The U.S.’s health appears to be measured by the years that pass from the terrible tragedy known simply by its date. As Sept. 11 nears each year, the country gets ready to look at the “heal-o-meter” and gauge how we’ve done in moving forward.
As we look at each year of progress up close, it seems as if nothing has changed. However, as we begin to look at the overall picture, we can see the progress that has developed before our eyes.
Over the last 12 years, the U.S. has progressed down a path of rebirth. With each passing year, new opportunities for healing and acceptance are presented and accepted by those who are ready to move forward.
Members of the Fairfield community congregated at Egan Chapel of St. Ignatius Loyola for an interfaith service on the 12th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center.
Students, professors and faith leaders who had not previously met suddenly became spiritually unified under one roof, gathered by the effects of the event. “The service had a theme of universality,” said Jawad Bayat, the new Muslim Chaplain at Fairfield.
“We are all human,” said Bayan Abunar ‘14, “the events affect[ed] us all the same way.”
Every generation is beginning to realize the severity of growing up in a post-Sept. 11 world.
“Parents were suddenly made very aware of the fact that something could happen randomly that they have no control over, and I think they became much more protective of their kids,” said Father Holland, S.J. “The idea that you talk to your mother five times a day and you’re a college student certainly wasn’t true a generation ago. That just didn’t happen.”
While we were in the midst of heartbreak, we were also given a chance to show that violence will not defeat our spirits. We live in a new reality that doesn’t allow us to take what we have for granted. We understand that we can lose the ones we love. From this perspective, the country has never been more alive.
Fairfield is a microcosm of the world. Abunar told her story of how she discontinued wearing her hijab after Sept. 11 because “people perceive you as an outsider, even if you’re an American.”
At the service, she was wearing her hijab once again, signaling a return of a sense of safety after the event.
At the rededication of the Peace Pole that was planted in 2005, congregates shared prayers in eleven languages, including Sign, Hebrew, Farsi, and German. The prayers recognized that the events of Sept. 11 were not just domestic, but international, and that the attack was a shot heard around the world.
“It’s a great opportunity to use the traditions of all religions, especially Judaism, Christianity and Islam, to pray together for peace,” explained Campus Minister for Immersions and Pilgrimages Jocelyn Collen.
“It gives students the opportunity to see other ways to pray, that other religions support peace and how important forgiveness is to moving forward,” Collen said.
In a world filled with distractions that can make time feel as if it moves at lightspeed, contemplative answers can mimic the feeling of being stuck behind that kid in the hallway who moves at a glacial pace.
As Holland explained, “We’re here in this business to ask better questions, to ask deeper questions. And I think what might happen … in an event like this, in a larger context of human beings from different places with different viewpoints sitting together, pondering together, reflecting together, praying together, it might not just comfort us, it might discomfort us. That is, it might unsettle us enough to ask some deeper, more penetrating questions.”
Despite the illusion that violence always seems to get the better of communication, we must remember that we do have the choice to ask deeper questions to avoid violence, to not allow anger to encourage the violence within us, and to overcome the tragedies of our time in the pursuit of peace.
“God does not seek out enemies to destroy. God seeks out enemies to convert, to turn around, to bring them into friendship with Him,” Holland said.
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