Healing Field

Monday night, we went into Sandy and visited the Healing Field.  It was surreal.  There were 2,973 American flags, one for each person lost on September 11, 2001.  That number sounds huge, until you see it represented tangibly, and then it becomes unfathomable.  Each flag had a laminated card attached with the name of the person being honored by that flag, his/her location at the time of death, and a short biography about the individual:  The father who had just returned to work after a paternity leave to welcome his new son; The woman on her first day at a new job; The mom who died while waiting for a call from her husband to tell about dropping their three-year-old off for his first day of preschool;  The entire family on their way to visit Grandma.


I expected the visitors to be reverent - similar to the behavior they would show in a cemetery.  It was, after all, a memorial site.  When I saw people laughing, kids playing with the flags and running in and out of the rows, and a general lightheartedness, I found myself growing angry.  Angry at the crowd, angry at the terrorists, angry at this violent world we live in.  About half way through, a thought struck me:  How amazing is it that we can live in a country where we can have such a magnificent memorial without fear for our safety, allow our children to run and play outside on a beautiful evening, laugh with our friends, and be strong enough as a society to overcome and move forward without being crippled by the evils of others.  That shift in my mental paradigm let me go through the rest of the flags, reverent in my own way, and recognizing that my way doesn't have to be everyone else's way.

The day before, on September 11, the kids and I attended church where we talked about Radical Forgiveness - something that Jesus practiced and preached.  We prayed for the perished, the surviving, the grieving, and the guilty.

 

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