NEW YORK — A surreal perimeter of reverence surrounds Ground Zero, buffering the site from the noisy city around it.

        Even the most aggressive photographer, amateur or professional, works quietly in this area so as not to disturb the thousands who make the procession each day, walking slowly from vista to vista to peer into the huge void in Lower Manhattan.

        On Saturday, when the last 50-foot section of the World Trade Center's facade was brought crashing down — it will be saved for a memorial at the site — a Mennonite church choir from Antrim, Ohio, contributed to the solemnity by singing gentle songs of spiritual comfort and giving away compact discs to any person who reached a hand toward them.

        The choir recorded the music in October specifically for the CD, which is not for sale. It's a gift to the people of New York and was organized by Christian Aid Ministries of Berlin, Ohio.

        “Singing seems to touch the hearts of people,” said Jonathan Stolzfus, who's a member of the ministry group.

Ministry to workers

        The 40 members of the Antrim Mennonite Choir spent most of Saturday at the corner of Fulton and Broadway, near the makeshift memorial to victims that has grown up on the iron fence outside St. Paul's Chapel.

        They sang “Rock of Ages” and “Silent Night,” and to one approaching from the south, the music sounded as if it were coming from inside the church.

        St. Paul's is closed to the public, as a sign makes clear on the sidewalk.

        “Our ministry right now is to all of the courageous relief workers who are at ground zero,” the sign reads.

        The workers walked in and out of the church through a guarded gate. Inside there were chiropractors and counselors, part of the wave of human assistance that has poured in from across the country.

        The Rev. Scott Keele, chaplain of the Broken Arrow (Okla.) Police Department, left his suburban Tulsa home at 3 a.m. Central time Saturday morning for a flight that stopped at the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport before making its way to Newark International.

        He had spent a week in late September counseling emergency workers, firefighters and police at Ground Zero, and he was back for a second week of duty scheduled to begin today.

        “They're doing their jobs,” said the Rev. Mr. Keele, who also worked with police and firefighters in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. “They haven't taken the time to take care of themselves.”

        In a briefcase he carried more than 400 printed e-mail messages of thanks and encouragement from Americans that he would give to relief workers at the site.

Relighting candles

        The homemade memorial outside St. Paul's Chapel evokes great emotion. Friends helped a young woman away by the arm late Saturday when she fell crying to her knees.

        A man and a woman each signed the top red stripe of a U.S. flag that bears hundreds of messages.

        “Italy,” they wrote, “will never forget.” Beside the flag hung a a banner from residents of Clayton County, Ga. “United We Stand,” it read.

        The sidewalk in front of the fence is lined with candles. Another young woman bent to relight a series of birthday cake candles fashioned to a block of foam rubber and aluminum foil.

A burial ground
        The streets around Ground Zero are amazingly clean, given the images of tons of debris snaking through them after the collapse of the twin towers. Many adjacent buildings, with their facades stripped by the crumbling buildings, are being repaired. They've been wrapped in giant netting, and the netting is parted to reveal small Bobcat tractors working on upper floors, pushing papers and other debris onto the ground below.

        For every person taking photographs, 10 are not. The site is a burial ground, temporary or permanent, for thousands of people who lost their lives that morning and whose remains have not or will not be found.

        At the corner of Barclay and Church, at the eastern corner of the site, the faithful walked up the steps of St. Peter's Church — the oldest Catholic church in New York — for the start of 4 p.m. Mass. Onlookers took turns standing at the railing of the church porch to see into the site above a fence. The demolished skeleton of Building Six was what they saw, a police officer said.

        Craig Nelson, of Hartford, Conn., made his first visit to the site Saturday. He had ridden the New York City subway beneath the World Trade Center the weekend before the attack.

        “I didn't expect all the people to be here,” he said. He paused. “When you see the enormity of the destruction, you realize why we're doing what we're doing in Afghanistan.”

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