My friend Fred Burnham recently came to town to talk about his experience of Sept. 11, 2001. If the near tower of the World Trade Center had shifted its direction by 12 feet, he would have been among those buried there. As it was, he and a handful of friends huddled in the dark, smothering in a smoky stairwell, while the successive booms of collapsing floors a few feet away made them believe they were under a military attack. They were certain that they all were going to die.
He said that at that moment, he experienced what he called a profound “circle of love,” casting out fear and bonding them together in an eternal sense of belongingness. He said that moment expanded into a transforming experience of the presence of God, the source of love. He had nofear of death. Instead, he was overwhelmed by infinite love, reaching out to every human being on the planet, connecting us all into a profound interrelatedness of being.
Fred says he is spending the rest of his life living to understand that experience and to live out of its reality.
For the next few months Fred was part of the team that worked out of St. Paul’s Chapel, which became a relief station for workers at the World Trade Center.
As volunteers presented themselves at the chapel, Fred gave them a list of needed services, and added an open-ended invitation.
“Do anything that you have energy and passion for.”
One woman massaged the feet of weary firefighters for 12 hours. She emerged exhausted and elated.
Another volunteer spontaneously began to organize and display the thousands of letters, messages and banners that came to Ground Zero as expressions of sympathy, prayer and support. The chapel transformed into a shrine of global goodwill.
Volunteers from our congregation went to New York to work, joining thousands of others.
Around the world on Sept. 11, sympathetic people took to the streets to express their empathy and solidarity with the American people, not just in London and Paris, but also in Moscow and Tehran. Our press reported disproportionately about the few, small demonstrations of joy. My son was in Beijing on agroup study tour with other American students. The Chinese embraced them warmly with comforting expressions of sympathy and support.
At that moment in history, the whole world waited willingly to follow our lead. How shall we respond globally to this singular tragedy? America had an opportunity to seize the moment and to define the event. A sympathetic world waited to respond with us.
As if by design, a vision and blueprint was ready for this opportunity. Just 12 months earlier in September 2000, 189 member states of the United Nations adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - eight achievable goals to:
• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger,
• Achieve universal primary education,
• Promote gender equality and empower women,
• Reduce child mortality rates,
• Improve maternal health,
• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases,
• Ensure environmental sustainability, and
• Develop a global partnership for development.
What if our nation’s response to the attacks of 9/11 had been to lead a global crusade on behalf of the goals? We could have reduced the circumstances of helplessness that tend to breed terrorism. We have a historical precedent. From the ashes of World War II came the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. Former enemies Germany and Italy are now close friends.
What if we had used our moral weight after 9/11 to broker a just settlement between Israel and Palestine? If our response to such an attack had been to create peace in the Middle East, not war, we mighthave helped spark the Arab Spring a decade earlier.
As a nation, we could have used the platform of the attacks on 9/11 in the same spirit as the volunteers at St. Paul’s Chapel. We could have organized for relief, recovery, rebuilding and peace. We could have responded with love, not war.
Part of what I said in a sermon the following Sunday was this: “The one battle that you and I can engage in against the unseen enemy that has attacked our people, is for us to refuse to let them damage our souls and our lives. We must refuse to let their evil have power over us. We must continue to be the people we were created to be: loving, compassionate, and strong.”
That is still our challenge and our call.
LOWELL GRISHAM IS AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST WHO LIVES IN FAYETTEVILLE.
Opinion, Pages 14 on 09/11/2011