Ground Zero...8 Years Later

The best defense against terrorism is a strong offensive against terrorists. That work continues.
--President George W. Bush, 10/13/2001

In Oklahoma we have a remembrance of 9-11 that is always colored by our remebrance of 4-19. On April 19th, 1995 an American groups of terrorists, born and raised here on our soil, killed innocent women, men and children as surely as those hijackers did almost 8 years later. That scar has forever changed us here locally, as the scars from New York City, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania have left an unmistakable mark on all of us.

I consider this nation changed since that day - changed economically, socially, ethically, patriotically, democratically and even theologically. I'm not sure its a change for the better. I do think that the initial surge, just like here in Oklahoma City after the Murrah Building bombing, was one of great compassion and unity. I just don't think that has lasted.

What has taken its place is fear. The sheer terror of that day in 2001 has lingered even more than the heartwarming feelings that surrounded the stories of selfless rescue attempts and the heroic courage of the first responders (not to mention the second and third and so on...). It is the "never again" mentality which drives us now, as if we could prevent such evil.

Story after story leaks out about how some law enforcement agencies knew about this hijacker or that one before that fateful day. They could have been stopped. The pieces should have been put together. The tragedy should have been averted. I'm afraid the truth is much harder than that.

What we have at times turned into in order to secure our sense of safety is the very thing that drove the hijackers to fly those planes into buildings...ideologically-driven protectionsts willing to do anything, even engage in absolute evil, to secure our "selves" or our ideas.

In the Gospel attributed to Mark, Jesus tells us that "Anyone who wanst to save his life will lose it, but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel, will save it" (Mark 8:35 NRSV Translation). In other words, there is no pain-free way to live, nor can we protect ourselves from all evil because we end up becoming evil when we do that. It comes down to this...if we must torture people in order to secure our lives, then we gain nothing but those lives for our souls are dead.

I believe that we are in the midst of another "great awakening" in terms of our awareness of one another, this planet and our relationship with God. I don't know what that will look like, but I do know this - I am not interested in theology than is unsustainable without fear, nor am I interested in patriotism or democracy that is unsustainable without fear.

It is time for a recovery of that word fear - it doesn't mean the same thing now that it did when it was written down. I'm good with biblical fear - the kind of respect and awe you have for a raging river or a twisting tornado - something else we are quite familiar with here. It is the fear generated by people interested only in their ratings, or in pursuing a political agenda, or worse yet saving a tired old idea of something that doesn't even exist anymore but which they are unwilling to let go...that's the soul-killing stuff.

I seek the God of Easter morning. The God who calls us to let go of the reins and trust that its not our bodies we're seeking to save but our souls. The God who calls us to awaken to the unimaginable possibility that our physical lives are not all that there is and that in the end, despite what the TV and internet would have you believe, love wins.

Tired in the Heartland...

"I am no believer in the amalgamation of parties, nor do I consider it as either desirable or useful for the public; but only that, like religious differences, a difference in politics should never be permitted to enter into social intercourse or to disturb its friendships, its charities or justice. In that form, they are censors of the conduct of each other and useful watchmen for the public." --Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824.

"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true." --Martin Luther King Jr.

We have been at this for some time, no doubt. Perhaps it is just because the guy that I favor is in office, but it seems like the vitriolic rhetoric is reaching new heights. Whether it is the "birther" movement, the "Obama-Hitler wants to kill your grandmother" slogans, or the current "education indoctrination" criticism, the general atmosphere (at least here in Oklahoma) makes it hard to find any sense of civility or reasonable dialogue about our future together as a nation.

Yes, that's right. I said OUR future TOGETHER as a nation. Sometime pretty recently we lost the sense of taking care of one another. Someplace between Survivor and American Idol we have decided that our own personal ideologies, our own personal feelings about someone or something, trump everything else. They trump reasonable legislation, they trump any possibility of changing our minds and they apparently trump moral imperatives.

Can we really not have meaningful changes - needed changes - in issues like health reform, education or immigration without simply retreating to our corners and spitting insults at one another? I will call myself out as guilty of this during the last administration. I wouldn't let anything be good if it came from Bush/Cheney because of my ideology.

As a Christian, I believe that Christ calls us to love. To love means that we are willing to change our own minds, to see another's point of view and to try to walk a mile in their shoes so that we might understand them. athe apostle Paul once told us about love in a passage that is unfortunately usually relegated to weddings, but should be the Christian Constitution, right after the Beatitudes. Paul said:

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

1 Corinthians 13:1-7
translation from The Message

We may not still agree, but disagreeing with compassion and understanding is a far better place to be in than where we are now. Our lives together should not be dictated by the talking heads and blogospheres looking only to increase their ratings. They should be forged in the discipline of agape love, as Dr. King once told us. We don't know who to trust anymore because we aren't looking with the right eyes.

Frankly I'm tired of being a liberal. I'm ready to just be an American.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." --Antoine De Saint Exupery