wfn.org | New York United Methodists remember Sept. 11

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Sept. 12, 2002	News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212) 870-38037New York
10-21-71BP{407}

NOTE: Photographs are available. For related coverage, see UMNS story #408.

By Linda Bloom*

NEW YORK (UMNS) - On a busy uptown street, as crosstown buses and sanitation
trucks rumbled by, the names of the dead were intoned outside Park Avenue
United Methodist Church.

At the 13th Street entrance to Metropolitan-Duane United Methodist Church -
where anyone looking south got a clear view of the empty sky where the twin
towers once stood - a small but steady stream of people entered the
sanctuary to sit and reflect.

At John Street United Methodist Church, where the congregation can trace its
origins to the late 1700s, worshippers memorialized those who had perished
in the terrorist attacks at Ground Zero, only two blocks away.

These were but a few of the ways that United Methodists in New York
remembered the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, one year later.

For many New Yorkers, the first anniversary was still a workday or school
day, and those were the people the Rev. William Shillady was trying to reach
when he set up a pulpit outside the doors of Park Avenue Church on East 86th
Street. In the middle of the sidewalk stood a box with the sign, "You are
welcome to take a candle to light on September 11th." By the time the 8:30
a.m. service began, half of the 4,000 candles donated by Cokesbury and the
United Methodist Publishing House were gone. Another sign reminded passersby
that counselors were available inside.

The weather was just as nice as the year before when those gathered at Park
Avenue read a litany of remembrance for office workers, bystanders,
firefighters, police officers and all others who lost their life that day.
But a strong breeze, which would swirl up the very dust at Ground Zero, made
it difficult to keep the candles lit.

At 8:46 a.m., the time the first plane hit the first tower, and at other
significant times during the morning, Shillady rang a bell to mark a moment
of silence. Then the reading of the names of the more than 2,800 victims at
Ground Zero began. The readers included a group of district superintendents
from across the country, in the city for a meeting at the United Methodist
Board of Global Ministries the next day.

A path was deliberately left clear on the sidewalk, and the rest of New York
- women pushing strollers, delivery persons, shoppers, business people -
came walking by as the reading of names continued. Some passersby paused for
a while; others continued on with the day's tasks. A well-dressed woman
stopped briefly to cross herself in front of the church doors. A young man
in a suit, wearing a baseball cap, strode through purposely and then
hesitated, looking as if he was listening for a name he might know.

Inside the church, where the names could still be heard, five to 10 people
at a time sat in prayer. A single rose sat in a vase before the altar,
placed there, as a sign outside the sanctuary explained, as a reminder "of
each individual killed on September 11th, ordinary people who had gone to
work that morning, whose acts of unselfishness and bravery we are awed (by)
as we remember."

Further downtown, people had been going in and out of the sanctuary at
Metropolitan-Duane church since 6 a.m. The pastor, the Rev. Takauki Ishii,
finished the morning service with two minutes of silence at 10:28 a.m., the
time the north tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.

A long banner, proclaiming "Our thoughts and prayers are with you," hung
along the altar rail, a gift signed by members of a Virginia church and sent
last September. From the pulpit hung a colorful cascade of 1,000 small,
attached origami "peace cranes," made by members of a church in Kamakura,
Japan. Sent by Ishii's friend, the Rev. Jin Arai, the small cranes and a
large white origami crane had arrived on Sept. 6.

Other banners with messages of peace and support decorated
Metropolitan-Duane's sanctuary, with markers available for people to express
their thoughts. The church's Spanish-speaking prayer partner, Elizabeth
Keppis, had created one of the newer banners, which listed the names of all
the World Trade Center victims within the outlines of the twin towers.

Near the tip of Manhattan, a lone bagpiper, Donal Morrissey, led the
processional of the United Methodist New York Conference afternoon service
at John Street. "Oh God, whose love is beyond our total understanding, we've
come here this day, in the shadow of towers that no longer stand, to
remember the horror that intruded itself into our lives one year ago," said
John Street's pastor, the Rev. James McGraw, as he led the unison prayer.

Among the liturgists was Christine Lee, a Board of Global Ministries
executive, who read Romans 8:31-39. Although she didn't speak about it
during the service, Lee had just come from the city's memorial observance
for families at Ground Zero. Her sister, Nancy Yuen Ngo, was working on a
high floor in the trade center on the day of the attacks.

But New York Bishop Ernest Lyght spoke, and even as he paid tribute to the
victims and rescuers, he reminded worshippers that they were not there "to
hold a funeral service" but to move forward from this anniversary with
faith.

"We must remember 9-11, but somehow we must help each other through the
difficulty and the pain we've experienced, to move on to a new place," he
said.

Despite their symbolic value, whether as a marker of power or a marker of
the U.S. landscape, "hope did not die when the towers crashed to the earth,"
the bishop pointed out. The beams of light temporarily cast into the night
sky last spring as a tribute "surely were symbolically beams of hope," he
said. 

One "good result of a horrible event," Lyght said, has been the necessity of
recognizing that Muslims are members of the community in many parts of the
United States. He also spoke with pride about participating in a prayer
service at Yankee Stadium immediately after Sept. 11 with those of many
different faiths.

The bishop reminded participants that Christians are called upon to love, no
matter what the circumstances. "It isn't easy to love when you're under
attack," he acknowledged. "It isn't easy to love when you're fearful the
attack will come. Yet only love will overcome hatred." 

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*Bloom is news director of United Methodist News Service's New York office.

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United Methodist News Service
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