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9/11
24/7 First Unitarian Church of Des Moines September 16 & 17, 2006
“For
America 9/11 was more than a tragedy. It
changed the way we look at the world.” Call to Gather We
have set aside this hour… Bringing open hears and minds As
we consider once again
Meditation Intro Five years is a long time… But
not so long ago that we are not still left with
vivid memories Five years is a long time… Not so long ago that we are not still wondering when our next shock may come. Five years is a long time. Not
so long ago that we shouldn’t take some time
to remember… A
picture, a feeling, an understanding perhaps
For today’s service, I will intertwine some elements of the service I led on Sunday September 16, 2001 with some of what these five years have taught me, with the hope that you might have reason to reflect as well.
The members of this church, according to our liberal religious tradition, have granted me “freedom of the pulpit.” Which means that I am given the privilege of speaking the truth as I see it, with the understanding that I do not represent the church as an institution. Only myself in the church.
We come together today with different perspectives of the last five years. My
hope this morning is that no matter where you
were five years ago, And no matter where my truth intersects with yours, There will be space for you in this hall. Space for your confusion, for your anger, for your sorrow, for your disagreement, and for your hope.
In this spirit then, I invite you to a time of meditation, reflection or prayer. This is the meditation I wrote five years ago.
Meditation for 9/16/01Creative Spirit, Spirit of Life, Known by many names spoken and unspoken
We were shaken from our slumber Tuesday morning To news of unthinkable horror To images of terror and a blatant disregard for humanity.
Shock, disbelief, sorrow bulldozed our spirits, Leaving us little room for anything more than anger, grief and mourning.
Everything seems different now.
Our expectation of safety has become anticipation of danger The song of life has been transposed into a dirge of death Our hope for the future has been overwhelmed by our fear of the present.
Everything seems different now.
Planes resuming their patterns above our heads Sound unfamiliar and foreboding
The earth we share seems somehow more fragile Our lives upon its soil seem more tenuous
The space separating us from our loved ones seems greater The need to be together, more urgent
Everything seems different now.
May we discover in the rubble of our previous innocence The building blocks of a new foundation of love and hope. May we take the pain of the past few days and transform it into commitment toward that which is good and lasting in life… Acts of kindness…Love for our neighbor and for the world we share Songs of hope and peace.
Everything seems different now… But life goes on…And so must we. Amen.
Recorded Music “Grim Cathedral” by David Francey (from Skating Rink) “Grim Cathedral” by David Francey (from Skating Rink)
The grim cathedral’s arch alone Towers over dust and stone Monument to flesh and bone Twisted, stark and bare
And the floodlights’ sharp relief Magnifies the weight of grief In the ruins that lie beneath That emptiness of air
The papers from the building flew Hung in the air, in a sky of blue Souls of the newly dead and gone Shone so bright on a Tuesday morn
In the canyon streets, the towering cloud Tumbles on the running crowd Falling like a funeral shroud Darkening the sun
Staggered statues, concrete grey Man as ashes, dust and clay Desolation of the day Falls on everyone
The papers from the building flew Hung in the air in a sky of blue Souls of the newly dead and gone Shone so bright in the morning sun
I watched it on my TV screen Devolution of the dream Images a nightmare scream To wake the likes of me
A charnel house of sight and sound Familiar streets a killing ground The day they brought the buildings down Down for all to see
ReadingToday’s reading is the same reading that was shared in this church the weekend after September 11, 2001. It is an excerpt from “The Judgment of the Birds” by Loren Eiseley.
“...on the edge of a little glade with one long, crooked branch extending across it, I had sat down to rest with my back against a stump. Through accident I was concealed from the glade, although I could see into it perfectly.
The sun was warm there, and the murmurs of forest life blurred softly away into my sleep. When I awoke, dimly aware of some commotion and outcry in the clearing, the light was slanting down through the pines in such a way that the glade was lit like some vast cathedral. I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the long shaft of light, and there on the extended branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak.
The sound that awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestling’s parents, who flew helplessly in circles about the clearing. The sleek black monster was indifferent to them. He gulped, whetted his beak on the dead branch for a moment and sat still. Up to that point the little tragedy had followed the usual pattern. But suddenly, out of all that area of woodland, a soft sound of complaint began to rise. Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents.
No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there in some instinctive common misery, the bereaved and the unbereaved. The glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries. They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer. There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew. He was a bird of death.
And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable.
The sighing died. It was then I saw the judgment. It was the judgment of life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented. I will never hear it again in notes so tragically prolonged. For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence. There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush. And finally, after painful fluttering, another took the song, and then another, the song passing from one bird to another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil thing were being slowly forgotten. Till suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats joyously together as birds are known to sing. They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful. They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven. In simple truth they had forgotten the raven, for they were the singers of life, and not of death.”
Sermon At a minister’s gathering earlier this year, I heard one of my colleagues, the Rev. Laurel Hallman, reflecting on her 25 years as a UU minister. She spoke of how any minister’s vision of her work is tied in many ways to the events of world during her first few years of ministry. For Laurel, the events that forged her sense of ministry were the rise of women ministers in our movement and the explosion of the AIDS epidemic that had an enormous impact in the congregations and communities she and her colleagues in the early 80’s served.
As Laurel spoke, I reflected on the world events that ushered in my own ministry. I was ordained on Mother’s Day 2001 and began serving here in August. My first Sunday in the pulpit of this auditorium was September 9. I remember that service well. We had a blending of the waters ritual, I gave a sermon about my first few weeks at the church, and our special guest UU musician Jim Scott led us in sing-alongs about peace and hope.
The following Tuesday I arrived at church a little after 10. It was a stunningly beautiful September morning. Caroline Adler met me in the parking lot asking me “Isn’t it awful?” That was the first I had heard about the horrible events that would soon be known as 9/11. We held a service that night in this room where I read some poetry and offered impromptu meditations and prayers, we shared an open mic from which many gave voice to their anger, sorrow, and fear, and I tried to figure out what in the world I could do or say that might bring hope even when, it felt like, the world was caving in.
That Sunday, I preached a sermon in which I mourned our collective loss, but in which I also questioned an over-abundance of patriotism and suggested that rather than flying American flags, we might more appropriately be flying flags with images of the earth, for it was clear to me this crisis was one with global implications. I suggested that, as the battleground of the attacks, the United States would have a chance to show some true leadership to the world, and I hoped that we would be led not by our anger but with all our faculties fully engaged. I offered a quote from Albert Camus that still seems poignant: “On the whole,” he wrote, “[humans]… are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. …They are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.”[i]
I then expressed my hope for clear-sightedness in our response to these attacks, for it was likely that our nation’s response would set the course for the next epoch of our shared history.
As I think back on the five years since I preached that sermon, I am struck by how much I was able to say then, even in the midst of my own grief and confusion, that I still believe now. I still question the link of the events of 9/11 with patriotism, especially as other acts of terror have been perpetrated by Al-Qaida (and others) in other parts of the world. I still hope for U.S. foreign policy that is less driven by anger and fear and is more based in clear-sightedness, even as I acknowledge that one person’s idea of clear-sightedness is oftentimes another’s idea of muddled thinking. And I still bemoan the vice of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything…no matter which branch of fundamentalist thought may be leading the way: Islamic, Christian, Secular, Capitalistic, Pro-American, Anti-American, pro-war or even anti-war. I yearn for clear-sightedness that perhaps will always be beyond our grasp…but that should be our ultimate goal. Clear-sightedness that is more interested in discovering elusive truth than in affirmation of one’s pre-dispositions. Clear-sightedness that does not discount the dangers in the world, but that puts those dangers in a larger context where they belong…the interdependent web, you might say…where we are not only able to see the “evildoers” who may threaten us…but the ways in which our own actions and reactions may be leading us toward our own kind of evil.
A few weeks ago, Susan and I had the chance to visit New York City for the first time since we lived there ten years ago. Neither of us, when we were residents of the city, spent much time near the World Trade Center, but we both wanted to visit the site where it once stood. I suppose it was a pilgrimage of sorts. A quiet Sunday morning trip to hallowed ground. A chance to reflect on what was and what is.
We boarded the subway and headed from our old neighborhood in the East Village to the southern tip of the island. I wanted to feel something with this trip, so I opened myself to whatever would rise up in me. As the train rattled along the tracks underneath the Manhattan streets, I gazed at our fellow passengers and wondered how many had lived in New York at the time of the destruction. Metal screeched on metal and the voice on the intercom crackled “next stop World Trade Center.” I tried to imagine the Tuesday morning five years ago, when people had been riding a train just like this one underneath the ground while chaos was just about to break out up above.
Upon our arrival the conductor announced that the World Trade Center site was at the exit at the front of the train. He was used to directing folks. I was reminded that Susan and I were not alone in our pilgrimage.
Once we passed from the old station into the new, the feelings I had been trying to conjure in the subway quickly evaporated in the open space. There was a sanitary newness to everything…nothing like the New York City that I remembered. Where the towers had stood was circled with a tall fence, through which not much could be seen other than a big construction site. As little has actually been built yet, the site felt more like an archeological dig than a place where other buildings will one day stand.
On one side of the fence, a large picture display of the events of 9/11 and the clean up that followed had drawn a crowd, through which mingled street merchants hawking photo booklets. Most people there honored the posted signs that suggested no sales of memorabilia should take place at this site, out of respect for the victims and their families. And yet, the voices of the salesmen wafted through the air like hot dog vendors at a baseball game.
Back in the station, along a wall opposite the site, a different kind of picture display had been hung. Called “Art for Heart” it was a collection of one-foot-square paintings made by children who had lost a parent to the events of 9/11. The paintings were the product of art therapy sessions over the past few years, which were intended to help these young people express feelings of loss and grief.
The square paintings were arranged into bigger squares, like big quilts of elementary school art. Except, of course, the subject matter was far more poignant than what is typically found in children’s classrooms. Some pictures showed violence: planes crashing into the towers, flames, streaks of red. But mostly, the pictures were like valentines. Messages of affection and remembrance for loved ones, covered with hearts and rainbows. And some theology was expressed, too. Words about heaven, God, “going home”. Each square was its own sermon, but each preached similar themes: that family connections are deeper than we may realize…that love transcends loss, even as it can’t completely fill the void…that no matter our age or our circumstances, each of us will one day face the pain of losing someone we love, maybe even at the hands of violence, and we will have to grapple with that, as part of our very humanity is the contrast between holding on to life and letting go.
I was overwhelmed by the loss and sorrow expressed in these paintings and I felt connected to the events of 9/11 more than I had in many years. I was reminded of the “desolation of the day” five years ago and the days that followed. These child artists had been turned into victims, just as their parents had been…turned into victims at the hands of an ideology that “fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.” Here again in these paintings was the clear expression that an “intangible ethic had been violated” five years ago by a small band of death posing as religious apostles.
As I stood at that display, I felt disgust that the people most directly impacted by the events of 9/11 were innocent victims—people who were merely going about their lives, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, no matter how deeply I felt the losses these young people had shared in their artwork, I felt some shame at this display, too. My stomach churned as I imagined all the innocent people in Iraq who have felt the brunt of their own losses at the hands of violence since our military operations began there more than three years ago…losses that are no less powerfully felt by these individuals than by victims’ families in this country. People who were merely going about their lives when our own military rained down a shower of explosives glibly referred to as “shock and awe.” People who continue to feel the brunt of being caught in the middle of U.S. policy that history has shown was misguided from the start and that has resulted in the removal of a brutal regime, yes…but also the deaths of over 40,000 civilians.[1] 40,000 innocent people. Women, men, girls and boys. More than 10 times the number of innocent Americans who lost their lives on 9/11.
Now I know I am going into dangerous territory to proclaim that our military intervention in Iraq was misguided. And to claim 40,000 innocent Iraqis have died as a result of U.S. policy is controversial, too. The numbers can be disputed, for sure. After all, it is easy to dispute numbers when we don’t want to hear them…or when we can’t do the tally ourselves. And the merits of the mission can be triumphed as well as its follies revealed. And yet, I don’t think any of us can successfully argue that there have not been unintended casualties as a result of our involvement in Iraq…loss of both American and Iraqi lives…which begs the question, “How many of these collaterally damaged families are too many?”
Regardless of our politics, I don’t think that any of us could persuasively claim that the bravado and hubris of our President and his administration doesn’t look ridiculous in hindsight. Or that the primary stated motivation of the war, a motivation developed from “faulty intelligence” in more ways than one, was accomplished before the first bomb was dropped, since we couldn’t disarm Saddam Hussein from the weapons of mass destruction that his regime simply didn’t have.
Or that, even if the administration contends they have never suggested that Iraq was in any way responsible for 9/11, the connection has been made subtly enough so that a high percentage of Americans, if not a majority, still believe, even these many years later, that Iraq was somehow involved.
Now, let me assure you, my reflection today is meant to be a sermon, not a stump speech. I do have a spiritual purpose with this service, and I find little of spiritual value in merely attacking our leaders, or their policies, which often leads to the malaise that leaves many of us to falsely believe that it simply doesn’t matter what we ordinary citizens say or do. And I don’t want to imply that this is a problem that stems from one political perspective. The fact is that a majority of Democrats and Republicans in our Congress gave the president the authority to begin this war and most have done little to stop it or even to question it.
I confess, I, too, have said little publicly to question the war. I preached a sermon the Sunday before the war began in which my apparent bias against it was clear enough that I received a few rebukes from members of the church…and my father, too, who after reading an e-mailed copy, called to warn me that I didn’t know enough about history to question the need for this war. Maybe he was right. But I don’t regret showing my bias at that time, even if I did ruffle some feathers. In my heart, I have believed all along that this war was wrong…at least in the way we approached it, with unilateral “we don’t give a damn about world opinion” bravado. But since it began, I have mostly avoided the subject from the pulpit. But I think, now, that I was wrong to do that. Not because I needed to exploit the privilege of my position to grandstand my own political perspective (fun though that might be). But because 9/11 continues to be deeply woven into the fabric of our lives no matter how much we may want to forget it. And what has followed 9/11 needs to be questioned and debated and not simply accepted as a foregone conclusion, regardless of our political persuasions.
9/11 was not a one-time event. I contend it colors nearly everything we do.
Is there anyone who can fly on a commercial jet and not think of 9/11? Political speeches are filled with references to 9/11. Fear is stoked by cable news networks that continually ponder the latest doomsday scenarios. And Americans remain painfully divided on our perceptions of the motives and battle plan of a war for which most of us have had to contribute very little…at least directly.
Still, indirectly, we have sacrificed more than we may realize. The cost of our military intervention in Iraq is now over $315,000,000 and rising. Do an Internet search on the “cost of war” and see for yourself how those dollars could have been spent on the things that Americans need, like health care, better public education, alleviation of poverty. As President Dwight Eisenhower said 50 years before the war in Iraq began, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
I am well aware that a desire for safety is a prime motivation for our efforts in Iraq. That when President Bush said on Monday “9/11 was more than a tragedy. It changed the way we look at the world,” he was talking about the need to be proactive in our effort to protect ourselves against what we can all agree is a dangerous and deadly threat to life as we know it. My concern continues to be that the war in Iraq seems to have actually made us, and the world, less safe. And that the brave men and women serving on behalf of this nation were betrayed by an association between terrorism and Iraq that simply didn’t exist.
I did some research on that children’s Art Display in New York. The first batch of 115 pictures was painted in June of 2003. The first place these pictures were publicly displayed was for our troops in the Middle East.[2] Love notes from children to their dead parents shared with soldiers in a land that had nothing to do with 9/11.
Saturday morning, member Karen Herwig forwarded me a story of a California church that is being investigated by the IRS as the result of an anti-war sermon preached just before the 2004 election. I applaud the IRS for investigating any church that inappropriately suggests to its congregants how to vote or even where to stand on the issues. But I have to wonder, if a minister taking an anti-war stand is seen as a threat, what is the point of religion? Aren’t war and its effects religious concerns? If our leaders can take us into battle without a word of rebuke or even question from the churches, then where in the world can we acknowledge the social and spiritual consequences of war? How else shall we heed the teachings of our religious texts that suggest peacemaking as life’s highest calling?
I began this sermon with the notion that my ministry would be forever tied with the events of 9/11 and our country’s response. And, I think that is true, just as it is true for each of us, in the various ministries of our lives. As the fear and anger provoked by the events of 9/11 continues to fester in our American consciousness, I think we all have to reason to reflect on the last five years and to thoughtfully consider those that will follow. My reflections this week brought me back to the days immediately following the attacks…and I yearn for what we have lost. Not just the life and the illusion of safety. But the care and concern that Americans showed for each other after the attacks…and that the world showed to us…the ways in which we were globally reconnected to our shared lives, regardless of our religion or our politics or even our class. What happened to that America? I contend it is our responsibility, as religious people who claim in our principles to affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of life, the inherent worth and dignity of all people, and the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all, to help us reclaim what we have lost, and to strive for an America that leads the world by example…not by double standards and bravado. An America that leads by being the singers of life…not of death. An America that sees its fate tied to the entire world’s fate…not just to our own interests.
One more story.
On Friday, just before I began writing this sermon, I paid a visit to the Central Iowa Healing Field. This is the temporary display of nearly 3000 American flags on the corporate campus of Homesteaders Life in West Des Moines to memorialize those who lost their lives in the events of 9/11. I had heard from people who had visited before me that the display provoked some powerful emotions, and my visit did the same for me. Attached to each flag was a yellow ribbon with the name and age of a victim and where he or she was at the time. Holding the names of these innocent people in my hands was sobering, especially when I came across the ribbon for an 11-year-old boy who had been on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center, which brought forth a torrent of grief for me. My heart goes out to all who lost loved ones on that tragic day. And yet, the most powerful experience I had at the Healing Field, was my realization of how little healing I thought it represented. The use of American flags to represent lives struck me as oppressive and, frankly speaking, inappropriate. Meanwhile, the location of the display, right next to the interstate, insured a soundtrack for my visit of loud vehicles rushing past…a noisy reminder of what has tied us to the Middle East far more than any terrorist attack ever could. Our insatiable thirst for oil. We need some clear-sightedness, my friends. And we need it now.
In his speech on Monday night, President Bush said, [the war] “will not be over until either we or the extremists emerge victorious.”
To which I respond, let us be about the task of doing all we can to insure that we do not become, in our own way, extremists ourselves.
Our president also said, “America did not ask for this war. And every American wishes it were over. So do I.”
May the days, months, and years ahead give us reason to believe the President meant what he said. Not just for our sake. But for the world’s.
Closing Words (Anwar Fazal) “We all drink from one water We all breathe from one air We rise from one ocean And we live under one sky
Remember We are one
The newborn baby cries the same The laughter of children is universal Everyone’s blood is red And our hearts beat the same song
Remember We are one
We are all brothers and sisters Only one family, only one earth Together we live And together we die
Remember We are one
Peace be on you Brothers and Sisters Peace be on you.”
[1] www.iraqbodycount.net [2] http://www.renewnyc.com/displaynews.aspx?newsid=a21a00b3-5e63-45cc-967a-c6582c562551
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