9/11 Thoughts

Watching the 9/11 Memorial service this morning I had a difficult time with the TV networks.  The reading of names in New York was riveting, and I kept finding myself upset with the journalists anchoring the shows as they talked or cut away for features.  I finally landed on C-Span, which was just showing the memorial service with no commentary- a simple reading of names, with a brief introduction by the relatives after every eight victims or so- "and my father, ---- ----, my hero, who I miss more than I can ever say...".  Heartbreaking, and requiring no words of wisdom from a newsman telling me what I should feel.  The pictures of the Memorial and the grieving families was enough for me.  [By the way, the Memorial itself looks beautiful, and I think they did a tremendous job with it.]

One thing about the features did bug me a bit.  There are many stories of survival from that day, as of course would be expected in such a chaotic and enormous attack.  The survivors tell stories of how a random decision or circumstance- we paused on the 4th floor to rest, and the people on the floors below us were crushed, or I went to get my coffee a few minutes earlier than usual, and then the planes hit, etc- and the implication, sometimes even explicitly stated, is that God or a guardian angel "was watching over me" and "saved me".

Now I understand that people create narratives to explain how the world works, and search for meaning through those narratives.  There must be a cosmic reason why I survived and the guy next to me died. But seeing these things as fate-driven or God-driven is wrong, and it's an insult to the dead to put such narratives out there.  If God chose me to live, that means He also chose 3000 other people to die.  If He left me on Earth for His purposes, that implies that he killed off the others for His purposes too.  To say such a thing about God is obscene.  So when the personal stories, which inspire so many people, get too close to cosmic explanations for survival, I just want to "be" with the families of the Dead.  Their deaths had no meaning- that's the horrible tragedy.  God wasn't involved in the Terrorists' attack, and He wasn't involved in choosing survivors.  He's there only to comfort the bereaved.

So may all the bereaved be comforted.