The ashes of last Sept. 11 settled long ago, but today we stir them up and sift through them. Memorial services, retrospective essays and television specials invite us to contemplate everything that has changed both within and without our nation and ourselves. Together we search for something to hold onto, for lessons to relearn, for moments of comfort.
There is almost too much to think about. Do we reflect on the uncertainty of life, its fragility, our inability to control the actions of others? Do we question the whereabouts of a supposedly benign deity? Do we give thanks for moments of remarkable courage and grace that shine through this darkness? Do we celebrate our unity and humanity in the face of incomprehensible loss? And are we changed?
Yes, I think, to all of those.
Sept. 11, 2001, clarified far more than it confused. We had been coasting along for decades, at ease in a land of plenty, with only occasional distant reminders that all is not well with mankind. Suffering was for other people. Calamity came to other countries whose citizens did not have the foresight to be born in the U.S. of A.
When a hurricane or flood or tornado destroyed lives and property here in America, we viewed it as an anomaly, something that's not supposed to happen. As a people, we resented such intrusions on our national dream.
But the attack on America was a catastrophic reminder that our whole world is out of whack and always has been. As it says in the Book of Job, "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward."
Where was God on Sept. 11? He was everywhere, disrupting the tide of evil that roars across our planet every day. He had a lot of assistants -- mysterious strangers who appeared in New York's twin towers to direct the dazed and battered to smoke-obscured exits, to carry them down stairwells, to make unhuman claims: "We are strong; we are with you."
Grace is where you find it. Other-worldly beings may or may not interfere in human affairs, but on the day of this tragedy and in the days that followed, there were people among us, many people, who did the work of angels. They were flawed but ready.
The mother of Rudy Giuliani died last week. During her son's two terms as New York mayor and years as a crusading federal prosecutor before that, he had made enough enemies and earned enough criticism to last several lifetimes. His marriage fell apart, his divorce was bitter and public, his moral leadership mocked. He battled cancer.
Then two pirated airliners devastated the city he led, and a whole nation watched him step forward with a simple spirit and an empathy for others' suffering borne of his own. We watched him inhabit his brokenness and lead his city so well that men whose nightly job is to criticize and mock could only praise him.
Years before, at Giuliani's second swearing-in ceremony, his mother, Helen, had said, "Someday I will see him sworn in as president." She did not, but could a mother ask for any sweeter reward than what she saw blossom in her son's life?
George Bush, however contested his presidency, also now seems to be the right man for this moment. Inner resolve had years before led the privileged party-boy to give up alcohol and take up faith and family, but some who heard his verbal fumbling doubted his depth. This moment has proved his making.
I am regularly grateful that the president is comfortable enough in himself that none of the measures he's taken or the words he's spoken have been about himself. They've been about the nation, about others' pain, about the everyday heroes in this tragedy.
Bush and Giuliani were elected to lead. Neither of them -- no one -- could have imagined what they would lead us through, but they were ready for the time when it came.
No one elected Todd Beamer or Mark Bingham or the other heroes aboard Flight 93. The men and women of New York's fire department didn't run for office, they just signed up for jobs that come with danger attached. Sept. 11 presented them with more peril than most of us will ever encounter, but when the moment came, they were ready.
I want that readiness for myself and my children. Part of it comes from knowing to stop today to consider the many rich ways it was demonstrated a year ago. Grace and courage are all around us. They shine brighter having been purified by fire.
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