Community Corner
9/11 Remembered: Commemorating Lives Lost in Peace
Waverly Presbyterian is remembering each individual lost in the attacks of 9/11 through peace cranes.
On Sunday, Sept. 11, the sanctuary at will be filled with 2,996 vibrantly colored paper cranes, with each bird signifying a single life, a dream taken away, an opportunity never had.
Each will have a name written on its wing—a name that is connected exponentially to loved ones, friends and family who will never get life’s moments back.
“I will point out to them and say, ‘This one is this person and that one is this person,’” the Rev. . “We need to think about that, and the people attached, and our government needs to think about that and other governments need to think about that.”
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The minister held a similar service for the first commemoration of the attacks at a different church in 2002, deciding to bring it back to her current congregation for the Sunday that will mark 10 years since the World Trade Center fell to the ground in a cloud of smoke, claiming the lives of nearly 3,000 people.
“I think one of the things some people lost sight of in the aftermath of 9/11 was that people of every ethnic, racial and religious background perished,” she said. “It was kind of driving me crazy that people were singing ‘God Bless America’ in worship, because it seemed to be antithetical to the idea that we are all children of God.”
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The varying vibrant colors of each origami-folded peace crane is a reminder of the diversity of the people affected by this tragedy that is burned into the world’s collective psyche.
“I wanted to do a service that focused on the concept of peace,” Hickok said. “This horrible, awful thing happened in the world—now, where do we go, what do we do and how can you make this not happen again?”
The concept for the construction of the peace cranes comes from the story of Sadako Sasaki and the thousand cranes, which originated in Japan. The true story surrounds a young girl living in Hiroshima during and after World War II. She lived in a normal family with a normal life and was a very fast runner at school. One day during a race, she got tired and fell down, discovering later she had leukemia from the effects of radiation left by the atomic bomb.
A Japanese legend states that if you fold a thousand paper cranes, you will be healed. In the hospital, she began to do just that.
“She folded crane after crane and kept getting worse,” Hickok said of the tale. “Sadako actually died after she had folded about 600 cranes and the children in her school took up her cause, and it became known throughout the country, and those children folded the rest of the cranes.”
In Hiroshima, there is a peace park with a statue of the girl holding a crane up to the air on her tiptoes.
“The healing is more than physical,” she said. “There’s a whole healing going on now about how we heal those fractured relationships that have gotten us to this point in the world where we are using religion to fight other people.”
Ten years ago, Hickok wanted to steer away from the churches that were focusing on not so much the religious aspect as the nationalist aspect of the 9/11 attacks—mourning America’s loss and only America’s loss. This year, she is taking the same approach at Waverly.
“The point was to recognize the fact that close to 3,000 people died, and not all of them were white, Christian Americans,” Hickok said. “There were people from all over the world on those planes and in the World Trade Center, and so this is how we make this truly a service where we lift up the possibilities of the peaceable kingdom, where all of God’s children can get together.”
During the Sept. 11 service this year, the Waverly congregation will sing, “This Is My Song,” to the tune of “Finlandia.”
“‘This is my song, oh God, of all the nations, a song for peace in lands afar and mine,’” Hickok recited. “‘This is my home, the country where my heart is. Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred chime. But other hearts in other lands are beating with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.’”
The peace cranes also have another global link to the site of 9/11. When Hickok traveled there with her husband a few years ago, they discovered the origami birds everywhere.
“I really think that FDR’s saying, ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself,’ is really true,” she said. “How many times have I heard people slur other racial groups, sexes, or people from a different lifestyle, and yet, when they are talking one-on-one, there is a sense of common ground.”
Underneath it all, we all share the same aspirations, we’re afraid of the same things, we hope for the same things and we want the same things, Hickok said. When you take the time to learn someone’s story, it changes how you view that person.
“Those 3,000 cranes—each one of them tells a story,” she said. “And that story is that we just have to work harder at finding that common ground. And sometimes that means for countries like ours, understanding that our way isn’t the only way.”
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