The 1,000 congregation members who filled St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre were sober, seeking solace in a familiar ritual. For his sermon the pastor left the pulpit and stood directly in front of the parishioners. He talked briefly about the horror and sadness of the terrorist attack, all the while fingering a white piece of paper. Then he stopped, unfolded the paper, and slowly read the names of 30 men and women missing from our town.

Ten days have passed since the World Trade Center vanished. I wanted to write you, as much for myself as to tell you what is happening, how the air tastes, what color the horizon has taken on.

I go up and down, hour by hour more than day by day. This particular moment, at 5 in the evening on Saturday the 22nd, I'm okay.

My colleagues and I held a teach-in last week for journalism students at NYU. An intellectual vigil, if you will. For the first time since I became a professor, I saw in the faces of students how much they needed us. Events had made them vulnerable to knowledge they hoped we had. Of course we needed them too. Their hoping most of all.

The sun had just dropped behind the trees, casting long, orange shadows across the ballfield; the sky, layered like the silky, clear waters of the tropics, turned an opalescent blue. In groups of twos and threes and fours young families and long-retired residents converged on the baseball diamond carrying candles, American flags, and a sense of historical imminence. Our lives, we all sensed, would never be the same. The future felt dangerously uncertain.

I received a call that volunteers were needed in mass care with ERV (Emergency Response Vehicle) training in New York City. This was Saturday evening and Sunday morning I got up, sang in my church’s worship band, got prayed over for strength, and headed for the airport to serve once again. I thanked the Lord for the strength He was giving me and would continue to give me.

Yesterday I had probably the most incredible and moving experience of my life. Juilliard organized a quartet to go play at the Armory. The Armory is a huge military building where families of people missing from Tuesday's disaster go to wait for news of their loved ones.

Reverend Steele, Pastor at the Central Presbyterian Church in Summit New Jersey, gave this sermon while Senior Pastor of the Hitchcock Presbyterian Church in Scarsdale, New York.

These have not been easy days for any of us. We are all operating with more stress than we probably even realize. And so, we need to keep talking with each other. We need to keep on being patient with each other and with ourselves. We need to remember that life is not a race, but that it is a journey. Let’s take our time.

Everyone was looking up, so I did too and saw the second plane crash into the building, and then people jumping out. No one could move, everyone was transfixed by what they were seeing. It felt like we were watching a re-run of Towering Inferno, but this was no movie, it was in front of us... but too difficult to take in.

It was silent. It was silent. An audience stood viewing the urban proscenium of death. The people, frozen and staring in the street, looked like some crazy foreshadowing of a Pompeii, waiting for the mud and the dust to take its place upon them. Disbelief. Denial.

The second plane hit.

When will this weeping end, I wonder, when will the river of tears run dry, the aching heart find relief, this national mourning run its course?

When will the sight of exhausted rescue workers and anguished fire fighters, of families seeking loved ones, of flickering candles, no longer sear my eyes?

Maybe the faded, torn notes of missing, wanting, please look for.... / Maybe the burned-downed candles and withering flowers left in corners of / buildings near B'way and Fulton... / Maybe the twisted, metal monster fingers, waiting to fall... / Maybe the broken glass windows glinting in the morning sunshine.... / Maybe the small groups of women gathering for a quick solace of camaraderie...

I lived near St. Vincent's Hospital (at the time, a Level I trauma center) and went to join the line of those seeking to donate blood. Plastered on every available surface — bus stops, pizzerias, even mail boxes — were hundreds upon hundreds of handmade flyers, with more being posted by frantic New Yorkers who'd come to the hospital to try to find their loved ones.

Those scenes, even more than the horrors I'd witnessed the day before, simply broke my heart.

He would be embarrassed by this tribute, so I won’t mention his name, though many in the community now know he was among the courageous firefighters who rushed to the scene of the World Trade Center disaster on September 11 and remain there still, searching for victims, extinguishing fires, sifting through the rubble, and providing America with an example of heroism that has reignited our national pride.

In Memory of all those lost September 11, 2001

And especially to the Fire Department of New York
From all Americans

With our tears, our love
And
our gratitude….

We came to New York from San Francisco nearly one and one-half years ago because we had grown to love this city. Now, like our fellow New Yorkers, we’ve gone through the profound emotions that were lit by the September 11 attacks – fear, loss, anger, grief, love – and find ourselves even more deeply immersed in the life of the city and still very glad to be here.

The last time we had seen her she was sitting in the first pew with her two young children listening to friends and relatives memorialize her husband. He had died along with so many others on September 11 and she had asked us, a local choir, to perform a requiem mass at his service of remembrance.