Candlelighting Meditation--Words by Forrest Church

Welcome to this house of memory and hope. Our longest week is still not over. Yet, as manifest this morning and in so many ways, what was intended to tear us apart is instead bringing us together. The soul map of this city and nation is already being recharted. As a nation and as individuals, the future as we knew it is ended; our task now is to create a new future, one deed at a time.

Before I read this morningÕs scripture, a beautiful passage from the Koran, let me share a few personal observations. Today our work is the work of mourning. Grief takes precedence over anger. Tears are this hourÕs sacrament. But the memorials that began in this sanctuary on Wednesday, continuing on Friday in the National Cathedral, and being conducted as we gather now in houses of worship all around the country are not services of closure, but invocations of long and challenging journey that we will be taking together for weeks and months to come. These acts of terror have transfigured our lives, initially and poignantly for the worse, but also, potentially, for the better. Though the billowing smoke of TuesdayÕs conflagration still stings in our eyes and we yet cannot see clearly through it, most of us recognize that our priorities of a week ago no longer offer answers sufficient to the test of meaning we are being given. On Wednesday evening I mentioned the Chinese word for crisis, two word pictures in juxtaposition: danger and opportunity. I truly believe that this terrible awakening offers an unprecedented opportunity for us to redirect and elevate our lives.

To begin with, death always awakens us to the preciousness and fragility of life. Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die. Whatever our faith, we are the religious animal. Knowing that we must die, we question what life means. By how thoughtfully and attentively we live, we both invent and discover meaning. Such meaning invests our lives with purpose. Put very simply, the purpose of life is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for. In this spirit, the challenge we face today is to redirect our priorities. Seeing our own tears in one anotherÕs eyes, we are called into communion with our brothers and sisters. If we rise to this challenge, not only will our own lives be enriched, we shall enhance the commonweal.

As for the commonweal itself, never have I so deeply appreciated the saving grace and power of universalism. I am not speaking of our little denomination alone, but of people of faith throughout the world who honor the intrinsic worth and dignity of every individual regardless of creed. Not only does universalism foster tolerance, it also demands that respect be given and differences honored. However difficult, the struggle that this weekÕs attack compels our nation to enter, is a redemptive one. It is a war not between civilizations or cultures but between civilization and anarchy, world order and chaos. It doesnÕt pit one member of the world body against another, but unites all who honor the body of which we are a part to join in removing the cancer that imperils us all. As I listened this week to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson speak of this almost unspeakable tragedy as GodÕs revenge against the United States for giving quarter to abortion, Feminists, Pagans, homosexuals, the People for the American Way, and the ACLU, I cringed at how easily the same divisive spirit that impelled the radical Muslim fringe to sponsor these terrorist bombings can manifest itself in Christianity as well. Never have we needed the healing power of Universalism more than we do today. If we do not take our faith as seriously and practice it as passionately as the radical fundamentalist extremists take and practice theirs, we will be mere spectators as the ground divides under our feet.

Finally, I think of this congregation. We too are changed as of last Tuesday. We are called again to answer in the spirit that Henry Whitney Bellows and All Souls did a century an a half ago at the outbreak of the Civil War. With the active support of his congregation, Bellows founded the American Sanitary Commission, precursor to the Red Cross, raising six million dollars (a staggering figure back then) to minister to the wounded on battlefields throughout our riven nation. How we answer to the call will be determined over the days and weeks ahead. But our history and faith demands that we extend our embrace beyond these doors to the community at large. Because of the nature of our faith, everyone is welcome here. We may not have final answers to lifeÕs unanswerable questions, but for this reason too we can model the very kind of dynamic pluralism for which our world so aches. Henceforth (as we have been all week) All Souls will be open to the communityÑthe larger parishÑnot for us to convert and save our neighbors, but for us to mourn and work and serve together in expanding the circle of love and compassion.

Though our lives are unimaginably darkened by the shadow of this tragedy, how privileged we are to be able to join and work as one extended family in these challenging and vivid times.
Our scripture is taken from the Koran. Next to those who lost loved ones, friends and acquaintances in TuesdayÕs devastation, no single group has been more victimized than the millions of good Muslims whose GodÕs name has been taken so savagely in vain.