I still remember waiting, sitting on the floor in front of the television with the other sisters, saying, "Show the flight number. Show the flight number. Show the flight number." The entire Haitian house - that is, our SSM Sisters in that convent - were on a 6AM American Airlines flight out of Boston that morning. And then there were our Sisters who work for Trinity Wall Street, right there at St. Paul's Chapel at Ground Zero.
All OK. None unaffected.
So many others didn't find such good news at the end of the day.
I still think of Deora Bodley, who was on the plane that went down in PA. She was in my mother's class in grade school - third or fourth grade, I'm not sure which. I prayed for her family tonight and remembered the story I heard about her mother in vigil waiting to hear...
And so tonight when we had Evensong alongside St. John's Duxbury, I looked at the face of a sister who had been there in NYC and thought how many more there must be out there tonight.
Eighteen years? Tonight there are many for whom it must seem yesterday. And we all go on. And we all hope. We live, we find joy, we remember... whatever it is.
I offer this hymn as a prayer for us all as we seek to heal our broken world, giving thanks for Carl Daw's gift in hymn writing that permits us to express that prayer more deeply.
