Where were you on 9/11?

I was on the organ bench. It was a fine September morning, and I remember starting the work day full of energy. The secretary came in and told me what had happened, and shortly after my wife called.

It became clear that we needed to have a church service that evening. Our priest in residence, Fr. Sanderson, organized a simple service of Evening Prayer and we posted it on the website. Quite a few people came. I played the organ arrangement of Barber's “Adagio for Strings,” and we sang a couple of hymns.

This last came back to me with remarkable force when I sat down a fortnight ago to begin preparing one of them, “America the Beautiful.” As soon as I opened the hymnal, I was carried back to that evening.

One of our parishioners suggested we sing “America the Beautiful” in this morning's Eucharist. For reasons I won't describe, we sang it last Sunday instead of today. There is a former State Senator in our congregation, a veteran of many political battles. After the service last Sunday, she told me that she has probably heard and sung the song hundreds of times, but that day, hearing the congregation sing it, she could not sing for the tears.

Today, we sang no patriotic hymns. But for the postlude after the contemporary service, I played a long introduction and slipped quietly into “My country, 'tis of Thee.” One of the ladies on duty for Altar Guild stopped what she was doing and listened, obviously in prayer. When I finished, she reminded me that we had sung that hymn ten years ago at that little evening service. She remembered the gist of Fr. Sanderson's sermon, as did I.

Our youth choir sang at today's contemporary service. Most of them have lived their whole lives under the shadow of 9/11 and its aftermath. My prayers this day were mainly for them:

“Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil...”