Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Tenth Anniversary of 9/11

Sermon Preached at St. John the Divine, Houston


Philippe came to see Guy Tozzoli, President of the of the World Trade Center Association, day after day. He said he wanted to do a story about the World Trade Center as a French Journalist.

Yet, Philippe kept asking Guy how the buildings move in the wind. Guy told him the buildings oscillate like snakes. Philippe also wanted to know how far apart are the buildings were.

The reason for this was that Philippe Petit is French but he is a performance artist and his goal on August 7, 1974 was to walk a tight rope between the two twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Step by step he would make his way to the other side. He traveled the 1,350 feet six or eight times.

When asked what it was like to walk across, he said he could hear the sounds of the city floating upwards. He could hear people, cars, boats and police. He could feel the wind, and the buildings move. But he remembers that first step.

He says, “I had to make a decision from one foot anchored on the building to one foot anchored on the wire.” He remembers thinking, “This is the end of my life.” Then he was resolved and with clarity he took his first steps. He knew he must go. He says, “I was pulled forward … and death is very close.” [read all]

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Quotes

  • "Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process." Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • "Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer." Oliver Wendell Holmes
  • "Perfection, in a Christian sense, means becoming mature enough to give ourselves to others." Kathleen Norris
  • "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." John Wesley
  • "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." G. K. Chesterton
  • "One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans." C. S. Lewis
  • "When we say, 'I love Jesus, but I hate the Church,' we end up losing not only the Church but Jesus too. The challenge is to forgive the Church. This challenge is especially great because the church seldom asks us for forgiveness." Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey
  • "Christians are hard to tolerate; I don't know how Jesus does it." Bono
  • "It's too easy to get caught in our little church subcultures, and the result is that the only younger people we might know are Christians who are already inside the church." Dan Kimball