Each September

       It’s now a few days after Sept. 11.  Every single one of you remembers what you were doing that day seven years ago. I was in India teaching English to Hindu orphans. Here’s what I remember:
      
       The Muslim neighbors who let us watch the 9/11 updates on their television while they served us tea and cookies and apologized for the anonymous attack.  I remember how the Indian community huddled around us protectively. I remember the English-language newspapers speculating how this attack would impact the relations between India and Pakistan over their continuing struggle with the Kashmir border.  I remember the international Time magazine that featured a picture of Gen. Musharrif on the front cover with a banner across him that read “America’s Puppet?” 
      
       I remember two angry men dressed in white robes and turbans following my friends and me while we visited a tourist site in New Delhi, and how I felt their hatred when I intentionally locked eyes with them so they would know that I knew they were following us.
      
       But most of all I remember the Hindu kids at the Christian orphanage, some of whom still wore cords and other identifiers of their caste. A week after the attack, right before we eight volunteers left, they held a ceremony for us to say goodbye. They danced their traditional dances and gave us hand-made ornamentation. Then they knelt down on rough mats over rougher cement and prayed. And prayed. And for the next three hours these little kids, who I’d watch beat each other into the ground for a bit of torn balloon or an empty crayon box, prayed and cried to a deity that many of them probably did not know or understand.  They prayed for our safety, our family and our happiness.
      
       And while these kids cried and prayed for our protection and gave thanks that we spent three weeks with them, I thought about my flight home, my nice house, my car and the restaurants I would be gathering at with my friends to tell them about my India trip.  I peeked at a few of my fellow volunteers and they looked similarly awkward.  Later they said they were thinking the same thing. 
      
       It was the most humbling moment of my life. 
      
       And so I don’t complain when Starbucks raises the price of latte or my homeowner tax increases.  And while most of our country remembers each September with heartbreak and horror (and I do too), a part of me gives thanks for being born in America, for the privileges that we take for granted and for the opportunity to serve.
      
       Get out and give back.