Since 911

"Since September Eleventh…" As Bill Sinkford points out in the prayer we read today, this phrase has been with us this year and has become a part of our
conversation.

I have found myself tearfully sad, again, these past weeks as the images have been shown again, and again, of planes crashing into buildings, of towers collapsing, of clouds of dust and debris roiling down city streets, of people hopefully, fearfully, desperately holding up pictures of loved ones.

Another phrase we hear often is "Everything's changed since September Eleventh." And much has. The time it takes to get onto an airplane, the number of guards in public places - guards at the building I walked past minutes ago just down the street at Taunusanlage - they weren't there one year ago. And the way we feel about our own safety has changed. What we can do is more limited - I used to carry a Swiss Army knife in my toiletries kit when I traveled; no more.

The awareness of where the assets of the nations are being redirected in this year is slowly coming to us - the social programs that are having funds cut while defense and security and ant-terror efforts receive additional financial and human resources applied to them. The effects continue to be realized.

And then there is how we live and feel about our fellow inhabitants of the Planet. At one point last September, New York's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani told us "Don't be afraid to live your life. Don't be afraid." With thousands of its citizens dead, soldiers guarding its streets, war planes patrolling its skies, a stricken city's leader saw the real enemy, and told us not to let fear rule our lives. Since September Eleventh, other leaders of the same nation have given us another message.

In these past few weeks, along with the images of collapsing buildings, we have been shown, again, the year-old pictures of police officers and firefighters and just folks rushing into danger to help. We've seen more recent video clips of people fighting wild fires. We've seen residents of cities and volunteers piling up sandbags to divert flood waters and then staying for the work of shoveling out, drying out, repairing and rebuilding.

And my emotions at these scenes bring me to tears too. Tears of, I guess, wonder, and even joy, at what else humanity is like. What we humans are, really.

For a few moments a year ago it seemed we, human beings, were together. Nations, organizations, individuals offered their condolences and their help to the victims of the terrorists' attacks.

Kindergarteners in Dreieich, the town next to where I live, put on a benefit basketball game - there's a picture for you: kindergarten kids playing basketball - to raise money to help a kindergarten in New York City. Each morning, for many days last September, fresh flowers and candles were placed at the gate of the Kaserne where I work. I remember the picture of the United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, helping take the injured out of the burning Pentagon building in Washington - that before staff members reminded him of other duties he had and awful decisions he had to make that day.

For me, I remember talking on the phone with people from this Fellowship. The reason for the calls was Fellowship business. But the substance of the calls was what was happening in the World and in our lives since the attacks. Those conversations were important. This community was, and is, important to me.

Churches that the weeks before September Eleventh had had empty seats were filled and overflowing as people came together to sooth and nourish and restore their spirits. And to remind themselves of the importance of religious communities.

For a few moments after the attacks in Washington and New York we humans came together. Not the whole world or course. But lots of people in many nations shared the shock and the fear and the sadness. We shared the loss and we helped each other. We recognized in each other the grief that being a part of a family, a community, a nation, an interconnected web of all existence can bring. That connection to others means sharing joys and sorrows.

And then, according to the President of the United States, our grief turned to anger. The world got divided again, this time into those who support those hunting terrorists and those who side with the terrorists.

And some of us felt were not in either group. More separation.

And a nation pursued the perpetrator of the attacks with bombs and missiles and soldiers. And another phrase, "régime change", came into use. It was applied to Afghanistan. It is applied to Iraq. It is applied to the Palestinian Authority. And who knows where next?
More dividing. The "evil axis" and the "coalition partners."

There seem to be at least two human reactions to tragedy. The instinctive coming together and the instinctive pulling back and hitting back.

Today, I want to celebrate the coming together. Community. And in particular, this community. This religious community.
-o-
In an interview, Joseph Campbell talked about an essay in which the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer asks, in Campbell's phrasing, "how is it that a human being can so participate in the peril or pain of another that without thought, spontaneously, he or she sacrifices his or her own life to the other? How can it happen that what we normally think of as the first law of nature and self-preservation is suddenly dissolved?"

Campbell cites a story where a police officer in Hawaii grabs hold of a man just as the man jumps from a cliff and the two nearly go over the edge together. A second police officer grabs the first and all three are saved.

Campbell goes on

Do you realize what had suddenly happened to that policeman who had given himself to death with that unknown youth? Everything else in his life had dropped off -- his duty to his family, his duty to his job, his duty to his own life -- all of his wishes and hopes for his lifetime had just disappeared. He was about to die.

Later, a newspaper reporter asked him, "Why didn't you let go? You would have been killed." And his reported answer was, "I couldn't let go. If I had let that young man go, I couldn't have lived another day of my life." How come?

Schopenhauer's answer is that such a psychological crisis represents the breakthrough of a … realization … that you and that other are one, that you are two aspects of the one life, and that your apparent separateness is but an effect of the way we experience forms under the conditions of space and time. Our true reality is in our identity and unity with all life. This is a metaphysical truth which may become spontaneously realized under circumstances of crisis. For it is, according to Schopenhauer, the truth of your life.

[Joseph Campbell, with Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth. 1988. Doubleday, Page110.]

The truth of our lives is that we are not separate from each other. In wars and floods and power blackouts and when buildings collapse we come together, we help each other, and we find ourselves there.
-o-

Much has, in deed, changed in our world since last September. But there is still, unchanged - whatever it is - lack of imagination perhaps - that has revenge guiding nations' and persons' actions; the same old stuff. And there is still, unchanged, our need for each other. Our importance to and for each other.

As Bill Sinkford tells us "Our coming together bears witness to the power of love, and the possibility of community." [Sinkford, William G. Pastoral Prayer, One Year Later, UUA Website, 2002]

It is good to be here together with you.