Larry Schor began What Have I to Give?: A Journey to Ground Zero by noting the irony and paradox involved.  Because he doesn’t know when his “last lecture” could be, he attempts to treat all of his discourses as if they might be so - meaningful, relevant, and collaborative.  He proceeded to present a reflection on his experience in late September in New York, where he volunteered as a Red Cross disaster mental health worker.

Larry addressed his research interests in depression and self-destruction and asked, “If psychology doesn’t heal suffering, what good is it?”  Addressing his own feelings on 9-11, he quoted Paul Simon: “I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered / I don’t have a friend who feels at ease / I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered / Or driven to its knees.”  Larry says that the felt neither a victim nor a hero at Ground Zero, but rather a witness: “How else can we learn about suffering without seeing it firsthand?”

Larry was assigned the late-night shift at the Respite Center about a block from the Twin Towers ruins.  Upon arrival for his first shift, he “could smell, taste, and see it.”  To quote the Pink Floyd: “There’s an unceasing wind that blows through this night / There’s dust in my eyes that blinds my sight / There’s a silence that speaks so much louder than words / Of promises broken.”  Larry “learned the unspeakable horror of what is true” and, in an effort to prevent anguish on the part of the rescue workers, screened the mailbags, ousting out the cards from children and spouses reading, “Good luck finding all the missing people.  Don’t forget, we’re counting on you.”

Larry did eventually visit the ruins of the Twin Towers with a police officer.  He describes, “It neither looked nor felt real.  But it seemed almost alive, as it was all that moved.  Everything else was frozen in time.  It was not like Pearl Harbor at all ... It was Hiroshima.”  Larry had “never felt more alone, standing among the dead on sacred ground,” he says, “Love conquers all, or at least enough.  The rescue workers clung to their humanity as if it was their sole possession.”  Then he quoted Bob Dylan, “Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb / I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from / Don’t even hear the murmur of a prayer / It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.”  Just as the therapist is affected by his clients, the rescue workers’ suffering became Larry’s own.

Larry also pointed out that although at the time this seemed like the worst thing that could ever occur, it is the recovery that has dumbfounded him.  “Is today more like 10 or 12 September?,” he asks.  The remainder of the hour was spent discussing this issue.  At the end, Larry wrapped up with the sentiment, “Be kind to each other, and yourselves.  And Thank You.”