Recollection of September 12th, 2001
By Loch Kelly

Loch Kelly was an Interfaith Chaplain at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City and is a Buddhist meditation teacher and a psychotherapist. His wife Paige is also a psychotherapist. They live in New York City.

I'd returned from a Dzogchen retreat with Tsoknyi Rinpoche in Crestone, Colorado a week and a day before September 11th. Dzogchen is a non-dual Buddhist teaching. During the retreat we received training in enhancement practices, and in recognizing the nature of mind, which is empty, awake, intelligent and open. There was no question that the support of this retreat helped me to face the events that followed.

Though we'd been up late the night of September 11th talking with friends and family, my wife Paige and I woke up at dawn on the 12th. Like many of us, I hoped that the events of the past day had been a dream. Turning on the TV that morning brought back the pain of the devastating loss. Paige and I felt called to see what kind of help we could offer at Ground Zero, so we decided to make our way down there.

We took the subway down as far as we could go and then began heading south toward the smoke. We couldn't help notice that it was a beautiful cloudless day, oddly quiet. The streets were eerily empty except for emergency vehicles, police and military personnel.

To get to the site, we had to go through four different checkpoints. At each barricade, I showed my ID from the Riverside Church Counseling Center, and after initial refusals, emergency personnel allowed us to continue moving towards Ground Zero.

As we came closer to the center of devastation, ash was everywhere, like a fine smoke; papers from office files were strewn about. Crossing the final checkpoint, we came face-to-face with a makeshift morgue inside the World Financial Center. Body bags were being loaded onto trucks.

We stopped for a moment of prayer. The reality of the enormous loss of life struck home. Paige began to shake and my body felt heavy with sadness. Walking through the atrium of the World Financial Center, we saw cafe tables with half-eaten breakfasts covered in dust, frozen in time from the morning of September 11th.

The faces of the firemen and medics leaving the site spoke of sadness, exhaustion and disbelief. Walking into the site, I tried to prepare myself for carnage and horror, for overwhelming terror and chaos. But as I entered Ground Zero I experienced instead a feeling of awe, like entering a great cathedral or the Grand Canyon. The remaining buildings surrounding the area where the Twin Towers had stood formed an enormous amphitheater, a sacred circle and burial ground. It was both infinite and intimate. I felt my heart break wide open.

We followed a line of firefighters further into the site where the first pile of rubble lay. We climbed and stood at the top of the hill without moving for nearly 30 minutes. As I watched in stillness, the words that came to me were, "Oh, this is how it is.'' This is who I am, this is the way the world is, this is the way of life and death, this is the nature of things. Everything that is created comes and goes, comes together and falls apart. Everything.

All of history seemed to be there. Visions of ancient civilizations rising and falling flashed through my mind, and I had an intense awareness of both the preciousness of human birth and the fleeting nature of life. I felt grief for those who had died, and for the families who would live on without them, but I also felt a deep sense of hurt for the continuing ignorance and insanity of the human race. Yesterday, two huge human-made structures stood here with thousands of people working inside, and 24 hours later, they were completely gone, now dust. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

But nothing was missing. My mind just stopped or seemed to drop away, and in this seeing, it was as if everything was present as vast, open space. It was as if love and hate, life and death, the inner and outer, all experience, moved as an infinite space of consciousness. There was only seamless, empty, silent, vast, loving light. On top of the hill of rubble in Ground Zero, amidst all the sadness and loss, it was as if a veil had parted and revealed a luminous, loving presence that had been hidden but was always there, like Jesus saying, "Split a piece of wood, and I am there."

I turned to Paige and asked her what her experience was. "Complete stillness," she responded. We remained standing there a while longer, sending our prayers and talking to all those who had died, who seemed to be in front of us. I had a strong impression of good intentions, love, prayers, and healing, pouring into the place like water flowing over the tops of the surrounding buildings into the site.

Some time later, a fire chief called out, "Quiet everyone. Quiet!" Within seconds, hundreds of firemen and emergency workers stopped digging, turned off their equipment and stood completely still, listening for the sounds of anyone trapped in the rubble. For five minutes I stood with hundreds of human beings, all united, resting and alert, listening for life. As the word came to return to the rescue effort, it was as if the five minutes of silence and stillness had renewed the workers' courage and resolve. It was inspiring to experience first-hand such tireless compassion.

We left the pile and walked out of the site. We saw workers resting. We brought them water and asked if they needed anything. They just responded: "Thanks for being here," looked into our eyes, and nodded. There was a feeling that we were all supporting each other by just being together.

Later on that day, we went to volunteer our services at the makeshift center established at Chelsea Piers for families searching for missing loved ones. There we met face to face with these families, who showed us photos and expressed a mixture of shock, hope and grief. I returned to Ground Zero the next day and continued to work as an interfaith chaplain for the next several weeks, joining with other volunteers from around the country in the recovery effort.

That first weekend as I was taking a run in Central Park, I saw a friend running in the other direction. I waved, and as he passed, I began to cry. I felt so alive, with the wind blowing at my skin and the trees around me, appreciating every moment. I ran and I cried in the vast open heart of my city.

Nothing was changed, all was revealed otherwise;
Not that horror was not, not that the killings did not continue,
Not that I thought there was to be no more despair,
But that as if transparent all disclosed
An otherwise that was blessed, that was bliss.
I saw paradise in the dust of the street

- From City Psalm, by Denise Levertov