FORGIVENESS AT GROUND ZERO

A minister serving near the World Trade Center records what he saw and endured.

Harris, co-author of The Forgive for Good Recovery Workbook (2025), was delighted by his April 2001 appointment to historic Saint Paul’s Chapel in Lower Manhattan, which George Washington attended after his inauguration and had long lacked full-time clergy. Born in a small town in South Carolina, Harris writes that he was encouraged to “to attract the ‘Gen X’ crowd. A rich mixture of artists and musicians, workers in the financial district, families, and singles of all sorts.” And then came the attack of September 11. After the first day’s exodus, police, firefighters, and rescue workers poured in. The following eight months were spent clearing debris and collecting the remains of the dead. Under Harris’ supervision, “the little chapel that stood” became a sanctuary providing food, rest, counseling, and consolation for workers from a small army of volunteers supported by businesses, charities, and individuals across the nation. A year later, he no longer worked at the chapel. “The euphoria was fleeting, tainted by grievances I couldn’t let go of, memories of subterfuge I couldn’t forgive, nightmares I couldn’t shake,” he recalls. “I was stuck in my grievance story, bound by chains of resentments that threatened to choke the life out of me.” The “most painful act of disrespect” came when he was left out of a documentary on St. Paul’s work. “I was not in a single frame,” he writes. Looking back, Harris admits that his superiors were good people and focuses on his own weaknesses—a yearning for recognition, an unforgiving anger at those who denied him, and a touch of post-traumatic stress disorder. “I couldn’t resist the temptation to turn my story into a victim’s narrative,” he writes. The author describes two decades of spiritual collapse, dismissal from the priesthood, dead-end jobs, bankruptcy, and depression. Supported by friends and a search for enlightenment, however, he set out on a “path to healing.”

An affecting memoir about moving beyond blame.