The following remarks were offered by ICNY Executive Director, the Rev. Chloe Breyer, at the Voices of September 11th Interfaith Service held on Monday evening, Sept. 10, at St. Peter Roman Catholic Church:
September 10, 2012
Greetings to you and thanks to Mary Fetchet and other Voices of 9/11 family members from St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in West Harlem and the Interfaith Center of New York where I serve as director, working with diverse faith leaders on practical problems. It is from this perspective I would like to say a word of reflection tonight.
Eleven years later reflecting on a life and nation-changing tradgedy, I still find hope in an obscure piece of federal legislation that had bearing on my own ability to serve like so many other diverse clergy as volunteer chaplains after 9/11 and is related to the better angles of our community response to the tragedy. I’m talking about the 1996 Federal Aviation Reauthorization Act that mandated any disaster involving an airplane in the United States required provision for the emotional and spiritual care of families of the victims. After the Valujet Everglades crash in 1996 where the crash site had been treated like a crime scene and little information given to the bereaved relatives, families lobbied Senators Paul Simon and Edward Kennedy to make provisions for family care.
So it was that 24 hours after the planes hit the WTC, Pentagon and Shanksville, PA, SAIR (Spiritual Aviation Incident Response) began to train and mobilize local clergy of different faith traditions to be a source of emotional and spiritual support for the victims. I am grateful for this Act for two reasons:
First, the law allowed clergy to give back and make a small contribution to the rebuilding of our city in the wake of that tragedy 11 years ago. We were part of an effort by thousands of average citizens who stepped forward to rebuild our community in amazing ways.
Also, this Act enabled clergy of different faith traditions reflecting the diversity of our city and the occupants of the Towers—Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu—to work together, to cooperate across faith lines in serving cleanup workers, fire, and police at World Trade Center Site and D-mort and T mort along with family members uptown at the Family Assistance Center.
Both these points of personal gratitude are part of a larger and too often untold part of the September 11th narrative—This is the real ending of the story of the following days and weeks that followed and the way so many people overcame difference to put their shoulder to the task of restoration. Specifically, religious leaders in this city showed the world that our great faith traditions can be a part of the solution–key to reconciliation and healing and not, as we too often hear today on the media, a source of division and hatred.
Many challenges we faced pm 911 haven’t gone away. The problems of hatred, fear and suspicion that divide us are too great NOT to embrace the offering of all God’s people in creating a better, safer, and more peaceful world. Amen.
