DIES IRAE
by Forrest Church
September 10, 2006
Five years ago many of us gathered in this very sanctuary in shock and grief to light a candle for the victims of an unimaginable act of horror. Today, on the fifth anniversary of that fateful morning, we gather once again, much as a family comes together to commemorate the anniversary of a loss. We to remember, or better, to make sure we don't forget. To close the book of death is to close the book of life. This morning we shall open both, remembering humanity at its worst and at its best and weighing our own lives in the balance. We remember awakening on that powder blue morning five years ago tomorrow and awaken once again. Then we had no choice. Now, the choice we make to stay awake means everything.
According to ancient legend, a woman died and arrived on the banks of the River Styx. She was greeted by Charon, ferryman to the underworld, her guide across the waters to the realm of departed souls. Upon arriving on the other side, Charon invited her„should she so wish„to drink of the waters of the River Lethe, which banked the Elysian fields. These were waters of forgetfulness, whose magic powers would erase all memory of her years on earth.
She asked the boatman, "If I drink this cup, will I forget how much I suffered and the tragedy I experienced?"
"Yes," he replied, "you will forget all sadness, together with your every moment of joy."
"Will I forget my failures?"
"Yes, your failures will evaporate into the mist of oblivion, and your triumphs as well."
"Will I forget the people who neglected and abused me?"
"Yes, those who hurt you will vanish from memory, as will the people who loved you and those you loved in return."
She thought for a moment and then shook her head. "I cannot do that. I will not drink of the waters of forgetfulness. I choose to remember everything."
I too choose to remember everything. I choose to remember our worst nightmare, because I must not give up dreaming. I choose to remember and honor my grief, for grief as a measure of loss is no less a measure of love. I choose to remember the perfect sky on that perfect morning. To remember the silver planes on tilted wing. To remember the instant of impact and the billowing dust clouds of implosion. To remember the sacraments of courage and emblems of kinship throughout this great city. Not„though tears are precious„ to remember that I might weep, but to remember that I might keep my heart open and my courage strong.
Five years from the day that terror transfigured our skyline and cast its naked shadow over our shared future, there are few harbingers of hope on the world's horizon. Under such stormy skies, how easily we slip into the sin of sophisticated resignation. Knowing the world's troubles by heart, how tempting it is to retreat into walled gardens. To drink the cup of Lethe. To flirt with oblivion.
To break oblivian's spell, we must remember. Remember how our lives quickened together with our pulses in those vivid days of fear and reckoning immediately after the towers went down; remember how we weighed our priorities in the balance, life's deeper moment made manifest to all, not only to those suffering from cancer or smarting from failure or recovering from recent loss. It is not simply that 3,000 people died five year ago tomorrow, interrupted forever in the middle of a conference call or while securely fastened in their seatbelts on a transcontinental flight. Seatbelts fastened or not, more than ten times that number die on America's highways every year. And that many soldiers have died in Iraq, in a misbegotten war aimed at the wrong target and compounding the problems it was intended to solve. 9/11 is not an exception to life's rules. It is an unforgettable reminder of them.
Five years ago tomorrow all of us together suffered something very like a death in the family. My brother-in-law lost his wife six weeks before 9/11. In mid-September he told Carolyn that the strangest thing happened. All of a sudden everyone seemed to understand just how he felt. He found this comforting, just when he needed comfort most. Needing empathy, he met empathetic people everywhere he turned.
Think back on how life changed for us that day. The incineration of the World Trade Center transfixed a bewildered nation, drawing us into the world's violence. In a single stroke, together we fronted our mortality. Four hijacked planes and the sea of destruction that followed in their wake knocked every life they did not end off automatic pilot. When this happened„indeed whenever it happens„we question not only the course the world is taking, but the course our lives are taking as well.
The challenge was unmistakable and the after-images almost unbearably poignant. Repeated video loops of the horror were soon displaced by testimonials to heroism: firefighters rushing up the stairs to help their fellows down; the courage of a little band of passengers on the doomed flight of United 93, saving the nation's Capitol or White House from almost sure destruction. A grieving nation witnessed countless deeds of heroism and as many reminders of our fundamental human kinship. As the soot and ash rained down, both literally and figuratively people became one color, one class and one faith, carrying one another down stairs and falling to their knees in prayer. Ours was a single family, united as never before in recent history.
We actually did become one family in the days after 9/11, mourning as one, comforting each another, intimate in our shared grief. An act intended to divide us instead brought us closer together. Together we reawakened to how slender is the thread by which each life hangs and how essential it is that we weave those threads together. Five years ago tomorrow our humanity was both blasphemed and heightened. The first was a tragedy, the latter a blessing. Humbled (not by the terrorists but by our own temporary powerlessness) we became more humane. Humility and humanity are etymological kin, stemming from the same root„human, humane, humanitarian, humble, humility, humus„from dust we come and to dust we shall return. If taken to heart, such reminders can temper human arrogance with saving humility.
The half-life of tragedy can be shorter than one might imagine, blunting its impact over time, but the imprint lingers. More deeply aware of life's tenuousness and more cognizant therefore of what really matters, we are all at least slightly different people today than we were then. Not better people necessarily. We may be more frightened, angrier, or more perplexed. Without leaders to remind us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, the 9/11 terrorists have succeeded beyond their wildest imaginings. That reality constitutes our ongoing challenge, even if the anger we then felt against the terrorists has shifted in many American hearts to anger against our own government. The avenging dark angel of terror's visitation casts a many shaped shadow over human nature and our future as a species. Yet the better angels of our nature beckon as well. Which, again, is why we must remember.
Remember how we felt in the aftershocks of that terrible morning. The very stories that broke our hearts made them beat faster. The emptiness we felt cast every selfish thought of petty fulfillment into question. These are good things. They saved us from ourselves by saving us for others. They reminded us that the only thing that can never be taken from us is the love we give away.
The world too was at long last able to observe us as we like to see ourselves: as a kind-hearted and generous-spirited people. No matter how tragic the occasion, to view Americans of every religion, class, and color demonstrating fidelity to our common humanity was nothing less than redemptive for a world in which divisions according to race, class, and creed are commonplace. Recognizing their own tears in American eyes, people throughout the world shared our grief with unprecedented sympathy for the world's great, wounded giant. President Jacques Chirac of France proclaimed, "We are all Americans now." The entire civilized world joined as one to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. Then came Iraq. Today even America is divided against itself.
The law of unintended consequences is inexorable. Waiting in the wings for Saddam to fall was a far more dangerous prospective foe. Long held in check by Iraq's fierce, secular presence in the region, Iran today exercises much freer reign in the Middle East. And Iraq itself, with 120 civilian casualties per week, is by almost every measure a more terrifying place to live than when Saddam ruled over it with such imperious sway. It wouldn't be called the law of unintended consequences, if we could predict what the consequences of our actions might be. But because we can't predict the future, preemptive strikes aimed at preventing future disasters are particularly subject to seeding the storm clouds they are designed to blow away.
So where, in these clouds is that promised silver lining? Where is the good news? To find it, we must look first to history's horizon, and, then„with eternal not temporal promise„to the horizon of the human heart.
Hope in history is divined from the cumulative record, not from any isolated act or cluster of events. The promise of American history, for instance„liberty and justice for all„is spelled out in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. At no moment in our history has that promise been fulfilled. Yet it nonetheless advances in our moral progress as a nation through the gradual, hard won, expansion of rights: from white alone to the entire human palette; from male alone to male and female; from straight alone to straight and Gay. This unfolding record, punctuated by bigotry and violence, extends from the founding to this very day.
Our leaders too tell us not to forget history. Just as we were told to remember Neville Chamberlain during the waning days of the misbegotten Vietnam War, anyone today who questions the wisdom of our misbegotten adventure in Iraq is cited for appeasement and told to remember history. Such drafts of memory work on the conscience and intelligence of the people like the waters of River Lethe. For hope's sake, I ask you to remember history less prescriptively. This is far from being the nation or the world's darkest moment„its most dangerous, perhaps, given the specter of nuclear catastrophe, but far from its darkest. We have ever so many more reasons for hope than we did in the darkest days of the Civil War, or World War I, or World War II. We still have time to dismount from our charger and walk together with our neighbors in this world toward a better tomorrow. We have time to renounce arrogance and win the war on terror in the only way it finally can be won, by recapturing the world's heart the way we did without even trying in the wake of 9/11.
If today's leaders cannot find such humility in their hearts or even, which is more likely, awaken to the logic of enlightened self-interest, tomorrow's leaders will rise to power because of it. As we have done before, we will catch up with our national ideals once again and help lead the world through the 21st century. That is my hope. Hope is not optimism. Optimism is rightly dashed by almost every report out of the Middle East. Hope is to optimism what faith is to confidence, and eternity to time.
Which leads me to the heart's horizon, where love will never lose the power to answer lightening with a saving ray of brilliant sunlight. The heart's hope is today what it has always been. Every day we live, the choices we make either redeem or diminish the world. Living at a time when one feels a part of history, which we certainly now do, can present a daunting challenge. On this field, there are no sidelines. To be saved is first to save. Yet, in meeting this challenge, we cannot help but become more engaged, committed, mindful, and alive. No power can relock a heart that we, by the grace of God, have dared to open.
Our own John Watson died in a tragic accident late this summer doing what he loved best, serving others, at camp in Vermont. He fell off a roof and never woke up. John and Hanan, in our Peace Task Force and throughout their lives, have been saving the world for years, one soul at a time. That is the only way the world can be saved. Does it show up in the headlines? No. It shows up in the heartlines„where God lives and moves, comforts and saves.
There is one thing that can never be taken from us, one human monument that cannot be rent asunder. The one thing that can never be taken, even by death, is the love we have given away. To honor John's life and the innocent bystanders to the world's violence who died on that September morning, we must redeem this September morning and tomorrow morning and the days before us, the only way we surely can: by gifts of love and works of praise; by loving our neighbor as our ourselves; even by daring to love our enemy. We each build only one lasting monument over the course of a lifetime. We build that monument in each others' hearts.
Let us join our hearts in the spirit of prayer.
For the innocent whose lives are violated by terror's dementia; for all the grieving families„here and throughout the world„beset by the shadow of violence; for our servicemen and women and the risks they take daily in the service of their nation; for all those who witness for peace; for the broken human family; for all God's children: we pray for courage, hope, understanding, and the presence of a healing spirit, kindled from heart to heart, beginning with our own, that grace may be received and love to neighbor again be the emblem of community, here and throughout the world. Amen.