD-player that he had brought from home. We listened together to part of Mozart’s Requiem. Some wept. After ten minutes or so, he turned it off and handed out the syllabus. I don’t think I paid much attention to what followed; I wanted to listen to the rest of the Requiem.
Ten years later, I still don’t know what to say, any more than my professors knew what to say on that day when the dust was still in the air. I feel compelled to say something, but in my heart I recognize that this urge arises more from a desire to make sense of things, to create order out of chaos, than from any new wisdom gained over the last decade. God is the one who creates, who breathes over the dark void to bring light, who causes dry land, our terra firma, to appear with a word, the foundations of the earth fashioned by a word. Our words cannot attain such lofty heights. Our powers are not sufficient for such profound purposes. We find ourselves standing beside the psalmist, singing softly, “O LORD, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother . . .” (Psalm 131:1-2a).
Our faith teaches us to be wary about our own powers, and with good reason. Nations are quick to exercise their powers in the service of order — recall the President’s swift judgment that “We are at war” and the resulting transmutation of international sorrow into national pride. The problem is that while sorrow speaks the language of prayer, keeping us close to the divine heartbeat, pride leaves no room for God to breathe, no ground for compassion to take root, no place for love to abide, no place for hope to blossom. The bloodshed of the past ten years has not saved us from our sorrow; it has only brought us farther from the cross, where Jesus taught us that the world cannot be redeemed by violence.
With what words, then, might God’s people mark this tenth anniversary? I will never forget what a friend, a retired pastor, told me after I conveyed a sense of despair about the future in the wake of September 11th and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He smiled, in that deep and joyful way that faith alone knows, put his hand on my shoulder, and told me that “There’s always hope at the foot of the cross.” As I think of this now, I realize that the psalmist ends her prayer in a similar way: “O Israel, hope in the LORD, from this time on and for evermore.” (Psalm 131:3) A prayer for today. And tomorrow.
—Jonathan
