Were you there

I won't be around tomorrow, so any 9/11 ruminations I've got to do, I've got to do now.

Like all events of this kind, we remember where we were when they happened. I was at work, and it was a beautiful sunny day. Ottawa is not too far from New York City, so I imagine they had a sunny warm day like ours.

We first got wind of it when somebody pulled up CNN. At first it seemed like one of those freakish accidents that are terribly unfortunate, but which are not the work of ghoulish and diabolical extremists. But when another plane, and another struck within 45 minutes, and the towers collapsed, and finally the plane over Pennsylvania went down, it seemed – no it felt, because you live a day like this in your heart, not your mind – like the world was coming to its fiery end. And in true world's end form, somebody rushed home and fetched their television. Armageddon, should it ever come for real, won't arrive without an exclusive broadcasting rights contract.

I had just signed myself up for a year-long religion class/journey of sorts when this happened. I had been moved to do so by the loss of my mother in law. As the days, weeks, and months passed, the shadow of 9/11 would cast itself over the entire journey.

At first, like all of you, I didn't have a reaction, other than numbness and fear. When I did start to react, I think I felt a visceral anger at Islam. I knew from the moment I felt it that it was not a fair reaction – 19 very bad men who chose the path of terror do not represent the feelings or morals of a billion people, and I knew that.

I decided instead that I would learn a little about Islam. I read online translations of the Quran. I read apologetics in defense of, and in opposition to, Islam. I read the serene meditations of Sufi mystics, and also the hate-filled screeds of anti-Israeli fanatics. I came to the conclusion that Islam's ecosystem was quite familiar. There was beauty, there was profanity. There were those who concerned themselves only with the divine, and there were others who practised a kind of obscene politics, and considered their obscene politics to be Islam itself. I am sympathetic to those muslims who say that "believers" like that are not muslims. I made a friend of one newsgroup muslim, and I still write him to wish him a happy Eid, just as he always writes me to wish me a merry Christmas!

It was at this time that I began to meditate on the issue of suffering, and realized the great beauty of my own Christian faith. Christianity posits that yes, we suffer. But God Himself came down here and joined us in our suffering. He came poor. He lived an itinerant. He died a martyr. He rose back to life renewed. Christianity proposes that he joined us in the bad stuff, and consequently, we will join him in the good stuff. We will follow Him renewed, should we chose to.

In the wreckage of the twin towers, the firemen found a cruciform shape that they heralded as a sign. In my opinion, it does not matter if this was a direct signal from Heaven, or one of those God-winks – the ways in which Earthly life just happens to hint at divine life. Ultimately, all despair leads to hope, if we choose to follow the road laid out between them.

On that road, we may be struck blind, like St. Paul on His way to Damascus. But like that hymn goes, where we once were blind, now we see. I can see the world now for what it is, the polish and the tarnish. I no longer despair at the latter, and put my trust in the former.