>> narrator: it's been a decade now. >> the heavens were blue and clear and perfect. >> religion drove those planes into those buildings.

>> narrator: there were so many questions. >> if there is a god, what is happening? >> narrator: including the ultimate question. >> how could god be in the horror of what i saw? >> narrator: tonight on "frontline," an intimate and profound investigation of the spiritual aftershocks of september 11. >> i asked god in the beginning, you know, "if you can give me just one, i'd appreciate it." ( laughs ) but i knew from being a fireman that my son couldn't have been in a worse possible position. >> narrator: those who lost loved ones, and many other americans, are haunted by questions of faith. >> today our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature. >> narrator: was it true evil the world witnessed that day? was religion itself to blame? and where was god on september

11? >> 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. >> narrator: tonight, confessions of faith and doubt at ground zero. >> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major funding is provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. and by reva and david logan. committed to investigative journalism as the guardian of the public interest. additional funding is provided by the park foundation.

dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. and by the frontline journalism >> 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. >> that 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 11 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?

>> 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. >> holy sh-t! >> 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.

>> 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. >> i just asked the trader next to me, "why's 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 the 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. >> 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 of that helicopter lift off the roof if it got bad. >> 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. >> god! >> watching this unfold live on tv, like, these flames, right where i knew she was, and then my heart started beating really fast. >> oh, god! please, no! >> and here coming towards me, the biggest aircraft i had ever seen in my life-- eye level. >> boom, we got hit. just this tremendous thump. >> the sound that it made when it crashed, that screeching, horrifying, ghostly sound. when this plane stopped, that

wing was stuck in my doorway to the office 20 feet from where i was. >> 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. >> there was jet fuel coming out of that building. there was fire dropping. there was debris hitting the ground. >> chunks of concrete, steel. >> this fireball came out of the elevator. this just enormous orange ball came right at me. >> ( translated ): i called my daughter shakila, "please call me back. where are you? let me know." i did not get a reply. >> ( translated ): i drove towards new york, but all the tunnels were closed. >> 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." >> 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 goes, "are you sure? where would he be?" 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 towers start to come down, and i dropped the phone, and i collapsed to the floor, and i knew he was dead. i just knew. >> 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 this 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. >> i watched them just crumble like a deck of cards, and i knew there were people in those buildings. i couldn't conceive of all this concrete and fire and furniture, everything just collapsing on a human body was so frail. >> every 20 feet, i would have a fireman or a policeman come up and say, "bless me. hear my confession." so 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. >> 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.

>> i asked him in the beginning, "you know, if you can give me this one, i'd appreciate it." >> 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 is 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." >> it was just complete horror. >> i said, "oh, god, please, no." >> i saw hell. >> you just started running, not... you know, people were getting trampled. >> "oh, god, just spare me." >> get over here! get over here! get over here! >> go! ( sirens wailing )

>> 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 a 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. >> 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. >> 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 is going to come." >> i wonder how many thought 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?" >> 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.

>> narrator: where was god on september 11? 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. >> 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. >> 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. now 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. >> i asked him for help that day, and he couldn't do it. you know... you know, i was looking for more givebacks. i thought a couple more firemen would walk out of that building, but it just didn't work that way. but i continue to ask. 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 givebacks. 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? >> i usually go to st. 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, and i buy him a beer, because just... i got to visit him. >> at this stage, i haven't questioned him, saying, you know... i asked him in the beginning, you know, "if you could give me this one, i'd appreciate it." but it... he had nothing to do with this. he... there were a lot more people that could have been killed. he was fighting 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 is the devil. you got to, you know... you got to fight the devil and just... god's always around. ( sirens wailing ) >> 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 coworkers that her mother told her a plane hit the building and they need to get out. and she asked me where was her baby, and i told her i had her baby and he was okay. and she asked me just to take care of him, and i said, "okay, just get out of there." and i ran out 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, and 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 okay. i just pray every day that she didn't suffer, that 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... 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. >> ( translated ): 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 that building, totally scorching my daughter to death. our son-in-law, nurul, worked on the 93rd 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. >> ( translated ): 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. >> 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 are knocked flat. i was screaming, crying, and praying out loud, "lord, help me! please, send somebody!" >> and i heard this "bang, bang, bang, bang! bang, bang, bang! help, help!" >> 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!" >> and i was able to grab onto something-- whether it was his collar or we locked arms-- i'm not sure-- and then i lifted him out. and we fell on a heap on the floor, and... and we introduced ourselves. he said, "oh, hallelujah! i'm stanley." and i said, "my name is 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." >> 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, got delivered, and i'm angry. angry because all these good people who were there-- the firefighters, the cops, the ems workers-- all 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 this debris, they perished. so i'm angry. >> 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. >> 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 17. 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 bag pipes 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...

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. ( drums beating ) >> ♪ it's different now i don't know how it's gone from the room ♪ we've lost you now it's wrong somehow with all that might have been ♪ we raise our glasses... >> it was december 6, 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 sun rise. 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 talk... 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. but 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. >> 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 going to ever get over a couple of them. i mean, we were really tight. you know, we... 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 of my barrels at him. it might sound crazy, but i cursedim, 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 11. 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 11 powerfully challenged their beliefs. ( choir singing ) >> 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 11, 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. >> since september 11, 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 a 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. >> ♪ oh, beautiful for spacious skies... ♪ >> 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 11 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 11 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. ( sirens wailing ) >> september 11 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 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 11 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 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's trying to do in one form or another. all of that paled into insignificance in contrast with this rapturous celebration of death that september 11 represented, and the ability to overcome that now hurdle which these young men created and put before a person like myself and my generation and others who think the same way. then it 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. >> i don't know if i believe... if i ever believed in god, because i figured 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 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, they're 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 we're just a molecule in somebody else's hair in another planet. and we think we're this big deal, and one day this guy is going to, like, cut his hair, and we're going to, like... and our planet is 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 in some other planet. you know, i see it, like, a very, like, sort of organic situation here. and has it changed after september 11?

what has changed after september 11 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 11, and i would be very... it doesn't have to be an 800 number either. ( laughs ) i'd gladly pay for the call, you know? that's what i wish. i wish that it wasn't such a big question, because in times like this we need simple answers. >> since september 11, 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. it is all... every tradition has that. every morning, three times... three times a day since i'm six years old, five years old, i've been saying, "here, oh, israel, the lord is 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 six years old. 9/11... i guess if you ask me, "what did 9/11 really do?" it made me understand the truth of 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

where 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 is, "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.

♪ 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 voice mail. 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.

♪ mommy the building is on fire ♪ there's smoke coming through the walls ♪ i can't breathe i love you, mommy ♪ good-bye. the real torah, the real wisdom, the real religious tradition, the real experience behind religion is about love, it is about connection, and it is no more complicated than that. ♪ i don't think i'm going to make it ♪ i love you take care of the children. ♪

>> 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, they never really... they must not have known who they were attacking. in fact, the attacks have united our country, rallied a nation, and out of evil will come good. ( cheers and applause ) >> 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"? >> 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 11 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 11, and we need to think about it. we need understand it in order to be able to cope with it, both in others and in ourselves. >> i think september 11 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... 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. >> for those who except 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. >> i believe that demons do exist. i think their will is contingent upon ours. in other words, they exploit our own weakness, 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 koran refers to some human beings as... as if they have become demons. >> 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 transhistorical 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... i think we have to be aware of treating september 11 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. ( woman singing opera ) >> 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 word in my vocabulary after september 11, 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'd always tried 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? >> i think evil is something, when you see it, when you know it, it's intimate. it's almost sensual. i mean, that is why people 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 phenomenon; it's hard to put into words. but you have to have that intimacy with it, that kind of shoulder-to-shoulder, where 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 that lives on through time in different ways. >> i can only describe evil by giving you what i remember-- not what i read in a book, but what i with my own eyes and ears heard and saw evil. what happened to my parents? they were the last people to leave the ghetto and 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. his name was mischka. he was a ukranian. 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. okay? 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? >> 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. ( gunshots ) >> what was creepier and stranger about the people who flew into the buildings on september 11 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 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. >> 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... 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. >> 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 reagan said 'the evil empire'? what was your attitude?" and he said, "well, i thought it was, you know, 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, you know, osama 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 all, you know, human beings together on this planet, in the same way, with certain kinds of values. and that's clearly what was lost. >> 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 of 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. it's as if one has a spell cast on one. but you feel you're 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 11, "oh, bin laden, he is the personification of evil." maybe he is, maybe he isn't. but even if you say that, evil is bigger. ( choir chanting ) >> ♪ a mighty fortress is our god... ♪

>> ♪ god bless america land that i love... ♪ >> ♪ oh, beautiful for spacious skies... ♪ >> ♪ his truth is marching on... ♪ >> ( man chanting ) >> ♪ oh, mighty god dear everlasting god... ♪ >> ( middle eastern chanting )

>> ( middle eastern chanting ) >> 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. >> 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. >> from the first moment, i looked into that horror on september 11, 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 recognized an old companion. i recognized religion.

look, i am a priest over 30 years. religion is my life, it's my vocation, it's my existence. i'd give my life for it; i hope to have the courage. therefore, i know it. and i know and recognized 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 recognized it. i recognized 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 recognized this... 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. >> 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're 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. ( gunshots ) i really don't remember until it

got so out of control that people i knew committed murder. ( crowd yelling ) 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. ( gunshots ) 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. >> 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 11 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... 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 nontraditional, 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 the old distinctions between combatants and noncombatants, between just and unjust wars, between 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. ( applause ) >> there's not a fine hour. 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. god bless you. >> the yankee stadium day was a pivotal day in my entire life.

it was a day when everything that i have stood for as a human being, as well as as a person of faith, was going to be on the line. 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. 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. well, 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 have 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 is 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 kind 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. >> 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. ( explosion ) 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's 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. ( man chanting ) >> 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 the world of doubts, a world of uncertainties, a world of ironies. people say art is a substitute religion, and i thought 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. ( piano music ) 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. uh-uh-uh. i don't want that kind of religion, and i don't want that kind of spirituality in art. ( singing ) >> i was raised irish catholic, but over the years i really grew disillusioned with the church until the horror of

september 11. 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 cannot be god's will. so i guess it made me reexamine all of my feelings and wonder if i didn't need to reenter 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... after death to be true.

i need them to be true. so, and frankly, the church since september 11 has comforted me. >> ♪ our father which art in heaven... ♪ >> 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's something deeper going

on, that there's a spiritual life. >> ♪ thy kingdom come thy will be done ♪ in earth as it is in heaven... ♪

>> 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 cleanup, 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 for 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 public demonstration. it was for the dead. and they did it over and over again. but that weighs on them. 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. >> 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, 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 enormous amounts 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. >> right after september 11, 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 am 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 11. 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 themselves, hardened themselves. 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. >> 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 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. ♪ amazing grace how sweet the sound... ♪ 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 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. of course, most of who 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 am going to cry now-- was... ( crying ) i can't even say it. ♪ and grace

will bring me home... ♪ 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. ♪ ten thousand years bright shining... ♪ >> 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 a 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." >> 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 is something elsethere's something greater, was very much present. and so this incredibly beautiful music actually was extremely comforting. it took us out of a 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 mess was not... was not the end of her spirit. >> 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-- coworkers, 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. >> 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. >> 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. >> a couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand. they reached for each other, and their hands met, and they jumped. sudden dead ane dead