A DAY REMEMBERED IN INFAMY

It is amazing how we humans remember seminal events that bind a nation, a world, or a culture together in a moment of common attention and purpose. My first memory is the emotional reaction of my parents to the news of the assassination of President Kennedy. Many of us remember hearing of the explosion of Challenger. Of course, for those too young to remember Pearl Harbor, the terrorist attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, remains the primary such event in our lifetime.

I had just taken a two year interim job in a church outside New Orleans. It was my last full-time ministry position, and I took it with the understanding that I would commute two days a week to Kansas City and two days a week to Atlanta to work toward the building of the Choral Foundation as my future primary vocation, an event that was accomplished by mid-2003.

My son John, then four, was playing in the family room while his mother watched The Today Show. Daughter Marguerite, then four months old, was protesting the imposition of tummy time on a blanket in front of the television. Since we had been in Louisiana less than three weeks the house was cluttered with boxes and debris from unpacking. The day I had planned included a meeting at the church in the morning, followed by a noon drive across Lake Pontchartrain to the New Orleans airport and a Festival Singers rehearsal in Kansas City the same evening.

I had placed my bags in the car and walked in the house to say goodbye when John yelled out, “Daddy, a plane flew into a building on television.” Since children of that age can say almost anything, I gave an unconcerned glance to the screen in time to see the replay of the first plane strike. I remember thinking that some drunk must have gotten off course and flown his small general aviation craft into a building.

I didn’t realize the event was a terrorist attack until I got to the church office and saw the ashen faces of my colleagues.

There were many moving images in those days. I watched the memorial service from the National Cathedral from the comfort of my daddy chair with my chubby infant daughter on my lap and I prayed for the world that she would live in one day. I remember talking to my brother about the senselessness of it all and raging, “I want chase those #@^&%$* to the ends of the earth and choke the life out of every one of them with my bare hands!”

The image that I remember the most, however, was the news coverage of the grounding of all flights over American airspace. A huge board somewhere in Washington had a blinking light for every plane in the air across the nation. One by one the lights when dark as the last planes landed. As the reporters remained silent the last few lights went out, leaving the dark board to certify that America was shut down. The greatest human kingdom on the face of the earth had been stricken.

But, even in the depths of the fear and despair, we knew as a people that we would rise again.

I was one of the first to board a plane in New Orleans after air travel resumed. There were seven people on the flight. Looking back at the Knowing the Score newsletters for late September 2001 reminds me that the Festival Singers added eleven new members in those two weeks. Several of those members became some of the most significant leaders in the history of the Choral Foundation. Though the 2001-2002 season was among our most challenging as an organization, many seeds of a decade of stupendous growth were sown during those dark and frightening days.

As the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks approaches Sunday, the media will be filled with stories about the event and the struggle against terrorism that will probably extend for the remainder of our lives. There will be pious words by theologians and philosophers. There will be policy debates by candidates and politicians. There will be spoken prayers and moments of silence by those who have survived and on behalf of those who were lost.

And the Festival Singers will sing. We will sing songs of faith and hope, living out the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian who died in a concentration camp at the hands of the Nazis: “...daring to love and pray for those who bring you harm is our highest calling under God.” As an eternal witness to his words, Bonhoeffer, knowing he would be killed at dawn, served the Sacrament of Holy Communion to the men who would be his murderers.

Yes, the Festival Singers will sing. We will affirm the power of love over hate. We will affirm the truth of life over death. We will give voice to the creative joy of the human spirit to bring a better world out of the rubble of destruction.

The arts have no greater purpose.


Soli Deo Gloria,
Bill