As I walked through the museum I had expected reverence like that I felt at Arlington Cemetery or at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. In New York there was constant chatter. Perhaps it was just today's group of visitors. The last steel beam was ceremoniously removed from ground zero and is now at home in the Memorial Museum. There are other huge steel and concrete remnants of the Twin Towers along with the survivor stairs that withstood the fires and building collapse--stairs that led far too few (and yet many) to safety. Artists were invited to render their view of the color of the sky on that beautiful September morn, and there is a wall of their differing eyes of color with Virgil's words "No day shall erase you from the memory of time." The wall is a symbol of how differently and how similarly people see the world around us.
The museum tells the story of what was and what is and what will be. I left thinking about the people lost, those who survived, those who risked their lives to save others. I stopped again at St. Paul's Chapel which still stands strong in the shadows of these new buildings. The chapel also reflects the stories of those who worked tirelessly to search and rescue and recover--it was a place of refuge from the horror of their work and a place of rest and of love. I'm glad I spent this day of remembering and commend the museum to you if you have not been.