At 9 a.m. on September 11, I was at the county commissioners' office preparing to open their session with a prayer. One of the items on the agenda was the peacocks of Perrine, not exactly a national issue but one which had the locals' feathers fluffed.
I was one day out of a wheelchair because of a tennis injury. Because I couldn't imagine moving as fast towards a TV as others, I asked a secretary to put me in a room by myself with one. She did.
For 45 minutes of national horror, I sat alone, having what I can only describe as a vision. I knew immediately there was more than one plane. I knew the intentionality of destruction. I knew the real question after the first plane went down was what these terrorists, whoever they were, had in mind next. I also knew the buildings were both going to collapse, even though physics and I aren't really acquainted. I knew it would "pancake" and that its pancakes were not just made of steel and glass. I shivered for the President. I saw in my inner eye the downward spiral of the airlines, the hotels, the restaurants, the economy. I saw the psychic layers developing and pushing up against each other, like impacted wisdom teeth can undo years of expensive braces, collapsing the teeth next to them and those next to them. I saw collateral damage, collateralizing.
I was at about the 99th floor when it hit me how hard my home state, Florida, and therefore my congregation would be affected. I horrified myself with my pancake, spiral theory of what these things meant.
I knew that we would pay our UN dues and do a double take on Durban and Kyoto. I managed a sick smile about my income tax refund.
About ten, they came to get me to take me to the county commissioners' office to pray. I sat with the peacock people who still wanted little more than a home for the wandering birds that some of their neighbors wanted homeless. Then I and others prayed and we all limped out of the building.
Had I been with others, I might not have had the vision. But there I sat, alone with a cold intuition that still bothers me. "Live in the moment" I tell people. And here too many moments were collapsing into one, creating a mile high pancake pile of destruction.
Now that we are a few weeks out and our government is showing a Zen like active restraint -- pursuing the terrorists without hurting innocent people -- and now that we have seen an extraordinary unity in the public, I can begin to read my vision. Like a dream, it had a meaning. I am just now beginning to see it.
The phoenix dives to rise. Catalytic events spiral both up and down. They are one motion; down has its ups and up has its downs; spirals form labyrinths, not just mazes. In labyrinth circularity, there is no way to get lost. Instead, we just keep going, linking in to out and out to in.
Our recovery, like that of any grief, is piecemeal and plodding. It involves putting the foundation down and then adding the pieces slowly. It requires slow motion, not fast motion, just like stop gaps and circuit breakers are required in the economy. That way layoffs will not hasten their own company's destruction or stock tumbles cause each other to increase. We can downsize slowly on behalf of rightsizing slowly. One foot goes slowly in front of the other. Panic stops progress.
When humans experience great grief, we do non-heroic things. We tell the story of what happened and look for a trusting companion to steady our shake. Slowly we go forward to normal, ahead to business. Not back to normal or back to business. Forward to business as better, not business as usual.
We begin to glimpse the gift of a new American led internationalism, the gift of vulnerability. We begin to hear the architects talk about what was always wrong with large buildings; they speak of multifaith parks and paradises, as though they were normal.
Limping, we rise. The proud peacock, homeless, comes home. Spirals don't only work in one direction; they go up and down. If small acts can yield great havoc, they can also yield great peace.
The Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper
iSenior Pastor of the Coral Gables Cong Church
author of Labrinths From the Inside Out, Skylights Press.