If Only for a Moment

              Like most of you, I remember where I was on that terrible Tuesday morning an eternal decade ago. I heard that something terrible had happened in New York City via car radio. I was driving to campus to teach logic when what turned out to be the most illogical and outrageous event in recent history took place.

            That first report had more ambiguity than clarity. Maybe it was only a tragic, freakish accident. Maybe it was just a “crazy” in a cockpit. At that point, we were thinking of all sorts of possibilities – and hoping for the best of the worst of them.

            We got through class. I moved as quickly as I could to pick up student papers, get back to my car, and head for a television set. With the radio on as I drove, the less-sinister options had all but left the conversation. My country was under attack – by some person or cult or country or what?

            In the 10 years since, the source of the attack has been identified. Military responses have been planned, executed, and protested. London, Mumbai, and cities other than our own have come under attack. In addition to the nearly 3,000 who died in New York, Washington, and Shanksville, twice that number have died in the U.S. military. Two of them were young men I knew.

            In the 10 years since, we have had time to blame and excoriate. Politicians have mastered the techniques of party polarization and personal ineffectiveness. (Is there a statesman anywhere to be found?) The terrorists have succeeded in frustrating us when we travel, helping to throw our economy into chaos, and infecting all of us with a sense of apprehension about what could happen next.

            But I do remember at least one good thing that happened in the aftermath of that awful day. America sensed – if only briefly – that we are one nation. Black and white, Latino and Asian, Catholic and Protestant, Republican and Democrat, we found ourselves standing together in unity. We showed intentional acts of kindness to one another. We smiled at each other as if to reassure one another. We met together to pray across the lines of our different faiths.

            Our pain, confusion, and fear gave us a sense of being “one nation.” We even said the pledge again that affirms we are “one nation under God.” But that ever-so-brief period soon gave way to the old divisions and has seen new ones added. Negative motivations do not generate positive outcomes that will endure.

            That awful day is deposited in a painful place in our memory banks forever. Living in denial would not reverse history. So it is better to allow the memory of a dark day that produced heroic first-responders, unselfish Ground Zero volunteers, and patriotic service by so many to call us back to a strong sense of unity grounded in our positive commitment to the common good, the Golden Rule, and love that imitates that of One who gave himself for all.

            If only for a moment, we had a glimpse of a better way forward.