For Us, The Living
(After September 11, 2001)
Sermon by Stephen D. Edington
September 16, 2001
For all of the media commentary that has come forth over the past several days, it was actually a Boston sportswriter, Bob Ryan, who turned the phrase that had me nodding in agreement. Admitting that he was evoking--as he was--a pretty well-worn cliché from some three decades back, Mr. Ryan noted that last Tuesday was the first day of the rest of our lives as Americans, and of our life as a nation. I would just add that it's not only Americans who have encountered that "first day," for the course of world events themselves have now been altered in ways we cannot even yet foresee. My offering to you this morning, as the minister of this fine and wonderful congregation, are my still emerging thoughts on living the rest of our lives as individuals, as members or friends of this religious community, as citizens of this country (for those of us who are), and as members of the global community--which we all are.
The street in my neighbourhood today still looks the same as always, as does our church here, as does our Nashua community. By Friday I could once again hear planes flying overhead. I continue to go about the tasks I have to accomplish, and the business I need to attend to, as do we all. But something feels different. In ways that words cannot adequately describe things don't feel quite as safe somehow. It's easy to make the appeal to rationality: My life and well being are in no greater danger today than they were back on Monday. This is true. But the world in general feels like a less safe place to me, however rational or not that feeling may be.
In the first couple of days after those who commandeered the airplanes had done their despicable deeds the first responses were of shock, grief, and utter, overwhelming bewilderment; and I'm only speaking here about those of us were not directly affected by the loss of a family member, loved one, or acquaintance. Two of my son's high school classmates were daughters of the pilot of the first doomed plane to take off from Logan Airport. These kinds of threads of connection have been playing out over the past 5-6 days. To even be somewhere out at the end of one of those threads is sobering and unsettling. For those were directly affected--who did lose a family member, loved one, or friend in such an insane manner--their pain is well nigh unimaginable to me. We can give them our love, our support, our empathy, and our caring hearts. Only time, a lot of time, will restore at least some measure of peace to their lives. We can hope and pray that that may be so.
We also know that grief, shock, pain, and bewilderment--especially in the face of horrific loss--in time give way to anger. Its part of the grieving process. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross told us that sometime back in the 1960s; and she was only relating something that has been an everlasting fact of human life. It would be almost inhuman not to feel anger after such a devastating attack of terrorism. But where do we go with it? That is the challenge before us. It is a challenge unique to any other we as a nation have had to face. As we weep for our dead and for those emotionally scarred by death; as we begin to clear the rubble; as we confront our newly felt sense of vulnerability; where do we go with our anger?
Derrick Jackson, a commentator whose opinions I've long respected, had this to say on the day after: "Yesterday America learned that its soul could be momentarily levelled, humbled, and reduced to rubble. How we pick ourselves up will determine how long this war will go on. It will depend upon how we handle our power, which by definition makes us a target." The service that several of us attended here on Tuesday night, and the meditative gathering that took place here at noon on Friday, were held because we have been knocked down in the way that Mr. Jackson describes. Perhaps we're still feeling knocked down; perhaps that is why many of you have come here this morning. We are still seeking comfort. I trust you find the right measure of that comfort here. But now as anger begins to supplant shock and grief we would also do well, I think, to consider how we pick ourselves up. This is the challenge before us, and clearly it is the challenge before those who lead this nation, as well as the leaders of those nations around the world whose souls have been reduced, and whose vulnerability has been exposed, by the events of the past week.
First of all we must not allow our anger to be turned in upon our own citizenry. I was pleased that our Mayor invited the leader of the local Islamic community to take part in the Community Interfaith Service held this past Wednesday evening. I was gratified by our President calling upon us to "treat Arab-Americans and Muslims with the respect they deserve;" and at the United States Senate's unanimous passage, on Wednesday evening, of a resolution calling for the protection of the civil rights of Arab-American and Muslims, and condemning acts of violence and harassment directed towards them. I can only hope that such commendable moves as these will serve to mitigate; will serve, in fact, to eliminate, those of the acts of violence and harassment that Arab American citizens have sadly had perpetuated against them over the past several days. This is a fearful time for all of us. It is terribly wrong for a particular segment of our population to have that fear compounded because of their national or ethnic ancestry and religion. We do not pick ourselves up by knocking down any of our fellow citizens.
Second, and this is the matter with which I've had my greatest personal struggle, we--either as a single nation or in concert with the forces of other nations--will respond militarily to these acts of terror. The United States Senate has given its unanimous approval in this regard. So it is not a question of if, but rather one of how, such a response will in time be carried out. I can only speak from the struggles of my own heart here, and offer my thoughts as a citizen of this country and as a person of faith who does indeed seek "the goal of world community," in addressing the "how" rather than the "if." I believe I did the right thing in opposing, through a variety of means, the military presence of this country in Southeast Asia thirty years ago. I also believe that my father and one of my uncles--both now deceased--did the right thing in taking up arms on behalf of their country in 1942. For all the ways in which I've embraced non-violent methods of dealing with human conflict, I've not been able to fully embrace pacifism, even as I have every respect for those who do.
I can only hope and pray that President Bush, and those who advise him, will remain true to the President's word, given on the evening of the attacks, when he said our response will be "focused and patient..." and that he, and they, will resist the cries of those who are calling for a reprisals for their own sake, as if any target will do. A caller I heard on a talk-show a couple of nights ago suggested that we, in his words, "take out a country" every time there is a terrorist attack on our country; as if, somehow, any country would do. His words may have been, shall we say, quite unfocused, but he represents, I am sure, a sentiment that is becoming increasingly widespread in our midst. It's a sentiment that scares me almost as much as the terror we've just experienced.
I cannot get the thought out of my head that last Tuesday thousands of ordinary Americans (or Americans for the most part) were going about the ordinary business of their lives. And those lives were horribly taken from them--for no other reason than that there were where they were going about the business about which they were going. Will this now be the fate of ordinary citizens of another country or countries as they simply go about their business at some future date? Please Mr. President, focused and patient.
There is another commentator I'd like to cite whose thoughts, as expressed in last Friday's New York Times, spoke well to my own internal struggle, and that represent some of the more insightful words I've come across in the past five days. They're by Thomas Friedman. He says:
"To not retaliate ferociously for this attack on our people is only to invite a worse attack tomorrow and an endless war with terrorists. But to retaliate in a way that does not distinguish between those who pray to a God of Hate and those who pray to the same God is to invite an endless war between civilizations--a war that will land us all in the smoking section."
You need not get caught up in Friedman's God-language to see the cogent point he makes in the overall piece itself. He notes that there is now going on what he calls "a civil war within Islam" between, in Friedman's words again, the "medievalists and the modernists;" that is to say between those who seek to be participants in what we call the "modern world," with all its failings; and those who see that modern world, with the United States as its epitome, as the embodiment of all evil.
I'll share with you some more of Friedman's article:
"The only chance to really defeat these nihilistic terrorists is not just by bombing them. That is necessary but not sufficient, because another generation will sprout up behind them. Only their own religious communities and societies can restrain and de-legitimatise them. That will happen when the Muslim majority recognizes [as I personally believe they do] that what the Osama bin Ladens are leading to is the destruction and degradation of their own religion and societies. This civil war within Islam, between the modernists and the medievalists has actually been going on for years--particularly in Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Pakistan. We (the US) need to strengthen the good guys in this civil war. And that requires a social, political, and economic strategy (that will be) as sophisticated and generous as our military one."
What Mr. Friedman is saying, correctly I believe, is that while a response by force is necessary, it is not by itself sufficient; it will not, by itself, somehow set things aright. How we use our power--our economic and political and military power--as the world's sole remaining empire, which in fact is what we are, is the larger question and challenge that will remain into the far future, well after any release of military force in the near future.
The newly elected President of our Unitarian Universalist Association, Rev. William Sinkford also spoke to this point in a letter he released to his fellow Unitarian Universalists on Thursday. I've made the entire text available on our Information Table. Bill Sinkford: "We must seek justice and, as our President says, to punish those responsible. But retribution (alone) will not create safety, nor (alone) move us toward justice."
I want to use some more of Bill's words in moving now to my final point about how we pick ourselves up. Rev. Sinkford once again: "May our congregations be centers of support where we can bring our questions and our fears, where we can find the presence of the holy in our coming together." When some of our members, friends, and persons from the larger community gathered in here on Tuesday evening around the flame of our chalice, and then again at the noon hour on Friday, I came to see the meaning of "sanctuary" in both a literal and profound way: A place of refuge. At those times when the world overwhelms us, as it clearly has done, we need a place of refuge wherein we find the love and support and care of one another. I was gratified to see our sanctuary become a sanctuary in this regard.
In addition to being a place of refuge in a time of need, let us also take to heart Bill Sinkford's call to our congregations to "be centers of support where we can bring our questions and our fears..." I'm sure we are united in our desire to help pick one another up at a time when our faith is tested; when our faith in and hope for a safe, sane, and just world has been severely challenged. I'm also aware that being the kind of independent minded folk that we are, we have a variety of thoughts and opinions as to where we as individuals, as religious liberals, and as citizens of this country--or some other country-- go, and what we do, as we pick ourselves up; as we face the world that now stands before us, the living. I simply ask that we hear each other, that we listen to one another, that we attend to the variety of questions, opinions, and perspectives amongst us, in a spirit of respect and love. For even as our nation and world have been handed a challenge like no other before as to how we shall now live with one another, so have we too in this religious community been given a challenge as to how we shall hear not only the questions and responses of one another, but how we sustain the fragile hope we still cling to for a planet at peace.
In time some of the issues which I'd originally intended to address today will re-emerge, and call for our attention. While our lives have been changed in ways that are still not fully known, the call to keep living out the principles and values of our free faith, in our personal lives and in our larger world, will continue to be issued. Even as the present has been terribly with us on this Sunday we will, one week from today, honour and celebrate the 175 years that we have maintained a liberal religious presence in this community. I'll probably make use of my remaining, albeit forlorn, Red Sox ticket this coming Friday night, knowing that the woes of their season have retreated into insignificance.
So may this church and this congregation on this morning, and in the remaining days of each and all of our lives, be a sustaining presence and power in our lives. May this room, this sanctuary, be a safe haven to which we may come; and may it be also a place of challenge and hope and renewal from which we emerge in order to engage ourselves once again with a painful, yet precious, world.
