That stirs our madness
To have chosen life
In the fields of sadness
(Trail of Tears, Anonymous, Cherokee)
Those twin towers had burrowed deeply into the earth even as they reached imposingly into the sky. They rose up from the ground of our past. They pointed to a vision for our future. They embodied an audacious modernity—technologically, economically, aesthetically, and spirituality. They pointed to an organizing principle for a whole civilization—not conquest, beauty or mystery, but trade.
But buried beneath them lay another important part of our history. On September 11, 1609 Henry Hudson “discovered” Manhattan Island for an expansive European civilization. Hudson’s arrival was the beginning of a succession of immigrations that changed the island forever. The children of the children of these immigrants dug deeply into this earth, and raised shimmering towers into the sky.
More than 550 generations across twelve millennia have inhabited the same land on which the World Trade Center stood. For those “First Nations” people, the arrival of European explorers would prove more disastrous than this more recent tragedy. In the fifty years that followed Hudson’s arrival, the population of the Metoac people alone fell from 10,000 to less than 500 due to the combined effects of warfare and epidemics. “Native peoples of the Americas have lived on intimate terms with the shadow of terrorism,” wrote Tia Oros (Zuni) in The Burning Sky. Terrorism “has fed on us with a ravenous appetite for our peoples and our lands for centuries…”
If the vertical dimension is embedded deeply in the soil of our history, it also rises into the stratosphere of our expectations. The WTC embodied the vision of a world that is radically interdependent and interconnected, and a world at peace. It was the progressive and secular dream of advancing prosperity and increasing affluence worldwide. Expanding trade, driven by accelerating flows of information, capital, technology and other resources, would create new norms. New institutions, uninhibited by the values of long-established cultures, would improve the quality of life and increase opportunities for everyone.
This dream of global trade and increasing affluence was present in an embryonic form even in Hudson’s 1609 trade mission financed by Dutch merchants. It has been an engine of incredible material improvement worldwide. It is transforming every corner of the world and raising expectations of people everywhere. But sadly, not everyone has benefited. Many are left on the sidelines. The pursuit of this dream has been accompanied by genocide, slavery, exploitation and the impairment of the biosphere itself.
There are spiritual lessons to be learned on this 10th anniversary of the attacks. The attacks may have germinated in perpetually festering grievances, but they were carried to fruition in the name of God and carried the apparent sanction of a segment of organized religion. With Henrietta Mann, a Montana professor, Cheyenne elder and herself a descendent of a brutalized people, we struggle to understand "how anyone could be so diabolical to strategize and plan for such wholesale destruction.” The world’s religious communities must engage in the deepest soul searching. We cannot simply disclaim terrorism and violence as “distortions” or “abuses” of otherwise genuinely religious impulses. We must identify the pathology of violence for what it is, and purge those things in our respective traditions that contribute to the world’s stockpile of hatred. The greatest tragedy for us will be if we become more vengeful, mean-spirited and small-minded, if we lose touch with our compassionate souls.
“The terrorists themselves had lost hold of the greater spirituality within life long before they killed themselves and many others,” wrote Rebecca Adamson (Cherokee), the founder of First Nations Development Institute. “From this time forward we must cultivate a more profound understanding of the sacred." This will be humankind’s greatest counterweight to evil deeds and endless violence.
To the indigenous peoples who were displaced, the very ground on which the WTC was built has been hallowed anew by the more recent tragedy. “All earth is sacred, but perhaps among the most sacred ground in the United States is the site of the former World Trade Center,” said Ms. Mann. Encouraged by tribes across the continent, she and Arvol Looking Horse, Pipe Carrier for the Lakota Nation, were the first to perform rituals and prayers at the site of the devastation. Mann prayed for the healing of the earth, and for the people working in the pit. “I prayed for the great-grandchildren of our great-grandchildren, that they will never experience a tragedy of this kind…I cried during the ceremony. Tears are the highest form of prayer.”
The Apostle Paul once wrote, "Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments… are summed up in these words, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'” (Romans 13:8-10) From a First Nations perspective, love begins in the simple acknowledgment that “We are all related.”
Love repents when repentance is called for. Love seeks reconciliation rather than retaliation. Love seeks the higher path of justice for all parties in conflict. If a resort to arms cannot be avoided, love proceeds with reluctance and anguish, always trying to find a peaceful alternative.
In the Cherokee poem, Trail of Tears, it is said that “a broken heart beats like a funeral drum.” Today let us hear the world’s broken heart. Let us respond to our own pain and grief, and to the fear and sorrow in the world, by affirming our sacred connections to all.
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