I read an article on NPR online this week in which former Secretary of State Colin Powell said, “Americans will only lose touch with the freedom-loving, open society we enjoy if we take such counsel of our fears that we change who we are." Powell argues that 10 years after the events of Sept. 11, 2001 the thing that we must guard against most is fear. Sept.11, 2001, was my first day of college — a day full of hopes and new beginnings. What started as an ordinary morning of freshman English, quickly dissolved into a day of shock, horror, and sadness. My classmates and I stood paralyzed in front of TV screens. So many people. We live in a world of constant calamity and sadness but on that day we were confronted with a new idea, most of us have never...

In my 2005 book, Where the Light Shines Through (Brazos Press), I begin the chapter, "9/12 Living in a 9/11 World," with this memory: In late September of 2001, not long after Sept. 11, the Washington Post ran an article by Hanna Rosen called, “God, You Around?” It was about the noticeable resurgence of both outward religious practice and private prayer in the wake of that September’s events. “It’s not just that the faithful are flocking to houses of worship,” she wrote, “it’s that people who have never been and still won’t go, who passed all those candlelight vigils . . . and kept on walking, are finding themselves, despite themselves, praying.” She quotes the head of a network of counselors working mostly with New York business folk: “‘Every other person we spoke to would get to a point where...

I wasn’t alive when President Kennedy was assassinated. I don’t remember the Challenger tragedy (I was three). But I do remember the exact moment I heard about the Twin Towers being struck on Sept. 11, 2001. I was in my first year of undergrad at Northern Arizona University and remember sitting of the floor of my dorm room for hours trying to convince myself that this was some sort of mistake. Though thousands of miles away, it felt as if it was happening in Flagstaff. It was that gut-wrenching, that earthshaking. In a way it was happening in Flagstaff. It was happening everywhere in our nation. Tears and confusion set in. It was what happened next that changed me most though. It was the first time I, as a young adult, saw people really come together. People who never had been to church flocked through the doors and found community with complete strangers and solace from the words of pastors they never valued...

For those of us old enough to remember – Dec. 7, 1941, and Sept. 11, 2001, were somewhat similar but decidedly different. It was more than just a 60-year difference. It was a difference in attitude and approach. In 1941, the nation banded together and fought a known aggressor. In ’01, we did not seem to band together except out of a fear of flying. Following 1941, we joined in every way possible to save all sorts of things that would be useful in the effort to push back Imperialism and Nazism. Following ’01, we joined together to see who might have something on their person that could be used to bring down an aircraft we might be flying on. Fear seemed to saturate our society rather than a firm resolve to find a rational solution to what was happening. As a matter of fact it was two phone calls from Germany that morning of Sept. 11, that told us to turn on our TV set. The following Saturday, Sue and I were among the first to fly out...