devarim

I woke up this morning to a report on the news saying that Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Weymouth had suffered a devestating fire overnight. It's terribly sad when any place of worship and community gathering is damaged or destroyed, and this is even more poignant because there were to be weddings today and tomorrow in the historic building. My sympathy goes out to the entire community, who until now had probably felt incredibly lucky to retain their "home" during the recent wave of church and school closings.

But...in the car on the way to work this morning, I continued listening to the news and heard a snippet of an interview with the church's cantor (I didn't even know they had those). And what did she say? "I looked at the church and it reminded me of September 11th."

Now, I can't fault you for being reminded of something. You have no control over the inner workings of your subconscious mind. I can, however, get righteously pissed at you for saying that out loud. No matter how precious a place of worship is, it is still nothing more than a building. One firefighter was seriously injured, but as far as I know, no one was killed.

I have no idea how you compare this to nineteen maniacs taking over four airplanes full of innocent people, and then proceeding to crash those planes into large buildings full of other innocent people (though failing as to one plane). How do you compare a seeing the aftermath of a church fire to watching people jumping hand-in-hand with their coworkers from the hundreth floor of a burning office building. How do you compare the smoky air around an extinguished fire to the concrete dust and charred bits of human flesh that wafted over Manhattan for nearly a week, causing residents as far as six miles away to shut their windows lest they choke on the fumes (or, at least, the thought of what they were smelling).

So, please, I know you can't always help what you're thinking, but maybe sometimes you should keep your thoughts to yourself.