I was in my office on 9/11 when the first plane hit. I heard the crash and had no idea what it was. Sirens went off. I went over to the window. It wasn’t long before papers were flying by the windows. It looked like a ticker tape parade, except the edges of these papers were burned. Very soon however, I heard that an airplane had struck the World Trade Center site.

I ran up the street to see what I could do to help out. I got just about to Liberty Street, directly bordering the South Tower, when the second plane hit. And in a moment of clarity I knew that this was no accident and that something horrible was underway.

Once we finally realized that it was a terrorist attack, the mood shifted to anger. Intense anger. I was hell bent on responding to the people who attacked my parish. These guys attacked my parish and I was intensely angry about that. And remained so for a long time.

After a while just this incredible sense of sorrow began to permeate the whole lower Manhattan experience. A sense of sorrow over what we had lost, over what was happening in the world. And we began processing that sorrow, that grief and that pervasive sense of loss. We realized for the first time that the myth of invincibility is just that, a myth. We were baptized by the blood of those who died, baptized into a world community that suffers these kinds of events much more frequently than we do.

I walked through the site at the World Trade Center everyday for eight and a half months following the attacks, seeing the faces of the people doing the digging, smelling the smells, seeing the sites, hearing the noise and the sounds. The question that kept running through my mind day after day after day was, "How in God’s name, literally, how in God’s name, do we stop this senseless cycle of violence and revenge?" And it only occurred to me later that forgiveness is the way to opt out of that cycle. Forgiveness is the way to say no to the perpetuation of violence for violence. Forgiveness is the way to create the future. A future beyond this kind of retribution and revenge.

When we announced the Garden of Forgiveness as a proposal that we were working on, the mother of a firefighter who was killed on 9/11 came up to me, looked me in the eyes, and said, "Lyndon, for the past four years, I’ve been motivated by anger, and a need for revenge. I’m at a point now where I need to think about other possibilities. When you build that garden, I want to come for a brief visit."

Later, I was trying to get in touch with a very prominent businessman in lower Manhattan. He had even indicated a willingness to talk to me, had even indicated that he was very encouraged and appreciative of my work with the community at St. Paul’s chapel after 911. But when I called his secretary to set up an appointment and told her what organization I was working with her first response was, "Just who do you intend to forgive?" I never got to have the meeting, because I never got through the secretary. People respond to this viscerally. Who is it we intend to forgive? What do we mean by forgiveness?

What we would like to have at the memorial site is a space dedicated to the concept of forgiveness as one option among many. It’s not for everybody. But we want to put forgiveness on the menu, so that it’s a choice that people can make. We know that forgiveness is healthy mentally, spiritually, and physically. After nearly five years we need to decide whether to continue carrying that need for revenge and that intense animosity and anger with us into the future. And by that we don’t mean in any way to excuse horrific acts by evil people. We don’t condone acts of violence or terrorism. But we want to invite people to decide intentionally to opt out of that cycle of violence and revenge, to let go of the perceived need for revenge. And to break that cycle.

What’s at stake in the re-development of Ground Zero is nothing short of our country’s future I think in some measure. What we build there will be a precedent. It will be a metaphor, it will be a symbol of who we are as a people. And I want the faith communities to be involved in that from the start from the ground floor.