Reflections on Ground Zero

In the summer of 2002, my then 17 year old son and my then 21 year old grandson and I went down to Lower Manhattan and spent the better part of an afternoon at Ground Zero. We read many of the notes pinned to the wrought iron fence and tacked to trees, etc. We looked at the gapping hole in the ground that had been the base for the Twin Towers of the WTC a few short months before. As we looked at the pictures of loved ones lost with notes of remembrance from family our hearts were heavy and our thoughts were complex. We didn't say much, we were too deep in thought.

Having lived and worked in Oklahoma City and having a sister who worked for several years in the Federal Court House Building in Oklahoma City, my first trip to the site of that building site after the devastating bombing was equally sobering and shocking. The memorial constructed there was a fitting one and anyone standing among the shadows and the streams of light cannot walk away unaffected.

Several years ago I stood on the site of another Ground Zero in Europe -- the site of the concentration camp at Auschwitz. It was an eerie feeling that caused me to be sick at my stomach as I realized the magnitude of the slaughter of human life that had taken place there.

It was not a Ground Zero but my first time to stand in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington at dusk and read aloud the words of Lincoln inscribed on those walls brought tears to my eyes and a feeling of unsteadiness as I reflected on his words from the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural.

I recalled how I felt when I visited Pearl Harbor, another Ground Zero, for the first time and realized the pandemonium that swept that harbor and took the lives of unsuspecting young Americans.

I have not been to Nagasaki or Hiroshima, although I have visited Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, and other cities in Japan at least 50 times over the past 20 years. But when I spent time a few months ago doing internet research and viewing pictures of the devastation of those cities and the enormous loss of innocent life wrought by the two atomic bombs we dropped there, I had that same feeling of emptiness and helplessness in my stomach.

I don't even want to try to add up the number of human lives taken by these tragic examples of humankind seeking to "get even" with those who are perceived to be our enemy. I know that every life lost in this way is an affront to the sacredness of life and a waste of enormous proportions. I also know that there has never been, nor will there ever be, a war that will end all wars.

And then I thought about an interview I watched with General Tommy Franks several months ago. In his disarming and downhome Texas drawl, General Franks comes across as a man of homespun wisdom that seems compelling. But as he spoke, I realized how far his philosophy was from the teachings of the one who walked the dusty paths of Galilee and Judea some 20+ centuries ago.

General Franks said that he asked every audience to reflect on how they felt immediately after hearing of the attack on the World Trade Center. Then he said, his advice was, don't ever forget how you felt because it is that feeling that motivates us to respond. What did you want to do at that point? [Of course for most people the natural response would be, get even.] So, he concluded, that is what we must do!

I also thought about the spectacle of a president whose nation had been attacked and was looked to for moral leadership using the language of the frontier, Wanted Dead or Alive; We will hunt you down and we will kill you!

That is not moral leadership!

As long as that is the attitude we bring to the table after we have been attacked, we will continue to have more and more Ground Zeroes. They that live by the sword will die by the sword. If we follow the pattern of an eye for an eye, eventually everyone will be blind.

It is the prophetic vision that the time will come when men shall beat their swords into pruning hooks and their spears into plowshares and the lamb shall lie down with the lion.

My fervent hope and prayer is to live long enough to see our nation claim the moral high ground in international relations and declare that we will no longer brag about having the strongest military force in the world, but instead will be considered by the world to have earned the role of the moral leader of the world.

Amen.