True Love

Today of course is St. Valentine’s Day. The day of love. True love can’t exist without forgiveness. Which is the topic of my post today. Recently, I spoke with The Reverend Lyndon F. Harris who was the priest in charge of the relief ministries at Ground Zero after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. His story is an incredible example of love in action.

Harris joined the staff of Trinity Church/ Saint Paul’s Chapel in April 2001 in order to develop an alternative urban worship program at Saint Paul’s. However, from September 15, 2001 to June 2, 2002, Saint Paul’s Chapel was converted into a multi-faith relief center for the rescue and relief workers, and victim’s family members, at the World Trade Center site. Saint Paul’s offered food, massage therapy, grief counseling, and chiropractic and podiatric care around the clock. By the end of the operation, over one half million meals were served.

In 2004, Harris founded the Sacred City Project, a non profit that seeks to bring together the faith communities so active in the months following 9/11 in order to work for peace. The premiere initiative of this non profit is to create Gardens of Forgiveness at Ground Zero and around the world, as places for reflection, healing, and conflict transformation, as well as venues for educational programs on forgiveness as a strategy for peacemaking.

As a chaplain at Ground Zero in New York, one of the most important responsibilities Harris had was to say prayers over the remains of the dead as they were uncovered. Every day as he walked through this devastating place devastation, the question that came to his mind again and again was, “How in God’s name—literally—how in God’s name do we end this cycle of violence and revenge?” He had no immediate answer. It was not until he learned of the work of Alexandra Asseily and the courageous people of Lebanon who have embraced the idea of a Garden of Forgiveness in central Beirut that an answer came to him. Forgiveness.

Based on his experience at Ground Zero, Harris founded the Sacred City Project (Sacred City, Inc.), an educational non profit that seeks to bring together the world’s religions to work for peace at the epicenter of the violence perpetrated on 9/11 by religious extremists. The premiere effort of the Sacred City Project is the development of a Garden of Forgiveness at Ground Zero, and a Global Gardens of Forgiveness Network in which every community in the world is encouraged to create a Garden of Forgiveness, a place where we can reflect on all the horrors that can happen to us as individuals, and then decide to make the world a better place by choosing not to reciprocate violence for violence. As Gandhi said, “an eye for an eye leaves both eyes blind,” and there’s too much violence in the world. Gardens of Forgiveness seek to replace “an eye for an eye” with “an eye for a heart.”

According to Harris, “forgiveness does not mean that we condone evil acts, or that we let evildoers off the hook for doing evil things. It does not mean we cannot defend ourselves. Forgiveness is not weakness. Forgiveness means that we give up all hope for a better past and then, with courage, create a new future: a future beyond violence, retribution, and revenge”. The Sacred City Project and the Global Gardens of Forgiveness Network seeks to heal the past and create the future—one Garden of Forgiveness at a time. Check out www.gofnyc.org

Say I love you this week by asking someone to forgive you. It’s powerful stuff…