Days of Infamy
My memories of the September 11 terrorist attacks are a blur. Mostly, I remember scrambling to plan an evening prayer service at Christ Church in Exeter, New Hampshire. For me, as with most others, the attacks were not personal. I didn’t lose anyone in the way one of my parishioners at the time did. She was a flight attendant for American Airlines who was not flying that day but knew most of the crew members on the American flights involved in the attacks.
For most of us, September 11 was a societal experience, not a personal one. With each passing year, the impact of that day recedes a bit more. The further we get from 9/11, the more the date compares to other dates on which we experienced national and societal trauma. April 15, 1865 (the assassination of Abraham Lincoln). October 28, 1929 (the beginning of the Great Depression). December 7, 1941 (the attack on Pearl Harbor). April 4, 1968 (the assassination of Martin Luther King).
These are all dates which “will live in infamy,” to use Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s phrase, because each unleashed a shared experience of vulnerability and anxiety that shaped us as a society. As Christians, how are we to live through these traumas? The anxiety unleashed by each experience lingers far longer than the memories. It becomes embedded in us. I don’t think it is much of a stretch to claim that another infamous date, January 6, 2021, is directly connected to September 11, 2001.
These are not the only traumatic dates in our lives. We all can name personal days of infamy. The death of a loved one, the loss of a job, the day we heard the diagnosis that changed the course of our life. The moment we realize we can no longer protect our children or discover our loved one with dementia no longer recognizes us.
How do we live faithfully in the face of such anxiety? First, we look backwards at our lives. Doing so, we see other moments in which we experienced deep loss. With hindsight, we see beyond the grief that paralyzed us to the resilience that lifted us. We see how we persevered and how a community supported us in unexpected ways.
Second, we take the memory of our past resilience and use it in the present to fuel the hope we need to move forward faithfully into an unknown and uncertain future. We trust that no matter how dark it may be, light will shine again. We trust that no matter how alone we may feel, someone will show up. We trust that God is with us even when it doesn’t feel like it.
Recently I received a prayer that I find very helpful, not only for days of infamy but any other day.
O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.