  Tuesday September 11th 2001! A day like any other day that has gone down in this planet’s history as one of the most horrific acts of terrorism. I still can remember the day quite clearly. I came back from a trip to ASDA where I’d been buying food in for our evening drop-in. I got back in St Anne’s house and all the staff was huddled round the television set. All of them sat in stunned silence. Brief interludes by newscasters informing the public with the latest up to date information, with intermittent cuts to the now world-wide known images of a jumbo jet flying over the New York skyline and crashing into one of the twin towers. The whole idea shocked me. That something so simple, and yet so destructive could happen… On a Tuesday… In September… It didn’t seem real. More like a clip from the sequel to Independence Day, or maybe another Bruce Willis film. Then another plane crashed. And a third was reported to be heading elsewhere, and then news of yet another. Had the world gone mad? What about all those people in that building, or living in the vicinity? At first it seemed so far away. New York, across the Atlantic. Then it hit me. Those wonderful Americans I’d met in Taize just two months previously. Upstairs in our offices, I struggled to try and get online to send e-mails. On the CNN website, those images played on a loop. Over and over. Like some kind of nightmare that you pray to wake up from. I managed to send the e-mails, and by the end of the working day, heard back from my American friends. But now, a year later, it occurs to me that the 11th September has become synonymous with tragedy. That date will forever be remembered as the day the earth stood still and watched those images of horror. I don’t think we should concentrate on that. For me, September the 11th has a more significant meaning. A year before that fateful day, I walked into the T.H.O.M.A.S. Reconcile drug rehabilitation programme. That’s the day I came back to life. When I was born again into a life of hope and opportunity. A date to which I’m eternally grateful. What about all the people that were born on that day? All the thousands of people who celebrate their birthday on that date? I’ve since heard the question asked, "Where was God when this terrible thing happened?" I’m no great theologian, and I don’t profess to know the answer. But I kind of like the idea that God was in the faces of all those children that were born into this world on that day, and was there in the heart of every addict that made a decision to change their lives. It amazed me that after that terrible act, so many of us phoned our loved ones, visited our families to tell them we loved them, to just hold them… Perhaps God was there too. Reminding us with one moment of insanity, just how precious life is, and how, sometimes we can take it all for granted. This year, on September 11th. I’ll be going to the service of hope at Blackburn cathedral, and I’ll be lighting two candles. One for those who died in that tragedy, and one for those of us who didn’t… And praying to God that this will never happen again. |
