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Tuesday, Sept. 11th was
simply a horrendous day. We didn't get very much work
done, needless to say, as we watched well-known buildings
burn and collapse and waited for the next disaster.
My
friend Ron watched the Pentagon burn from his 8th floor
flat in the Cairo near Dupont Circle. It took my friend
Mark over an hour to ride his bike home from his job at
the Environmental Protection Agency when they closed the
government and evacuated all the buildings -- usually a
10 minute bike ride. And much more tragically, an old
friend worked on the 89th floor of one of the World Trade
Center towers and I have not heard from him or been able
to reach him.
I grew up in New York. I love to drive to New York from
New Jersey or Long Island and watch the skyline loom up
across the river, punctuated mid-town by the Empire State
Building and the lovely graceful Chrysler Building and
anchored way downtown by the two huge towers of the World
Trade Center. The anchor is gone now. I don't know if it
will be easy to look at my hometown skyline again.
Here in my new home I often take a route that passes right
by the Pentagon on my way downtown, especially if I am
going to MCC DC. The gaping hole and blackened walls of
that side of the Pentagon will be hard to look at.
And though we are not yet completely sure, it appears that
these atrocities were committed by religious fanatics.
It is important to remember that the last time we as a
people felt like this, unknown terrorists had blown up a
Federal building in Oklahoma City. The assumption was that
it was the Arabs, that Islam was somehow responsible. But
it turned out to be a lanky, blond-headed American boy,
helpfully trained by our own military. Go figure.
Jumping to conclusions is the only exercise some Americans
get. But we can't let our assumptions control our actions.
Not all followers of Islam are terrorists. The terrorists
are the real heretics, twisting the Koran to their own
perverted uses. Sort of like Christians can do when it
comes to homosexuality.
Despite all the horrors America has unarguably committed
and the wrong-headedness of some of our leaders, it is
hard to look at all this disaster and feel anything but
fierce pride and patriotism. I hope that feeling doesn't
translate into American horrors against whatever Arab or
Muslim country can be connected with the attacks on us, and
especially on individual Arab or Muslim people.
The President's missile defense shield seems a little silly
now -- our enemies don't need missiles when any handy
American Airlines 767 filled with jet fuel can get through
to it's target without even a fighter jet being scrambled
to try to stop it. Our strongest symbols of American
financial and military might can be shattered not by
missiles or nuclear bombs, but by determined fanatics
with knives on a commercial airliner.
In stark contrast to the craven acts of knife-wielding
barbarians there is another face of America. It is seen
in the bravery, commitment, love, and compassion of
thousands of people who are groping through the rubble,
sometimes with their bare hands, trying to find any left
alive in the huge pile of junk that used to be the World
Trade Center. It is in the thousands lining up to give
blood. It is the millions who are thronging their
churches, synagogues, and mosques to pray. I like to
think that this is the true face of America and indeed the
world.
Even people of the strongest faith are tempted to ask,
Where is God? How can a loving God allow this to happen?
Where is God in all this?
It is my belief that we CAN see the hand of God in this
situation. But not in the disaster itself. God is not
found in the disasters that befall us. God is found in
our response to those disasters. God didn't hijack and
crash four jet airplanes. But God does inspire our loving,
caring responses the rescue workers, the police and fire
fighters, the medical personnel, the heroes and heroines
on the scene in New York and at the Pentagon. And God is
found in us ordinary people who stop to grieve and pray,
who give blood, who light a candle.
Similarly, God will not be seen in the Americans who throw
bricks through mosque windows, or who vandalize Islamic
centers, or who shoot up Arab gathering places, or who
terrorize American citizens of Arab descent or Islamic
faith. God will be seen in those of us who stretch out a
hand of love to those who are different from us, even
Arabs, even Muslims. God will be seen in our acts of
kindness, forbearance, and understanding.
That isn't to say that I don't want justice done for those
who supported the horror rained down upon our great nation
that day. I do. I want those responsible found and
punished to the fullest extent of the law. Americans crave
justice in this case. I hope that we also remember that
judgement is God's.
Life will go on in our country. New York will rebuild its
shattered financial district. The Pentagon will be
rebuilt. But there is something else that has been taken
from us, something that will not so easily be rebuilt.
Our sense of safety. Our innocence. Our belief that our
strong, powerful, dominant country is somehow invulnerable.
I disagree that this is a new Pearl Harbor. It isn't,
because there is no identifiable Japan, no single nation
or alliance of nations who have attacked the United States
militarily in an act of war. Perhaps it is more like the
assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo toward the
beginning of the last century -- the act of a lone
assassin. That act evolved into the First World War as
nation after nation got into the act of reprisals and
revenge and retaliation. Soon the whole world was
engulfed.
I am afraid the new century is starting out as badly as
the last one. Senseless and horrific acts of violence
have obliterated hundreds, probably thousands of innocent
people in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. I fear
what will come next.
May God have mercy on us. Grant us your peace.
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Websites:
Also In This Issue:
And Lo, A Star Shone In The East
A Christian Response to the Sept. 11 Tragedy
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