On the eve of the Jewish New Year, I, like so many of us, am still in a state of shock. As long as I live, I’ll never forget those television pictures of a nightmare become real, including last night’s aerial views of the full extent of the devastation. We’ve seen the very worst in humanity: a brutal act of naked evil. But we’ve also seen the very best, in countless acts of support and human kindness. And today we’ll see the sheer power of human resilience, as people follow President Bush’s call to return to work and reconnect with normal life again.
And that is why acts of terror, though they succeed for a moment, always fail in the end. Those who commit them believe they can create panic and fear. But after the initial shock, free human beings don’t react with panic and fear. Their response is to try to help, to rescue, to comfort, to heal.
Will we ever forget those passengers on the fourth plane, who fought with the hijackers at the certain cost of their own lives, to save the lives of people on the ground? Will we ever forget those last telephoned messages of love from those who knew they were about to die? Or the tidal wave of shared emotion as people heard the news and were instantly united with the injured and bereaved in grief and prayer? Or the tears shed at the first funerals, over the weekend, as firemen mourned their colleagues who gave their lives to rescue others?
If ever we sought proof of the power of the human spirit, it’s been there, in the bond of solidarity and compassion that, from New York to New Zealand, turned strangers into friends and bystanders into a single extended family. It’s as if the world had put its arms around America and given it comfort in the hour of its grief. And in that moment, a new hope was born: that together we can defeat the forces of death and find a way, however painful and difficult, to a new affirmation and defence of life.
And when, last Wednesday, I stood together with Muslim and Christian leaders, expressing our grief and our joint commitment to peace, I knew just this: that love is stronger than hate; freedom more powerful than its enemies; and the human spirit too resilient to be intimidated for long. And so I pray, in words adapted from the liturgy of the New Year: ‘O God of life, whose gift is life, be with us now and in the coming year, giving us the courage to affirm and cherish life.’
