25 Weeks To 25 Years

A 25-week series leading up to the 25th anniversary of 9/11

Much attention has been paid to the 250th anniversary of our country this year. This is as it should be. After all, 250 years of this American experiment in democracy is worth celebrating.

Less attention, however, has been given to the fact that this year also brings with it the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

Twenty-five years since the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s 250-year history.

And there’s been hardly a peep about it.

This reality reflects a fear I have that we no longer bother to remember something we told ourselves we would “never forget.”

This series, this whole Substack, is meant to help us never forget 9/11 by more actively engaging with it.

Beginning this Friday, March 20, I will be publishing a post each Friday morning to mark each of the 25 weeks leading up to the 25th anniversary of 9/11. I’ll use anniversaries of events to foreshadow the anniversary we’ll commemorate at the end of this 25-week journey.

I’ll touch on people and places you know, as well as some that you may not. I invite you to share your memories of these people and places, just as I invite your openness in engaging with those about which you may know nothing. If your experience is anything like mine, they may teach you the most.

Engaging with that day requires us to also interact with what came before it and what came after it. So this series will ebb and flow over the years, across continents, cutting through histories to reveal some personal stories that will provide context to life before and life after 9/11.

This is an earnest effort at engaging with that day so that we may more fully heal from it. It’s an effort at remembering so that we may more fully honor those who lost their lives that day - and those whose lives have since been lost in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). It’s an effort, to borrow a line from Lincoln, of working to “bind up the nation’s wounds” in the hope of a “new birth of freedom.”

The effort involved here is non-trivial - at an individual, communal, and national level. It requires curiosity, openness, courage, and humility. Importantly, it requires an honesty with ourselves that just may prove redemptive.

Now, a word about me, your guide.

I was 12-years-old on 9/11. It was Picture Day at my junior high and the picture at the top of the page was taken of me minutes before I first heard the news, before whatever innocence remained in me was obliterated by acts of terror.

I was just a kid but resolved myself to learn Arabic and join the CIA to prevent this from ever happening again. Growing up in post-9/11 America, I blindly accepted the idea that Muslims, Arabs, and the Middle East were just synonyms for terrorism.

I studied Arabic in college, studied abroad in Egypt but, for the transformative experiences I had there, decided against the CIA. Instead, I took a job with a company setting up an office in Pakistan.

I’m also a white, Catholic, American male, a husband and a father, cognizant that each layer of identity has influenced my perception and, indeed, my memory of events. So, too, have the books I’ve read, the people I’ve met, and the writing I’ve done to work through the collective trauma we all encountered that day.

I’m thrilled to have you on this journey with me. While I may be your guide, I’m not walking in front of you - we’re walking side-by-side on this one.

Thank you for your curiosity, your openness, your companionship as we undertake this journey together.

I’ll see you Friday morning.

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