October 2001
From the Revd. Hugh Trenchard, Vicar.
Dear Parishioners
In his book "I Dream'd in a Dream", Walt Whitman offers a description of what we have seen in New York, these past days.
"I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth I dream'd that was the new city of Friends."
The agonisingly impossible has been enfolded by hands torn by digging and hearts beating with both love and hope. We all stand at a transforming moment in history and we do so with all mixture of emotions such evil engenders.
Only by chance, in these last few months I explored a little of the complexities and the broken-ness which depression and bereavement can afflict these complex minds of ours.
Even if you found them difficult, painful or heavy going, re-read them.
If you saw the interview with one of New York's brightest, the Chief Executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald inc., Howard Lutnick, you will have seen the torment of just one firm who lost 700 colleagues. Between them some 1500 children.
His response amidst his terror and tears was to speak of the "Cantor Family", and the pledge to devote 25% of all their future business profits to try to take care of the families.
Many people to whom I have spoken in recent days express all sorts of anxieties for the future, but the spirit of many nations will find fresh and united, the teachings of the one God who is the God of Jew, Muslim and Christian. The same God who was in those towers, in those fires, under debris and dust.
Why didn't God stop those planes? The simple truth is He does not work that way. He is biased on the side of the victim because He was one Himself on the Cross. He is the God who will unite His world, hopefully for the future of humankind, for such evil can only be defeated, not by huge war machines but by you and me saying, "this far but no further".
By the whisper of love which must deepen into the thunder, not of victory alone but of praise and joy in our God and in each other.
Finally, from Whitman, again: "This dust was once the man, gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand, against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age, was saved the Union of these States."
To which we can add and the Family of Humankind.
Best wishes and God's Blessing,
Hugh Trenchard
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