No Giving Up Hope!

It's almost 9 years later, and tonight I am remembering the two most powerful experiences I had in September 2001. The first was watching the terrorist attacks on television on 9/11 and the weeks after. The second occurred about a week later, when I discovered someone had put an apple and honey packets in my mailbox where I worked. I didn't understand why someone would do this or what it meant, until a Jewish friend explained it to me. The Jewish students on campus were gifting us with apples and honey as a part of Rosh Hashanah. I'd never eaten apples with honey before, but the sweetness of it and the act of the students was in stark contrast to the bitter taste left in my mouth of the terrorist acts of 9/11.

Where I did not understand the gift given, I most certainly understood why the act of terrorism occurred and what it meant. I'd spent 10 months working with political asylum seekers and torture survivors prior to 9/11, and I understood the mechanism and motives behind torture and terrorism.

I remember the mourning by myself and those around me and the sweet sight of candlelight vigils and flag waving unity that followed. People seemed to find comfort in this, but I did not. I knew that it would only be a matter of time before we'd go to war. In order to have unity around something, we've got this habit of going aggressively against something. It was only a matter of deciding what thing we were going to drop bombs on.

I knew it wouldn't be Saudi Arabia (despite the fact that many of the terrorists were from there) because they're an ally and we need our military bases there. Additionally, Saudi Arabia contains two holy cities of great spiritual significance to Muslims everywhere. It would start the Holy War to end all Holy Wars to bomb there. We'd show our unity by attacking something else that people didn't seem to care as much about, and so we selected Afghanistan.

I'm thinking about all of this tonight because two years ago, I became on online English practice teacher of a female refugee from Afghanistan who is living in Pakistan. She wants to learn English because her father believed in women receiving an education and she is doing this to honor his memory. I think she's been a refugee for these eight or nine years, shortly after 9/11 and when I discovered apples and honey. Tonight we were discussing what has been termed the "Ground Zero Mosque," future educational prospects for her and what it might be like to come to America being a conservative Pashtun female.

Apples and honey are eaten during Rosh Hashanah, I've learned, to symbolize our hopes for a "sweet" new year. I think that my student has never eaten apples and honey, and still waits for that sweet new year to happen, all these years after being displaced from her home. She's told me about the bombs at the bazaars in her town in Pakistan, of the girls getting kidnapped while riding a cab, of the threats of violence against women who try to attend school. Now they're faced with a wave of new displaced people owing to the floods in Pakistan.

As we were discussing the available options for obtaining an education elsewhere, I could slowly hear her losing hope. I kept saying and typing "No giving up hope!" It absolutely cannot be an option, for either of us to give up hope. I was saying it for my own benefit as much as for hers. When we give up hope, we've lost it all.

I have the great luxury of being able to write this without a fear of bombs going off, losing power, losing the Internet connection, or having retaliation for what I write. I have the liberty and luxury of being able to leave my house at any time, day or night. However, there is no great luxury for me in seeing the hatred emerging in its various forms across America.

The same people unified over candles and under flags, saying we are all Americans are fighting each other in nasty ways across political divides. The same people unified over candles and under flags are labelling a mosque in NYC the "Ground Zero Mosque" and saying that Americans can't have a mosque that close to ground zero. I'm reading reports of women harassed (by US government and law officials) here in the US for wearing the scarf.

I'm trying to explain to my student why there can be no option of her coming here as a visitor and then applying for a student visa, out of fear that if her status becomes illegal, wearing covering from head to toe in this current climate of animosity, she might become a target by people who do not understand her religion, cultural ways or values. I have no idea of how well the INS understands the importance of her wearing this, if she was found to be illegal here. It was difficult to explain this to her, painful, actually.

So we're done attacking other people and have turned on ourselves and those who need our help the most. In my mind, there's absolutely no justification for it. I would like to know someday that we are in a better place than we are right now - for my student in terms of physical location, and for our country in our mindset.

I am going to keep reminding myself, "No giving up hope!"

The Uncharted Course = Courageous Defiance

Today my son showed me art work he'd done and the most striking element of one piece was where he'd written "And you thought I was crazy!" surrounded by images and words of love. There was something very visceral about it, a kind of courageous defiance to it. I understood it on so many levels, but the level I understood it on the most was in my own experience of that same phenomenon.

His art work brought me back to a time when I was about his age and did my own meaning making through art. I used to draw phoenixes over and over again, making each more personally my own, and putting quotes around them that echoed my reaction to the world. I believed in (and still do) the power of transformation, which took the form of the metaphor of the phoenix, rising from its ashes.

At the time I did this, there was absolutely nothing in my environment that would have given rise to such an idea. There was no reason for it. What I saw around me was quite the opposite and my courageous defiance had to do with believing in something in the absence of proof. I believed that people could transform themselves and rise from the ashes. I didn't know how it would happen, or what it would require, but I knew it to be an absolute truth in my life.

A funny thing happened as I grew up. I began to live my values to the degree where my own transformative process has been an impetus for me to help others, and even to be an inspiration to others, oddly enough. I never really wanted to inspire others, I just wanted to live a life consistent with something that was an absolute. I still am.

I reflect on my son's artwork and his own evolving absolute value, and I can relate, from the perspective that everyone thought I was crazy, too. It's amazing what crazy faith in a core value can do for a life, though. In his case, his relates to love. I think he means romantic love of the steadfast and undying kind. He may not see it modeled in his current environment, but it's enough for me that he believes in such a love as an absolute value. If he can imagine it, he can manifest it in his own life. I suspect he'd like me to believe in it too, based upon his insistence I watch every romantic comedy in existence with him.

What strikes me as endearing is the recognition that he shares with me the common bond of a sort of courageous defiance of "what is," a kind of blind trust in something. I nodded in admiration of his work, and silently contemplated that the moment you allow the circumstances to define you, you've lost the game.

If in his life, he holds the belief in love in some fashion, I think he'll enjoy himself as much as I have in my path of transformation. I appreciate his defiance of what exists so long as he can contemplate what is yet to be in a positive way. I can model for him the power of transformation and he can model for me the steadfast belief in love as a commitment that does not end. The place where we converge in our thinking is kind of magical.