An Ungentle Midwife
All the hoopla surrounding the Florida pastor who wants to burn a copy of Islam's holy book on 09/11, and the debate over the not-Ground Zero mosque set me to thinking about the last nine years and how far we've come. Or not.
Most of us know were we were on September 11, 2001 when the airplanes crashed one by one into the towers of the World Trade Center. We know where we were when we heard about the attack on the Pentagon. We know where we were when we heard about United Airlines Flight 93 going down and why it did.
The day before had been spent acting as the stage manager for the wedding of one of my best friends. The day after was my brother's 37th birthday. This morning, I had just obtained a cup of coffee and was making my bleary way toward the day's habits and duties. My cell phone rang. One of my employees called to tell me to turn on the TV. I did. I watched. We mumbled back and forth at each other, and I, feeling a formless panic, finally hung up and called my husband into the room.
Then I called my daughter, who was then just 11. She was up and getting ready for school, and I needed her to see it, to be a witness to the events that would change her world, even if she was too young then to understand why.
There are a lot of people who say we've forgotten the lessons of 9/11 when we advocate for peace and tolerance. I'm wondering just which lessons they learned. Did they learn the lesson of fear? Yeah, they did. It was handed to us whole cloth by the terrorists who orchestrated and perpetrated the attacks that day. A percentage of our population made head to toe suits of that cloth and still wear it proudly, from the Hawks in our government who say war is the only answer, to the Christian pastor who forgot (or never learned) what the New Testament has to say about loving our enemies.
That fear was exposed in the huge upswing of hate crimes. It was exposed in a war against "terrorism" in Iraq, a war started through false pretenses. America at its ugliest.
We learned a certain world-weariness that comes from devastating losses of life. We learned what it means to have the security of seemingly sacrosanct borders violated. We learned that America has enemies. And we learned that we can easily make more.
We also learned how incredibly kind the rest of the world can be, how solidarity and compassion grows from human to human across borders. Our government learned how to be non-partisan, even if that lesson was short lived. Some of us even learned to look back past the attacks to see what influences brought them into being, and some of us took responsibility for America's hand in stirring the hatred.
Nine years later, I realize that despite our travails at the hands of an ungentle midwife, we've had (and still have) an unprecedented opportunity to give birth to a new way of thinking in our country. We were shown how clear-hearted and forward-thinking our country can be when it drops the habits of self-interest, fear and scarcity mindsets. For a few weeks, a precious few weeks, we helped one another. We kept sight of one another. We went beyond our individual needs to tend to the larger community. We turned away from the haters, and found commonality with the entire world. We were a stunningly brilliant people.
And we can be again.
That's the lesson I learned from the tragedy of 09/11. It took me a long mental pregnancy to get here, to see the hope in the dust and rubble of Ground Zero. I've never quite got over the disappointment that our leaders in Washington relapsed into business as usual politicking. I won't ever forget that we're as vulnerable as any other country on any other continent. I know with every fibre of my being that how we use others, in our country, in other countries, other people, other resources ... that's how we'll end up being used.
What goes around comes around. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. It ain't new news. But it's the lesson we most quickly forget.
I want us to remember and embrace the brilliance. I want us to shine everywhere. We can. We've done it before.
What do you remember most from 9/11? What did you learn?
Most of us know were we were on September 11, 2001 when the airplanes crashed one by one into the towers of the World Trade Center. We know where we were when we heard about the attack on the Pentagon. We know where we were when we heard about United Airlines Flight 93 going down and why it did.
The day before had been spent acting as the stage manager for the wedding of one of my best friends. The day after was my brother's 37th birthday. This morning, I had just obtained a cup of coffee and was making my bleary way toward the day's habits and duties. My cell phone rang. One of my employees called to tell me to turn on the TV. I did. I watched. We mumbled back and forth at each other, and I, feeling a formless panic, finally hung up and called my husband into the room.
Then I called my daughter, who was then just 11. She was up and getting ready for school, and I needed her to see it, to be a witness to the events that would change her world, even if she was too young then to understand why.
There are a lot of people who say we've forgotten the lessons of 9/11 when we advocate for peace and tolerance. I'm wondering just which lessons they learned. Did they learn the lesson of fear? Yeah, they did. It was handed to us whole cloth by the terrorists who orchestrated and perpetrated the attacks that day. A percentage of our population made head to toe suits of that cloth and still wear it proudly, from the Hawks in our government who say war is the only answer, to the Christian pastor who forgot (or never learned) what the New Testament has to say about loving our enemies.
That fear was exposed in the huge upswing of hate crimes. It was exposed in a war against "terrorism" in Iraq, a war started through false pretenses. America at its ugliest.
We learned a certain world-weariness that comes from devastating losses of life. We learned what it means to have the security of seemingly sacrosanct borders violated. We learned that America has enemies. And we learned that we can easily make more.
We also learned how incredibly kind the rest of the world can be, how solidarity and compassion grows from human to human across borders. Our government learned how to be non-partisan, even if that lesson was short lived. Some of us even learned to look back past the attacks to see what influences brought them into being, and some of us took responsibility for America's hand in stirring the hatred.
Nine years later, I realize that despite our travails at the hands of an ungentle midwife, we've had (and still have) an unprecedented opportunity to give birth to a new way of thinking in our country. We were shown how clear-hearted and forward-thinking our country can be when it drops the habits of self-interest, fear and scarcity mindsets. For a few weeks, a precious few weeks, we helped one another. We kept sight of one another. We went beyond our individual needs to tend to the larger community. We turned away from the haters, and found commonality with the entire world. We were a stunningly brilliant people.
And we can be again.
That's the lesson I learned from the tragedy of 09/11. It took me a long mental pregnancy to get here, to see the hope in the dust and rubble of Ground Zero. I've never quite got over the disappointment that our leaders in Washington relapsed into business as usual politicking. I won't ever forget that we're as vulnerable as any other country on any other continent. I know with every fibre of my being that how we use others, in our country, in other countries, other people, other resources ... that's how we'll end up being used.
What goes around comes around. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. It ain't new news. But it's the lesson we most quickly forget.
I want us to remember and embrace the brilliance. I want us to shine everywhere. We can. We've done it before.
What do you remember most from 9/11? What did you learn?