 | ||
| "Pacific
Currents"
by Rev. Dr.
Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, October, 2001 BUILDING ON A NEW FOUNDATION
For about a week after September 11th I was hard-pressed to maintain any kind of concentration. I didn't cry until Thursday morning. It was just a paragraph in the Chronicle that set me off-part of an article profiling some of those who had died on the California-bound planes. This one was about the man who was flying to Los Angeles to visit his son before the son's classes began at UCLA. I read the words, "I know my Dad loved me more than anything," and I totally lost it. I understood those words, and that love, and my breath became jagged with the realization that it could have been me, or my daughter, or my mother. We hear about wars and hurricanes, we read about car bombs and military coups, mostly without being viscerally engaged. But we know what it's like to go to work in an office building in a big city in the United States. We know what it's like to get on a plane. Will we ever again walk the halls in a skyscraper without imaging the floor giving way beneath us, or a blast out of nowhere slamming us across the room? Will we ever again take our seats on an airliner and fasten our seatbelts and try to ignore the safety demonstration without our hands getting clammy and our hearts racing; will we be on our feet ready to tackle the first passenger who walks past us on the way to the bathroom? There were the mesmerizing moments of clarity through technology. The man in the Bay area who has his wife's voice on their home answering machine, telling him a bomb has gone off in the tower, she doesn't know if she can make it out, she loves him. The phone calls from the passengers on the four airliners. Those on the 4th plane learning what had already happened in New York and Washington and quickly assimilating the inevitability of their own deaths, then taking action to avert greater catastrophe, bringing the plane down in rural Pennsylvania, rather than on Pennsylvania Avenue. Acts of terrorism capture our imaginations, hold them captive. Beyond the sheer awful weight of the devastation, in addition to the stifling pall of grief, those of us who survive are at risk of being invaded by nightmares and possessed by fear. At risk. But not doomed. There is a force more powerful than fear, more tenacious than terror. There is courage that propels firefighters, police, and volunteers into the howling face of danger in hopes of saving just one life. There is tenderness and thanksgiving for those we love-touches extended, messages sent. There is, miraculously, the drawing together of Christians and Muslims in affirmation of a radical monotheism: we are the creations of just one Divinity; we worship the same Holy One. The Lectionary lesson from Jeremiah assigned for Sunday, September 23rd, could not have been better-timed: "My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick...For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead?" So God weeps with us today. So the Holy One grieves whenever there is injustice, or pain, or loss. The Imam of a mosque in Oakland spoke last week of the Koran's teaching that all of human life is sacred, that, in order for the terrorists to carry out their attacks, they first committed the offense in their hearts of de-sanctifying all those they would kill. As we re-build the symbols of our country's economic and military might, let us build upon a sanctified foundation. Let us build upon the foundation of faith in the One who grieves whenever there is injustice or pain or loss, who created humankind in the Divine image, who lavishes upon us grace beyond measure, love beyond our deserving of it. The Almighty has breathed life into us, and in the breathing has suffused the human race with holiness.
~ Mary Susan | ||
|
| ||
|
Your comments are
welcome [Home]
[Who We
Are] [Churches]
[Worship
and Prayer] [Calendar]
this page last updated on October 8, 2001 |
