The Column with Canon Rev Dr Rod Garner Lord have mercy for us all on this anniversary

AMERICA is rarely far from my thoughts. I’ve been fascinated by its people, politics and geography all my adult life.

In my early twenties I travelled from New York to San Francisco by Greyhound coach, taking in cities and tiny towns along the way. It was a massive education – humbling in the face of the country’s vastness and, just occasionally, dangerous when too close to midnight I found myself in the wrong part of a city still looking for a place to sleep!

I’ve returned many times since and had the privilege of teaching at its universities and seminaries, preaching in its churches and chapels, and seeing at first hand the impact of its landscapes on the human spirit.

To be on the Great Plains on a Sabbath morning as the sun rises and walk through the burial ground of the Native American Indians murdered at Wounded Knee is an experience that never fades away.

By my study desk I have the newspapers I bought on September 12 2001, the day after the twin towers collapsed in New York and the world changed. My wife found them as we moved house three years ago.

Twenty years on, the images and headlines are still shocking. The Pope prayed ‘that God will give the numerous victims eternal rest, and courage and strength to their families.’ The wickedness of that day and the terrible loss and grief that followed will be keenly felt this Saturday as the United States falls silent in its annual act of remembrance.

Twenty years is a milestone. In any lifetime, Presidents have been given to emphasising the importance of their first 100 days in office in relation to their plans and achievements.

7,300 days is a considerably longer stretch of time in which to take stock of the state of the nation, especially as President Biden faces criticism from most quarters following the debacle of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and what that means for both countries.

The political ‘blame game’ is now in full swing. It will be many more days before lessons can be drawn from the miscalculations and mistakes that contributed to the victory of the Taliban and its consequences for American global power. But even at this early stage our moral duty to the Afghan people left helpless in the aftermath is clear. The UK should play its part.

It is also necessary that we allow a decent time for lament, not a word that figures very much in public or political discourse any more. Lament that since 9/11, the arc of history has still to bend toward the justice foretold by Dr Martin Luther King Jnr during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The facts are that sometimes evil shapes events, that good guys don’t always win, and things carefully built up can fall apart with alarming ease.

In such instances, hope and resolve have to be reborn each day and grounded in a faith that will not ultimately disappoint us. And lament too for the human cost of the war in Afghanistan.

Military and civilian lives lost; wounds mental and physical that cannot be healed; and the terrible realisation on the part of many soldiers and their families that their sacrifice through this conflict may not have achieved any lasting gain.

In this as in so many other instances of human tragedy, the words and wisdom of the Christian religion have their place: Kyrie Eleison – ‘ Lord have mercy.’