BY MAGGIE HETTINGER
Yesterday, we all celebrated 9/11 day. It’s been 21 years, right? I’m sure the TV was full of “remembrance,” if that’s what you watch. I did not.
Yesterday morning, my church placed the American flag beside the altar. We sang together, “This is my song…this is my home…these are my hopes…but other hearts in other lands are beating with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.” We sang this, knowing that some in the assembly would have preferred to be singing songs we knew by rote like “My Country Tis of Thee,” or thrumming the martial beat of “Glory Hallelujah.” It was a choice and could have gone either way.
Later in the day, I accepted an invitation to attend a remembrance of 9/11 in person. “We will always remember 9/11. We MUST always remember 9/11.” With a friend, I went to a small but thriving VFW post and gathered with men in uniforms and men out of uniform, and women in everyday clothing passing out flags—little plastic American flags and tiny flower pins that stand for honest and enduring love of country. Other women in matching outfits and multicultural smiling faces would sing in exquisitely matched tones of America, of the branches of military service, of pride and freedom. We honored duty and sacrifice and unity and determination. The service concluded with a shocking blast of gunfire just outside the door, followed by the smooth tones of the recorded-bugle Taps — “Day is Done.”
On 9/11 we remember “America” was attacked, but also that people from over 100 nations were killed in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and Flight 77 and Flight 93. The speaker at the VFW ceremony asked us to close our eyes and remember where we were and what we did. It was powerful.
My personal memory is bound to be different from yours. I remember that on 9/11 we gathered in the evening in our small rural church to pray. We prayed for the world, and we asked ourselves and our God, “Why did this thing happen?” “What caused it?” “Why would anybody do this to us?” We asked for understanding. We stayed overnight in vigil, in a suspended moment of shock, loss and questioning.
By morning the world had changed even more. By then (9/12) our loved and respected elders, members of the “greatest” generation, remembering their coming of age in wartime, brought out rituals of flags, candles, and memorials to military loss and sacrifice. The oneness of our shock allowed us to remember the oneness of wartime, and somehow they merged and started to give direction to the days that followed.
Yesterday at the VFW ceremony, Ronald Reagan’s recorded voice explained what he meant by “informed patriotism” — “why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant.” For me, Reagan’s words were offset by the presence of my young friend beside me, a visitor from the suburbs of Tokyo, here to learn what she can of American culture. My friend is the reason I was actually at that service instead of down on Brownsboro Road in a different Sept. 11 observance — folk music and dancing. My friend had made the choice for us to come to the VFW Post. I’m not sure what she felt. I can only share my feelings.
There are a lot of ways to commemorate 9/11, and somewhere in the balance between them we can move in new directions, if we will.
On Sept. 12, 2001, the blue sky above me was clear and empty of contrails, but that normally-beautiful blue seemed stark and ominous because we knew all planes were grounded. But yesterday, there were planes in my sky. There were also turbulent clouds, a reminder of the environmental threat to human freedom that sets itself before us to be dealt with today. Yesterday, abruptly, that turbulent sky also gave us a magnificent double rainbow that persisted for a long time.
We were off balance after the first 9/11 when we plunged straight into Homeland Security and war in Iraq. At that time, the loss of freedom was what we, the USA, imposed on ourselves and exported to the rest of the world.
Will we find a good balance point today to set our path to a better tomorrow? In balance, we do have a choice.
Maggie Hettinger is a volunteer with Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a nonpartisan, nonprofit, grassroots organization that exists to create the political will for a livable world. She and her sister also put on a workshop, “The PLUMMMIT Summit,” a game that can be played by groups of people who want to get the conversation rolling about climate action.