"Love never fails."
- I Corinthians 13:8
As we launched the “Honor Their Memory: Be a Hero for Peace” project last week, Suzanne and I reflected quite a bit on evil, loss, and meaning.
One of the sayings we will continue to hear as 9/11/2011 approaches is “America will not forget!” How can we? The terrible images from that day are etched in our minds. We will always remember where we were when it happened. We will not forget. There is no doubt about that. The question is, “In what way will we remember 9/11?”
Because we can choose how to remember evil events. We can remember them in ways that lead us to more evil, violence, and destruction. Or we can remember them in ways that lead to healing, reconciliation, and love.
I was beginning my senior year at Linfield College in the small town of McMinnville, Oregon on 9/11/2001. The previous year I changed my major to religious studies in order to explore the meaning of human suffering. That topic may seem to some as an impractical existential concern. Many parents balk when their college student majors in religious studies, but for me there was no choice. I had to do it.
My mother died two weeks before the end of my sophomore year at Linfield. For 10 years she suffered from cancer. It was evil. No other word can describe it. It never should have happened. Sometimes, well meaning people would say things like, “All things work for good in God’s time.”
To that statement, I want to say, “No.” And then I want to say, “Yes.” It’s a paradoxical response, but I think any response to evil must be paradoxical because evil is an existential paradox.
There are things that happen in our world that are evil and should be called evil. The cancer that took my mom was evil. It never should have happened, but it did. Her suffering, the pain she went through, the pain her family went through – it never should have happened. No good came from the cancer. My family and I continue to grieve her death. It’s a loss we will never forget.
That’s the “No” to the above statement.
Here’s the “Yes”: Love overcomes evil. As my mother was dying, I witnessed the most amazing love between her and my dad. I remember my dad holding her, comforting her, and loving her in the sincerest, most heartfelt, way. When my mom was at her lowest, most ignominious point in her life, dad was there. As the cancerous evil took my mom’s life, and as she lay in her hospital bed, her husband of 25 years sat by her side.
During this time, my dad and my mom were both models of how to love. Dad gave love. Mom received love. They loved with courage and they were both heroes in my eyes. My mom died, but the love between my parents never failed.
Love won. And it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
That’s how I choose to remember my mom and her experience with cancer. Love overcame an evil that never should have happened.
The evil events of 9/11/2001 happened soon after my mother’s death. I witnessed 9/11 from my college campus. I awoke later than usual on that day. As I walked to the living room of my apartment, my roommates faces were glued to the television screen – their faces blank. “What’s going on?” I asked. After a brief pause, one of my roommates turned his head and told me the news.
Like the rest of the United States, we were all in a state of shock. Some of us went to class; others didn’t. I remember watching the events of that day unfold on the television in our student union. The terrible evil and violence of that day is etched in my mind, but so are the selfless acts of love and heroism. Firefighters, policemen, and countless others sacrificed their lives and health in order to save people they didn’t know. That kind of sacrificial love is courageous; it’s heroic. In the midst of tragic evil, there was love.
That’s how I choose to remember 9/11/2001. I can’t forget the evil and violence, but I remember that evil didn’t have the last word. Love didn’t fail on that day. Love overcame evil. Love won.
As heroic and courageous as love is, it is hard to trust that love never fails. So, we easily get caught up in evil – we punch back. And that’s what the United States did. The problem is that, as Walter Wink claims in his book The Powers that Be, “Evil is contagious. No one grapples with it without contamination” (124). As we are entering the 10th year since 9/11, and as we enter the 10th year of the “War on Terror,” we are beginning to realize that war, violence, and evil cannot win. Evil, violence, and war are contagious. The United States got sucked into its trap and we are suffering the evil done to us and the evil we’ve inflicted upon others.
So, how do we remember the past and move forward?
Our friends at the Metta Center suggest we respond by doing something counter-intuitive and extremely courageous. They are challenging us to respond with the 2,000 year old wisdom of loving our enemies. We at Raven are trying to do our part by encouraging people to “Honor Their Memory – Be a Hero for Peace.” During the next few months, we will have activities on the Raven website that will help do and be just that. We invite you to join us and the Metta Center in this project. The world needs courageous people who trust that “love never fails” and who, in their daily lives, will bravely be heroes for peace.
