The event was touching. People read verses from the Bible, and two women from MSA read from the Qu'ran, the first woman speaking in Arabic and the second (Saddyna) reading an English translation. At first, the microphone didn't work, and everyone shuffled closer to the podium to better hear, causing us to reduce our "personal space." What kinds of situations facilitate, and permit, this breach of such a strongly held taboo as our distance between our bodies?
Word of Truth led us in singing Amazing Grace as we lit our candles, a process which began on the inside of the arc of people and spread to the back in a wave of increasing light, each person sharing the flame of their candle with the unlit wick of the person behind them, and together we sang. To see the light spreading, to hear people lifting their voices, together, in song to the same god...it made me cry.
I cried because we expressed this unity in the aftermath of such a tragedy rather than before it. In the context of tragedy, we were willing to pray together, to sing together, to bow our heads in a moment of silence together, to stand, together, with our candles, lit by the willing assistance of a stranger whom we may or may not see again.
I ponder the metaphor of the candle. I see it as a representation of the self, a symbol of our vital energy that we our selves hold, and at first I wondered to what extent this enforced individualism, but then I saw the paper disc that someone had pushed the candle through, now catching hot wax that dripped from around the wick just as tears slid from the eyes of my peers. And I saw how many candles depended on others to be lit. And I saw how, when we each held these candles, the light overlapped and collaborated and spread outward into something we shared, and we could see it and feel its heat, and if anyone had walked by, they would have felt it, too, and would have been welcome to join us. And I saw how that light would not have been observable had it not been night. And I wondered why the shooter felt compelled to harm others, wondered what forces led him to that sense of isolation, for he surely felt as one in the night. And I see him as holding his own candle, but by himself, a solitary light meek and feeble, and when it blew out, no one was around to lend him their light. Each person scurried past, hands cupped around their meager flames because of their fear that it would go out. But if we would support each other, we would recognize that we do not need to protect our selves so much, that when we focus so much on our own selves, we are actually neglecting our true selves. When we look so anxiously at our flames, we fail to see that a fellow person's has become extinguished. But if we walk together, our light can show the way for our selves, our unified self, and others, who should be welcome to join us or just use us momentarily. And because we have the confidence of our numbers, none need protect their flame over-zealously, because if one goes out, several others can offer help. And the beauty full thing, the truly beauty full thing, is that no one gives anything up for the sharing; on the contrary, all benefit from it.
During the readings from holy books, during prayer, and during Amazing Grace, I thought of god for the first time in terms of a key metaphor, this common thread to unite a diverse people and provide them with a framework for understanding. In this way, a seeker, one searching for a line-of-best-fit religion, can, I believe, fully believe a sought-and-found religion, partially because they can claim an appeal to faith and point out that it was always true and they simply hadn't known it, but beyond that is the sense that a seeker is not looking for something to believe in, but for a way to believe in that essence, a way to express that belief through ritualism and have a community to share that.
I don't know how we would have communicated tonight if not through religion. I don't know how we would have understood each other. Thinking of the word communicate, I see that it means something like 'to create unity together,' that community means (approximately) 'with unity.' Communication, then, if truly observed, is a process whereby we unify, and community is a result of that process which requires ongoing communication, ongoing creation and definition.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Day of Silence
This is part of a poem I wrote the morning we left for Chicago. I thought it appropriate to share today:
...
and life is a series of easy defeats
that people deny with their subtle conceit,
'cause this illusion is quiet,
this illusion's discreet,
and if there were truth
then we'd still choose deceit
...
and the best we can do
is just to charge on,
without hope for glory,
expectations gone,
and if there is hope, then it's in the dawn,
and if there is hope, then it's in our lawn—
that small patch of land that we all dismissed
'cause the lure of the tv's too much to resist,
and we forget how to speak but we memorize lists
of shows that display all these guns, all these fists,
and we'll watch people killed, we'll watch people die,
without making a grimace or blinking an eye.
and somewhere in this mess we forgot how to cry,
but we learned to not eat, to make ourselves thin,
and we learned how to dress, to look just like them,
because the most important thing is for us to fit in.
the most important thing is for us to give in.
...
and I always wonder why they choose this fear,
why they fight the love that could save us here,
why they force us to silence,
why they smother our voice,
why they call it a sin,
why they call it a choice.
and this silence?
it's violence.
and this hate crime must end,
'cause more people will break
if others won't bend.
and i have seen people pushed over the top,
and this silence must end,
and this violence must stop,
'cause my friend, she is giving
the pulse of her wrist
to the people whose hatred
will never desist,
and if they saw her scars,
they wouldn't ask why,
because life is easier when life is a lie.
...
and you say god is love,
and you drop to your knees,
and you ask what you want,
and you say pretty please,
but you neglect with willful ease
that queer is a lifestyle and not a disease.
and the hatred you preach
from the pulpit, your sin,
is beading blood on delicate skin
that's not thick enough, no, it's too thin,
and the raised lines that criss-cross
her once-young breasts
aren't there to offend, aren't there to protest:
they're her favourite secret, kept close to her chest,
and the ones who know it—
they know her best.
...
I have so much to say about this day. But that is all for now.
...
and life is a series of easy defeats
that people deny with their subtle conceit,
'cause this illusion is quiet,
this illusion's discreet,
and if there were truth
then we'd still choose deceit
...
and the best we can do
is just to charge on,
without hope for glory,
expectations gone,
and if there is hope, then it's in the dawn,
and if there is hope, then it's in our lawn—
that small patch of land that we all dismissed
'cause the lure of the tv's too much to resist,
and we forget how to speak but we memorize lists
of shows that display all these guns, all these fists,
and we'll watch people killed, we'll watch people die,
without making a grimace or blinking an eye.
and somewhere in this mess we forgot how to cry,
but we learned to not eat, to make ourselves thin,
and we learned how to dress, to look just like them,
because the most important thing is for us to fit in.
the most important thing is for us to give in.
...
and I always wonder why they choose this fear,
why they fight the love that could save us here,
why they force us to silence,
why they smother our voice,
why they call it a sin,
why they call it a choice.
and this silence?
it's violence.
and this hate crime must end,
'cause more people will break
if others won't bend.
and i have seen people pushed over the top,
and this silence must end,
and this violence must stop,
'cause my friend, she is giving
the pulse of her wrist
to the people whose hatred
will never desist,
and if they saw her scars,
they wouldn't ask why,
because life is easier when life is a lie.
...
and you say god is love,
and you drop to your knees,
and you ask what you want,
and you say pretty please,
but you neglect with willful ease
that queer is a lifestyle and not a disease.
and the hatred you preach
from the pulpit, your sin,
is beading blood on delicate skin
that's not thick enough, no, it's too thin,
and the raised lines that criss-cross
her once-young breasts
aren't there to offend, aren't there to protest:
they're her favourite secret, kept close to her chest,
and the ones who know it—
they know her best.
...
I have so much to say about this day. But that is all for now.
Today, I got online to vote in the USFT elections, and I realized that I'm probably not going to get re-elected.
Oddly enough, I felt relieved.
Because I want to focus more on local action. I want to work with TCU organizations, where I can see people, and touch them, and really work with them. And because I cannot truly see the people on the Coordinating Committee, I end up lagging in my commitments. It tears me apart, how much I cannot do. Why have I not already worked on the newsletter for USFT? Why not the mentorship program with the Advisory Council? Why not established an Interfaith Coalition? At the end of each day, I go to sleep in a state of near-panic (exemplifying the extent of my fatigue), thinking on everything I did not complete, everything for United Students for Fair Trade, for Frogs for Fair Trade, for ideas of on-campus activism that I could achieve through the Fellows Alliance which I could use to reach out from Interfaith to Living Wage, to work with Heal Hunger more, with the Gay Straight Alliance.
Everything I join, I join because it's something I should be able to do. Something I can do. Something I should do. This is the most difficult thing, this sense that I should be doing all of this. To not be on the CC for USFT would weigh heavily on me, but worse than that would be this continual inability to support USFT. Because the truth of the matter can be summed in the first question asked for our self-nominations: How many hours are you able to commit to USFT weekly during the 2007/2008 school year? I put five. The two other women who applied can commit ten to fifteen. This alone puts them above me, leading me to ask the question: Should I vote for myself? More important than my networking opportunities and getting to see Nicaragua, more important than me, is Fair Trade. Can I, in good conscience, choose to vote for myself, when these other women can offer two to three times as many hours as I can?
If I don't get elected, I won't have to make the choice. That would make my life so much easier. Choice, which is so valued by our depressed society as a means to happiness, in fact tends to make people unhappy. Oh, sweet irony.
I can't do this. Every day the impossibility of my commitments manifests itself in some way. In my fatigue. In my overbooking. In my double booking. In the hours of studying that frequently proscribe more than four consecutive REM cycles.
And somehow, I can't picture my life any differently. Perhaps this is because my life has been this intense since ninth grade, and in some ways since middle school, in my commitment to studying and drumline and a myriad of honor societies and extracurricular activities and, more recently, life as a wage laborer. Without the pressure, I doubt if I could function. But I also doubt that I'll ever know.
In other news, I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately. What a concept.
"Sometimes I wonder, 'Will God ever forgive us for what we've done to each other? And I look around and I realize, God left this place a long time ago.'" (From Blood Diamond. See it. Or at least this clip: http://youtube.com/watch?v=UVIVtU8mCe4)
Oddly enough, I felt relieved.
Because I want to focus more on local action. I want to work with TCU organizations, where I can see people, and touch them, and really work with them. And because I cannot truly see the people on the Coordinating Committee, I end up lagging in my commitments. It tears me apart, how much I cannot do. Why have I not already worked on the newsletter for USFT? Why not the mentorship program with the Advisory Council? Why not established an Interfaith Coalition? At the end of each day, I go to sleep in a state of near-panic (exemplifying the extent of my fatigue), thinking on everything I did not complete, everything for United Students for Fair Trade, for Frogs for Fair Trade, for ideas of on-campus activism that I could achieve through the Fellows Alliance which I could use to reach out from Interfaith to Living Wage, to work with Heal Hunger more, with the Gay Straight Alliance.
Everything I join, I join because it's something I should be able to do. Something I can do. Something I should do. This is the most difficult thing, this sense that I should be doing all of this. To not be on the CC for USFT would weigh heavily on me, but worse than that would be this continual inability to support USFT. Because the truth of the matter can be summed in the first question asked for our self-nominations: How many hours are you able to commit to USFT weekly during the 2007/2008 school year? I put five. The two other women who applied can commit ten to fifteen. This alone puts them above me, leading me to ask the question: Should I vote for myself? More important than my networking opportunities and getting to see Nicaragua, more important than me, is Fair Trade. Can I, in good conscience, choose to vote for myself, when these other women can offer two to three times as many hours as I can?
If I don't get elected, I won't have to make the choice. That would make my life so much easier. Choice, which is so valued by our depressed society as a means to happiness, in fact tends to make people unhappy. Oh, sweet irony.
I can't do this. Every day the impossibility of my commitments manifests itself in some way. In my fatigue. In my overbooking. In my double booking. In the hours of studying that frequently proscribe more than four consecutive REM cycles.
And somehow, I can't picture my life any differently. Perhaps this is because my life has been this intense since ninth grade, and in some ways since middle school, in my commitment to studying and drumline and a myriad of honor societies and extracurricular activities and, more recently, life as a wage laborer. Without the pressure, I doubt if I could function. But I also doubt that I'll ever know.
In other news, I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately. What a concept.
"Sometimes I wonder, 'Will God ever forgive us for what we've done to each other? And I look around and I realize, God left this place a long time ago.'" (From Blood Diamond. See it. Or at least this clip: http://youtube.com/watch?v=UVIVtU8mCe4)
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