September 11

I do not know whether the passing of a man is good or bad, but I only know that it makes me sad when so many pass away so quickly in a searing explosion of concrete, steel, flame, and dust. Is slow any better? Shakespeare's skepticism about the passage of man is inviting:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well sav'd a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing. Jaques in As You Like It(II.vii)
The slow sinking of the body to the ground pulled there by the inevitable gravity of life would seem terrifying if we did not live it out in little bits every day.
The ancients thought it was better to go darkly into that black night than to rage madly at the coming of the night. But is it better to go quickly?
How long were the hours of Jesus on the cross?
How long before he slumped down in the breathlessness of death?
And so when copper flames fall by the thousands, like tongues of fire, like red-poached leaves of passing that fall too too early in the autumn, I think of that too bright flame of love that seems to be extinguished on the charred wood of the cross. No, no, not burnt out but loved by a Lady in Blue who stood by the cross and tried to warn us that death was coming. And so she stood by two towers seven years ago and wept with us over the fallen. Stabat mater dolorosa juxta crucem lacrimosa dum pendebat Filius. The Gospel exhorts us to love out enemies, but to Mary we were the enemies because we put her Son to death. Yet she loves us in the moment that command of Jesus from the Cross was given: Mother, behold your Son. And so Mary is our life, our sweetness, and our hope in this valley of tears. In this Eucharist Jesus is the Bread of Life and our hope for the years to come.