9/11, 2004

9/11, three years later

Again in 2004, September 11^th has been an occasion for mourning -- and for reflection on what it all means for us today.

We offer a few samples here -- and invite you to share yours! Just send a note.

Reflections on a vigil:

In the silence, a call to action for peace and wholeness
[9-13-04]

This note comes from Bill LeMosy, Witherspoon member and interim pastor in Iowa

On Thursday night [September 9] I participated in one of many vigils held around the nation. As I stood there in the circle holding my candle plus a poster picturing one of the fallen, and as I listened both to a series of speakers and to the holy silence, a meditation began in my mind.

The Des Moines Register carried a report on the vigil. LeMosy adds this note to the press report: After Melanie's ten rings, another person, who had been to Iraq before the war, rang the bell ten more times for the 10,000-30,000 Iraqis who have died. Melanie had actually rung for the thousands of Americans wounded. ...

Here's what Bill wrote:

A Reflection at the Vigil
By Bill LeMosy

September 9, 2004

I hold a poster for one of the lost Americans, Michael, a 21 year old who died in Iraq. One tragedy among thousands to date. A human sacrifice to the domination machine.

And I remember a moment 39 years ago when at age 21 I walked up the steps to one of the dining halls at Florida State University. There I met a fellow student handing out leaflets about some skirmish on the other side of the planet, in a place called Vietnam. I'd not heard of the land, or the issues; I'd only glimpsed the injustice in my own nation surrounding race.

That was my beginning, at Michael's age of death. Since then I've worked for peace with justice, in a world of exploitation that my own nation orchestrates. And after countless conversations, demonstrations, agitations and procrastinations, the relentless malfeasance of my country persists. And I'm tired. Very, very tired.

Whence cometh empowerment for the peacemaker? How do we keep going amid America's quest for world dominance?

In gatherings like tonight's vigil, I reconnect with a passion for wholeness that inhabits this world. I re-visualize an impetus toward healing and just distribution of resources. I reclaim a yearning to give and to savor life, even as AK-47s and depleted uranium weaponry promote death. Then I take this passion, this impetus, this yearning, that manifest themselves all around us and sometimes through us, and I call them "God."

Tonight, in our gathering and holding and weeping, I see that this "God" still acts in the human midst. Whether "God" is a referential term or a metaphor or a product of hopeful imagination, I don't know, not even after seminary training and 35 years of Presbyterian ministry. Yet, in this circle of persons with posters and lighted candles, She or He shines forth like the sun.

Here in the sanctuary of this Japanese bell, where we so often lament the atrocities of our species, each of us knows he or she is not alone. We are not victims destined to cry out with Prophet Elijah, "I alone am left." Rather, we are persons in community who would share the passion for wholeness, who would unfold toward healing and justice for the dispossessed, and who would embody the yearning for life.

But this embodiment so often happens in frail, frustrated ways. Sometimes we cave into our own fatigue and frustration, as Rosa Parks did on the Birmingham bus. Sometimes we give in to the rhetoric of deceit. Sometimes we stumble into our own modes of arrogance. But in the end, may we choose, however feebly, to participate in "God." And may we know that when that happens, life happens, and we are not alone.

How sad that Michael and thousands of other human beings have been deprived of knowing this "God." How dare the demons of death commit such sacrilege.

Three years after 9/11:

September 11th Families For Peaceful Tomorrows affirm that war is not the answer to terrorism

As September 11th Families For Peaceful Tomorrows commemorated the third anniversary of the loss of their brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers, these most directly effected Americans issued a statement saying that the answer lies in defeating fears, lies and ignorance. [9-13-04]

'I thought we were different'

Georgie Ann Geyer, who has decades of experience as observer and commentator on international affairs, observes the third anniversary of 9/11 with a thoughtful essay. She struggles with an "endlessly haunting question: Have we changed as a people so as to be willing, as the polls show us, to re-elect men and women who have misled us and lied to us every step of the way? ... Have we, the rational, "exceptional" people of our history, been overtaken by the war fever and that same identification with the demented warrior-leader as lesser peoples throughout history?"

Lest you fear this woman is a wild-eyed radical, she appears on the Universal Press Syndicate's website in such unimpeachably conservative company as William F. Buckley Jr., James J. Kilpatrick, and Ann Coulter.

You'll find her essay on the "Uexpress" website of the Universal Press Syndicate, and on TruthOut.org. [9-13-04]

America Right Or Wrong

Anatol Lieven, a British journalist, writer and historian, compares the way our political elites have used fear, national identity and popular ignorance to unite the country behind a war on terror that looks remarkably like ... the Dutch colonial period. He says that as every crisis is now viewed through the lens of the war on terror, "America is fast becoming irrational in its analysis and use of deadly power."

Lieven has specialized in the former Soviet Union and on aspects of contemporary warfare. This material is drawn from his new book, America Right or Wrong. [9-13-04]