Time To Forget

That evening, after walking from the city to Falls Church because our car was locked away in a building that had received an opportunistic bomb threat, we sat downstairs with our children.  We were physically tired, but that was nothing.  We were emotionally drained, taken down to nothing by the events of the day, still struggling to process the great black pillar of smoke against the perfect crystal sky.  The helicopters.  The fighters, roaring overhead, loaded for bear.  Being two drops in that river of humanity flowing from the city, trivial extras in some big budget disaster film.

The television ran clip after clip, of bodies falling and towers falling.  Then they replayed them.  And replayed them again.  Late in the evening, Dubya had come on, looking and speaking like someone had recently whacked him in the back of the head with a bat.  It was not reassuring.  Then back to towers falling, and people falling, and people talking anxiously.  And pictures of dark black smoke against a crystal blue sky.

Our three year old, curious as always, peppered me with questions while the one-year old goofed about.  What's happening, Daddy?  What's happening to those buildings, Daddy?  I tried to give him some gentle but not-lying answers, and then realized it was time to turn off the big pipe of endlessly cycling fear and horror that was pouring into our home.

I did, and as this was 2001, I put a tape into the VCR.  VeggieTales, as it happened.  The boys stilled to watch it, and I curled up on the sofa with my wife.  It could easily have been the night before.  There were no rumbles of bombardment, no panicked cries, no sounds of war.  Instead, there was Larry the Cucumber and Bob the Tomato.  They were sharing gently mischievous lessons about kindness and compassion.  

When the time came for Silly Songs with Larry, it was the Song of the Cebu.  I found myself unable to stop smiling.  It was a place of grace, a place to set aside the fear for a moment and be safe with the little ones and my wife half-asleep on my shoulder.

We need those places if we are to heal.  Terror and fear and anxiety can't always be in the forefront of our minds, day after day, year after year.  The inability to move forward and to find islands of forgetting does bad things to our souls, makes us too hard or too weak.  Or both.

That is true for human beings.  It is also true for the hearts of nations.

The Mosque Debate

That after several months we're still hearing about the ongoing "debate" about the construction of an Islamic Center and mosque near the Manhattan site of the September 11 attacks is really quite hornswogglingly baffling. Well, it is and it isn't.

It isn't baffling because the folks on the right who are raking this muck know they've got something that riles their base. When you're able to get over 60% of the population behind you on an issue, you pitch that issue out there as frequently as with as much energy as possible. It doesn't matter what that issue is. Just follow the zeitgeist, and watch your polling numbers rise. And boy, does this baby push all the populist hot buttons. 9/11. Islam. The honor of America's fallen. It's perfectly prepackaged for midterm election demagogery.

But while it works great for talking heads and red-state-representative shouting, what I for the life of me cannot see is how anyone who cares about America's constitutional republic can oppose this mosque. I hear their argument, sure. The terrorists who took so many American lives under those crystal clear September skies were radical jihadists, proponents of a horrifically violent and brutish sect of Islam. So, by extension, any expression of Islam anywhere near the World Trade Center site is a reminder of the evil they committed.

Problem is, that extension is just plain wrong. Moderate, tolerant Islam is not the enemy of America, and the folks who seek to build that mosque are as far removed from the jihadists as I am from Fred Phelps. They are, in fact, precisely the kind of Muslims who make good citizens and neighbors if they live here, and trustworthy allies abroad.

That concept doesn't work for those who want to paint Islam as inherently evil. For the American far right, which rumbles and glowers endlessly about Islamofascism, there can be no good Muslim. It also doesn't work in those portions of rural red-state America that see every Muslim as a potential terrorist, dark hued and almost as dangerous as Mexicans. According to the election year calculations of folks like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, it's best to play up those fears. Gets folks all riled up, and even if it's not technically true, and completely antithetical to the bedrock values of our religious liberty..well..who's to let that get in the way of scoring some points in the fall?

It is a testament to the people of New York City that they aren't buying any of that, which makes this "debate" a complete non-issue.

That, I think, is ultimately the reason folks on the right are still ranting about this. It's meaningless, something that rouses rabble but has no political solution other than the solution already found by the people of Manhattan. Which is, of course, to allow the principles of freedom of worship upon which our country was founded to overcome the shouts of those who love fame and flags and the trappings of power more than constitutional principle.