November 2004

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Interfaith Memorial and Vigil
September 11, 2004

The vigil was sponsored by the Peacebuilding & Demilitarization Program of the American Friends Service Committee, and held in Philadelphia, PA. Representatives of many faith communities and peace groups spoke. For the full text of all the speakers' remarks, contact Katrina Weber, AFSC, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia PA 19105; 215/241-700; kweber@afsc.org

Photo: Terry Foss

Celeste Zapala is the mother of Sherwood Baker, who died in Iraq at the age of 30. Sherwood was a sergeant in the Pennsylvania National Guard.

Like many of you, I remember the early morning of September 11, 2001. I noticed that the sky was particularly blue and the air particularly sweet and as I crossed Broad Street to go to my office, I remember thinking to myself, "the world is exquisite today."

Later, when I saw the second plane go into the tower, I felt cold filling my body. "The world will change," I thought, and I started to cry. To cry for the people I was watching die before me, and for my children, and the young people of the world. I knew the world would never be all right again for them -- and particularly I felt dread for my oldest son.

Sherwood is one of 1,007 so loved American soldiers who have died along well more than 11,000 Iraqis, 132 soldiers of other countries, thousands of Afghanis strewn broken across their country and 3000 souls who fell with those fiery towers, and at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. The losses are unbearable.

Over these past months my family and I have learned many things. We have learned of mercy and kindness ñ support that has picked us up from the ground, everyday prayers that give us will and strength. We have tried to learn what it means to do justice and to join with other voices to try to speak the truth and take whatever faithful steps we can to walk a road to peace. And we have learned much of humility -- we have been humbled to meet other families of fallen soldiers and families of soldiers serving in Iraq, and now the veterans. We have wept with families who lost their loved ones in the towers, and the Pentagon, and Iraq. Now we know more than we ever could before about the grief of the world.

All the great religions teach us to be peacemakers, to try to be servants of love. This is scripture I cling to from the book of Micah: "The lord hath showed thee, o people, what is good; And what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" And here we stand ñ humble people trying to do justice, humble people trying to do the hard work of love in the world.

Iftekhar Hussain is Secretary General of the American Muslim Society of the Tri-state Area of PA, NJ & DE.

I mourn for the 2,973 souls that perished in the tragedy of 9/11 in 2001. I mourn for their families and their loved ones. I mourn for the upwards of 20,000 souls killed in the immoral invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. I mourn for the more than 1,000 young of our country that have died in this needless war.

But most of all I mourn for our forgetfulness of the history of aggressor nations that overstretched their reach and in so doing, declared their demise. I mourn for our forgetfulness of the futility of greed and short-term gains based policies that drive international relations and human relations. I mourn for our forgetfulness of the lies on which wars are inducted and conducted.

I mourn for our forgetfulness of sacrificing the aspirations and hopes of the many and the common to the greed and hoarding of the few and the elite. I mourn for the forgetfulness of our modern leaders to the guidance left to us by the founders of this nation. And I mourn for the forgetfulness of the best and the loftiest in each of our religious traditions.

Let us commit to reawakening our memories and committing ourselves to change the course of this nation, and perhaps that of this world.

Paul A. Lacey is Clerk of the Board of the American Friends Service Committee.

I wish it were possible just to be silent today, because so many people have tried, and will in the future try, to take over the suffering of others to promote their own political speech. But today around the country someone else is speaking who presumes to speak for those who have died, for those who have lost loved ones, and for me. How often have you heard someone say "they must not die in vain"? That is such a seductive phrase. What does it mean when our government leaders tell us that in order for the dead from 9/11 not to have died in vain, our soldiers and more must die, these 18,000 Iraqis must die -- that the only way you can hallow the death of innocent helpless people is to kill more helpless and innocent people?

I do not want the deaths of 9/11 to be meaningless, in vain, nor do I want our young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan to die meaninglessly, in vain. And you all gathered here don't want our fellow citizens, or Afghans or Iraqis, to die in vain, either. But we have got to say something that does not merely multiply those deaths but that can truly hallow and redeem them. We have got to say no to further bloodshed and suffering.

I find myself thinking again and again of the experiences poets have captured for us. In particular I think of what William Butler Yeats wrote about the causes and consequences of the Irish civil war.

We had fed the heart on fantasies;
The heart's grown brutal from the fare.
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love...

That is an extraordinary analysis of what happens to us in war, and in the destruction of language that goes with war. When you fantasize, you are the only one who counts, everyone else is a shadow and the world is yours to shape around your pleasure and your will. You are the only one who has a just cause. You are the only one entitled to satisfaction for your suffering. And if Yeats is right, and I think he is, if we feed the heart on fantasy -- the fantasy that these must die so that those didn't die in vain -- that fantasy of justification allows us, requires us, to act violently.

There has to be something to nourish our hopes and animate and shape our actions other than heart-brutalizing fantasy. We've got to hold on to and encourage each other with the moral imagination, that capacity which lets us listen to and sympathize with those who are suffering, lets us live with their reality, not to appropriate their lives for our own, but to know others as like us, to see in them our siblings, children and spouses. The moral imagination teaches us to grant other human beings their humanity, and to act from that knowledge.

Mary Ellen McNish is General Secretary of the American Friends Service Committee.

After September 11, 2001, there was a brief period of great hope, even in the midst of shock, tears, and grief, that something good could come out of it. We imagined our leaders seizing upon this moment of unity in America. We imagined our President telling the citizens that although we all wanted to be at Ground Zero, we couldn't -- but that there was work to be done all over America. Our work is needed at community centers to tutor kids and help them to read -- we're needed in gutted neighborhoods to rebuild housing and clean up parks…We imagined a President who would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit, and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy, a new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: if you attack us we will become stronger, better educated, and more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. That was our great hope!

In the three years since the September 11 attacks, we have seen two wars, and in the US our democracy has compromised by fear and hatred. Basic rights and due process under the law were quickly compromised in a climate of fear. A unified American public has grown bitterly divided and a world population that had a profound sympathy and support for us has grown contemptuous and distrustful, viewing us as a rogue state. And well they might…It is the noon of our nation's arrogance!

In answer to this chaos and the storm clouds of war, we are commanded to raise up our own cloud of witness to the power of love. This power of love leads us to the way of love -- the road of cooperation whose bed is an unshaken belief that each person is a unique creation, an irreplaceable image of God.

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