THAT DAY and This 9/11

Khaled, now seventy-five and a newlywed since July, turned to Fatiha and cried, “This madness must stop. Retaliation only ups the ante, and the wheel is still in spin. But I am nearing my end. I have been dreaming of mass communication for decades and olive trees my entire life; now, I must act!”

Within hours of viewing the tragic news that stopped the world on that Tuesday morning, Khaled phoned his many friends: Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others to gather in downtown Orlando at Lake Eola and pray for peace. He told everyone, “Praying for peace without action is like praying to win the lottery and never buying a ticket. But unless we work for peace, saying ‘peace, peace, peace,’ means nothing. If we want peace, we must work for justice.”

Jack had been restless for three days. Julianne was in New York City at her sister’s home and wasn’t due back for three more. His knees began throbbing more the moment she drove out of sight on the morning of September 8, 2001.

After returning home on Monday night from the BLAC/Brother Lawrence Addictions Center, Jack mindlessly ate two Lean Cuisines, then spent the rest of the evening trying to read. He fell asleep just before dawn and dreamt he was on the blacktop running track at the middle school where Julianne taught seventh grade English, where they both rollerbladed in the early mornings before the students arrived on campus.


Jack spent a ten-hour day at the BLAC, as its founder and administrator, and the mornings on the track were when the couple had their best conversations. He inhaled the aroma of tar as he wondered what was keeping Julianne from him. He bladed for what seemed like hours, when a silver spandex-clad apparition with a golden helmet flew by, sharply turned, and with a backward stroke, called out, “Hi, Jack, don’t look down; don’t look back; look out straight, Jack, look out straight, don’t look back!”

“Yeah, I can; I can do that,” Jack bellowed, but the apparition had already vaporized into the distance. Then Jack rolled onto an exquisite grace, knees freed from bone-on-bone grinding and not an ache in his fifty-three-year old body that had been abused by two motor vehicle accidents and hours of overuse syndrome. Jack glided on the blacktop effortlessly for what seemed like hours, when suddenly, a roar of thunder assaulted his senses, and his eyes were magnetized upward, to view two fireballs thrown down from on high, miles from where he stood. He saw them hit the ground; one traveled east, the other west, and then they circled back around, burning a path straight towards him. Just before they collided, Jack woke up, not believing he had only been dreaming.
Not until after he had downed a pot of coffee did the phone ring. “Jack? Are you watching TV?" Maureen, the day supervisor at the BLAC asked, as she fingered the framed mission statement that sat upon every employee’s desk and on the north wall of every resident’s room:


‘Peace, peace, peace. God’s peace be upon you. But living today in a time of war, crying out peace, peace, peace, where there is no peace. Fearing age and death, pain and darkness, destitution and loneliness, people need to get back to the simplicity of Brother Lawrence.’ [Dorothy Day]

Brother L. was a monk in the 17th century, who lived in a monastery and was consigned to the kitchen. He spent his life baking bread, chopping onions, scrubbing pots and floors. He also ran all the errands, did all the shopping, and always brought back the finest of wine. He loved his brothers deeply, but they merely tolerated his many eccentricities, or he was totally ignored. Truly, I tell you, if ever a saint was born to bring hope to the addicted and those afflicted with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, he is the one. For Brother L. learned that by continually re-remembering the Lord, no matter what the activity, or where one might be, the Lord was ever-present and a holy habit was born, just re-remembering that.

Jack thrived on curiosity and spoke as he reached for the remote. “Mo, you know I never watch TV in the daytime; what’s up?”

“Well, isn’t Julianne visiting her sister in the city?”

“Yeah, in fact, today’s plan was to meet her sister’s co-workers on Floor 101 of the North Twin Tower.”

“Jack, turn the TV on.”

“Oh, Mo, I just did; my God, is it the end of the world?” He spoke as he hung up the phone and never heard Mo say, “I don’t know.”

Jack knew in his bones that Julianne had been vaporized as he recalled a song he had first heard at a Bob Dylan concert in 1981:

See the massacre of the innocent
City’s on fire
Phones out of order
I see the turning of the page.
Curtain’s rising on a new age.
See the Groom+ still waiting at the altar.

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