Remembering 9/11

(Warning: some of the descriptions below are graphic and may be disturbing for some readers.)

It’s the aftermath of 9/11 I remember the most: people wandering like ghosts through silent streets for days after the towers fell; the echoing silence everywhere, a silence so profound it was nearly palpable; the scorched and smoky smell that permeated everyplace Downtown, that made the heart jump and the throat close up with remembered horror; the open-hearted camaraderie that reached across race, class, and gender lines and seemed to fill every corner of the ruined city; the stunned incomprehension, the confusion, the fear, and underneath it all, simmering slowly, something that would not be fully voiced for weeks: outrage.

I was very, very lucky on 9/11. At the time, I worked for a financial firm that had offices in the World Trade Center, but also secondary offices just across the water in Jersey City. As part of my daily commute from New York into New Jersey I used the transit authority hub located in the base of one of the WTC towers. I was on the last train out of the WTC before the plane hit. On most days I dawdled in the Trade Center, used the restroom, grabbed a bit of breakfast, before heading across the river. I was running late that September morning and it’s a blessed thing that I was. Had I been on time, I’d very likely have been dead.

It wasn’t until I exited the train station in Jersey that I realized anything was amiss. When I came out onto the street and looked across the water at Manhattan, I could see plumes of billowing smoke from the building my train had only just pulled out of five minutes before and I remember wondering what on earth was causing it. Several commuters stopped and looked and we mused briefly amongst ourselves before moving onward into our day. None of us knew yet the true scope of what was transpiring.

By the time I arrived at work a few minutes later, my co-workers already had the televisions on hoping for some information. Being that it was a financial firm, there were televisions on the brokerage floor and we all gathered around, wondering what was going on and hoping the news would have answers. No one was prepared for the reality of the situation. We watched the second tower being hit and then the Pentagon and I remember a co-worker saying dazedly, “they’re saying it was a terrorist attack” with the most indescribable confusion in his voice, as though surely, it was some kind of a trick, a joke, a stunt. It wasn’t.

The whole thing seemed very surreal. Within a half an hour, just to be safe, the office was evacuated. To be sure, I’m still not certain most of us really understood what was happening. Employees who lived in Jersey offered crash space to those who, living in Manhattan, Queens, or Brooklyn, now could not get home. I had just enough time to call my sister in Texas. After that, the phone lines were so jammed as to be utterly impassible. We were very much cut off from what seemed like an outside world very far away.

Because of the issue with the phone lines, my mother was in the dark as to my status for all of that terrible day. Even my sister, while she received the message from her roommate that I was evacuating from work, wasn’t sure exactly where I worked. Both my mother and my sister realized immediately that my financial firm had offices in the upper floors of the World Trade Center and my mother at least was convinced that I worked there. She didn’t realize I worked in Jersey City. Needless to say, both were anxiously and helplessly sitting by the phone all day.

My mother’s worry wasn’t just limited to me. Her sister, my aunt worked at the Pentagon, in the very office that was hit and destroyed by the terrorist-hijacked plane. She had a narrow escape when some sixth sense told her to get up and look out the window. She told me later that she just knew something was wrong when she saw a plane where she didn’t expect to see one (and where no plane should be) and she promptly (and quickly) exited the building, probably saving her own life in the process.

Being Heathen, my first concern was for a member of my kindred who was legally blind and who worked in the same building as I did. I made my way to her, flat out disobeying the orders of my boss to leave the building, and made sure she was safe—as safe as could be at any rate. Then together, we went to the evacuation site.

Once outside of work, it was just a mass of terrified confusion. No one really knew anything, no one knew what to do, and everyone was terrified that another strike was forthcoming. I saw hardened police officers flinch as American military planes flew overhead roughly an hour later. I watched a seasoned EMT sit down and cry from what he’d seen at Ground Zero. I’m a priest and I wanted to do something to help. At the evacuation site, I looked for anything I could do. When I spotted a couple of my co-workers there milling about uncertainly but also wanting to help, I headed for them and gave them directions, telling them to do what they could to get people comfortable. The site had water and blankets available and I told them to pass these out, being on the look out for signs of physical shock (which I explained to them). Then I did the same. Streams of people were being ferried across the water from Ground Zero. It was an amazing sight: in addition to the transit authority ferries and, I believe, the Coast Guard, private individuals put their own boats into service to get people to safety.

They came huddled in confused, terrified groups, pale, hollow-eyed, and shaking, reeking of the acrid smell of fire and often covered with soot and ash. It reminded me of stories that I’d read about Pompeii and the eruption of Vesuvius where the ash rained down blanketing the city, and I wondered vaguely, for just a brief moment, if this was what the end of the world looked like.

I talked with many of the EMTs who were working, and I found myself doing on the spot chaplaincy work. I also found out from them how bad the situation really was. They spoke to me about the carnage they witnessed, about things that never reached the news. One, pale and grim, sat with me on the pier and told me that there were body parts all over Ground Zero, amongst the rubble. She told me that she’d felt something on her shoe and looked down to find someone’s head. Her voice shook with horror and we spoke for what seemed like a very long time but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, and then she got back up and boarded one of the ferries to go back into the fray and face it all again. It has become cliché to say that it was the firefighters, police, and EMTs who were the real heroes of 9/11, but if it is cliché, that is only because it’s true. Those men and women exhibited tremendous courage and compassion on 9/11 and for many weeks and months after and they deserve to be celebrated for it. They acted with valor.

I could not get home that night for a long time because the trains were not running and a lovely Hindu family took both my kinswoman and me into their home for hours until we were able to get back across the water. In the interim, we went en masse to the hospital which was calling for donations and gave blood. We also took supplies to the local fire house. In the rush of that day’s aftermath, I never got their names but I ask for the blessings of the Gods on them every chance I get. That family was good and gracious and kind to two complete strangers. Their hospitality was unexpected and unasked for, and was the equal if not the better of any Heathen I know. It is people like that who were the unsung heroes of 9/11, just average, every-day people rising to the occasion and behaving with grace and kindness. I pray their Gods bless and keep them.

The next few weeks, I worked both at the Red Cross Center and a local hospital as a volunteer chaplain. I assisted with coordinating counseling efforts at my job, and saw first hand the terror and later the post traumatic stress in so many people with whom I worked. Many quit their jobs rather than have to go near Ground Zero again. I sat with a Vietnam Vet, one of my co-workers as he sobbed through clenched teeth wondering if this would start the war that would take his son from him. I witnessed another chaplain shaking and crying softly as she told me how her son was watching television when the first images of the attack were broadcast. He was five and asked her if those were bodies falling from the windows of the ruined Towers. At her horrified look, he turned to her and said “don’t worry, Mommy. God will catch them.” As a shaman, for the first time in my life, I spent my nights guiding lost, agitated and very confused souls across to the realm of the dead. Too much had happened too quickly and many did not know how or even that they were dead. For the first time in my life, I connected with the God Who owns me, Odin, in His role as God of the dead. I became their psychopomp albeit a clumsy one. Nor was I alone in this work.

Working at the Red Cross armory was wrenching. People came in hurting and hopeful only to realize one-by-one, by the very personal nature of the questions they had to answer, that their loved ones were most likely dead. The questions were so detailed many also came to realize they may not find the body of their loved one, but if they were lucky a mere fragment of the body. I saw such tremendous heroism there too: a rabbi who physically chased fundamentalist proselytizers out of the building and down the street, away from the heart-wounded people who needed anything but such an attack, the young Catholic priest, the most phenomenally gifted chaplain I have ever had the privilege of seeing, who took the time to make sure his colleagues, me included, were ok too, up to and including making us sit down and eat when there was still so much pressing work to be done.

While the clergy and chaplains serving with the Red Cross were some of the finest individuals I have ever met, unfortunately my experience with the Red Cross itself has left a very bitter taste in my mouth. The Red Cross had at that time (and perhaps still has) a very discriminatory and demeaning policy toward non-traditional clergy. I had been a priest for fourteen years with extensive pastoral counseling experience, chaplaincy experience and a diploma from an interfaith seminary. None of that mattered to the Red Cross organizers. Because we were not ‘legitimate’ in their eyes, we were put to work cleaning toilets and emptying garbage rather than ministering to the people coming in. Non-traditional clergy, by the way, included a female Episcopalian minister of 18 years pastoral experience. Nine years later I remain disgusted with the Red Cross and their treatment of us.

Still, those of us who were clergy found ourselves challenged that day and in the days following as never before. Looking back, it’s hard to believe that we lived through something that has come to so define our generation. Now, there is “before 9/11” and “after 9/11” and still it seems nothing will ever be the same again. I do not think it is incorrect to say that for Americans, this was the Pearl Harbor of my generation. No clergy person involved in providing aftercare was immune from the emotions raging around them. Those of us who stumbled forward to help found ourselves facing not just human grief and loss and pain, but confusion, terror, trauma, and slowly a burning desire for vengeance. We wrestled with these things ourselves even as we tried to give those who sought us out the tools of faith and practice that would help them to begin to reclaim some sense of spiritual, emotional, and mental security, some sense of meaning.

We tried not only to give comfort, but to help people pick up the pieces of often shattered lives. Sometimes we tried to build bridges toward greater understanding and awareness between religions. I know many a minister who reached out to his or her Muslim neighbors (as I did to local Sikh neighbors who found themselves being harassed by people who assumed they were Muslim).

We grew in faith and in commitment, at least those I worked with did. It was a harrowing ordeal that made each and every one of us examine the chinks in his or her spiritual armor. We learned fast because when it came down to the wire, those claiming the name of priest, priestess, rabbi, minister, etc. were the ones people turned to with the question: why?

From the wife who lost her husband, the husband who lost his wife, the parent who lost his or her children: why? From those left behind: why? From those trying to find some meaning in something so seemingly senseless: why? I didn’t have any answers then but I’ll tell you this: in trying to help people find their own way through the terrible darkness of 9/11 and its aftermath, I found my way deeper into the heart of my God. I found the Gods in the midst of it all and I came out of it a much better priest. I saw first hand not only the compassion that the Gods have for humanity, but the compassion we are able to summon for each other. That is no small thing, in fact, it is in that human compassion that I find the greatest of miracles.

A Prayer of Remembrance

Today we remember 9/11.

I pray to all the Holy Powers of all the Nine Sacred Worlds,

and humbly I ask Your collective blessings.

In the name of Helheim,

May those who died in the attacks of 9/11 find comfort in the halls of their ancestors

In the name of Niflheim,

May we learn to see beyond the limits of past hatreds so that we may craft a shared future.

In the name of Svartalfheim,

May we find a way to craft a peace that sustains.

In the name of Muspelheim,

May the brave men and women who worked as EMTs, firefighters, police, chaplains, and all first responders be blessed with an abundance of all good things.

In the name of Midgard,

May those left behind find comfort and healing.

In the name of Jotunheim,

May extremists who would kill in the name of religion

find better ways to honor their Gods.

In the name of Alfheim,

Let us all learn the grace of living with diversity.

In the name of Vanaheim,

May the seeds of understanding bear rich fruit.

In the name of Asgard,

May we be freed of the ignorance and arrogance of fundamentalism,

from wherever it might come.