Children's Defense Fund
It was a gloriously beautiful morning in
Atlanta, Georgia on September 11, 2001. I was attending the first public
event of organizations that had joined together to sponsor a breakfast
with several hundred Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Baha’i, Buddhist, Hindu,
and political and community leaders of every color, to affirm our joint
responsibility to ensure a safe and fit nation and world for all of
God’s children. I was moved to tears as the angelic Harmony Children’s
Choir, who looked like a little United Nations, sang the anthem of our
Civil Rights Movement, “We Shall Overcome,” as sweetly, movingly and
convincingly as I had ever heard.
This taste of heaven and hope on earth was
shattered by hate and hell on earth as my friend Andrew Young met me at
the door with the news of terrorists’ planes crashing into the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. After I ran to call family members, my
next urgently felt need was to go to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s
Atlanta gravesite to share the loving, hopeful vision of the morning
darkened by despair and death and ask how he would react and what he
would tell us to do and say. I wondered what God was teaching us through
this unspeakable tragedy. Could it be a chance to bring us closer to
our world neighbors, or would it push us further apart? Surely the
extraordinary courage, generosity and sacrifice of so many trapped in or
near the World Trade Center renewed our belief in human beings and
human kindness. One survivor of the twin towers attack said: “If you had
seen what it was like in that stairway, you’d be proud. There was no
gender, no race, no religion. It was everyone, unequivocally, helping
each other.” It was an unforgettable vision of community that terrible
day in the very epicenter of catastrophe. Imagine what our nation and
world could become if we realized and practiced this example of beloved
community in less catastrophic times.
Click here to see ENTIRE column.
