Can We Move On From Here?
Rev. Kristen Harper
September 16, 2001
UUSDBA

To live in this world
You must be able to do three things:
To love what is mortal;
To hold it against your bones
Knowing your own life depends on it;
And, when the time comes to let it go,
To let it go.
Mary Oliver

Our interconnection with humanity is never more evident than at times such as these. The interdependent web of all existence, our seventh principle, an intellectual concept, has come alive in our souls and is on fire. We do not need to know the names or see the faces of those who have died and those who grieve for loved ones lost. We feel the fracture, the anguish of life lost too soon, in our diaphragm as we fight for breath in our horror and confusion. Truly now we understand those prophetic words of Martin Luther King Jr., "we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."

I hesitate say we may not have been directly affected by personal loss, as I am not sure that is the case. But I do know we are intimately connected to the two Unitarian Universalist families, one from the Adelphi Maryland Church, and the other from the Belmont Massachusetts church, who were on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the plane that crashed into the pentagon. We are connected to the thousands of Unitarian Universalists in New York and New Jersey and Connecticut who lost family, friends, and community members.

And then there are the firemen, policemen, doctors, nurses and civilians who rushed to the aid of those in the building in our stead and loss their lives. Our common humanity, our compassion, weaves us to them. One fire department in Brooklyn answered the first 911 call and the entire shift is buried in the rubble. We are woven to them as well as those who answering the call have had their lives shattered by the suffering and helplessness, death and destruction amongst which they have moved.
We are connected to countries such as Canada, Australia, England, Russia, Ireland, Japan, over 40 nations that had citizens working and visiting in the towers and offered AID and support to us.

And we are connected to all of those who watched and listened in horror as two symbols of our country were destroyed, watched as people jumped and were thrown from the collapsing and burning buildings. We are connected to the pain, the fear, the anguish, the anger, the courage, the hope, and the perseverance of the precious human community of which we are a link.

We cannot turn away. We can turn off the television or the radio. We can refuse to talk about it and turn inward. But we cannot change the fact that we are indeed caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

Those of you who were alive during the bombing of Pearl Harbor probably remember where you were when you got the announcement. I grew up hearing stories about how people felt and what they were doing when President John F. Kennedy died. They were just stories to me. I have watched video of our nation in mourning not quite understanding the impact or the emotions. But, I have always marveled at the nationalism that both incidents sparked.

On Tuesday morning when I woke up, I turned on the radio as I do every day to listen to a local talk radio program. My morning coffee was interrupted by the call that long time member and former church secretary, Lettie Clark, had died. Sitting in my office trying to gather myself to make the calls I needed to, I listened as the first report of a plane colliding into one of the Towers of the World Trade center interrupted the broadcast. I was concerned for those aboard the plane and in the tower but it did not register through my sorrow about Lettie that this was anything more than pilot error.

As I got ready to leave for my meetings in Orlando I heard that a second plane had crashed into the other tower. Horrified, I listened to the talk show hosts' confusion. "Did the smoke from the first plane cause the second accident. It was with a queasy feeling I got into my car and headed towards Orlando.

As the reports came out that this was indeed a terrorist attack, my thoughts drifted back to my internship at Community Church of New York, when I had walked by the twin towers. "Did any of my friends still work there," I wondered. And then all those people, I hope they got out? I continued on not sure what to do. A panicked voice broke over the radio. A third plane has hit the pentagon and exploded, it said. "Oh, my god, I thought. Jay's Uncle Randy. Randy is a captain on the pentagon police force. Bull's eye-the web came to life for me. I pulled into the next rest stop and woke Jay up. When I arrived at my meeting the other minister's had no idea what was going on and we spent the rest of the meeting listening to the radio and expressing our horror.

The next several hours were the worst of my life. I developed a migraine and had difficulty seeing. I became nauseas and cold. I kept calling home to find out if Jay had heard anything about Randy but no word. Finally, I realized I needed to come home. When I pulled up to the complex Jay was waiting at the door. Randy was fine. The initial panic receded to be replaced by concern for all the people I knew in New York and was not sure of their location. I got on line and began sending and receiving emails. I began to call congregation members that I though might have New York ties. By the next evening everyone I contacted was accounted for-my little part of the world intact.

"Sometimes we peacemakers are more like the apostles. We have allowed the war around us, to become part of us." Initially I was too scared to be angry. To shocked, perhaps too much in denial. My mind kept seizing at the thought of thousands of people missing probably dead. I felt hope and pride as I watched the steel workers and other citizens volunteer to clear debris. And yes I felt a sense of patriotism, a sense of deep connection with the entire nation.

A feeling of great fear descended over me, however, on Tuesday and it has only grown. It is not a fear of flying or even of further terrorist attacks. The fear was not so much of loved ones lost, although certainly that was a part of it. The fear that has a strangle hold on me began with the calls for retribution, the desire for vengeance, heard from all levels of society. The fear that has led to the attacks on Muslim, Hindu and Arab persons and property, the fear that has led to innocent people being detained and unabashedly discriminated against by the media and the public. The fear that would allow us to confuse justice with revenge, nationality with race, religion with Christianity, safety with dictatorship. Hatred and bitterness," Dr. King said, "can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that. We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation."

During the candle light vigil at All Souls Unitarian Church in Manhattan on Tuesday night, Rev. Forrester Church spoke about this fear many of us are trying to grapple with, " At first these visions of a future rebuilt upon yesterday's ashes may seem to contradict each another. Justice and mercy. Retribution and compassion. War and love. Yet they will only be at odds should we choose one vision in place of the other. On the one hand, if hatred and vengeance spur our lust for retribution, rather than the greater quest for peace, we will but add to the world's terror even as we seek to end it. On the other, if we pray only for peace, we shall surely abet the spread of terrorism. Our hands will end up far bloodier than those that lift up arms against it.

History supports each of these statements. In the first instance, we must recall history's most ironic lesson: Choose your enemies carefully, for you will become like them. Terrorism is powered by hatred. If we answer the hated of others with hatred of our own, we and our enemies will soon be indistinguishable.

It is hard, I know, to curb the passion for vengeance. When we see Palestinian children dancing in the street to celebrate the slaughter of our neighbors and loved ones, how can we help but feel a surge of disgust and anger, the very emotions that precipitate hatred. But the Palestinians are not our enemy. Nor are the Muslims. This is not, as some historians would have it, a war between civilizations. It is a war between civilization and anarchy, a war of God-demented nihilists against the very fabric of world order"

In spite of what some people are calling for, I do not believe most of us want another Hiroshima. I do not believe we want internment camps or continued harassment of innocent citizens and residents. We do not want the war that is raging outside to enter into our hearts and destroy us.

We need to find the courage, the courage that make human life noble and find meaning out of this senseless, blind destruction. Part of my internal struggle this week has been not to assign blame. Not to put this all at the feet of Asama bin Laden or condemn this as simply acts of religious fanaticism. I do not believe this was simply the result of hatred for America's freedom, as President Bush stated, and certainly not a punishment from God for our ungodly ways as Pat Robinson and Jerry Fallwell claimed. I know that a number of you do not believe in God at all, but I cannot believe even the God of Christianity, or the god of creation, the god that is the cosmic consciousness would punish thousands of people to gain converts and as a student of Islam I know it does not believe this either. And I do not believe that thousands of people who got out of the twin towers or who had yet to arrive at work because they were late or sick were any more blessed than those who died or lost their lives trying to save others. This loss of life is too great to be dismissed in such a manner. Man's inhumanity to men to evident to deny our culpability.

In my search to find an explanation beyond the superficial I came across Boston Globe Columnist Derrick Jackson's Wednesday's offering, "it is… eerie that, suddenly, we want help on terrorism at the very time when we have been isolating ourselves from the world stage, from the environment to racism to missile defense. Missile defense would not have prevented the worst peacetime act within the lower 48 states.

Whoever attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and our sense of daily trust and freedom, must be found. But America must find itself, too. The targets clearly represented America's global power, a power that is not innocent of arrogance, either militarily or economically. With all the condolence that can be offered, it is incongruent to think that the world's leading exporter of the tools of death and destruction would not someday be visited with an evil in return.

Yesterday America learned that its soul could be momentarily leveled, humbled, and reduced to rubble. How we pick ourselves up will determine how long this war will go on. It will depend on how humbly we handle our power, which by definition makes us a target. What we know more clearly than ever is that no matter how much we withdraw, the most terrible evils can still come to us."

This week I spoke with a couple friends from Canada who expressed their concerns that this would mean the end of the relative free exchange and the tightening around the borders between the United States and Canada. And while we have indeed most likely seen the end of our relatively easy air travel and the beginning of evacuation procedures and security measures like those enjoyed by other countries more frequently visited by terrorism, I fear that in our desire for more security we will give up some of the freedoms that make this such a great nation. Will we turn inward and further isolate our country and ourselves from the rest of the world. Will we allow searches of our person and property without cause, the detention of our citizens of Arab decent for looking suspicious? Will we begin to call the police when we here chanting as one person this week suggested or for having an "Arab" looking name as another person did.

"We must, as Dr. King implored, pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. We shall hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope." And I believe there is great hope. Hope in our reaching out to one another now and the week ahead to find comfort and healing, to rebuild our broken symbols and recreate how those symbols are seen in the world. There is hope in our reaching across state lines, giving aid and compassion to those directly victimized and to those who need a community of love to enter. There is hope in our reaching out to the Muslim and Hindu communities showing our support of them in this time of fear. There is hope that in our awakening we might rethink our foreign policy and see ourselves as part of a larger global community dedicated to peace and justice for all. There is hope in our reaching out to our neighbors in the North and South and building healthy economic, cultural and scientific exchanges. And there is hope that we can go on tomorrow and begin to repair this beloved community, deeply shattered but powerfully courageous.

Aldous Huxley agreed with the biblical notion that "Love casts out fear." But, he added, "conversely, fear casts out love..." Fear, he went on, also casts out intelligence, "casts out goodness, casts out all thoughts of beauty and truth." In fear we isolate ourselves.

Love Casts out Fear - Sara Moores Campbell

In love, we connect with others.
In fear, we become immobilized.
In love, we are empowered to act.
In fear, we judge others.
In love, we seek justice.
In fear, we distrust.
In love, we trust.
In fear, we seek punishment.
In love, we seek mercy and forgiveness.
In fear, we see death.
In love, we see life.
In fear, we retreat.
In love, we reach out.
Let us respond to our times with love.
Let us reach out.

Benediction:
I take my closing words from Anne Frank's diary. July 15th, 1944: "It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It is utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too will end, that peace and tranquility will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold onto my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I'll be able to realize them."