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Retrophisch

Have you forgotten?

Jon asked the question. (It makes me feel old to realize he's talking about high school classes in his remarks.) I was getting ready for work. Kel and I had just changed places in the shower; she was watching the Today show when they went live after the first plane it. While I was shaving, I watched the second plane fly in to the second tower. "A second plane just hit!" I yelled in to the bathroom. "What?!?!?" was the reply from my wife. "The first plane was no accident," I told her. The early speculation after the first plane struck was that it was an accident of some sort. I, and millions of others, knew right then it was no accident. We both finished getting ourselves ready, watching the news the entire time. I was on the road to the office when the first tower fell. Tears were in my eyes, and the thought that kept running through my head was Those poor people... I was at work for around an hour before they sent us home. At the time, my wife was working in the tallest building in downtown Dallas. Building management shut it down; my wife never even made it up to her office to be sent home. We spent the rest of the day in the living room, glued to the news. Yesterday, Jeff said:

On another subject, tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of 9/11. What’s there to say about that? It seems like a lot of Americans would like to forget the events of that day. I don’t really blame them. Denial is a legitimate reaction to trauma. But I think we’d be better served by remembering than forgetting. I think we’d be better off taking the day tomorrow to think about what happened on that Tuesday morning four years ago, to remember the shock and the horror and the grief. Because I think that remembering it will honor the dead and fill us with a terrible resolve that nothing like it shall ever happen again. Likewise, the Toad implores us to never forget. Our pastor touched briefly on this in worship this morning. Our church is involved in several different areas of providing relief services to persons displaced by Katrina. We've adopted 22 families that have been relocated to the Dallas area, among other initiatives. One thing Tim told us was to keep a marathon mindset with regard to this help we were providing. Just as too many people in this nation lost sight of what 9/11 meant for our country, too many people will forget about the hundreds of thousands affected by Katrina in the coming months. We can forget neither. Keep the long view in mind. Pace yourself; the war against the Islamofascists who attacked us on 9/11 will be a marathon, not a sprint. Do not forget.