On the Open Heart
After the ruthless attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, something that has struck me again and again is how many people have been able to keep an open heart. I am surprised, over and over, both by those who want blood but not the blood of innocents, and by those who have protested our government's actions for half their lives but are still generous when that government makes a step toward common sense and compassion.
I think of the shrine I read about that sprang up in New York days after the tragedy, covered with both patriotic slogans and prayers for peace, and about the support that people of differing views gave to each other there.
I think of Robin Morgan, a radical feminist and a New Yorker, someone on the opposite side of almost every issue from New York's mayor, praising him for having "risen to this moment with efficiency, compassion, real leadership."1
I think of Robert Dreher, a conservative responding (in the extremely conservative National Review Online) to Jerry Falwell's attack on "pagans and abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians...." Dreher wrote of standing next to his lesbian neighbors at a candlelight vigil and thinking "I am with you, ladies." 2
I think, too, of Falwell apologizing for his words.
And I wonder what to do with this open heart of mine; I wonder what we all will do with these hearts that have been opened against our will. Jerry Falwell's policies are still deplorable; radical Islamists still hate the United States; and it's still true that for fifty year our government has given people in the Middle East plenty of opportunity for hate. How do I keep an open heart and still act in the world? How do I act with conviction and still keep an open heart?
Robin Morgan has advice: "And if we find ourselves wrenched back and forth between choking with rage and thirsting for peace, what if we actually claimed that--claimed our frail, imperfect, human ambivalence as the virtue it is?" 3
Here's one ambivalence I will claim. It shocked me to find the following quote in the letter found in one of the murderers' luggage (particularly given the title I'd chosen for this piece):
Keep a very open mind, keep a very open heart of what you are to face. You will be entering paradise. You will be entering the happiest life, everlasting life. Keep in your mind that if you are plagued with a problem and how to get out of it. A believer is always plagued with problems.... You will never enter paradise if you have not had a major problem. But only those who stood fast through it are the ones who will overcome it. 4
What in world is this? What does it mean that the attackers, ruthless fanatical murderers, were enjoined to keep a very open mind, keep a very open heart? I can't take this in. It baffles me. It angers me. I had started this piece intending to argue, intellectually, that we should not demonize the attackers, that their god was not a god of hate (just as the god of the crew of the Enola Gay was not a god of hate). I wanted to *write* about that; I didn't want to have it rubbed in my face.
With necessary changes to account for cultural differences, that advice might have been given to a spiritual seekers of a hundred traditions. I've heard versions of it myself; I've given versions of it myself. And here it is, sent as spiritual comfort to men who in the morning will get on a plane, slit the throats of a few people to terrorize the rest into submission, and shortly thereafter kill themselves, the rest of the passengers, and thousands of others.
I don't *want* them to have had that good advice, from someone as ruthless as they were. It cheapens the advice. And I do want them to have had it -- even them. Because if they *took* the advice, if just one of them kept an open heart in just the last seconds of his life, what an opening that may have made: what an effect on all the worlds. Perhaps we are seeing the working of that opening even now.
So when I can, I will keep an open mind, an open heart, though murderers are told to do the same. When I can, I will pray that even they may hear the advice. When I can I will act from my convictions, taking my inspiration from all of you, all of you I have seen acting again and again with beauty and courage, with clear eyes and open hearts. 5
Love,
-Yarrow
Footnotes:
1
Robin Morgan's email "Week 1: Ghosts and Echoes"
2
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-dreher091601.shtml
3 Robin Morgan's email "Week 2: Redefining Normal"
4
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37557-2001Sep27
5The last phrase is from Donald Engstrom.