Lament and renewal
9/11: Ten years later
Read more reflections on the 9/11 anniversary.
After watching from our 16th-floor windows as both towers lit up, then fell into a cloud of smoke, we gathered in the chapel of the Interchurch Center in Morningside Heights to pray. Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset has said, "History happens when the sensitive crown of the hu man heart inclines to one side or the other of the horizon." I heard the American heart incline and new history unfold as the chapel rang out with the precious names of loved ones downtown. In the speaking of the names I heard the sensitive crown of the human heart incline from security to insecurity; from entitlement to vulnerability; from the veneer of secularity (disenchantment) to a yearning to speak to our Maker; from insularity to fleeting solidarity.
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