Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

The Voice in the Whirlwind

Reverend Eva Českava
April 13, 2008
Palo Alto, CA

 

It was a morning very like yesterday’s — bright, breezy, warm — thirteen years ago when the lives and attitudes of all Americans were irrevocably changed. Much like people whose memories take them back to December 7, 1941 or November 22, 1963, more recently like September 11, 2001, we all know where we were when we heard the news that the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City had been destroyed by a massive bomb. I’ll tell you a little of my own experience.

The spring of 1995 was an eventful one in my life even without the catastrophe of the bombing. I was working for the Southwest District and the UUA as the Religious Education Consultant — half-time — and attending seminary full time. I was completing my course work that semester, and learned in March that I had been chosen as the Interim Religious Educator for the First Unitarian Church of Dallas. I was elated, though it meant moving from Oklahoma City, my home of over 30 years, and from the house I loved where my husband and I had reared our family and lived for a quarter century.

Then March 30, my mother, who lived alone in Missouri, suffered a severe brain aneurysm and, when she was released from the hospital, we moved her to a long-term care hospital in Oklahoma City where my brother and I could more conveniently care for her.

That spring, I attended classes two days a week in Enid, a farming and university community about an hour and a half north. Since the Southwest District office is in Fort Worth and my seminary was in Oklahoma, I officed out of the front bedroom of my house. That bright Wednesday morning of April 19, I was already in my office at the computer, albeit in my nightgown. (one of the conveniences of officing in one’s home) Just after 9:00 I heard the loudest sonic boom I ever remember hearing. It shook the house hard and rattled the windows. I went to the front door and looked out, gazing up at the spring sky. The air was strangely still, as I recall, no traffic to speak of, a bit like it is during an eclipse of the sun when even the dogs are oddly quiet. Then I heard my office phone ringing, and spent the next hour on the phone to a perplexed youth advisor in Houston.

Then, still in my nightgown, I turned on the television, something I absolutely never do during the daytime. I still can’t understand why I did. I couldn’t believe what I saw on all the channels. Everyone was broadcasting from downtown, only three miles away, and there were fires and smoke and injured people on the sidewalk and firefighters and police and emergency vehicles and the Murrah Building was a skeleton of steel and concrete and roofing tarps. I heard myself saying, “No! Not here. Not in Oklahoma City!”

I called my daughter, and she had just heard, too. Then I called my close friend Nancy at work, asking what was going on, did she know anything. “Not really,” she said. The office where she had worked six months before, where many of her co-workers on the State Water Board still officed, was directly across the street from the Murrah Building, and there was no answer when they tried calling there. She couldn’t tell me any more than the television had. Of course, we both were concerned about our friends who worked in that building, three of them members of the Unitarian Church.

“Can you go to lunch now?” I asked her. It was only about 10:15, but I didn’t want to be alone. “Can you come get me?” I had a car; we could have met somewhere. But she didn’t hesitate. “Sure. I’ll be there in about half an hour.”

We hugged when she got to my house, then went to our favorite Thai buffet. I don’t think we tasted the food at all. But we were together. Then — not surprisingly — we went to the church where I had been the Director of Religious Education for 14 years, yet another mile closer to downtown. The Interim Minister and the DRE were the only ones there, though during the hour or so that we were there more people came by. We saw the broken windows, only a couple, and both sets of dead-bolted solid double doors whose wood was split, not from the blast itself, but from the back draft an instant after the explosion. The force was so great that the very air was sucked back toward the blast, with equal or greater impact. The doors were literally sucked open, splintering the wood around the locks, top, bottom and middle.

No one knew anything about our three church members who worked for Housing and Urban Development. From the television, I recalled seeing the back of a woman, leaning on her elbows on the sidewalk, who looked remarkably like Mary, one of “my” faithful teachers, the mother of two daughters; the shirt she was wearing even looked like one of Mary’s. So I called Mary’s husband, Ben, who was home because he usually worked nights. He had sent his brother to school to pick up his daughters and was waiting for them and for some word from Mary. I asked him what she was wearing that day, and he told me it was a black skirt with a white and black polka-dot crepe blouse. “Not her blue shirt with the Indian design?” I asked. “I saw someone that looked like Mary wearing that shirt.” No, he was sure of what she had worn that morning.

Nancy took me home, then went back to work. I kept the television on for the rest of the day. Then in the late afternoon, Fern, the interim minister, called and asked me if I could go to Mary’s house to sit with her family and her best friend, Ann, while they waited for word. Fern, being an interim, didn’t know the family, and Ann had asked that I come.

Mary’s daughters, whom I’ll call Kimberly, 16, and Kristen, 12, were distraught, of course. Years earlier Kristen had been diagnosed as having Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder, and was — understandably — difficult to calm down. She and her sister were taking turns trying to get through to the Red Cross, but the lines were continually busy. Ben sat in a daze, talked very little. Friends came by with food and well wishes, asking what they could do to help, and we kept our vigil. Somewhere around 9:00 the girls got through to the Red Cross and they were told that Mary had been taken to a hospital, but they weren’t sure which one. We felt such relief. So church friends divided up the hospitals where the injured were being taken and drove to the emergency rooms, looking everywhere. Mary was not registered on any of the lists of injured, but chaos was the order of the day — of the night, that is. Ann and Ben assured me that I could go home, that they would be okay and would call me when they heard about Mary. I talked with Ben the next morning at about 7:00 and learned that the Red Cross had called him at 2:00 am to tell him that they had been mistaken, that they did not know where Mary was, but they would continue searching the hospitals. I spent most of Thursday at their house, too.

That evening, there was a “gathering” at the church. Our social hall was filled with members of all ages. Fern spoke, we sat in silence for a time, and then everyone who wished to speak was given a chance. I remember the children’s words. One girl, about ten, tearfully told how frightened she was that one of her parents might have been in the building; maybe they had gone to the Social Security Office or to the IRS or something. It was pretty far-fetched, but it told of the terror our children felt. Mary’s 16-year-old Kimberly spoke with anger at Connie Chung who had tried to interview her and other family members who were holding vigil in a large Disciples church. She talked about how she didn’t want to talk to reporters, how she wanted to shove that microphone down Connie Chung’s throat. Understandable, yes, this displaced anger. And all during this gathering, Kristen was running her usual track around the building, up and down the stairs, along the corridors, never stopping for more than a second. Following the meeting, after we sang “Spirit of Life,” I was called into the high school classroom and found Kristen wailing in her sister’s arms. A couple of other mothers were standing around these girls, Kimberly trying to be strong for her little sister, Kristen inconsolable. No one had been found alive for nearly 24 hours. She was beginning to understand what that meant. We all were, and Kristen wailed for us all.

It was nearly two weeks before the bodies of Mary and Susan were recovered. Susan’s parents arranged for her funeral at their own Presbyterian church. Fern and I officiated at Mary’s. Kathy, the third member of our church in that office, had escaped being killed because she had gone downstairs to the snack bar in the basement a little early that morning, and was in the back of the building, away from the blast. She doesn’t remember the sound, she says, but told of the lights going out, sitting in the dark and rubble for a few seconds, then looking north and, through the dust, being able to see her car in the parking lot across the street — on fire. She and her stunned office mates walked out the back door into the alley.

That was incredibly difficult for me, writing this sermon ten years ago. Telling this story about my home church is the best way I can think of to share my personal theology with you. So the next bit is a citation, a quote from that first sermon, written in 1998. I’m asking that you go with me back in time ten years. April 19 fell on a Sunday then…

This has been one of the hardest things I have ever done, writing this sermon. I was unaware of the amount of sorrow I still had around this disaster, a deep sadness which wouldn’t leave, a sense of helplessness and despair. Watching myself the last few weeks, particularly in the wake of the children killing their classmates in Jonesboro, Arkansas, I notice I’ve been eating “comfort foods” like a farm breakfast — bacon, eggs and waffles — for supper. I really have missed my own children, and have wanted to ask for hugs from strangers. What I did, though, was I called my kids, emailed my friends in Oklahoma — and got a massage!

There are the inevitable questions of “Why?” There is outrage over the violent culture we live in — have helped create — promoted by money-hungry media and callous television producers. There is the question of assault weapons and the lack of gun control in this country. But those are sermons for another day. I ask myself, I ask you to consider where God is in these catastrophes. Not unlike the authors of Job, who believed that Yahweh was testing Job’s faith, we, too, try to find meaning in senseless pain and carnage. I suggest that the Divine is found in the whirlwind.

Using wind as a metaphor for the voice of the Divine or Ultimate Meaning — Yahweh or God to the ancient prophets — comes naturally to me. Born on the southern plains, growing up in the tallgrass prairie country of northeastern Oklahoma, wind is a constant of life there. The wind of this week, warm and dusty and pollen-laden, brings back the feeling of my other home. There is a comfort in the wind for me, not unlike sailors must feel facing the brisk sea breeze, the spray in their hair, the taste of salt on their lips and skin.

What of the times though when the wind is fierce, destroying homes and ships and lives? Is there a theophany — the voice of God — in a tornado or hurricane, a calling to humanity by the Source of All Life? Is it God’s voice in the whirlwind, as the ancient Hebrew theologians believed? Does the Divine come to us in calamity and ruin? How can this be?

As I struggled this month — again! — to retrieve even a small thread of meaning in the horror that struck my home and my community, I recalled Job and his struggle. There is no making sense of senseless stupidity and terrorism. Where there is meaning is in “the between.” God, the Divine, our Ultimate Reality is “the between,” that which exists as we interact authentically with each other. The whirlwind, the chaos, the unfathomable chasm is breached through relationship.

This is a poem written by Carol Hamilton, Poet Laureate of Oklahoma in 1995.

Nothing gentles down from
A mild heaven here.
We are always braced
Against the wild wind.
We were ever hand in hand
As far as the eye can see.

Cataclysms are the story.
Our cities sprang up overnight,
Are flattened at a tongue-lashing
By clouds, and bush-whackers and
Bonnies and Clydes
Struck fast and hid against
The land stretched and pegged
Flat to the Four Corners
Of the Earth. We do not cower
At disaster.

We join hands, sing hymns.
We share tears, and
Bend our backs, raising
A neighbor’s barn.
Do not think your
Abrupt terror will
Destroy us.

Wide horizons stretch our
Vision. We do not believe in limits.
We shift with the red dust,
Dance golden like the wheatfields.
We believe. We move on.
We bend and dance
On the tallgrass.

The prairie sings our pain.
The land shouts our praise.
The wind calls us together.

By way of example, I’d like to share with you email messages that I have exchanged with my Oklahoma City friends Patrick and Scot and Carol during the last month. Scot sent the poem I just read, and Carol sent her poem she had written for the centennial celebration of the Oklahoma City UU church, the words to the anthem the choir sang. Four weeks ago Pat wrote to several of us who live out of state. Here, in part, is his letter:

I keep thinking and hoping that the pain of the Oklahoma City bombing will pass. With the McVeigh and Nichols trials over, the story has not been front-page news every day as it had been for so long.

Kathy, a friend and fellow church member, worked at the offices of Housing and Urban Development in the Federal Building. She went to the snack bar a few minutes before 9:00 am on April 19. When the bomb went off almost everyone in her office was killed. Kathy was spared because she was on the other side of the building, but in the ensuring weeks she attended over 30 funerals of people she had known or worked with. The past three years have been especially hard on Kathy, and she sank deeper and deeper into depression. She continued to work for HUD. Last Wednesday (almost six weeks ago now), she took an overdose of medication, left a suicide note on her desk at work, and went home. Her husband found her unconscious on the bedroom floor, and rushed her to the hospital. Kathy died this morning, never regaining consciousness. Another victim …

Pat continued: “Tim McVeigh thinks he was doing something to free us from the power of the government. What he did was enslave us … to a life of reminders of that terrible day, to a life of regret, to a life of wondering ‘What more might Kathy have been?’”

Pat goes on to say that in February the church’s Board of Trustees had talked about what they would do this year on April 19. The past two years there have been special services and gatherings, and the church steeple bells, along with all Oklahoma City churches’ bells, were rung 168 times in memory of all those who died. This year it was decided to only ring the bells 168 times at 9:02 am. Pat has always been the one to ring the bells, and it takes about five minutes. This morning he is adding one more peel of the bells for Kathy.

Pat ended his message with “I’m a lucky person. I’ve got you as a friend or a loving relative.’”

I responded to Pat that I had been depressed for several days, even with the warm sunshine and rising temperatures. I had to get my seeds started inside, but hadn’t done that with all the other work I have here. Then after I’d watched myself hungrily devour the OKC church newsletter, get mad that the post office got it here so late (9 days from when it was mailed) when there’s so much going on, and the overwhelming sadness I felt that I wasn’t there, I knew I really missed home. “Yes,” I wrote. “I’m home here with a wonderful congregation, and I love the area and the ocean, my work and new friends, I guess it’s all mixed up with not knowing what to say in my sermon and being very sad that Kathy died — and how she died, in so much pain — and missing my kids and friends. I also don’t get the hugs I need for daily maintenance… Send me hugs, Pat.”

Pat’s response to my response: “Your sermon Sunday should be about why we shouldn’t take anything for granted, and why we should be grateful for what we have. It’s basic stuff, but too often we lose sight of what’s important. The bombing taught us that you can never say, ‘I love you.’ enough. Hugs are on the way, but the post office will probably be late in delivery.”

My response: “I love you, Pat.”

I spoke with Pat this week, as I do every April. Pat is the one who has always rung the steeple bells at 9:02 AM every April 19. Well, they’re not real bells. There’s a loud speaker that broadcasts the “bell” sound from the organ, and Pat has always struck that key 168 times. I asked if he would be doing it again this year from the carillon installed a few years ago, and he said now the bells are on a timer. He’ll be there Saturday morning as usual, and the timer, in sync with that national or global clock, will ring the chimes.

And life goes on, as after the WW II, and Kennedy’s assassination, the attacks of 9-11. Children grow up and everything changes, bit by bit. I spoke with my good friend Karen a couple of weeks ago, a woman who has kept in touch with Kristen. She is married now and has two little girls, four and six, one of whom resembles Mary a lot. Karen brings the girls to church often, though it’s hard for Kristen to be there for long. She and her sister are, of course, bitter about having their lives so horribly disrupted. So though the lives of this family were nearly destroyed, that relationship between loving friends, Mary and Karen, continues.

The German theologian Martin Buber alludes to God in terms of “I-Thou,” of authentic relationship as approaching The Divine. As we think deeply about this faith community, this precious place-more-than-a-place, we begin to realize that our “ultimate concern,” as Tillich put it, what we consider of highest value, is lived out within this church. We are here because we believe that supporting this institution by our presence in this relationship and with our energy, time and gifts is in our own best interest, and best for the world as well.

Through our whirlwind experiences, be they catastrophic or less horrific, our best, truest source of meaning is with one another, ultimately in “the between” of relationship, finally, in love.

In the chiming of our future in the knells of yesterday
We spin echoes through our fingers
Palm to palm
Hand in hand
Spirits holding to each other
We exult in all the colors of the moment we twine Now.
In coats of many colors on the melody of chance
spirits linked palm to palm
In all colors of the moment we twine Now.
We exult in the center of each moment we call Now.

May it be so with you, with all of us. Amen.

 

Reflection: A Sense of Connectedness by Susan Owicki