SAFE THROUGH THE STORM

Thinking through the 9/11 anniversary just a bit more....

I was struck by all the op-ed pieces and commentators talking about the "Are we safer" question. Are we safer now than we were five years ago?

I think it's the wrong question. Because we weren't safer on 9/10/01. Sure, we thought we were. We just didn't know how unsafe the world really was. We learned 24 hours later.

The world is not a safe place. It never has been, not since the Garden of Eden. We like to pretend it's safe, and perhaps we need to, for the sake of our children, for the sake of our own daily peace of mind. But the world is not safe.

Are we safer now than we used to be? Of course we are, in some ways. Women no longer expect to have half their children die as infants -- and no longer face the prospect of their own death with every child they bear. Food is inspected and packaged and frozen, with nice little expiration dates printed for our safety. We have air bags and car seats and pasteurized milk and antibiotics and weekly paychecks and bike helmets and vaccines and GPS systems and Neosporin. Our world is much safer than it used to be, even a couple of generations ago.

But we also have cars that come out of nowhere to hit our children at speeds unimaginable to our grandparents. We have asbestos leaking and lead-based paint peeling from our older buildings. We have trans-fats and high fructose corn syrup clogging our bodies. We have an antiquated air traffic control system. We have AIDS, we have heart disease, we have cancer at a rate unheard of in previous generations. And we have a whole population of terrorists (accomplished and wannabes alike) dedidicated to our eradication. So in many ways, no, we are not safer.

The world has never been safe. It isn't safe now. The dangers change. But the idea of "safe for the whole family" is a lie.

When I was a little girl, one of my big desires was (for some odd reason) to be in the eye of a hurricane. I must have seen some movie (Flipper?) that put it in my head.

It never occurred to me, of course, that to get to the eye of a hurricane, I would have to go through the hurricane.

Thinking about that, oh these many years later, I realize that I live in a hurricane. Life swirls around me with its constant threats: Car wrecks. Broken bones on the playground. Loss of jobs. Brush fires. Cancer. Dog bites, wasp stings, rattlesnakes. Creditors at the door. Riptides. Plane crashes. Earthquakes.

But God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea.

The hurricane is always around us. On 9/11, it hit in a new and unexpected way. But no matter what, we are always in the eye of the hurricane. Always.

If only we didn't have to go through the hurricane to get there. Oh, if only...