A Still Small Voice: General Revelation in the Tragedy of
9-11
Ashes.
Thick, colorless, black and grey ashes methodically descended from the skyline
covering the city in a blanket of confusion, fear and doubt. I remember the
clouds of smoke billowing from the sides of this post-modern tower of Babel.
Smoke so thick and dense it seemed to suck the very light and color out of the
morning sun and send this Unreal City
into the premature darkness of night.
Driving
over the Mid-Hudson
Bridge exactly 10 years
latter, September 11, 2011, I find a small, yet somewhat morbid sense of poetic
justice in the dark and dreary weather. It seems only fitting that the earth
too would snap out of its melodic melees of summer glory and if only for a
brief moment, mourn with the rest of us, shedding tears that slowly fell into
the Hudson River. It was as if the almost
silent reverberations of water on water were a cosmic dirge from whence the
rain proceeded like a funeral procession slowly and surely to the ocean.
It is in
moments and hours such as that fateful September day 8 years ago that the world
stands up and joins the philosopher in his tirelessly, unceasing chorus of
“WHY?” To steal from T.S. Elliot, events such as these “force the moment to its
crisis” (Prufrock). On a day when mothers and fathers, sons and daughters,
brothers and sisters, were so unexpectedly and publicly executed, even the most
jaded, mediated, agnostic soul faces an existential crisis. The universal
“why?” was spoke forth only to get sucked into those cursed black clouds of
smoke, before it could even reach the ears of God.
In Elliot’s
“Ash Wednesday” he writes, “Where shall the word be found, where will the word
resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.” On September 11, 2001 there
was a nation-wide silence, and the word that resounded, piercingly loud and
clear was DISORDER. Surely the poet had been mistaken, September, not April,
was the “cruelest month.”
On that
early September day there was no struggle to find disorder. This is a world of
disease, famine, plague, terrorism and death. As Bob Dylan sings, “He not busy
being born is busy dying.” In a world of disorder we are posed with the same
question that Elie Wiesel faced in one of Hitler’s death camps. Wiesel, in Night,
recounts the story of walking past Jewish prisoners hanging:
But
the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing…
And so he remained for more than half
an hour, lingering between life and
death, writhing before our eyes. And
we were forced to look at him at close
range. He was still alive when I
passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes
not yet extinguished. Behind me, I
heard the same man asking: “For God’s
sake, where is God?” And from within
me, I heard a voice answer: “Where
he is? This is where—hanging here
from this gallows.”
On days like 9-11, and in a post-modern world
where more than ever this disorder seems to assert Nietzsche’s claim that “God
is dead”, we all are faced with what Heidegger called Geworfenheit. Geworfenheit
is a German word that essentially means “throwness” or a having been thrown. In
an age post mortem dei (after the death of God), the whole of humanity is
stricken with a sense of Geworfenheit. Man is not at home in a world without
God. At the very core all of mankind is confused, alone and disordered. The
human experience, which Heidegger describes as one of “dasien” (being there) is
a constant and perpetual state of disorientation. With out the existence of an
eternal deity, man does not know where he came from or where he is going. We
have been thrown into this universe where we find ourselves existing before we
know what it means to exist, and the heavens and the earth continue to proclaim
“disorder.”
This
disordered state of affairs, brought to the forefront by events such as 9-11,
calls for a Cartesian-like crisis; a reexamination and questioning of our
fundamental beliefs. In an age of reason Descartes sought after scientific and
mathematical-like certainty in all fields of study. He wanted an indubitable
starting point upon which he could build a new house of knowledge. However, in
order to build a new house we must first tear down the old one. Let us then
take up the Cartesian torch and try and search for a semblance of certainty by
reexamining the way we look at our world.
In the
Platonic dialogues Socrates constantly preached the importance of examining the
things that we learned at our mother’s knees. In today’s day and age the mother
referred to throughout the Platonic corpus is completely analogous to the
public school systems.
In
Chemistry we were all taught, and believed with 100% mathematical certainty, that
atoms were the smallest unit of matter. That is however until scientists
cracked the atoms and found a world of electrons and protons. Then, years
latter, scientists discovered the quark, and quickly it
replaced the atom as the smallest unit of matter. Finally, certainty! That is
however until scientists cracked the quark and discovered that at the root, the
core of all substance is energy. Energy, you say, scratching your head. Energy
is not tangible enough. It is not corporeal. It has no extension.
So what is
it then that give form to all substances. What is it that makes something water
rather than gold, or dirt or a chair? We have now found that the essence of all
corporal, physical things, the thing that makes a thing a thing is
relationships. Substance and form is intrinsically and explicitly relational.
It is the arrangement and the relation of the electrons to one another that
gives form.
To take
this one step further, I would assert, however political incorrect it may be,
that the pinnacle, the crowning jewel of physical substance is the human being.
Just as we questioned what makes a physical thing the thing that it is, what
gives it its form, let us turn the question inward and ask what makes a man the
particular man that he is.
We must
first look at the human condition and realize that even as individualistic as
this technologically driven age may be, we do not exist as individuals in a
vacuum. Our existence is a “field of being” (Heidegger). What makes a person
who they are is one hundred percent relation based. I am only a teacher because
I have a class. My father would not exist as a father without his children, nor
I as a son without my father and mother. The human condition, at its core is
relation based. Just as inanimate corporeal things gain there substance from
their relations, we too find our essence, our meaning in relationships.
To dig one
last step further into the murky waters of the metaphysical, let us examine the
essence of God. St. Augustine
was once posed with the question of “what was God doing before he made the
universe?” He snidely replied, “He is making hell for people who ask stupid
questions.” In his work on the trinity however, Augustine answers the question
in a much less sarcastic tone. Before God created the universe, he was in
communion, in relationship with himself. The triune God of Christianity exists
as three persons in one. The Father is only the Father in relation to the Son
and the Son the Son only in relation to the Father. The essence of the three
person God-head is relational.
What great
symmetry! What great order! After the clouds of billowing smoke have dissipated
and dispersed, after our ideas have been reexamined we find the universe cries
out order! Design! Peace! From the atoms, to the person, to God himself there
is a divine order of relationships. This is an order and symmetry so divinely
orchestrated that even in the midst of the most horrific of days, after the
ashes settle, in that brief moment of silence the word resounds, and like music
to the ears it pronounces “Peace”, “Order.”
The most important and primal social unit is the family. The human condition is intrinsically familial; hence the greatest variety and degree of human emotions are experienced in and through the family. It is for this reason that the breakdown of society is always coterminous with the breakdown of the nuclear family.
In once sense it is odd, given the importance of the family, that it would be so denigrated by the secular world. But on a closer look, the roots of this hatred begin to surface. The family is deeply and uniquely Trinitarian; with its three constituents: father, mother, and child. The Trinity is the foundation for not only the family, but love—it is the cornerstone of all romance. It is the first and only real love story.
On the same token, falling in love has something to do with us. As much as we may “fall in love”, do we not also jump? “In so far as to some extent we choose…falling in love is not truly romantic…The supreme adventure is not falling in love, it is being born.” This greatest of all adventures, breeds true love and true romance. We do not have the slightest choice in picking our families, just as we have no choice in picking our neighbors. Yet Christ commanded us to love our neighbors. That is because there is a deeper love, a deeper romance formed when our choice is taken out of the equation.
