A quietness!
It is quiet at ground zero, the site of the September eleventh attacks in New York City as the water falls just as the bodies did from the heights on down to the depths of the soulless attacks that occurred there just thirteen years ago today.
We were there in June and we were impressed by the investments that had been made and the respect that had been accorded what had gone on there years ago. There is a towering structure that has risen out of the ashes of what had been just as the proverbial phoenix arose from it lair many eons ago to take flight and astound the world. The building is still not occupied but there is the promise that it will be in the near future and that activities similar to what went on before will once again occur as human beings again do business and conduct commerce as they once did at this site. And, just perhaps, that is as it should be. If those who died in such numbers just thirteen years ago had anything to say about it they would probably want it just that way just as they would appreciate that their names are also at this location carved in the stone overlooking where the waters fall into the perpetuity that we hope will always be. And they would also probably smile if they knew that a single white rose is laid by each of their names on their birthdays each and every year.
We desperately need to remember what went on at this place just as we need to continue to do what those who were doing it at the time of the attacks would want us to do. It should be for them if nothing else that we should continue on with the daily lives that were so rudely interrupted on what has become this day of days in the life of a city that has seen so much during its time. Before the attacks, New York had a window on the world that the twin towers provided and there is no reason that should not continue to be the case. But, it is such a far different world that we collectively look out upon now than we did on the morning of September eleventh when our former one came crashing down around us in such a spectacular if evil way.
There is evil in the world and our television sets show it to us just about every evening these days. But there is good there too and the often seeming minuscule actions of everyday people who strive to be of use and of help to their fellow man should not be discounted in any way at all. We have made heroes out of people who died on this day who would rather have simply gone on with their daily routines and continued on with the loves of their lives. It is always that way with heroism and it is usually the ordinary ones who are thrust into it and who emerge from it as different souls than we ever saw them as before. We will never know the countless acts of help and comfort that those who died gave to one another in those towers before the end came. All we have are the cell phone calls that the doomed made to try to reach their loved ones that so often left such poignant messages on voice mails and answering machines that were matched for days after the attack by the plaintive ringing of cell phones of the dead at ground zero that only the still living could helplessly hear as they furiously dug with the fading hope of finding anyone alive.
Heroes are made, not born, but we should be very appreciative of the yeast from which they came, especially those who went up into those towers that day on a mission that would take them to eternity as they tried to aid others who could no longer help themselves. And we should never forget those who chose just a few more seconds of life over the inferno that they faced as they had to make a choice that even Sophie would have found difficult as they jumped to a death that we have always felt made them angels before they ever touched the ground. Angels abounded that day. As we sat on a bench at the site of the attacks all we could really think of was that we were sitting on ground where these souls had landed just a few short years before and we wonder what their final few thoughts might have been. Life sometimes seems such a long journey but we remember the old Irishman on his deathbed who told his nephew that life is really nothing more than the wink of an eye.
As we sat there and listened to the fall of that water we knew instinctively why it had been chosen as the symbol for the ear to hear. Water at the oceans edge is one of the most soothing sounds that a being can ever experience and to fall into slumber to the perpetuality of it is a truly wonderful thing. It connects us to eternity as we continue to live out our lives and we realize that there is a finality to everything human but that some things will always continue to go on. It is the final gift that is given and will always connect us one to another as withered or damaged hands pass a torch that we pray will always light our way in a world too often filled with darkness and despair. .
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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