A Hole in the Sky

Rev. Mark Stringer

First Unitarian Church of Des Moines

9/16/01

Opening Words  -- from Barbara G. Walker

Thousands of years of history have passed…

and during all that time

human beings

have fought, killed,

plundered and wronged each other

in every possible way.

Of such stuff history is made.

But also during that time,

other human beings  have quietly and patiently persevered

in the development of the arts, crafts, inventions, ideas and programs.

From these millions of creative persons,

most of them unnoticed and unknown in the upheavals of history,

have come the good and lasting things

in the sum of human culture.

Meditation for 9/16/01

Creative Spirit, Spirit of Life,

Known by many names spoken and unspoken

We were shaken from our slumber Tuesday morning

To news of unthinkable horror

To images of terror and a blatant disregard for humanity.

Shock, disbelief, sorrow bulldozed our spirits,

Leaving us little room for anything more than anger, grief and mourning.

Everything seems different now.

Our expectation of safety has become anticipation of danger

The song of life has been transposed into a dirge of death

Our hope for the future has been overwhelmed by our fear of the present.

Everything seems different now.

Planes resuming their patterns above our heads

Sound unfamiliar and foreboding

The earth we share seems somehow more fragile

Our lives upon its soil seem more tenuous

The space separating us from our loved ones seems greater

The need to be together, more urgent

Everything seems different now.

Let us be silent for a time. (silence)

May we discover in the rubble of our previous innocence

The building blocks of a new foundation of love and hope.

May we take the pain of the past few days and transform it

into commitment toward that which is good and lasting in life…

Acts of kindness…Love for our neighbor and for the world we share

Songs of hope and peace.

Everything seems different now…

But life goes on…And so must we.  Amen.

Reading 

The words of Loren Eiseley…

“...on the edge of a little glade with one long, crooked branch extending across it, I had sat down to rest with my back against a stump.  Through accident I was concealed from the glade, although I could see into it perfectly.

The sun was warm there, and the murmurs of forest life blurred softly away into my sleep.  When I awoke, dimly aware of some commotion and outcry in the clearing, the light was slanting down through the pines in such a way that the glade was lit like some vast cathedral.  I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the long shaft of life, and there on the extended branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak.

The sound that awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestling’s parents, who flew helplessly in circles about the clearing.  The sleek black monster was indifferent to them.  He gulped, whetted his beak on the dead branch for a moment and sat still.  Up to that point the little tragedy had followed the usual pattern.  But suddenly, out of all that area of woodland, a soft sound of complaint began to rise.  Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents.

No one dared to attack the raven.  But they cried there in some instinctive common misery, the bereaved and the unbereaved.  The glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries.  They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer.  There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew.  He was a bird of death.

And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable.

The sighing died.  It was then I saw the judgment.  It was the judgment of life against death.  I will never see it again so forcefully presented.  I will never hear it again in notes so tragically prolonged.  For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence.  There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush.  And finally, after painful fluttering, another took the song, and then another, the song passing from one bird to another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil thing were being slowly forgotten.  Till suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats joyously together as birds are known to sing.  They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful.  They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven.  In simple truth they had forgotten the raven, for they were the singers of life, and not of death.

Sermon

I slept in yesterday, trying to rest after an exhausting week, a week filled with anxious hours in front of the tv, reviewing images and expert perspectives over and over again.  My mind has been racing with questions:  What is important for us to remember at a time like this?  What can we tell ourselves in the midst of all this grief and sorrow?  In the afternoon, I sat down to write, hoping to discover words of meaning on a day when I was still struck by meaninglessness.

Just as I began, my next door neighbor, a pleasant fellow who Susan and I have grown to admire and appreciate, began work he had warned us was soon to begin.  In preparation for a two-story addition he plans to make on his house, he—and two hired hands—began felling a large pine tree just off the back of his patio.  Almost in tandem with my clicking away at the keys of my computer, a chainsaw began gnawing at the seventy-year-old wood that separated our neighbor from the home of his desires.

This beautiful, old tree undoubtedly housed many neighborhood creatures…birds, squirrels, insects.  I paused in my writing to watch it fall, partly because the men’s shouts and machinery were drowning out my thoughts, and partly because their work was too eerie to be ignored.  The felling of this great tree left a hole in the sky for which I was not prepared.  The smoke that arose from the exhaust of their saws filled our backyards.  As they worked to break down the former tower of wood and life into manageable bundles to be carried off, I was transfixed with the thoughts of men and women busy at work in NYC and Washington, DC breaking down the rubble, searching for survivors, sifting through the wreckage of what now seemed to be an even-more broken world.

I tell you this story not to imply that there is a significant parallel between the work of my neighbor and the destruction brought about by a determined band of terrorists.  I tell you this story as evidence that the way I view the world has been significantly altered.  What may have been a simple intrusion into the silence of my home just a few days ago, was now a haunting reminder of a tragedy for which words still cannot do justice.

As a nation we have spent much time grieving in the past few days.  And there’s no doubt about it…we should be grieving.  Grieving not only for those who lost their lives, but also for those they left behind who must now try to make sense of the senseless…to go on with lives that will forever contain empty spaces.

Our nation has come together in an unprecedented show of support for our president and elected officials, and again, this is how it should be.  However, I share the feeling with many others that this is not simply an American issue.  This is not simply an American crisis.  This is a crisis for all of humanity.  Yes, the violence occurred in American cities, but this kind of violence has sprouted from all corners of the globe and it may be felt anywhere, at any time.  Perhaps we should feel some patriotism at a time like this.  After all, our country was the battleground for these recent attacks, and the very freedom we treasure here must have been a factor in our selection as the playground for terrorism. Yet, we are shortsighted if we believe this is solely our problem.  Flying an American flag and wearing red-white-and blue is fine, but more appropriate, it seems to me, would be to fly a flag with an image of the earth, for this is a crisis we all must face.

I have been asked this week how something like this could have come from religion.  My answer has been and will continue to be that this destruction was not the product of religion.  Yes, it may have been perpetrated in the name of religion, but there is no conceivable parallel between what these terrorists have done and any of the world’s great religions…including Islam.  In fact, the Qur’an “categorically prohibits coercion in matters of religion, be it by sheer force or implicit deceptive ways.  Muslims are obliged to call mankind toward submission to God by wisdom, good example, and sincere exhortation, not in argument [or violence], but with kind manner (Q. 2:257; 16:125).[i]  Therefore, I join my voice with many who are asking that we be careful to not condemn Muslims for the actions of fanatics.

As our government spins it’s battle-plan to the media who will then spin it to the world, it is essential that this tragedy be framed in the proper context.  This was not simply a strike on America…this was a strike on all of humanity.  This crisis is an opportunity for the US to show some true leadership to the world, not by wielding our own weapons and brandishing our bravado, but by repeatedly emphasizing that nations who harbor terrorist activity are actually jeopardizing the planet, for if they can so brazenly destroy the lives of 5,000 people, sacrificing their own lives in the process, where will they stop?

I am concerned that so much of the discourse of our leaders and our fellow Americans appears to be based in anger.  I am not suggesting that we shouldn’t feel anger.  But it is important to remember that anger is not a policy…it is not a course of action; it is an emotion.  We must not allow ourselves to be motivated solely by our anger, just as we should not allow ourselves to be controlled by our despair, the utter lack of hope which Albert Camus warned “has opinions and desires about everything in general and nothing in particular.”[ii] 

We do have a responsibility to respond to this week’s attacks and to rebel against the terrorist threat to our country and to our world, but I join with many of you who believe that we must do so with a clear vision and with all of our faculties engaged.  We cannot lose sight of the fact that the Taliban-run government in Afghanistan does not speak for the entire region; how could it when women and children have no voice?  We cannot lose sight of the fact that an eye-for-an-eye is a dangerous way to approach peace.  We cannot lose sight of the fact that violence begets violence.  

I found comfort this week in the writing of Albert Camus, a man of superior intellect and reason, who lived through his own experiences of terror. Camus contended that the evil in the world is always the product of ignorance and he warned that good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding.  He wrote, “On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. …They are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.  The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clearsightedness.”[iii]

We hope that the response to this week’s violence will have clearsightedness as its foundation, for it is the primary means by which we may set the tone for the next epoch of our shared history…a history that will be directly forged from our response to these violent acts.

In the meantime the tragedy has served to remind us all of some important things.  It has reminded us how tenuous life is, how quickly things can change and how important it is to maintain a grasp of what is truly important in this life: to love as though each day may be our last.  We must never lose this capacity for love, the true song of our living, the song that emerges for us each time we look with reverence and respect toward the majesty of our world, each time we discover the simple pleasures of a kind deed, each time we feel the gaze of our children’s eyes, or the comforting touch of a loved one’s embrace.  These are the things of life that will last.  These are the things in life to which we must give ourselves, for they are the only things that will sustain us as we continue to feel the impact of the actions of those bent on destruction.

Jane Flanders wrote in her poem “Planting Onions”:

“It is right

that I fall to my knees

on this damp, stony cake,

that I bend my back

and bow my head.

Sun warms my shoulders,

the nape of my neck,

and the air is tangy with rot.

Bulbs rustle like spirits

in their sack.

I bury each one

a trowel’s width under.

May they take hold,

rising green in time

to help us weep and live.”

The tree in my neighbor’s yard is mostly carved up now.  The view from my office window has changed.  Susan and I have already decided we will plant a tree in our yard in remembrance.  We will remember what was, and we will live with what is.  But perhaps most importantly, we will plant what will be.

Closing Words

The words of Anwar Fazal…

“We all drink from one water

We all breathe from one air

We rise from one ocean

And we live under one sky

Remember

We are one

The newborn baby cries the same

The laughter of children is universal

Everyone’s blood is red

And our hearts beat the same song

Remember

We are one

We are all brothers and sisters

Only one family, only one earth

Together we live

And together we die

Remember

We are one

Peace be on you

Brothers and Sisters

Peace be on you.”