The Holiest Community Ever

Was this the holiest community ever?

It's a question I didn't expect to ask when I began researching Unexpected Grace: Stories of Faith, Science, and Altruism.

I was in New York City interviewing Courtney Cowart, one of two dozen theologians who were meeting at Trinity's Institute one-and-a-half blocks from the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11. Forced to flee after the first tower fell, Cowart and the others were caught on the street and completely engulfed in the debris cloud from the second tower's collapse.

"There was nothing you could do to save yourself," Cowart recalled. "Your fate was just not in your own hands. And in that moment of helpless self-offering, I realized that I was emptied. I believe this created a space – a vessel if you will – where purpose could make its home in me."

For Cowart and several others from Trinity Institute, that purpose expressed itself in helping to organize the nine-month volunteer effort at St. Paul's Chapel that served the needs of recovery workers at Ground Zero.

Like a nondenominational tide, volunteers and workers flowed through that small Episcopal chapel: Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus – and atheists. Serving each other – and the city – day and night, voicing awe and wonder for the atmosphere of holiness that filled the chapel. Love loving love, as one volunteer called it.

"This is where God is," said a Catholic fireman. "This is the greatest sense of God's presence I have ever known."

Like "touching the face of God" said a Benedictine monk.

"Full of love and sacredness," said a rabbi.

Jim Wallace, the head of Sojourners in Washington D.C. asked Cowart, "Do you know how you know that you've been to a holy site?"

He answered his own question. "You know when you've been transformed. Simply by virtue of having been there. This is a holy site."

After 30 years of meditation, I know the feel of a holy community. Others might say the same about their own faith communities – their churches and synagogues and mosques. But never before in the history of this nation – or perhaps any other – has altruistic service generated a sense of God's presence that crossed denominational lines and included everyone it touched – religious or otherwise.

Inclusion. This was the miracle of 9/11: a small chapel on the edge of catastrophe that bestowed God's presence on everyone who entered.

The holiest community in American history? I'd say yes.

Bill Kramer is a freelance writer living in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and author of the new book "Unexpected Grace: Stories of Faith, Science, and Altruism," published by the Templeton Foundation Press.

By Bill Kramer |  September 11, 2007; 12:47 PM ET
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