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What Can We Do?By Thomas Keating The basic oneness of the human family, intuited by the mystics of all religions, is reinforced by the discoveries of particle physics, bio-physics, quantum mechanics, Big Bang, the chaos and string theories. Reality manifests the unity in diversity of the Ultimate Reality. Anthropology reveals the evolution of the from pre self-conscious states to full reflective self-consciousness. Higher states of consciousness are now a possibility for every individual. Is it also possible for the human race as a whole, or at least a major portion? If so, it may require a series of crises on a global scale to force us to relinquish narrow, limited, and self-interested goals in order to venture into the world of inner freedom, mutual concern and transformation. This is the goal of the spiritual disciplines of the world religions, especially the Christian path as understood by the Fathers of the Church and contemplatives throughout the Christian tradition. The Greek Fathers boldly spoke of divinization in their ordinary homilies. The witness of the Algerian Martyrs of the Cistercian Monastery of Atlas is significant for our contemporary experience. These were monks from several European monasteries who went to Algeria to live the monastic life as a witness to Christ’s love for the Muslim people. Their dialogue of presence to the impoverished Arabs who lived around them might be called dialogue unto death. They forgave those who killed them in advance. They fulfilled the most profound social meaning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: forgiveness of everyone and everyday as well as a practical caring for all their neighbors. One of the consequences of this teaching is the conviction that the sufferings of others are our sufferings. It can also be said that the needs of everyone are our needs. From the perspective of the Gospel, these needs are also God’s needs. "As long as you did it to one of the least of my little ones, you did it to me" (Matt. 25:40). Those who died in the wreckage of the Twin Towers may not be martyrs in the strict sense of the term. Martyrs are those who lay down their lives for a cause. Jesus did not lay down his life for a particular cause. He laid down his life for the sake of the whole human family. The victims of the Twin Towers have entered into the same broader dimension. They had no time to think of a cause to die for. They were mostly concerned about their loved ones and about the ordinary lives that they were on the point of losing. In a sense they pioneered a new kind of martyrdom without even thinking about it. They were called to submit to the dark side of human transformation, which is death. But this is what Jesus did in his own person—suffering death without any power to rise except his absolute trust in the Father’s faithfulness. Even that as a psychological support was sacrificed in the apparent abandonment he experienced on the cross and his subsequent descent into hell. These were the inevitable consequences of his identification with the human condition, especially with personal and social sin and the natural sanctions which flow from them: guilt, shame, isolation, desolation, loneliness, alienation. Contemplatives of all times have been called to participate in this collective anguish and to rise with Jesus to the inconceivable union and unity that is God’s plan for each individual and for humanity as a whole. The victims have contributed to the great awakening that God may have planned from all eternity for us fragile human creatures. In any case, the death of the innocent victims of war and violence is the Passion of Christ extended in time and space. Our collective sufferings, including the shock, grief, anger and shattering of our expectations and support systems, may be a necessary part of the preparation for the ultimate healing of the individual and societal wounds of the human family and its collective resurrection. The Twin Towers’ destruction was man made. It was not a natural disaster. Hence it is a lively symbol of the devastation that is the consequence of sin, especially social sin, the collective evil accumulating from millions of people seeking to escape from their personal emotional pain. Inflicting pain on others is a characteristic response to this experience. The desire for revenge always accompanies feelings of intense anger or long-simmering hostility. Retaliation, if given free reign, adds to the violence already inflicted on the human family by the original perpetrators. The need for a vindictive triumph, so often touted in war propaganda, must be sharply distinguished from legitimate measures to defend innocent people from brutal attack. At the same time we owe it to the dead not to take the low road of merciless vengeance, which is basically what destroyed their lives. The Twin Towers, at least to third world countries, were symbols of unbridled capitalism, economic domination by the United States over the rest of the world, the search for wealth reaching to the skies and the power to impose our materialistic culture on everyone else. It was a symbol of pride, arrogance, greed, vanity, and the apotheosis of financial success and domination. Yet for most who worked there, it was a way of earning a living, supporting their families with a good job and "hope" for the future. As a world catastrophe, it is a kind of culmination of the escalating insensitivity to human life that characterizes the wars and violence of the last eighty to a hundred years of human history. The people who worked in the Twin Towers were from eighty different nationalities. The perpetrators of the event had as a clear intent to destroy not just the buildings with their symbolism, but as many innocent people as possible. Anyone who lived in the USA and especially those who passed through those towers was an enemy totally beyond consideration, sympathy, or pity. Thus the attack is a denial of what is most fundamental about human beings, namely, their common unity, a oneness rooted in our common Source. We are individual and social in our very being, manifesting the unity and diversity of the Trinity and its boundless creative activity. The oneness of the human family is taught in Genesis by affirming Adam and Eve as the progenitors of the race. Paul develops in Romans how Christ, in taking one human being to himself in the Incarnation, has taken every human being into union with his divine nature. In the light of this teaching, all social divisions have to be reevaluated and many of them dismantled. The destruction of the Twin Towers was clearly an attack on humanity itself. Since God is identified with the human family and dwells in each member of it, the destruction was also an attack upon God. The crescendo of human suffering is manifested by the disregard of ordinary citizens as possessing any rights in war, as the just war theory had once proposed as essential for a war to be truly just. The United States government has its share of blame, e.g. the saturation bombing of German cities at the close of WWII, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, support of corrupt dictatorships, refusal to ban land mines and refusal to forgive the debts of impoverished countries, building an ever more grandiose military industrial complex at the cost of neglecting the poor, health care, and protecting the environment. The present terrorist crisis moves to certain logical conclusions. No one is safe. No place is safe. No weapons can secure anyone against a terrorist attack, especially the ultimate aggression of suicide bombing. The destruction of the Twin Towers happens to be the most visible and dramatic image of the corporate crucifixion of the human family up till now. Isaiah vividly foretells the Passion of Jesus and its consequences (Isa. 52:13-53:12). By making all the pronouns plural, the text strikingly resonates with the tragic deaths of those crushed in the falling buildings. The agonizing deaths of the victims conform them to Christ’s redeeming death. Do they foreshadow the corporate resurrection that God may be preparing for the world? Dying to the false self and inner resurrection is the path to divine union. Many individuals have reached this state in the course of human history. But the divine plan for the human race as a whole to reach this state is now becoming the central issue for religion, spirituality, and human history itself. What might we do? Above everything else, continue or initiate in one’s own life a permanent commitment to personal transformation. Be reconciled with everyone, forgive in advance those who fight against us. Act in principle out of the reality of the oneness of the human family and all creation. The specific way in which to serve depends on one’s own talents, the call of grace, and the recognition of the immense complexity, as well as the interconnectedness and interdependence, of the developing global society. Issues of justice and peace need the input, collaboration, and cooperation of experts in many areas of human interaction if the emerging global society is to meet the world’s immediate and ongoing needs.
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Contemplative
Outreach Newsletter · Spring/Summer 2004