9/11 Time for reflection and courage

I remember as a child when I learned the important three numbers 9-1-1.  Our parents taught us these three numbers so that we would be able to call for help in case of an emergency.  I remember in 2001 when these numbers were stolen from our language and turned into the memorial that they are now.  No longer were the numbers 911 linked to life saving, they were linked to memorial and sadness.  They became linked to tragedy and bigotry.  I wonder if anybody who dialed 911 on that morning recognized the two.  Part of me also wonders if the cowards who carried out these terrorist actions saw this.  It is curious that our 911 is a symbol of our national collective belief in the sanctity of life and a communal view that all lives are worth saving vs. their viewpoint that there are infidels in the world that should never be saved and indeed should be murdered in cold blood.

We would be mistaken to believe that Islam is responsible for this tragedy.  We would be mistaken to assert that Christianity should be to blame for the Holocaust.  There are aspects that were used, but in reality they were abused by the criminals in both cases.  No religion endorses the murder of the innocent, and no believer in God will condone such heinous actions.  These were not religious actions, they were political and terrorist ones.

We should be very proud in the United States that we have a society that embraces religions of all shapes and colors.  We should likewise be proud that we have people who do not subscribe to any of these.  But we never should condone the drive to uproot faith from our public discourse nor from our society.  If people choose to believe they should be embraced and if people choose not to believe then they should be embraced.  People who try to stifle the viewpoints of other people are in a way taking a page out of the playbook of the people who committed these crimes: stifling discussion. I was reminded today of an ongoing debate over a cross from the World Trade Center site.  http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/10/atheists-continue-battle-against-world-trade-center-cross-at-memorial/?hpt=hp_t2&hpt=hp_t2.  Why this is an issue is beyond me, but what upsets me is that there is a movement to remove God from the United States.  I am not a Christian, and yet I support the cross being there not because it is a Christian symbol, but because it is a religious symbol.  I would love them to make a Jewish Star and a Crescent Moon with it as well.  I would like them to make all other symbols of faith.  Because while everyone is busy blaming God for this and religion for this... What they are missing is that God was not in the planes going into the buildings... God was in the people running in to rescue the others.  God was absent in the hearts of the terrorists, but was alive and well in the eyes of the people crying in their living rooms asking why.  God was not in the Koran that was usurped and desecrated by Al Qaeda, but was in the scriptures of all of the people who went to Synagogues and Churches and Mosques afterwards to pray and be consoled after the tragedy.  There are people who want you to believe that God is the source of all hatred and war.  But when it comes down to reality the conflicts are over money, power and grudges.  The wars are not God made, they are human devised.  We must see that while we push God out of the world in our violence, we bring God back into the world when we embrace humanity and other people.  God is in the response and that is why the cross belongs there in the eyes of this rabbi.  I have no problem living in a majority christian country that provides me with the room to be a Jew.  I have an enormous problem living in a Godless country that drives God out of every public place.  Leave the cross there as it is a source of comfort, and continue to accept and acknowledge that there are multiple approaches to God, including none at all, and from there go forward and continue our healing from the time our sacred 911 was stolen from us.  Go forward and restore 9-1-1 into our national consciousness as the lifesaving numbers and not the ones that murdered.  May generations to come have faith in these numbers and that they will be there to lift us up and not tear us down.

May the memories of all of the souls lost on September 11, 2001 rest in peace and may their loved ones find comfort in their memory and their legacy.