We all have our stories of where we were on September 11. Most of us (especially we who watched it on television, not on the streets of Manhattan or Washington) say it felt surreal... this couldn't be happening. I remember in the days that followed the wild estimates of how many people had been killed -- obliterated -- when the Towers fell. As many as 40,000? 20,000? 30,000? 10,000?
Only 5,000? Not even 3,000?
But it's numbers, just numbers. And the numbers are as meaningless as that other incomprehensible number in our Western consciousness: 6 million.
I signed up for
the 2,996 project [
dcroe.com] because I thought that as a widow, I could give a more human perspective to the person I was writing about. I didn't want to write an obituary; anyone could do that. I wanted to speak about the loss, and I did that.
After I posted
my tribute, [
penthaslist.blogspot.com] I started reading what others had written. I find that I can't stop reading. The numbers now have names, faces, stories. Reading through the blogs has been an incredibly humbling experience for me. The beauty, the love, the loss, the remembrance.
I don't know if the Slattery family will read what I wrote about Chris; I hope they do, because I now carry Chris in my heart forever. And as I read other people's tributes, I can tell that they were similarly affected by this project. Chris worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, and whenever I read a tribute about another person there, I think that Chris probably knew him or her. Maybe they were together when they died. I find myself praying for that person, connected to the blogger who wrote the tribute. The "web" truly is weaving us together with strands of love and compassion.
The tributes have actually manifested the Body of Christ to me: So many lives lost, so much love, so much sorrow. All embraced in God's care, bound together invisibly in memory and prayer.
I don't know if any of this makes any sense to anyone but me, but I'm writing this to urge you to read a few of the stories. Go to the
list of tributes [
dcroe.com] and choose one at random. Read the comments, and click from there to a tribute written by another blogger. It's breathtaking. I am feeling more a part of humanity than I have in ages.
-- Penthaetria, deep in prayer today
