Roz Hamlett: We Must Not Succumb to the ‘Banality of Brutality’

Twenty years ago, I stood in my kitchen in Baltimore and watched in disbelief as two planes hit the Twin Towers. Days later, I was compelled to go to Ground Zero myself to bear witness to the crime. I won’t ever forget the eerily silent procession of stunned residents walking slowly through the white ash of pulverized cement, steel, drywall, window glass that covered everything. We breathed in dust containing the remains of the people killed in the attack, along with the hair and skin cells of those who had worked in the World Trade Center decades before. The mood felt sacred, and we were congregants receiving communion together.