A Mighty Wind:
9/11 as Modern-Day Pentecost
September 16, 2007
Dominique C. Atchison

On Tuesday the country took time to remember the 6th anniversary of the tragedy that occurred on September 11th, 2001. On Tuesday I also called one of my good friends from seminary, Michelle. She told me that she had lost hearing in one of her ears due to a lightening strike that came way too close to where she lived. I joked and told her she needed to tell her newborn daughter, whose name is Gabryel (like Gabrielle, the recent hurricane), to stop bringing all of that stormy weather our way. But I actually don't give all of the credit for the weather on Tuesday to Hurricane Gabrielle, baby Gabryel, or even my sister named Gabrie'l.

In reality I believe that weather, including the weather on 9/11, is often symbolic. Maybe I am too much of a hippy, but I always see the weather as a reflection of the state of the earthly and the divine. This understanding of weather isn't uncommon. If you think about the Yoruba traditions within West Africa and its Diaspora, each of the Orisha, or spiritual energies, has an element connected to their personality that manifests itself in nature and often in the weather. For example, my head Orisha are Yemoja and Xango: Yemoja is the mother to all children and is the ocean, and Xango is a worrier who is also thunder.

Even if the Yoruba culture is not something you are familiar with, how many of you would choose to get married on a particular day if you could somehow know in advance that it would rain? And I don't know about you but so many of my visual memories of funerals of friends, family members, famous people, and even fictional characters are filed with cloudy skies and dark umbrellas. It seems like the weather often reflects the mood of the people, the sorrow they feel. But sunshine and sometimes even rain, like tears, can have a cleansing, joyous effect that washes away sorrow.

So when my friend Michelle said the raindrops on September 11th this year were tears, I knew what she was talking about. And many of our memories and reflections related to 9/11 have to do with weather and the environment. For example, many of you might remember that September 11th, 2001, was actually a beautiful day weather-wise in New York. It was warm and sunny. September 11th is technically still summer but from all accounts the weather was almost "Spring-ish". I remember my sister commenting on how bright it was down in that area in the months following the event. She said that she realized what a literal shadow the two huge building had cast over all of lower Manhattan. She reflected on how in the midst of such pain, there was an eerie sense of peace because of the sun that shined so brightly in the space where the towers once stood.

The weather seemed to have played a major role in all of the memorial ceremonies. Of course this year's observances were marked by a rainstorm. But even before this year, an intense wind has always been a very important element in the remembrance ceremonies between 2002 and 2006. This past Tuesday after all the names were read, and the children's choir sang "Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water" in the mist of gusty wind, I thought to myself, this wind is extremely Pentecostal. And no, I am not referring to the denomination. The wind was not a member of the charismatic, holiness tradition. It didn't speak in tongues that needed interpretation, nor did the wind begin to shout.

When I thought this, I was actually thinking about the parallels between these memorials at Ground Zero and the moment when the Holy Spirit descended upon the people in Acts, Chapter 2. This moment in early Christian history was very similar to our time: there was a lot of violence and a lot of division. Many Christian were being martyred and the Christians who remained most likely lived in fear. The King James translation of our Ancient Text says that a "mighty wind" came along. And I suspect this wind was much like the wind that moved around Ground Zero as we stopped to remember.

In the case of the 9/11 memorials, and possibly in Acts, it is as if the spirits of those who have perished joined with the Ruah, or the breath of God, and the Holy Spirit and created this wind: a wind that brings people together, comforts the mourning, bring closure for those who may have never been able to find even any fragment of their loved one to lay to rest, a wind that calls for peace and says never forget.

In our Biblical text, the wind and the tongues of fire held very powerful purposes. They were mechanisms for change and communication across language and cultural barriers. The text says that all of a sudden people could speak and understand across boundaries created by differences. This powerful wind was mending the divisions and making it so that all would have access to the ministry of Jesus. It was a great symbol of what could be and what will be. It gave humanity a short glimpse of heaven or what Jesus refers to as the Reign (or Kingdom) of God.

And while listening to the names of those who were killed, looking at the faces of all of the recovery workers and volunteers who read the names, and even listening to the accents of those who reflected on the stories of the loved ones who they lost, I saw the power of this Pentecostal wind. I think I might have even seen that glimpse of God's intention for this world. This horrific tragedy had gathered thousands of people into one space, each representing a family member, friend, or co-worker who died. These were people who came from several diverse backgrounds and spoke several different languages, yet in the midst of mourning and remembering the worst man-made disasters in US history, there was peace. Peace in a place where there isn't usually peace. Togetherness in a country that literally thrives off of division…

In that list of names of those who died, there seemed to be a name that represented every background, culture, and country of origin the world has to offer. There were many people with the same last names but from different races or ethnicities. They were Irish, Italian, Native-American, Hispanic/Latino, African, African-American, Afro-Caribbean, East Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern, Arabic... And in those few hours there was peace across those lines, in spite of the fact that 9/11 lead to the racial and ethnic profiling of many South Asians and Middle Easterners. In spite of the propaganda, there were several people from those specific backgrounds who died that day, yet their families stood by other families and for just a moment could get lost in the wind.

The victims were the rich and the poor, those who were there a few minutes early to prepare for the big business meeting or broker that big deal and others who were there early to open up the fast food chain or clean the toilets. And there were those who might have just been passing through, visiting New York, shopping, playing hooky from work. But they were all there when those planes hit. And for the most part when we stand to honor them, even for just three hours, the dividing lines seem to diminish slightly.

I don't intend to be morbid. Nor am I trying to be one of those who will say that God creates disaster as a punishment. I said this a year ago, when I preached about Katrina's first anniversary: I don't know why these things happen. I don't think anyone can know what exact role God plays in disaster. Does God create it to punish? To warn? Does God create anything that is not good or perfect? I don't know. Yet, my experience in life has lead me to believe that God does walk with people through the most unpleasant, painful moments in our lives. And there is always a lesson to be learned in the midst of such tragedy.

I was not in New York on 9/11/01 even though I am a native New Yorker. I was in the middle of nowhere, OH, starting my last year at Oberlin College. I was on the way from one class to the next and one of the deans whose daughter I happened to be walking with told me what had happened one section at a time: "A plane hit one of the WTC towers." My first reaction was laughter because that summer some amateur pilot had crashed his little plane into the Statute of Liberty. "Then a second plane hit the second tower… And then both towers collapsed… Basically the World Trade Center is gone." WHAT?? The first thing I thought of was my mother, my only close relative in New York City at the time. She was on her way from the Bronx to Brooklyn when the first tower was hit; this most likely put her right under the World Trade Center. It took me until that evening to get in contact with her and make sure she was OK. That was probably the scariest thing about that day for me.

Like many other Americans, I spent the next few years of my life being afraid. I wasn't necessarily afraid of terrorists. Maybe I was afraid of God because of the randomness of it all. I was afraid of a world that seemed so chaotic and without order. When I moved back to New York in May of 2002, I, like many other New Yorkers, was anxious and afraid. It seemed as if New York had reached this unbearable level of anxiety and impatience that did not exist pre-9/11. I didn't want to go out and I especially didn't want to go downtown. I was afraid to go anywhere south of 14th Street. I was afraid to go on the train. I remember taking buses from where I live in the Bronx all the way to the East Village, just to avoid the train.

It took me a long time before I could go to lower Manhattan again at all. And still, to this day, whenever I go anywhere near the World Trade Center site I feel an overwhelming wind tunnel-like energy. (My friends from NYDIS make fun of my 9/11 ghost stories). And being uninformed about Lower Manhattan geography, I applied for a Katrina recovery related job and ended up in a building literally across the street from Ground Zero. The site could be viewed from all of the windows in the office. And at the end of my time at NYDIS, I ended up serving 9/11 survivors and clean-up/recovery workers. In spite of my resistance and fear, I think that it was necessary for me to end up in that space and come so unbelievably close to where I thought I could never go and begin to understand something that at first was too big to understand. I knew that there was a lesson to be learned from the things in my life that caused me the most fear.

And one of the more valuable yet somewhat dark lessons I've learned while doing disaster-related work over the past two years is that disaster, tragedy, and death are often the greatest equalizers out there.

Like 9/11, there were some ways that Katrina had a similar equalizing effect. For example, I was in Biloxi and Ocean Springs, MS, six months after Katrina hit. Biloxi is a working-class town that survives off of employment from the waterfront casinos. The people in that city were black, white, Mexican, and Vietnamese, for the most part. And Ocean Springs was a pretty much all white, upper-class suburb with huge mansions. Yet with all of those differences both towns were completely destroyed. In both places we heard stories of people's houses simply floating away in the Tsunami-like tide that hit their coast. And in both places they lamented the lack of coverage they received as compared to those in New Orleans, and both towns cursed FEMA, Michael Brown, and George W. Bush. Of course the wealthier among them will recover quicker because of the insurance available to those who owned their houses and other privileges received by the rich during the recovery process. Yet in the moments when all of that water was flowing, none of those man-made distinctions made a difference. They were all feeling fear and loss and pain. And both groups of people were very clear to express this point to us volunteers.

It is this equalizing effect that is so important to take away from not only the Biblical text but also from the stories of those who were affected by disasters. I think the story in Acts in a very powerful illustration of the possibility of the Reign of God. It makes me believe in a God that wants peace, who wants creation to unite across constructed lines and who wants humanity to engage in communal healing. And I've learned that sometimes, in the most difficult moments, humanity is able to look and get an extremely brief sight of that place that God is preparing for us.

Amen.