Chalice Lighting
May those
whose lives are gripped in the palm of suffering
open
even now
to the Wonder of Life.
May they let go of the hurt
and Meet the True Self beyond pain,
the Uncarved Block
that is our joyous Unity with Holiness.
May they discover through pain and torment
the strength to live with grace and humor.
May they discover through doubt and anguish
the strength to live with dignity and holiness.
May they discover through suffering and fear
the strength to move toward healing.
--Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro
Call to Worship – Rev. Michael A. McGee
It’s been a long, long, painful week for all of us. It’s hard to believe that the terrorist’s attacks in New York and Washington took place only five days ago. It seems like years.
It’s impossible to put into words the depth of grief and despair we have all felt during this week. The shock of losing so many people and the terror of how they died has brought a torrent of tears and a flood of anguish for each and every one of us.
No words can express the pain, the grief, the fear, the anger that we have felt. Nothing can be said to erase the images of jetliners crashing into the World Trade Center, the towers collapsing with thousands of people inside, and the fiery gash in the Pentagon. And no words can adequately heal and make us whole again.
But this morning, in this religious community of caring people we will use our words, our love and our compassionate commitment to do what we can to heal each other and to bear witness to what has happened.
I would like to share this statement with you from the new president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Rev. William Sinkford. Bill read this statement here in our church at the vigil on Wednesday night:
Dear Friends,
The events of this week have shattered our sense of safety. Many of us are in shock. Many of us are afraid. Many of us long to know what to tell our children. Some of us grieve the loss of friends or loved ones. All of us search for our response as people of faith.
The images of destruction will not allow us to escape. The collapse of buildings mirrors a collapse of confidence, rocking the fragile foundations of our lives. Our world will never be the same.
Our work to heal ourselves and to heal the world seems puny in comparison with the destruction we see.
How shall we respond?
First, let us hold in our hearts and in our prayers the families of those who were killed and wounded in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.
Let us stand with those who grieve and those who
wait the long hours for news of loved ones.
Let us know our fear, but not allow it to overwhelm us. For most of us, life normally seems safe and secure. But people in many parts of the world, and many people in our part of the world, know violence and potential violence in their daily lives.
The terrorist attacks are being likened to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a day that "will live in infamy." Pearl Harbor did galvanize this nation into action, and my hope is that this tragedy, too, will impel us to address the brokenness of our world that makes violence an unimaginable solution. Remember also that Pearl Harbor led to the impounding and imprisonment of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans. There are Arab and Muslim communities in this country and around the world that grieve as we do, and fear as we do. I hope our congregations will reach out to those communities and stand with them.
We must seek justice and, as our President says, to punish those responsible. But retribution will not create safety, nor move us toward justice.
This tragedy tests our faith. Where is God in this? Where is the Spirit of Life?
May our congregations be centers of support where we can bring our questions and our fears, where we can find the presence of the holy in our coming together.
Yours in faith and hope,
William G. Sinkford
Readings
Joan
Rabindranath Tagore
… I feel the age we live in is drawing to a close—
Upheavals threaten, gather the pace
Of a storm that nothing slows.
Hatred and envy swell to violent conflagration:
Panic spreads down from the skies,
From their growing devastation.
If nowhere in the sky is there left a place
For the gods to be seated, then, Indra,
Thunderer, may you place
At the end of this history your direst instruction:
A last full stop written in the fire
Of furious total destruction.
Hear the prayer of an earth that is stricken with pain:
In the green woods, O may the birds
Sing supreme again.
Michael
Iroquois Prayer
We wait in the darkness!
Come all ye who listen,
Help in our night journey:
Now no sun is shining;
Now no star is glowing;
Come show us the pathway:
The night is not friendly;
The moon has forgot us,
We wait in darkness!
Joan
A.Powell Davies
When sorrow comes, let us accept it simply, as a part of life. Let the heart open to pain; let it be stretched by it. All the evidence we have says that this is the better way. An open heart never grows bitter. Or if it does, it cannot remain so. In the desolate hour, there is an outcry; a clenching of the hands upon emptiness; a burning pain of bereavement; a weary ache of loss. Nut anguish, like ecstasy, is not forever. There comes a gentleness, a returning quietness, a restoring stillness. This, too, is a door to life. Here, also, is a deepening of meaning -–and it can lead to dedication; a going forward to the triumph of the soul, the conquering of the wilderness. And in the process will come a deepening inward knowledge that in the final reckoning, all is well.
Walt Whitman, from his poem, “I Sing of Myself”
Michael: What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
Joan: They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
Michael: All goes forward and outward … and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Joan: Agonies are one of my changes of garments;
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels…..
I myself become the wounded person,
My hurt turns livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
Michael: I am the mashed fireman with breastbone broken…..
Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,
Heat and smoke I inspired…..I heard the yelling shouts
of my comrades,
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels;
They have cleared the beams away…..they tenderly lift me forth.
Joan
Anne Frank
In spite of everything, I still believe
that people are really good at heart.
I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation
consisting of confusion, misery, and death.
I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness,
I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us, too,
I can feel the suffering of millions, and yet,
if I look up into the heavens,
I think that it will all come out right,
that this cruelty will end,
and that peace and tranquility will return again.
In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals,
for perhaps the time will come
when I shall be able to carry them out.
Michael:
Anonymous (who was a woman)
Lead us from death to life,
from falsehood to truth.
Lead us from despair to hope,
from fear to trust.
Let peace fill our hearts,
our world, our universe.
Let us dream together,
pray together,
work together,
to build one world,
of peace and justice for all.
Homily – Rev. Joan Gelbein
My feelings are a jumble. It was such a vicious, brutal attack, the terrorist strikes in New York and Washington last Tuesday morning. The kind of hatred that motivated this complex plan to hijack airplanes and crash them into buildings filled with thousands of people takes my breath away.
I find this tragedy beyond understanding, beyond the capacity for ordinary feeling; I can’t take in the overwhelming enormity of what has happened.
I see-saw, as I’m sure most of us are doing now, between grief, confusion, uncertainty, fear, anger.
I feel profound vulnerability, both as an individual, and as part of a nation that has seemed to be invulnerable; shielded by great ideals, great power, and righteousness.
I’m upset when I watch, on television, the response of some Palestinians to this devastating horror – they are dancing and celebrating in the street. I am frightened when I read in the newspaper that someone in Iraq is quoted as saying that the only people who could be responsible for such a complicated attack would be the Israelis, and they are saying, “Death to Israel!”
I have a sense of desolation over the horrendous loss of life. I shrink back from my own imagination of what it must have been like on one of those planes; on one of those high floors of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Listening to the stories of survivors on television, and hearing the anguish of family members searching for victims, turns me into a weeping mess.
Most of my life has been spent as a New Yorker; that’s my home town; I REALLY know those people. Living in the Northern Virginia-Washington area, and being a part of this church community for over 12 years, I have found another unique home town, full of amazing people I love. These two cities of my heart have been violated, cracked open, shocked, and tested.
Now, the whole nation is galvanized by this profound unthinkable violation; this incredible act of hatred. A veil has been lifted, a line crossed; we are all changed.
And our faith has been severely challenged as well, if not breeched. As Unitarian Universalists we hold a great faith in humanity and in its capacity for goodness.
Our faith is grounded in hope.
We may be skeptics and iconoclasts, but we are not cynics. And, we may be optimists, but we are not naïve fools. We know there is evil.
For every insane terrorist, there have been hundreds, thousands, of rescue workers in the smoking rubble, and just people, risking their lives in hi-jacked planes, and on the endless staircases of the World Trade Center. I am deeply touched by all the acts of heroism that hear and read about.
We have always been a religion that sees the primacy of affirming respect for the dignity and worth of every human person. It is in this fundamental value of our faith, that we find, and will continue to find, the resource for hope and action.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor of TIKKUN Magazine, just wrote that, “We in the spiritual world will see this as a global incapacity to recognize the spirit of God in each other – what we call the sanctity of each human being. ….. But we live in a world, increasingly interconnected with everyone, and the forces that lead people to feel outrage, anger and desperation eventually impact on our own lives. ….. [We need to] ….. return to the notion that every human life is sacred, that the “bottom line” should be the creation of a world of love and caring, and that the best way to prevent these kinds of acts is not to turn ourselves into a police state, but turn ourselves into a society in which social justice, love, and compassion are so prevalent that violence becomes only a distant memory.”
The world is not a safe place and no one ever said it was. But, we believe that humankind must maintain its circle around the campfire; the light and warmth of hope and compassion we build, and build again, and build, yet again, in the dark.
So we come to our faith community, to this familiar space, among these familiar people, to be comforted, to be close, to renew our spirits, and find some precious little bit of clarity and direction.
We all have some thoughts about what happened and why; we all have opinions about the perpetrators, and about the way our own country’s policies or actions may or may not have contributed to this tragedy. Those things we can, and must, talk about later.
For now, we come in compassion and sorrow; in solidarity with the whole family of Americans mourning this incomprehensible loss. There is a place here for anger, but not enmity. Let our spirits bend toward sympathy, not revenge; healing, not retaliation. To make a difference in consequences and outcomes, we must be grounded in our faith.
Let us respect and stand together with all people of good faith and good will. In our church there has been a tangible outpouring of concern for Muslims in our midst. We can unite in this congregation, and hand-in-hand with other UU congregations in this area, to oppose any acts of revenge and bigotry targeted against any Muslims or anyone from the Middle East. We can offer sanctuary; we can offer a hand of friendship. We can practice our values.
We deplore violence. Hatred and retaliation inspired in bigotry is wrong and dead-ended. It is love and hope that will bring us together to find a path to a more peaceful world, as we seek and find comfort from our faith community in dealing with this national tragedy. If we would make peace, we will need to radiate peace. To do peace, we must be peace. Shalom, and amen!
Homily – Rev. Michael A. McGee
If you are like me, the shock of Tuesday has been melting into a terrible sadness. What was at first unbelievable and incomprehensible, is now turning into a horrifying reality as we see bodies removed from the rubble and people desperately searching for loved ones.
It’s no longer just the horrifying numbers of people who have been killed and injured; now it is the names and stories of the individual human beings who will no longer be with us, stories that remind us that these were real people whose loss will be felt by so many, for so long.
We can’t help but think that it could have been any one of us or a loved one who was on one of those planes or in the Trade Center or at the Pentagon on Tuesday. I was actually on my way to the airport in Cleveland on that morning. I had flown from National airport to Cleveland the night before on my way to a denominational meeting in Chicago, spending the night with our daughter and son-in-law who drove me to the airport the next morning. But when we arrived, the airport was blocked off by police who informed us that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. That was the first of many shocks.
We returned to our daughter’s home to call family members and watch the horrifying events take place. We sat there together shocked, outraged and grief-stricken. I was fortunate to be with family members, but I desperately wanted to return here to Arlington to be with my wife, Terry, and all of you – especially when I heard that the Pentagon had been another target. Fortunately, our son, Brendan, was at Kent State University, not far from Cleveland, and he drove me home on Tuesday night.
On that six-hour journey Brendan and I listened to the news on the radio and talked with each other about the significance of the day. Brendan told me that he had heard people describe how they remembered exactly where they were when Pearl Harbor was bombed and John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were assassinated. And now he will always remember where he was on September 11, 2001, and the pain of losing his innocence.
It was an eerie drive home. Few cars were on the road. We saw many flags at half-mast and no airplanes in the sky. We passed Pittsburgh, where one of the planes crashed nearby, and we passed the battlefields at Gettysburg and Antietam, the two bloodiest days in American history -- until Tuesday. Signs along the toll-road warned drivers to stay out of New York City and Washington D.C.. When we finally arrived, I was glad to be home, to have Terry and our family to console each other and to be with all of you for the vigils this week.
This past week has been horrifying. And the future will be difficult as well. Buildings will be rebuilt, planes will resume flying, and we will go on with our lives. But always there will be a tear in the fabric of our national and personal lives where the darkness of this time will be ever-present, a darkness that will always remind us of the terror and grief of Tuesday.
This tragedy has made it clear that we are all inextricably connected to each other in the interdependent web of all existence. All of us have experienced the pain of losing these people, whether we knew them or not. Their loss has reverberated around the world.
And we also cannot help but be infused with the courage, compassion, and hope that holds us so tightly together now as a nation and a world. Though the differences are many, we are experiencing the oneness of human community -- at least for this week -- and that inspiration will hopefully help us to strive to create the Beloved Community as a reality in the future.
Now it is time to give witness to the interdependent web by doing everything we can to make it stronger. This is a time to commit ourselves to not only helping the victims of this tragedy, but for each of us to be a light of gentleness and compassion in the world.
Those who are responsible for these horrific acts will be brought to justice, but we need to be certain that the innocent are not harmed. This is a time to stand side by side with those of all religious traditions -- including our Muslim brothers and sisters -- in solidarity against hatred and terrorism.
We need to stand together as religious people against those who worship a God of hatred -- whether they be Muslims like Osama bin Ladin or Christians like Timothy McVeigh and Jerry Falwell. And we need to proclaim together a divinity of great love and compassion.
This is also a time for all of us to look deeper into the causes of these acts and to find ways to respond with justice. Let us not simplify the struggle as a war between good and evil, but instead let us ask the hard questions about why there are those who hate our nation so fanatically. And let us also ask the hard questions about why it is that hatred, violence and prejudice are so deeply rooted in each and every one of us.
This is a painful and challenging time.
It is a time when we are witnesses to injustice but we must bear witness for justice.
This is a time when we are witnesses to hatred and violence but we must bear witness for love and compassion.
This is a time when we are witnesses to death and destruction but we must bear witness for life and creation.
This is a time when we are witnesses to despair and hopelessness but we must bear witness for hope and the triumph of the human spirit.
--Amen.
Benediction
We affirm the unfailing renewal of life.
Rising from the earth, and reaching for the sun,
all living creatures shall fulfill themselves.
We affirm the steady growth of human companionship.
Rising from ancient cradles and reaching for the stars,
people the world over shall seek the ways of understanding.
We affirm a continuing hope that out of every tragedy
the spirits of individuals shall rise and build a better world.
--Leonard Mason
--Shalom, Salaam, Blessed be, Amen.
