Guess who suggested our local community have a 11 September worship service, and is one of the two organiers of it?
My real problem is to keep it from turning it into a God Bless America spectacularganza. I am fighting to keep it simple as we did on the original dy, no big choirs singing patriotic anthems (irt was the WORLD Trade Center, why is this perceived as an opportunity for jingoism?), a memorial for those who died, some reflection on the day, but no Lee Greenwood wave the flag shit. Our next planning session is Tueday so i welcome suggestions on what a simple communitu service would include, in everyone's opinions. My biggest challenge is how to involve the people who attrend; as clergy, I get to play a role, but the people just sit unless we find a way to involve them more than just singing the occasional hymn and saying Amen. I am trying to formulate a candle lightiung thing but it isn't coming together in my mind. The one thing I know I want sung is "O Beautiful, for Spacious Skies" (even I have my patriotic side). I also am open to any ideas as to how to nicely make the point at the community service that yes surely 11 September was a horrible act of terrorism that should be commemorated - that is why i was the only clergy in our community to suggest it - but in the eyes of the suffering of the world, it was dramatic, but hardly the worst event of even the last decade. That would be Rwanda - and in one day in (and I can't spell this) in Bosnia at Schredraneca (bad misspelling, and that says something that I do not know how to spell that name) in what, 1994 or 1995, there were almost 8,000 men and boys murdered by the Serbs , twice the death toll of September 11, and for those who were not ililled, against the women, rape was used as a weapon of terrorism - how can we only remember our own pain and not also include the suffering of others? But then agaion, I want our local community service to be not confrontational or some sort of stage for anyone's political views, to silence me as well as others whose opinions I would just as soon not hear proclaimed at a worship event. I do not want what we do to be a political event at all. Any ideas, I am open to. If you all out there were planning a community service to observe September 11th, what would you do? What should I do? Vince
