Let Us Heal

For my newsletter column:

Coming into the September sermon schedule, I am keenly aware that “9/11” falls on a Sunday.  What’s more, it is being promoted as the tenth year anniversary.  I approach this date with trepidation, because I fear, frankly, that we, as a nation, will miss another opportunity to respond in a way that leads toward wellness.

I have felt for some time that we need to stop encouraging pathological grief.  We need to stop re-opening and salting the wound of “9/11” with the anguish of victimology and the compulsion of American exceptionalism.  This creates the assumption that this should never have happened to us (more than anyone else)….and that since it has happened to us, it has changed the world, being a tragedy that trumps other tragedies.

This, I believe, is false logic, which will not lead us to the world we want to live in, unless we want to stay fearful and suspicious, making choices out of a sense of scarcity.

I believe that much that is ailing our society in the U.S. is revealed in our response to 9/11. I also believe that the terrorists had a far greater victory than necessary, for weakening society is not only about the initial strike, it is about disabling hope, integrity and the generosity of a people.

If we memorialize an attack, to the point of giving our children a cultural reference (“9/11”), we condition ourselves into an emotional metaphor that carries through the way we dwell with one another.  Let us not shape a society of indignant victims who remain in denial that horrific things can happen to anyone and have….all around the world.    Let us not lead ourselves into the quagmire of the unfairly attacked, which feeds the justification to close our borders, to fear the stranger, to disregard consequences of our aggressive action (because “worse has happened to us”) and keep the echo of a terrible day the center of our days to come.

I remember reading an article years back of a wife and mother who lost her spouse in the terrorist attacks.  She was pleading with society and the media to help her help her children move on and embrace the days that they have, tend toward the healing, and end the obsession with that horrible day.

As I was leaving Chautauqua Institute, I shook the hand of a New York fire fighter who had shared the communal kitchen where we made our meals.  We had not spoken about 9/11.  I simply looked into his eyes and said “thank you for what you do.”  He returned my offer of humanity with his own and we both knew the layers within that moment.  Tears filled my eyes as I walked away.  We can honor our wounds by living well into our days; not by avoiding the sadness, but by meeting it with kindness and a belief that this day, regardless of what we’ve been through, can be a good day.

So may it be.  Amen.