Its Easter today and spring came this week – or so says the calendar. I’m not a Christian, so I’m not celebrating Easter. But I do love the messages associated with this time of year… renewal, rebirth, light from darkness.
This last week has felt confusing to me as we observed the fifth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq followed almost immediately by the advent of spring. It felt like the darkest of nights was pressed too close for comfort against the possibilities of a new day. Emotionally I haven’t been able to move that fast. And just to underscore the point, we’ve gotten 5-6 inches of snow where I live in the last two days and it is snowing again this morning as I write. Indeed old man winter is fighting to give way to the coming of spring.
For many of us this winter has been a long one. And I’m not just talking about the weather. The worst of it started 7 and a half years ago when the Supreme Court declared George Bush to be president. That was all followed closely by 9/11, Afghanistan, then Iraq. And things have just grown darker since then.
There are times I play with fantasy and wonder what might have happened differently. What if we had a leader that responded to 9/11 as we would have wanted her to? How would we have scripted something different? I know many felt that moment right after the event when, in all the shock and grief, it seemed as if the whole world came together and was ready to help with the healing. But we all know that moment was squandered by those who took us to war and told us to go shopping.
Is renewal still possible after those fatal errors? There are certainly some wounds that will take more than a lifetime to heal. And we need to honor those wounds in our lives and memories with the respect they deserve.
But the capacity of the human spirit is an amazing thing. I was just reminded of that when RUKind posted a link in a comment to Nightprowlkitty’s essay Friday about the film Beyond Belief.
Susan Retik and Patti Quigley are two ordinary soccer moms living in the affluent suburbs of Boston until tragedy strikes. Rather than turning inwards, grief compels these women to focus on the country where the terrorists who took their husbands’ lives were trained: Afghanistan.
Over the course of two years, as they cope with loss and struggle to raise their families as single mothers, these extraordinary women dedicate themselves to empowering Afghan widows whose lives have been ravaged by decades of war, poverty and oppression – factors they consider to be the root causes of terrorism. As Susan and Patti make the courageous journey from their comfortable neighborhoods to the most desperate Afghan villages, they discover a powerful bond with each other, an unlikely kinship with widows halfway around the world, and a profound way to move beyond tragedy.
From the ruins of the World Trade Center to those of Kabul and back, theirs is a journey of personal strength and international reconciliation, and a testament to the vision that peace can be forged… one woman at a time.
Here again are the words from the trailer:
Beyond tragedy
there is hope.
Beyond hatred
there is compassion.
Beyond our borders
two women discover we are all connected.
Beyond belief.
But it’s not “beyond belief.” These are two real women who are acting in the real world. They are demonstrating for all of us what the true spirit of renewal can be…even in the wake of terrible tragedy. What if their way of responding was the expected course? This is not outside the bounds of what the human spirit is capable of. Certainly it is the more difficult path. Much easier to feed into hate, revenge and violence (in word and deed). But if we ever needed an example of the folly of that way, we’ve seen it demonstrated clearly over the last few years.
So today, on this spring day, I want to claim the path of renewal as demonstrated by Susan Retik and Patti Quigley for myself… and someday for my country.
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have been inspired by Susan and Patti (all my gratitude to RUKind for introducing me to them!), they have started a non-profit called Beyond the 11th. Show them some love!!
But is it really easier (to feed into hate, etc.)? I’m a hot-tempered Irish woman with Pict blood, and an Aries sun, if that matters. I know anger from experience. It creates deep, deep groves in body, mind, soul. If I give into anger, I’m there, 100 percent. And it’s not a good place to be. It feeds on itself, like fire, takes all the oxygen in the room. So, sort of like I gave up chocolate because it gives me migraines, I’ve given up anger because it gives me… migraines.
Compassion, forgiveness, humor is, to me, really the ‘easier, softer way.’ The groves they create in me are just as deep, just as wide, as anger, but instead of grooves with hard walls made of rock and cement, they covered with soft loam and wildflowers.
It’s a choice. I truly think it really is just that simple. One is a piece of shit, the other isn’t.
i was on-line with a group of people that had been communicating with one another for a couple of years. some of the people were in NYC, some watched the fighter jets deployed (i forget now, from Virginia?), some were in PA, we were ‘live blogging’ before there was such a thing.
it didn’t take too long for some… for the shock to turn to incredible anger and a need to retaliate. by that evening, there were calls to bomb the *(*&% out of Afghanistan.
i considered myself sort of a student of the process of grief, so i kept waiting for my anger to hit. you know, it never did. it still hasn’t. to admit that then was tantamount to not caring about the dead, which it wasn’t, of course. the events of that day were simply to large for me to respond with anger. and it was even more personal… i didn’t know if my brother was at the Pentagon, or not, that day, until the evening when he called (the phones lines were screwed up all day) to say he was okay and everyone he knew was okay. so, for me, relief was the overwhelming emotion. relief and shock.
anger didn’t materialize until GWB started talking. until Ruddy and Co. started talking about what a ‘leader’ GWB was. until GWB used the word ‘crusade’ that next Sunday. then the anger came and i went ballastic. and turned off the television.
Sunday muse for the morning. have no idea if it applies to this essay, or not. apologies if not.
And this one is particulalry fascinating.
What If …Al Gore had been President on 9/11? Remember that would have been a different All than the one we know today, too.
Given all the warnings, would it even still have happened?
If it had happened, how would Gore have responded at a time when the whole world was ready to unify behind the US?
The difference in the world we would have are about as night and day as you can get.
Happy Spring, everyone
of government generally but especially when it (through its media toadies) tells me I should be angry about something.
In such situations, I’ve come to believe, I should be angry but not about what the government tells me to be angry.
Full disclosure: Life has taught me that the American People have been harmed vastly more by their own government than by any foreign enemy.
My Mother’s Name
My mother didn’t call herself a seamstress, but she sewed. She talked about putting labels inside our clothes that read, “Handmade, not homemade.” She was an artist with fabric. I loved her in ways that were primary, basic, not thought about, not thought out.
When I lost her, I lost the stitching of my life, the binding thread. For years I couldn’t do anything with the pieces left scattered about. She was the one who had held everything together. She was the pattern. She was the seam. She was the whole. Then, she was gone.
I was sixteen when I witnessed her leaving. I was astonished to see her vanish from this earth, this world she had brought me into, and I told her so. “Don’t go. Mom, don’t go.” Her hand was warm but the noise that rumbled out of her was a wild creature intent on escape. That’s when I first met Ruah. He comes eventually for all of us, and He had come for her then, swept up and swallowed her breath. He ripped open the fabric of her life, and she slipped from this world into the next.
In my life since, some people are red threads, some yellow, some blue, some gold. Now when they go, I gather the remaining ends and tie them together. I know there will always be a knot where the hole was, but the threads are bound tightly there too. A patched garment true, but handmade, just like my mother taught me to sew.
*Ruah is a Hebrew word for God, the Holy Spirit
KJ
Written for a university publication titled: “Women Honoring Women 2000”
just read “The Space Between Us’ by Thrity Umrigar. have you read it? not earth-shattering, but very, very good and highly applicable. in the back of the book there are some questions answered by the author, and one of them was, what does she think America’s apartheid has been? her answer was- Katrina.
Renewal. Deep from the soul.
Many beautiful comments here also.
I’m passing lotus flowers to both NL & kj.
I’ve just experienced the most difficult winter of my 41 years. I cried last week at the sight of a crocus…my kids thought I was crazy, if they only knew what that one, infinitesimally small miracle meant to me…they’ll get it one day, I know. I almost lost my dog-friend last week and today he is here with us, happy and healthy and even greeted us at the door this afternoon. Why is it you only appreciate something until you realize the possibility of losing it?
I hope you don’t mind if I share a photo of my kids in their Easter outfits at grandma’s house today…they were so cunning! Hannah found the “golden egg” with the hundred dollar bill in it!!!! Yeehaa!
Happy Spring NL!