Park 51 And America's Unresolved Pain

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Park 51 and America’s Unresolved Painby: Valerie Elverton-Dixon on August 19th, 2010
19 Comments »People do harm out of their own pain. When we see people causing harm to other people, we ought to ask ourselves and ask them: “Who hurt you?” Sometimes the answer to that question is difficult to know. The answer to the question may be entangled in several different strands of personal, political and historical factors that are too complicated to disentangle. We are perplexed by a Gordian knot of our own psychological pain that cannot simply be undone by the stroke of a sharp sword and an indiscriminant mind.



Opposition to the Park 51 Community Center revolves around the sensibilities of people who lost loved one on September 11, 2001 and the sensibilities of a nation that suffered one of the most horrific attacks of its history. When someone we love dies, the world is never the same. Even if they die full of years with their family surrounding them with love and prayers, the pain is palpable. Even if we have a grave site to visit, their passing leaves a space that can only be filled with memory and hope. It is especially difficult when the someone that we love dies suddenly, violently, needlessly. It is difficult not to have a place to visit, a headstone to talk to, a stream of water, ocean, a green field, or beautiful landscape to visit and remember the moment we scattered the ashes. There is nothing that anyone can do or not do that will make the ache stop. And our tears have a will of their own.



The controversy over Park 51, captiously misnamed the Ground Zero Mosque leads us to ask the national question: “Who hurt us?” I say: A group of terrorist criminals hurt us, not Islam itself. (I have written about this in two blogs at the Washington Post On Faith blog and at God’s Politics.) Most people know with their rational minds that this nation was attacked by criminals whose actions were a desecration of Islam and all that is holy. Islam teaches that Allah is merciful and compassionate. He is all powerful. Logic tells the believer that an all powerful God does not need humankind to kill. Islam teaches that God wants us to compete as in a race toward all the virtues. Yet, when we seek an answer to the question of who hurt us, we find it difficult not to lay responsibility at the foot of Muslims. We see them as different, as dangerous and Other. Thus, we do not want to see an Islamic Community Center anywhere near ground zero in New York City. Our pain is still too raw and too real. And the political exploitation of this pain is an abomination.



However, I think something more may be at work here, something beyond the willingness of people to set aside the Constitutional protections of freedom of religion in this case in the name of wisdom, propriety and sensitivity. There is something more than a culture war or clash of civilizations at work here. I think the pain that many Americans feel at this moment is the fear that the September 11 signaled the end of America’s supremacy in the world.

Vietnam notwithstanding, since the end of World War II, the United States has stood astride the world as a Leviathan. As described in the book of Job:



Who can confront it and be safe?



–under the whole heaven, who?



. . .



Who can strip off its outer garment?



Who can penetrate its double coat of mail?



Who can open the doors of its face?



There is terror all around its teeth.



. . .



On earth it has no equal,



a creature without fear.



It surveys everything that is lofty;



It is king over all that are proud. (Job 40)



The Soviet Union was no match for our economic and military power. We deployed armies across the globe to advance our ideals and our economic interests. Our culture spread across the globe along with our fast food and soft drinks. And God was on our side. We were great because we were good. Or so we thought. On 9/11 neither our military might nor our economic power nor our cultural hegemony protected us, and God was present in the bravery of the rescue workers and ordinary people reaching out to each other to help and to comfort.



Since that time we have fought two protracted wars. Our combat forces withdrew from Iraq August 18, 2010, a few days ahead of schedule, with very little fanfare and none of the wall to wall television coverage that heralded our entrance into that needless conflict. (I applaud MSNBC for its coverage.) We have not captured or killed Osama bin Laden the man who is responsible for the attacks. Those we have caught leave us with a quandary about what to do with them as we seek to balance our security needs with our values of due process of law within a free society.



We have seen the limitations of our power as a nation in taking care of our citizens and our ecology in the wake of natural and manmade disasters-hurricane Katrina and the failure of the levies in New Orleans and the most recent BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Our economy is the worst it has been since the Great Depression. We are trillions of dollars in debt to other nations in the world, especially to the Chinese whose economic power is growing steadily as ours stagnates. We cannot control our borders, so that we have to come to terms with the changing complexion of the United States. We are becoming a more diverse society. Those of us whose identities are defined by America’s supremacy on any level face an identity crisis. We are trapped in a whirlwind not of our own choosing, and we are disoriented and powerless.



Thus, it is easy to vent our anger on a group of Muslims who want to build a community center in a building that has been abandoned since 9/11. It is easy to talk about disrespect for our grief. It is easy to push all kinds of emotional buttons for the sake of a few votes. (Ground Zero is thought to be too holy for a community center that intends to be a space for reconciliation, but the tragedy is not too holy for political exploitation. The logic boggles the mind and turns the stomach.) It seems that this is easier to do than to think about ways that we can turn the 9/11 tragedy into a reaffirmation of American ideals. The difficult thing to do is to welcome the Park 51 Community Center. It is the difficult thing to do, but it is also the right thing to do. It is right not only for the Islamic community that wants to build it, but it is right for the nation.



There is a reason that the scriptures teach us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, to do unto others as we would be done by, to forgive as we want to and need to be forgiven, to overcome evil with good, to even love our enemies. The moment we do this, we take our power back. Whenever we allow resentment and pain and fear and unforgiveness and will to revenge have place in our hearts or in our country, we continue to be subject to the event that caused us the pain and to the people that caused the event. We are never free of them. When we forgive and remember, when we love and remember, when we do good while we remember, we are free. We have taken back our moral agency.



However, as a nation, we cannot do this until we face the reality that we are not the world’s Leviathan. We are not a nation that is chosen by God above all other nations. We have to understand where our true power lies. It is not in the things that could not keep us safe from terrorist attacks. Our true power, our true strength lies in our values. It lies in our fidelity to the values of freedom and of equality under the law, even though we are still working on making those values more perfectly manifest in our country. Our true power lies in how we refuse the terrorists our terror, our fear and our suspicion of our Muslim sisters and brother. Our true power and our true strength is that from many we are one. It is from the strength of that unity that gives us the bravery not only to allow an Islamic Community Center two blocks from ground zero, but to welcome and to celebrate it.