By Pat McCaughan
Los Angeles area Episcopalians and interfaith leaders gathered in person and online Sept. 11 at St. John’s Cathedral, for prayer, reflection, song, and sacred solidarity, to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., which killed more than 3,000 people, including eleven members of the diocesan community.
Cathedral Dean the Very Rev. Anne Sawyer welcomed the gathering, which brought together representatives of multiple faith traditions for a shared commemoration and call to solidarity.
The Guibord Center, a nonprofit agency dedicated to promoting interfaith dialogue, education and spiritual exploration across different faiths, organized “Standing Together in Spiritual Solidarity: Why a Multi-faith Response to 9/11 Matters Today.” The program invited people and organizations across traditions to renew a multi-faith commitment to one another and to democracy, according to Dr. Lo Sprague, Guibord Center president and CEO and a cathedral lay leader.
“We have come together to rededicate ourselves to being in true spiritual solidarity with one another,” according to Sprague and other speakers representing the Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Sikh, and Buddhist faiths. “We acknowledge the need to literally show up for one another, to speak up for one another, to stand up for one another and to share positive experiences about and with one another,” she said.
Canon Bob Williams, representing the Interreligious Council of Southern California as incoming co-president, which works to enhance pluralism and understanding in the region, recalled the shock and horror experienced in 2001, and its aftermath.
“We Episcopalians knew exactly what to do on the afternoon of 9/11, which was to visit the Islamic Center and express our solidarity and greet our beloved friends. What unfolded was one of the top crises to shape our lifetimes.”
Diocesan responses included a “Hands in Healing” cross-country pilgrimage to sites of violence with young adults, including Laramie, Wyoming and the hate-crime murder site of young gay man Mathew Shepard; to the Muslim community in Dearborn on the outskirts of Detroit, to New York’s Ground Zero, Atlanta’s Civil Rights Museum and the Oklahoma City bombing memorial. Those young adults are now leaders in the church, said Williams, the former diocesan Canon for Common Life. He retired in July of this year.
Now is the time for coordinated efforts, he added. “Among most leaders engaged in interfaith work of the last 25 years, there is clear consensus that it is time to pivot beyond surface-level dialogue and familiarity to address the present day, times such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described as ‘the fierce urgency of now’ created by new and virulent strains of Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and racism,” Williams said.
He announced a planned Sept. 22 online gathering “to any who want to come together to think, brainstorm about new strategies that unite us in the protection of democracy, the affirmation of the Golden Rule in living these days together.” Echoing the hearing of the John Lennon song ‘Imagine’ he added: “Let’s try to imagine religion mobilized. We don’t have to try to reinvent the wheel but we need wheels to turn in sync for progress.”
Williams said that a Zoom link will be made available for the informal “Interfaith L.A. Project” consultation, set for 5 p.m., the hour of the autumnal equinox, symbolizing a new season for shared work. Goal for the session is for participants and organizations to identify areas of common cause and strategy, including empowering youth for interfaith leadership, strengthening public communication, and shared service opportunities such as prison chaplaincy. Inquiries can be forwarded to Williams by email, rwilliams@interfaithla.org, after Sept. 15.
Salam Al-Marayati, co-founder and president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, told the gathering of about 70 in person and 60 online, “because of these interfaith partnerships, because of the voices of many leaders in the Japanese American community, we averted internment after 9/11.
“It is only because of the solidarity that we kept the promise of America alive for all Americans. We are here to commemorate those who died on 9/11, the first responders who saved lives, some of whom were Muslim and even those Muslim names remain under the rubble that some do not want to lift and let people know that we were victims of both the terror attack and what ensued after 9/11.”
Al-Marayati said he and the late Dr. Maher Hatout were in Washington, D.C., the morning of 9/11, on their way to a White House meeting with then President George W. Bush. It was supposed to be a celebration where American Muslims finally were received with respect and acceptance and partnership, he said. “But things crumbled, just as the Twin Towers crumbled.”
Rabbi Neil Commes-Daniels, Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Beth Shir Salom, declared, “The world boils down to this—if I wouldn’t want something done to my children, or grandchildren, I won’t do it to anyone else’s. If everyone in the world acted like this, the world would be instantly better.”
Fr. Alexei Smith, Ecumenical and Interreligious Officer for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Los Angeles, quoted the late Pope Francis’s 202 encyclical: “the sense of belonging to a single family is sadly fading and the dream of working together for justice and peace seems to be an outdated utopia. It need not be so.”
Duncan Singh Sachdeva, a Sikh civil rights advocate, said it is important to not let grief and anger calcify into something that outlives those who caused it, that ends up costing us more than it ever cost them. “It takes real effort not to let that happen,” he said, noting that the first victim of post-9/11 hate crimes was an Arizona Sikh gas station owner named Balbir Singh Sodhi.
“This is the anniversary of the day this pain began; we are still choosing in our own way, good over hatred, unity over exclusion and seclusion, and forging a bond of fellowship,” Sachdeva said.
In a letter, to the Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe said “Our lament will never end for those who died in the attacks, those who gave of their lives in the days and weeks following, and those who will still suffer.
“Our grief is particularly sharp on this historic anniversary,” he said. “We also mourn that, since that day in 2001, our common life has been deformed by division and fear of one another. Sometimes it seems that the chasm has become unbridgeable.
“Even in the face of unimaginable evil and suffering, God calls us to be repairers of the breach and restorers of paths to dwell in. I pray that this commemoration of 9/11 renews our commitment to answer that call in our own lives and communities, and together as the body of Christ in the world.”
Bishop Antonio Gallardo Lucena also reflected on the enduring grief of Sept. 11 and the Christian call to hope amid suffering.
“My prayer is that on this commemoration of 9/11 we are reminded that amid wounds and trauma that may not heal, God still calls us to life,” Gallardo L. said. “We will grieve, we will remember, we will rebuild, we will repair and restore, we will carry one another, we will speak what is precious, and we will continue to follow Jesus, not because suffering is good, but because love is stronger than suffering.”
Members of the Los Angeles diocesan community who died in the attacks included:
American Airlines Flight 11, headed to L.A. from Boston, crashed into the Twin Towers, 92 died: Berry Berenson, who had been a parishioner at All Saints’, Beverly Hills; Edmund Glazer, brother-in-law of Campbell Hall junior Jade Shany; and Lynn and David Angell. Lynn was the librarian at Campbell Hall Episcopal School in North Hollywood, and he was the producer of the very popular T.V. sitcom “Frasier.” Both were volunteers and supporters of Hillsides, an institution of the diocese that aids vulnerable children, youth and families.
American Airlines Flight 77, head to L.A. from Washington, D.C.’s Dulles Airport, crashed into the Pentagon, 64 died: Christopher Newton, a father of two, and former chorister at St. Luke’s Church, Long Beach.
United Airlines Flight 175, headed to L.A. from Boston, the second plane to hit the Twin Towers, 65 died: Lisa Frost, a graduate of St. John’s School in Rancho Santa Margarita, who had recently graduated from Boston University.
At the World Trade Center:
Susan Hayashi, cousin of Doreen Oleson, principal of the St. Mark’s School, Altadena
Gary Koecheler, uncle of Campbell Hall freshman Christopher Devlin
Christopher Larrabee, son of Stephen Larrabee, parishioner of St. Francis Church, Rancho Palos Verdes;
George Morrell, godparent of Campbell Hall freshman Christopher Devlin;
Thomas Palazzo, godparent of Campbell Hall freshman Christopher Devlin.
Another plane, United Flight 93, crashed into a field at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought back against the hijackers. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the self-proclaimed mastermind and principal architect of the September 11 attacks. Captured in 2003, he remains held at Guantanamo Bay, with a trial date tentatively set for 2028 after decades of legal delays.