Proposal for the World Trade Center Site

What should have happened after the attacks of 9/11—the first thing, a child could have told you--was a dedication of some part of the Trade Center site to a center of faith, a humble building that would house together in some peaceful tranquil way the religions of the world, of the holy land and those of the East. The work of religion is akin to that of science, an attempt to figure out and then explain in terms the nature of reality. (Rightly so is a philosopher of a religion called a doctor, as Saint Jerome is regarded in the statue at the end of my street, ‘greatest doctor of the church.’) The work of holy men, Saint Francis, Buddha, for instance, is to work toward advancements on understanding the nature of human joy and sorrow, what the meaning of self is, what selflessness means, and so on and so forth.

Religion is not about enforcing an archaic scientific understanding that has long since been proved at great odds with logic and fossil record and geological understanding. Too often those thoughtful poetic suggestions from a time past are rigidly held to, when they were with self-acknowledgement but the first attempts at math, primitive, grasping for terms. And often, there is the simple poetry, as in God creating and seeing that what he had made was good, which is as poetry does, attempt to arrive at a truth through suggestion and proposal.

Religion, the point needed to be made, and can still be made, cannot ever be associated with violence and attack. It is rather about us helping ourselves, and in turn helping other people, and that sort of stuff. All parties could agree that it isn’t wise to stuff something down someone else’s throat.

Religion is about the happy poetic philosopher, the gentle peaceful being within us, coming out to say his word, and wish himself and other people well. And after 9/11, some place where people could come under a roof, or without a roof, as in a quiet garden, to commemorate the good, the positive, the friendships and advancements offered by religious thoughts would have been a fitting tribute to what was attacked that day.

At the core of any economic enterprise, remember, there is the attempt to figure out reality, to find useful ways of dealing with it, treating it, cooking it so it tastes better, making it more comfortable, basically making happiness attainable, even if that might ultimately mean turning convention on its head and making plentiful sorrows into a kind of joy earned and worth sharing. So would it be appropriate at a place called World Trade Center to have a shrine toward peace and the different ways peace is celebrated.

And who knows, maybe allow for a stage, with musicians, restaurateurs, comedians, athletes, writers, scientists, survivors of difficult things, the high, the low, the in-between, even atheists, general people of peace, to stand and say a word they thought might help. Maybe even leave it empty of clerics, lest they tend toward partisan ways.

But instead of that, we were led to rebuild without much thought to the basic purpose of any building so constructed, to posture, to say nothing about peace and turning violence away from the world, to go and start a war, attacking, fighting back at what we couldn’t even grasp at. And a child could have told us the consequences of acting so.