A column by Dave Schmelzer

It's been five years since the Sept. 11 attacks

Of course you remember where you were when you heard that one of the Twin Towers had been hit by a plane, and then that the other tower was hit, and then that they both fell. 

You know someone, or you know someone who knows someone, who was on one of the planes.  You know half a dozen people who were at work near the Towers and then had an unbelievably harrowing journey home. 

Dave Schmelzer

You remember how you felt about the big questions in those few days later.  Maybe you, if just for a moment, pondered if this was some sort of sign of the end.  When our president—in a more-popular season—called for days of prayer, for churches to stay open, maybe you dropped in for a prayer or a service. 

For most of us, it seemed to make sense. 

There were endless articles in those next few months about how attendance at religious services was booming, and then endless more in the next few months about how the boom didn’t last.  And that—arguably—is fine. 

Those services met a need in a moment of common crisis.  The crisis faded.  Folks moved on.

But I wonder if you discovered something then that it would be a shame for you to lose.  And that’s that faith—whatever your faith may be—is meant to be done with other people.  You are, of course, more than welcome to pursue a private faith. 

But I’ll tell you from survey after survey and from endless personal experience that your private faith won’t get you the same level of good stuff that you could be enjoying with a shared faith.  You’re just flat cheating yourself. 

Here’s a 9/11 story that comes to mind on this theme. 

A young woman had been raped by a soldier.  She didn’t know anyone she could meaningfully process it with, so she tried to move on from it.  That didn’t work.  She discovered that she had powerfully negative emotions whenever she saw someone in uniform.  After 9/11, all those newfound uniformed people in airports induced full-fledge panic attacks.  Suddenly she couldn’t do business travel, couldn’t go home to see her parents.  She went to counselors to no evident effect. 

Though a longtime secularist, she had the thought that maybe the only way to address this was in a faith community, that maybe some of what had happened to her was legitimately spiritual. 

Who knows?  Maybe that was why her secular psychologist had been so impotent to help her. 
So, perhaps two months after 9/11, she dropped by our community.  Surprisingly, she liked it, really liked it, felt comforted in a unique way when she left.  She, of course, came back. 

A few visits in, she met someone in the lobby who invited her to a small group of folks who met during the week to pray for each other and do their best to be friends in the journey of faith together.  She visited there, made some great friends, and returned. 

Within two months she was back on a plane.  Her little prayer group prayed like crazy for that day, and it went swimmingly.  Within a month: no more panic attacks, some of the best friends she’d yet made and a general encouragement in life she hadn’t known was out there even to hope for.

So, wherever your faith may lead you, can I encourage you to take the anniversary of 9/11 to take a fresh shot at pursuing it with others?  Because if there was any good legacy in the immediate aftermath of that unbelievable day, I’d submit that it was that, as a nation, we discovered it felt good to pray with that neighbor we’d seen on the street, but hadn’t had the chance to say hello to. 

Maybe, as we take a moment to think back to that time, it did more for us than just make us feel good.

Comments

[peter]

How great for that woman! Very nice column, Dave.