December 7, 1941.  For members of the so-called "Greatest Generation," this is a day, the day of the attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, which will forever remain in their memories.  In the same way, December 8, 1980, is a day which (along with November 22, 1963) will likely forever remain in the memories of their children.  On this night, John Lennon, the former Beatle, was assassinated in front of his apartment building in New York City.  Similarly, September 11, 2011, the day that two jets flew into the World Trade Center Towers in downtown Manhattan, is a day which, although it will certainly remain in the minds of all Americans for many years to come, will perhaps burn most strongly in the memories of the Baby Boomers' children.
     Three days, three generations, three seminal events, three transitional moments.  Such moments are the stuff of historical angst and cultural tragedy, the Urstoff that moves hearts and shapes minds, the liminality that bursts categories and horizons, thrusting those who experience them into unexpected perceptions of what life can hold.  They change the way that people see the world.
     As they should.  When such momentous tangles of metaphysical and material horror erupt into our everyday experience, we are often aghast, struck at the seeming capriciousnss and unanswerability of existence.  We weep, we ponder; we wonder why.  We wonder why they happen, we wonder why they have to be.  And we feel helpless that we cannot go back and stop them.
     But this is our reality, our place, our world.  We wander in the shadows of forces and movements over which we have absolutely no control, living out our lives in the umbra of twists and turns of space and time from which we at times wish only to flee, only to find that we cannot.
     Yet, really, should we?  To flee is to deny the facts of existence.  Not that we embrace the tragedy, not that we rejoice that we experience it.  But we understand it is part of living on this planet, part of walking on a globe bent and broken by sin.
     What can we do?  We weep, we wonder, we restore and repair.  Ultimately, however, we trust.  We trust in the fact of a loving God.
     Darkness, be it come in 1941, 1980, or 2001, need not be ascendant.