Reflections on 9/11

Father, into your hands I commit my spirit! -Luke 23:46

Since September 11 it's been hard to think. I don't mean to ruminate or to fantasize, but to really think - to be in touch with basic beliefs and principles, clarifying them in new circumstances.

How would I express my stance before September 11? I might put it this way:

I want to live my life in such a way that I contribute to the maturing of the human species, to some little growth in the human capacity to respond in thoughtful ways to the challenges of life.

One Part of that stance is my decision some years ago not to support the killing of human beings by other human beings.

During these past weeks I've felt significant stress as I've reviewed that stance toward violence.

I've thought often of my daughters. Erin is 24. Megan is 18.

I've imagined each of them on one of those planes: or in one of those buildings, running down the stairs; or at one of those windows, with her back to the flames.

I've asked myself: "Do you believe still what you've thought you believed?" And I've been deciding again - yes.

Who can say what they will do or not do in a particular circumstance? What I can do is make my best effort at defining my beliefs and principles so that I have some basis for making the decisions that come my way.

So what other beliefs and principles have I reaffirmed lately?

1. First, I work to see things in terms of emotional systems.

Emotional systems operate as single units. What one person does effects all the others. I react to another reacting to me before I know it. And the more I react, the less I think.

The whole idea of growing up a bit is to grow in my capacity to manage my automatic reactivity just enough to give my thinking a chance to tap into my beliefs so that I might actually choose the next step I'm going to take.

In conflict, it's hard not to go into automatic. As I'm physically threatened, I get ready to fight. I lose some capacity to think. Options I might otherwise imagine are lost to me. My attention more narrowly focuses on defending myself and doing harm to others.

As I act out of this state my opponent reacts the same way. Thus, even to threaten violence reduces the capacity - in my mind and in the mind of the other - to think of other possibilities.

this reactivity belongs to us all. It flows among us like electrical current.

That circuit can be broken, or at least calmed, if someone chooses at some point not to react violently to violence.

Such a stance would entail risks and costs in the immediate future. I'm not convinced, however, that such risks and costs would be greater than those accepted as a matter of course in war.

2. Second, I work to see things in multi-generational terms.

I try to make my decisions, evaluate my actions, and weigh my sacrifices from a perspective broader than my own lifetime or the lifetimes of those I love.

To be violent is to do what comes naturally. But it deepens the sad tracks of the past, the ruts that got us here.

If we forbid ourselves the option of killing, however, I think that it might come to people less easily, a long time from now - over the generations.

And if that happened, would a greater risk of our own deaths have been worth it? Even the deaths of people we love? I think, not easily but clearly, yes.

3. Finally, I work to see things as having their reality in God.

I believe that God and our being in God is that which is most real. To the extent that I ground myself there, I am better able to act on principles that don't have my physical safety or that of the people I love at the center of things.

One day we will each be gone from this place. My daughters will be gone too. Only our life in God continues.

Each day poses the question - to what do I entrust my spirit? September 11 posed that question most starkly.