WHAT DO WE DO ON 9-11?

The Rev. William Tully, rector of St. Bart's Church on Park Avenue, holds a noon service each year on the anniversary of 9-11. This year it was on Thursday. At this past Sunday's Rector's Forum, at which I was Bill's guest, he told the congregation that he struggles with the question of what to do each year, how much to make of the anniversary or how to begin to minimize the remembrance. He wonders if his congregants, including the firefighters of the nearby 8th Batallion, are ready to move on, taking less and less note of the day.

"This year," he told us Sunday, "we had the largest turn out ever."

What does that tell you?

I think that rather than getting past the remembrance (a painful remembrance at that), Americans are just beginning to open up to the events of 9-11. I have thought for some time now that the feelings inside us have been locked away. Somehow we have moved too quickly past the morning of 9-11 into a 9-12 world. Individually, we've gotten back to work, back to raising the family, gotten back to life. As a nation, we zoomed into a new geo-political world and took on the added burden of changing our way of life for new security.

What we really did though, was avoid the effect that 9-11 had on us. I see it coming out now. I hear it from those who read "Bikeman" and who want to talk about the feelings they have, many expressing those feelings for the first time.

I think that's what The Rev. Tully was seeing when his church was filling up more than ever for his service on the anniversary of 9-11. I suspect it will continue to grow for some years to come.