Never Forget.
All day long you’ll see those two words filling-up your news feed, lining your road sides, and adorning lapel pins and bumper stickers.
They will be on the lips of politicians and pastors, gas station attendants and next door neighbors.
They will be spoken as instruction and warning and prayer; the default response to a still unfathomable tragedy, one that altered so much about who we all are and how we navigate the world around us.
They will be the punctuation mark of so many sentences today, the last word and the final thought and the reverent “Amen”.
The problem is, not forgetting as good as it is is simply too easy a task.
Remembering, for those of us who lived through that day requires no real effort or sacrifice.
It’s as simple as glancing at the calendar.
The date itself brings a relentless, unstoppable flood of images and sounds; a cocktail of helplessness, horror, outrage, and grief. It’s like a cruel time machine, instantly ripping us from our now and throwing us violently back to the where and when, of one of the worst days our nation has ever endured.
Saying “Never forget” to those of who who lived through 9/11, is a lot like saying “Remember to breathe.”
The best question though, for anyone who walked through the dizzying madness of that day, isn’t whether or not we will remember but what we will do with what we remember.
Memory itself has no great virtue.
It has no admirable morality.
It has no inherent goodness or righteous power or redeeming value.
Our memory is only as valuable and meaningful, as our response to what we remember.
I want my memories to be the catalyst for movement. I want them to be living, breathing things that alter the present; not some sacred space reserved for residual anger or tired excuses to harbor hate or merely fitting reasons to look back with sadness and grief.
Because ultimately, in the face of such senseless violence and such terrible loss, memories cannot be enough anyway.
My hope and prayer, is that the things we will choose to never forget, would be the things that are worth remembering:
Never forget the blessing of people who know you intimately and who love you still.
Never forget the magnificence of quiet moments and ordinary days with them.
Never forget the commonality of all humanity, regardless of any earthly distinction we try to make to the contrary.
Never forget that people of every kind do evil; not merely ones who look and sound nothing like you.
Never forget the incalculable impact that every life has on those who come into contact with it—including your own.
Never forget, that Love is truly triumphant in the end; always, in every place, in every day, forever.
And as you remember these things today, do more than that—live differently because you remember.
For all the difficulties and all the pain and all the tragedy that comes with it, life is still a pretty beautiful gift.
Never forget.
