Alli Starr |
by
Alli Starr
Has everything changed? That's what folks are saying. Is World
War III, the event we've all been waiting for, yet trying to
prevent, finally approaching? How many more must die? How much
blood must spill? How many mothers and sisters, fathers and
brothers will mourn the unbearable loss of loved ones? A glistening
thread of sorrow weaves through the hearts of our species. It
is as old as the ancestors, who also unite us.
The world has forever been grieving, counting her losses. But
now the clock ticks louder as the eleventh hour comes abruptly
to an end. The bully has been thrown some powerful, precise
punches. Working people, giant buildings and invincibility have
been sacrificed.
People at the bar smile and ask how it's going. I look around
at all of us as if we're splayed out on some lost beach. The
tide has gone out, sucking up all the water this time. The underbelly
of our false security, our sense of who we are and our place
in the world lies tousled, naked and exposed. Shelled creatures
scramble aimlessly for familiar cover, but somehow the ocean
is different now. A giant wave prepares, almost invisible on
the horizon.
We drink our cocktails. We talk about the Time Magazine article.
We strategize our next event for peace. We assess the media,
both the progressive and the conservative angles. We take our
positions. We pose in odd shapes in our respective furniture,
arranged, re-arranged. No one mentions our trajectory or the
speed this ship seems to be moving.
A woman tells a friend how much we are despised in Indonesia.
I hear a thousand other countries quietly murmuring, wondering
if finally the big, dumb bully has gotten a taste of his own
medicine, wondering who else will suffer the results of hate
begetting hate, fear breeding fear. How many more bodies will
be counted in the final toll. The heartache is as tangible as
the taste of the forthcoming unknown. We are united by expectancy
and new ageless fears unearthed.
But there is another web being woven. Many of the millions of
weavers, don't even know we are weaving, but the fabric grows
defying large bodies of water, ignoring ideologies, religions,
even names. It is this unnamable tapestry that transcends hope.
It is life herself breeding life through us, her children. Like
all children, we ask the unknowable questions and give them
answers when we can't wait anymore. All we can do is to awake
to our weaving and behold the edges of beauty's vastness. Hopefully,
by then we are trembling in awe and singing in gratitude for
being allowed to be a part of the unfolding.
There are no more degrees of separation. There is no more waiting.
There is only stepping out to prepare with our great families
for what we have all come here to do. We have arrived with a
specific set of gifts sewn into our beings; the passion to create,
the power to vision and the drive to love beyond all reason.
May we unfurl our collective treasures. The wind has always
known we would.
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Eboo Patel |
September 22,
2001
by Eboo Patel
100 years ago, my great-grandfather traveled from a village
in Gujarat to the bustling city of Bombay, scared, I am sure,
but determined. I never met him, but I know that on his journey
he chanted Ya Allah Ya Allah, and felt safe. 25 years ago, my
parents crossed continents and oceans from Bombay to the American
Midwest, scared, I am sure, but determined. I have no memories
from that time, but I know that on their journey they chanted
Ya Allah Ya Allah, and felt safe.
That prayer - Ya Allah Ya Allah - has brought calm to Muslims
for fourteen centuries. I have called it many times. Last year,
when my best friend from high school was involved in a terrible
motorcycle accident in Texas, and I was a world away in India,
chanting Ya Allah Ya Allah transported my spirit to his side.
On September 11, 2001, Ya Allah Ya Allah, seemed to be the only
thing I could say. I know it was the same for Muslims the world
over - from Kalamazoo to Karachi, from Cairo to Cape Town. We
prayed to ease the horror, we prayed to give strength to the
heroes. We prayed for the Indians, Pakistanis, British, Chinese,
Japanese, Israelis, and nationals of over 70 other countries;
the Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, Jains, and
those who pray in other ways; the men and women; the bankers
and the secretaries and the custodians - we prayed for all those
who perished and for all those who pain. And we prayed for America,
because America is all of them. We prayed for the rebirth -
physical, emotional and spiritual - of a country that has given
rebirth to peoples from everywhere.
At the heart of America is an overflowing openness, a radical
love for humankind and an unquenchable aspiration to be better.
Occasionally American politicians remind us of this original
vision, but more often it is American poets that speak these
truths. Take Walt Whitman, the great welcomer. Whitman who said,
speaking for America:
I am large, I contain multitudes.
Whitman, who marveled at the diversity of voices in the world:
the Christian priests at the altars of their
churches, the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque,
the Hebrew reading his records and psalms, the Hindoo teaching
his favorite pupil.
Whitman, who held so deeply that all of us are from God:
Each of us inevitable,
Each of us limitless - each of us with his or her right upon
the earth,
Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth,
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.
Whitman, who could not stand for any separation from his
brothers and sisters the world over:
What cities the light or warmth penetrate
I penetrate those cities myself,
All islands to which birds wing their way I wing my way myself.
I am a real Parisian.
I am a habitan of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Constantinople
The world has taken a page from Whitman's book by echoing
this spirit of overflowing openness in their sympathy for
and solidarity with America. The French newspaper Le Monde
ran a banner headline that read, We are all Americans Now.
Candlelight vigils in support of America have happened in
the center of the world's great cities.
In America, attention has turned from the rescue effort in
New York to the revenge operation against Afghanistan, already
one of the most difficult places in the world to live. In
these times, it is worthwhile to point out that the most popular
poet in America today is a Muslim born in that land 800 years
ago. Rumi resonates in America because his vision, like Whitman's,
reminds us of the radical love, overflowing openness, and
unquenchable aspiration to be better that is America at its
best.
Rumi, who could not stand separation, and said:
When I press my hand to my chest,
it is your chest.
And now you're scratching my head!
You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.
Rumi, who was wide like Whitman:
I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,
and the falling away. What is,
and what isn't.
Rumi who was not to be entrapped in any passing earthly identity
but unyieldingly sought his eternal source:
I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up
from the ground
My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless.
I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.
I like to think that in some dream-world, in some other
dimension, Rumi and Whitman are engaged in what sufis call
sohbet, a mystical conversation on mystical subjects. They
are arguing and agreeing, playing and fighting, wishing they
had shared the earth and not just the heavens with one another.
Just as there are times when the Angels come to Earth, there
are moments when that dimension and this become one. It is
then that Africans and Europeans realize they are Americans,
and Americans know that they are Afghans.
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