Keeping 9/11 a shared experience
Twenty years have passed since the traumatic event of 9/11. As an educator teaching about 9/11, the students and I initially shared a lived experience and memory. However, the students I am teaching today at St. Mary’s University were not yet born in 2001.
For them, 9/11 is history. But the educators of this next generation must keep it from feeling like distant history.
This presents new challenges in structuring dialogue that has moved from students saying, “I remember,” to “I can only imagine.” The common element over the past 20 years has been sharing my personal memory and tying it to the lived experiences of today’s young adults.
On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in Madrid attending an international education conference. Participants came from more than 50 countries and represented every major religion of the world. When news spread of planes striking the World Trade Center, participants gathered in the large conference auditorium to watch the news.
We sat in silence as we watched the collapse of the twin towers. It seemed as though each person present had a friend or family member in or close to New York City, and everyone wanted to contact them, but the phone lines to the United States had been shut down. The internet was also down, preventing email to those in the U.S. All flights to the United States had been canceled, and the Spanish army quickly surrounded the U.S. Embassy.
Board members of the conference’s host organization met to devise a strategic plan to calm concerned participants and attend to their immediate logistical needs. As a board member, I participated in the planning. We organized a computer center for those trying to email family and friends throughout the world. We
became travel agents assisting members in rebooking tickets, even though there was no indication of when flights to the U.S. would resume. A housing assistance center was established to ensure participants could remain in their hotel or dormitory rooms for the duration of the crisis, and we worked with catering so meals would be provided. These were nuts-and-bolts issues that had to be dealt with first.
At the end of that initial strategic planning session, the discussion turned to the spiritual needs of the conference participants. Thus, on the evening of 9/11, a prayer service was organized. There was not an empty seat in that large auditorium.
For close to three hours there were spontaneous prayers, songs, chants, liturgical dances and readings of Scripture and poems of peace as organizers opened the stage to anyone feeling moved to share. On that stage were followers of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist,
Baha’i, Jain, Confucian, Zoroastrian, Shinto, Tao and Indigenous religions.
This was, and remains, the most spiritual moment of my life. It was transformational.
Today’s challenge is to find ways to enable students to imagine that short-lived experience of shared global unity. I emphasize that conference participants from around the world did not become “one” on 9/11; rather, we became “whole.”
Unity was not experienced “in” our diversity but “through” our diversity.
The goal is to have students for whom 9/11 is history focus their imagination on visualizing “global wholeness” while understanding the complexity of the issues they find traumatic today. Their lived experiences must be discussed for them to have a deep understanding of the 9/11 trauma.