Out of Many, One

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First UU Church of Berks County
Rev. Sandra Fees
September 11, 2011
Out of Many, One
At the beginning of my second year of studies at Lancaster Theological
Seminary, I took a conflict and leadership class. It was an intensive day-long
three week required course that preceded the beginning of the regular
semester. The course was designed to allow conflict to emerge and help us
observe how we dealt with it individually and collectively. We sat in a large circle
and worked through uncomfortable case studies and self-analysis.
We were in the last week of the course, and, to some extent, we were all weary
from some intense emotional conflicts. As one small example, I had a classmate
accuse me of trying to steal her ideas. Her hostility toward me and this
accusation were particularly curious since we hold very different theologies. Of
course, it wouldn’t have seemed very UU of me to tell her just how absurd it
seemed to me.
That last week our class was interrupted. Our professor was called into the
hallway to speak to an administrator. When he returned, he informed us that a
plane had just flown into the World Trade Center. We sat stunned and unbelieving
as we listened to him. One of my classmates asked what I must admit was also a
fleeting thought of my own: “Is this real or is it an exercise as part of the class?” It
seemed too cruel to imagine our instructor would manufacturer such a horrific
story as a classroom exercise. It was crueler still to think that it was real.
The question my classmate asked expressed some of our national sense of
disbelief. Of course, it also expressed the stress we were under in our class. As
we began to absorb what we were hearing, some students rushed from the room
and never returned. Others excused themselves to call family and friends. Some
wept. One woman dropped to her knees and prayed. She was the same person
who had accused me of stealing her ideas. Many of us sat in stony silence.
Students who lived on campus began to organize a way for us all to view the
news together. They set up a television in the courtyard between resident halls.
There we watched the images that are now seared into our collective memories.
Along with my classmates, I watched the unfolding tragedy that has come to be
known as 9/11 or September 11.
Each of us can probably recall where we were that day 10 years ago. “People
know where they were when they heard the unheard-of,” as reporter N.R.
Kleinfield wrote in The New York Times. Today, a decade later, we are still
telling our stories as individuals and as a nation. We continue to try to make
meaning of the events of that painful day in history – to inquire about the ways it
changed and failed to change us. Kleinfield says, “In the years since 2001,
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neither our worst fears nor our highest hopes have been realized. … So many
things were expected to be different that have not been.” (“The Price of the New
Normal,” The New York Times, Sept. 8, 2011).
For those who lost friends, family members, and co-workers that day, for rescue
workers, for those living in or near areas directly impacted by the four planes
that crashed that day, September 11 had a profound and lasting effect.
Everything was different. Nothing was or ever would be the same.
Those like me who didn’t know anyone who died that day or was injured or
involved felt the impact, but differently. As Kleinfield says,
For most people, the influence of 9/11 on day-to-day life is felt much less
intensely than the arrival of Facebook and Twitter. Or the eruption of
nagging, pontificating voices on cable TV. Or the suffocating recession.
Ultimately, each person attaches an individual meaning to 9/11, if
possible. Outside of the families of the victims, most people’s lives may
not present themselves as remarkably different. But there is residue,
lingering wisps of Sept. 11
In the days immediately following September 11, it seemed there would be
something more than lingering wisps. Americans seemed to come together in a
unique way. There was tenderness in our grieving and people seemed more
open to each other than ever before. It seemed as if the world would never be
the same again and that we were entering into a whole new era of understanding
and compassion.
What I’d like to be able to tell you this morning is that that spirit prevailed. I’d like
to be able to tell you we’ve all been transformed and enlightened in the 9/11
decade. I’d like to tell you that everything that’s happened since that day has
been a giant leap closer to a better world - one of greater religious and cultural
tolerance, respect for human rights and dignity, neighborliness to the other, and
compassion and care for our world. You would know that I was at best telling
you half-truths. Our highest hopes have not been realized. Many of the changes
resulting from 9/11 have harmed rather than helped.
As a result of 9/11, national safety and security took on a whole new meaning.
Homeland security and the war on terror were launched to battle the new face of
evil. Wendell Bell of Yale University refers to our approach as a “garrison
mentality” when it comes to security. Distrust of the other has been heightened
by surveillance technology.
Changes designed to make travel safer have also made it more inconvenient,
perhaps a small price to pay. In the process, we have learned to be on guard
against a new enemy, a much larger price to pay. Signs teach us: “If you see
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something, say something.” There is “an underlying sense of the sinister out
there somewhere.” (Kleinfield).
Startled by our vulnerability to violence, we have willingly sacrificed freedom for
safety. Threats to civil liberties are more easily accepted. As religious people
who value the right of conscience, the fierce pursuit of truth, and democratic
process, there’s cause for concern.
Tolerance for dissent is on the decline. Attempts to narrow our understanding of
patriotism have made dissent un-American. Policies of pre-emption and a new
imperialism in the name of safety have taken precedence over negotiation and
world relations.
Soon after 9/11, the French newspaper Le Monde ran a headline that expressed
the world’s sympathy for America. It read: “We are all Americans now.” How
quickly our country squandered that good will and positive regard by the world
community, striving instead to ensure national interests and security and
commencing two wars that present little hope of coming to an easy end.
Alarmed by the potential for religious violence, religious bigotry became
mainstreamed. Tolerance of other religions and cultures declined. The rhetoric
of evil is now routinely used to demonize the other. A vocal Islamophobia has
emerged among those who blame a whole religious tradition for the fanaticism
of a few. Just consider the hostile reaction to proposals to build a 9/11 mosque.
Some things we hoped and expected might change did not. Yet there are
glimmers of hope. Many of the areas of greatest disappointment have in fact also
exhibited the greatest healing and growth. We live in the midst of that paradox.
Even as public expressions of intolerance have become more accepted, and
fundamentalist voices have grown louder and more disheartening, interfaith
efforts have flourished. Communities of faith have sought to build bridges and
cross boundaries. Religious groups and religious leaders have reached out to
better understand Islam. Muslims are being brought out of the margins.
In the process, many Americans are discovering that core religious values such
as peace, compassion, and love are shared across the world’s religions. There
is growing resistance to allowing extremists to define the contribution of the
major religions of the world. Leaders in local communities are forging alliances
with Muslims.
September 11 has called upon religious people of all faiths to reexamine their
beliefs and values. It has pushed us to go deeper, to push the limits of our faith
and our love for one another. It has challenged us to question simplistic and
narrow beliefs and to embrace more fully the contradictions, mysteries, and
potentialities of life.
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As a nation, we have had to wrestle with the role of God in the world. Does God
intervene in history? Could God have prevented the events of 9/11? Did God
spare some lives and not others? Did God have anything to do with it? If religion
caused such violence, would it be better not to believe in God at all? Where was
God while all this happened?
Liberal religious communities like ours have had to confront a theology that
preferred to skirt the question of evil. In the decade since 9/11, we have been
much more willing to discuss evil. We recognize that an easy optimism is no
longer adequate to the reality of the world in which we live. It never really was.
9/11 pushed us to a deeper reflection on human nature. Affirming the inherent
worth and dignity of every person stands not as a simplistic belief in human
goodness. It speaks to our aspirations for the human spirit. We recognize the
human potential and the responsibility we have to uphold human rights and
dignity even in the face of human failings. Even, and perhaps especially, on that
day 10 years ago, we witnessed the greatness of humanity arise even in the
darkest times. We watched individuals from all walks of life become heroes.
A few weeks ago, I asked my friend, Heather Thomas, about 9/11. I was telling her
that it’s easy to see how things have changed for the worse. But I wanted to find
the places of hope, the possibilities toward which we might aspire. I asked her,
where do you see hope in light of September 11? She is an English Professor at
Kutztown University and a poet. I think you will hear the poetry in her reply to me.
She wrote me this note:
So where is the "hope" in 9/11? … For me, that hope lies in the healing
process itself. The experience of 9/11, as full as it was of death and horror,
renewed my appreciation of life. It heightened my awareness of each
moment lived, intensified my gratitude for life and my loved ones. No
longer could I take anything for granted, or suffer a moment of boredom.
To glimpse a filament of spider web catching the sun's morning rays, to
speak to my son and say love you every time, to reach out to my students
and discover what they were teaching me. As much as we wanted to close
down our hearts to others in fear, 9/11 called us to do the opposite, to
open our hearts, to risk the undefended heart casting its own inner
filaments outwardly to others, to make a greater effort to connect with
what matters to us and to the world as we know it and want it to be.
In a world with so much uncertainty and despair, let us “make a greater effort to
connect with what matters to us.” In a world with so much hatred and violence, let
us make a greater effort to connect “to the world as we know it and want it to be.”
On this 10th anniversary of September 11, let us renew our bonds of kinship with
each other, with the whole human family, and with the holy. Let us continue to
work to build the world and faith to which we yet aspire.
Blessed be. Amen. Salaam. Shalom.