"How We Have Changed"

Everyone tries to talk about it.

Writers have filled the newspapers and magazines

        with attempts to describe

                what has happened.

We know we have changed,

        but we don't have a sense just yet

                of how much 

                        or how far this change will take us. 

 

In an essay published in Harper's magazine last month,

        novelist and New Yorker Don DeLillo 

                wrote movingly about our collective experience

                        of shock, sorrow and adjustment.

"We like to think America invented the future,"

        DeLillo wrote.

"We are comfortable with the future,

        intimate with it.

But there are disturbances now,

        in large and small ways,

                a chain of reconsiderations.

Where we live,

        how we travel,

                what we think about 

                        when we look at our children.

For many people,

        the event has changed the grain of the most routine moment."

The future is one problem:

        we think about it now, 

                DeLillo noted,

                        "not in our normally hopeful way

                                but guided by dread."

As for the present,

        even the "most routine moment"

                has been altered:

                        I now must stop for security guards

                                to inspect my driver's license and my trunk

                                        before I can enter the parking lot

                                                at my gym.

It's a small inconvenience, 

        true,

                but it portends great danger.

 

And the past is somehow different now too.

We were ignorant 

        of the catastrophe coming our way.

When it happened,

        we wondered if it would change everything.

                

Essayist Vivian Gornick, 

        another New York eye witness 

                to the World Trade Center attack,

                        wrote in the Book Review section of the Los Angeles Times,

"I stood across the street from my apartment house

        in Greenwich Village,

                in a silent crowd,

                        watching the tallest buildings in Manhattan

                                burn and then fall.

No one spoke,

        no one cried out.

I think everyone in that crowd knew,

        then and there,

                that our world had changed

                        and that New York would never be the same.

In the months since that horrifying day,

        an atmosphere difficult to define –

                somewhat stunned,

                        somewhat disoriented,

                                strangely thoughtful,

                                        has enveloped the city 

                                                and not yet abated."

 

Gornick concluded that the change 

        that has enveloped us

                is similar to what Europeans experienced

                        after World War II.

It was a "cold pure silence" 

        that came from gazing directly and too long

                at the abyss war makes:

                        holes in the ground and in the heart,

                                leaving its victims aware

                                        that something is gone forever.

What is gone, Gornick wrote, 

        is a sense of nostalgia.

The absence of it

        "made available only to those 

                who stand at the end of history

                        staring, without longing or regret,

                                into the is-ness of what is."

Now we have entered that world at the end of history.

We see what is,

        and it is not what it was.

And neither are we.

 

The New Year has arrived,

        and with it the reflexive activity

                of thinking about the future.

But it's not the same future

        we used to invoke with hope and optimism.

Few of us are optimistic,

        yet all of us are on much more intimate terms with hope.

                

We can't wipe the slate clean this year.

To put aside what has happened

        would be like trying to stop grieving

                before we are ready.

Not possible.

We go on,

        yet we live with our memory,

                if not our nostalgia.

 

The present is all we really have.

And this is where we must begin.

For the present is full of possibilities,

        for insight and growth,

                for living fully and meaningfully

                        in ways we never have before.

Shaken though we are by world-changing events,

        we see revelations in the present moment,

                and they can do us great good.

According to the Christian legend of Epiphany,

        the three kings,

                those foreign men who visited Jesus in Bethlehem,

                        were the first non-Jews to celebrate his birth.

They realized that his life

        would change the world.

So they humbled themselves before him 

        and they brought him gifts,

                grateful for his life 

                        and all that it meant to them.

In the version of the story that comes from Puerto Rico,

        the gifts they brought

                came back to them later,

                        triple in value.

        

Epiphany is not a holiday that has carried much meaning 

        for Unitarian Universalists. 

Thomas Jefferson's version of the gospels

        doesn’t even tell the story of the three kings;

                he must have judged it specious.

But for those for whom Jesus' life

        would change their world,

                the moment when that became clear

                        was a true revelation.

And that is why the day is called Epiphany.

 

Any day lived in the awareness of life-changing events

        is a day of epiphany.

When we give ourselves fully to that moment,

        we are rewarded many times over.

We may have changed, but for the better.

Now we are not the same.

We are sadder and wiser, yes.

But we are also able to see something

        we have never seen before:

                a "starkness," 

                        as Vivian Gornick described it,

                                that we must honor 

                                        "with a fully present attention."

Or as Don DeLillo told us,

        "the event has changed the grain 

                of the most routine moment." 

 

I read these pronouncements with a need

        for words to explain the feelings 

                I have inside.

Outwardly, much has returned to normal in my life.

I work,

        I make plans.

In many ways, 

        nothing has changed much for me.

But in some other way,

        everything has.

 

Barbara Brown Taylor's essay "Back to normal?"

        addressed this paradoxical condition.

She wrote about how a serious illness or injury

        can scare us into a "stunning clarity"

                about what really matters.

We think we can hold onto the revelation,

        but gradually our old life returns 

                "like the tide."

We don't want to remember 

        how scared we were,

                and we decide that the best way to live

                        with gratitude for life

                                is to go back to normal.

 

Barbara Brown Taylor concluded

        that she did not want to go back to normal,

                not back to the way things were.

For although this "stunning tragedy"    

        opened our eyes to horror and fear,

                we also saw remarkable acts of heroism,

                        tolerance,

                                and moral determination.

Let's not lose the good things

        that come from catastrophic events,

                she asked us.

"Our whole country has been in the hospital," 

        she wrote,

                "wide-awake to the question 

                        of where do we go from here.

As we contemplate our discharge,

        many of us are considering the best way

                to express our gratitude.

Among the many options open to us,

        I hope that returning to normal

                is the last thing on our lists."

 

A good task for us this New Year 

        is to think about 

                how not to go back to normal.

During these past few dark and scary months,

        did you realize how much 

                your family and friends meant to you?

Did you realize how much you longed 

        to be with the people you loved?

Did you realize you lived too much in the past,

        or were always waiting for the future,

                while days passed in a procession

                        of lost opportunities to live more fully in the present?

Did you think about God 

        for the first time in a long time?

Did you feel grateful to be alive?

 

I realized all this;

        perhaps you did too.    

I don't want to let these realizations go.

I want to let my awareness last long enough

        to change the way I go about my days,

                to make a difference,

                        a good difference,

                                after all that has happened. 

I want something to grow

        in the great gaping emptiness 

                that comes from horror and fear.

If I have changed,

        I want it to be for the better.

I do not want to go back to where I was,

        when I was "normal."

 

Don DeLillo wrote of a harrowing escape 

        by a young family who lived near the towers.

Mother and father hurrying their children 

        into the stairwell of their downtown apartment building

                while smoke seeped in.

Calls made on cell phones to parents across the country,

        and then, an improvised rescue.

 

"They came out into a world of ash and near night,"

        he reported.

"There was no one else to be seen now on the street...

The members of the group were masked and toweled,

        children in adults' arms,

                moving east and then north on Nassau Street,

                        trying not to look around,

                                only what's immediate,

                                        one step and then another,

                                                all closely focused,

                                                        a pregnant woman,

                                                                a newborn,

                                                                        a dog.

They were covered in ash 

        when they reached shelter at Pace University,

                where there was food and water,

                        and kind and able staff members,

                                and a gas-leak scare,

                                        and more running water.

Workers began pouring water on the group.

Stay wet, stay wet.

This was the theme of the first half hour.

 

"Later a line began to form along the food counter.

Someone said, 'I don’t want cheese on that.'

Someone said, 'I like it better not so cooked.'

Not so incongruous really,

        just people alive and hungry,

                beginning to be themselves again."

 

We are beginning to be ourselves again too.

Our gratitude for life is giving way 

        to our preference for wanting life 

                this way or that.

And yet, even the "grain of the most routine moment" 

        has changed,

                and with it,

                        our awareness of how precious each moment is.

All I want 

        is to remember always 

                how precious each moment is;

                        to remember how I learned,

                                through tragedy and fear,

                                        that we can grow in the emptiness

                                                if we live as fully as we can

                                                        in the present.

Its a New Year. 

This is a good place to begin again.

Sources for this sermon include "In the Ruins of the Future," by Don DeLillo, inHarper's Magazine, December 2001; "Back to normal?" by Barbara Brown Taylor, inChristian Century, November 7, 2001, and "Reading in an Age of Uncertainty," byVivian Gornick, in the Los Angeles Times, December 30, 2001.