We stand ten feet deep in spiritual rubble. We are fogged in by the smoke and layered under steel beams of disbelief, twisted and contorted electrical connections which no longer connect, body parts and bag lunches.
In the same way that the streets of lower Manhattan will one day again be clear, our spiritual and psychological rubble will clear.. Psychologically, what has happened is a lot like rape. People do heal and clear after rape -- but usually one steel beam and dump truck at a time.
When an airplane penetrates what was seen as safe air space, something like a rape happens. We are violated. In this instance we have been violated both intimately and publicly. We lose not only our physical coherence but our psychological coherence. All we want back is what rape victims want back, which is "yesterday." That is the one thing we can't have. The rape metaphor is gender free. Many men do violent things in retaliation when their intimate is raped., simply to calm their soul, simply to comfort the anger which is an extreme form of love.. War could happen right now, from a raped nation, and not do any good, even for the rage. It could happen to calm a rage it will only excite. Persecuting the crime of rape is a lot different than going to war against it; in war, we generalize. In crime, we get the real rapist not just the suspects.
What can rape victims do? They can refuse the status of victim. They can understand that the rape is not their fault -- it wasn't because they were too sexy or too available or out at the wrong time of night. They can also understand that one victimization does not an innocent make. America is not innocent of its wealth or power weakly used. We could not expect to live securely forever as under ten per cent of the population using over 90 per cent of the resources. The "old" problems we have as a nation come with us in the new age, just like the old warts of the raped woman carry with her into her future as an adult. We have been raped but we don't have to be victims, either by enjoying the status of pure, unjust injury or by staying under the rubble of our attackers. We may and must rise. Indeed, we may and must become rubble rousers. Then we can go on.
Donna Schaper
(LectionAid and WorshipAid Writer)