The “Maps of Meaning” course provides a good framework for yesterday’s events and all the commentary around it. But: in light of everything that has happened since then - and that continues to happen - that torn flag seems to me like the omen I feared it was at the time. Maybe that flag had come apart earlier, and my friend only noticed it on that morning. I was in those days filled with patriotic righteousness - which is why the tearing of the flag was so eerie, and unwelcome to me. I was not eager to believe in portents that cast doubt on that project. Now, finally, we would set the world to right. We would soon be going to war in the Middle East, that was clear by then. The United States was at that moment the sole hyperpower on the planet. On the other hand, I was also primed to think that 9/11 was going to summon up the strength of our great nation, and goad us to assert ourselves on the world stage. Granted, I have an apocalyptic mindset, and even if I didn’t, it was very easy to think in apocalyptic terms in those days, living so close to Ground Zero. I left my friend’s apartment wondering if the tearing of the flag - assuming that there was symbolic meaning behind it - meant that there was a withdrawal of God’s favor on the US, and that 9/11 was the beginning of our end. That event has multiple meanings in Christian belief, and among them is a prophecy of the ultimate destruction of the Temple itself, which took place at the hands of the Romans in 70 AD. Both of us are believing Christians, and we could not help seeing it in light of the Biblical account of the tearing of the veil in the Temple when Jesus died on the Cross. I have lost contact with that friend, but I wonder what she thinks of it today. It had torn down the middle, even though it was sealed under glass, and nobody had come into her home. But that morning - Septemwhile she was out in the crowd at Ground Zero, something happened to it. It was position right across from her desk. Then she told me: she’s had that flag on the wall for years, and it was fine. It wasn’t obvious to me what the issue was. A tear ran through it, almost from top to bottom. She led me into her tiny home office, and showed me a small American flag, so old and threadbare that you could see through it, framed and under glass, hanging on her wall. She was fairly freaked out, and asked me to come over at once. Later in the day, I received a call from a friend I had run into at Ground Zero that morning. If I had to bet money, I’d say that the winds stopped blowing when the last names were read at Ground Zero. I don’t know when the ceased to blow, but I can tell you it was in the relatively short time between the start and end of the church service. Shortly after, the church liturgy ended, and I emerged outside to calm. At some point during the church service, we could hear a signal from adjacent Ground Zero, indicating that all the names of the dead had been read, and that the ceremony there was ending. The wind was still blowing later that morning when I went into Trinity Church Wall Street for a memorial service celebrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury. A friend who had been watching the services live on TV said that one of the commenters called the wind “Biblical.” If you were down there in that wind, as I was, it seemed apt. It blew a fairly steady 60 mph all morning. Still, I was there, and the timing was very, very weird. It was from Hurricane Gustav, which had come ashore in the Carolinas, and was rolling up the East Coast. Suddenly, at the time when the first plane hit the World Trade Center, a powerful wind descended from the same direction of that plane. The crowd was behind a fence none of us had access to the site itself, which was reserved for families and dignitaries. I stood on the north side of the hole, at the perimeter, waiting for the service to start. On the morning of September 11, 2002, I walked over to Ground Zero for the solemn observation of the anniversary.
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