Where were you...

We play the "where were you..." game with significant events in our lives.

• I was at my friend Tim's house on a snow day from school (2nd grade) when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded, witnessing the event on live TV;
• I was at a friend's house dance party when I experienced my first kiss in middle school;
• (non sports fans can skip this one!) I was at Dottie and John's place in Evanston in 1984 when the Chicago Cubs blew a 2 games to nothing lead and a 3-0 lead in the final game of that best-of-5 series that would have allowed them to go to the World Series (a similar scenario repeated in 2003).
• I was at my aunt and uncle's house in Harlan, Iowa on my way to seminary when the events on September 11, 2001 unfolded.

The "where were you..." game is possible because all the events of that day were so world-changing for us as individuals that every detail, including who we were with, what we were wearing, what we ate, what we did, is etched into our long term memory. When we say, "we will never forget" regarding those events from nine years ago, it is a given--the magnitude of what happened means that we can't forget even if we wanted to.

There are two things that I consider with special attention on this day.

First, there are places in our world where violence is a relatively normal occurrence. Ask someone from the Sudan or from Afghanistan "Where were you when your country was ravaged by war?" would be a recounting of their daily lives for the past seven and 32 years, respectively. Not that we should discount the events of this day by any stretch, but that we should be cognizant of those for whom this kind of destruction within their borders is all too commonplace.

The second consideration is this. Tomorrow I will be talking at church about how Jeremiah warns of endless cycles of disaster after disaster and that Jesus calls us to be "cycle breakers." The wake of the Sept 11, 2001 seems to have brought with it a seemingly endless cycle of violence in our world. However, those events were themselves a part of a cycle of violence that is preceeded as far back as we can collectively remember; marked both by countless "where were you..." moments and behind-the-scenes economic violence that can hardly be remembered by anyone. The leaders of our world have fooled themselves into believing we can "war ourselves into peace." But the truly sad part is that too often, people of faith, particularly a Christian faith that has its foundations on the radical compassion and forgiveness of Christ himself, are complacent to forget those foundations. Or worse, we re-mold our foundations to fit into the continuation of violence.

My prayer is this: that I could look back on a particular yet-to-happen moment in the life of the collective church as one of these "where were you..." moments--the moment when people of faith collectively remembered whose we are; that we will have collectively loved ourselves enough to see that God can work even through our broken selves; and we collectively will have loved our neighbors, no matter what they had done, who are worthy of radical forgiveness and compassion. There is nothing impossible about this. We can be cycle breakers. But only if we are bold enough to remember.