Part 1: Lessons from the Day
Fifteen years and one day ago, September 10, 2001, I was on an airplane returning from business in France. We landed in Newark, and I changed to a plane bound for Denver, for home. We rolled out onto the tarmac, and then we sat. And sat. We were there for a couple of hours, as late afternoon thunderstorms pounded the airport. My business companions consulted their OAG flight guide booklet, to see what early morning flights were available, in case this flight was cancelled. The word from the cockpit was not good, cancellation was increasingly likely. And then, a window opened in the storm sky, and we were off, very late, but homeward bound.
So I was groggy, not fully awake, when Liz took a phone call and said to me, “Matt, turn on the TV!” At this point the story joins your stories, for I’m sure almost all of you can remember where you were, what you were doing, the morning of September 11, 2001.
It’s now been fifteen years after attackers brought down two buildings, damaged a third, destroyed four airplanes, and killed about three thousand people, in what has become the seminal, defining event for a generation.
We take time today to mourn the losses, of the lives lost on that day certainly, but also of all the lives lost in the days and years after, as we began to wage war on those we blamed for the attack. We mourn in particular the innocents who died, and those other innocents with lives shattered, as families find themselves on the move, seeking to find refuge somewhere away from the violence, lives distorted and broken, as people find themselves living under the thumb of terror and oppression.
Perhaps as much as the lives lost and broken, we also mourn the loss of our civility, the loss of communal maturity and order. We lost our innocence, that naive certainty that we were a moral, civilized people who could rise above emotion and deal rationally with whatever comes our way. We now confront our own murky sense of American exceptionalism and find it woven tight with xenophobia, greed, and intolerance. We know ourselves better now, as Americans, and we are humbled by our limitations.
Except of course for those of our countrymen who deny all this, and who still see only in the stark divisions of good and evil, us and them.
In trying to understand this distortion of seeing, I quote from my colleague Rev. Tom Schade, who wrote this a few years ago, but it is still relevant today:
The dominant narrative about 9/11, 2001 is that the event proved the existence of evil in the world, that there is an escalating conflict between the West and some undetermined portion of Islam, and that we are moving toward an apocalyptic catastrophe. Fear and anger were appropriate [responses] … There is a whole historical analysis that undergirds that emotional response — that proves that fear and anger are rational responses.
There is a whole segment of this culture that accepts this narrative as true. Not much we say will sway them.
But is it spiritually correct?
We [as religious progressives] see the future not as a clash of civilizations, not as an armageddon, not as a final battle for God. We see a future of peace, cooperation and diversity. We see that future coming into being right now and one way is that all across the country, interfaith coalitions including Muslims, Christians and Jews are stronger now than on 9/10, 2001.
The dominant narrative of 9/11, 2001 makes it a holiday of anti-Universalism. We, whose whole theology of History points toward Universalism, must speak on that day, to testify to our faith in a different and better future.[1]
So if this day is a holiday, a holy day, — and I mean a holy day in the sense of Yom Kippur or Ash Wednesday in other traditions, it must be a day of reflection and atonement. The rawness is long gone, for most people, but not all, as Liz suggested in her Chalice Lighting.
Yet some people harbor a deep, malevolent rage, and we must stand against that rage. If this day is to be a holy day, and not merely a patriotic day, let us make it holy by dreaming of and speaking for a more peaceful and Universal future.
We might first speak out opposing those who would ban all people from entering this country simply on the basis of their religion. We, more than most, know that religious identity is a complex thing, and that people holding any given religion vary widely in their politics, their culture, and their moral and ethical formation.
We, more than most, know the history of religious intolerance, and the ease to which intolerance can lead to violence and genocide. We, more than most, know that such intolerance only strengthens the most fundamentalist and radicalized forms of all religions on all sides of a conflict, and that the adherents of progressive and liberal religions are often squeezed out in such clashes.
We might also remind people that to take a hard line on terrorism, to say “never again will this happen” simply plays into the hands of terrorists. The cover article in last month’s Atlantic Magazine was titled “Is America Any Safer?” Writer Steven Brill noted that after the attacks, (I quote):
President Bush’s strategy was simply to tell us not to worry—that we should fearlessly keep on shopping. As a short-term measure, it was a sensible effort to calm a shocked nation. But the longer term requires a more nuanced, and politically perilous, message, because there is no such thing as “never again.” Attacks will happen, and, as San Bernardino and Orlando portend, they will happen in random venues—where part of what’s so frightening is the randomness, suggesting that anyone, anywhere, anytime could be vulnerable.[2]
As our sensibility returns, we become more able to courageously confront modern-day terrorist attacks, to see them as just one of many tragedies that we encounter in an imperfect world. By managing our fear, we deprive terrorism of its power, which is — of course — creating terror. As I have pondered close call to the 9-11 attacks, and on friends and acquaintances more directly touched by that and other terrorist acts, I realize that quiet courage is the best response. We prevail by courageously holding fast to our deepest values: freedom, acceptance, and peace.
Finally, my prayer — for it is more a prayer than a hope — is that we may be ‘saved from our weak resignation to violence’. I pray we will remember that responding to violence with violence simply amplifies violence. As we continue to fight the longest war in our country’s history, with no obvious plan for ending it, we might become wise to the total costs of violence. Indeed, we might work instead to develop our currently stunted understanding of Satyagraha, the philosophy of non-violent action.
Satyagraha was the teaching of Mahatma Gandhi, and was the practice of Martin Luther King, Jr. We might remember that Gandhi is purported to have said,
Satyagraha is the exact opposite of the policy of an-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye which ends in making everybody blind.[3]
Those of us with the wisdom of years know that the lessons of life that we learn most fully are often bound up in pain and loss. As a nation, as a world, we have suffered a decade and a half of pain and loss. Perhaps we will learn some lessons from our suffering. Perhaps we will learn of the universal human qualities that underlie all cultures and religions, that we might focus on unifying rather than dividing. Perhaps we will learn how to have courage in the face of adversity of any kind, so that we might respond ‘thoughtfully and tenderly’. Perhaps we will learn to practice the art of Satyagraha, using non-violent methods to achieve our most worthy goals. Perhaps we can hope that we will become a wiser people, and from our wisdom, a better world will emerge.
Part 2: Bubbles in the Stream
There is a Tibetan Buddhist text, “The Foundation of All Good Qualities” written in about the 14th century, which tells us that
“this life is as impermanent as a water bubble;
remember how quickly it decays and death comes.”[4]
I love the clarity of that image. Our lives are brief fragmentary events, like the formation and cavitation of tiny bubbles in a burbling stream — momentary events in a much larger and more vital river of life. Just as tiny bubbles are formed out of the water, we may for a time think we are separate from the water, but in reality the water connects all of those bubbles, and our existence is merely a perturbation of the water, created out of the movement of the water as gravity calls the water and us toward its downstream home.
I love the larger sense of the image as well, that as bubbles in our own brook, we blend and merge with other brooks, into streams, into rivers, and flow down into the oneness of the sea. This is the essence of the theological Universalism that Tom Schade was speaking of.
Now some of us may believe that there is nothing real beyond what we can see and touch. No God, no heretofore undiscovered part of reality that touches us as humans, no mystery. These empirical thinkers among us may sometimes find the use of metaphor, symbols, and story as perhaps a worldview too soft and fluffy to buy into.
At the same time, I hope we might find some useful meaning in images like bubbles in the stream. Remember, physicists often work from conceptual images — think of Einstein’s twins who age at different rates, or Schrodinger’s cat in a box, both alive and dead at the same time. Such metaphors can be every bit as inscrutable as religious images and koans and parables, and yet they form the starting point for the work, which for theoretical physicists is the mathematical analysis of the reality behind the paradoxical image.
And so the bubbles are metaphors. Indeed, I can quite easily see my life as just one bubble in the stream, interacting with other bubbles, but somehow part of much larger trends and patterns in the evolution of life and humanity itself. We live through history, as in a stream, sometimes in placid, smooth waters, sometimes encountering the rocks and holes of turbulent rapids. We make our contribution, however large or small, offering what we can where we can, being part of the great current of humanity.
Alternatively, some of us might identify as mystical humanists, feeling that our empirical knowing takes us only so far, and that there is great mystery beyond that. To reach into that mystery, we might feel that we can apprehend that more distant knowing through our own personal spiritual experiences. If we are not experienced in this way, we might find that the truths of mystics through the ages might resonate with that feeling.
Consider, for example, Muslim mystic poet the Jelaluddin Rumi, who lived in the 13th century in what is now Afghanistan. In one of his mystical poems, he entreats us to:
Plunge, plunge into the vast ocean of Consciousness.
Let the drop of water that is you
become a hundred mighty seas.
But do not think that the drop alone
becomes the Ocean –
The Ocean, too, becomes the drop! [5]
Like so many of the mystics, Rumi speaks of a yearning for wholeness, a desire for the ending of separation that is at the core of our human condition. The end of our searching will be merger, finding unity, becoming one with Consciousness, with the divine, or with the universe.
And many of us come at our spirituality from other religious traditions, Christianity, Judaism, Paganism. We find these too all have their mystical variants, and those mystics also speak of our universality, that sense that we all come from the same origins, and have the same destination. Whether that is union with God or the gods or something else, we become unified, we become one.
At the very deepest, most profound level, we find commonality. It is like reaching down to the water table, to the vast underground reservoirs of water, hidden from us, except where they burble up as clear springs, hidden pools that we may access with some labor by digging wells.
Christian theologian and mystic Matthew Fox tells us,
… We can and ought to return to our spiritual sources … to find joint truth together, common ground on which to face the very survival issues of morality and celebration, grief and forgiveness and letting go. Without this truth-discovery we will not survive. Going down to the well of one’s own tradition or [one’s] chosen [tradition], we do indeed arrive at the common waters of wisdom.[6]
And so we arrive at the common waters, the vast Ocean, and we are one.
Rumi again —
Late, by myself, in the boat of myself,
no light and no land anywhere,
cloud-cover thick. I try to stay
just above the surface,
yet I’m already under
and living with the ocean.[7]
May you, bubbles in the stream, find your way along the flow of life. May you find your way under and living with the ocean of life, reaching that sense of spiritual unity, of one with all.
The Water Ritual – Merging the Waters
We now have our ritual of merging the waters.
Since 1980, Unitarian Universalists have celebrated a ritual of merging the waters, sometimes known as the water service or water communion. The ritual symbolizes the coming together of people from both nearby and far away, into one communal whole. The ritual invites us to draw on the strength of that unity, that we may live our lives fully and well, and as our closing hymn tells us, where we may — together — build a land where justice shall roll down like waters and peace like and ever flowing stream.
So now, we invite you to come forward, taking just a bit of water in your palm from one of the pitchers, either nearby or far away. Some of you may have brought water that is meaningful to you; put a little in your palm, too.
As you take the water in your palm, be very mindful of its wetness, its coolness. Reflect on its fluidity, its tendency to flow, to drip down your arm. All that is ok.
Bring that little bit of water forward and pour it into this vase, merging it with the waters of others here, and with the waters we have kept from all our previous water services. Thus we find merger in both place and time.
After that, we have towels on both sides to dry your hands, before returning to your seat down the side aisles.
Notes:
1 Tom Schade, via email, with permission, 2011
2 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/09/are-we-any-safer/492761/
3 http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/27/eye-for-eye-blind/
4 http://www.lamayeshe.com/article/foundation-all-good-qualities
5 Rumi, “A Garden Beyond Paradise”
6 Matthew Fox, “One River, Many Wells”, p. 434.
7 From Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks