9/11 Prayer

The following prayer was given on Friday, Sept, 11, 2009, in front of Lee Chapel by Burr Datz, director of Leadership Development and coordinator of religious campus activities:

Compassionate God, we call you by many names as we gather today, members of a variety of faith traditions and one human family. We pause to remember the morning of September 11, 2001. We remember the crystal clarity and sunshine of that day. We remember the shock as the news filtered from office to office, from home to home. We remember silently gathering around TV sets in disbelief to watch the smoke, to listen to the reporters as they tried to make sense of the catastrophe. We remember our tears as the towers fell, as the Pentagon burned. We remember our fear as we tried to contact those who worked in either place or their families and their friends. We remember our pain, and also our anger.

Eight years later, we pause to remember the thousands of lives lost that day. We remember in particular the lives of James A. Gadiel ‘00 and CMDR Robert A. Schlegel ‘85. We remember the police and the fire and the rescue personnel who heroically sacrificed their lives while trying to save others. We remember those who searched through the rubble and debris to recover the bodies, and we remember and lift up to you all those who still suffer physically and emotionally from that attack. We pray for our armed forces, called into duty to fight Al Qaeda on many levels and in many nations.

We pray for our political leaders and ask that you grant them the fortitude to respond wisely to this continuing threat. We pray that you continue to comfort and heal all those who suffered losses of friends, family members, loved ones and neighbors on that day and in the months that followed. As we remember today, we lift up to you these concerns, knowing that you hear all voices of grief this day, and will make them one unto yourself. Guide our footsteps so that we may return love instead of hate in the face of our enemies.

In your name we pray, Amen.