September 11, 2004
third time through?
What does it matter to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? - GhandiToday is the third anniversary of the attack on the twin towers. On the first anniversary I was involved in a performance of Mozart's Requiem, lovely and unfinished. There were hundreds of choirs singing that day...around the world. Today, how do we memorialize the dead? There are many ways. Poem, images, music (singing again today), moments of silence, grief, prayers. But I still struggle, and have since September 12, with our desire to strike back. It seems such an implausible way to memorialize the dead. "On behalf of the person who is at peace with God, I will kill." This is my problem. I do not see this war as a defense of liberty. This may not be someone else's problem. I am not asking for agreement.
We are not defending liberty. Even though there are over 1000 soldiers dead, a great tragedy, no one I have met has been willing to say that they would kill in the name of liberty. We use words like "defend" or "die." Are you willing to kill in the name of America? That is the questin I ask myself. I have not yet come up with an affirmative.
In the extended is a short essay that pushed me around this morning. It is powerful. Well, it was to me. So, be warned.
This is by Bill Wiser.
It is all so familiar. A poem set against a growing mountain of flowers that was once a single, carefully laid bouquet. The glow of too many candles, each a symbol of one life cruelly snuffed out too soon. A pile of rubble transformed into a shrine. Some who come gather in silence. Others search in vain for something they know they will never find, or place a photo among the gallery of smiling faces hoping that someone will recognize the features of a loved one.Agnus Dei, qui tolis pecata mundi... Posted by tripp at September 11, 2004 06:25 AM
Union Square in lower Manhattan? Ground Zero? It could be. But that was three years ago. Today these are the images surrounding a school in Beslan, North Ossetia.Here in America three years later, there is too much noise. It is drowning out the still, small voice that in those first weeks pointed us down a road less traveled. Small though it was, it had the power to transform whole neighborhoods into caring communities united by grief and sacrifice.
But then came the increasingly rancorous rhetoric, punctuated by the explosions of bombs over Afghanistan and Baghdad and the roar of aircraft returning from Iraq with the dead and maimed. In recent weeks here in New York the noise rose to fever pitch inside Madison Square Garden and on the streets outside. We have become a nation splintered by the very event that once brought us together.
Is it too late to try the other road? Three years after 9/11 the images of Beslan and Ground Zero blur and mingle with those of the rubble in Iraqi cities, becoming one in the cry of a mother?s heart. Why must these little ones die in an endless cycle of terror? Why can?t their small bodies?laid in the earth and watered with the tears of unspeakable pain?be the seeds of a new world? What can we do today for the sake of tomorrow?s children?
Beslan is a call to America to remember the candles, the flowers, and the grief that united us in the aftermath of 9/11. On this day, if we turn down the volume, our ears will catch an echo of that still, small voice once again. We may not know where the road will take us, but we owe it to the world?s children to return to the starting point before we have gone so far that we can?t turn back.
