I returned from Europe on Sunday, two days after the terrorist attack in Paris. To say we were a bit jittery would be an understatement, especially after our flight home was delayed five hours. We were informed via email of the delay, but were encouraged to get to the airport at the original time of our take off. We were told that the delay was due to a computer problem in our home city at the air traffic control tower. I have to say, no one really bought that excuse.
The flight home was uneventful, but eerily quiet. Most of the travelers, I suspect, where thinking about events in Paris, Beirut and on the Russian plane which had departed from Sharm el Shek.
Now, I am no stranger to terrorist attacks, having lived thorough the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2000. I was teaching at that time, and we could see the smoke emitting from the top floors of the Twin Towers which were visible from the front top floor of our school. Several of us went up to the roof to see what was gong on. We pulled the blinds down in our classrooms. One of our school aides and three of our teachers had family members who were scheduled to be on one of those buildings. As life has odd twists, one was late for his meeting, one got stuck on a late ferry, another very pregnant woman was still waiting for an elevator when the planes struck and the fourth one stopped for coffee on the way to work and lived to tell the story. But several others, fathers, uncles and brothers of our students did not make it. Most of these men were either police or firefighters who lost their lives attempting to save others. Some were aunts and cousins who worked in the buildings as brokers or administrative assistants; regular folks doing regular jobs to support their families. A friend with Cerebral Palsy, remembering the first time the towers were bombed, walked out of his office, down the stairs and never went back. He retired the very next day.
Several days after returning home, as I sat on the ferry on my way to my part time job in Brooklyn, I noticed the Coast guard escort on BOTH sides of the boat. In the past, on occasion, one of the boats would escort the odd boat to and from Manhattan. But on this day EVERY boat had not one, but two escorts, and each boat had an armed machine gunner at the bow. This is our new reality, our new normal.
Today we hear that the group responsible for the violent events in Egypt, France and Lebanon are now making unveiled threats implying they will proudly strike in Washington DC and my own hometown, New York City.
And well, what does this mean for those of us who use various modes of transportation to get back and forth in our daily lives? It means we need to continue living our lives as we always have. We need to begin trusting in those in our society who are charged with maintaining the social order. We have to begin trusting that our common humanity will win out over the heartless inhumanity we have witnessed. And we have to remember that we are all children of the one Creator in whom we live and move and have our being, no matter the name we call that entity: God the Father, YHWH, or Allah.
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