From Anger to Love – 10th Anniversary of the Attack on the World Trade Center
By Charles Rush
Sept 11, 2011
1 John 4: 16-19
[ Audio
(mp3, 8.5Mb) ]
is true that ten years ago, our whole country was attacked as one, but we haven't talked too much about it here in Summit NJ because it was so personal and we went through it together. I remember Dave Bunting calling me to come to his office and see what was on TV right away. Not long after that, someone else called me from World Trade 7 to describe all that was falling in front of him.
One of our
neighbors reportedly called home that morning from the top floors of World
Trade 2 to leave a farewell message and he got the answering machine. He said a
brief word of love to his wife and children. At the end of it, he asked his
young son to watch over his sisters and his mother and he closed with those
awful words you never want to say, “You're the man of the house now.”
I remember
Michael Radutzky getting a call from one of our neighbors whose husband was
missing. Their kids and our kids grew up together, soccer teams, sleep over's…
Michael used all of his connections at ‘60 Minutes' to open as many doors as he
could, so that the missing man's wife could expedite her search for him. There
was so much unknowing. Should we keep calling his cell phone or would it wear
out the battery? Even at the time, you knew it was a futile question but no one
would dare suggest it out loud. The iron workers really thought they might find
someone, only to later report that everything was pulverized. I remember one of their kids being at our
house in that prolonged waiting, unknowing.
Mayor Long, God
rest his soul, called me to stand at the train station to offer counseling. I
remember thinking that no one wanted counseling that day, but I went. The EMT
people were hosing off commuters as they got off the train covered in soot. I
don't believe I actually uttered a word but I remember seeing several of you
that day, exchanging a touch as you headed on your way to your children, go
home, and get under the covers I suspect.
I remember the
next day, no one able to get to work in lower Manhattan, so literally almost
all the town walking around as families checking on each other, just being
families. People touching, hugging, being neighbors with each other, a
beautiful community.
I remember the
prayer service that night on the Green. The entire Green was covered with people. We got to the pastoral prayer.
Father Harahan made space for people to call out names of people they hadn't
heard from, people they were concerned about, people they wanted to pray for.
John, Celia, Kevin, Maria… It went on and on and on…
I remember
being at a Fundraiser for Children's Specialized Hospital that was held at the
old train terminal at Liberty State Park, right across from Ellis Island in
October. No one was much in the mood for a fund-raiser party but it had been on
the books. Right at the end of cocktail hour, the Harlem Boys Choir got up to
sing a couple songs that they had planned. As you looked at them, behind them
was a huge glass window, and through that glass window, as the lights dimmed,
the World Trade Center was lit up. You could see the firemen and iron works
standing on that 16 story pile at night working. You could smell the burned,
acrid air. I'm standing there with Squire Knox, God bless his soul, and Dennis
Bushe and a bunch of young Wall Street guys. The boys start singing “America the
Beautiful” and all of us stood there clenching our jaws to keep some composure.
I remember
taking my daughter Annie and my nieces and nephews to see the Macy's Day parade
that year. We were up near the start of the parade, sitting on the hills on
Central Park West. After a couple bands passed by, the New York City Fire
Department came marching behind…. Without a word being spoken, the entire group
of thousands in the park stood up as one while they passed. Men took their hats
off, shedding as they did, a layer of hardened cynicism so characteristic of
New Yorkers before that September…
We were a
changed people. And we could continue into that change, reading as we did,
those wonderful obituaries that the Times so thoughtfully put together,
discovering people that were friends of friends that we had known. I know a
couple times, months later, I would write a note to a widow after reading in
the Times about someone from Princeton that had died that day that I hadn't
heard about until I read the obit. Those obits were so full of touching humanity, the beauty of home, family
and friends.
And we needed
it because there was a lot of subterranean anger that for the most part we
channeled fairly well considering. I suppose it was almost inevitable that our
President would stand on top of the pile with a bull horn and tell the world,
“To the people who did this, we will come get you.” That was what the rest of
the world wanted us to do at some deeper level. They want New Yorkers to have a
confidence that almost swaggers, that this won't faze us, that the leaders of
the Free World will establish order and rough justice.
I was on
Sabbatical the following spring, part of it was in Scotland. I was in a Pub and
the bartender insisted on buying me a beer when he heard from my voice that I
was an American. He gave me his full throated opinion of Al Qaeda that went on
and on for a while and he concluded his speech saying, “And when you Americans
go find that bastard Bin Laden, we Scotsman will be right there behind you.”
In some ways,
it was very gratifying that Osama Bin Laden was killed the way that he was
killed. Let's make no mistake, as Sting says in one of his songs, ‘nothing
comes from violence, nothing ever could.' Violence is not a good thing. But if
you have to use violence, the Navy Seals are the Gold standard in how you do
it.
Never mind the
stealth technology, the incredible organization it takes to coordinate an
attack like that, the article in the New Yorker this summer said that those
guys were not able to train for the mission on a compound like the one they
were attacking which is why the helicopter went down. The actual compound had
walls that created a wind shear they hadn't anticipated, so the first
helicopter went down hard.
Not deterred,
they made their way into the innermost sanctum, chased Bin Laden into his
bedroom, where he was hiding behind his two wives. When the three Seals got in
the room, one of the women ran at them. The Seals had been briefed that it was
likely that the women would approach them and it was likely that they would be
wearing suicide bomb vests. So they shot the first one in the leg to stop her.
Meanwhile, another Seal, rather than kill them, bear hugged both wives and
knocked them to the ground, ready to sacrifice his own life to minimize the
bomb's impact for everyone else. No
bomb. Two shots, they cuffed the wives, let them go, care to minimize
collateral damage, and radioed, “Geronimo, EKIA”- Bin Laden, Enemy killed in
action.
They all got
back safe, almost completely undetected. These guys are cut from a better bolt
of cloth. When the President of the United States met with them, he went to see
them where they live, in a very basic barrack, with folding chairs, cheap
carpet. He was quiet for a moment and you know what he said? “You guys are,
literally, the finest small fighting force that has ever existed in the world.”
The Seals gave
the President the folded American Flag that had been on the Chinook helicopter
that had ferried them to Abbottabad. They all signed the back of it. It will
undoubtedly be the most meaningful gift the President will receive in office. The
author of the article concluded with this, “… the president posed for
photographs with each Seal member and spoke with many of them, but he left one
thing unsaid. He never asked who fired the kill shot, and the Seal's never
volunteered to tell him.” They don't think like that. They have a higher Code
of honor than the rest of us.
I am quite sure
that the rest of the world not only respects that but wants to believe that men
and women, such as these, are leading. They want to believe that order and
right will be restored by men and women like this.
And the end of bin
Laden had a kind of finality to it. It was like that chapter had really come to
a close. Sure, there are a few more Al Qaeda leaders but we've been taking them
out with remarkable effectiveness all summer. There was a political cartoon in
one of the European papers that showed an Al Qaeda guy in the first frame, an
Al Qaeda fighter cracking and crumbling in the second frame, and the third
frame has just his weapon with the inscription, “Now available on eBay”. They
may not be extinct but the hive has been obliterated.
In some ways it
is over, and in other ways not. In other ways, our fears and our anger still
need to be managed and that is not going to go away. Our scripture this morning
has a gritty realism in it as it turns out. “Perfect love casts out fear”. It
knows that fear needs to be corralled, that our anger needs a constructive bit
in order to bridle its destructive capacity.
I learned
something interesting this summer in my reading. Our emotions do not all reside
in the same part of the brain, as you might simplistically imagine. Fear and
anger come from the oldest part of our brain. They evolved first.
Love,
compassion, empathy, understanding, caring… These all reside in the frontal
lobe, the part of our brain to develop only in the past 200,000 years or so.
Apparently, you can actually see it on an MRI screen. If you scare someone,
this region lights up. If you walk across the room and hug someone in sympathy
for their loss, different centers up here light up.
We are actually
physically hard-wired so that we have a built in conflict. Our anxiety and fear
are quicker to start. But, our
compassion, our empathy have to override them. At some level, almost
unconscious, we simply choose to let love and compassion take the lead. We have
to invoke the positive disposition. We have to activate it and in so doing, we
are changed.
I read dozens
of articles this week on the tenth anniversary and they have a certain
consensus themes in them. They confirm what, I suspect, most of us here already
intuit. In some ways, a chapter has been closed, but in most ways the actual
challenges, moral, physical, and spiritual have not. We will have to choose
love in the face of anger and fear going forward. This is just the way it is.
Wendell
Steavenson wrote a piece in the Financial Times that articles by Fouad Ajami
and Martin Peretz in the New Republic.[i]
Steavenson has lived in Cairo, Amman, Beirut, Kabul and Damascus. He's been
interviewing Jihadists for the past decade, trying to understand what motivates
them and why they hate us.
What did we
have to learn? Not very much. He has concluded, soberly, that the Manichean
world view they have, is not going away and there is not much we can do about
it, even if we retreated from the Middle East, which is not going to happen. He
interviewed a young man in Cairo, who has become a friend to him over the past
decade, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, studying for a Master's Degree in
Sharia Law, but also taking a Master's Degree from the American University in
Cairo.
The young man
is still happy about the attack on America, a remark that is typical of the people
that Steavenson has interviewed. The America they hate is not simply specific
foreign policy gaffes, it is America, the symbol of the Modern, secular society
based on the values of the Enlightenment.
And the Islam
they invoke to oppose it is not the institutional religion but a unifying
political force- a surprising number of them were not raised in religious homes
and have never really attended the Mosque.
Steavenson
points out, they seek a utopian unity of Muslims, something pure, something
beyond the mere ‘whim of the majority' that they think characterizes western
democracies, something deeper than opinions, something rooted in conviction.
After a decade,
interviewing hundreds of these young men, some educated, some not, some warm
and personable, he was never really able to engage a dialogue that could brook
the impasse. But, this world view is not going away, certainly not in our
lifetime. All these authors are grateful for the Arab spring that they believe
will help change the discussion broadly across the Middle East. But, people
will hate us for who we are and will continue to pray and organize for our
destruction.
And our internal
moral challenges, a decade on, are far from resolved. When President Bush first
declared a war on Al Qaeda, we weren't really sure who or what it was. Since it
wasn't a regular war against another nation, he used rather broad terms,
declaring war on ‘the enemies of freedom'. We understood why the Executive
branch took that broad brush, even as we also recognized that it is inherently
dangerous because it is an invitation to an open-ended use of force. For the
past ten years, we have been struggling to contain the scope of our military
operations and to define the moral limits on the use of force. When do you
declare victory and return home if your goal is to pre-emptively destroy a “potential
enemy of freedom” before they attack Americans in our country? That moral
question will remain with us for the foreseeable future.
And we
understood, in the aftermath of the attacks, that we needed to use our
technological advantage to monitor communication, if we were going to be successful
in stopping plots preemptively. But all of us recognize that there are inherent
constitutional issues in allowing the National Security Agency broad access to
monitor our phones, our email, what websites we visit. These are fundamental
questions of American values and all of us recognize the inherent abuses that
could occur when we give that scope of authority to an Agency that is
clandestine. We just don't have any real idea of what actually goes on in the
National Security Agency or how they spend the huge budget they have that
employs enough people that they have 18,000 parking spaces at their
headquarters Ft. Meade on the Baltimore/Washington Parkway.
Ten years on,
we now live in a world where in Manhattan in a 25 block area around Wall Street
and in another 25 block area in Midtown, you are never off camera.
Theoretically, all of your electronic communication could be retrieved, all of
your cell phone communication identified. When I was a child, George Orwell and
Aldous Huxley only worried about Big Brother watching us 24/7 in totalitarian
societies. I wonder what they would say now about the world we are creating for
ourselves in the name of safety?
These very real
moral questions will actually only grow in the next decade because they are
fundamental values of freedom- that might have to be suspended in an emergency
when attacked- but when they become institutional and permanent, that is a
different matter.
Or the very
real costs of war, way beyond the simple finances of putting boots on the
ground in Iraq. I'm thinking of the very real spiritual costs that the trauma
of violence inflicts on our young men and women in uniform. I'm thinking of the
very real emotional trauma that it inflicts on their families.
I was forced to
reflect on this since one of my boys served in Afghanistan, and right now our
Congregation has three boys in uniform right now that grew up in our Church.
For the past 9 years, I've found myself reading about the lives of those that
have died on our behalf that we might live our lives in peace and freedom.
These soldiers
are outstanding people, incredible leaders… I read about their families, their
spouses, their children. How do you fill in that void?
I read about
those that come back traumatized, some physically crippled, some spiritually
and emotionally wounded. The very high divorce rates… It is very spiritually
expensive for our families. These fears and anxieties will stay with us.
I feel an
obligation to honor these women and men with our lives in light of what we have
asked of them beyond simply the memorials, the medals, the rehabilitation
centers, the GI Bill. Every once in a while I'll be doing something simple with
my son, now that he is out of the Army, like fishing, and I'm just filled with
gratitude, filled with a deeper meaning for a moment. Unconsciously, I suppose I
know that I am doing something simple and humane that thousands of Father's in
our country would like to do and won't.
We can't undo
the trauma, but what we can do is release love. Our scriptures teach us that love
drives back fear and anxiety. The real source of these fears and anxieties is
still out there. We can work to mitigate them and we do but some of them will
still be out there anyway.
When we look at
the life of Jesus what is so profound about his example is the way he
actualized love and compassion in the midst of real injustice, real torture,
and impending death. So when John tried to write about what we learn from his
life and example, he says, “Perfect love drives back fear”.
St. Paul used
to pray that in the really trying times of our lives, when really bad stuff
happens to us, that we might know a ‘peace that passes all understanding.' It
is a peace that comes from actualizing love in the midst of tragedy, even loss.
It doesn't undo tragedy or loss, but it transcends it. Spiritually, it is
intrinsically honorable and humane.
What I hope for
all of us going forward is that we develop lives with deeper meaning, fuller
richer love, lives shared with a rainbow of people so that we become broader in
our compassion and more sensitive in understanding. I hope we develop
authenticity and character with integrity. I hope we invoke the Higher selves
that God intends for us and that we lead our families by example. I hope that
we can honor those that sacrificed on our behalf by being honorable to each
other.
A reporter last
week was in New York to ask how we healed. The answer, of course, is that it
was the miracle of a million small acts of kindness and thoughtfulness. That is
the other side of New Yorkers.
I just happened
to run into one of the families that lost a Dad ten years ago at the World
Trade Center and I asked them if they were going to be downtown this morning.
“No, we'll be in Washington. The New York Giants are playing the Redskins and
they asked some of the kids of 9/11 to sit behind them for the game. Our 12
year old son had a choice of Mayor Bloomberg or Eli Manning. He went with Eli.”
What a
wonderful way to bless a 12 year old boy. How normal. It's been astonishing to
read about how many New Yorkers pledged themselves to do a mitzvah, a good
deed, in response.
We are going to
symbolize our commitment to do just that together in a small way. Ten years
ago, we had just dedicated the new education building. The next week, we were
attacked and we didn't really have a big party to celebrate the building. And,
we ran out of money at the end, so we didn't finish a couple pieces. So this
summer, we did one of them, we added a patio on the back of the atrium, to make
our memorial garden a beautiful place for prayer and meditation, remembering
those who have gone before us.
We are going to
close the service, each of us taking a ribbon, and we are going to walk out to
the new patio and tie those ribbons on a tree out there. As you do, I want you
to think about one thing you are going to focus on to invoke the higher part of
you. I want you to think about how you are going to release the love with your
family, with your community, our world. Let us release the love and keep fear
in its place. Amen.
