peace – Page 5 – Dan Harper

Flower celebration, 2006

This flower celebration was led by Rev. Dan Harper and Emma Mitchell, Director of Religious Education. As usual, the material below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Homily and story copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.

Story for all ages — The Story of the Flower Service

83 years ago, Norbert and Maja Capek were ministers of a Unitarian congregation far away from here in Europe, in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Most members of their congregation had left other religions to become Unitarians, and many of these people did not want to be reminded of the religions they had left behind. So Norbert and Maja Capek decided to create a new ritual for their congregation — a Flower Ceremony.

One Sunday in June, they asked everyone in the congregation to bring a flower to the worship service. When people arrived on Sunday morning, all the flowers were gathered together in vases, and Norbert Capek said a short blessing over the flowers. It seems to me that the flowers became symbols of what it means to be a human being: every flower was different, every flower was beautiful in its own way. And at the end of the worship service, everyone went up and took a flower, a different flower from the one that they had brought, took that flower home with them as a symbol of their connection to everyone else in the congregation.

We are going to have our own Flower Celebration, or Flower Communion, right here in our own congregation. In just a moment, we will all have a chance to come forward and place a flower in the vases on the table here. If you forgot to bring a flower with you this morning, or if you didn’t know that you were supposed to bring a flower, you will find extra flowers on the table over there, and you can come up, pick a flower you like, and place it in the central vase.

Because we value our children highly — for our children represent new beginnings and new possibilities — I am going to let the children be the first ones to place their flowers in the vase here. I invite the children to come forward now, and you may bring an adult along if you wish….

[Children come forward]

And now I invite everyone to come forward and place a flower in the vase here.

[All come forward]

This short blessing was written by Norbert Capek:

Infinite Spirit of Life, we ask your blessing on these, your messengers of fellowship and love. May they remind us, amid diversities of knowledge and of gifts, to be one in desire and affection, and in devotion to your will. May they also remind us of the value of comradeship, of doing and sharing alike. May we cherish friendship as one of your most precious gifts. May we not let awareness of another’s talents discourage us, or sully our relationship, but may we realize that, whatever we can do, great or small, the efforts of all of us are needed to do your work in this world.

[All come forward during this.]

Now that we have gathered all the flowers together, I will read a short prayer written by Norbert Capek:

In the name of Providence, which implants in the seed the future of the tree and in the hearts of men [and women] the longing for people living in [human] love; in the name of the highest, in whom we move and who makes the mother [and father], the brother and sister what they are; in the name of sages and great religious leaders, who sacrificed their lives to hasten the coming of [peace and justice];– let us renew our resolution sincerely to be real brothers and sisters regardless of any kind of bar which estranges [one from another]. In this holy resolution may we be strengthened, knowing that we are [one] family, that one spirit, the spirit of love, unites us, [that we] endeavor for a more perfect and more joyful life. Amen.

Readings

The first reading is from a short biography of Norbert Capek, written by Richard Henry for the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society.

“On the 28th of March, 1941, [Norbert] Capek and his daughter, Zora, aged 29, were arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Pankrac Prison. Zora was accused of listening to foreign broadcasts and distributing the content of some BBC transmissions; Capek himself of listening to foreign broadcasts and of “high treason.” Several of his sermons were cited as “evidence” of the latter charge. Listening to foreign broadcasts was a capital offense under the Protectorate. Two separate trials were held, the first at Pankrac Prison soon after their arrest; the second, an appeal of the original decision, at Dresden in April 1942. The appeals court found Capek innocent of the treason charge, recommending that, given his age, the year between his arrest and the appeals trial be counted toward his jail time. The Gestapo, ignoring the court’s recommendation, nonetheless sent Capek to Dachau, Zora to forced labor in Germany. Capek’s name appears among prisoners sent on an invalid transport on October 12, 1942 to Hartheim Castle, near Linz, Austria, where he died of poison gas.”

Not long before he was put to death by the Nazis, Dr. Capek wrote this prayer:

It is worthwhile to live and fight courageously for sacred ideals.
Oh blow ye evil winds into my body’s fire; my soul you’ll never unravel.
Even though disappointed a thousand times or fallen in the fight and everything would worthless seem,
I have lived amidst eternity.
Be grateful, my soul,
My life was worth living.
He who was pressed from all sides but remained victorious in spirit is welcomed into the choir of heroes.
He who overcame the fetters giving wing to the mind is entering into the golden age of the victorious.

HOMILY — “Maja Capek, Flowers, and Totalitarianism”

You all probably know that our congregation dates back to 1708. It started out as one of the established Puritan congregations of the Massachusetts theocracy, but eventually the congregation gradually moved towards a more liberal Unitarian theology. So it is we often think of our congregational history as a single long chain of existence from those early beginnings nearly three hundred years ago; and so it is that we post bronze plaques at the front and the rear of this room listing all the ministers who have served this congregation.

Of course, life is rarely that simple; and the history of our congregation is more complex than the list of ministers would have it seem. For in fact, our congregation today is the carrier of the institutional existences of two other New Bedford area congregations: First Universalist Church, which had its start in the 1820’s, became a part of our church in 1930; and North Unitarian Church, founded by First Unitarian as a settlement house in the North End in 1894, affiliated with the American Unitarian Association as separate congregation in 1941, but when their building burned down in 1974, they essentially merged back into First Unitarian. Therefore, our single list of ministers should really be three lists of ministers: the ministers of First Unitarian, the ministers of First Universalist, and the ministers of North Unitarian.

I wish we had those other two lists of ministers posted on bronze plaques here in this room, because if we did I could point to the name of the minister whom I consider to be the most remarkable minister who ever served one of the three root congregations of our present congregation. That minister’s name is Maja Capek, who was minister of North Unitarian Church for the first three years of its existence as a congregation.

Maja Oktavek was born in Bohemia on April 8, 1888. She came to the United States in 1907 when she was 19 years old, obtained a degree in library science from Columbia University, and went to work for the New York Public Library. There in the library she met Norbert Capek, a liberal minister affiliated with the Union of Baptist Churches of Moravia and Slovakia. (In 1910, he had tried to get the American Unitarian Association to support his efforts to promote liberal religion, but to no avail.) Capek had escaped the Austro-Hungarian Empire because of his writings which promoted Czech nationalism, and were critical of the state-supported Roman Catholic church. Norbert and Maja were married on June 23, 1917.

Norbert tried to continue working as a Baptist minister in this country, but he and Maja were becoming increasingly liberal in their religious views. Then in 1920, they decided to send their children to the Sunday school of the First Unitarian Church of Essex County, New Jersey. The children loved it so much, Maja and Norbert attended the church; and Norbert and Maja liked it so much they became members of the congregation in 1921.

By this time, the Capeks had decided to return to their homeland. After the end of the first world war, Czechoslovakia had achieved independence, and once the Roman Catholic church was no longer supported by the state, many people left Catholicism, searching for a new and more liberal alternative. Maja and Norbert Capek founded the Prague Congregation of Liberal Religious Fellowship; I say that Maja and Norbert founded the congregation together, even though the standard histories give all the credit to Norbert; because we all know perfectly well that in those days, the wives of male ministers did as much work as their husbands while receiving none of the credit. And the Prague congregation, and Norbert, recognized Maja’s contributions, for Maja was ordained in 1926.

The Prague congregation searched for alternatives to the Roman Catholic worship that had dominated them before national independence. It was in response to that search that Norbert — probably with help from Maja — developed the Flower Celebration. The very first Flower Celebration was celebrated on June 23, 1923. The celebration was seen in part as a replacement of the Roman Catholic communion service:– stripped of all the weighty Catholic theological baggage, stripped of the Biblical references to bread and wine, the Flower Celebration became instead a way to celebrate the essential connection of all persons to one another.

During the next decade and a half, the Prague Unitarian congregation became the largest Unitarian congregation in the world, with over 3,200 members. That is more than twice as large as today’s largest Unitarian Universalist congregation. I believe liberal religion in Czechoslovakia in those years between the two world wars represented a new sense of freedom for Czechs; it represented the end of domination by the outside forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, by the Roman Catholic church. But soon a new spectre of domination would rise over Europe.

In 1939, Maja Capek came to the United States to raise money to assist refugees trying to escape Nazi Germany. Not long after she left, the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, ending that small nation’s brief history as an independent country. It was not safe for her to return to occupied Czechoslovakia, and in 1940 she wound up settling in the North End of New Bedford, where she found a vibrant community of people from central and eastern Europe. Of course she immediately became involved in the Unity Chapel affiliated with First Unitarian’s settlement house, and soon she had arranged for North Unitarian Church to have separate institutional existence; and she became the first minister of North Unitarian Church.

But Norbert and their youngest daughter Zora remained trapped in Nazi Germany. Norbert and Zora were arrested on March 28, 1941; and Norbert was executed by the Nazis in the Dachau concentration camp on October 12, 1942.

I cannot help but think that the Capeks’ Unitarianism represented a threat to the tyranny and totalitarianism of Nazi Germany. Any religion that preaches the essential connection of all human beings must be a threat to tyrants; for tyrants maintain their power by driving people apart. Any minister who preaches that one spirit of love unites us all must also be a threat to tyrants; for tyrants push hatred on us, and love is always a threat to manipulative hatred.

I cannot help but believe that even today the Flower Celebration developed by the Capeks remains a threat to totalitarianism. When we celebrate flowers, we celebrate a spirit of beauty that feeds our souls, a spirit of beauty that encourages us to be better human beings, a spirit of beauty that encourages us towards new life. But the would-be tyrants try to seduce us with a lesser beauty:– an empty beauty that cuts us off from other people, a selfish beauty that tries to get us to consume selfishly, a hateful beauty that divides us along the lines of race and gender and class.

In this spirit we celebrate our own Flower Celebration this morning. We celebrate the true beauty of the world, as symbolized by flowers. We celebrate a beauty that seems fragile; but it is a beauty which is vibrantly alive, and like the grass that grows through concrete, it is a beauty that can quietly resist tyranny. We celebrate beauty, and we celebrate the freedom inherent in liberal religion: not just a freedom of mind, but the freedom of our hearts, the freedom of our spirits, the freedom of our bodies; we celebrate freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from violence.

The symbolism of this Flower Celebration is simple: we commit ourselves to spreading beauty in the world; a wild, free, raging beauty that will brook no tyranny, that will not allow domination of body or spirit or mind. May it be so.

All Kinds of Patriots

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2005 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The reading, a poem about the horrors of war, is not included here due to copyright restrictions.

SERMON — “All Kinds of Patriots”

Today is the Sunday closest to November 11, Veteran’s Day, the holiday when we honor all those men and women who served in the armed forces of this country; November 11 is also Armistice Day, the day when we commemorate the signing of the 1918 armistice which put an end to “the war to end all wars.” But war is one of those topics we Unitarian Universalists struggle with. Some of us oppose all war; others of us believe war is sometimes necessary. So on this weekend when we honor veterans and commemorate the end to World War I, let’s explore what, if anything, we hold in common about war and warfare. Not that we’ll come up with a final answer this morning, but it’s the beginning of a conversation, the beginning of an exploration.

As Unitarian Universalists, we are firmly within the tradition of Western religion, and while individually we may find inspiration in other, non-Western, religious traditions, we are nonetheless each embedded in a society with deep roots in the Jewish and Christian religions. Thus it is that when a man like Martin Luther King asked us to consider who was our neighbor, we know he meant to refer to the teachings of Jesus, who is reported to have said, treat your neighbor as you yourself would like to be treated. Thus it is that we are all familiar with the teachings of the book of Exodus, which tells the story of how Moses led his people out of slavery and into the freedom of the desert; and the story tells how in the desert God appears to Moses and gives Moses a series of moral precepts, or commandments, including the commandment, “You shall not murder” [NRSV]; or, as this commandment is more familiarly (though perhaps less accurately) translated, “Thou shalt not kill.” [KJV] Therefore, as people of the Western religious tradition, we have gut-level knowledge of these two ethical teachings: treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated, and thou shall not kill.

Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the High Middle Ages and who was one of the greatest philosophers of the Western tradition, realized that these two moral precepts seemed to indicate that all war must be immoral. But in his book the Summa Theologica, he argued that in fact some wars can be considered just wars. And Thomas Aquinas offers three criteria to help us judge whether a given war is actually a just war or not. Let’s look at those three classic criteria for determining if a war is just.

For one of his three criteria, Thomas Aquinas writes that a just war must have a just cause:

“…[A] just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault. Wherefore Augustine says: ‘A just war is wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly.’ ”

In the ongoing discussion about the Iraq war, we have been hearing both pro-war and anti-war people repeatedly referring to this criterion. But this is a criterion we religious liberals are wary of using. As Universalists we are certain that love that will transform the world, not violence or vengeance. Therefore, while we might be able to condone warfare as a short-term necessity, it seems difficult for us to justify it in terms of vengeance or punishment.

Another criterion for just war, according to Thomas Aquinas, goes like this:

“…[I]t is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil…. For it may happen that the war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention. Hence Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 74): ‘The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war.’ ”

Again, this criterion for war remains current, and we’ve heard supporters and opponents of the Iraq war using it. We religious liberals like to use this criterion. With our strong emphasis on the dictates of conscience, we spend a lot of time thinking about intentions, and we well know that the best actions can be sullied by wicked intentions. But we are most likely to use this criterion at a personal level, for those who serve or have served in the armed forces: if your overall intention is honorable and good, by the dictates of your conscience, then your own military service is justified and justifiable. But while necessary on a personal level, this criterion does not seem to us to be a sufficient reason for going to war.

Which brings us to Thomas Aquinas’s third criterion for a just war, which requires:

“…the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged. For it is not the business of a private individual to declare war, because he can seek for redress of his rights from the tribunal of his superior…. And as the care of the common weal is committed to those who are in authority, it is their business to watch over the common weal of the city, kingdom or province subject to them. And just as it is lawful for them to have recourse to the sword in defending that common weal against internal disturbances, when they punish evil-doers… so too, it is their business to have recourse to the sword of war in defending the common weal against external enemies….”

As religious liberals, this particular criterion for just war is most problematic for us. Thomas Aquinas assumes here that society is based upon a hierarchy and authority that begins with God, who is the ruler of us all. From God, power flows down to ecclesiastical and governmental authorities, who rule masses of people, and finally trickles down to individuals. We religious liberals have a different vision of society that begins with the connections that bind us each to each; these connections lead us to develop covenants, explicit statements of how we are bound together, and the promises we make to each other; and ends with the possibility that any or all of us can have direct experience of the transcending mystery of the universe, from which experience we might be able to draw new moral and ethical insights to share with all those to whom we are connected, and with whom we are bound together by covenant. Therefore, we find that we religious liberals cannot really use this criterion to determine whether a war is just.

Indeed, we are not entirely comfortable with any of these three classic criteria for what constitutes a just war. As Unitarian Universalists, we have two ultimate authorities: first, our individual consciences; second, the communities to which we are bound by covenant. So our determination of a just war is made not because someone in authority over us says that a given war is just, nor because we wish to punish someone else; and while we require good intentions, good intentions alone are not enough of a reason to go to war. Rather, we look to our individual consciences, and to our abiding understanding of the transforming power of love.

Because we recognize the authority of individual conscience, we are going to find Unitarian Universalists with a wide range of understandings about what constitutes a just war. Among our ranks, we have many veterans who have served in the armed forces and who are proud of what they have accomplished through their service. We also have conscientious objectors who have refused to serve in the military on moral and religious grounds, and who are proud of their adherence to principle. I have talked with both veterans and conscientious objectors who say that their Unitarian Universalist faith gave them strength as they lived out their very different choices.

Therefore, as a religious lbieral I don’t think it’s possible to describe a war as just, any more than I can describe a war as purple, or fuzzy. If I describe a war as just, what do I say to the conscientious objector who feels all wars are unjust? If I describe a war as unjust, what do I say to the veteran who served honorably in that war? As a religious liberal, I find that I am not inclined to make some straightforward, abstract judgment about whether a given war is just or unjust. There is no easy determination; which is so often the case for us religious liberals — there’s no one easy answer.

Wars are big, messy. A soldier has a very different experience of war than does a child. As we heard in today’s reading, a child in Belfast in 1940 could be fascinated by the pieces of shrapnel she found; she must have had a very different experience from the pilot of the plane that dropped the bombs on Belfast. It’s impossible to reduce war’s bigness and messiness to the point where we can all them unequivocally just or unequivocally unjust. There are moral consequences of going to war; or of not going to war; and whatever action we take, we are bound to face up to those moral consequences. Any action we take is going to have good consequences and bad consequences. We make the best choices we can, but we can never make perfect choices, and so we often have to deal with the unintended consequences of our choices; and we have to deal with the consequences of the choices made by people we are in relationship to.

Nor can we pass off blame for unintended consequences onto someone else, but because of our understanding of relationships and of covenant we should not do that. I have opposed the war in Iraq from the very beginning, and it would be easy for me to say that, because of my opposition, I am not responsible for what happened in Abu Ghraib prison; but I have to accept responsibility for what happened there, because of my deep connections to this country. It’s easier to say, “Don’t blame me, I voted for John Kerry,” or to say, “People who oppose the war are destroying this country.” It’s easier to point your finger at someone else and say, “I didn’t do it — it’s them.” But if we’re going to get serious about the transforming power of love, we cannot divide the world up into “us” and “them.”

In our Western religious tradition, Jesus of Nazareth remains one of our most influential teachers and prophets. Jesus offered some cogent advice for healing human relationships. He said, treat your neighbor as you yourself would like to be treated. Herein lies the true core of our Western tradition. Treat your neighbor as yourself; and remember that every other person is, in some sense, your neighbor. When war happens, it gets in the way of us treating others as neighbors; and therefore we do all we can to bring war to a close and to achieve a just and lasting peace.

In the love for all human beings, therein lies healing for us all. In that direction lies the path to a just and lasting peace. We come to this place of sanctuary each week in order draw strength in these troubled times. May we use our strength to go out and heal the world, one human relationship at a time.

Remembering

Reading

The first readings was a poem titled “11th of September, 2001” by Maggi Pierce, and it was read by the poet.

Excerpt from “With a Wrench of the Gut,” an article from the New York Times of Wednesday, September 7, 2005

“Mark Scherzer, like perhaps thousands of New Yorkers, finds himself looking up with mild panic when he hears a plane flying low, or a sudden noise, even though, he says, the attack “has significantly receded in my consciousness.”

“Steven DeGennaro, 34, stops by the wall of victims near ground zero once a week on the way to the Staten Island ferry terminal, to look at the name of his cousin. Then he boards the boat, hoists a Heineken, and thinks.

“Four years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, many New Yorkers seem trapped between a daily life free of the terrible memories of that day, and an inability to fully forget. Many go for weeks or even months without thinking about it at all, but then feel eerily transported back to that morning by a sudden sound, or the sight of a police officer searching bags in the subway, or a certain hue of the sky….

“Sunil Chugh, 25, who lives and works in Jackson Heights, Queens, has a daily reminder of of a neighbor who died. ‘They never moved his car,’ Mr. Chugh said. ‘It is still parked outside his house, and his picture is in the car window with a sign that says “September 11, 2001″. Every day, I pass by that and I look and I think….”

SERMON — “Remembering”

I don’t know about you, but I thought I had pretty much gotten over nine-eleven. I did my grieving. I even got my HMO to pay for therapy because I had been helping people in the congregation I was then serving and hadn’t had time to deal with my own grieving. All that’s four years ago now. I know children who are six or seven who really have no memory of the terrorist attacks. My own memories are fading — what with the war in Iraq, and violence on our streets, and ongoing news of drugs and poverty and hunger, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center that happened back in 2001 had receded into the dusty back corners of my memory. So I thought.

But as I followed the news coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and the desparate relief efforts, and the political fingerpointing, I find myself remembering once again. And I have been finding that other people are finding the same thing — this new disaster is bringing up memories of nine-eleven.

You heard a reading from a New York Times article that said, in part: “Four years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, many New Yorkers seem trapped between a daily life free of the terrible memories of that day, and an inability to fully forget. Many go for weeks or even months without thinking about it at all, but then feel eerily transported back to that morning by a sudden sound, or the sight of a police officer searching bags in the subway, or a certain hue of the sky….” Even if you’re not a New Yorker, even if you were basically unaffected by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, even if you’re six years old and have no direct memory of those events, you are still affected — because what happened on September 11, 2001, affected our society at large. The attacks have become a part of the memory, the mythos, of this country. I had gotten sick of people saying, “The United States has been forever changed by nine-eleven” — I’m still sick of hearing that platitude, but it’s true, too. We cannot forget — we are unable to forget. As a society, we find that we cannot forget.

Which brings me to Frog and Toad. Frog and Toad are reading a book together, a book about brave people who fight dragons and giants, people who are never afraid. “I wonder if we would be afraid,” asks Frog. “We look brave.”

To which Toad responds, “Yes, but are we [brave]?” As it turns out, Frog and Toad are not particularly brave. At the end of the story, they wind up hiding in a closet — but if you are confronted with a snake who’s much bigger than you and who greets you by saying, “Hello lunch!” I think you have every right to run away as fast as you can. Indeed, in all the situations they faced — hungry snakes, avalanches, and so on — Frog and Toad did the right thing by running away. Bravery can take many forms. But I’m not sure Frog and Toad did the right thing by continuing to insist that they are not afraid.

So I’m going to come right out and say it: After nine-eleven, I am afraid. I was afraid of many things before nine-eleven, I was afraid of crime and violence and poverty, and I still am afraid of all those things. But now I’m also afraid of terrorism in a way that I wasn’t before. Now I’m afraid of this new postmodern world of ours where there are people who really really hate us here in the United States, who hate us because of our culture and our lifestyles and our deep love of our democracy. Sometimes I like to say to myself, but if they only knew me personally, they would like me! — but I know in my heart that some of the hatred that is directed at the United States is so strong, that there is no real possibility of them ever knowing me personally. After nine-eleven, I am afraid. I suspect many of you here this morning have also been a little more afraid since nine-eleven.

There’s the fear, and then there’s the anger. I know we’re all good religious liberals, and religious liberals never get angry, do we? We’re too nice to get angry. We have polite discussions, and study issues to deepen our understanding of other cultures and of oppressed peoples, and we vote on resolutions of concern, but we don’t get angry. But I am angry about nine-eleven. I am angry at the twisted minds that could kill themselves and innocent people by flying a jetliner into the World Trade Center or teh Pentagon, or into the ground out in Pennsylvania. I am angry at death toll. I am angry that children were killed. I remember the faces of the people I knew who had friends and co-workers who died on the planes, and I am angry. I read the news stories about the surviving husbands and wives and children of those who were killed on nine-eleven, and it breaks my heart, and I find that I am indeed angry. I suspect that many of you are just as angry as I am — if not angrier.

And here’s where I really struggle. As a Universalist, I believe that every human beings is worthy of dignity and respect. The old Universalists said that God is love, and because God is love all persons will be saved. Like those old Universalists, I reject any religion that tries to tell me that some people are going to be punished for all eternity for their sins. I cannot accept a universe that is based on punishment, on vidictiveness, on hatred — I cannot accept a universe that is run by some angry God who threatens us into good behavior by dangling us over the fires of hell. I am a Universalist, and I tell you that there is no hell — I tell you that the most powerful force in the universe is love.

So the most powerful force in the universe is love — yet when we are full of fear, when we feel abiding anger, it’s hard to remember that the most powerful force in the universe is love.

Maggi Peirce tells me that she wrote her poem, the one she just read for us, after she heard about a man who jumped from the burning, collapsing World Trade Center — and he stretched our his arms as if he were flying. Maggi says news stories about this man interviewed his sister, who said this was typical of him — he always embraced life. Maggi writes in her poem:

“But one flew. We have all dreamed of flying. Salute this one small mortal who, taking his life into his own hands, winged his way earthwards with such aplomb.”

We have all dreamed of flying.

It is easy to succumb to fear and anger. It is equally easy to insist that we are not angry and not afraid, to insist like Frog and Toad that we are brave — all while hiding in the closet or while hiding in bed under the covers. And it is easy to blame politicians for our woes, to blame the president, or more recently to blame the head of FEMA, or to blame anyone at all. But by hiding in the closet, or letting fear and anger rule over us, or blaming the politicians — none of those actions affirms that love is the most powerful force in the universe.

And each of those actions ultimately makes us smaller and less human.

Maybe you are perfectly happy hiding in the closet, or blaming the politicians, or remaining afraid and angry. That is understandable, and perfectly OK. But let me suggest an alternative. I suggest that we begin with forgiveness — we forgive the politicians (who, after all, are limited human beings just like us), we forgive ourselves for feeling afriad and angry, and maybe we even find it in ourselves to forgive the twisted minds who could fly those jetliners into buildings. We forgive, and we still hold people accountable for their actions. We must hold others and ourselves accountable for our actions. But remember that forgiveness is something takes place in our own hearts. It is not a gift that we bestow on other people; it is not even a gift that we give to ourselves. We forgive in the hope that we can heal the universe. We forgive trusting that forgiveness will take the weight off our shoulders, will allow us to open our arms, and embrace life.

I try to imagine what it would be like to stand near the top of a burning World Trade Center, knowing that there was no hope of escape. Would I have the courage to leap out into the unknown, arms spread wide, embracing the universe? I don’t know if I could do that or not, but I salute that one small mortal who could, and did — who took his life into his own hands.

We have a choice. The memories will be there, and they may come back at odd moments. But let us choose to embrace life, to embrace love. In forgiveness, we can find a fresh start, we can turn to the work that awaits us — the new work of Gulf Coast relief, the ongoing work of ending hunger and poverty and violence. Let us choose to embrace life, to embrace love. It will take courage, but in doing so, we will bring new hope to a world that desparately needs it.