Candles and Flags: Divided We Fall

Candles and American flags. These are what I remember most about 9/11 and the days that followed. At the time, I worked as the communications director for a megachurch. Within hours of the attack on the World Trade Center, people began trickling in, looking for peace in the midst of their grief. The trickle became a flood, and the church became a 24-hour gathering place with formal services twice-daily for thousands of people in the city to come together, lighting candles, crying, praying, or simply sitting in stunned silence.

American flags were everywhere in the city and throughout neighborhoods, symbols of solidarity and support in a land that had become vulnerable to violent attack. Democrats and Republicans gathered on the steps of the nation’s Capitol building that day, spontaneously singing “God Bless America” in a bipartisan act of unity against unimaginable hate.

As I write this, I’m in our nation’s capital, looking out at the dome of the Capitol, recalling the horror of the homegrown attack on that building–and those in it–on January 6; our nation’s flag weaponized against police officers. Americans attacking Americans. This city I love is now militarized, National Guard members everywhere. One of them heckled my husband and son-in-law this week as they exited a metro station. An American taunting Americans.

Like millions across the nation, I’ve watched endless news coverage of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. During commercial breaks, my gaze turns to the windows of my kids’ home. Looking out at that beautiful Capitol dome, my mind’s eye revisits images of another young man, also assassinated, who laid in state in the Rotunda. Like Mr. Kirk, President John F. Kennedy, Jr. was a husband, father, and consequential political voice. Hundreds of thousands of people of all political persuasions gathered together to mourn the loss of his life, cut short by unspeakable violence.

If, God forbid, another 9/11 event happens again, I wonder if Congress would come together on the steps of the Capitol in bipartisan patriotism. I doubt Americans of different political and religious persuasions would stumble into an unknown church, lighting candles and praying together, looking for peace and collective community.

I question this because I’m watching news commentators and social media opinions divide along the too-familiar fault lines of our political polarization as the assassination of Mr. Kirk is rehashed. Some point out Mr. Kirk’s statements about gun deaths being worth the preservation of Second Amendment freedoms. Others lament his death, offering the familiar thoughts and prayers for his wife and children. Some memes and comments are so dark that I am limiting my time on social media to preserve my own soul and sanity.

Is this where 250 years of working to build a more perfect union has led us? Can we look ourselves in the collective mirror and honestly say we like what we see?

I fundamentally disagree with everything Mr. Kirk believed and espoused. But he, like me–like every human being–was a person made in the image and likeness of God. And he, like JFK, my husband, my dad, and other men I admire, was a husband and father. His life mattered to his wife. His children will grow up without their father being there to take them to their first day of school, teach them how to drive, and walk them down the aisle. And the video clips of his last moments on earth will be indelibly etched in their memories and souls.

We have lost too many lives to political violence. And I fear we are losing our collective soul–and that of our nation–in the process. Today, on this anniversary of 9/11, I choose to light candles. I choose to double down on democracy. And I choose to lead with love.

“God bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her, and guide her, through the night with a light from above…”