Soul Food

Michele Marr

I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts

of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. -- Jeremiah

29:11

I knew before he said a word that something was terribly wrong. Early

Tuesday morning, my husband Michael woke me. There was something

particularly gentle in the way he laid his hand on my shoulder and in the

very quiet way he said my name.

Stooped alongside me at eye level, he waited especially long to be

sure I was awake before he spoke.

“I am going into work late,” he said and paused. “A jetliner has just

flown into the World Trade Center.”

I heard the sound of the TV broadcast coming from the family room. I

got up and wandered toward it like someone following the beckoning voice

of someone unseen. I sat on the sofa. I watched people waving white

pieces of cloth -- like flags of surrender -- from open windows, windows

in a building with windows that don’t open.

I watched a jetliner, a second jetliner fly into the second tower of

the Trade Center and disappear into a wall of flames and debris. I

watched the tower tremble, then crumple: 110 stories of dust. Then the

second tower sighed and collapsed.

“This is going to be a ‘Where were you when,”’ my husband said. It’s

the question our generation asks about the day John Kennedy was shot.

It’s the question our parent’s generation asks about the bombing of Pearl

Harbor. I felt dazed. “Um,” I said, “um hum.”

I watched what could have passed for a snowstorm, the remains of a

national icon and no one knows how many people -- nothing looked any

larger than a snowflake -- drifting toward the streets of New York City.

Sept. 11: another chink in our collective illusion of invulnerability,

this time a chink of incomprehensible magnitude.

I drove to an appointment around 10 a.m. There was scarcely any

traffic. I passed by homes where people were standing on their front

lawns. Just standing, as though they might have gone to check that their

lawns were still there.

Someone had chalked “pray for our nation” on a sidewalk on Edwards

Hill. Someone else had written the same message across the dirty rear

window of a car at the post office on Warner Avenue. No one, anywhere,

had much to say.

Back in my office, I checked my e-mail. There were no new messages,

even though I subscribe to eight special interest groups and, among them,

typically get nearly 1000 e-mails a day. No messages from clients. No

messages from friends. No messages from family.

I did some work. I watched the footage of the Twin Towers and the

Pentagon. I watched it again. An anchorman referred to Tony Blair as the

Prime Minister of London. I giggled and the sound surprised me. I began

to realize I was in shock and so was the rest of the city, the nation,

maybe much of the world.

This astonishing thing had been done. And it couldn’t be undone.

By afternoon the phone began to ring. Pastors were organizing prayer

meetings and vigils. A reader called to say he just couldn’t believe what

had happened and he didn’t know what to do.

“For now, maybe you can just do whatever you usually do,” I suggested.

“How can I do that?” he asked, sounding incredulous that I could even

propose it.

“Well, maybe it would be good to go for a walk or a drive,” I revised.

“I think I’ll go to the church,” he said. “Maybe there is someone

there. Maybe there is something I can do.”

Helplessness. Grief. Shock. Mourning. Dismay.

The e-mails began to come in.

“E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G HAS NOW CHANGED FOREVER ! ! !” wrote one U.S. art

director.

“All our thoughts go out to the people of the USA on this most saddest

of days,” wrote a service bureau in Britain.

“I want you all in USA to know we are thinking of you and are

devastated at the news that we have woken to this morning,” came a

message from New Zealand.

“Our world will not be the same again. It is a disaster. It is beyond

imagination. It’s like picture of Jeronimush [Heironymous] Bosch, it’s

like Apocalypse, may be it is. It is beyond description. So sorry for my

verry bad English,” wrote a graphic designer in Bulgaria.

I wondered how long it would be before the rest would start. The

anger. Rage. Blame. Retaliation. Revenge.

There was a time before I believed in the grace of God when tragedy

could knock me flat. It could take me to a place so dark I could barely

breath, a place so dark I didn’t know if I wanted to breath. And anger or

rage was the only thing that could get me out of that place.

It is harder to do it God’s way. Our mourning demands vengeance. Our

helplessness seeks retaliation. Our grief desires blame. Times like these

put us to the greatest test.

Yet Jesus said, “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good

to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you.”

The apostle Paul wrote, “Never take revenge, for the scripture says,

‘I [the Lord] will take revenge, I [the Lord] will pay back. Do not be

overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”’

But it’s so much easier said than done when faced with words like

these, “We’re ecstatic. Let America have a taste of what we’ve tasted,”

the Gulf Daily News reported a Beirut resident, Ali Mareh, as saying.

Christian apologist, G. K. Chesterton wrote, “Christianity has not

been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”

Yet in our trying lays our future and our hope.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer and graphic designer from

Huntington Beach. She has been interested in religion and ethics for as

long as she can remember. She can be reached at o7

[email protected]