9/11 turns 25: Recollections and Reflections

   I’d not thought ahead to realize this Friday will be the 25^th anniversary of 9/11 – the 9/11 – until I spoke the other day with my friend Geoff, whose brother George died in the Twin Towers. George had phoned his brother shortly after the attack, reporting that he was helping others to get out of the building, and not to worry about him. Geoff recalled to me with gratitude the love and care from his church and pastor that carried him through the intense grief which, of course, still lingers.

   His call prompted me to remember, and to reflect on all that has transpired, what has changed, how we are different, and the meaning of it all now at age 25. First, to remember.

Recalling 9/11/2001

   Like you (if you’re old enough to have been around then!), I know precisely where I heard the news, with whom I watched the unfolding horror, and the absolute urgency of needing to speak with and hug those I love but took for granted earlier that morning. The school announced it was fine to pick up your kids, or let them stay at school. I picked mine up, and immediately.

   We all felt helpless, watching the utter and devastating helplessness of the unrescuable; I wonder about the long-term paralyzing effects of these harrowing images etched in our souls. Things went from horrible to much worse – and twice, as one tower fell, then the other.

   By noon on 9/11, a steady stream of people with a crazed mix of emotions, numb, panicky, teary, enraged, and confused, not knowing what else to do, showed up at churches like mine, even though it was a Tuesday. Sanctuaries were packed on Friday in response to President Bush’s appeal for a day of prayer. Much was said that week about God. Many predicted a sweeping national religious revival, that we would rise up from the ashes like the phoenix. I was more sober, guessing church attendance would boom for two or three weeks, then settle down. I was wrong. By Sunday number two, we’d returned to the way things had been.

   I could not sleep that week, and spent the wee hours in my children’s rooms, watching them sleep, grieving that they would grow up in such a violent world, praying for children I did not know by name whose parents had died in the attacks, or in efforts to rescue others.

   On 9/11, I’d been at WBTV for a few hours on the local news with another pastor, as they wanted religious people on hand to offer commentary. When off camera, he and I explored what we might preach come Sunday. He’d chosen Psalm 46. My mind drafted toward Psalm 102:

   “Hear my prayer, O Lord. Do not hide your face from me. For my days pass away like smoke, my bones burn like a furnace. My heart is smitten. I forget to eat my bread. I am like an owl among the ruins. I lie awake. I am like a lonely bird on the rooftop. My enemies taunt me. I eat ashes like bread.” Days of utter destruction, evil, and terror are well-recorded in Scripture. I couldn’t rush to easy theological clichés. We dwell with the sorrow, like the Psalmists of old.

The Troubles of the World

   Sadly, instead of turning to hope in God, unity among Americans, and peace in the world, we rushed to payback and a swelling of national pride. President Bush vowed to rid the world of evil. We’ve not rid our own hearts of evil! And the world is, if anything, more widely haunted by evil. Today, we are mired in an unwinnable war in the Middle East – again – even though Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are long dead.

   The troubles of the world are so overwhelming we feel impotent. We are more judgmental of people who are different. And I suspect we are less willing than ever to ask hard moral questions about the way we pursue security. We may be meaner than we were 25 years ago; but if we are, it is because we are scared. Today we’re as angry with the other half of America as we were then with the Taliban or whomever else wrought terror from far away.

   Religion hasn’t helped. If anything, religion has been discredited. Wasn’t it a crazed, twisted faith that motivated the killers? And who looks more foolish? Those who say God orchestrated the events to judge us (as some did)? or those who’d naively believed God would always protect us? And now, as a reflex of our fears, insecurity, and malformed souls that perceive difference as danger, we have churches waving flags and worshipping a muscular, automatic-weapon-toting Jesus, as if God wishes us to fight terror out there and even in our own country with more terror.

   I’ve visited the 9/11 memorial a few times. We always find George’s name by the pool. I imagine survivors, widows who’ve grown old, those who were little kids then who have little kids of their own now. The grief that abides. And I’ve tried to puzzle out, in my mind, what might be any blessing to come from 9/11. Where’s the hope, the wisdom, the plan?

Wisdom from 9/11?

   Some theological lessons reside there. If there’s a God, this deity isn’t a genie who shelters us but not others. If there’s a God, it must be a God who cares about all people, all countries, and until we think about a good God in all places, and the way that goodness in God can and should manifest itself through all religions, we will shrivel into permanently frightened, angry victims.

   As a country, we now know what all other countries have experienced through history. Think about it: 9/11 was just a sip, barely a taste of what Ukraine, Gaza, and a great many other places have repeatedly experienced over months and years. Perhaps knowing, we can sympathize, and not intimidate so much as befriend, and maybe move toward the forgiveness and reconciliation that are at the heart of our faiths. We’ve learned that the immense power we wield (as our military still dwarfs all other militaries combined) cannot insulate us from harm; perhaps we can learn to ask how our bigness might foster understanding and peace. Perhaps it’s high time to reclaim the moral high ground.

   Where should 9/11 rank among the days? To me, 9/11 is like 12/7/41, or the day my grandfather died, or the day a tornado touched down and killed a friend, or a shooter rampaged through Virginia Tech – tragic days, solidly and thankfully in the past. Evil probably loves so much attention being lavished on such a dark, violent day. 

   More crucial, and hopeful world-changing days in the past for us Americans might be not 9/11 but 7/4, when the good of independence was declared, or 1/1/1863, when the unjustly enslaved were emancipated. My children’s birthdates merit pomp and circumstance, for they are days that celebrate life, not death. Is Ground Zero sacred ground – a place where evil pumped its fist? Or is it the labor and delivery room? Or our sanctuaries where we pray and hope? or the classroom where a student gets a bold idea?

   What dates changed history? Christians point to Easter, Jews to the Passover liberation from bondage in Egypt; other traditions have their sacred, life-giving days as well. A graduation?  A wedding?  These are days with a future, with hope and joyful optimism.

   After 25 years of grieving, fear and anger, might our next 25 become a season of a revival of courage and hope? Can we be the people who get back up, unified not by rage or apathy but by hope, the kinds of people envisioned by those who signed on 7/4, the noble who celebrate Easter, Passover, birthdays, weddings or graduations? We reached out for meaning and help, love and hope, on 9/11. Might the best memorial be a new reaching out, and forward, so the phoenix of goodness does finally rise from the ashes?

 

Fears for our Country, Exasperation with People: Is there Hope?

 Over and over, as I listen to my church people (and non-church folks too), I hear many expressions of fears for the country, and exasperation over the way others think and feel. Our United Methodist Publishing House asked me to write a book on Religion and Politics. I said yes, and began thinking up titles, like We’ve All Lost Our Minds or Jesus Must Be So Embarrassed. Easy to find fault and cast blame – but the publisher wants a book that analyzes what’s gone awry and yet clings to hope, and dares to suggest how we might fix some things and be healers. I won’t attempt to summarize a 140 page book here, but let me mention a few things.

People are in a deep funk about their country. But there’s so much to love. We can be grateful for the free space we have to disagree, to vote, to get involved (or not). We have traffic and other laws. We have brilliant founding documents on liberty, the separation of powers, and freedom of religion. We have national parks. We have my hometown and beautiful children. We have heroes who remind us of what actually is possible during times of fear and funk.

David Chappell’s A Stone of Hope, a book that demonstrates clearly that evil was held in check and the country was changed by the church, and nobody else, in the 1950’s, quotes a poem from Seamus Heaney: “History says, don’t hope on this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime, the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.”

Are we so cynical and jaded we can’t envision, anticipate, or even pray for some great tidal wave, something God can do? If we cling to and live into what God might just do, we’re liberated from our fears, and liberated to do something. I just finished a great book by my friend Vickie Barnett about “Bystanders,” that vast majority of Germans who knew what was going on but just shrugged and did nothing. They felt overwhelmed and powerless.

But were they? Barnett points to the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, population 3,000, which rescued 2,500 Jews, mostly children, from the Nazis. The silence of other towns was a thundering approval of Nazi atrocities. At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, there’s a garden celebrating the few who had courage and did something, with the inscription “Whoever saves one life saves the universe.”

We’re not called to be bystanders, or to fume in the privacy of our dens. Do some little something. Have some courage. Talk to somebody; listen to somebody. Don’t let your politics be your idol – a bad habit easy to spot in the other guys. Our God is above and beyond party divisions, and we can calm down and get busy if our trust is vested in the true God.

There’s so much damage from politics as waged in recent history. What gifts does the Church bring to healing? We are people with hope, not naïve optimism, but a long-range belief in that arc that bends toward justice. Reconciliation is supposed to be our strong suit, not blaming or cringing. We are supposed to know how to love, how to engage respectfully, how to bring faith to life in the real world, with resilience, tenderness, toughness.

My premise, which can’t be dismissed as naïve, or we’re toast, is that we aren’t stuck in an endless spitting match that feels like that nightmarish trench warfare of World War I, immense carnage to gain a few feet of turf, only to lose it the next day, everyone losing. There was a break on Christmas Day when both sides lobbed gifts to their foes before meeting in No Man’s Land to sing carols together. Fear for the country is paralyzing, and invites the very disaster we fear. Do a little something today, and something else tomorrow. Find a friend. Make a friend. Pray. Where else is there to turn just now except to God, and to others who love their country?

Review of The Odyssey: Unheroic, Disenchanted... and Long Fight Scenes?

    We saw “The Odyssey” last night. Well, it began mid-afternoon and ended last night! I rarely review movies. Not my strong suit – although I’m of more value than Bill Murray on Saturday Night Live who’d launch into a review, then pause to say “Now, I’ve not actually seen this movie…” I saw it. Didn’t take a bathroom or snack break either. Let me tell you about it – theologically and culturally, I hope.

   I had tangled expectations going on, not just because of the hype, but because I’ve always treasured Homer (although I’d take The Iliad over The Odyssey any day!). I re-read The Odyssey over the past month to ready myself. That alone was a great gift of the movie coming out.

   I felt a bit like I do when viewing a movie or TV series about the Bible. I know I’ll be jarred and annoyed, with a bit of an elitist sneer that “the book is way better than the movie.” But this one has that Christopher Nolan brand, and I knew lots of people would ask me my assessment of it. And people I know well and whose opinions I respect had already shared glowing reviews with me.

   The costumes, boats, scenery, and buildings were super well-done. I felt like we were back in the Bronze Age. The dialogue wasn’t very Bronze-Age-ish or Greek-ish, but no worries. There was some solid acting, but I’m no judge of such things.

   Four people we know sat on the row in front of us. Several times one would turn to me and say “You’ll get a sermon out of this, I’m sure!” Probably not. Despite being dazzled by cinematic technique, and digging a few moments, I was on the whole very disappointed. I’m a fan of Matt Damon (I mean, “Good Will Hunting”? “Bourne”? – great stuff). But his Odysseus was brooding, uncertain, pulsating with regrets, and nowhere near as wise, charming, brilliant, and compelling as Homer’s Odysseus.

   Not Damon’s fault! Nolan gave him a script. To Nolan (who seemed bent in the overall plot of the film to be saying Civilization is crumbling and we’d best do something before it collapses) I’d say Our civilization desperately needs heroes. You’re putting one on the big screen, but he looks decidedly unheroic.

   He looks unheroic because of another huge flaw in the film. One reviewer, Leah Schnelbach, rightly named “the Disenchanted World of The Odyssey.” In Homer, the gods are everywhere, active, and due considerable reverence as they push the plot. In Nolan, there are vague allusions to Poseidon being very angry and hurling some storms – feeding, I fear, into modern notions that God is not a good blessing but a problem. Athena appears on most pages of Homer, talking a lot, disguising herself as various characters, hugely impactful. In Nolan, a woman (I had to guess it was Athena) once in a while is sitting near Odysseus, more like she’s his therapist instead of the warrior goddess who wears armor and wields a spear.

   Damon as Odysseus hears others speak of the gods, and his replies reveal he is bent on defying them. I’m okay that this is inconsistent with Homer, but it’s so very modernistic, isn’t it? There’s a lot of chatter in the film about “the Law of Zeus,” the Greek tradition of hospitality as a must. I wish I’d known at the beginning to count how many times various characters appealed to “the Law of Zeus.” Zeus begins with a z, and for me the boring repetition of his name left me with a zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

   Zeus’s Law is utterly unsuccessful as a plot driver, and I’m sure Homer would say hospitality doesn’t come into play when city states are attacking one another or when someone’s stealing from your home. Homer’s Zeus wasn’t the author of a Miss Manners book of how to welcome strangers. Zeus was the king of the gods, a harsh enforcer of justice, and a philanderer.

   But my biggest complaint about the film is that it is flat out TOO LONG. It wasn’t the 3 hours; many of my favorite movies (“The Lord of the Rings”? “The Godfather”? “Dr. Zhivago”? “Ben Hur”? Even the biblical “Ten Commandments”?) are 3+ hours long. It’s a absurdly lengthy fight scenes. Yes, Homer’s Odyssey had violence. But Nolan fed into what must be the public’s taste for lengthy depictions of men stabbing, smashing, hurling, swinging, on and on, on and on, so boring. You could easily understand that in the plot there was a fight in just a minute or two. I wish I’d timed Nolan’s brawls.

   So what is it about our culture that digs extended and savage combat scenes? Homer was far more high-minded, reporting on fighting, but leaving us with a feel of nobility, personal tragedy, victory and sorrow. I should have seized on the beginning of any fight scene and gone to the bathroom or the snack bar. Boring, and troubling. I told my wife as we drove to dinner that I have a lone exception to my loathing of these monotonous scenes. In “The Lord of the Rings,” we have some extended battles. But there’s movement, real shifts in dynamics, and the unlikely hero pops up now and then (Eowen? Merry and Pippin?). And humor: in the thick of peril, Legolas and Gimli taunt one another as they count how many orcs they’ve dispatched. It’s funny, and defuses the violence.

   Okay, this review needn’t ramble on as long as Nolan’s film. I’m glad I saw it. Sort of.

History Matters - Now More than Ever

    I snapped up a copy of David McCullough’s new History Matters the day it was published. He’s always been reliable to reward his readers with hours of being absorbed in some moment in history, and you feel you know and have befriended people who matter: Harry Truman, Teddy Roosevelt, John Adams – the list goes on and on.

   McCullough died 3 years ago, and so his daughter lovingly gathered various unpublished essays and has gifted us with them. The title is pitch perfect. History Matters. I’d add Now more than Ever. In our vapid anti-intellectual day, when history increasingly is ignored or revisioned beyond recognition, history really matters – and McCullough shows us why (and it’s not so you can score and win on Jeopardy). Listen to McCullough with me:

   “History shows us how to behave. History teaches us what we stand for. Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant. It’s rude. It’s a form of ingratitude. I hope that we will become a people who are about the past because we care about the future. I hope that we will become a people who are less self-centered, self-conscious, and selfish.” That’s one small window into the treasure of these essays, and you can’t read those words without noticing why History Matters, and we’d best pay attention before it is too late for us, and we’re doing nothing more than writing a new chapter of history that will be a dark, embarrassing chapter in some future chronicle of history.

   There’s humor, a McCullough trademark. When asked why he had a horseshoe nailed about the door to his office for good luck, the great physicist Neils Bohr replied, “I’m told it works even if you don’t believe it.” McCullough finds some little marvelous detail which tells you everything about a person and a moment in history. Harry Truman got a call urging him to come to the White House. Not knowing Franklin Roosevelt had died, he ran (not “walked” but “ran”) there – stopping first by his office to get his hat (what McCullough calls “a nice period touch”).

   Truman matters, as does George Washington, and McCullough’s essays on these two should be read by every American today before we carry on as a people. This pair of essays exposes not just the best of these two remarkable men, but also the best in all of us, the ideals for which we might strive. Of Washington, McCullough draws our attention to the painting in the Capitol Rotunda of him handing over the command to Congress after the Revolutionary War. “This man who wouldn’t give up, who wouldn’t give in, wouldn’t give up no matter what, gives up the most important thing – power. He’s turning over command. No conquering general had ever done that. And when King George III heard this was going to happen, he said ‘If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.’ And he did. And he was.”

   And then Truman. He pushed through an unheard of (in those days – 1948!) a Civil Rights program – while he was running for President. His advisors told him he would lose if he did something that troubling to so many. Truman responded that, if he lost for that, he would have lost for a good cause. And there’s much more in McCullough’s short essay. Brilliant – and hugely important for us.

   I could say Read History Matters! I’d better say, since we’ve forgotten how to behave or what we really stand for, History does matter, so read history. It’s rude and ungrateful not to.

My Wager on Carbon

 After reading some glowing reviews, I snapped up a copy of author and environmentalist Paul Hawken’s new Carbon: The Book of Life, which eloquently demonstrates what we should already know: carbon feels nowadays like a problem (“carbon emissions,” “carbon footprint,” etc.), but carbon is the stuff that animates all of life, mine as I type, yours as you read, the world’s.

While praising carbon, and while dazzling us with the marvel that carbon is, Hawken is like a vigilant, protective parent as he frets over what humanity has done and persists in doing to this carbon-enlivened world we delight in. I am sure a high percentage of the American population will rush to politicize and thus dismiss his concerns. But count me in the camp of those in my neighborhood whose yard-signs say “Science is real.” And I am glad that there are scientists who knows things and are way smarter than I am.

Let me share a few of Hawken’s thoughts – and ask (even if you think worrying about the environment is only for the politically naïve) if we might be wise to take seriously and heed all the warning flares. A wager (the wager, really): Supposing all the educated scientists are wrong about the impending peril. If we conserve, if we protect this beautiful earth, no harm will be done – and wouldn’t we rather risk believing climate change will be catastrophic, doing something, and turning out to be wrong? than dismissing climate change as a fake problem, doing nothing (or adding to the problem), but turning out to be wrong? What moves so many people to bet the future of the world on science being a hoax?

Okay. Some of Hawken’s warnings: “If human-induced greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed, civilization will be.” “The current lifestyle of the world is maintained at the cost of a terrifying future.” “Commerce is eliminating life on earth to pay shareholder dividends.” Ouch. “We are trying to design life on our own terms even while we are killing life on its terms.” “There is a tacit assumption that the current fossil fuel-based energy system can be swapped out for renewables and the privileged can continue to live the way they do; this is magical thinking.”

As a Christian theologian, I can only say that the Bible quite clearly implies we are to be careful stewards of the beautiful earth God has entrusted to us. St. Francis of Assisi is something of the patron saint of conservation - and rightly so. He wasn’t scared of a future, though. He was so enraptured by the glories God crafted that he did not wish for a single voice in that great chorus to be silenced. Creation isn’t ours for the taking. It is God’s, and ours is to glorify, and cherish.

At the end (don’t be anxious about a spoiler alert!), Hawken underestimates things by saying “The cascade of troubling information about the future is staggering and dispiriting.” Then he wisely reminds us that “Without fail, meaningful change begins with one person, one idea, one aspiration, one audacious dream. Uniqueness is your birthright… Plant it and see what happens. Pessimism and gloom are cobwebs; brush them aside.” Indeed, “You can’t be both cautious and courageous, we must choose…Where you are is where you are most effective. The power to act does not lie elsewhere. Everyone on Earth comes first; there is no second.”

Cruelty and Compassion: "I am like you. This troubles me."

  On Wednesday I had a great conversation with friend, author and inspiring merchant of love and hope Julie Wood. You can watch! Her book, Changing the Message, narrates the cruelty inflicted on her beautiful son Ben – in the church, his happy, safe place – which sent him into a downward spiral, eventually taking his own life. A youth pastor, spewing vile condemnation at a vulnerable kid for being – although still too young to have had a romantic relationship – gay.

   I admire Julie’s courage and resilience, and her determination to save even one life, or one more person being treated as any less than a lovely child of God, when she sits in front of people and bares her soul, her deep woundedness. And yet she has a vast heart overflowing with love – even daring to understand mean people. No small feat, this daring to understand.

   In our conversation, I read some lyrics from Craig Hella Johnson’s moving, mind-boggling “Considering Matthew Shepard,” a profound setting to music of the story of the young man brutally murdered for being gay in Wyoming. The most poignant moment comes when gays and lesbians reflect on Matthew’s killers:

   “When I think of you, and honestly I don’t like to think about you. But sometimes I do. I am so angry and confused. Late one night I had a glimpse of something, I don’t even like to say this out loud, it isn’t even all that true, but I wondered for a moment, am I like you in any way? I pray the answer is no. I bet you once had hopes and dreams too. Some things we love get lost along the way. That’s just like me. I am like you, I get confused, I’m afraid, I’ve been reckless, unthinking, intoxicated, I’ve come unhinged and made mistakes and hurt people very much. I am like you; this troubles me.”

   Julie resonated to this thought, pondering how we are all broken, and how if we hurl rage toward those who seem so evil, we become like them. She asks What happened, what trauma happened to the youth minister who scathingly condemned Ben to hell that twisted his created goodness into monstrous meanness?

   Mind you, there’s forgiveness and there’s forgiveness. Finding a space of understanding, and letting go of understandable, natural recoiling against someone who did something horrible to you and yours never can imply that it was all right. We demand this never happen on earth, ever again, and then meander toward a place of compassion, even for the one who is so terribly wrong, and hope.

   In our agonizingly divided world, with so much toxic rancor, I wonder if Julie might be showing us a way forward. We get confused. We’ve made mistakes and hurt others, including ourselves. I am like you. This can be, albeit with the conviction that the standard for Christians, and for all people of goodwill (and this isn’t optional) is that we resist as zealously as we can any who do harm. We stand with those who are adversely impacted by what’s going on. That’s not partisan. That’s not even exclusively Christian. That’s just human.

Holy Land Pilgrimage, 2026!

   Come with me to Israel to explore the places where Jesus walked and so many Bible stories happened! From the Sea of Galilee to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, from Bethlehem to Magdala and Caesarea: moving, transformative places we will see together. More details are forthcoming - but for now mark your calendar for April 28-May 9. I've led two dozen pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and showing it to others is one of my great joys in life. Tentative cost will be around $4,750, which includes flights, accommodations, and on the ground travel. Reach out to me at james@mpumc.org with any questions or to express interest!