9/11 remembered
Trauma connections Grace at ground zero Martha Jacobi, a pastoral psycho-
“It changed my life and my
therapist in private practice and a pastor of St. Luke Lutheran Church, Manhattan, is an expert in trauma. Today she still helps New Yorkers
post-Sept. 11, as she did right after the attack. She also consults with an organization that helps families heal from the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., a suburban community 80 miles from ground zero. Jacobi was invited by the Resiliency Center of Newtown, an organization related to Tuesday’s Children, a group formed in the aftermath of Sept. 11. “A noticeable number of people
in the Newtown area also have a connection to Sept. 11,” Jacobi said. “In both cases this is complex existential trauma. It’s the kind of deeply personal, deeply communal tragedy that rattles people to their core, that shakes up any and all previous assumptions of how life should be. “9/11 was on a large scale and
affected people all over the world. If you take that energy and compress it, it’s the same type of energy but held within a small town. The people who died there were young children and their teachers, and there’s a profound feeling that this is not how life is supposed to be.” Reflecting on her counseling
vocation, Jacobi said: “This is my calling. This point has stayed with me since 9/11 and keeps me grounded. I stand on Christ and in Christ—this is who I am, who God has called me to be. In the parish and in the therapy office, my entire ministry has been focused on helping people heal from trauma.”
By Wendy Healy
ministry. It’s with me every day, wherever I go,” said Stephen Bouman, who was bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod on 9/11 and is now executive director for ELCA Domestic Mission. “For the last 15 years I’ve been
trying to say thank you for this beautiful church,” he said. “What I bring with me to my current job is that I know in my bones what it’s like when this whole church works together.” Although he moved to Chicago
in 2008, Bouman considers himself a New Yorker for life and believes that what he witnessed and learned post-9/11 is relevant today, which he has written about in his book Baptized for This Moment: Rediscovering Grace All Around Us (Acta, 2016). “Now in the world, which I
trace to 9-1-1, our public mood is that we are paralyzed by anger, fear and scarcity,” he said. “My book is about a place for grace- based witness in this world when we can’t even talk about refugees without talking about walls.” In his book, a sequel to Grace
“ I’ve always been an activist, but I learned after 9/11 how shallow that is apart from prayer, liturgy, sacraments and Scripture,” said Stephen Bouman, who was bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod at the time of 9/11.
All Around Us: Embracing God’s Promise in Tragedy and Loss (Augsburg Books, 2007), Bouman calls people “to re-engage the soul of faith in the public arena, to accompany public society with the most graceful and irenic and communal commitments of our traditions.” On this 15th anniversary of 9/11, Bouman wants people to see
the church as God’s answer to ground zero. “I want people to stop and remember that this isn’t a token; those were real lives, real people who died and risked everything following their vocation to rescue,” he said. “In the same way a city came together in ways it never had, so did this church. Where hatred, violence and bad religion tried to take over our turf, God’s love conquers all.”
By Megan Brandsrud
LIVINGLUTHERAN.ORG 29
Photo: Will Nunnally
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