September 11

As the events of September 11, 2001 unfolded for many of us the core of our safety and understanding of America was challenged. For me it was also a moment in my life that I saw vividly the work at home in America that is long over due. As I watched and heard the story unfold that day I was dropping off my daughter at kindergarten and driving to my office. Like many of us I had more questions than answers.

Once in the office I gathered with others around computer terminals as the buildings one by one collapsed and we all struggled to understand the enormity of what was happening. We did not know how many people were trapped and dying. We did not know if there would be further attacks in other cities. In my ignorance I worried that the stock exchange was in the World Trade Center and imagined a world the next morning where everything I knew was no longer functioning. I pictured a stock market inoperable, banks and businesses closed, and government systems struggling to respond.

I had been fairly self sufficient for 20 years at this point in my life. I had been employed, earned a paycheck, had a mortgage and paid my bills. As a matter of fact these were defining institutions that named me and shaped my days. I was good at the treadmill. I was good at living within the system.

Suddenly I had a glimpse of America without our economic systems functioning and I began to picture surviving in the new terrain. What I instantly knew was that what mattered now was not the task and accomplishment that I thought I was supposed to be so good at but rather simply and practically the quality of the relationships that surrounded me. For some reason I pictured myself walking, I don’t know exactly why I did not picture getting in my car for at least part of the journey to wherever I was going, but visions and epiphanies are what they are, certainly not always rational.

I pictured myself walking with my 5 year daughter’s hand in my hand. I believe we were headed to collect with family if possible. Like many American families we are spread around the United States and even the world. Or perhaps we were headed to Pine Ridge Reservation where terrorists would have little interest or gather little resource. Pine Ridge is most likely where my daughter’s father would be going as well. It is where the man our family prays with lives. It is one of the poorest areas of our country and yet it is where I now imagined refuge for my daughter and I.

As we walked I imagined us walking initially through our predominantly white neighborhood. Here I have been deliberate to make connections with my neighbors since the birth of my daughter. We wanted her to be surrounded by people who knew her and would befriend her and look out for her. I pictured walking to my neighbors’ houses and finding people overwhelmed by task and planning. While I did not imagine being turned away, I remember a sense of not fitting. I imagined people so busy trying to make contact with relatives around the country and plans for next steps that there was not room for my daughter and me in the frantic moment. We kept moving.

In passing through an African American neighborhood just north of us, I pictured us walking to the door of the house of strangers and felt the chilly reception I believed we deserved:“what have you done for us?”. Here was a community struggling with high crime, high rates of incarceration, early death and poverty. What had my efforts and success with all the American social and economic systems ever done to bring relief to those already living in this version of chaos in our city that we have allowed for so long?

As I moved towards Hmong homes, families socialized not in America but in an entirely different world view, I found another response. I pictured the door opening at many Hmong homes and I would be welcomed with the words, “We are glad you have come, we are better with you than with out you.” I imagined the same reception in Lower Sioux or Pine Ridge where we had relationships. In the Dakota way, we pray Mitakyue Oyasin "we are all related".

Of course each one of these visions over simplifies what I might really encounter in those circumstances. And yet still it was defining to me. For a moment I was able to rise above everything I defined myself by, individual accomplishment, self-sufficiency, and personal goals and see the critical essence of relationship and interdependence.

And suddenly I recognized the crisis of America has never been a crisis of not “doing” enough. It has been a crisis of relationship. Who is safe, who is not safe and how are we doing living together as humans is the real work of our generation. If we are good at building tall buildings and enormous planes, but we as a human race are going to fly our planes into our buildings, we are not long for this earth. What we need to learn is understanding and co-existence.

Fortunately the world I know did not dismantle on September 12. However the person I am changed. I still concern myself with the necessary tasks of all the systems that surround me however those systems no longer define me. I work every day to define myself by the quality of the human relationships that I encounter, open and tend. I now see more clearly that all my individual accomplishments mean little if I am not able to articulate to those around me their value to me and my desire to be something of value to them. Often I disappoint myself more than I celebrate this journey. I stumble sometimes as I find getting something done or protecting the carpet in my living room still hold a power in the forefront of my consciousness over the people in my life.

I have also become committed to work that helps us understand that all these systems that work so well for many of us have failed many others long before 9-11. There are huge barriers to the health and well-being of many of our friends, neighbors and others who live in America with us. This is particularly glaring along lines of race and the historic lines that slavery and the genocide of the Indian nations created.


This needs to be addressed not only because the ideals of American justice promise that it will be but because these are huge segments of our community and we will collectively benefit from their genius and partnership when we bring them more fully into the American social contract.