Loving the Warriors... and the Haters
I remember September 11th like it was yesterday. The first thing I remember is that my kids were in school about three and half miles from the smoking wreckage of the Pentagon. The next thing I remember is that my husband’s office was between the White House and the Capital– where the fourth plane was headed - and that he couldn’t get to the kids because everyone was running, driving and walking out of the city for their lives. The next image that swims into view was me - stuck in Los Angeles for a week away from my family and friends in NY and DC who were suffering so terribly. For the first and last time in years, I was glued to CNN to watch the tragedy unfold. Even LA shut down for three days, the American People were so shocked – and afraid.
But then what I remember was love. The great outpouring of support for the victims and their families - the calls for tolerance and not to continue the cycle of hate. My neighbors and country responded to those calls – for a while.
A Decade of Conflict
I’m very conflicted about the wars that have raged on our taxdollars over the past ten years. While I abhor violence, I’m not foolish enough to think that it doesn’t play a role in keeping our world from falling into chaos. My brother’s an ex-cop. My son wants to be a Marine. I live and work in Washington and I read the paper, struggling to understand the difficult choices my neighbors who run the country have to make on a daily basis. What I know about the policies and practices that try to keep our world safe reminds me that there is no simple solution. And so I wrestle with how I should feel about the fact that some of my taxdollars, which I give freely to the government that does so much for us, are used to drop bombs that birth widows and orphans.
My personal approach is not to engage in conflict. I vote my conscience. I don’t give energy to negative thoughts. I teach my children tolerance, acceptance and love. I contribute to good causes that help those widows. But that doesn’t relieve the conflict around me, or in me.
The Warriors
Nowhere is the conflict more apparent to me than when I think about the warriors themselves. In Arlington, VA where I live you see them on the streets, on the metro, in the coffee shops. They are the ones spending my taxdollars to create death and destruction. And they are the ones upholding my freedom and helping the children helping the children who are homeless because of their violence. Some of them are dear friends. All of them have my love, respect and sympathy.
Recently I worked on a project that took me into the halls of the Pentagon itself. The building has been nicely refurbished with a somber memorial and a more secure entrance that at least kept a crazy gunslinger at bay – instead of letting him run rampant inside - a few months before I took the job. On my first visit there I wasn’t sure what to expect. I know members of the military, but I’d never been in such a concentrated hotbed of them. What would the energy be like? Would it be brewing with anger as they plotted bombing campaigns and funding strategies to get more guns? Or would Defense Secretary Gates’ and Admiral Mullens’ balanced and – in my view – rational energy pervade?
As I walked the halls, had the meetings, joked with my friends over lunch, I made an effort to see them all with my magical eyes, and what I saw were people driven by a purpose, a belief, that what they did was noble, important and necessary. Many were weary. All were respectful. I liked that I could make them relax by seeing them with love, even though that wasn’t my job there.
But as I left the building I had another uncomfortable thought. The people we fight. The haters – both inside and outside our borders, inside and outside our institutions – they are also driven by purpose and a belief that what they do is important. They are also warriors in this fight. Are they worthy of my love and respect?
Loving the Haters
I do not love or respect hatred. The ends do not justify the means and hatred is a means. Even if pursuing a worthy goal, hatred brings consequences that tarnish the achievement, leave more heartache and breed more violence – if not to the body then to the soul. There are warriors on both sides that are noble and warriors who are haters. I choose not to respect or support the haters, no matter who they fight for. But I must love the haters themselves, for otherwise I am no better than they.
I must tell you that this hurts me. Opening myself up to hatred is painful. It reminds me that I am capable of hate myself. But that’s not the point. The only way I can combat the haters is to love them. I do not condone their actions; I support those that fight them in the flesh; I would be happy to see them behind bars. But I do not hate them. Selfishly, and to protect myself from becoming a hater, I send them my love.
My Prayer
On this day of remembrance, I muster my heartforce to send out streams of love to all those who have suffered at the hands of hate, and to those who have wielded the instruments of suffering. I don’t do this for noble reasons and I don’t do it easily. I do it because it is the only way I know how to fight.
Tell me, how has this decade of conflict affected you, your neighbors and your world? How do you cope? How do you fight? Share your stories, please.
Cross-posted on OwningPink.com OwningPink.com
Categories: witness, living out loud, love
Tags: love son september 11th 9/11 work husband family real life
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Nobly conceived and beautifully written. Here are some thoughts of my own:
Most, if not all of us, in America today regard religious wars as abhorrent. But the fact is that today we are engaged in a religious war. The reason many of us are saying this war is unwinnable, is because we don’t know how to fight a religious war.
There was a time, not too long ago, when Americans understood that they needed God to fight their battles--that He is not only a God of love, but a God of war, a God of judgment (Rev. 19:11-15; The Battle Hymn of the Republic). The words of most if not all of our founding Fathers reveal this understanding. They may not all have been "fundamentalist" Christians but they understood, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, that “God rules in the affairs of men.” The greatest expression of this understanding from an American politician can be heard in Lincoln’s wartime speeches and writings, summed up most beautifully in his Second Inaugural address. The length and ferocity of the American Civil War, and the mountains of casualties it exacted on both sides, can only be explained by the religious commitment of both--ironically to the same God.
Today we are engaged in another religious war. This one, however, is between the adherents of different gods--on one side Allah, the unforgiving god of Muhammad and the suicide bomber, and on the other side a strange melange of gods and anti-gods, who can never seem to agree on who or what they are fighting, or even if they are fighting for anything worthwhile.
To succeed in a religious war--a war between gods, or between men and God--we need to assess the power of the forces we are fighting both for and against. In the long history of Islamic jihads, Allah has proven himself a power to be reckoned with. For long centuries, up to and including our own, he contested the power of the Christian God, as well as other gods, with significant victories. During recent centuries of Christian (and anti-Christian) dominance and rivalry, he fell on hard times; but he is once again making a serious challenge to the faith (and unfaith) of rival gods and men. It would be a serious mistake on our part to misjudge the power of this challenge.
Lincoln succeeded in his struggle against the God of human slavery by his reliance on the true God whose “truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32) Lincoln believed, with Benjamin Franklin and George Washington in the Revolutionary War, that “God rules in the affairs of men.” We would do well to follow his example.
I remember that day that looked so much like today, with fewer clouds in the sky. At first I couldn't believe that anyone would intentionally do this. I thought it was an air traffic control mistake. I remember having to explain what happened to my six year old when I didn't understand it myself. I remember walking to my children's school and offering to help. The man sitting next to me spoke with an accent and said, "I left my country to get away from this." I stood next to another school volunteer whose wife was on an airplane that morning at Dulles. He still didn't know what plane had hit the Pentagon. Fortunately she was on a different plane, stranded on the tarmac, and has become a friend of mine.
Two days after the attacks, I stood in front of a class of 45 students, some soldiers, some seventeen year olds, some retirees finally pursuing their degrees. In the class sat two women in head scarves. As students struggled to discuss the stress they had experienced one young man in his early 30s stood and looked around the class. His dark eyes reflected fear ande determination at the same time. "This is not Islam," he said, "This is not Islam!"
I was pregnant with my oldest when Timothy McVey blew up a daycare center in Oklahoma City. He was a Christian. I don't blame Christians, and I don't blame Muslims. I try daily to understand the suffering and hurt that drives people to hate others enough to not only make sacrifice themselves, but murder others. It is not even the haters I pray for, it is the world that cares so little, it allows suffering to create the haters.