A Book for 9/11: David Carlson's "Peace Be With You"

Do you remember what you were doing on September 11, 2001? When did you hear the news that shook the world? What do you remember from the days following? How did your faith shape your view of the events? And if asked for any wisdom, do you think you might have some insights to share?
With an uneasy feeling that the United States may have reacted instead of responded and consequently headed down the wrong path of retaliation, these are the types of questions that David Carlson asked the monastic community and relates to us in Peace Be With You: Monastic Wisdom for a Terror-Filled World.
Last November I was searching for a book in the public library, to see if they had a copy. They didn't have the book I was looking for, but they did have Carlson's Peace Be With You. You might, then, be wondering why I'm reviewing it now, 9 months after I've finished it. Because it speaks profoundly to the events of 9/11. Peace Be With You is Carlson's search for a "word of life" from the monastic communities in the United States. He relates his experiences with over thirty interviews of monks and nuns (plus a potter) and how their wisdom and their insight into the human experience challenges and shapes his life. In the meantime, he finds that these words of life might also provide a way in which Islam and Christianity can dialogue, and continue our relationship with one another on a compassionate level.

When 9/11 hit I was serving three churches in central Idaho. While other pastors were speaking about the end times and divine punishment, I struggled to express how God calls us to be means of grace, using justice tempered with compassion with the goal of reconciliation. Consequently, I found this book to be an intriguing read that validated some of my own insights, longing and struggles while encouraging my faith.
As September rolls around once more, I would encourage you to read this book, and open yourself for transformation.

Blessed Be
Rev. Joel

Below are few quotes to prompt your reading.

One of the monks responds to the question of freedom:

"[People] think you lose your freedom when you come into a monastery. Now you're under obedience, you can't do what you want anymore, can't go out when you want, can't spend money like you want, all these other things we lose, you know ... But [this life] gives us a great freedom, the freedom to live our life in God."
I thought of the last stanza of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, where Eliot compares human life to a sailboat under masterful control. The boat achieves its end, reaches its destination, when the rudder and lines to the sails are controlled. Chaos and confusion, not freedom, are achieved in letting go the lines and leaving the boat to the mercy of the wind. Monastic life is all about taking hold of the ropes - these ropes of discipline that lead to freedom (30).

When interviewing Mother Julianne, she relates how the events of 9/11 brought back terrible memories of fellow sisters who experienced firsthand the terrors of Guatemala, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Carlson reflects:

I was unexpectedly moved by Mother Julianne's connecting 9/11 with the suffering in Guatemala and Rwanda (and later in the interview, Bosnia). She was articulating something that had saddened me about our nation's reaction to 9/11. Our grief could have become a bridge of understanding and empathy to others in the world who have known (and continue to experience) horrendous suffering. But that had not happened. I had yet to hear anyone ask, "Was 9/11 something like what the Japanese experienced in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?"
Instead, 9/11 only seemed to isolate us further from the world. To most Americans, the tragedy of 9/11 was experienced as a bubble to suffering so unique that only we could possibly feel the severity of the pain. Our grief seemed to become our private possession (42-3).

And, yet, here is a nun with the world/faith view to say "'I think that's why 9/11 took on a whole international [meaning] - it's not just an American problem. It's a problem of our present [global] society'" (43).

Carlson spends a chapter reflecting upon Thomas Merton, especially Merton's epiphany in Louisville at the corner of Fourth and Walnut where he suddenly sees all these people walking around him as each one must appear to the eyes of God, and he loves them.

Several years later, in New Seeds of Contemplation (1961), Merton would express this insight as seeing the mystical Christ in the people around him. "For in becoming man, God became not only Jesus Christ, but also potentially every man and woman that ever existed. In Christ, God became not only 'this' man, but also, in a broader and more mystical sense, yet no less truly, 'every man'" (99 - from Merton's Seeds 294-5)

In Merton's view, the Incarnation, the belief that God became human in Christ, was not an abstract theological doctrine, not simply a creedal statement, but an actual transformation of the entire human race. As a drop of holy water is said to have power to sanctify an entire ocean, as a spore of leaven affects the entire loaf, God becoming human has changed us all. The decisive moment of human history had come in Christ, the God-man, and, for Merton, this was the answer to the Cold War of his own lifetime. I swallowed hard ... I had come to believe that Merton's insight was becoming for me an answer to 9/11 (134-5).

Here was the truth about contemplation, that contemplation is a protest, a refusal to concede the victory to hatred, vengeance, materialism, tribalism, or individualism. Contemplation can be the collective experience of a minority (a "whispered peace"), but that minority insists that a depth of living exists, even within those who are ignorant of that depth, where healing, wholeness, and unity can never be destroyed. Contemplation is radical in that it anticipates not the destruction of our adversaries but our reconciliation with them (164).

His interview with Richard Bresnahan (see previous posting about his pottery here) is incredible. Bresnahan has deep insights into what it means an artist is to be doing, and how the life of an artist shapes everything. One's vocation is not just lived out at work, but in all of one's life. And humans are here to balance out the ecosystem.

The cornerstone of this new understanding of the mystical Christ as present within humanity. The Incarnation is much more radical an event than is reflected in our brief Christmas festivities. The Incarnation means that Jesus has entered this world and lurks, albeit often in a hidden way, within the entire human race. I began to realize that I did not need to bring Jesus to bear on our crisis. What I needed to do was find Jesus moving in the midst of it (228).

And the Incarnation leads to love.

And our failure to trust in this unfathomable love had been our lost chance after 9/11. "We had an opportunity to not only heal ourselves ... to receive healing, but also to help the world," [Brother Christopher] said. "That didn't necessarily preclude trying to bring to justice the perpetrators of the act, but we, in my judgment, have squandered that. And that's almost as big a tragedy as the act of 9/11 itself." ... "It was a kairos moment [a time of great significance] ... and is this an opportunity where can be seen? And make no mistake about it; we're not looking for a deus ex machina swinging down. At least I'm not. I'm not expecting all of a sudden Jesus coming down or the Rapture taking place ... No, rather, we become the means of grace. We become God's hands, God's feet. We become the instruments of the gospel. Or not!" he emphasized (243).

In our response to the tragedy of 9/11, we had replaced the God of the paschal mystery with the God of vengeance. The God whom Jesus embodied had made a far different choice. God had chosen forgiveness. God did not condemn the world for crucifying His Son, but raised Jesus for the sake of the world - for the sake of us who continue to crucify Christ in our actions toward others. ... We had failed to understand 9/11 in light of the death and resurrection of Christ. We had left Christ on the cross.
For Christians to view 9/11 and the world of terrorism through the paschal mystery of Christ's death and resurrection will be difficult and complex. Such a stance does not mean condoning or ignoring what al-Qaeda did on September 11, any more than God, in Christian belief, ignored or condoned the sinfulness of humanity in crucifying His Son. No, forgiveness must mean, as the South African activist Malusi Mpumlwana suggests, helping our adversaries recover their humanity (246-7).

****
Carlson, David. Peace Be With You: Monastic Wisdom for a Terror-Filled World. Thomas Nelson, 2011. 276 pages