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At noon on September 11 the chapel of the Interchurch Center at 475 Riverside Drive was filled with people who didn’t know the fate of loved ones, and people who could not get home, as Manhattan was sealed off. We sang “O God Our Help in Ages Past,” “Precious Lord,” “When the Storms Are Raging.” The Interchurch Center and the Metro Synod office of the ELCA remained open as an emergency shelter. In the chapel I asked people to name folks on their hearts and in their concern.

These past days the church has been open. People have come flowing in bearing pictures of “the disappeared,” sent by St. Vincent’s Hospital two blocks away, where the chapel was overwhelmed and the need had become too taxing for a staff readying for the arrival of the victims—victims who never came in anything like the expected numbers.