United by hope: 9/11: Ten years later

Read more reflections on the 9/11 anniversary.

Several members of my Manhattan congregation are involved in the National 9/11 Memorial project at Ground Zero. One is a subcontractor who has worked on the memorial's concrete foundations, and he took me on a tour of the uncompleted memorial last spring. When it opens on the tenth anniversary of the attack, visitors will find it to be Olympian in scale: two pools covering an acre each—roughly the footprint of the twin towers—into which four-sided waterfalls cascade 30 feet, with the museum wedged between the pools; a forest of trees, including the lone survivor tree; and 2,983 names etched in stone.

Another church member working on the memorial came through the greeting line after church not long after my tour and gave me a rubber wristband that reads "9/11 Memorial—United by Hope." I have been wearing it, and plan to do so till after church on Sunday, September 11. I think the three words on my bracelet will serve well to direct how we shape worship that day: memorial, united, hope.