9/11: LIFE GOES ON

Eight years on from the momentous events of 9/11.

I’m sitting in the café of Lighthouse, Poole’s Arts Centre. (The lack of the definite article ‘the’ before ‘Lighthouse’ is very irritating. It is one of those peculiar arty pretences that insists on it just being ‘Lighthouse’, when this feels very uncomfortable, because really it is the Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre for the Arts, rather than an individual who we correctly refer to as, say, Matthew, and not the Matthew; unless of course people are irritated with me – which happens – and they then tend to refer to me as that Matthew. But I digress. I’m sitting in [the] Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre for the Arts.)

I’ve come here to write a sermon (it helps the mind sometimes to work in a different environment) and around me life continues as normal. People drinking coffee; buying tickets for concerts (I’m going to get some for Seth Lakeman in a minute); an arty looking group having an arty meeting. The events of eight years ago are not making much impact here. Life goes on.

My oldest daughter starts at our church youth group this evening. Life goes on. And life goes fast. Where did those 12 years go?

Some things last longer than expected. I had to finally throw away a favourite t-shirt this morning, that I have been wearing for the past ten years (not continually, you’ll understand). I know I’ve had it for ten years because I got it on a trip to South Africa in 1999. It was the first time I had taken a group of young people out there – young people from the church youth group I was leading at the time. One of the lads (who is now a medical doctor and a fine young man, married to another doctor) bought a Quicksilver t-shirt (we were staying by a surfers beach) but then spilt blackcurrant juice all over it. So he bought another. But the juice washed out of the original, and I bought it from him and have been wearing it since. I didn’t expect it to last ten years.

We have some camping gas bottles that we have been using for 12 years. I know we got them in 1997 because we bought all our camping gear the summer before my oldest daughter was born. Those bottles have done several bible weeks, holidays in France, and local camping trips. Every time we use them we say, “Surely they’re not going to last this time – we really should get them refilled.” But, like the widows oil, they never seem to run dry.

Most things don’t last as long as we expect though. At least, it feels that life goes very fast. Eight years since 9/11. A daughter in the youth group. Former members of my youth group becoming responsible members of society.

As the Teacher puts it in Ecclesiastes, A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains for ever.