9/11 VIVIDLY RECALLED

Watching the replay this week of the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers instantly brought back the unbelievable horrors of that day. Every aspect, it seems, was recorded by some camera or audio recorder. I found the impact of the re-run of the footage intensely sobering. There was no need to go looking for some new aspect of the event as the media is always inclined to do. It was important simply to see again the main story.

The human aspect of it was the most horrific and the most sobering. Four plane loads of unsuspecting passengers, having been murderously hijacked, were deliberately used as highly lethal missiles. In three of them everyone was atomised on impact. We actually saw very clearly one of those impacts taking place! Nothing was left to the imagination. The stunned horror of the watching bystanders was recorded in detail. That horror worsened as the flames isolated hundreds of people trapped in the floors above the point of impact. And then it happened all over again as the second tower was hit by another plane.

Some 200 people jumped from the top floors to avoid incarceration. Their jumps were witnessed by those on the ground; a devastating horrifying sight. It was unbelievable, surreal; a disaster movie of the most lurid kind had come to life. Yet worse was to come; something that no one anticipated. The first tower began to collapse, and collapse very quickly in a huge cloud of dust and rubble. The shock of that to onlookers was enormous. Then the second tower followed suit. There was little or no hope for those still in them. Later it was learned that over 300 fire fighters were killed inside the towers as they were seeking to rescue others. People immediately outside the towers were filmed running for their lives, enveloped in a fast moving, suffocating and toxic cloud. It later came as no surprise, though with awful force, that nearly 3,000 people had died in the towers. Only some 200 or so bodies were identifiable, and of those only a handful was recognisable.

It was a human horror story, an ultimate human tragedy. It was a tragedy indeed for those who were killed. It was also a tragedy for humanity generally in that it revealed once again just how deluded and deranged humanity itself could be in using its talents and sophistication to bring about such cynical and murderous actions, and, in watching it, actually applaud it. It had taken some two hours to unfold. It would change perspectives for a very long time to come.

And this was in New York, New York on what began as a normal working day. This was the capital of the world’s greatest superpower! Separated from the rest of the world by two vast oceans, it was the dominating, invulnerable, proud new empire of the turn of the century. The iconic centre of the trade on which it was built had been demolished in what was virtually a moment of time.

And the whole world watched it as it was actually happening on television screens. This was a truly horrifying aspect. One is tempted to say this aspect was unique, but unfortunately this is not strictly true. The world’s disasters, of whatever kind, are all now watched instantly. We are not told about them, we see them. And there have been many of them now.

Utterly sobering; that is my reaction. By that I mean, you just have to stop and think hard and deep about it. You just have to wrestle with the hard questions that arise. You can’t really go back to the old round of giddy pleasures burying your head at such a reminder of human vulnerability. We have to ask, “What am I doing with my life?”, “Am I accountable for my life?” It’s a very foolish thing to write off questions of life after death merely on the basis of materialistic ideology. For us, life now has to go on, of course, despite the horror, but it is so desperately important to wrestle with the question of what life is about, and why these things happen. Not just at the human level but at the divine level. What was God saying through this? Where was God in this? There’s certainly far more to this than the story of evil people against the good, even if that may be part of it.

Bob

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