“Tower of Voices” offers stirring 9/11 tribute

The “Tower of Voices” is a Shanksville, Pennsylvania, monument housing forty wind chimes. According to the US National Park Service, the “intent is to create a set of 40 tones that can signify through consonance the serenity and nobility of the site while also through dissonance recalling the event that consecrated the site.”

“The event that consecrated the site” was the crash of United Flight 93 seventeen years ago. The monument is ninety-three feet tall to commemorate the flight number. The forty wind chimes give voice to the forty passengers and crew who died heroically that day.

Park Superintendent Stephen Clark: “Together their voices will ring out into perpetuity.”

“Hoping for the best and preparing for the worst”

I did an internet search for “9/11” and 269 million results appeared this morning. Seventeen years later, it is still difficult to find words appropriate to the horror of that day.

Many years ago, I stood beneath the Twin Towers and marveled at their magnificent height. It never occurred to me that they could be destroyed. In some ways, it still seems surreal–the jets crashing into the Towers and the Pentagon, the flames, the mass destruction. The heroes of Flight 93 who caused the plane to crash before it could attack the terrorists’ target, presumably the White House or Congress.

We cannot prevent all tragedies, of course. But we can prepare for them.

More than one million people face mandatory evacuation orders as Hurricane Florence nears Category 5 strength this morning. “We are hoping for the best and preparing for the worst,” said Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan.

Christians need to do the same. It is imperative that we begin praying now for those who are facing this catastrophic storm. And that we look for other ways to demonstrate God’s love in our compassion.

“We had nowhere to look but up”

Henri Nouwen: “The many disasters in our world, and all the tragedies that happen to people each day,…