"Come on Up for the Rising"

by: Bill Orr

Sun Sep 11, 2011 at 10:15:00 AM EDT

For me it was not a political leader, but Bruce Springsteen in his song "The Rising" who vividly captured the 9/11 experience and expressed the hope that out of the horror some good would come. It is narrated by a fireman, one of many heroes during this awful moment. He  is climbing the World Trade Center stairs through the fire and chaos, "Lost track of how far I've gone, how high I've climbed. On my back's a sixty pound stone. On my shoulder a half mile line." He sees the dead and injured: "Faces gone, black, eyes burnin' bright. May their precious blood forever bind me." Thinking perhaps about the effect this event will have on so many remaining friends and family members, he speaks of "Sky of memory and shadow. Sky of longing and emptiness." Released a year after the event, the song has as its refrain "Come on up for the rising," suggesting not only the fireman's excruciating climb upward, but also a religious exhortation that people come on up for a renewal or resurrection, life after death, which provides meaning and hope where initially there was only despair.

As we think back on 9/11 I hope we learn a lesson from this flawed response. The courage and spirit of those activists in the ongoing Arab Spring who have been struggling to retake control of their own countries have set a better example on how to respond to tyranny and terrorism. Removing our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq would be one step that might allow us to "Come on up for the rising."