Where were you on that date? There are certain dates that most, if not all, people who were alive and more than a few years old, remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. In my lifetime, the first such date was the assassination of JFK (initials are all that are necessary). I was coming home after school, living in Fort Qu’Appelle Saskatchewan. Then there was the landing of the first men. on the moon. There are some other dates that stand out during my life – like the election of Donald J Trump as President of the United States. However, the one that is most prominent in my mind that happened 22 years ago today. It is a date that doesn’t require a year. It is just September 11th. That now has the shorthand of 9-11 which is telling.
For me it is particularly poignant because it was my first
day at Huron University College in London Ontario, as I embarked on a journey which
would lead to my ordination as an Anglican priest. After my class was finished, I went over to
the student centre at the University of Western Ontario – as it was then known (now
just Western U.) In the common area I noticed
that everyone – and there were many people gathered – were completely mesmerized
looking at the TV monitors suspended from the ceiling. As I looked up, I saw that it was what turned
out to be a live picture of the Twin Towers in New York. As I looked a plane flew into one of the
towers. It turned out to be the second
plane. That was a momentous and tragic beginning to
my formal theological education which has continued in one way or another –
formally and informally - to this day.
I imagine that most, if not all of you, remember the
circumstances when you heard the news. In
my view this is probably the most significant event in our lifetime and probably
beyond. One reason for that is the
almost complete reordering of the world since that day: the Iraq war, the
reality of Global Warming Crisis, the pervasiveness of social media, the lack
of trust in our institutions, COVID, the crisis of refugees at the borders of
Western Countries, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and even the return of
inflation. September 11 seems to mark
the beginning of the remaking the world so that it is in many ways a completely
different one from that pre-9-11 world.
The question that I believe we all face is, how do we
respond to this not so brave new world that we find ourselves living in? Many of us are in survival mode. We are hunkering down and hoping the next big
change doesn’t overwhelm us. I recently
ventured into the AI world of ChatGPT after resisting that next new thing. I was amazed at how it responded and the
speed in which it responded to my request; a 500-word essay on The Jungian
Collective Shadow. I used some of the
response in formulating one of the editions of these missives. The potential for this development - probably
for better and worse - staggers my imagination. I want to cry out – the robots are taking
over! Perhaps we all should listen to
the warning of Robbie the Robot, “Danger Will Robinson.”
When it comes to change, I think of the joke, how many
Anglicans does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer, we don’t change, we’re Anglicans. That now applies to all of us. Change will happen to us whether we want to
or not. How are we going to respond to the
change? Even we Anglicans are being dragged
kicking and screaming into realizing we must change. I don’t have any real answers - probably no
one has the one easy answer that we would all like. However, one possibility is to embrace hope. I think of the wonderful response by the
people of Gander Newfoundland to 9-11 and the commercial planes that were diverted
to that airport in response to 9-11. It
was memorialized in that wonderful musical, Come From Away. They could have turned their backs and said it’s
just too much and anyway its not my problem. But they didn’t and their response resonates
to this day. That gives me hope for the
future – the ability of the human spirit to respond with love.
Hope is todays word of the day from the Society of St. John the
Evangelist:
To be patient means to tolerate or endure discomfort and
suffering without denying them. Feel the pain, express it, groan, and then look
beyond. Trust that God is both real and active. Hope acknowledges the present
suffering while also believing in what lies beyond it. Br. Luke Ditewig, SSJE
May you have hope on your journey in this brave new world.
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