Remembering 9/11

The Watchers

Gary Allison Furr. September 11, 2020

I wasn’t on a plane, or a family member receiving frantic calls,

I was not one of the air traffic controllers or military leaders

Or an advisor to the President. I wasn’t at the Pentegon that day

Or even a taxi driver or cop on duty in New York that day.

I sometimes wished to have been more useful as the Towers fell,

Reaching out to help someone else or at least console them.

LISTEN to Gary read “The Watchers”

I was a witness like the rest, but I was where I’ve been since then,

Watching on television, failing at first to understand what was happening.

I knew people on planes that got stuck somewhere, and know people

Who knew people who were on the planes.

But I am just one of the Americans who watched with disbelief, then despair,

And then rage. I wanted annihilation, if I’m honest,

of the merchants of Nihilism guised as a religion,

who hijacked their own faith along with the planes into fanaticism,

carrying us all into a cauldron of misery and death and revenge.

Justice is as elusive now as then, consequences were dealt but no one seems to have learned.

A generation starting their lives changed course,

And Lord, the mourning, etched on us, next to Challenger and Columbia

And Saigon and tsunamis and Katrina and Pearl Harbor for the eldest,

Who remembered shock and fear when there was no instant news.

I was just there, helpless, watching with everyone else,

Paralyzed, then on high alert, then grieving and outraged.

We prayed. We read stories, of lives and people and restaurant workers

Of miraculous escapes, brave firemen and women, lucky misses

Bodies, surrendering to the inevitable, hurtling to the ground

To die by choice rather than smoke and fire. We wanted to know

about the enemies who did this and their perverted spirituality,

their hate of us, their idolatry of a cult of destruction and a single man who caused it,

And we read about war that came to us and mushroomed,

Dead sons and daughters and the boiling clouds of poison and bloodshed

Across the region where three religions were born and peace always goes to die.

And most of all, we watched the cities, the centers of our economic and political lives

Brought to a complete and unnatural stop.

I prayed and led memorials, put out my flag on the mailbox, and prayed some more.

“We’ll never forget this,” we said, and for a while we meant it, truly did.

But time moves on and the present presses memory aside for the next terrible darkness.

Now there are those who don’t remember it at all. And the Pearl Harbor guardians,

They are gone, almost all. Now it is up to those of us who were there.

We can remember every terrible piece of that time, not alone but together.

We can remember stories and read them, cultivate decency and help for each other,

Try to remember how just for a short time we stopped complaining about our lot in life

And blaming one another. For just a while, we revered the dead and honored the heroic.

For one bittersweet episode, our pride and competitive ruthlessness gave way

To family and neighbor and the brevity of things.

There were terrible reactions, and there were stupid people who did thoughtless things

But more often there was a determination not to forget, to comfort the grieving

And to hold onto the deepest about us.

God, we need it back.


One day, we went to the memorial, stared down into that terrifying waterfall

Pouring down, down, disappearing into the earth. It is hard to look at,

And saw families stopping next to names cut out in the ribbon of memory,

Some touching one, perhaps their son or sister or father or friend.

They paused, or left flowers or a note, a wailing wall for Americans.

I saw names I recognized from that day and from my years of remembering,

People who were about an ordinary day, flying to a business meeting,Or to start a vacation, or driving to

the restaurant with the best view To have coffee and breakfast

when the Evil same upon us the earth

And so I remember how fast all can disappear

And hope in a time when we cannot seem to speak to friends

Who voted differently or who don’t share our ideas

That we won’t forget what it felt like to be united in sorrow

And humbled by death

And laid down our selfishness for a holy indignation for what had been done.

I will carry these memories as long as i can, try to hand it on,

tell its stories, and let them speak.

Prayer for a Requiem

I am grateful that I have served with three wonderful worship leaders over the twenty-seven years at Vestavia Hills Baptist Church before I retired–Dr. Milburn Price, Dr. Terre Johnson, and Rev. Marty Watts. Thanks to being in a church with these outstanding musicians, we were exposed to some of the great music of the Christian church. Terre Johnson asked me to compose a closing prayer following a presentation of the Requiem by John Rutter, a beautiful and somber remembrance of human sorrow. Before we can hope again, we must grieve honestly to reckon our loss, and the Rutter Requiem is one of the most beautiful I have heard.

As it is Good Friday, it seems appropriate to revisit this prayer. If you object to written prayers, I would simply say the act of writing in quiet is every bit as spontaneous and open to God as free-form prayers, which can become incredibly predictable over time. For me personally, Good Friday is a hard day. And so this prayer feels right for a Tennebrae service, a candlelight series of readings on Good Friday evening. As readings from the gospels are given, candles are extinguished one by one until we end in darkness and leave in reflection on the power of death and our need for the light.

I published this prayer as part of a book several years ago entitled Poems, Prayers and Unfinished Promises.. I hope, whether you share my faith or not, that this prayer might speak to you today.

We came here tonight to wait and to hope

That tombs and sorrow and death and loss

Are only prelude

To seek the Living shepherd,

Beyond our doubts, beyond our fears,

From death into life.

We wait faithfully

Hoping that

You might meet us in our gardens of sorrow as you met Mary,

We wait for unexpected visions in the midst of our tears.

And for you to come to us

As you came to them behind the locked doors of fear

To wait tonight is enough

For tomorrow we will walk to the tomb again

And discover the promise fulfilled yet once more

Tonight it is enough to shed out tears and grieve

For joy comes in the morning

And there is a purpose to the night that cannot

And should not be passed by

For when the morning comes

Its light is ever more brilliant

And our joy everlasting.

We wait as the people of faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Mother and Son

Jaroslav Pelikan’s marvelous book Jesus Through the Centuries takes a sojourn through the vast and complex history of the interpretations of Jesus.  Among the chapters is one entitled, “Christ Crucified,” in which he notes the disproportionate focus on Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection in the gospel accounts.  By even the most “generous” reading, he notes, we have at most information about less than a hundred days of Jesus’ ministry on earth, but of the last few days we have an hour by hour account.

Says Pelikan, “What was said of  the thane of Cawdor in MacBeth was true pre-eminently of Jesus: ‘Nothing in his life/Became him like the leaving of it.’”  It is clear that the gospel writers intend for us to focus our attention here, to the foot of the cross and the edge of the empty tomb.  These are the founding images of the Christian faith, called the “Passion” of Jesus Christ.

Surprisingly little is said of the actual method of crucifixion.  The most agonizing details of the death itself have been multiplied by morbid preaching, but the gospels pass over those details in near silence.  They do not seem to be interested particularly in the pounding of the nails or biology of asphyxiation.  The fact of his crucifixion seems enough.

We do, however, have seven short sayings and attributed to Jesus as he died on the cross.  They have fascinated preachers through the centuries.  Why, of all things he might have said, did he say these in his final hours?  And if there was more, why were these the sayings remembered by the gospel writers?  We will not know the answers to those questions on this side of heaven, but we can still listen in fascination.

After all, who can resist overhearing the last words of any dying person?  Every child at a bedside strains to hear a word of love, reconciliation, summing up, or release from a dying parent.  These words say some significant things to us if we have ears to hear them.  They seem random at first, but have resonated in the Christian tradition:

John 19:26-27-“Son, behold your mother…”

John 19:28-29-“I thirst”

Luke 23:32-38-“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Mt. 27:45-54-“My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?”

Luke 23:39-43-“Today, You Shall Be with Me in Paradise”

Luke 23:44-46-“Into Thy Hands I commit my Spirit”

John 19:28-30-“It is Finished!”

While many of the words are about lofty things—surrender to God, eternal hope, abandonment, forgiveness, there are two that are very poignant for their simple earthiness and pathos.  “I thirst” is a cry of a suffering human being. And “Son, behold thy mother,” was Jesus speaking to John, we assume (the disciple Jesus loved, John humbly refers to himself). He was asking him to care for his mother. As a last act on his earthly life, he turned to maternal love and the anxiety of leaving her. We assume Joseph perhaps has already died and she is now losing a son. John says that from that day on, the disciple took her into his own home.

Now I’ve been thinking about that again as the pain of George Floyd’s death has returned to us through a trial. And beyond the infamous words of not being able to breathe, it was the cry for his mother that undoes me. For all the anger, pain and sorrow of what happened last year, at the core of every bit of human brokenness is love and sorrow. In the anguish of an ordinary moment on a city street gone bad, something in me feels sadness above all else. All the pain in the world ends up as the separations from one another—life lost, families broken, neighbor love replaced by anger and distrust, and all that wells up.

No, “Son, behold thy mother” is not housekeeping. It is every bit as deep and profound as all the theologically lofty words that followed. Perhaps in this moment, too, it is this simple recognition of one another’s profound and vulnerable humanity, a child and mother, that has been lost in this virtual world of ours, only revealed in those moments of terrible unjust suffering. Don’t hurry past it. Take it in. It’s the only way back.

From Here to Okay

This song speaks for itself. It came to me during the summer. The hook was a quote from a news story at a disaster scene, but my mind was on people I loved and knew who lost children. Their stories are the most courageous I have ever met. That they still have any faith at all after such losses is perhaps the closest to real miracles we ever see.

It’s such a long, hard road. In my vocation I traipse alongside unimaginable losses, but children are the hardest from my perspective. It is the loss of love so intense, the loss so against our DNA, that a person’s world is shattered. But they keep going, somehow.

This is on our forthcoming new album. This particular track features my friend since high school, Paul Harmon, a phenomenal musician from the Boston area, along with fiddle work by Mark Weldon.

From Here to Okay
Gary Allison Furr

1. I was telling my favorite story when I heard a knocking sound
It was my neighbor. He said, “You’d best sit down”
I never finished that story. I’ll never tell it again.`
The clock on the wall said 7:10.

2. I’m lost and so angry. She’s just sad all the time,
The shadows go with us everywhere.
Now and then for a while we still act like we used to,
But we still can’t move that empty chair.

CHORUS:
It’ll be a long time ’til we put it behind us
Just sit with me. There’s nothing to say.
Walk with me a while in the valley of grey
It’s a long way from here to okay

So thank you so kindly for asking about us
And for the fine food that you brought
But please take back home the reassuring words you offered,
It’s not easy answers I’ve sought

Some cope with a bottle, and others with a pill,
Some sit in a circle and pray for God’s will,
But nothing on earth fills the hole left inside
By a love that was once so alive.

CHORUS:
It’ll be a long time ’til we put it behind us
Just sit with me. There’s nothing to say.
Walk with me a while in the valley of grey
It’s a long way from here to okay

credits

released November 18, 2020
lyrics and music by Gary Allison Furr BMI all rights reserved.

Gary Allison Furr-vocals, guitar
Mark Weldon—violin
Paul Harmon—electric guitar, piano, percussion, bass, drums

Memorial Day

On Monday, Memorial Day 2007, Vickie and I went to American Village to attend the Gold Star Memorial Service in the chapel for fallen servicemen and women who have died since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have begun.  I went because my friend Marynell Winslow, with whom I collaborated on a song about her fallen son Ryan (which many of you heard last November when she and George came to our church on a Wednesday evening around Veteran’s Day).  It was sung beautifully at the beginning of the service by 800px-US_Navy_040531-N-6371Q-223_Marines_and_Sailors_march_in_the_Little_Neck_Memorial_Day_Parade_in_Queens_N.Y._during_the_17th_Annual_Fleet_Week_2004a talented young soloist from Nashville.

Later, family members or representatives of the families walked one by one to the front and laid a single rose across a pair of combat boots as a symbol of the one whose full name was called.  As the roses piled higher and higher and you heard that list of names, one at a time, there was time to think about each family, each person, and who they were—what did they dream?  What was it like for them?

Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day.  It is a day of remembrance for those who have died in the service of our nation. According to a website on its observance, how it began is mysterious.

There are many stories as to its actual beginnings, with over two dozen cities and towns laying claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. There is also evidence that Forgotten Memorialorganized women’s groups in the South were decorating graves before the end of the Civil War: a hymn published in 1867, “Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping” by Nella L. Sweet carried the dedication “To The Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead.”

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

                                         — http://www.usmemorialday.org/

800px-bn3q09604_candle_lightTo a mother whose son has died, nothing can give complete comfort.  To know that he died for a good cause, as a patriot, as a loyal soldier, even with the gratitude of the nation, is meaningful.  But there is still that terrible void—the child she held in her arms, taught to walk and talk and pray and play, is gone.

I think about those families during this week. However their deaths came, for each family this was deeply personal, irreplaceable, terrible and relentless.

Remembering is a holy act.  Death is a doorway into that mystery called eternity—a door that opens only one way for us.  In the anguish of loss, we search for meaning, for hope, for comfort.  At the very least, to be remembered is a moment of relief.  It is good for us to place a hand on the parent of a son or daughter who died and say, “We remember.  And we are sad, too.”  Death is terrible enough, and grief is its horrid companion.  At the least we should not have to bear it alone or without a sense that our loved one’s life really mattered.

Memorial Day was a time for me to reflect, not just on this war, but on all wars we have endured.  The price is always enormous.  I miss my World War II veterans and Korean War veterans. If they had seen these angry people walking around our streets with guns, threatening one another when we should be pulling together.  They would have shaken their heads. They knew what it is really like.

The toll is deeper than we know.  It is good to pause and remember and count the cost.  It is good to understand that in all that we do, there are those from among us who cannot sit comfortably and do it.  They carry a heavy load.

I am reminded to pray a little harder for peaceful solutions, to be slow to anger and quick to forgive, to pray for safe returns, for just outcomes, for intelligence to prevail over impulse and rage against each other, for healing and effective grief, for a more thankful heart, for emotional restoration.  And to appreciate those who do the hard part of democracy.

But most of all, I have been pondering about widening out Memorial Day this year a little more to include a different war, against an invisible virus, taking some of our brightest and best and too many people who are loved from us. It makes no distinctions at all as we do with one another. And most of all I think of the soldiers in this war, doctors, nurses, dedicated researchers and healthcare professionals, farmers and ordinary truck drivers and workers and factory employees risking themselves to feed us, retail workers who have to ask us too much to abide by some simple courtesies, a little irritation and inconvenience, just for the privilege of shopping for what we need in a world where even now we have ten times what most others in the world could dream of.

I hope we’re up to it. But it may require, as Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman said, that we first grieve our losses before we can be sane about resuming life. I hope we don’t skip over the remembering, as painful as it might be. Because there is also joy in the remembering. And you don’t get the joy without the sorrow. If there are no parades this year, let it not keep us from remembering, honoring, mourning, and giving thanks. Be grateful for every act of sacrifice for the greater good, no matter how small.