Tag: terrorism

Remembering 9-11

Posted on by Gary Furr

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[Now it has been many years since I first published this piece. It remains one of the most read pieces I have ever written on here, not because of any brilliance on my part, but because of the solemnity of the event and the somber reality of loss. Since the original 9-11, the world has only underlined the pain, conflict and brokenness embodied in that day. Walter Brueggemann once wrote that before Israel in ancient times could hear God’s word of hope they had to grieve in order to understand what they had lost. Forgetting 9-11 dishonors that day. It was a terrible day, not in the way the deluded anarchists intended, but a day that caused the world to stop and reconsider itself. We should never forget the dead, one or three thousand. They have much to tell us, if we will listen. I hope this might speak to you, to all of us, as we remember today. I have edited the original to a shorter version, but it is important to me to remember.]

In 2009, I saw Washington, D.C. for the first time in my life.   I was truly inspired by the experience.  In these cynical times, it is hard to find places to connect to a larger sense of e pluribus unum anymore, but looking at the Lincoln Memorial , close to the spot memorialwhere Martin Luther King called us to our better selves, I felt something powerful in my heart.  I looked up at the tragic, larger than life statue of President Lincoln, and read the two inscriptions on either side of him—one of the Gettysburg Address and the other the Second Inaugural Address.  I felt a sense of the “hallowed,” one of the few spaces where I have seen public and religious come near one another without either losing itself.

So as we mark yet another anniversary of  9-11, we truly need public places to come and remember together.  I wonder what our remembering will be?  Now the years are passing, and the anguish and fury and violation have dulled into annual observances. We have found a whole new litany of grievances and sorrows to lament. An 18 year old having their birthday today was born on that day.

Remembering matters, but it also shifts and changes with the years.  Remembering in the sense I speak is not sugarcoating or forgetting the pain, but neither do we let the loss become the entire narrative of a lost life.  If there is value in living with the end of our lives in view, it is also necessary that we not merely remember lives by the way they ended.

I once shared this perspective with a friend whose dear aunt had been murdered by a yardworker she had hired, a drug addict who broke into her home at night and stabbed her to death.  She was a caring, devout Christian who taught literacy, helped the poor and gave her life to the unfortunates, only to have one of them take her life.  My wife, a friend to his wife, went over and cleaned up the terrible scene once the police had finished, and it haunted us all.  I said to my friend, “I hope you will be able to not merely remember this terrible end.  However long it went on, whatever horror she went through, it was over in a while.  But her life of more than eighty years far outweighs those few terrible moments.”  He was comforted by this. To be remembered and not forgotten is to continue to be loved.

firemen_flagWe do not have forever freeze the dead of 9-11 in those burning buildings, or falling to their deaths, or the horror of crashing planes.  To do so is to provide the psychopathic fanatics who did it their hollow little victory.  Remembering must stretch out, farther and deeper and wider, to remember all that those 3,000 lives meant.  Neither do we have to sink into endless rage against the sinners.  They’re God’s problem now.  I remember an extraordinary quote from Elie Wiesel, the Nobel prize winning writer who survived Auschwitz.  He said something to the effect that “it is a greater sin to forget our sins than to have committed them.”  Remembering is the path to forgiveness, ironically, not forgetting.  Forgetting is denial and it’s not the same as choosing to relinquish our right to hold on to our resentment.

Ritual and worship are powerful, too.  When times are hard, they can lift us and sustain us.  Many years ago in our little book, The Dialogue of Worship, Milburn Price and I wrote this:

Sometimes people are in crisis when they come to worship.  Their faith is weak, or their life is one of defeat and    discouragement.  The writer of Hebrews warned early Christians not to “neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another” (Hebrews 10:25, NRSV).  The very act of gathering is an act of mutual encouragement.  We allow ourselves into the presence of others.  We leave behind our solitary troubles and connect with like-minded believers.  We cannot overestimate the power of this fellowship.  But there are mercies of God offered to all, not merely the church.  There was a time when we talked about “General Revelation” as the goodnesses that God revealed to all people–nature, morality, and all the traces of Godself that hint at the divine being at every turn to help us find our way to grace.

I think, somehow, that on this occasion of 9-11 remembrance that we are most in need of this, too.  As a nation, perhaps we could reconnect to that deep resolve, unity of sorrow, and spirit of generosity and kindness that flowed for a while in that moment.

Some events are transcendent, even larger than the church.  They are part of the human condition and its tragic anguish in the cosmos.  God is mysteriously working in this larger picture, but it cannot be neatly explained or rationalized.  It must be simply offered to us, where we can weep, remember, and find some sense that this is not empty in the universe.

It ought to comfort, not threaten, us who are people of faith that God is not just in the place where we come every week, but here, too, and in the terrible, cruel and merciful turns of history.  We will leave our churches, synagogues and mosques, even our agnostic lake houses and condos, and gather together to weep and remember.  And the remembering will help heal our souls.

I close with this beautiful rendering of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, performed on September 15, four days after the attacks, which says what only music and tears can say.  The grief of all humankind, the follies of hate and domination and the thirst for revenge, wars and rumors of war and all the pain and suffering they bring, often to those least intended, is contained in the naked emotion of this piece.  Remember, so that we might be one day healed.

Listen

 

 

 

Remembering 9-11

Posted on by Gary Furr

[Five years ago, I published this piece. It remains, by far, the most read piece I have ever written on here, not because of any brilliance on my part, but because of the solemnity of the event and the somber reality of loss. Since the original 9-11, the world has only underlined the pain, conflict and brokenness embodied in that day. Walter Brueggemann once wrote that before Israel in ancient times could hear God’s word, they had to grieve in order to understand what they had lost. Forgetting 9-11 dishonors that day. It was a terrible day, not in the way the deluded anarchists intended, but a day that caused the world to stop and consider itself. We should never forget the dead, one or three thousand. They have much to tell us, if we will listen. I hope this might speak to you, to all of us, as we remember today]

So what are you readers doing to remember 9-11?   A few weeks ago our church lead in a community wide presentation on a Sunday evening with joint choirs and full orchestra as a remembrance of 9-11.  It was inspiring, somber, reflective and hopeful.  I expect that this year will be an especially somber time for our nation as we mark a decade since that terrible day.  It has been one of the most challenging decades of our nation’s history.

One of the most intriguing books I have read in recent years is Rodney Clapp’s Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction.  It really is not, mostly, a book about Johnny Cash.  It is about the religious, cultural and political ambiguities of the American psyche that were embodied in the life of Johnny Cash.  One of the points he made was that whereas the center of community life in New England was the public square, as expressed in the parade, in the South, the center of life became the church, and the great public event was the revival.

The result of this caused the church to bear all the weight of life, public and private.  It was the center of its members’ lives in a way that did not play out the same in the Northeast.  Therefore, patriotism also had to find its way into the church and live there.  I have thought about this a great deal since reading it, wondering if we do not suffer greatly from the diminishment of shared public life so well-chronicled in recent years.  More and more, we live disconnected from our fellow citizens, isolated into interest groups, religious ghettos and our homes with their entertainment centers.  It’s hard to get us all together.  Even churches need to get out in God’s wider world sometimes…

In 2009, I saw Washington, D.C. for the first time in my life (I know, how DID it take so long!).   I was truly inspired by the experience.  In these cynical times, it is hard to find places to connect to a larger sense of e pluribus unum anymore, but looking at the Lincoln Memorial , close to the spot where Martin Luther King called us to our better selves, I felt something powerful in my heart.  I looked up at the tragic, larger than life statue of President Lincoln, and Continue reading “Remembering 9-11” →

A Prayer for the Victims of the Orlando Shooting

Posted on by Gary Furr

We pray today for these victims and their families— not gay or straight, black or white, Democrat or Republican, Christian or Jew or Muslim or none of the above, but as You see them–beloved sons, daughters, friends, sisters, brothers, neighbors, and most of all, fellow Americans.

As a minister, writer, and songwriter, I am always vexed when events of great magnitude happen. What words are adequate for such a moment? The shootings in Orlando, done by a single darkened soul under the sound and fury of evil ideology left us once again speechless.  Except, everywhere, we started talking, typing, blaming, searching for answers. Many offered easy ones, mostly the same ones, and few people seem to change their minds. “If only everyone would….”

But the child160612082538-08-orlando-shooting-0612-large-1691ren, sisters, brothers and friends are still dead. I have searched my own soul, and pondered, “What more can I do?” There have been, according to a report I heard 133 mass shootings in the US (four or more murdered) in this year.  Terror, violence, hatred, fear, loathing of people we don’t know or understand.

Continue reading “A Prayer for the Victims of the Orlando Shooting” →

Another Day of Terror: Holy Week Reflection

Posted on by Gary Furr

I woke up to the bad news from Brussels, Belgium today. We are so numbed to the violence on our globe, we have to wonder about the ambivalent gift of “information.” There is no time to digest, reflect, pray, consider. We are, instead, an endless echo of bad news cycles, compounded by the “unsocial media” that encourages the worst among us to speak loudly even if it is unworthy to hear. Here is the reflection I sent to my congregation today:

The recurring horror of terrorism is found in the terrorists themselves.  They are, finally, demented haters of life, of humanity, of our collective existence—that is the essence of terrorists’ acts. There is nothing in them but absolute despair of hope, and the desire to destroy it in all others for the sake of fantastic delusions of forcing the hand of the universe to bend to their will. There is nothing at the end of

Brussels Subway system attacked

their action except death and blood.

They are not new. Throughout all of history, they have killed, as governments and society seek to kill them in response. On and on the fatal disaster continues, hopelessly. It is into Holy Week that the latest delusion happens. In Brussels the fanatics strike civilization once more, convinced that they will prevail, and destined absolutely to fail.

Of all weeks, this one should comfort those who believe in Christ Jesus. Of all people, we began in a story of unjust death, amid terrorists who led people into the desert (Acts 21:38) and to the top of Masada only to die for nothing and their hopes dashed. Those who waved the palms would flee for their lives—and for what? The emptiness of a lost cause. Continue reading “Another Day of Terror: Holy Week Reflection” →

Love Lifted Me: a 9-11 Story

Posted on by Gary Furr

Sometimes hope only bubbles up in the small delicate places

that are almost unnoticed among the debris of history

 What do 9-11, a pregnant woman, an orphan immigrant from Burkina-Faso, and a store specializing in Afro-pop music have in common?   And on a day of such sadness, are there flickers of hope to fasten to?

Sometimes hope only bubbles up in the small delicate places that are almost unnoticed among the debris of history and humanity’s terrible bent to self-destruction.  If we cannot always fathom the great purposes of God in the

Ken Braun

rumblings of nations and enemies, we can listen to stories.  My daughter Katie is a member of Metro Baptist Church in Midtown Manhattan, a thriving small congregation with dynamic social ministries and a loving fellowship.  Last year, one of their members, Ken Braun, shared his story of that day.  It was about his friend and colleague, Alberto Barbosa.  “Berto,” as Ken calls him, was born in a  poor village in west Africa.  Orphaned, he made his way as     a teenager, first to Portugal and then to New York.

Ken met Berto when he first came to New York and when Braun   started a company dedicated to African music, Berto was his first employee.  The business was located just a few blocks from the World Trade Center.  Eventually, they both moved their families to New Jersey and would meet in Newark and commute on the Path train every morning to the World Trade Center terminal and walk to work from there.

On September 11, Braun says he had some errands to do, so he didn’t take the Path train, instead taking the bus to the Port Authority.  He never made it to work, and we know why.  Braun said, “The bus route takes an elevated highway over the Meadowlands, and from there you can see almost all of Manhattan, especially when the sky is a lucid blue like it was that day.  I saw the flames and smoke from the North Tower.  I had no idea what was going on.”

Traffic ground to a halt above the Lincoln tunnel and as they stared out the windows, they had a panorama seat to see the South Tower impaled by the second plane.  They could get no closer, and chaos ensued.   It took a long time for Ken to make his way home and he spent the rest of that day calling friends, leaving a message at the school for his children, and following the unspeakable horror.  He was particularly eager to contact colleagues because they all would have been going to that part of the city that morning.

He heard from everyone but Berto was the last.  He was anxious, worried about him taking the train right into the station under the buildings.  Finally, Berto called, and Braun anxiously sputtered, “Where the hell have you been?  And he said, “Well…hell.’   I’ll let Braun himself tell the rest.

He had been on the last train to come into the World Trade Center, and when he exited into the underground terminal, people were shouting and running in all directions, so he thought, “I better get out of this and get to work.”   So he went up to the ground level and exited the building and walked into pandemonium.  Debris was falling and fireballs were falling, and he said, “Some I the things I saw, I didn’t want to look at them, I don’t want to know what they were.  I just wanted to get out of there.”

So he kept walking toward the office, but he didn’t get far, because he came upon a woman, a very pregnant woman, sprawled out on the sidewalk, and he knelt down beside her.  She was gasping for breath.   He thought she was having her baby.  He tried to motion for a policeman or a medic, and there were many, but they were all rushing toward the fire, and no one noticed him or the pregnant woman on the ground.

So he picked her up in his arms and he carried her as far as he could and then he set her down in the shelter of a doorway, and took out a bottle of water and gave it to her.  And when she could finally catch her breath, she said, “I’m not in labor, I’m just terrified.”  And he said, “Don’t worry, we’ll get through this together.”

And when she had enough strength, he helped her to her feet, and he put his arm behind her waist, and they walked.  They walked north, and whenever she needed to rest, which was frequently, they would stop and then keep going.

It took them seven hours to walk seven miles.  She lived in New Jersey, so they went to the Hudson River Ferry crossing on West 33rd Street, and there were masses of people there because that was the only way to leave Manhattan.

Berto found a bench for her to sit on, so he went to find a person of authority to help her get on this ferry ahead of all the people who got there first, so eventually he found somebody and they escorted her up the ferry.  She said, “I will not go without this man,” so they brought him and he went with her.

When they got to Hoboken, there were masses of people there, too, but had no place to go because the buses and taxis were full.  But someone with a car saw how pregnant she was and said, “I’ll take you wherever you have to go.”  But there wasn’t room for Berto, so he said, “You’ll be okay now.  Good night.”  Then he made his own way home, which took another two hours.   He got home at 9:00 that night.

In 2009, Berto was shopping and a woman bumped into him and said, “Alberto!”  he recognized her and said, “I know you.  Where have we met?”  And she identified herself as the pregnant woman and told him he had saved her life.  Berto said, “Ah!  I didn’t save your life!  You were strong.  We helped each other.”

She said, “Alberto, when death surrounded me, I prayed to God that He would spare my baby, and when I opened my eyes, there you were.  And you lifted me up and carried me away from danger.  You saved me and my baby.”

What  moment that had to be!  He asked how the child was and she said, excitedly, “Wait here.”  She ran off into the store and returned with a smiling man and young boy in tow.  The husband threw his arms around him and a party broke out.

The woman said, “Every night I thank God for you and pray that we will meet.  I want you to meet our son.  Alberto, this is our son.  His name is Alberto.”

Berto, still uncomprehending, said, “Oh!  Is that a name in your family?”

And the father said, “It is now.”

Listen to Ken Braun tell the story on the Metro Baptist Church website.

A New York Times piece about Ken Braun’s love of African music.

Dreaming On

Posted on by Gary Furr


The anniversary of 9/11 is not only a marker of a terrible historical moment, it is a reminder that we have lived an entire decade in the collective shadows of fear and diminished hopes.  Our children graduating now have spent their childhoods absorbing tsunamis, wars, terrorism, hurricanes, earthquakes and economic catastrophe.  They enter a job market that will test their ability to hope.  It may be a great moment not only to remember 9/11 but also to remember how to hope.

Howard Thurman once wrote that “as long as a man has a dream in his heart, he cannot lose the significance of living.” (Meditations of the Heart, 36-37).  He went on to say that realism, daily facts, are unavoidable, but without that ineffable presence of something bigger inside us, life turns into “a swamp, a dreary, dead place and, deep within, a man’s heart begins to rot.”  This dream does not have to be some world-shaking vision of dramatic change, although moments of history sometimes require these.  Instead, “the dream is the quiet persistence in the heart that enables [us] to ride out the storms of  [our] churning experiences.”

Thurman grew up in Daytona Beach during segregation, but rose to national prominence as a preacher, writer, pastor and academician. He traveled widely and participated in many Christian missions and among his travels, spent time with Gandhi.  He was a college classmate of Martin Luther King, Sr., and was the Dean of the Chapel when King’s son, Martin, came there for study.

Thurman took the young man under wing and mentored him.  He was, in many regards, King’s spiritual director through his short life.  His book, Jesus and the Disinherited, written in 1949, profoundly influenced King.   In 1953 Life magazine) rated Thurman among the twelve most important religious leaders in the United States, but time has moved on and, outside the African American churches and historians and theologians, Thurman is not well-known.

When we think of all of these echoes of Thurman in the life of a young preacher from Atlanta, and how Thurman’s thoughts lived out through King’s life, it underlines the importance of his words about dreaming.  Our dreams do not have to be cosmic or political and yet they can roll out to change the world.  The Apostle Paul had a dream one night of a Macedonian man who said, “Come over here and help us,” and the gospel came to that place.  Peter had a vision that opened the gospel to the Gentiles in Acts 10.  Dreaming is powerful.

These dreams do not have to be world-sized.  They can be quite simple—dreaming of a better life for your children, to help a friend whose life is crushed, or as simple as “I want to be a better person than I have been up until now.”  It can be a dream to rebuild out of financial ruin or when your circumstances have taken a devastating turn.  We can dream of helping the next generation do more than we ever imagined and so give ourselves to a career of teaching and guiding.

There is something very determined about dreaming.  While “dreamy” often describes escape, inward dreams are just the opposite—they occupy our hearts and minds and drive us toward something that is ultimately better.  We imagine a future worth attaining.

Don’t underestimate the dream.  It is quite powerful.  It raised the ancient Jewish patriarch Joseph out of prison and into the Pharaoh’s court, and ultimately Israel into existence.  Thurman’s dreams lived into a young man who was part of calling America to its best self.

In these times of rebuilding, re-imagining and renewal, biblical people ought to dream.  Who knows what might come of it?  Just when life is at its worst is when dreams matter most.