[Talk presented at the Interfaith Remembrance Service in Huntsville, Alabama, September 10, 2002]

"And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightening and descending in the rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in the trees."

--From Kahlil Gibran's inspirational masterpiece, The Prophet.

Our initial impression, while struggling to come to terms with the loss of 9-11, is that it seems so senseless, for how could we possibly find meaning in this catastrophe? I offer that we may find meaning by seeing clearly the illness of the human spirit that led to these heinous acts; and then decisively committing ourselves to the healing and eradication of that illness, wherever we find it. This illness is the animosity born of religious prejudice, intolerance, and exclusivity. But we must realize that these destructive attitudes are defeated by the more powerful force of what Jesus called the second greatest commandment--to love thy neighbor as thyself--the force that will unite us. "Let a man overcome anger by love," the Buddha tells us. Let us not underestimate the power of unity, for it is more powerful than we can imagine. "So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth," the Baha'i scriptures tell us. It is the all-embracing power of unity to overcome prejudice which inspired Edwin Markham to write, at the dawn of the twentieth century, his epigram entitled "Outwitted":

He drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!

And that is why we are here tonight--that we may draw our circle so large as to take in even those who would seek to shut us out.

I wish to draw a parallel between the events of 9-11 with other catastrophic events, such as those from the Civil War, the World Wars, or the Holocaust. Each of these events taught us that isolationism and doctrines of superiority do not meet our collective interests, but rather threaten our very survival. Each of these calamities compelled us to take steps toward higher degrees of unity and the means to protect that unity--and we are better off for it. Each calamity now holds meaning for us in the lessons learned from it--lessons enshrined in its remembrance and in the institutions which unfolded from it, each safeguarding against its recurrence.

Sacrifice means, literally, "to make sacred", and the sacrifices of millions of lives were made sacred through our promises that we would never allow a recurrence of that calamity. These hard-won lessons would never have been learned had it not been for the sacrifice of so many lives. Had we failed to learn these lessons, and continued on as before, we would have rendered the loss of these lives meaningless and senseless.

And so, I ask, in the words of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain"; and that we heed the warning from the book of Proverbs that, "Where there is no vision the people perish."

Calamity can be our providence. I offer that we stand again upon that same threshold. We need but take one step and advance toward the next stage of conquering religious prejudice, superiority, and exclusivity, just as we confronted them in the racial sphere. The Baha'i scriptures are particularly clear in urging us on in this quest.

"There can be no doubt whatever that the peoples of the world, of whatever race or religion, derive their inspiration from one heavenly Source, and are the subjects of one God."

"Consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship."

I wish to close with a poem that expresses well the cost of blind dogmas and the power of love for one's neighbor to conquer and restore. It is the 1901 poem of Edwin Markham entitled "Brotherhood". Though couched in masculine terminology, I am sure you can see that it speaks universally.

The crest and crowning of all good,
Life's final star, is Brotherhood;
For it will bring again to Earth
Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth;
Will send new light on every face,
A kingly power upon the race.
And till it come, we men are slaves,
And travel downward to the dust of graves.
Come, clear the way, then, clear the way;
Blind creeds and kings have had their day;
Break the dead branches from the path;
Our Hope is in the aftermath--
Our hope is in heroic men,
Star-led to build the world again.
To this event the ages ran:
Make way for brotherhood--make way for Man!