March 14, 2004

• Solidarity

  
  

  I've been thinking a lot about the bombing in Madrid.  So many of those scenes take me back to the feelings and thoughts I had after 9/11.  I've heard radio and television commentators making links between the Madrid atrocity and what we experienced here.  They pointed out that it was 911 days from September 11, 2001 to March 11, 2004. 

  
  

  I have grieved along with the survivors and the families of the victims in Madrid in the same way that I grieved for the pain of the 9/11 victims.  I find them haunting my dreams and I wake with tears on my face.

  
  

  I made the comment to a friend that we live in a horrible world when human life has no more value than to be used as political speech.  My friend considered that and answered, no and yes.  The world we live in isn't horrible, it's wonderful.  With a moment to reflect on that, I can agree.  The world is full of breathtakingly beautiful vistas.  I've been touched to my core by open-hearted love and support from friends and acts of unbelievable kindness by strangers.  I've given birth and I know the miracle of seeing a tiny body take it's first breath.  The world is a wonderful place.

  
  

  It would be easy in the face of the acts of terrorism I see on television, and shamefully thank God that it wasn't me, wasn't my children, to create a division in my mind between the us who would never do such things and the them who did.  But I wonder even as I think these thoughts whether such a division falsely separates me from the shadow side of what it means to be a human.

  
  

  In this wonderful world, people have a tendency to devalue human life.  Devaluing takes place every time we speak harshly to our child, take advantage of our neighbor or lie to avoid the consequences of truth.  We don't judge ourselves so harshly, we say, "Well, at least I didn't ..." but we did.  Anytime we refuse to see the person before us with eyes of honest seeing, we devalue him.  There is a sense in which we kill the people around us everyday by refusing to allow them to be who they really are, to be real in our eyes.  No, I don't plant bombs.  But I've been a child on the receiving end of verbal abuse and I believe I'm not too far out on a limb when I say that abuse kills, it wounds and kills the spirit of a human who is changed, has a part of his life potential lost.  And yet, I hear harsh words come from my own mouth as though I have no memory of that pain.

  
  

  I find when I search my heart that I have solidarity with those who mourn because my experience gives me empathy and insight into their suffering.  I also find and uncomfortable solidarity with those who destroy because I have been destructive.  I don't know, I think it's too early to know who was responsible for Thursday's attack.  I've been reminded of nothing so much as the Oklahoma City bombing and how in the first hours after that attack the focus was on "foreign terrorists" only it turned out to be someone who looked like he could have been any American kid.

  
  

  As we wait to learn what the investigation uncovers, I hope that we will be slow to judge groups of people based on the actions of a few.  I want to remember that there is no "us" and "them", there's just a painful continuum on which we live and we could all say of those who commit such acts, "There but for the grace of God, go I."

  
  

  *****

  
  

  In my meditation over the past several days, searching for understanding and hope I have been reminded of the work of another poet.  The story of Basque poet, Manuel de Unamuno is worth repeating before I share his poem.  In 1936 he was an elderly professor at the University of Salamanca.  Known for his outspoken criticism of Franco and the fascist cause, he found himself staring at the fascist General Milan-Astray over the barrel of a gun.  Unamuno said to him, "At times to be silent is to lie.   You will win because you have enough brute force.  But you will not convince.  For to convince you need to persuade.  And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: reason and right."  The general shouted, "Death to intelligence!  Long live death!" and drove the ailing poet out of the university.

  
  

  Within a week, Unamuno suffered a heart attack and died.  Yet almost 70 years later, he and his words are still remembered in Spain (and obviously elsewhere because I have them here on my desk.)  Except for his association with Unamuno's story, the name of the general has long since fallen into obscurity.  It is my hope that in this wonderful world, compassion and joy, sacrifice and solidarity will slways outlive anger, hate, and destruction.  In the face of his own trouble and grief, Unamuno wrote the following poem:

  
  

  Throw Yourself Like Seed

  
  

  Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
  sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
  that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
  the man who wants to live is the man in whom life
  is abundant.
  
  Now you are only giving food to that final pain
  which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
  but to live is to work, and the only thing
  which lasts
  is the work; start then, turn to the work.
  
  Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your
  own field,
  don't turn your face for that would be to turn it
  to death,
  and to not let the past weigh your motion.

  
  

  Leave what's alive in the furrow, what's dead
  in yourself,
  for life does not move in the same way as a group
  of clouds;
  from your work you will be able one day to
  gather yourself.

  
  

  Manuel de Unamuno

  
  

  * Addendum - after one of the comments left earlier, I would like to make one thing perfectly clear.  When I speak of solidarity with those who have committed an atrocity like this bombing, I am not in any way suggesting that I approve or voluntarily align myself with the perpetrators of the act.  I am saying that I feel a unity with these people because when I look into my own heart, I recognize the same seeds of inhumanity that taken to their logical end would have me commiting acts that abuse and dehumanize others.  I can't imagine myself ever making or planting a bomb, but that doesn't mean that I can say I have no part of that evil in my heart.  It isn't comfortable to recognize that I have the same feelings or predisposition to devalue others for my own ends.  It is the truth. 

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