On Thursday night, September 13, I visited an impromptu shrine overlooking the New York skyline. Ever since the planes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center on Tuesday morning people have streamed to an overlook in a huge park here in New Jersey that looks out over the Hudson River to the New York City skyline. Candles, bouquets of flowers, small American flags and rose petals line the top of the overlook's stone wall. Two huge flags hang over the edge, facing Manhattan.

Taped all over the wall are white pieces of paper filled with people's thoughts, hopes, and prayers. Many include drawings of the towers as they used to be or as they looked during that terrible first half hour Tuesday morning. They are in childish scrawl and adult hand. They are in English, Spanish and German. Their authors do not have all the answers but they need to proclaim something. Theology is being done in the public square.

Long ago, St. Anselm defined theology as "faith seeking understanding." In these hours faithful people seek to understand this devastating crime. A woman whose husband came home from the city unscathed Tuesday afternoon broke into tears after a morning prayer service Wednesday. How, she asked, will I ever feel safe again. Where do we find hope? What are we to do? What do we say to the children, ask others.

Most of the working people in my parish commute into Manhattan. We are about 35 minutes by train from the station below the World Trade Center and many work in the financial district served by that station. Over and over again as we checked in with our parishioners, we heard stories of close calls. As of when I write this, we know of no parishioner who is dead, injured or still missing. This parish, however, does not emerge unscathed. One of our members' sister died in one of the planes. Many can't find friends, neighbors, co-workers and employees.

We are among the lucky ones and it is tempting to call our survival a miracle, but those words are too glib for these hours. They imply that God chose to save some and not others. I cannot look at the photos of people at the windows of the towers and believe that this is how God acts in this world.

This, instead, is how God loves us: God huddles in the rubble of Ground Zero and cradles the dead and injured, and holds up the rescue workers. God sobs with each of us. God grieves far beyond our measure of sadness because of the killing instinct that a jealous and fearful Cain rooted in our bones. God longs for us to purge ourselves of this evil by adopting a fierce and radical stance of forgiveness, repentance, and love.

Of all the theological statements taped to the overlook's wall only a few demand retribution. "OK, Afghanistan," reads one. "Bombs Away!" God supports our need to punish these deeds, but God does not desire us to practice revenge. Faith's radical stance demands other actions instead. Knowing now what it means to live in terror, we must stand in solidarity with the vulnerable in the world. From that vantage point we ought to be able to discern why people hate this country so much and how we might salve that anger.

Most of the shrine's theologians want an end to violence and a beginning of true peace. They beg the leaders of the United States not to answer this violence with more violence. Blazing out from the sea of white-papered prayers is a piece of yellow construction paper on which someone has written in bold black letters, "swords into plowshares."

That prayer echoes Old Testament vision in Micah 4:3 - 4:4:

. . . they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.

We read this vision Tuesday at noon during a prayer service at Christ Church. We also read these words of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew (5:43 - 5:46):

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?

At a later service Tuesday we invited our parishioners to put their raw emotions on the altar and ask God to transform them. Micah's vision and Jesus' words give us a transforming kind of marching order. It is one that the world rarely follows but one that this corner of the world, close to Ground Zero, seems to be crying out to hear.