Remembering Sept. 11:
In face of uncertainty, focus on God

		Guest  commentary  John Rosengren

That Tuesday morning, we'd gone out for breakfast. My 16-month old daughter chased birds in the parking lot, her arms outstretched.

The robins fluttered to higher perches. Over a thousand miles away, a Boeing 767 tilted its wings into the World Trade Center's south tower.

That night, the sun set on a different world. My wife and I lay in bed and listened to the planes drone overhead. These were not the usual incoming flights we sometimes heard every three minutes, but military patrols circling the city. Under siege of fear, we couldn't sleep.

Sign of uncertainty

In the dark, the day's images flickered before my mind's eye. The planes strike the towers. Smoke swallows lower Manhattan. The south tower crumples. Anonymous bodies swim in slow motion descent to their suicides. The north tower sinks. The planes strike the towers . . .

When we snapped off the TV, the day was sunny and crisp. Our daughter played in her sandbox. You could almost believe it hadn't happened. But the eerie stillness in the blue skies overhead wouldn't let you.

I hadn't known anyone personally in the targeted buildings nor on the flights, but that day of terror chiseled a demarcation point in my psyche. Suspicion has tarnished everything since. When the commercial flights returned to the air Thursday, it was not a sign of normalcy but uncertainty - who was aboard those flights?

Mystery of God's creation

The attacks overshadow my memory. Reading my journal from that week, I'm surprised to find this Friday entry: "It's official - we're pregnant again. Doc confirmed it yesterday." I'd forgotten that had also been the week we'd had the miracle of new life affirmed.

Brendan Francis arrived happy and healthy on a bright spring evening, April 24. He shares a birthday with my grandmother, deceased these past 55 years. His birth is another personal demarcation, another invitation to enter the mystery of God's creation.

Our daughter still does not know what happened Sept. 11. Nor does Alison understand where her brother came from. For the moment, her innocence is intact, however fragilely. One day, I know, I will have to explain both.

God shines through

It will be two tales interwoven, mysteries of love and hate, of free will blessed and perverted, of God's presence immutable. My telling will expose how little I myself understand of human behavior and divine grace. The children will have to find their own way to live out these mysteries as they come of age.

Today, when I think about Sept. 11, I still feel grief. When I look at my children - "Ready, set, jump," Alison says; Brendan gurgles his giggle - I feel intense joy.

Without forgetting what's happened, I choose to focus on my children. God shines through their smiles. I pray theirs are the face of the future.

John Rosengren is the author of Meeting Christ in Teens: Startling Moments of Grace to be released by St. Mary's Press in September. He may be reached at: johnrosengren@qwest.net