No Time For Hating

Dear Boo and Bubble,

Today marks the 15^th anniversary of a most dark and sad day in the history of our country – the attack by Al Qaeda on the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.  For all Americans, these incidents became a “stop” moment in our lives whereby the time, place and circumstances of where we were are forever seared into our memories, never to be forgotten.

At the time, I was Executive Director of Central Midlands Habitat for Humanity in Columbia, SC.  I remember heading to an appointment with a potential donor, when a call from Aunt Bee, who was attending the College of Charleston, came through to my cellphone.  She had been watching The Today Show on television and there was news that a plane had just crashed into one of the towers.  I envisioned a small, private plane that had perhaps suffered some malfunction in its controls or worse, someone committing the fatal act of suicide.  However, she explained that reports indicated it was a large commercial jet liner.  As we talked, her voice paused and she let out a gasp.  Looking at the television screen, she witnessed in horror a second plane careening through the stately glass and steel structure of the second tower.    It became obvious to her, to me and to everyone in the world that this must be a deliberate act off aggression and it shook all of us to the core.

I had no choice but to keep my appointment.  It was with a doctor at Lexington Medical Center who hoped to fund a house for one of the nurse’s aides that worked there.  The news from New York had spread throughout the facility and neither he nor I could concentrate on our intended business.  We agreed to meet again later. 

As I drove back towards my office, the cellphone rang again.  It was a female voice I did not recognize.

 “Beth, this Elaine ……… Grayson’s mother.  I just want you to know that he was able to call me and they both are okay.” 

Your mom and dad had just moved to the D.C. area and were renting an apartment right across the Interstate from the Pentagon.  I had no clue what she was talking about and asked her what was going on.  She filled me in on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.  Luckily, both of your parents were in D.C. proper when it happened.  Your mom was interviewing for a job and your dad had accompanied her on the train to make sure she found the right station to exit.  He tried to make his way back home by train, but all mass transportation had been stopped.  He ended up on the mall in the shadows of the Washington Monument.  Thousands of people funneled to the open space which was considered safer than being in buildings that could possibly be attack targets.   He had called your grandmother Elaine from there and asked her to call me.  This was the first time she and I had ever spoken.

It was a horrific day in the psyche of our nation.  Initially, there was a kind of incredible unity among us that a shared trauma can generate.  And once the enemy identified itself as the perpetrator of this strike against us, there was an instant galvanization – almost completely around the world – against them.  Looking back at the point in time from fifteen years later, I marvel that it could be so because the events that have occurred since then seem to have put us back in the same bubbling cauldron of contentious stew where we found ourselves before it all happened. 

Understanding that there is an oceanic divide between the personal realm and the political nation…..and that sometimes what works in the one does not in the other….I still grapple with the correct response one should have after experiencing such an ordeal.  The visceral temptation to cast aspersions, to foster suspicion and abhorrence, is a very real one.  But, I believe I must avoid it.  It serves no purpose but to feed the gerbil wheel of hate.

In going through the scrapbooks of your great, great, great, great grandfather Joseph Benson Cottrell, I found a poem that resonated with me on this matter.  I don’t know whether he wrote it or whether he clipped it out of the newspaper to keep as material for one of his sermons.  That is neither here nor there.  It’s the words that are important.

No Time for Hating

Be gone with feud! Away with strife;

Our human hearts unmating!

Let us be friends again – this life

Is all too short for hating.

So dull the day, so dim the way,

So rough the road we’re faring –

Far better weal with faithful friend

Than stalk alone uncaring.

The barren fig, the withered vine

Are types of selfish living;

But souls that give, like thine and mine,

Renew their life by giving.

While cypress waves o’er early graves,

On all the way we’re going,

Far better plant where seed is scant

Than tramp o’er broken roses.

Of what are all the joys we hold

Compared to joys above us?

And what are rank, and power and gold,

Compared to hearts that love us?

So fleet our years, so full of fears,

So closely death is waiting;

God gives us space for loving grace,

But leaves not time for hating.