Today I went into the City in an attempt to ‘get life back to normal.’ I took the train to GCT and from there I took the subway to Fulton Street. In GCT there are memorial boards with signs and photos of the dead and missing. When I got out at Fulton St. you could still smell smoke in the air even on the subway platform. I headed up Fulton toward Broadway and the crowds were quite large. There is no traffic in this part of Manhattan so people were walking everywhere. There are barricades at Broadway, so you cannot cross. However, you can see up the side streets to Ground Zero.

It is very hard to describe and the pictures on the television don’t give you a real sense of what it is like. The rubble is still smoking. The portion of the side of the WTC building that is still standing is very eerie. There is a flag on the top of it. One of the lower buildings is still standing, but is completely burned out. As you move south on Broadway and get to Wall St. you see the large pile of rubble that must be several stories high. The buildings immediately around the WTC area are all damaged – broken windows or portions of the building torn open. The crowd was very somber as they walked along. The police keep everyone moving, but many are stopping to take pictures.

Most of the surrounding buildings in the area are covered in dust, even though we have had two very heavy rainstorms in the past two weeks. This was even as far over as Broadway and heading toward the East River. All of the streets are torn up and closed to traffic. The only vehicles that were going by were police vehicles or trucks carrying rubble.

I then walked down Broadway toward Battery Park because I wanted to get the view of the skyline from the tip of Manhattan. This was not possible. Battery Park is closed. There are barriers at all of the entrances guarded by military in fatigue dress. The Park itself is a military staging area. There are tents set up and many military vehicles. The Staten Island Ferry is running, but the boats to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island are not.

I could not get across to the West Side, so I took a bus up to South Street Seaport. It was a beautiful and sunny fall day, but there were very few people at the Seaport. Most of the stores were empty and only about 25% of the outside tables at the restaurants were full. All of the Seaport Museum exhibits are open for free to encourage people to come in.

From the Seaport I took the subway up to Union Square (14thStreet) because I had seen so much of it on TV. There was an enormous crowd at Union Square. The statue of George Washington is covered with hand-made signs and graffiti. The statue has been fenced off as have all of the grassy areas of the Square. The fences are covered with hand-made signs– memorials to the dead and missing as well as children’s posters thanking the rescue workers. There are many signs calling for a peaceful resolution of the crisis, and a few calling for military action. The signs for peace far outnumbered those calling for military strikes. There were a number of people playing musical instruments. All of the music was somber and quiet, quite different from what you normally hear in the city. There was a church group singing hymns. There were also several replicas of the Twin Towers, one made of those small license plates with names on them. The mood at Union Square was also very somber with people were milling around reading the signs and looking dazed.

I then headed back up to midtown to get the train home. At Broadway pamphlets were being distributed in remembrance of Sept. 11. The messages in the pamphlet are Christian in nature. There is a memorial to Father Lynch, the Fire Chaplain who was killed and a message from the father of a girl killed at Columbine. The pamphlet was well done and helped me gather some sense of peace after having seen it all close up.

Let’s continue to pray for those who lost their lives and for the physical, spiritual and psychological recovery of all who have been affected (that’s all of us) and of the City itself.