Notes from A Day at Ground Zero

I spent today, a month and a day after the attack on New York, volunteering my services at St. Paul's Chapel near the World Trade Center. Since access to the site is tightly restricted, I thought my impressions might be of interest to others.

As the 6:00 a.m. New Jersey Transit train from Princeton Junction left Newark and made the last leg of its journey toward New York, the familiar skyline of New York to the east and south was back lit by a red sunrise — the traditional portent of bad weather to come. Where the World Trade Towers used to be there was just sky.

We came closer to the tunnel under the Hudson River and I felt a pang of fear, remembering the news reports of the previous day that warned of more terrorist attacks and that this very tunnel might be a target. A few minutes later we emerged on the other side to a Penn Station that had much smaller crowds than I remember when I was commuting to seminary in New York just a couple of years ago. The subways seemed to be almost deserted, perhaps because of the early hour or perhaps because the part of the city in the direction I was headed had lost so many jobs that fewer people needed to go there early in the morning.

From around 14th Street, the borderline of midtown and Greenwich Village, I began to smell the acrid totally unfamiliar and unique smell that would be in my nostrils and on my clothing all day — and still is. It's a smell of a combination of pulverized concrete and burning building materials and smells sort of electrical, like the inside of a new computer or radio, only much stronger, not pleasant but oddly not terribly unpleasant either. I guess you could also say it's the smell of the dust of angels. The smell intensified as I walked up the steps from the subway to Church Street just two blocks from the World Trade Center.

Across the street stands St. Paul's Chapel, a chapel of Trinity Church, Wall Street, the oldest Episcopal parish in New York. St. Paul's is the only colonial era church building still standing in New York city and it was the place where George Washington attended services on the morning of his inauguration as president. There was a barricade and I had to show identification to National Guard troops who then let me cross to the church.

The scene at the church was incredible. The iron fence surrounding the church yard was covered with posters and banners, mostly made by school children from all over the country and some from England and Australia. They all were addressed to the firefighters and rescue workers and police and said things like "Thank you," "We appreciate how you tried to save people," "You went into the buildings while others ran out," "We'll never forget you," "You are my hero," "God bless you!," "We love you."

On the broad stone steps of the church was set up a kitchen serving a hot breakfast to the workers — police, firefighters, National Guard troops, and others. Signs said "Welcome" and "Please come in and rest." Fr. Lyndon Harris and his staff looked tired but were upbeat about what was going on there. Some would say they're operating on adrenaline and some would say the Holy Spirit is sustaining them as they work to sustain others. I suspect both theories are correct. They welcomed us warmly and explained how we could be of help. Fr. Harris gave a little chuckle and told me in his South Carolina drawl "Our motto here is 'Give me ambiguity, or give me something else.'"

Inside the church there were many vigil candles on window sills and on tables. There were more posters with messages of love and support from children addressed to the rescue workers, many of whom were sleeping on pews or sitting eating breakfast. Some were praying and some were sitting in the pews reading letters and cards taped to the backs of all the pews. As they read these messages from children, it was sometimes enough to release the pent up emotions of doing hard, exhausting, grisly heart-wrenching work day in and day out for a month — and they wept.

In the back of the church and along the side aisles there were massage therapists and chiropractors massaging weary rescue workers who were coming off the night shift. The Anglican Church places a little extra emphasis on the mystery of the incarnation — that Christian doctrine of the God who chooses to become human and thus makes holy all of creation — and I saw this incarnational theology at work here as loving hands massaged some relaxation into strained muscles and tired backs, and as hungry men who had scarcely taken any break during a 12 hour shift were fed and gently covered with blankets as they fell asleep exhausted on pews.

A group of Anglican nuns and priests were gathered in one corner praying the morning office and in other places lay people were speaking or praying with rescue workers. People were milling about.

I was given an identification badge, a hard hat, and a face mask and was taken by Fr. Andy Mullins — rector of the Church of the Epiphany in Manhattan and a veteran here — out of the church and down the street toward the site of the devastation. We had to pass through another National Guard checkpoint. The Guard sergeant seemed unsure about whether to let us pass. When he checked with a police sergeant, the policeman said, "Let them by; we need these guys down there." I was glad he felt that way because as we approached the site I wasn't sure what I could do that would be of any help to anyone. As we passed through the barricade a Guardsman told me to put my hard had on and keep it on.

If you think of the site of the devastation as an oblong, the street from St. Paul's is a block long and runs into a long side of the oblong about a third of the way along its length. At this edge of the site near what was left of 5 World Trade Center we could see a panoramic view of the devastation and it was breathtakingly shocking for its immensity. Television and still pictures cannot convey how big this area is. As we looked across to the other side of the site workers who were on the mound only halfway across were so far away that they appeared to us like ants on an anthill. A police captain told me the site is the size of 32 football fields.

"The Pile", as it is called, which rises about three stories above street level — down from six stories a month ago — is still burning in some places and enormous hollow steel girders sticking up from the rubble act like chimneys with gray smoke pouring out of them from deep down. There are huge pieces of twisted steel and broken concrete everywhere and every surface is covered with gray dust or gray mud.

Around the area where the buildings collapsed there are six or seven other buildings, some of them 30 stories high, that have their sides ripped off or that have been burned into hollow rusting hulks. Some of them are covered with plastic mesh. You don't see these buildings on television, but if just one of them were the only damage there was from the attack, it would still be an enormous disaster.

There are five or six huge construction cranes and dozens of bulldozers and massive clawed machine shovels moving debris into large trailer trucks to be hauled away. Rescue workers probe pockets uncovered by the cranes. They're still finding bodies and body parts and when they do I was told everything stops and they all doff their hard hats and salute. However, there were no such recoveries while I was there.

There are workers from more organizations than you can count and I wonder how they ever decide who is in charge: FDNY, NYPD, Port Authority Police, State Police, NY National Guard, US Customs, FBI, ATF, Army Corps of Engineers, US Coast Guard, Consolidated Edison (power company), Verizon (telephone company), demolition companies, hauling companies, engineers, Mayor's Office, Governor's Office, FEMA, OSHA. In addition, there are priests of the Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches wandering around who are valued by the rescue workers for the blessings we give and the special rituals we have for the dead. Ministers of other faiths are present and are doing wonderful work, but we were told by more than one of the workers that in these stressful and painful circumstances they appreciate the rituals and the symbols of our ancient catholic tradition.

On the southeast corner of the site is the FDNY firehouse of Engine 10 and Ladder 10, the first units to arrive when disaster struck. Seven men from this station house were killed and there is a shrine outside with letters, flowers, candles, badges from fire departments all over the world, rosary beads, crucifixes, the drawings by school children. Shrines like this are all over New York — on street corners, in front of every fire house, in subway stations, and in churches.

As we walked around we didn't actually do much of anything or have any profound conversations with the workers. There were a few brief encounters, but they weren't heavy or deep at all. But as we walked around the rescue workers waved or nodded and smiled. Some even winked as if to say "thanks for being here." It seemed as if just being there representing the presence and the love of God was all we had to do, was all that was necessary and useful. We often say that priests are "symbol bearers" for the whole church and this was evident today. The comedian Woody Allen once said "Eighty percent of life is just showing up." I think he was wrong — it's a hundred percent.

Back at St. Paul's I attended mass with the most incredible hodgepodge of humanity I've ever seen gathered in a church — many of whom were oblivious to the mass going on in their midst. There were the chiropractors and massage therapists doing their thing along the side aisles. There were rescue workers sleeping or eating lunch — some of them Jews wearing yalmukas under their fire helmets. There were National Guard troops from the farms and forests of upstate New York looking very young and lost in the big city. People sat on the floor and on the steps leading to the choir loft. Some of the rescue workers who had not shown much interest in the mass when it began found themselves drawn into the ancient prayers that promise life forever with God and ended up taking communion with tears in their eyes. This was Christ's church in all its messiness, diversity, ambiguity, brokeness, and holiness. And it was truly beautiful.

In the days following the disaster the question was often asked "Why do bad things like this happen." One answer is, of course, that we have the gift of freedom from God and sometimes we choose to do very evil things. But today I saw much evidence of the love of humanity for one another and of strangers reaching out to one another and caring for one another. So we might just as well ask "Why do good things like this happen." And the answer is, of course, that God's love for us is more powerful than any evil.