Someone asked me today if I was planning on doing a 9-11 post, I figured there would be a couple of things that I could do.

As I was watching the real-time coverage of the event on cnn’s site today and reading about the various conspiracy theories it reminded me of a few things.

I remembered how close everyone was during that first 2-3 weeks following the attacks.  Literally in NYC, and across the country people would smile at you when you passed and were a little bit more willing to forgive others.  I remembered just how many flags there were flying during that whole fall.  People were proud to be an American.  We went on a trip with NYC Ministries who run a number of mission trips to NYC; they felt the best way they could react was to go witness and love on the people of the city.  Even two weeks after the collapse of the towers I could still smell jet fuel in lower manhattan.  We went down to Ground Zero at night one evening and walked around the area and I remember walking in front of the Stock Exchange and having it be as silent as a countryside in the fall.  There were countless shops that still had their gates half closed and plates with half-eaten food on tables.  I remember a conversation that I had with a rescue worker who was on the edge of a nervous breakdown for working the 12 hour shifts at Ground Zero’s recovery.  Although we visited Ground Zero just one night we were there; I remember the tears, the hugs and the smoke rising from the wrecked hulls of buildings that were still standing (at that moment); it was there that I really appreciated the capability of evil men to do evil things.  There were so many good things that came from that trip; an increased awareness of God and his work in people’s lives, a sense of urgency with sharing the good news, and just heart-felt sympathy and love for the people of that city.  It’s those times that you embrace your mortality as well.

But I also laugh at the countless consipiracy theories that still remain.  Despite evidence and despite logical thinking some people just don’t want to believe what they saw.  There is an article in the Indy (our left-ist student newspaper) today going through the top five or so theories. 

It amazes me that people will see senseless acts of carnage and feel a need to blame someone that they control or think they control.  It’s like there are no evil people in this world that have the capability and desire to do unspeakable acts of evil.  It seems that with any national tradgedy that we feel the need to cast blame on someone.  Don’t get me wrong, I love to question government policy and politics has always been a sport to watch for me, but there is questioning your government and believing our leadership are psychopathic.  Conspiracy theories that I’ve read surrounding 9/11 seem to have no basis in reality. I remember losing my mom to cancer 10 years ago and the temptation to cast blame on the Doctors inability to ‘fix her’, or my mom for even not going in soon enough and a friend telling me that sometimes things ‘just happen’.  As a Christian, I believe in a soverign God that is right in the middle of even the most ugliest of days and take comfort in the fact that he is there.  But I wonder if there is something deeply embedded in us that seeks justice to the point of needing to cast blame if it all doesn’t seem right. 

Personally, I pretty much take everything revolving around that day at face value; dispicable acts of violence were balanced with heroic acts.  People on flight 93, for example, provide a standard to look up to if ever I were in that situation; frail, imperfect, stupid sometimes but willing to fight. 

May we never forget that day.