On September 11th 2001, I awoke in my on-campus apartment of Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas. While going through my morning routine and anticipating my class for that day, a friend called and told me that a plane had flown into one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.
“Turn on the news, Fred.”
“What channel?”
“Any channel.”
So I did, and I don’t really have to relate what it was like to watch the news that day. I watched, aghast, as the towers burned and eventually collapsed. As many of you recall, we did not know at first that it wasn’t just a horrible accident. But when the second tower was hit, and then the Pentagon, and then Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, we knew this was no accident; we were under attack.
In this dark world, can we work for peace on this planet?
As I watched in sheer horror as the towers came down, I wept loudly, a twenty-seven year old man screaming alone in his safe apartment like an abandoned child. And now, twenty-one years later, I will report a part of my grief that I have never related to anyone, in public or private, and I relate it with a kind of cold dolour on my heart. As I watched T.V. the morning of 9/11, it was not merely the death, distress, and destruction on my screen that made me wail; it was dissonance within me as well. You see, I was aware that the U.S. government maintained 700 foreign military bases around the world (the number is now 750). I was aware that the intrusive U.S. foreign military policy had instilled hostility among people in other nations, the type of hostility that destroys many on account of the wrongs of a few, the type of hostility that sees no difference between an ipseity and the society to which he or she happens to belong. Not one soul lost that day deserved to die, and not one bereaved survivor deserved, or deserves the pain he or she felt and continues to feel. Not one. Yet I knew that the foreign policies of my own country had courted the disaster displayed on my television screen, and this awful knowledge triggered an acute ruefulness within me. The ruefulness merged with the horror within me, and this the ghastly synthesis induced an involuntary primal scream I could not contain.
In this dark world, can we work for peace on this planet?
Though I lived in North Texas at the time, I had been fortunate enough to visit the World Trade Center a few years before on a choir trip to sing in Carnegie Hall. Now, the towers were no longer there. Of course, no one had to have actually visited the towers to feel the horror. We had all seen the great twins on T.V., and had maybe even watched a giant gorilla climb them in the 1976 King Kong movie. North Texas was not too far away from Manhattan for the attack to not anguish us. When it was time for class, I walked in a state of shock from my apartment to the building where my classes were, and when I entered I found it almost abandoned and very quiet. I looked into my professor’s office and he quietly told me classes were cancelled for the day. Walking back to my apartment, I met a student from Germany walking in the other direction. Maybe he asked me how I was, maybe he didn’t. I know he said something to me; I don’t recall what. I only recall my reply was, “I am worried for the future of my country.”
I was not wrong to be worried for the future of my country. Since then, the U.S. has been embroiled in decades-long wars with Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and we have even bombed Libya. None of 9/11 hijackers came from any of these four nations, and yet our military warred against them. Currently, the U.S. government is aiding Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen. Our government’s reaction to the havoc wreaked upon our nation was to wreak havoc in other nations.
We were all Americans on 9/11. Even that October, I went to a comedic play set in the South that spoofed on the Dracula story. The vampire in this farce was often disparagingly referred to as “a Yankee,” and the director of the play, mindful of the implied meanness toward our Northern compatriots, printed a statement of support for New York City residents in the program. We were all Americans during those months. But now, twenty-one years later, partisanship is ripping our nation asunder.
In this dark world, can we work for peace on this planet?
Yes, we can. At least now, in this very distinct moment betwixt and between two Great American eclipses, you can, and you are working for peace. A total solar eclipse is a few minutes of darkness that happens at mid-day. The stars will come out, the world will take on an eerie twilight aura, and it will become cool. You will be able to see the corona of the sun, and it will be the most ethereal sight you have ever seen in your life. It is a sight that will astound you, and it is a sight to be astounded by with every soul around you. No matter what your race, your religion, the region you come from, your language, your political party, your gender, your orientation…no matter who you are, the eclipse is for you. Under the umbra, we are all human; we are all citizens of the solar system. The total solar eclipse eliminates, at least for a few minutes, all human distinctions. And if we can all be unified for three minutes and forty-six seconds, we can all be unified, always. Do you wish to work for peace in a dark world? Let’s get all kinds of people together to witness the eclipse in Western New York.
And to anticipate this great moment of unity, should not Western New Yorkers be united?
Ave Maria University’s Philosophy professor Dr. Michael Sugrue says, interpreting the The Book of Isaiah, that “rebuilding the sacred city is the project of Western Religion.” He also says that any city could be sacred, and any land could be promised. Can Buffalo be the sacred city, can Western New York be the promised land? Certainly. Our region has brought together blacks, Hispanics, Italians, Polish, Greeks, Germans, Asians, Middle-Easterners, Irish, English, Asians, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, all denominations, all religions and the non-religious. I even hear there are a few Quakers running amok. Such an expression of human unity must be regarded as sacred. We have a city of incredible religious and secular architecture, a place to find all kinds of theater, art, music, and dance. Our city is the culmination of the Erie Canal, and on the shores of Lake Erie, where you can see the sunset on the water. It is the home of the giant silos, and could soon become a city where the new field of urban farming provides sustenance to the citizenry. It is (in my opinion), bound to become the capital of sustainable energy. Of COURSE Buffalo is a sacred city, and Western New York is a promised land. And now, whether you are motivated by religion, science, philosophy, civic-responsibility, or what-have-you, is the time to rebuild it.
The Big-Brained Bipeds of Planet Earth should be using our heads, hearts, and hands to build up cities, countries, homes, and all humanity, not wreaking havoc on one-another. Let us, the humans of Western New York, be unified in our preparation for the arrival of all kinds of umbraphiles; let us show them hospitality, and let our city be resplendent. If we do so, we will be working for peace in a dark world, and the darkness of the eclipse will bring a little light in. When people turn on the evening news on April 8, 2024, let them hear of the hospitality and resplendence of Western New York. If they do, we will have worked for peace.