The morning of 9/11 I was listening to KFI - Bill Handel on the radio. Bill is still on the air but I don't listen to KFI much anymore. (Audio Books suffice.) He is known for a sort of jokey sarcasm - and an exaggerated way of telling stories - on himself - and on others. For instance, he once gave a blow by blow account of a death row inmate being fried that was compelling. So Bill is a character - a personality - and when he started talking about what was happening in New York, there was a question in my mind - it's a joke right? But it was not. The television set confirmed it and of all people to call first, I called my then building manager. He didn't believe me. Then I called my best friend - who didn't answer the phone. Like everyone else, I was riveted to the television set.
And then, then I became depressed.
Someone gifted me something I really needed, something that no one else on this earth at the time would have thought to gift me, something that no one else I knew at the time could afford, and probably the most generous gift I ever received, but the box sat there unopened. I wasn't even curious to open the Apple box. I was moving through molasses. I awaited word that we were going to war, that war had been officially declared and called war, rather than a "military action."
At this time I went to a number of coffee houses in order to write. I went over to one where I had a coffeehouse friend who was an artist, a painter of dog portraits, whose work was even published in a book not of his own making. The artist told me his own mother had been in the building that the first plane hit. In fact it probably hit her very office. His family in New York City wanted him to get on a plane and fly there right away. They were in denial. They wanted him to go to the hospitals looking for their mom. He didn't go. He knew there was no chance she was alive.
The impact of the loss of his mom in such a horrific way was so strong that this artist could not paint. He could not hold a brush. Months later he was trying another form of creative expression - writing songs - to overcome the paralysis. He was clearly not in his normality for a long time.
A couple weeks after 9/11, while still feeling angry and powerless, I went ahead and opened the gift. It was a laptop computer and I needed it to write. It was intended as a practical gift but it became one in which self expression was also a way of maintaining the healing I needed because of this horrible event.
While the construct and enormity of 9/11 made it a special attack on an icon of the United States of America, I realize also that it was the closest thing to a military attack ON OUR TURF since Pearl Harbor. Imagine though what it was for the Japanese when the United States dropped the atomic bomb. Or enduring the Holocaust. Or any other violent events that have taken place on this earth - and do now.
Is the world really getting more violent? Mass shootings for no good reason beyond someone's hatred or insanity seem to happen with regularity. Would they be as appealing to their originators if it were not for the fast global news coverage made possible not just on television but internet and cell phones?
A recent foray into a Fundamentalist Bible Study - long story as I know you know this is not like me - has been interesting in that just about every other woman there believes with certainty that we are in the End Times. Some people there think that President Donald Trump is in place, no matter how he screws it up, to usher in the End Times, citing his recognition of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Trump and those like him are, to me, believers in the Prosperity Gospel, a kind of New Age defilement of Christ's message. Christians feed the hungry, cloth and shelter those who have none, and there is a traditional acceptance and embrace of the poor as worthy human beings. The Prosperity Gospel to me is more like Janis Joplin singing Mercedes Benz. I guess it could be argued that God gives prosperity to those who HAVE so they can give to the poor, but let's not talk about Amazon's unlivable wages, or that Google's blue collar employees live in RV's near the Silicon Valley "campus."
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Some think President Trump can do just about anything, because it's really Vice President Mike Pence who is the Real Believer and the Next President, one way or another. There is lots of talk in this group about which politicians are "Believers" or not. I'm not there to question the class or the teacher's belief system, just to absorb differences as comfortably as I can and learn some things that I didn't know about the lifeways of the ancient people of Bible times, particularly the few women mentioned.
As a more liberal Christian friend of mine said, "There have ALWAYS been wars. So it's always the End Times."
One day in the class, someone said that Oprah Winfrey was leading millions of people straight to hell. (On the list of deceivers was also Shirley MacLaine.) So what is that if not intolerance?
And this is CALIFORNIA?
I have no answers at the moment. I just know that 9/11 became a pivotal moment in our history which marked a change of consciousness about our vulnerability and need for defense.
As a child in Catholic grade school we often prayed for the President, to make good decisions for us all, just as we did the Pope. If you're a praying person, this is a good time to do so.
C 2018 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved
