I was ready to write my second post about T.M. Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back when memories of this day intruded. September 11 is a complicated day for me. Here’s what I wrote back in 2007:
[On Sept. 11, 2001], I met Debbie Erickson on the way to our first Hebrew class of the year at Regent College. We were both biking down University Drive at about 7:30 am PST. “Have you heard?†Debbie asked me. By that time, both towers have come down. Because I had not turned on a TV or radio that morning, this is the first time I’ve heard about anything. We continue on to class.
That Tuesday was the first “real†day of class that semester. Tuesdays are the day for chapel and the massive communal meal simply called “Soup,†when about 300 members of the Regent community sing, pray, and worship together, then enjoy military-size pots of soup. That Tuesday was also the first official day of my role as editor of the school newspaper.
The day before, I had made my first trip to Copies Plus on West Broadway to drop off the PDF of the Regent College student newspaper, the Et Cetera. Over the summer, I had met with John Stackhouse, Maxine Hancock, the previous editor Won Jang, and my assistant editor Leland Ferguson to plan the coming year. I had also spent several hours in the Regent library reading student newspapers dating to the 1970s. Editing the Et Cetera fit perfectly with an idea I had been developing for my masters thesis — writing for a specific community. How could I have known that writing for the Regent community would have become so important that year? [Read more…] about Sorrow, Joy, and Academic Community on 9/11