Wounded Healers? A sermon Delivered by Rev. Bruce Southworth, Senior Minister of The Community Church of NY Unitarian Universalist, Homecoming Sunday, September 11, 2011 Recently I went to see a documentary that for eight years, with annual interviews, followed the lives of five individuals. Each of the five had been deeply affected by the assault on and destruction of the World Trade Center Towers ten years ago today with so many dead or injured. One woman, Ling, worked in an office on the 78 th floor of the South Tower, a floor struck by one of the planes, and she survived. We see her skin grafts after 2 nd and 3 rd degree burns over much of her body, and we follow her many, many 40 of them operations and her moods via the annual interviews: Her despair, her progress, her letting go, her acceptance. Another woman, Tanya, then in her 30s, lost her fiancée who was a firefighter who died in the collapse. She calls Sergio her soul mate, and in years to come wears her engagement ring from him, even after her marriage some years later to a very nurturing partner. Tanya is only able to take down a shrine in her home after the birth of their second child. A young man, Nick, who was interviewed, was in high school when he lost his mother who worked on the 104 th floor for Cantor Fitzgerald. He is thrown out of the house and becomes alienated from his father for several years, explores working on Wall Street in finance like his mother, and finds a different vocation. At one point, he is laughing about Osama Bin Laden, with anger and rage defused, focusing on the political rather than the personal. Another man, Tim, was an emergency management responder, who lost his best friend and many other colleagues. He struggles with survivor s guilt for years to come. Brian was a construction worker who lost his youngest brother, a firefighter who was in one of the towers when it collapsed. He immediately went to the site and pitched in as a first responder and a recovery worker amid the carnage. We hear, and see, his depression that sets in a few years after dazed by depression or medication or both at times, and then his recovery. He now works as a project manager on the new World Trade Center building under construction. The documentary is titled Rebirth, which suggests the journey we are to go on with these five survivors of great losses. We hear them tell their stories, unfolding year by year with an astonishing candor emotions of shock, grief, anger, confusion wry humor, and resiliency, learnings, strength, and new beginnings, suggesting as the title does, rebirth. 1
We follow their lives from 2002 to 2009. Various wounds now healing integrating those wounds perhaps a better word than closure or completion of grief work. Howard Thurman, one of the grand religious teachers of the twentieth century, offered an annoying, at least challenging insight when he reported, Everything is sustenance. Everything? Even the bad stuff? Yes, even the bad stuff offers spiritual opportunity to grow your soul. Pain walks with us, and just maybe, just maybe we become wounded healers, for others as well as for ourselves. The resilience and radiance of the human spirit enables us to become fiercely loving agents of Beauty and New Life. These five in the documentary arrive, or so it seems, not unscathed but well along in healing from their very different traumas, and on this day, I wonder how you are with your own grief, anger, rage, losses, confusion, numbing, healing or other reactions to what for me is a lingering wound, certainly not piercing, but not forgotten. And if you would like to talk a little or be with others, please join me in the Chapel at 12:45. Of late, I confess I am annoyed and I resent the construction of a new commercial building on the ground zero site while welcoming a memorial to those who died. A few nights ago, I was thrilled to see again the twin beams of light that have been offered occasionally at the site to see again that luminous, numinous tribute of light, which for me has seemed so fitting. It was a test for tonight s illumination, and the lights seemed to have been on for an hour or less, and out my window I could glimpse their rising into the sky. I felt lucky. On the other hand, out the same window I can also see just the tip of the new structure, construction lights way in the distance, emerging between near and distant rooftops It strikes me as hubris, folly, economically unsound, and an overly prideful dare to terrorists to follow up with a third strike. And having a visceral attachment to those collapsed towers for many reasons, I know, I know in my heart, there could never be a fitting replacement And a bit oddly for me, former Mayor Giuliani and I agree on something. I know some could care less, while still others swell with pride in American audacity. If you here today were not in the city, not a New Yorker ten years ago today, you too of course have your own very personal experiences. Each of us does. I know one of our members at the time spoke of going to 25 memorial 2
services in a 2 week period. And Lydia and Charlotte, thank you again for being with us this morning and for your powerful words, and I recall being with you for the celebration of Valerie Hanna s life, beloved mother and grandmother, at your home in Brooklyn. The consequences for our lives, our city, our nation, our family of humankind, and the peoples of the world continue to ripple, and for a moment I simply want to acknowledge many that remain. I also would add that I am not quite a fan of the rhetoric that everything changed. Much has, and for some on a personal level it is profound. Yet, as one religious writer has noted, We re now no less addicted to mass-produced spectacle and obsessive but shallow celebrity culture than we were before 9/11. (Rodney Clapp, Christian Century, 11/16/10) Plus our addictions to militarism, classism, racism, and much more continue. To honor our time, I can only list some of the collateral impact after 9/11: o The deaths of 6500 US soldiers with more than 65,000 wounded in battle, and thousands/millions of family members and friends scarred; o Over 200,000 deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, where the social fabric is similarly in heartache and anger; o There has been the demise of American sense of invincibility with its dangerous arrogance, a good thing, even as we now face a full alert in our city this day. o Billions of dollars in needed health care funds for first responders, workers and downtown residents with 10,000 already under treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder; o A precarious economy damaged by more than $1 trillion in war costs; o The weakening of American moral standing in the world because of pursuit of wars of convenience and because of torture what former Times columnist Anthony Lewis has called Official American Sadism. (NYRB, 9/25/08) o Threats to habeas corpus have, for now, been stopped, but a weakening of civil liberties and privacy rights remains. o An increase in religious intolerance, especially toward Muslims; o And the list goes on and on, far beyond our own personal aches, and wounds and healing. One of the blessings of the documentary Rebirth is that we see and feel how deeply resilient our human spirit is. It s not a part of this film, yet researchers 3
also remind us how we are hard-wired for processing our suffering and wrestling with it, even integrating it into our lives. And, of course, made as we are but slightly lower than the angels, we have to find ways to be the peace-makers across the world, and at home in this country, this city, our workplaces, our congregation, and yes, in your families, and to be devoted to compassion, to radical hospitality, to abjuring anything and everything that separates and divides, honoring our sisterhood and brotherhood, and, as we know, to work toward that audacious dream of heaven on earth, the Beloved Community, as wounded healers knowing ever more deeply that this is our calling. So fitting for our Homecoming and new season are the words that W. E. B. DuBois wrote to us in 1948 upon the dedication of this building, The final triumph of a Community Church in New York knowing not sect, class, nation, or race is not merely local nor purely personal, but a great step towards making a disillusioned world regard religion as honest, true, and capable of courage and daring. Our wounds, sometimes to our surprise, bless us, and open us to new Life, if we understand that our suffering invites us to the deep sources of Creativity and Life. More about that next week and in weeks ahead this business of wrestling with how joy and sorrow touch, how we celebrate both life and death. This is part of the meaning-making of faith, and on this September 11 th we especially embrace it. Security is an illusion. Vulnerability goes with our daily lives. Honesty opens us to each other. Compassion guides us and heals us. Our wounds help us expand our vision to our shared humanity. Radical hospitality builds community. We need one another and the world needs us. Deep strength remains with us as co-creators, partners with Life. More about rational faith, vision and consequences next week. This morning I return to one of the enduring, healing images I carry with me these past ten years. On that strange, horrific Tuesday of September 11, 2001 a beautiful day, I encountered a moment that spoke to me of something larger, trustworthy, and sacred. On September 11 th, late in the afternoon, after being at church on the phone in the office much of the day, welcoming visitors to the Chapel, greeting some members who had come by to keep the homeless shelter open, near dusk, in mid-september s late summer, on my way home, so sad, so bewildered, I walked by St. Vartan Park at Second Avenue and 35 th Street. 4
No more ghostly ash-covered women and men were walking home as they had been in the morning. At the park, there were some young children playing with their parents at hand some parents watching, some joining in children running, laughing, filled with joy as they should be filled with innocence of youth; the parents filled with love to make things normal for them on a tragic day parents no doubt forever changed, and wounded, yet doing a healing thing. After the grieving, and sometimes in the middle of some great grief, even amidst the most tragic of days, we realize that Life goes on. Love continues. The hope for the future remains in our children and in all we give them. On that tragic, wounded day, I had again a powerful glimpse of something sacred and trustworthy. God, perhaps. At least Spirit. Life. Something trustworthy showing up. Good news Good news, simple, trustworthy, daily, holy. As the documentary Rebirth comes to a close, several of the interviewees speak as scenes of the ground zero construction are shown: I think it is Ling, who had been burned so massively, who says, Everybody heals in a completely different way. And Tanya, who eventually finds a new partner, marries and has children, says, You re always grieving but it shouldn t keep you from having a life of joy. And one last thing: are you feeling a bit discouraged, a bit worn down, or unlovely, or even a little bit beat up, or just lonely, or nearly overwhelmed? Everything is sustenance. We are to take it all in, sharing the pain when we need to and sharing the strength whenever we can. Take a chance on being vulnerable to these wonderful kindred souls on your right hand and your left hand, who, like you on your strong days, are wounded healers and caretakers of wonder. 5