(September 11, 2019 at 11:41 am)Rev. Rye Wrote: In my sixth grade classroom. The teacher just turned on the TVs and set the channel to CNN where we saw smoke billowing out of the Twin Towers.
I was also in class.
I was eight years old, in my third grade class. I didn't find out about what was happening until I got home from school, if I remember correctly. That had to be around three in the afternoon.
I remember feeling a very strange sense of shock; it was all just very bizarre and I don't think my eight year old brain was really able to process what was happening and what it really meant. I knew that it was really bad, and that a lot of people got hurt. Watching the video clips on the news of the plane hitting the second tower didn't seem real in any way. It was all just very weird to me.
Years later, I've since processed this a lot more, and have honestly been brought to tears once or twice reading about 9/11 and thinking deeply about how many people must have been affected by this tragedy... let alone how many people died as a direct result of the attack.
It's so fucking horrible, and probably helped shape my view on religion. Part of the tragedy is that the pieces of human garbage that committed the attack are dead, and couldn't be punished at the hands of the American justice system - a justice system I normally have little faith in.
This war they're fighting is very real, and this is the type of shit that Jihadists and Islamic extremists want to do to us simply for being who we are (not Muslims). While I'm not championing America as some proud, noble country that's never done anything wrong, we didn't deserve anything like that.
If you're frightened of dying, and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth.
