A Lament for Mercy: Remembering 9-11
Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God (Psalm 69:1-3).
Waiting… Waiting for something to happen, for news of survival or death to arrive, for hope amid devastating human loss, for God to act. One can viscerally hear, and seemingly touch, the waiting in the cries of lament from September 11. One can read and hear those cries in the voices of Garrett M. Graff’s The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9-11 (Simon and Schuster, 2019). As Graff indicates, “This book is an attempt to listen, to hear others’ stories, to know what it was like to experience the day first-hand, to wrestle with the confusion and the terror” (viii). Hear and touch the laments of waiting in these voices of 9-11:
Waiting for Something to Happen: Louise Buzzelli waiting for her husband, firefighter Pasquale Buzzelli to do something—That day, I just wanted to feel him, and I took the (his) shirt and put it on. We have a cross in our room, and I grabbed the cross, and I was praying to God that this would be over, and he could get out and this would all be something that we could get past and the world could get past (68).
Waiting for News: Jennifer Meyers, a dispatcher with Arlington County Emergency Communications Center—All of us who worked that day can recall moments that will stay with us for the rest of our lives. Mine was a phone call from a man who spoke with extreme calmness—I believe he might have been in shock. He told me he knew his wife had been on the plane that went into the Pentagon, and he knew she was no longer alive. What he was requesting was for me to assist him in finding out who was sitting next to her. He wanted to know what her last words had been—he wanted to speak to the survivors. My heart sank. His voice is ingrained on me forever. What I was not allowed to release to the public yet was that they were almost certain there were no survivors on the plane (269).
Waiting for Hope: 15-year old Lourdes V. Baker of California— It was the first time I completely understood that nothing is simple, some things never make sense, and sometimes horrible things happen for no reason at all. It was the end of my childhood (338).
Waiting for God: Author Garrett Graff—Yet, it is hard to come away from the stories of 9/11 with a sense of anything other than appreciation for the role randomness plays in our daily existence—There but for the grace of God go I, as the 16th century clergyman John Bradford is said to have phrased it—and how it can change the course of history…I am overwhelmed by the unfair randomness of the day (440).
Randomness might be just another name for waiting on God to act, to bring justice, to dispense mercy. 9-11 drives the contingency of our lives like a stake into our hearts. But the impact of the stake isn’t clear. Does it lead to profound appreciation or the loadstone of unfairness? Yet, Bradford is right. It only drives to waiting for the grace of God, to the mercy of God, to the resurrection of the Crucified One and his words: Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you” (John 20:19).
As Detective David Brink, Emergency Service Unit, Truck 3, NYPD said—I needed something to wipe my face off with. . . . I found the little one—it was a little white cloth that they would put over the chalice when they were doing the wine ceremony—and it had a little red cross stitched into it. I dipped that in the holy water and started wiping my eyes off. I looked up, and the priest had come out. I said, “Oh, boy. I’m in trouble now.” He says, “No, my son. That’s what they’re supposed to be used for. It’s okay.” I said, “Thank you, Father,” and I dipped it again in the holy water. Then I put it around my neck, and tied it there because the cool water felt good on the back of my neck (264).
We continue to wait…in hope, for God has promised to act in mercy and grace. As we wait, the water feels good about our necks.
Our help comes from you, O Lord, you who made heaven and earth. In the midst of grief, you are our comfort. In the face of uncertainty, you are our rock. In the wake of tragedy, you are our hope. So even as we weep, we praise you, and place our trust in you. We pray in the name of the one who suffered and died and was raised for us, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen (All Creation Sings, Augsburg Fortress, 2020, 66).