Late Sunday afternoon I was settled on the couch, the hummingbird that had been adoring the patio hibiscus for a good part of the day had taken off in a frenzied search for sweeter flowers a few balconies over and I reluctantly decided to pick up the morning paper and give it a read. I don't have the stomach for news lately but out of years and years of habit I still pick up the paper and flip through the sections. It seems I do more skimming than detailed reading.
This Holy Spoon blog has sat idle for a few months as I have dealt with my own personal "to do" list. Doctor appointments and a couple of hospital visits have been written down, checked off, written down and checked off again. I've been anxious and bored and, for the times in between, I've been looking for things to do that would take my mind off of myself and focus it on helping others. I've always been a poetry nerd and Emily Dickinson's pretty words ran through my head. “If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, or cool one pain, or help one fainting robin up to his nest again, I shall not live in vain.”
I had also been looking for that "need to write" feeling that had slipped from my life in a sputtering gasp. When I opened the Sunday paper and saw the 9/11 anniversary coverage, I once again realized that my own problems are of little interest to me and even less interest to others and certainly nothing anyone would want to read about. I missed writing and I was beginning to wonder if one of my strongest beliefs would hold up: If we are quiet, if we are patient and if we simply "let it be" our inner voice will speak, sometimes softly and sometimes, for stubborn souls like mine, loudly and repeatedly. On Sunday, it shouted and I listened.
September 11, 2001. Sheer horror. The searing images of the towers and bodies falling are forever branded in our memory. It changed all of us.
I have never been a political savant. I follow political events but I am not an activist for any party's cause. I believe it's damn near impossible, especially post 9/11, to find a politician not motivated by greed or a narcissistic need to use the tragedy for his or her own fame. My political views align a bit left of the middle. And, unlike what polls say is the norm, I did not fall further to the right as I aged or after 9/11. Rather, I abandoned party lines altogether and began to search for more truths, more spirituality and more humanity.
After 9/11, I watched some groups of Americans, fueled by ignorance and stoked by anger, spew hatred until it multiplied and reached far beyond the already irrational fear that all who wore a headscarf were members of Al-Qaeda. Hate stretched its ugly arms and embraced the notion that anyone who was different was worthy of scorn. “The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt," said educator and theologian Frederick Buechner.
As the political voices in our country became louder and shriller I found my own political stance fall away entirely. I did not want to lend my voice to the already crowded landscape of right wing email forwarders, left wing conspiracy theorists, the Tea Bag nation or anyone trying to scream over a political adversary. Nor did I want to become a housebound recluse, fed up with the political rhetoric, who lived only for myself.
If I had to cull it down to the most significant change in my own life since 9/11, it is my refusal to accept the status quo in my little section of our vast universe. Life is so very, very short. I actively sought people of like mind and I found them in abundance.
Earlier this year I had written about my personal relationship with religion, the journey I had traveled and my desire to find a place of worship where equality and diversity reigned. It's not been an easy road. And for anyone who knows me well, I am not one who shouts my religious views to the world. I believe in a deeply personal relationship with my God and I am respectful of other people who practice their own religion in peace and who do not seek to elicit change through tyranny and violence. I believe the greater good comes from living a life that emphasizes charity and compassion and that good people abide in all religions.
Since February of this year we have been attending Hollywood United Methodist Church where the belief statement reads like this:
We believe that God is LOVE, that all people are welcome and equal in the family of God, and that God is for us, not against us.
We believe in Jesus Christ, the son of God, whose example of radical love and justice we seek to follow.
We believe in the Holy Spirit as God’s constant presence in our lives and in our hearts, always with us to remind us of God’s acceptance and love for us, and empowering us to do God’s work.
We believe in the Bible, interpreted through the lenses of our reason, experience and tradition, and wherever it agrees with the fundamental truth of God’s love and grace as revealed by the life of Christ.
We believe that God calls us to actively build the kingdom of God on earth, that being Christian requires us to work for social justice.
We believe in peace over war.
We believe in grace over works.
We believe in forgiveness over sin and judgment.
We believe in the power of prayer, that fear is not the only force at work in the world today.
We believe in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless, healing the sick, and mending the broken.
We believe that when you truly embrace diversity, you embrace God, that all are fully welcome regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, occupation, or station in life.
We believe that it’s good to question.
We may not always believe exactly the same thing, but the people of Hollywood UMC believe in God and each other.
It has been a remarkable experience in a diverse congregation that welcomes all. No offense to any of the other churches I have ever attended but I have never woken on a Sunday morning and wanted to take my place in the pews. In my post 9/11 life I have chosen to turn away from the hateful refrains of politicians and ill informed religious leaders and focus on peace and charity. As Mother Teresa tried to teach us, "If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."
I write this, not as an advertisement for the church, although we could certainly use more people in our congregation, but rather as a reminder to myself to keep tuning out the nasty rhetoric and keep working to make my little corner of the world a better place to live.
