The Spiritual Questions People Grappled With a Year After 9/11 (full documentary) | FRONTLINE (PBS)

ANNOUNCER: It's been a decade now. SPEAKER: The heavens were  blue and clear and perfect. Rabbi BRAD HIRSCHFIELD, Orthodox Rabbi: Religion  drove those planes into those buildings. ANNOUNCER: And there are still so many questions. SPEAKER: If there is a God, what is happening? ANNOUNCER: Including perhaps  the ultimate questions. SPEAKER: How could God be  in the horror of what I saw? ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE,   an intimate and profound investigation of  the spiritual aftershocks of September 11. BERNIE HEERAN, Retired NYC Firefighter:  I asked God in the beginning, you know,   if you can give me this one, I- I'd  appreciate it. But I knew from being   a fireman that my son couldn't have  been in a worse possible position. ANNOUNCER: Those who lost loved ones,   and many other Americans, are  haunted by questions of faith. Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH: Today our nation  saw evil, the very worst of human nature.

ANNOUNCER: Was it true evil  the world witnessed that day?   Is religion itself to blame? And  where was God on September 11th? MARIAN FONTANA, Writer: I couldn't  believe that this God that I'd   talked to in my own way for 35 years  turned this loving man into bones,   and now I can't bring myself to speak to  him anymore because I feel so abandoned. ANNOUNCER: Tonight, confessions of  Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero. [voices] It was hell on earth.

You couldn't dream it. This burning horror- my mother's in that. How could God be in the horror of what I saw? What kind of God is this? How can you believe in such a God? It's nothing to do with God. He's gone. This emptiness. I saw evil all in that building. This is what evil looks like. Being trapped in that building,  was there any God with them? There is no answer. There is  only anger. A lot of anger. Religion drove those planes into those buildings. If people can kill for God in this way, this  is the best reason never to believe in God!

It looked like a giant syringe  had sucked out this wonderful,   amazing hope that we had in this  country, was sucked out at Ground Zero. NARRATOR: Almost everyone has a moment  when they feel lost in darkness,   a loved one snatched away,  disease, natural disaster,   human cruelty. Almost everyone at some point  asks the question, "Why me? Why her? Why, God?" What made September 11th different from other  dark nights was that so many Americans came   away from it asking these fundamental questions  at the same time, not only those who witnessed   the slaughter at Ground Zero but those  who watched in horror at a distance.

We set out to document this national  conversation, not the customary   analysis of politics and economics, but  a conversation about spiritual questions.   From the moment of the attacks on the World Trade  Center and The Pentagon, many people - believers   and unbelievers - started to talk about  the role of God, the problem of evil,   and a newer, more disturbing question about the  potential for violence within religion itself. What did America see that day? And what  did it mean for our spiritual lives? Act 1: September 11 [voices] The glory of that day.

The sky was an unbelievable blue. The heavens were blue and clear and perfect. A gorgeous Tuesday morning. The crispness of that day, which made  the whole thing look totally surreal. KIM COLEMAN, Retired NYC Police Officer: I  realized that the first plane hit my daughter's   building. And as I bent over to pick up the  telephone, my daughter was on the other line. And   she was telling me that she was scared and that it  was real smoky in there and they couldn't breathe. MARIAN FONTANA, Writer: And  I remember seeing this black,   very straight plume of smoke start to come over  the sky. And then I started to get worried,   because Dave works in a specialized  fire company, that he would probably   go and be stuck in the city for a lot of  hours. And so I was initially annoyed.

SEAN HEERAN, Stock Trader: I just asked the trader  next to me, "Why are there papers flying around   outside?" And then automatically it was on TV -  a plane's hit the World Trade Center north tower,   where my brother was. And first thing, you know,  just chills ran through my body. I just knew he   was in trouble. I spoke to my father,  and my father said he had spoke to him. BERNIE HEERAN, Retired NYC Firefighter: And I  picked up the phone and there was a sharp, "Dad,   a plane hit the building." He wanted to vent, take  the windows out in his office. And I told him no,   to take the people he was with to the  roof. They were on the 104th floor. I   just always thought about helicopter  lift off the roof if it got bad. TERRY McGOVERN, Attorney:  I put on CNN, and I saw the   north tower burning. I knew my mother was  in the south tower. And as I was watching,   I saw the plane fly into the south tower, my  mother's tower. Watching this unfold live on TV,   like, these flames right where I knew she was.  And then my heart started beating really fast.

TIM PEARSON, Dpty. Inspector,  NYPD: Oh, God! Please! No! STANLEY PRAIMNATH, Loan Officer:  And here coming towards me,   the biggest aircraft that I'd  ever seen in my life- eye level! BRIAN CLARK, Banker: Boom! We got  hit, just this tremendous thump. STANLEY PRAIMNATH: The sound that it  made when it crashed, that screeching,   horrifying, ghostly sound.  When this plane stopped,   that wing was stuck in my doorway at  the office, 20 feet from where I was. BRIAN CLARK: The building moved off to the  west and kept moving and kept moving. It   went and it went and it went and it kept  going, and I truly thought the building   was going over. But then it stopped,  and it slowly came back to vertical. [voices] There was jet fuel coming out of that building.   There was fire dropping. There  was debris hitting the ground. Chunks of concrete and steel. This fireball came out of the elevator. This  just enormous orange ball came right at me.

SHOWKATARA SHARIF CHOWDHURY, Teacher:  [through interpreter] I called my daughter,   Shakila. "Please call me back. Where are  you? Let me know." I did not get a reply. SHARIF CHOWDHURY, Insurance Agent: [through  interpreter] I drove towards New York,   but all the tunnels were closed. [voices] I can literally see people hanging  from windows, jumping from windows. At first, you know, I thought they were  birds. You looked and you said to yourself,   "My God! These are people coming down!" MARIAN FONTANA: I saw the whole top of  the tower in flames. My friend, Mila,   called and she said, "Would Dave be in there?"  And I said, "Yeah." She was, "Are you sure?   Where would he be?" And I said, "Well, he'd  probably be running in, and he'd probably be,   you know, pretty far up." And right when I said  that, I saw the tower start to come down. And   I dropped the phone and I collapsed to the  floor, and I knew he was dead. I just knew. TERRY McGOVERN: This building just turned into  dust on TV, and it was, like, this couldn't be   happening. This couldn't be happening. But then  these horrifying moments of - my mother's in that.   You know? It was like- it's weird, but it felt  like our great- I mean, it was a great moment   of separation. You know, there was nothing I could  do. There was nothing I could do. My mother was in   that, and there was absolutely nothing I could do.  And it just got worse and worse before my eyes.

TIM LYNSTON, Security Guard: I watched them  just crumble like a deck of cards. And I knew   there were people in those buildings. I couldn't  conceive all this concrete and fire and furniture,   everything just collapsing on  a human body that was so frail. Father PAUL WEIRICHS, FBI Chaplain: Every 20 feet,   I would have a fireman or a policeman come up  to me and say, "Bless me." You know, "Hear my   confession," so- and I had no time to  hear confessions, I just asked them   if they were sorry for their sins, I would  give them absolution. It was overwhelming. MARIAN FONTANA: I think I wandered into every  church in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. I just   stumbled in and dropped to my knees everywhere  I went and just prayed and prayed and prayed. BERNIE HEERAN: I asked him, in the beginning,   you know, "If you can give me this  one, I'd appreciate it." [weeps] TIM PEARSON, Dpty. Inspector, NYPD: We heard  this loud, rumbling noise - Boom! Boom! Boom!   Boom! Boom! Boom! - and you'd look and you're  seeing debris. And you say, "Oh, my God! Please   don't tell me this is what's happening." And  all of a sudden, you realize it's the facade of   the building and it's coming down, and it's coming  down hard and fast. And I'm realizing, "I'm dead."

SEAN HEERAN: It was just complete horror. TIM PEARSON: And I said, "Oh God! Please! No!" SEAN HEERAN: I saw hell. [voices] We just started running. You know,  it was people getting trampled. Oh, God, spare me! JOSH SIMON, Rabbinical Student:   People streaming uptown by the thousands,  carrying their briefcases, in total silence,   just streaming like the living dead. The  exodus. It was like the Day of Judgment   or an apocalyptic prophecy come  true. But this awestruck silence.

Everyone had that stunned look, not  believing what they were witnessing.   There was just an awesome sense of bewilderment. NARRATOR:   The drama of faith and doubt began as soon as the  first plane disappeared into the side of the north   tower. In the silence that followed, America's  sense of invulnerability was shaken. Many people   were forced to confront their own deaths as  they imagined the terror of those who jumped. LUCA BABINI, Photographer: To me, the idea  of standing on a ledge of the 80th floor   of a high-rise and look at a woman or a friend  and hold hands and say, "We're going to," like,   "fly down and die together now, holding  hands"- it's something that is so beyond   my courage. You know, how many times I  have actually visualized myself in that   situation since that happened, and  I can't even imagine how to do that!

Dr. MICHAELBRESCIA, Physician: I saw the pictures  of the people at the windows, knowing what was   happening, that there was no ladder, "There is  no ladder long enough to reach me, there is no   helicopter on the roof that's going to come." I  wonder how many thought if there was a God, and   if there was a God, "Why me? Why this? And where  am I going to go? Is there a heaven I'm going to?" LUCA BABINI: I mean, I'm sure that there is so  many religious people asking themselves questions.   Did they hear a voice? Did they hear a calling?  Did they see a beautiful garden with rivers and   lakes down there? Was their pain so much that  some device that we don't know about that we have   inside ourselves - some spiritual device - just  triggered on, and all of a sudden, it was heaven   already before they jumped, and they were just  jumping into something beautiful? Because I tell   you, I could not do it. Something special must  have been going on because a lot of them jumped.

Father GEORGE RUTLER, Catholic Priest: When those  towers came down, we were being reminded of our   mortality. If those- the biggest buildings in the  biggest city in the center of the universe - I   speak as a New Yorker again - could come down,  this world will come down. Just the buildings,   just being so massive and powerful, gave us  an illusion that we were that way, too. Act 2: The Face of God NARRATOR: Where was God on September  11th? For some, he was among the missing.   For others, he was right there at Ground  Zero. The questions that had begun to be   asked that day would intensify, especially  for those who suffered terrible losses. BERNIE HEERAN: I came to church, and I kind of  negotiated with God and asked him to- if he could   give me this one. But I knew from being a fireman  that my son couldn't have been in a worse possible   position. All the people above- you couldn't have  been in a worse spot than anybody in that fire. SEAN HEERAN: My brother, Charlie, and my  father were very tight. He just had a special   relationship with him. If you were a guy, if  you were a girl, you always wanted to be around   him. Always. He lit up a room. He lit up a room.  He's 24 years old. He just had so much talent,   so much potential. Whether it was working on Wall  Street, whether it was helping my dad at the bar,   he just had a special charisma about  him that made people respond to him.

BERNIE HEERAN: I asked him for help that  day, and he couldn't do it, you know, and-   you know, I was looking for more give-backs.  I thought a couple more firemen would walk   out of that building, but it just didn't  work that way. But I continued to ask. His two- my son's two brothers were  there that day. I could have lost   three sons. And I could have lost more  firemen that were there, that I knew,   that I've talked to. And they made  it. So they're the give-backs. I mean,   you can't- I question, "Why not me, and  leave my son?" I mean, I would have switched. I communicate to my son through God,  I would imagine. I found myself closer   to God because of wanting- picturing, in  fact, that my son is with him. You know,   that's where I want him to be, you know, and  now he's going to help me. He's watching me,   you know? I tell my friends I got to be  good. My son's watching me now, you know?

SEAN HEERAN: I usually go to Saint Patrick's  Cathedral in midtown Manhattan because I   feel that it's my brother's home now. I go  there to see him. And I just go there and,   you know, light a candle and buy him and  his buddies, you know, a beer. I throw a   couple of bucks in the little thing, I buy  him a beer because just- I got to visit him. BERNIE HEERAN: At this stage, I haven't  questioned him saying- you know,   I asked him in the beginning, you  know, "If you can give me this one,   I'd appreciate it." But it- he had nothing  to do with this. There were a lot more people   that could have been killed. He was fighting  the evil that day, like he does every day,   you know? The Fire Department calls fire  "The Devil." You know, firemen call fire   "The Devil." And that day we fought the devil,  and we saved a lot of people, you know? But the   devil's the devil. You got to- you know, you got  to fight the devil. And just- God's always around.

KIM COLEMAN: I realized that the first plane hit  my daughter's building. And as I bent over to pick   up the telephone, my daughter was on the other  line. She didn't know what happened. So I told   her that a plane had hit her building and for them  to get out of there. And I could hear my daughter   tell her co-workers that her mother told her a  plane hit the building and they needed to get out. Then she asked me where was her baby. And I told  her I had her baby and he was OK. And she asked   me just to take care of him, and I said "OK,  just get out of there." And I ran out of my   apartment into the hallway, and I was just  screaming in the hallway. And all of a sudden,   my neighbors came out and they didn't know what  happened. And I just said, "My baby's gone!'' That night, when I went to bed, after I finally  was able to lay down, there was a light that   shines through my window. And for some reason,  this light was real bright. And I opened my eyes,   and I saw an angel. She was dressed in white and  she had a smile on her face, and I took that to   believe that she was letting me know that my  daughter was in heaven and that she was OK.

I just pray every day that she  didn't suffer and maybe she   just fell off to sleep and she didn't  feel anything. I know she was scared,   but I know my daughter also has faith  in God, so I know she was praying. I never question why God didn't intervene. I  often ask the question as to why he picked her,   but I have come to the conclusion that  I felt God knew something I didn't know.   And maybe he felt that- maybe she was-  even though she was here 23 years,   that she was suffering a lot more than  I knew about. And I felt that God knew   best. I always felt that way when he takes  someone, that he knows better than we do. SHARIF CHOWDHURY: [through interpreter] They say  the planes hit the building somewhere in the 92nd   to the 101st floor. It's terrible to think  that 2,000 gallons of petrol burned through the   building, totally scorching my daughter to death.  Our son-in-law, Nurul, worked on the 93th floor.   We were hoping that he might just have barely  survived. I pray to Allah that if they survive,  

let them both survive. If they have to  die, let them both go to Allah together.   What was Allah's wish? My daughter and  her husband both went to Allah together. SHOWKATARA SHARIF CHOWDHURY: [through interpreter]   In their one year of marriage, I have never seen  my daughter unhappy. Nurul took great care of her   and made her so happy. We were very lucky to  have found Nurul. But even after finding him,   we still lost him. And I cannot protest  to Allah or ask why he took my daughter.   It is all his will. No matter what I do - if  I cry, if I scream - I can't bring her back.   And so I have to accept that that is Allah's will.

STANLEY PRAIMNATH: It was the darkest  day in my life, loneliest day in my life,   most horrifying day in my life. When I looked  through that window towards the Statue of   Liberty and I saw that plane coming towards me,  I was numb. This monstrous plane looking at me,   like, "I'm taking you." Part of the 82nd  floor collapsed. All the walls were knocked   flat. I was screaming, crying and praying out  loud, "Lord! Help me! Please! Send somebody!" BRIAN CLARK: And I heard this, "Bang! Bang!  Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Help! Help!" STANLEY PRAIMNATH: I felt like  this strange force came over me,   this power that I've never felt before. And  I looked at this wall, and I started to hit   and punch and kick. And I busted a little  hole. And Brian said, "I see your hand!" BRIAN CLARK: And I was able to grab onto  something, whether it was his collar or his- we   locked arms, I'm not sure. And then I lifted him  out. And we fell in a heap on the floor, and we   introduced ourselves. He said, "Oh! Hallelujah!  I'm Stanley!" And I said, "My name's Brian.   We might be friends for life!" You know, that  sort of emotion overcame us. And then I said,   "Well, come on, let's go. Let's get out of here."

STANLEY PRAIMNATH: So here I am, running,  screaming, like everybody else. My Lord upheld   this building. Then we were in perfect safety. The  building collapsed. And here I am, God-delivered,   and I'm angry, angry because all these good  people who were there- the firefighters,   the cops, the EMS workers- all of these  good people who were left in this building,   which I'm sure they were, that couldn't  come down from the 81st or 82nd floor,   coming down because of all of this  debris, they perished. So I'm angry. BRIAN CLARK: Just like he intervenes  in everybody's life, God intervened in   my life that day. It- I couldn't predict what  he was going to do. I didn't feel like he was   intervening at any second, particular second.  It just unfolded, and here I am. Clearly,   everybody had different experiences. My experience  was to be able to meet Stanley in a special way   and to get ourselves out of the building. Other  people didn't have that same experience. Whatever   God's plan is or was and shall be - is,  was, and shall be. I can't question it.

MARIAN FONTANA: I think I went to 14 funerals and  wakes. It became a full-time job. They were very   draining and painful. I decided to plan Dave's on  his birthday, October 17th, went through the pain   of writing his eulogy, which was the hardest  thing I've ever written, and I'm a writer. It was incredibly moving. There were  thousands of firemen lined in the streets   and thousands of neighbors and people who  were standing in solemn respect for Dave,   and fire trucks and bagpipes and processions  of firefighters and everybody. And I just   spoke about him and his life and what he  meant to me and our 17 years together. I   talked about the kind of man he was, which  was completely- oh, he was a beautiful spirit   who gave to everybody, was so kind and  generous in a very quiet and humble way.

He was creative. He was a sculptor and a  historian. He liked simple pleasures. He   liked a warm fire, stars, Ireland, a pint  of Guinness, being with his son. He was the   most incredible father. He gave up a lot so he  could be around him and loved him so deeply that   it touched me constantly. The love he felt was  very profound for his son. He was a big man who   just enveloped everybody with his love and spirit  and kindness. So that was the kind of man he was. It was December 6th, and I was in  Hawaii with a lot of the firemen   from my husband's house. And I felt  his presence everywhere that day,  

and everybody kept remarking on how  they felt Dave's presence at the beach.   It was the first day I felt, like, relaxed, that  I could finally enjoy something. And it just felt   good to just breathe in the air and watch the  firemen smile for the first time since the 11th. I got back to the hotel room, and I guess  that's when I really felt the stark reality of   everything. And I sat there by myself and watched  the sunrise. And it was such startling beauty that   I couldn't believe that this God that I'd talked  to in my own way for 35 years could make the   most beautiful place in the world and turn this  loving man into bones. And I couldn't reconcile   the difference between those two extremes. And  I guess that's when I felt that my faith was   so weakened by the 11th. And so I felt like God  was just not present in me the way it had been.

I guess all I feel, at this point, is the profound  absence of Dave. And my conversations with God   that I used to have, I don't have anymore. I just  can't bring myself to- I used to talk quietly to   myself or to God and say, "Thank you for Dave.  Thank you for Aidan. Thank you for my life. God   bless everyone. God bless the children." You  know, "Please heal the sick." You know, the   usual blessings. And now I can't bring myself to  speak to him anymore because I feel so abandoned. Bit I guess deep down inside, I  know he still exists and that I   have to forgive and move on. But  I'm not ready to do that yet.

TIM LYNSTON:   I really can't see the purpose why all these  people had to die. I can't accept this. Right now,   God's not giving me that comfort. We're a  community in mourning. We were hit pretty bad.   I knew close to 30 people who died at the  World Trade. Basically, they were firemen,   young stockbrokers, sons of friends I knew. I miss  them dearly. I don't know if I'm ever going to   get over a couple of them. I mean, we were really  tight. You know, we did a lot of things together. And I had to come down here to  the beachfront to just let loose,   and it was brutal. I let loose at God. I fired  all my barrels at him. It might sound crazy,   but I cursed him. I damned him. I think  God could have just ended this all.   That's why I feel strongly that I'm losing respect  for him. I know there's a Trinity. I believe in  

the Son, but the Father I'm having a rough time  dealing with. I'm really having a rough time. I didn't have any love for God the weeks that  followed September 11th. It was really hatred.   I can't accept this unless I can have  an answer as to why it all occurred. I come down- basically, when I come down here,  and- no question about it, I cry when I come   down here and I'll talk to my friends. I think my  friends can hear me. God knows, they're watching   over all of us. I feel sometimes they're helping  me along with my life, trying to make me stronger. It was too barbaric. It was too barbaric, the  way the lives were taken. That wasn't mercy.

So I look at him now as a barbarian, and I  probably will. And it's a sad situation. I   think I'm a good Christian, but I have  a different view and image of him now,   and I can't replace it with the old image.  I can't replace it with the old image. NARRATOR: For many people who did not  lose loved ones, the questions were also   urgent and personal. Something about September  11th powerfully challenged their beliefs. Rev. JOSEPH GRIESEDIECK, Episcopal Priest: The  face of God for me was one that was strong,   secure, consistent, a face that  while at times seemed distant,   could more or less be counted on to be there,  who kept things in order - the sun would come up,   the sun would go down - who'd  provide, could be counted on.

After September 11th, the face of  God was a blank slate for me. God   couldn't be counted on in the way  I thought God could be counted on.   That's what I felt as I stood on  Ground Zero. God seemed absent.   And it was frightening because the attributes that  I had depended upon had all been stripped away.   And I was left with nothing but that thing we  call faith. But faith in what? I wasn't so sure. Rabbi BRAD HIRSCHFIELD, Orthodox Rabbi:  Since September 11th, people keep asking me,   "Where was God?" And they think because I'm  a rabbi, I have answers. And I actually think   that my job as a rabbi is to help them live with  those questions. If God's ways are mysterious,   live with the mystery. It's upsetting. It's scary.  It's painful. It's deep. And it's interesting.   No plan. That's what mystery  is. It's all of those things.

You want plan? Then tell me about plan. But if  you're going to tell me about how the plan saved   you, you better also be able to explain how the  plan killed them. And the test of that has nothing   to do with saying it in your synagogue or your  church. The test of that has to do with going and   saying it to the person who just buried someone  and look in their eyes and tell them God's plan   was to blow your loved one apart. Look at them and  tell them that God's plan was that their children   should go to bed every night for the rest of their  lives without a parent. And if you can say that,   well, at least you're honest. I don't worship  the same God, but that at least has integrity. It's just it's too easy. That's  my problem with the answer. Not   that I think they're being inauthentic  when people say it or being dishonest,   it's just too damn easy. It's easy because it  gets God off the hook. And it's easy because it   gets their religious beliefs off the hook.  And right now, everything is on the hook.

JOSH SIMON, Rabbinical Student: I cling to a  very noble image of God, a majestic God. Our   anthems are basically hymns to this majestic God  who blesses America with everything. But September   11th killed that God for me because there was no  way to have a majestic God, a God who controlled   everything. There was no way to have a God who  understood reward and punishment, fair or unfair,   who felt that America should be blessed above  other nations because we were good people. There was a God on September 11th who didn't even  mind that God's own name could be used as the   final prayer of a suicide hijacker as he plowed  into a building. We needed, and I know I needed,   to have another God to turn to at that  moment, or there was going to be no God.

KANAN MAKIYA, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies:  September 11th is harder for an atheist like   myself than for a believer because it shook my  belief in the one last foundation of everything,   in the human race. That human beings could  do this to other human beings- for me,   it just- it confirms my atheism. And then  that does leave you very, very isolated,   not knowing where to turn. You  can't hope anymore the same way. Always I had a purpose, even in the  darkest times. You write a hard book like   "Republic of Fear," describing atrocities beyond  belief, a regime that is truly beyond the pale,   Saddam's regime in Iraq, which killed  tens of thousands of its own citizens,   397 eliminated Kurdish villages in northern Iraq. September 11th rendered all of that,  both the activism and the writing,   somehow futile and pointless because although  I was used to despair, I was used to violence,   and I had become habituated and know how to write  about them and so on, what was new here was the   rapturous embrace of violence, the scale-on  such a scale that every effort to overcome it,   which is what the purpose and the meaning of  my work is, whether it be in the shape of an  

Arab-Israeli peace treaty or be in the shape of  a different regime in Iraq- it doesn't matter.   That's what one is trying to do, in one form or  another. All of that paled into insignificance   in contrast with this rapturous celebration  of death that September 11th represented. And the ability to overcome that now hurdle, which  those young men created and put before a person   like myself and my generation and others who  think the same way, then just looks like a labor   of Sisyphus, just to feel something hopeless and  difficult to struggle against. And anything you do   is so minute. And the aloneness that I feel in the  Middle Eastern world- that's a spiritual crisis,   but it's not one involving God. I don't begin to  doubt even my own lack of faith because of it.   I just- it's a sense of sinking into an abyss in  which you can't hold onto anything in the world.

LUCA BABINI, Photographer: I don't know  if I believe- if I ever believed in God   because I figured that I was busy enough  trying to stay alive. And I felt almost,   like, pretentious whenever I thought of  God because I figured, why would he, like,   get involved in these little matters here? He gave  us this to play with, so it's really our problem.   If there is an intervention, it's at the  very beginning or the very end of something. And I have to tell you that believing-  in that relationship with God, the twin   towers is a lot more acceptable fact because  you don't hate your God for having allowed   that because you know that it's nothing to  do with God, in the way that I believed in   religion and God before. It's our toy, our  game. The judgment is not at a daily level.   Or God, you know, is not, like, there  pushing us with a little finger over   cliffs and pushing cars against other cars  to make us die. I don't see it that way.

I see it in a much grander scale, so  grand, like I said, I think- I always   thought it was sort of pretentious to even try to  understand. Sometimes I think that we're just a   molecule in somebody else's hair in another  planet. And we think we are this big deal,   and one day this guy is going to, like,  cut his hair and we're going to, like- our   planet's going to blow. And we think  that it's the end of the universe,   and in reality, it's just somebody else  cutting his hair on some other planet. You know, I see it, like, a very, like, sort of  organic situation here. And has it changed after   September 11th? What has changed after September  11th is that I wish for the opposite. I wish that   there was a God that I could access and that it  could be proven that I can access him. I wish   that God had a telephone number since September  11th,and I would be very- it doesn't have to be   an 800 number, either. I'd gladly pay for  the call, you know? That's what I wish. I   wish it wasn't such a big question because  in times like this, we need simple answers.

Rabbi IRWIN KULA, Conservative Rabbi:  Since September 11th, this, for me,   that there's something out there and that I'm  here, no longer meant anything because every   time I thought there was something out there, it  turns into inevitably something opposed to me,   something I have to define myself against,  whether that's God or whether that's a   Christian or whether that's a Muslim or whether  that's a Buddhist. And that's not my experience. My genuine experience of life is  that there is nothing out there,   this is all there is. And when you see  the seamlessness of it all, that's what   I mean by God. Every tradition has that. Every  morning, three times a day since I'm 6 years old,   5 years old, I've been saying, "Hear O Israel,  the Lord our God, the Lord is one." Right? It's   one of our few creedal statements, right, the  Shema. Three times a day since I'm 6 years old. And 9/11, I guess- if you ask me what did 9/11  really do, it made me understand the truth of   that, that the truth of that, everything  is one. Not that there's some guy hanging   out there who has it all together, who  we call One, but that it is all one.

We all know it deep down! We've all had those  experiences, whether it's looking at our child   in a crib, or whether it's looking at  our lover or looking at a mountaintop   or looking at a sunset, right? We've all  had those experiences when we recognize,   "Whoa! We're much more connected here." That's  what those firemen had. They recognized. Now,   they didn't have time to think  about it, right, because actually,   if you think about it, you begin to create  separations. They didn't think about it.   All they knew was we're absolutely connected.  We're absolutely connected to the 86th floor. Well, that's where God is. That's not where God   is. God isn't anywhere. That's  what we mean when we say God. And yet, these insights of  connectedness and oneness,   which make us feel so at home in the world,  are so difficult to hold onto. And so,   inevitably, we wind up living  lives of isolation and loneliness.

Rabbi IRWIN KULA: [singing]   Hey, Jules. It's Brian. I'm on the plane  and it's hijacked, and it doesn't look good.   I just wanted to let you know that I  love you and I hope to see you again. These are final conversations that were recorded  on cell phones, recorded on voicemail. They're   so pure about the expression of love between  husband and wife, between mother and child.   They seem to me to be incredible  texts because they were at the   moment of confronting life or death. And  for me, I chant these every single morning   because they remind me that whatever  my tradition is about, it's about this.

[singing] Mommy, the building is on fire.  There's smoke coming through the walls.   I can't breathe. I love you, Mommy. Goodbye. The real Torah, the real wisdom, the real  religious tradition, the real experience   behind religion, is about love and is about  connection and is no more complicated than that. [singing] Honey, something terrible  is happening. I don't think I'm going   to make it. I love you. Take  care of the children.

Act 3: The Face of Evil Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH:   Today our nation saw evil, the very worst of  human nature. Our country has been deeply wounded.   I certainly never dreamt that I'd be the  president where there is a war on our home   front. But the evildoers, never really- they must  have not known who they were attacking. In fact,   the attacks have united our country, rallied  a nation, and out of evil will come good. NARRATOR: What was unusual about the  President's words was his use of "evil"   as a noun- not merely evildoers, evil  acts, but evil. Bush's language provoked   controversy and touched a nerve. What is  it we talk about when we talk about evil?

ANDREW DELBANCO, Prof. of Humanities and  Literature: It's a word we don't want to   use casually. It's a word that we don't want to  use to excuse ourselves by pointing the finger   at somebody else and saying, ``There's  evil! Go get it!" But at the same time,   to pretend that an event like that which took  place on September 11th can be explained with   the ordinary language of politics or psychology  seems to me quite inadequate to what happened. I have felt for some time that American  culture has lost touch with the reality   of evil. We really did experience evil on  September 11th, and we need to think about   it and we need understand it in order to be able  to cope with it both in others and in ourselves. Dr. ANN ULANOV, Psychoanalyst, Professor  of Theology: I think the September 11th   attacks have introduced something new in the  discussion of evil. From the psychological side,   there are a whole lot of theories that  say destructiveness comes from privation   and deprivation. It isn't something in itself.  It's from bad parenting or low self-esteem. What   religion of any denomination, any tradition,  offers to depth psychology is a recognition   that evil is a force. It's not something  that is caused just by the blows of fate.

Father GEORGE RUTLER, Catholic Priest:   For those who accept Christ as the Savior,  they have to recognize the fact that our Lord   spoke very vividly and intimately of evil,  of Satan. He doesn't talk in abstract terms   about evil. He addresses evil as a person. When he  confronts this man possessed with evil, he says,   "Come out of him." He's speaking  to something other than the man. KHALED ABOU EL-FADL, Professor  of Islamic Law: I believe that   demons do exist. I think their will is  contingent upon ours - in other words,   they exploit our own weaknesses -  that you can open the door for evil,   but the outside being is not allowed to come  inside of you until you open the door for that   being. That is why the Qur'an refers to some  human beings as- as if they have become demons.

IAN McEWAN, Author: I don't  really believe in evil at all.   I don't believe in God, and I certainly  don't, therefore, believe in some sort of   supernatural or trans-historical force  that somehow organizes life on dark or   black principles. I think there are only people  behaving, and sometimes behaving monstrously. And sometimes their monstrous behavior  is so beyond our abilities to explain it,   we have to reach for this numinous notion of  evil. But I think it's often better to try   and understand it in real terms, in real, you  know, either political or psychological terms.   There's something, at the same time, very, very  attractive about this word. It's sort of- it's   a great intensifier. It just lets us say that  we thoroughly abhor, you know, this behavior. So I think we have to beware of treating September  11th as the only and most spectacular event   of human cruelty. There've been many acts of  cruelty, some of them on an even larger scale.   I think it's inherent. I think one of the  great tasks of art is really to explore that,   all those many, many sides of human nature.

RENEE FLEMING, Opera Singer: The  tragedy that man wreaks on man,   it's universal and it's been for all time. That's  the beauty of working in art that spans centuries.   One realizes that in love and war and lust and  vengeance, man has changed virtually not at all. I did question one- one word in my vocabulary  after September 11th, and that was the word "evil"   because I had decided that there was not even  any black and white, that there were no extremes,   that we lived in a world of gray, everyone was  more complex than the word "evil" would allow.   And I really thought about it a lot after that  because I would always try to justify hate with   learning. And I do think, to a great degree,  that's true, that people learn how to hate and   they can become very good at it, depending  on what their personal circumstances are.

But I don't know. And I still don't know if-   I don't know now. I question it  now. Does evil exist? Is it real? KANAN MAKIYA, Professor of Middle Eastern  Studies: I think evil is something,   when you see it, when you know it, it's  intimate. It's almost sensual. I mean,   that is whypeople who have been tortured  know it by instinct. They don't need to   be told what it is. And they may have  a very hard time putting it into words,   and they often will. It's- that's the nature  of the phenomena. It's hard to put into words. But you have to have that intimacy with it,   that kind of should-to-shoulder rub, and you  have to be able to see yourself there. Otherwise   it runs this terrible danger of becoming  something someone else is, and not you.

Suggesting evil is human doesn't  mean we can always understand it.   It's like a great work of art.  You can never fully absorb it.   It's got many dimensions. It lives  on through time in different ways. DASHA RITTENBERG, Holocaust Survivor: I can only  describe evil by giving you what I remember,   not what I read in a book, but what  I, my own eyes and ears heard and saw   evil. What happened to my parents? They  were the last people to leave the ghetto,   and they were taken to Auschwitz. I know that  they were burned into ashes. My mother, my father,   my three brothers, my younger sister, my uncles,  my aunts, their children, burned into ashes.

That's all I have seen in humanity is evil. I've  seen hangings. I've seen shootings. I saw one man   whose name was Mischka. He was a Ukrainian. He was  drunk. He would just go killing. Every single day,   he had to have his blood on his hands,  Jewish blood. Evil? You want to hear more?   So. All the ghetto life, the hunger, the poverty,  the lice that were crawling on my body. Evil.   Evil people just patting their dogs and then  killing a child because it was Jewish. Evil,   OK? Hitting, slapping for no reason, because  you were not even in line with the next person,   being hit by dogs and bitten, the  blood running out of your feet. Evil.

People would go to sleep every night, get  up in the morning and eat and drink and be   evil. Were they, too, created in the image of  God? I don't know. What does it say about God? KHALED ABOU EL-FADL: How can you kneel in  submission to a God who authors evil? I   follow a school within Islam called the Mutazila,  which said, "No, God doesn't preordain everything.   God doesn't write everything somewhere. And  God doesn't- is not the creator of evil,   is not the maker of evil, and also is not the  creator and maker of all good." There are so   much good that is the product of my decision,  my consciousness, my will as a human being.

KIRK VARNEDOE, Former MoMA Curator:   What was creepier and stranger  about the people who flew into   the buildings on September 11th was  that this level of fanaticism had   been maintained on a calm and even  plane over a whole number of years. These were middle-class people. They had  families. They had money. They had all the seeming   advantages. They lived in the heart of what  America thinks of as its great, fat, happy middle.   They went to the malls. They ordered pizza. They  were in bars. They lived this life for years. And still, on the day, they got on the plane,   checked their bags and knew they were  never getting off that plane and that   they were going to kill themselves to  do it. And they carried it through. The change in my idea of what fanatic  meant, at that point, my sense of the   power of deep-burning absolutism and hatred  shifted and became scarier because I was used   to the crazy teenager who blows himself up, but  the calculating person who understands- you know,   learns how to fly a 747, understands the  dynamics of aviation fuel, knows what the   structural requirements of the World Trade  Center are, goes through all of this and then   sits like a ticking time bomb for a year and a  half, is a whole different order of absolutism,   a whole different order of fervor. You think  of fervor itself as something ignitable,   volatile, but the cold-bloodedness  of this operation was shocking.

KANAN MAKIYA, Professor of Middle  Eastern Studies: The hijackers bring   in a different element of evil. It's the sort of  perfection of the death instinct, the absolute-   it is the infatuation, rapture in the event  of killing, of death of oneself and others,   as many people as possible. That's what they bring  that's so new, I mean, this ability to be at one   with the desire to die and to inflict death on  as many people as possible- not as an instrument,   not as a means, I mean, that they may  serve in some other, larger picture. But it's the action- forgetting the politics of  it entirely. Put that aside. Once a person has   entered into the frame of mind- the politics  may have been necessary to bring them there,   but they have entered into the frame of  mind where they are going to do- they   are going to pursue the death wish  to its ultimate, fullest extreme.

Now, how do you then think up a way of doing that,   an absolutely diabolical way of doing that,  that has the qualities of a spectacle,   a great spectacle, and mass destruction? But to  have elevated it to this level is what is new,   terrifying, and probably, in the end, evil,  truly evil, about what happened. And it is   recognizing it as evil that allows  us to change the discourse about it. So that's why the word is important, especially  for Muslims and Arabs to recognize it as such   and to eject it out of themselves, out of  their tradition, which hasn't been done yet. MARGOT ADLER, NPR Correspondent:   Vladimir Putin came to National Public Radio and  gave an interview. And this became a big affair,   and there were news articles about it all  over the place. But the one thing that he   said that I haven't forgotten- and it was  never quoted anywhere. It was in no news   story. But when I heard it, literally, the hair  on the back of my wrists just stood up straight.

He was asked, "Well," you know, "what do you think  about- what do you think when Regan said `the evil   empire?' " You know, "What was your attitude?"  And he said, "Well, I thought it was- you know,   it was sort of a way of speaking. It was an  exaggeration." And then the interviewer said   to him, "Well," you know, "when George Bush talks  about the"- you know, "Usama bin Laden as evil,"   you know, "do you think it's also a turn of  phrase?" And Putin said, "No. I think that   is really mild language. I have many words for  them, but I couldn't say them on the air." And   then he said, "We are as dust to them." That was  the line that got me, "We are as dust to them." So maybe what evil is, on some level,  is when you get- when you believe in   something so utterly that you lose your  sense that a human being is a human being,   when you feel that you can go into a building  and kill 3,000 people and it doesn't matter   because you are so focused on what you think is  perfection and good, maybe that is a definition   of evil. It's a kind of estrangement, though. It's  an estrangement from your connection that these   other human beings, the ones that are jumping  out the window to the bottom, are just like you.

And that is probably the deepest religious  perception that liberal religious tradition   puts forward, that we are, you know, all human  beings together on this planet in the same way,   with certain kinds of values.  And that's clearly what was lost. Dr. ANN ULANOV, Psychoanalyst, Professor  of Theology: Evil is a mysterious force.   How else could one fly a whole plane full of  people- how could you fly all those people,   plus your own compatriots, into a  building where thousands of people   were working? How could you do that?  You'd have to go against every instinct. It wouldn't be enough to just be identified  with your cause. It wouldn't be enough to be   painted as a hero after you were dead  or that your family would be rewarded.   There'd have to be some experience of  being in the grip of something. Now,   they thought they were serving a good. On the  receiving end, it's clear this is an evil. Why?   Because it is so destructive. It's so beyond the  bounds of human discourse, the discourse of war.

So I believe that evil, yes, you can get to it  yourself. You can go to the place you've been   hurt or threatened to be destroyed, or pieces  of you have been destroyed, mangled, treated   as if they are of no value. You can get to your  outrage, your absolute determination to retaliate   for vengeance, and you can understand how you  feel that because of something done to you. But deeper than that, it's like an undertow  of the ocean. It's like an undertow current,   a force that invites you to join it. As your  feet are being pulled out from under you by the   undertow, and you get caught in that, you're in  something that's outside yourself. The personal   explanation is not enough. Even the psychological  explanation - archetypal pattern of energy,   unconscious instincts of hate and cannibalism  - even that isn't enough. That's involved,   too, but it's as if one has a spell cast on one.

But you feel you are caught in what the New  Testament calls principalities and powers.   It's a power that catches you, and you  are not enough by yourself to defeat it. So we can say after September 11th, "Oh,  bin Laden, he is the personification of   evil." Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. But  even if you say that, evil's bigger. Act 4: The Face of Religion NARRATOR: Throughout   time, religion has been a source of grace  and consolation, and also of violence and   divisiveness. Since September 11th, many are  asking with urgency, and even anger, how can   such things be done in the name of God?

Rabbi BRAD HIRSCHFIELD, Orthodox Rabbi:   Religion drove those planes into  those buildings. And that's upsetting,   but that's what happened. And this  idea that somehow that's not Islam,   so we shouldn't worry, is- it's not  only naive, it's stupid! It's wrong.   There's a very rich tradition which they, you  know, delved into to justify what they did. By the way, hating doing it and fighting  against it ever happening again is also Islam,   just like within Jewish tradition.  The guy who went into the mosque in   the city of Hebron and murdered 29 human  beings didn't do that out of the air. He   had a deep connection to a tradition,  a religious tradition in Judaism that   pushed him there. Keeping him from doing  it is also a serious religious tradition.

You don't sterilize these traditions and say, "No,  no. They don't do anything wrong" because what's   really going on when we do that is that we don't  want- if Islam is clean and that's not real Islam,   then I don't have to ask where is it real Jewish.  And Christians don't have to ask where is it real   Christian. And the worst thing we can do is make  some kind of compact where none of us admit the   blood on our hands. What we really have to  do is admit the blood on all of our hands,   not because it's equal blood, but because  we've all been bloodied by these traditions. KANAN MAKIYA: At this point in time, in this  place, at this conjuncture in our history,   religion did drive those planes into those  towers. In some deep way, religion is responsible.   Not any religion, but Islam in particular. I  have always thought there were dark corners in   religion. I took that for granted. That's not  the surprising thing for me. The frightening   thing is rather that in the Arab world, we have  let the darkness of religion flourish. And the   forces that are dampening it, at this moment in  our history, are weak. And that is frightening.

Monsignor LORENZO ALBACETE, Catholic Priest:  From the first moment I looked into that horror   on September 11th, into that fireball, into that  explosion of horror, I knew it. I knew it before   anything was said about those who did it or why. I  recognize an old companion. I recognize religion. Look, I am a priest for over 30 years.  Religion is my life. It's my vocation.   It's my existence. I'll give my life for  it. I hope to have the courage. Therefore,   I know it. And I know and recognize that day  that the same force, energy, sense, instinct,   whatever, passion - because religion can be  a passion - the same passion that motivates  

religious people to do great things is the same  one that that day brought all that destruction. When they said that the people who did it  did it in the name of God, I was not in the   slightest bit surprised. It only confirmed what  I knew. I recognize it. I recognize this thirst,   this demand for the absolute, because if you  don't- if you don't hang onto the unchanging,   to the absolute, to that which cannot  disappear, you might disappear.   I recognize this thirst for the never-ending,  the permanent, the oneness of all things, this   intolerance or fear of diversity, that which is  different. These are characteristics of religion.

And I knew that that force could take you to  do great things, but I knew that there was   no greater and no more destructive force on the  surface of this earth than the religious passion. Rabbi BRAD HIRSCHFIELD: You can get so drunk  on God that you don't see anything else.   And I didn't. It's so easy to get  wrapped up in a messianic vision   of how the world could be. And I  know it's easy because I did it. I spent a part of my life, between the ages of 17  and 21, living off and on in the city of Hebron.   Hebron is traditionally understood by rabbinic  tradition as one of the four holiest cities in   the land of Israel. It's the burial place  of the matriarchs and the patriarchs,   of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Sarah and  Rebecca and Leah. And the site where they are   buried has traded between being a mosque and  a church many times in the last 1,800 years.

And for Jews to be able to go back to that  place where the founding fathers and mothers   are buried is unbelievable. To be able, at  the age of 18 or 19, to say, "This is where   I belong" after thousands of years of exile is  intoxicating. You believe anything is possible. I really don't remember, until it got  so out of control that people I knew   committed murder- I don't think that I  thought for a minute about the impact of   my beliefs on other human beings who didn't  share them. Other people were just wrong. It's amazing how good religion is  at mobilizing people to do awful,   murderous things. There is this dark side to  it, and anyone who loves religious experience,   including me, better begin to own there  is a serious shadow side to this thing.

KANAN MAKIYA: Perhaps the most dangerous element  that was picked out of the Muslim tradition and   changed and transformed in the hands of  these young men who perpetrated September   11th is this idea of committing suicide  - they call it "martyrdom," of course,   suicide is firmly rejected in Islam - as an  act of worship. In the tradition, generally,   to die in battle for the sake- for a  larger purpose - that is, for the sake   of the community at large - is a noble thing  to do, self-sacrifice yourself as you defend   the community. That is a traditional thing,  and that has a traditional meaning of jihad. But what is non-traditional, what is new, is this  idea that jihad is almost like an act of private   worship. You become closer to God by blowing  yourself up in such a way. You, privately,   irrespective of what effect it has on everyone  else. That is new. And for these young men,   that is the new idea of jihad. This  idea of jihad allows you to think   of- to lose all of the old distinctions  between combatants and non-combatants,   between just and unjust wars, between the  rules of engagement of different types.   All of that is gone because now the  act of martyrdom is an act of worship.

These young men touched a chord among  considerable numbers of Muslims in the   Arab world and in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  That is what is so dangerous about Islam at   this moment. These young men have captured the  moral high ground - not of the whole of Islam yet,   but they are in danger of capturing the moral  high ground of a great religious tradition.   And I think that is the great, great challenge  that faces Muslims today is to repudiate that. [Memorial Service at Yankee  Stadium, Sept. 23, 2001] PRESIDING OFFICIAL: And now I want to  bring to you the Reverend Dr. David Benke,   who is president of the Atlantic district  of the Lutheran Church, the Missouri Synod. Reverend DAVID BENKE, Lutheran Minister: The  Yankee Stadium day was a pivotal day in my   entire life. It was a day when everything  that I had stood for as a human being,   as well as a person of faith,  was going to be on the line.

[Memorial service] So take the hand of one next to you now and join   me in prayer on this field of dreams  turned into God's house of prayer. We were in the middle of a very emotional,  highly-charged event. There was a sense of   people wanting to release these profound emotions  that had just been harbored in them because they   didn't know whether their husbands were going  to be found, or their wives. They were still   waiting for word from the rescue workers. They  were still calling everybody "missing" at that   time. They just came for some comfort, some-  something to hang onto. Even though, you know,   we all had questions about "Where was God,"  my prayer was, "You have to be our tower of   strength, God. You cannot desert us at this  moment." And that's how the prayer led off. [Memorial service] Oh Lord, our God, we're leaning on you today. When I shared the podium with representatives  of all the major faiths and prayed, that prayer   became the center of a major controversy. The  very next day, I began to get messages filled with   hate. They were messages not from people outside  of my tradition, but from within my tradition.   And they were messages that nailed me to the  floor, frankly, emotionally. They just said,   "You were wrong to be there. You never should  have gone to Yankee Stadium. You are a heretic.   You have dishonored your faith." One man said  genuine terrorism was me. He said, "Planes  

crash and people die. Nothing big about that."  Genuine terrorism was me giving that prayer. I just want to say that I have not gotten over  that and I can't get through that because I   lived through the real terrorists driving the  planes into the real buildings and I've talked   to people whose loved ones were murdered. And for  me to be put in that same category is just not   tolerable to me. I can't take it. I can't bear  up under it. It doesn't make any sense to me. Within two months, a number of those people put  together a petition and filed charges of heresy,   saying that I am not part of the Christian church  because of what I did on that day and should not   be part of my denomination anymore, should not be  allowed to preach, should have my collar removed.   The people who brought the charges against  me are clergymen from my denomination. And   their belief is that the doctrine of the church  does not allow a Christian to stand at the same   podium with someone of another faith, or  everybody's going to get the idea that all   religions are equal. And we have made absolute  claims, exclusive claims about our faith.

If religion leads people to make these kinds  of accusations at exactly the worst moment   in American history, perhaps, then what's  underneath religion? Is religion really   part of a lust for power and control  in people's lives? Is it a desire for   absolute security so strong that people  cannot see the need to reach out and help?   If that's true, then I've got a lot of  wrestling to do with my own religion. KHALED EL-FADL, Professor of Islamic  Law: I am fighting for the soul and   identity of Islam itself. I did speak out, but  did I do enough? Did I do enough to prevent this?   I really don't think that you can be- you  can hold your head high and have a sense   of dignity about yourself if you can't clearly  confront the fact that this remarkable amount of   ugliness was committed in the name  of the faith that you believe in.

Well before this, there was the destroying of  the Buddha statues in Afghanistan, there were   the oppression of women, there were the decision  to have Christians and Jews wear distinctive   marks in Afghanistan. Bin Laden represents a  puritan extremism within Islam, modern Islam.   There is no question that the extremists and  puritans want to be the only representatives   of Islam who can tell you what God wants and what  Islam is, and that's the beginning and the end. What I think is the most dangerous is- there  are few that are as arrogant or self-righteous   as bin Laden within the Muslim world. But  the most dangerous is a type of thinking   that would allow a person to think they speak  authoritatively and decisively for God. And   that type of thinking is more widespread  in contemporary Islam than bin Laden.

What I communicate to people is a message of  tolerance, of a conception of God as beauty,   the embodiment of beauty, and the insistence on  the autonomy of the individual and the importance   of conscience and the acceptance that the  law does not necessarily embody morality,   but that morality must always  examine the law and shape the law. KIRK VARNEDOE: That sense of religion  - that we have a direct line to God,   that we alone understand, and only people who are  in our little circle understand that and the rest   of them are heathens, barbarians, non-people, et  cetera, et cetera - this is horrifying. And we   keep being reminded that it is at the core  and nature of religion to be intransigent,   to believe that, "I understand what's  right, and you are an infidel."

I came to think that art is exactly not what  religion is, that it's not about absolutes and it   has to do with the condition of being human, which  is not ever to be able to deal with absolutes,   that we deal in a world of doubts, a world  of uncertainties, a world of ironies. People say art is a substitute religion,  and I thought about a lot about that in   the aftermath of 9/11. It's true that art  transports you, that it gives you the sense   that you can find other worlds than the ones  that you know are inside of you. There are so   many imagined worlds. Each artist creates a  world with its own logic and its own set of   rules in which you can move in and inhabit.  They find form that lets you imaginatively   take part in experiences with which you may  not have had any contact, and for a moment,   conceive of a world as pearlescent and  as beautifully, rectilinearly ordered as   a Piero. To feel these things through  art expands the reach of who you are.

But art doesn't only transport you to new,  imagined places. It also, in the best sense,   narrows your vision, focuses with a new immediacy  on the things that may be the most familiar to   you. It gives a new spiritual dimension to  the objects that you touch, to the room that   you inhabit. And this is not just a tidy or  comfortable experience but can be suffused   with a kind Dionysian pleasure, in the sense of  the small world controlled and the poetry of the   world possessed, this crossing over of the line  between what is the love of the material thing,   of the dust mote in the sunlight or the  sheen of the porcelain, of the look of the   ivy winding around the bowl of fish, you know,  this sort of pleasure in the daily small things. In art, through art, I think, transmutes  itself into a form of spirituality,   one to which I respond very, very  strongly. That peculiar little religion,   that alternative to the comforting absolutism of  believing that if I run myself into a building,   there will be 40 black-eyed virgins waiting  for me on the other side- I don't want that   kind of religion, and I don't want  that kind of spirituality in art.

NARRATOR: But there is another  face of religion that celebrates   mystery and offers solace. In this time of  questioning, that power of religion endures. TERRY McGOVERN: I was raised Irish Catholic, but  over the years, I really grew disillusioned with   the church until the horror of September 11th.  I just couldn't stop thinking about my mother. I   obsessed about all these horrible things. Was she  burned? I obsessed about our last conversations.   I obsessed about if I didn't appreciate her  enough. I obsessed about everything, everything. I went and sat in the local  church. It calls up kind of deep,   ancient rituals. It has great resonance.  It feels like it's connected to something   much greater and larger, though I think  I went there to feel the solitude and to   lay at the feet of the altar "Why?" And  then I think my mother's memorial mass,   which I had no expectations for, turned out to  be extremely comforting. The priest talked in   his sermon about that- this was not God's will,  that we can't find anything good in this, that  

all we can do in response to this is cry, that  there is no- this is- this cannot be God's will. So I guess it made me reexamine all of  my feelings and wonder if I didn't need   to re-enter the church community and if  that world couldn't give me some answers   that I desperately was looking for. How  could this happen? Is this really it?   Is that it? Is that it for my mother?  I mean, she dies like that, you know? I think on some very deep level, I  don't- I want the church's teachings on   the spiritual life after death to be true. I  need them to be true. So- and- and frankly,   the church since September 11th has comforted me.

When you have this kind of unimaginable  horror happen to somebody that you love,   you do have to find a way to connect and hope  for something much deeper because otherwise,   I think your mind could kind of snap,  really. I mean, you have to believe that   there is something deeper going on,  that there's a spiritual life. Act 5: Ground Zero JOEL MEYEROWITZ, Photographer:   I think that the World Trade Center site has  achieved more than this notion of a cemetery,  

a graveyard. It's become hallowed ground.  If you go to a cathedral every single day   and sit inside that space, with its smells  and its tones and its experience of place,   you would know something about what  emotions are embedded in that space.   And this 16-acre plot is an enormous, open-air  cathedral. And if you go into it every day,   you will be changed. It's a  visitation. It's knowledge. The people who have attended to the  clean-up, and I mean the firemen and   the police and the rescue workers and the  crane operators and the bulldozer drivers   and everyone down there trying to find  some remnant that could bring some peace   to a family member - every day they show  up and they're on their hands and knees.

I was down there at a moment that they  were finding a larger number of remains.   And coming up the ranks were six fireman  carrying a little sled, draped with a flag.   Every single person took off their helmet, put it  over their heart, saluted, did this traditional   American gesture of respect for the dead, and  there was no one to do it for. There was no   press. It wasn't a public demonstration. It was  for the dead. And they did it over and over again. But that weighs on them. That- it's a  reminder because they have to put that-   that remains on that sled. They have to handle  that. And some of the remains are beyond words.

HELEN TWORKOV, Buddhist, Editor of Tricycle  Magazine: I volunteered to go to Ground Zero,   I think, for the same reasons that many people  did. I wanted to do something. But I think I   went down there out of a sense of civic duty.  I didn't go down there out of any kind of great   spiritual awakening. But once I got down there,  there was something very compelling about being   in that space, and it had to do with the  way people were relating to each other.   There was so much kindness and so much tenderness. With 9/11, there was this monumental, massive  act of destruction, and it took a tremendous   amount of planning. It took a lot of thinking  about. It took a lot of orchestration. It took   a lot of synchronicity. It took a lot of people  getting together and planning and going to flight   school and talking to each other and raising a  lot of money and figuring out how all of this   was going to happen. It took an enormous  amount of energy to be that destructive.

And when it happened, the day that it  happened, the hours that it was happening,   these stories of people waiting for their friends  or not leaving their friends, or walking out   in such peaceful lines, and these firemen and  these policemen running upstairs to help people,   and the way people treated each other- where did  all that come from? There was no planning. There   was no thought went into that. I mean, everybody  was stunned. And within that being stunned,   this kindness came out. And it came out  a lot and everybody talked about it. Everybody that was there, everybody that was  in those buildings, everybody that was in those   streets, running uptown, everybody talked about  it. Where did it come from? It was just there.

Reverend JOSEPH GRIESEDIECK, Episcopal  Priest: Right after September 11th,   a good many individuals that I talked to  were reexamining their relationships and   taking concrete steps to reconcile relationships  that were not reconciled. Some have said to me,   "I was so materialistic. I'm trying to be  more spiritual,'' whatever that means. Those   are the positive changes, people wanting to  mend relationships, become more spiritual. There are other changes that I'm not pleased to  see, and some of those changes are in myself-   a deepened sense of cynicism, a sense of  being more alone than before September   11th. Even as one such as myself, who has  a wonderful wife and three children and an   extended family that I love, there is  this sense of being alone, out there,   in a world that is a lot crueler  than I thought at the age of 31.

There is a sense in me, and in many others  that I've spoken with, that we're surviving.   At least for now. We don't know what's coming.  We're surviving. We're sensitive to the changes   around us, but we know we have to survive, and  some have numbed ourselves, hardened ourselves.   To be vulnerable is very difficult right now.  And to be open to faith takes vulnerability,   and some people aren't willing to do that because  we've been burned - some literally - by religion. RENEE FLEMING, Opera Singer: What I found  when I actually reached Ground Zero is that   it wasn't at all what I expected. It was so big, i  couldn't comprehend of it. I couldn't take it in.   I didn't expect it to be so enormous.  And then I turned around and I saw the   faces of the 9,000 people who had crowded  into this extremely narrow space. So many   more people came than they had expected,  in their grief, trying to find a spot,   trying to connect in some way to  the site, to what we were doing.

[Fleming singing "Amazing  Grace" at Ground Zero memorial] It was definitely the most difficult thing I have  ever had to do, in terms of singing. Normally,   I- it's my job and it's my joy to connect to the  audience. I had to look up. I just- I couldn't do   that. I had to look above the audience because  I just knew I wouldn't be able to go on. There   were so many people. And of course, most of  whom I could see were the people directly in   front of me. And it was the children. I think the  hardest thing for me- see, I'm going to cry now!   It was- I can't- [weeps]

It was the sense of knowing, in many cases,  that the people they lost were behind us,   just imagining losing a family member in that way. KIM COLEMAN, Retired NYC Police Officer:  Sitting at the memorial at Ground Zero was   so somber. And looking at the buildings, and  watching on the screen, with the crane digging,   and smelling the smell, i kind of felt what  the people that were in that building felt. I   kind of understood what my daughter may have  gone through. And it wasn't a good feeling. A lot of people were sitting there  with masks on. I didn't wear the   mask. I wanted to feel the air and what  actually was going on down there that   day and just imagine it. I just cried.  It's hard. It's hard without a body.   I- as it was being sung, I just wished  she was here. Every day I say I just  

wish she could walk through  the door just one more time. TERRY McGOVERN, Attorney:   I thought, "Why are we here sitting  on these chairs, these folding chairs,   in front of this horror?" My  brother and I and my sister,   we felt devastated. We felt devastated  sitting there in front of this smoking thing,   which was the building that my mother  worked in, knowing that she was in there. So I think this theme of kind of trying to connect  to this deeper spirituality in some desperate hope   that there's something else - there's something  greater - was very much present. And so this   incredibly beautiful music actually was extremely  comforting. It took us out of the very horrifying   reality and transported me to this place of  hope that we could aspire for something better,   and that perhaps something better does  exist, and that whatever was left of   my incredibly fabulous mother in that- in  that mess was not the end of her spirit.

JOEL MEYEROWITZ:   One of the most impossible and memorable images of  that day were people leaping out of the windows,   being forced out by the fire behind them, driving  them, herding them out the windows. And to see   that image of two people - co-workers, strangers  - I had no idea, but that not knowing made it   all the more poignant for - reaching out for  somebody's hand to take your last step, that you   would end your life in the hands of a stranger,  plummeting thousands of feet to your death.

MARGOT ADLER, NPR Correspondent:  I think that the power of that   image is it doesn't give an answer. It  takes us in two opposing directions.   On the one hand, we are all alone at the end.  Life is fleeting. There's no one to help us   when we face the abyss. And there wasn't.  No one came for them. And on the other hand,   they reached for each other. They said that in  that moment when they're facing the absolute   ultimate, there are other human beings to reach  out, to be there, to help them, to help us. IAN McEWAN, Author:   To me, it just seemed the bleakest possible  image of the whole thing. Actually, I couldn't   find a scrap of hope in it. What I saw was utter  desperation, jumping to certain death rather than   dying in pain and fire. It spoke to me of sheer  panic, humans brought to the sort of furthest   edge of despair. I found no hope in that at all.  If there is a God, he's a very indifferent God.

BRIAN DOYLE: A couple leaped from the south  tower, hand in hand. They reached for each   other and their hands met, and they jumped. I  try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and   the harrowed families of the dead and  the screaming souls of the murderers,   but I keep coming back to his hand in her hand,  nestled in each other with such extraordinary,   ordinary, naked love. It's the most powerful  prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent,   the most graceful. It's everything we're  capable of against horror and loss and tragedy. It's what makes me believe that  we're not fools to believe in God,   to believe that human beings have greatness  and holiness within them, like seeds that open   only under great fire, to believe that  who we are persists past what we were,   to believe, against evil evidenced  hourly, that love is why we are here.

Monsignor LORENZO ALBACETE, Catholic Priest: To  me, that image is an inescapable provocation.   This gesture, this holding of hands in  the midst of that horror, it embodies   what September 11 was all about. The image  confronts us with the need to make a judgment,   a choice. Does it show the ultimate hopelessness  of human attempts to survive the power of hatred   and of death? Or is it an affirmation of a  greatness within our humanity itself that   somehow shines in the midst of that darkness  and contains the hint of a possibility, a power   greater than death itself? Which of the two?  It's a choice? It's the choice of September 11.