Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Reflection on the Impact of Terrorism

A Reflection by Susan Owicki, Worship Associate
September 16, 2001
Palo Alto, CA

Last Tuesday our world changed. As the poet Adrienne Rich wrote, in a different context:

The great dark birds of history screamed
and plunged into our personal weather.
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions
drove along the shore, through the rags of fog
Where we stood, saying I.

In this new world, we have lost our privileged position of safety. We are vulnerable, just like the rest of the people on the planet.

For the present, this new world is dominated by pain. The pain comes in many flavors. There is grief for those who died, and anguish at the suffering of their friends and family.

There is horror at the cruelty of such well-planned destruction. There is fear - fear of further terrorism, fear of war, fear of economic collapse, fear of the ordinary risks of life that suddenly loom large.

There is a sense of helplessness, a feeling that nothing we do can change what happened or what is yet to come. There is anger at the terrorists, at Muslims in general, at those who might somehow have acted to avert the disaster.

There is rage that leads some people to believe that the answer to destruction is even more destruction. Throughout it all is a heavy wordless weight of sadness.

What can we do with this pain? Can we somehow find in it a source of something positive?

We have seen already that this can happen. Many people have been drawn to deal with their own pain by acting to ease the suffering of others. They give blood, give money, volunteer in hospitals, make breakfast for firemen, make quilts. They gather together, as we are doing today, and build communities where the injuries we all received can begin to find healing.

But I think we are also called to go beyond help for those already wounded. I think we must do whatever we can to prevent further damage.

I do not see simple answers as to how to do this. It seems to me that we must act against those who planned and carried out these attacks. I pray that we may find a way to act effectively without violence, although I do not know how.

I fear that the rhetoric of war will prevail, and we will wreak destruction to prove that we are too big to be pushed around. And those we injure, or their friends, will take retribution on us, and yet another cycle of escalation will be born.

We have heard from this pulpit that "the only answer to hate is love." One form of love is compassion - the opening of the heart.

Extending compassion is a powerful spiritual practice, and a very difficult one. To be compassionate, we must be vulnerable. We must be willing to let in the hurt of others, which reminds us how we too can be hurt. We must be willing to let go of our own righteousness, so we can see the humanity in those whose actions outrage us, whether they are foreign terrorists or domestic war-mongers.

When we can't manage this hard work, we can extend compassion to ourselves so that we do not close our hearts any more than necessary.

Kahlil Gibran has said, "Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." May we find a way to let our current pain take us beyond our shell, to a place of greater understanding and caring for all the inhabitants of this planet.

If we can do that, as a nation, then we may find the consequences of these events less bleak than we fear. As Gibran says elsewhere, "If winter should say, "Spring is in my heart," who would believe winter?"

. . .

And a woman spoke, saying, "Tell us of Pain." And he said: Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
      -- Kahlil Gibran, excerpt from "The Prophet" on pain

. . .

Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world. But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also ...

... You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked; for they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together. And if any of you would punish in the name of righteousness and lay the ax unto the evil tree, let him see to its roots; And verily he will find the roots of the good and the bad, the fruitful and the fruitless, all entwined together in the silent heart of the earth.
      -- Kahlil Gibran, excerpts from "The Prophet" on crime and punishment