Eleven years ago today my dad and I went fishing. He was retired and I was pastoring a small church in the Milwaukee area. One of the upsides in pastoring that church is that I could see my aging parents once a week. Dad like to shore fish and sometimes he would come to my house which was close to Lake Michigan and we’d head to the lake to wet a line. We never caught anything but that was not the point. It was just good to be with dad and “shoot the baloney” as he would put it. After fishing we’d go to lunch and continue the baloney shooting. There is nothing remarkable about any of this except for the date. It was 9\11\2001.

We had finished fishing, again having caught nothing, and got in the car. I turned the radio on and neither of us could believe our…