Take each other's hand
September 28, 2006
I wasn't planning to do another blog entry about 9/11, but after watching a powerful television program with some friends the other night, I can't resist. It was a PBS Frontline report (originally aired in 2002) called "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero." In the program, various people whose lives were impacted by the attacks-including New York City religious leaders, people who escaped from the Twin Towers, and those who lost loved ones that day-shared about how their religious faith had been impacted. It was fascinating to see how different people reacted to the same events: Some had their faith in God strengthened, while others lost their faith completely.
Toward the end of the program, several commentators spoke of their reactions to a picture they had seen (which wasn't shown). It was of a couple who jumped from one of the towers hand in hand. I found the words of a man named Brian Doyle particularly moving:
A couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand. They reached for each other and their hands met, and they jumped. I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers, but I keep coming back to his hand in her hand, nestled in each other with such extraordinary, ordinary, naked love. It's the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It's everything we're capable of against horror and loss and tragedy.
It's what makes me believe that we're not fools to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them, like seeds that open only under great fire, to believe that who we are persists past what we were, to believe, against evil evidenced hourly, that love is why we are here.
Two thoughts come to my mind as I reflect on this. One is that we have a moment-by-moment choice about how to interpret what our physical eyes show us. We can see evidence of sin everywhere, which is very easy to do when we're seeing people ram planes into a building with the intent of killing everyone inside. But we can also choose to see evidence of love. As the Course says, when we let the Holy Spirit guide our senses, "They will see only the blameless and the beautiful, the gentle and the kind. They will be as careful to let no little act of charity, no tiny expression of forgiveness, no little breath of love escape their notice" (T-19.IV(A).14:3-4). It seems to me that this is what Brian Doyle saw in that picture: In the face of horror, he saw "extraordinary, ordinary, naked love." Instead of intractable sin, he saw reason to believe in God, and "to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them." He saw, "against evil evidenced hourly, that love is why we are here."
My second thought is that the most powerful evidence of love this world offers is exactly what that picture showed: human beings joining. Especially in the holy relationship discussions of the Text, Jesus stresses again and again that truly joining with another person undoes the ego's entire nightmare and awakens us to God. That image of the two people who jumped from the tower, seemingly doomed yet finding strength in each other, reminds me of this passage:
You groped but feebly in the dust and found each other's hand, uncertain whether to let it go, or to take hold on life so long forgotten. Strengthen your hold, and raise your eyes unto your strong companion, in whom the meaning of your freedom lies. He seemed to be crucified beside you. And yet his holiness remained untouched and perfect, and with him beside you shall you this day enter with him to Paradise, and know the peace of God. (T-20.III.9:3-6, Urtext version)
I was talking about this in our Workbook class this morning, and someone said: Why wait until we're faced with such an extreme situation to take each other's hand? Why not do it right now? Exactly! As long as we're listening to the ego, we don't have to leap from a burning building to feel like we're hurtling toward our doom. All of us will die, and the ego uses this as the ultimate evidence that we are guilty sinners forever banished from Heaven. But as we take each other's hand, we "take hold on life so long forgotten." Through joining, we find the proof of our perfect holiness and "this day enter with [each other] to Paradise, and know the peace of God."
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