9/11, The one I most remember

 

Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; … He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench. (Isaiah 42:1-3)

I don’t know her name. I never heard her speak, nor can I offer a close description of her face. But I will never forget her.

Without a word, she drew me back to Union Square every night I was in New York, just to watch her into the wee hours of the morning. She was always there when I arrived and still keeping watch when fatigue drew me to my bed at a nearby hostel.

The week following the destruction of the World Trade Center Towers, I walked the streets of Manhattan, listening to whomever would talk to me, sitting on church steps or park benches, street corners or coffee shops.

I was there as a journalist, a reporter, gathering stories, fighting off tears and searching for God.

My second night, restless, I could not sleep, so I dressed and walked to nearby Union Square between 14^th and 17^th street. One hundred or more sat in a semi-circle surrounding hundreds of candles flickering in the darkness.

A young woman, 20 or so, watched over the lights as a mother hovers over her little children, cherishing each flickering wick lest it be extinguished in the night breezes.

She never looked up, never looked at the aching souls around her, holding each other in the darkness. Eyes down, this dark-haired young woman nimbly crawled among the candles, taper in hand, tending the lights, keeping them burning through the night.

No one spoke. Pristine silence, delicate as woven crystal shimmered in the light of a thousand candles, broken only by muffled footfalls, gently on the pavement.

There was no anger here, no calls for revenge, only loss and grief and sadness and anguish and hope, all of it an unspoken prayer for mercy, illumined by the tender flames that mesmerized every eye into a soul-deep silence.

Holy ground. Holy souls, all of them, joined in a holy longing by the Spirit who is Love. And none shimmered with the beauty of holiness more than this young woman, crawling among the candles, keeping the fires burning through the night lest the light of hope and love fail and die.

Our Lady of the Lights, I named her in an article written after that trip, the Madonna of Manhattan. Lovingly, she tended the fires of hope that drew thousands to Union Square every night.

I would have loved to know her name. I would have loved to hear her story. But when one gazes into the beauty of holiness it is best to keep quiet, to say nothing.

What words could possibly add anything to the exquisite wonder of a soul so given to love?

I wonder what happened to her in the years since those nights in Union Square. I wonder if she knows how important she was and is and always will be to so many souls who came to that place to feel some love, some hope, some companionship in sorrow?

I wonder if she has any idea that she was the incarnate grace of God, tending the souls of the inconsolable, all of us, her children.

Pray for us, Our Lady of the Lights. Pray for us, that we may be as thee.

David L. Miller