Sojourners

As we approach the Fourth Annual Festival of Peace this weekend, we are reminded that our Movement has long been blessed by strong voices for nonviolence and is also renewed as new voices are raised and previously delivered prophecy is revoiced as in this piece from Sojourners by Joan Chittister.

9/11. SEVEN YEARS ON
We are seven years away now from the incineration of the Twin Towers when, in one blow, 19 radical religious zealots with a memory for Crusades and hatred for the United States turned the world upside down. Or we did. It’s very hard to tell seven years later who really did more of the turning.

What specific concerns drove these men to the point where they would give up their own lives just to injure ours is hard to tell. Few asked, and fewer still seemed to care. In the midst of national grief—and for many, anger — all that mattered, apparently, was who to strike in retaliation. Anybody would do it, it seemed. And so we did.