9-11.

The Book of Job.

I'm in a reflective mood today, largely due to today being the tenth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.

9-11-01, I was working for the company that is my current employer. I was a Customer Service Associate in the Call Center. My shift started, if memory serves, at 8:15 AM. I arrived in the Center at about 7:50 AM. When I got to the break room, everyone was talking about the plane flying into one of the towers. The television had one of the networks on, and the horror of it all sank in. I clung to the hope that maybe, maybe this was just a terrible mistake in navigation. But the thought wouldn't go away: amateur pilots flying little planes might make such a navigational mistake. But a professional pilot, qualified to fly a large jetliner? I don't think so. . .

Then the second plane hit. All doubt was gone. A jet hit the Pentagon. Flight 93 crashed in that field in Pennsylvania.

What I remember then: confusion. No one knowing how many planes had been taken. Rumors about other crashes. Grounding of all flights. No clue about how many had died, how many injured - people jumping from the upper floors of the towers because since death was imminent that way of dying was preferable to waiting to burn to death, people losing their life partners, kids losing parents. . .For three or four days there were very few calls that came in. Eerie silence.

It's now 8:59 AM Central - the time when the first tower collapsed. Observing a moment of silence.

Now, of course, we know. And we reflect.

Some years ago, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book, When Bad Things Happen To Good People. Kushner looks at three traits we attribute to God. God is all-loving. God is omniscient. God is omnipotent. In this, Kushner's attempt to come to grips with undeserved suffering, he suggests that we must surrender one of those traits. Kushner asks if we can accept the idea that there is a certain randomness in Creation, that things do happen that God has nothing to do with, and that there really is no explanation.

9:28 AM. The second tower falls. Another moment of silence.

Followed by a song - The Sound of Silence. Highly apropo.

I agree with Kushner in saying that we can't explain unwarranted pain. But, surrendering the concept of those characteristics of God? Sorry, Rabbi; I respect your life and your body of work, but I can't go with you there.

God is all-loving. God is omnipotent (and omnipresent). And, God is omniscient.

I recently finished rereading The Book of Job. This was another attempt to wrestle with undeserved suffering. It's one of my favorite books of the Bible. It's one of the most ancient of the books, and one of the more difficult to analyze. Where exactly did that guy Elihu come from? But the central message of Job still hits home.

Let's don't talk about the patience of Job. He wasn't especially patient. Friends arrived to "comfort" Job. They're silent for days. When Job finally speaks he whines like a puppy and cries like a baby. Yet the phrase recurs: "In all of this Job did not sin against God." When bad things happen we are not obligated to grin and bear it. We can tell God what we think. In any interaction between us and God, God is the grown-up. The ones who were upbraided for their sin? The three friends who insisted, "You or someone in your family must have sinned terribly. This must be your fault somehow." Wrong.

Then God answers Job. God's answer? Who are you to put me on trial? Where were you when I created the universe? Behemoth and Leviathan - those creatures you find so fearsome - are but toys to me.

In the end, Job can only bow to the wisdom of the Creator. As must we.

So, hatred motivated the attacks. Why did God not intervene - stop all this pain?

I don't know. Neither does anyone else. But, even so. . .

Praised be the name of the Lord.

And may we honor those who died - those who tried to save others, even if the cost was their owns lives - those who serve to protect us from this ever happening again. Thank you!