Today is the 13th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that we now refer to simply as 9/11.
It is the sort of day that people want to commemorate, even if widely-practiced commemorative customs and rituals haven’t quite fallen into place yet.
How do you mark 9/11?
I listen to this song, and, if the day permits, the entire album.
As the Rev. Patrick J. Kelly wrote in 2003 article for America, the lyrics of “The Rising” allude to resurrection.
The refrain, “Come on up for the rising,” suggests, as does much else in the song, new life and resurrection. When asked in a recent interview by Ted Koppel of “Nightline” if it was the resurrection he had in mind, Springsteen responded, “Yeah, well, I’m a good…. Well, I was a good Catholic boy when I was little, so those images for me are always very close, and they explain a lot about life.” He then elaborated: “What I was trying to describe, one of the most powerful images of the 11th, that I’d read in the paper, some of the people coming down were talking about the emergency workers who were ascending. And you know, that was just an image I felt left with, after that particular day. The idea of those guys going up the stairs, up the stairs, ascending, ascending. I mean you could be ascending a smoky staircase, you could be in the afterlife, moving on.”
Have you developed a way of commemorating 9/11?