Both Sides By Rev. Nina D. Grey October, 2001

There are very few events in history about which I recall exactly where I was when I heard. I know where I was when President Kennedy died. And when Dr. King was shot. And when I heard about the Challenger explosion. When I saw the burning tower of the World Trade Center, I was in a restaurant, about to pay my bill. Someone said, look at the tv. And I did.

My daughter was on her way to school, P.S. 3, with her daughter, my granddaughter Hannah, in Greenwich Village, New York. They saw the flames two miles in the distance. My son in law watched the towers come crushing down, from the roof of their 10th Street apartment building.

We have all taken in so much of this devastation, taken in so much grief. Yet as terrible as I have felt day after day, I knew, talking to my daughter, that what the people felt close to ground zero was geometrically more awful. And so my grief is not only for the thousands of people lost (one and one and one and one ......) and their suddenly immeasurably bereft families and friends, but for the lost lightheartedness and foolish, joyful playfulness of my daughter's family and so many other families like hers. And for the lost innocence of childhood of the children. This makes me very angry. So anger is mixed in with my deep sadness. Perhaps this is true for you, also.

One of our members said, I go from one feeling to another to another. Anger and sadness and going from one feeling to another are natural parts of many experiences of grief, even when we lose one beloved from illness or other natural causes.

I am writing less than two weeks after the bombings. I don't know how I will feel by the time you are reading this October Both Sides reflection. Already, though I am still crying, I am weepy less often. Every day I am grateful that Kimberly and Chad and Hannah are alright, and I have faith that they will find healing, slowly. I celebrate with Barbara Need of our congregation, whose family member, working in the World Trade Center, got out safely. And I am touched by some of the many stories of courage and faithfulness. In small acts and large, so many have shown generosity and bravery.

Yet still I grieve for so much unimaginable loss. And still, in the aftermath, and as our nation's leaders are responding with a determination to defeat terrorism through what they call a new kind of war, I am afraid for us and for our world. I know I am not alone in that fear. And still, I seek understanding. Meaning. Hope. And I know I am not alone in those yearnings either.

I am unclear about many things. I do not have many answers about how to make our world safer, while at the same time maintaining our human freedoms and increasing justice. I will be preaching this Sunday (September 23) from that unclarity. But, as I prepare for that Sunday, of three things I am certain.

One is that we have been a profound community of support in these difficult times. We came together and spoke and listened to one another, and gave our church children special care, and I know we will need to continue giving each other support and caring. And we continued to pay attention to ones in our congregation who were needing special care, who were ill or grieving a personal loss. I have felt blessed by the tenderness of us.

Another is that as a liberal religious movement, we were absolutely right when we made our first Unitarian Universalist principle, the affirmation and promotion of the dignity and worth of every person. If I know little, I know that. And so I am glad that some of us from First Unitarian Church of Chicago will be joining an interfaith vigil at the Moslem Community Center after church.

And we were also right when we made affirming and promoting the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part our seventh principle. I have seen those interconnections when an email calling for a candlelight vigil makes it all around the world in hours. I have felt our connections in our worldwide sharing of grief. I believe that knowledge of that interdependence is more widespread. If we can find ways to embody it, ways to identify with peoples of every condition, all over the world, if we plumb the meaning of that interdependence and the possibilities for world wide care and cooperation, maybe that knowledge can save us.

Let us witness for the values we believe in. Let us live them. Let us keep on showing our caring and love. Let us keep faith with our passion for justice, even as we continue seeking knowledge, understanding, and hopefully, wisdom. And let us nurture hope.

In faith, with love,

Nina