The Back Room: A Sermon

Grace Cathedral, San Francisco (September 23, 2001)

I was in New York on September 11, 2001, on a book tour, did a reading in Union Square on the 10th, and the next morning the world came crashing down. I was in an apartment on Riverside Drive and heard a plane flying down the Hudson River, very low, and a few minutes later, the news came. The tour was canceled for a week, then resumed. I’d accepted an i…