Last week we invited Company of Friends members and Fast Company's readers, writers, and friends to use this site as a means to connect with each other, to explore ways of helping each other, and to express their feelings in the wake of a tragedy that has shaken the world.
We've been astonished by the outpouring of support and resilience we've seen from the global Fast Company community. Company of Friends members are opening their homes to stranded travelers -- within a few hours, 43 volunteers in 19 states had offered to house people unable to get back home. They're organizing blood drives and carpools, developing Web sites to help people track down loved ones and to follow developments of the rescue efforts. They're offering coaching and counseling services and are collaborating on relief efforts.
Meanwhile, Fast Company readers from Australia to Denmark have been posting messages of support and disbelief -- affirming that the world stands as one in opposition to this horror.
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Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California
On Wednesday night, one day after the terrorist attacks, the Right Reverend William Edwin Swing addressed a congregation of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and members of other religions at an interfaith service of national mourning in San Francisco's Grace Cathedral. Swing, who was featured in Who's Fast 2000, is the founder of the United Religions Initiative, an international interfaith group inspired by the United Nations.
Citing the date of the tragedy -- September 11, 2001 -- he called Tuesday's attacks "the ultimate 911 call" to our humanity, to the United States, and to all religious faiths. The following is an excerpt from his sermon:
"This moment must be the time that we call religious bigotry for what it is. We have to stop cursing each other and start blessing. We have to stop killing and persecuting people in the name of God. We have to object when one religious group announces its spiritual superiority over other religious groups. And we have to come together to find a common vocation for religions to work for the common good.
"What if the horror of the killing fields of Cambodia, the horror of the Balkans, and the horror of the Sudan is kin to the horror in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania? What if there is one human family, and we all are related? What if the people of the United States of America find security not only in tighter strictures but in closer human ties with the people who hate us? What if there is religious oneness in shared values and spiritual aspirations? Not one religion but one yearning to come together to see what gifts that faiths together can give to a world in ashes.
"September 11, 2001 was a 911 call to end the day with a more united humanity, a wiser United States of America, and a more resourceful United Religions."
Senior editor
There's a scene from the old movie The Poseidon Adventure that I've never forgotten. It's when Ernest Borgnine and Shelly Winters and their little band are struggling up the decks of the overturned liner toward the hull, and they start meeting passengers -- first dozens, then hundreds -- slowly filing the other way. They look like ghosts, and they are, of course, doomed.
This was how Manhattan seemed yesterday. As I walked down Third Avenue, thousands of people streamed past me. They walked uptown because there was no other way to go and nothing else to do. Some, it was clear, had already journeyed the three miles from the financial district: From their necks dangled masks or, for a few, triage tags. One man, his shirt opened three buttons and tie askew, his eyes empty, was dredged white with ash.
So, these were the ghosts. The specters held cell phones to their ears. Bound by an awkward intimacy, they knotted in front of TV sets in bank windows and around a city truck -- the town crier -- with its radio at full blast. A couple holding hands abruptly slowed and then pulled into a shop entrance to embrace and weep.
They looked behind them, down Third Avenue, and they witnessed a left-leaning mushroom-mountain of gray smoke blooming into our perfect blue sky. This image was indelible, and it will stay so. It was the wrenching reality check that said, This is not a TV movie.
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