I switched on the tiny television in the kitchen--a fire in the Big Apple.

It always fascinates me, in this age of television shows and movies, how we have come to depend upon dramatic clues to interpret events --how the narrative line slowly builds, how the background music is ominous, hinting toward danger, and then climaxes in some powerful event. That Tuesday morning, no screen-writer had done his homework, no composer had thought to point toward anything significant. There was no narrator to make sense of the senseless. Silently, and as if in slow motion, a plane flies into a 110-story tower; flames leap and smoke billows; debris scatters; then the screen is divided and the right half shows a smoking Pentagon; Peter Jennings announces a plane has crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

What? What??!!

This movie doesn't make sense. Is this a video game on the screen? "Sim City," perhaps? Bomb that tower! Then that one! And the Pentagon! Score 1800 points!!

I don't know how long I stood motionless at my kitchen counter transfixed before that tiny screen as it began to sink in that this was not a movie and not a game, that this was real life, this was war, and it was happening now, and I was scared. When the towers fell, an agonized voice rose from within me and echoed, "Oh, the humanity!"

Now, two days later, like the debris from those scenes of horror, my thoughts also are still flying, falling, settling, a pile of rubble that still must be sifted for meaning. Like the rescue workers searching for survivors and the FBI searching for clues, my search will take a long time.

Now, only two things I know for sure. One is the profound grief I feel for those who died, those who were injured, those families who did not see their loved ones walk through the doors of their homes that night. I am filled with grief for the victims of this attack, and also I have a new appreciation of what life must be like for those around the world who live daily with terrorism. In an article in the New York Times on the day after the attacks, speaking for those terrorized Israelis, Clyde Haberman asks us Americans, "Do you get it now?" Do we get now what it is like to live with constant threats of imminent violence, the ever-present anxiety and danger and fear that many people live with daily, not only in Israel, but also in Bosnia, Northern Ireland, the Middle East? How we in America have taken our freedom and peace for granted! Yes, now I am beginning to get it.

The second thing I know for sure is my sudden overwhelming admiration and appreciation for the firefighters, police officers, rescue workers, and the countless others who have lent a hand, offered help, comforted the victims, donated blood, put their dedication to service to others before their own welfare--each and every one an every day hero.