September 2006

Five Years Later... Let's Remember Well

Like most Americans, I remember exactly where I was on the morning of September 11, 2001. In those days, I worked as a case manager for the Western North Carolina AIDS Project, an organization whose home was a large house about a block away from my own. On the morning of September 11, I sat in a staff meeting and one of our staffers in a nearby town broke the news over the conference call line.

The morning seemed to unfold at an excruciating crawl as one tower, then another, fell before us, our eyes peeled to the old television we had pulled out of a dark cabinet in a dusty corner. I thought of my good friends who live in New York City. When I was finally able to get in touch with my best friend from college, she told me that she had watched the towers fall from a bridge, not a television screen. She spoke repeatedly of the awful smell and ghastly dust that appeared throughout the city. I listened as if frozen, lamenting the tragic loss of life in this deliberate, hateful attack.

As days blended into weeks, the comfort of our collective, national lament took me by surprise. Folks treated me kind in the grocery store. People I didn’t know met my eyes on the street and spoke a solemn, authentic “hello.” We were a nation in mourning, comforted only by the understanding that we held something precious in common that we had never laid our hands on before. I had great hopes that out of our grief and lament would emerge a stronger nation, more compassionate to the world around us, especially to those strangers joining us by candlelight vigil in nations across the globe.

My grief curdled into anger when our national leadership, with the overwhelming support of many Americans, called for vengeance, perpetuating the cycle of violence. I knew our best option was not a hasty resort to war, I believed we were more creative than crying out “an eye for an eye.” I come from a religious tradition that urges me to love the enemy. And, as a woman who is always suspect of any good emerging from violence, I wasn’t convinced that answering the attacks of 9/11 with a military response was the best use of the trust the American people had invested in our leaders.

And though I worked for a liberal organization, belonged to a progressive community of faith, and surrounded myself, like so many Americans, mostly with friends who thought a lot like I did, isolation closed in on me in the midst of the public outcry for revenge that followed on the heels of 9/11.

Right around that time, a friend and co-worker asked me if I’d ever heard of an organization called Women’s Action for New Directions. “It’s a group of progressive women who are calling for a thoughtful response to 9/11,” she told me. “They are influential, well informed, connected to women legislators.” I was sold. Within a week, I paid my dues, became a member, and began receiving my first WAND mailings.

As we round the bend on the 5th anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11, our nation has been busy at war, first with Afghanistan, and then with Iraq. The war in Iraq has cost our nation the lives of 2,633 U.S. troops and over $300 billion in taxpayer dollars.

In my travels with WAND, I often have the chance to talk to folks around the country about the cost of this war, and the implications of our faith in a time of war. And the word on the street is—overwhelmingly—that this war is far too costly. As today’s turmoil in Iraq boils over into tomorrow’s civil war, our nation continues to fund weapons manufacturing and war-making as if violence were a sustainable solution to the conflicts of our time. No doubt, peace and security are of vital importance to us as Americans. The problem with the war in Iraq, however, is not simply that it’s too costly, but that it’s been completely ineffective in combating, dismantling, and preventing terrorism.

Five years later, the time has come to say we can do better. Instead of engaging in costly war is if it were the only tool in our toolbox, we can create an exit strategy in Iraq, eliminate the bloat in Pentagon spending (especially on obsolete weapons systems, such as the failed missile defense program), and increase funding for diplomacy and humanitarian programs which prevent terrorism by addressing the root causes of instability.

It’s common sense. But it won’t happen unless we stand up and speak out for change together.

In troubled times, I remember these words from Psalm 146, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish. Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob…who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry” (Psalm 146:3-7).

In the time these words were written, a king’s honor was tied to how well he mirrored the God who executes justice for the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. Ultimate allegiance belongs not to the prince, king, or president; but to the God of justice and mercy. Ultimate allegiance belongs not to a nation, a particular foreign policy or war; but to the God whose realm we live into each time we seek justice for the oppressed, or emergency services for the most vulnerable.

I believe we remember 9/11 well when we call, not for the blood of war this time, but for an end to senseless killing. We mark the 5th anniversary of 9/11 with honor when we place our trust in those leaders who embody the call to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. Let’s remember well.

Amanda Hendler-Voss Faith Communities Organizer Rev. Amanda Hendler-Voss is the Faith Based Coordinator for the Women’s Action for New Directions Educational Fund and the Minister of Christian Education at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Asheville, NC. She is a graduate of the master of divinity program at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, where she received certificates in the Black Church Studies and Church and Community programs. Her studies have taken her to London, England and Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Amanda serves as a member of the Wellspring Clergywomen’s Alliance of the Black Church and Domestic Violence Institute. She has a background in case management and experience working with people with HIV/AIDS and single parent families. Amanda is ordained in the United Church of Christ.