Litany For September 11
Rev. Kathleen McTigue
We gather together this evening to name our grief, born of the violence
that fell on us from a bright autumn sky one year ago today. We gather
as a circle of remembrance, to honor those now missing from the circle.
We bear witness to our loss.
We remember the ones we knew and loved who perished, and we honor the
strangers whose smiling faces and shattered hopes have haunted the edges
of the news all through this long year.
We bear witness to our loss.
We honor those who turned their faces toward the danger rather than
away, those brave ones who reached strong hands into the fire and smoke,
whose lives were lost in the saving of others.
We bear witness to our heroes.
We have learned that our world is a complex web of sorrows, a litany
of wrongs and injustices into which we are bound. Our pain has sometimes
led us to the ancient and dangerous equation of an eye for every eye,
a tooth for every tooth.
We bear witness to our choices.
There are strangers half a world away whose lives have now been lost
to our own nation's hunger for justice, innocent others just as beloved
as our dead, just as worthy of lives rich and long.
We bear witness to our violence.
Yet we know ourselves to be people who hunger for righteousness. We
hear the persistent whispers from our prophets and teachers who remind
us of the sweet movement from the fist to the open hand, and tell us
how urgent is the call to that movement now.
We bear witness to the power of forgiveness.
There is only one human tribe across all the earth. Within each confused
and yearning heart is the capacity for unspeakable cruelty, and the
seed of great goodness that can open us to new life.
We bear witness to our unity.
All around us we hear the language of war sounding out. We are called
into the stronger lilt and music of a different syntax, a language of
peace, a language in which our future can still beckon us as a place
of safety and nurture, justice and harmony.
We bear witness to the way of peace.
