Life comes full circle sometimes. Ten years ago today, on the morning of September 11, 2001, I stood on a Habitat for Humanity work site in northeast DC. We had been planning a big ceremony for months, celebrating a build in partnership with the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The HUD Secretary, the Mayor of DC, and several other VIPs were scheduled to be there later that morning to officially kick off the construction. As the crew got everything ready, people who were arriving after us said something big was happening on the news. Some sort of accident involving an airplane and the World Trade Center. We gathered around a car radio to listen to events unfolding in New York City. Then phones started ringing – the HUD Secretary and other special guests would not be coming. The president had called an emergency meeting with his cabinet.

We heard that something was happening in DC, too. Suddenly, we listened harder not to the radio, but to the sounds in the air around us. Our build site was only a few miles from the Capitol. Several of my roommates worked on the hill. The news was uncertain, full of rumors – there were reports that the Pentagon had been hit, that the White House might be targeted, that the Capitol Building and congressional offices had been evacuated. Someone heard that the USA Today building had been hit. The metro might not be safe. In those first few hours of chaos, it was hard to discern the actual events from the speculation.

We closed down the Habitat site and cancelled work for the day. I didn’t want to drive all the way across town, past the monuments and the mall, to my house, so I sat in the house near our build site where the Habitat Americorps volunteers lived and we watched tv and made phone calls all day. My dad was actually in town meeting with some people from the Pentagon, but luckily they were meeting off site, at a hotel in Virginia.

Many of the details about the rest of that day, and the days that followed, are fuzzy. What I do remember is the comfort that came from being in community. Spending those first few hours of shock and disbelief with my Habitat friends, who had been working together to make our city a safer, better place for everyone. Going to dinner that night (or was it the next day?) with my fellow Rhodes College alumni, all International Studies majors who had spent countless hours before this debating foreign policy and discussing what the world would be like in the post-Cold War era – unsure how our world had just changed. Taking refuge in my messy, comfy home with my three roommates once we all made our way back that night, shaken and emotionally drained.

It seemed that at first, no one wanted to be alone. We needed each other, to listen to the questions we were each wrestling with, to try to figure out the ‘right’ way to respond, to process the different ways people across the country and the world were reacting, to offer each other hope in the midst of so many stories of loss and fear. It was the kind of time when the people around you mattered –you wanted to be surrounded by a community, a network of support, people who reminded you of who you were.

Now, ten years later, as we remember the events of September 11, I again find myself connected with Habitat and a community that is witness of hope. This morning there was an interfaith service of peace and solidarity on the site where soon we will begin building the Abraham House – a joint project of local Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups. I couldn’t be at the service in person, because I was helping lead worship at my church, but I am looking forward to working together on this Habitat house with a diverse group of people who share the dream of making our community a safer, better place for all. Our world and how we relate to others has certainly changed since I got my International Studies degree 12 years ago, but there is comfort in knowing that in spite of our recent history, Muslims, Christians and Jews can still find common ground. I find comfort in this community of people who will not let fear or differences divide them. In learning from each other and working together, we are all reminded of who we really are, of who we want to be, of the kind of community we want to be a part of, of the kind of world we want to build.