A month after the September 11 attacks, workers at Ground Zero found a badly damaged Callery pear tree in the rubble. Its roots were snapped and its branches were burned and broken. Most folks would’ve hauled it off with the rest of the debris. Instead, it was pulled out and handed over to the New York City parks department. They nursed it back to health, and in 2010 it was brought back and planted at the 9/11 Memorial. New, smooth limbs grew out of the old gnarled stumps, and you can still see the line between its past and its present. Every spring it blooms with thousands of little white flowers. God specializes in bringing new life out of what everyone else counted as rubble.
