Remembrance: September 11th
On September 11th, CMMB held an event sponsored by KPMG in Midtown Manhattan. The event highlighted CMMB’s partnership with the Conrad Hilton Foundation, Johns Hopkins, and KPMG through the “digital health and women religious” initiative. There was also an update on CMMB’s $500 million commitment to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal’s made in 2016 and the unveiling of their newest campaign, Join Hands.
To begin the event, CMMB board member, Sister Carol Zinn, provided this beautiful reflection about Remembrance.
Our theme for prayer and reflection this evening is: In Remembrance.
I’d like to invite you to a couple of minutes of quiet, to consider how all the work you do individually and all the work we do collectively together, is all done in remembrance.
Tonight we gather in remembrance of all those near and far in harm’s way. Those whose faces we know and whose faces and names we’ll never know.
We gather tonight in remembrance of the faith that we each share, have, and live our lives from that source.
We gather in remembrance of hope, the hope that energizes us to live our life as we do.
We gather in remembrance of love, the love that compels us to be of service.
We gather also in remembrance of community because it’s community that beckons us to be of service to one another.
We gather in remembrance of partnership, because what we can do together is way beyond what any of us can do by alone.
We gather in remembrance of the universality of the sustainable development goals. While at a high level seeming beyond any of us, at a grassroots level are exactly what we do.
We gather in remembrance of the 8 out of 10 people on our planet who are illiterate, and we remember that 6 out of 7 are women.
We gather in remembrance of the 7 out of 10 people who do not have access to healthcare and that 5 out of 7 of them are women.
We gather in remembrance of the 4 out of 5 people on the planet with no access to potable water, and most of them are women.
We gather in remembrance of all that our faith compels us to do.
And we would be quite remiss as we gather on this particular day, in this particular place of our common home earth, if we did not remember what happened 16 years ago in this very place. We understand now the social, the cultural, the racial, the religious, the political, and the gender complexities that actually led to something like that and those complexities are still alive today, and we remember that. We remember also, that somehow or other much like the disasters here and around the world, that on this day of remembrance there’s something in those moments that pulls the very soul out of us.
I don’t know if you do remember that in Manhattan before 11 September for about two years, there was tremendous racial tension and religious tension. The police and firefighters had just agreed that women could actually be on the front lines. There was a big scare with donating blood because of different diseases. There was a lot of discrimination around different languages being used, a lot of “if they live here they ought to speak like we speak here”, all of that.
We remember that because it is still part of our world today.
And so as I thought and prayed about our reflection of in remembrance today, I thought perhaps we could just close with this piece of poetry. It speaks what Jesus says in John 17, that all may be one.
ONE
As the soot and dirt and ash rained down,
We became one color.
As we carried each other down the stairs of the burning building
We became one class.
As we lit candles of waiting and hope
We became one generation.
As the firefighters and police officers fought their way into the inferno
We became one gender.
As we fell to our knees in prayer for strength,
We became one faith.
As we whispered or shouted words of encouragement,
We spoke one language.
As we gave our blood in lines a mile long,
We became one body.
As we mourned together the great loss
We became one family.
As we cried tears of grief and loss
We became one soul.
As we retell with pride of the sacrifice of heros
We become one people.
We are
One color
One class
One generation
One gender
One faith
One language
One body
One family
One soul
One people
We are The Power of One.
We are United.
We are America.
Poem by Cheryl Sawyer