Patriot Day—9/11

I never watch TV in the morning hours—but when my mother-in-law out in California called on that morning of 9/11 to tell me that something bad was happening in New York City—I broke my normal pattern and turned on the TV and remained glued to the screen for the remainder of the day.  I could not believe what was happening!

Nearly two decades have passed since the 9/11 attacks and much has changed. In fact, the whole world has changed.  Our right to privacy, our immigration policies, the way we travel, an 18-year war, etc. are all part of 9/11’s aftermath.

The immediate response after 9/11, however, was our coming together as a people—a people with shared values—American values—that we felt had been attacked that day. Those values included a shared commitment to freedom, diversity, and equality, and a unity undergirded by courage and love and selflessness.  

Those shared values that brought us together on 9/11 are under attack again—not from intruders or outsiders, but from within. The values (the American character) that emerged after 9/11 was a wondrous thing—turning the “worst day we have ever seen” into a day that “brought out the best in all of us.”  While we mourn, remember, and reflect on that 9/11 of eighteen years ago, we must also seek to find again those shared values that held us together then, and can hold us together now.  “America will never be destroyed from the outside,” Abraham Lincoln once said—and 9/11 proved his point—“If we falter and lose our freedoms,” he warned, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

“O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears!  America! America! God mend thine every flaw, confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law.”