There was a kind of a hush all over the world last September 11th.
It is now the 18th of April, a historic date in American history. In 1775, Paul Revere road from Lexington to Concord, warning of the imminent arrival of the British on American shores… and in 1993, the Branch Davidian/FBI stand-off at Waco, Texas, simmered, just below the boiling point… a philosophical tug of war, whose victims, many women and children among them, were consumed by the raging fire of the next morning. On the morning of the 19th, in 1995, the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City was the site of a homegrown terrorist militia bombing.
The Catholic Church in America would appear to be imploding with daily reports of priest malfeasance, as the world at large explodes with ever-increasing terror. A confluence of events, consistently reflective of man’s inhumanity to man, has occurred.
The list is overwhelming in its scope and would seem to incorporate a good number of the seven deadly sins. On October 25th, I had the privilege of attending the memorial Mass for Captain William F. Burke Jr., a fallen New York firefighter. Christine Ebersole sang an amazing rendition of Jesus Walks with Me. On that day, St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City served as a sacred temple to honor one of our dead. Billy Burke was a quintessential New Yorker. The son of a renowned firefighter, he was dedicated and passionate in all of his pursuits. Among the many who spoke was a buddy of Billy’s, a compatriot from the Robert Moses State Park lifeguard squad. They had protected beachgoers and rescued swimmers together for twenty years. Billy was the star of the lifeguard station, a seasoned raconteur. He was also what is known as “Black Irish,” with dark hair and dark eyes. He could pass for a Jew. His buddy was a Jew, a red-headed Jew, who could pass for an Irishman. The fact that a Jew who looked like an Irishman was eulogizing the Irishman who looked like a Jew in St. Pat’s Cathedral, well, that would have sat just fine with Billy, his buddy said. Indeed, he would have thought, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”
No, but it could get a lot worse.
It seems to me that lust is the sin rearing its twisted head with the utmost frequency of late. Lust for power, lust for unforgiving ideology. Truly, the bigger the boys, the bigger the toys. Be it priests and their boy toys or terrorists and their flaming weapons of mass destruction. From individual desecration to the totality of global devastation, all that is promised is momentary pleasure in the sacristy or the strip joint on Rt. 9. Virgins of all stripes wait at the fiery portal.
It also seems to me that we, those of us processing this information with much trepidation, need to focus on the virtues of a different kind of portal. Given that knowledge is power, what should we simple folk do? Well, I think we should tap into the elemental nature of the World Wide Web: global reach, unfettered by doctrine and unbridled from constraint.
Once, it was a legend, shedding light on the glory, and then it was Guttenberg’s press that spread the story. Now, server banks and satellites disseminate the word. As John Chambers, head of Cisco Systems, remarked in an article penned by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times in November of 1999, “Unlike the industrial revolution when you had to be in the right country or city to participate, in this new era capital will flow to whichever countries and companies install the best internet and educational capabilities, [this] will affect the global balance of power.”
When those words were spoken, in the glow of the internet boom, September 11th, 2001, and the Jenin refugee camp, as it exists in April of 2002, remained horrors yet unseen. The promise of wireless global communication and the possibilities of its use for education, as heralded in that article, scripted two and a half years ago, has, instead, morphed into a conduit for brutal images and mocking propaganda.
The print medium is linear in process, a man’s elocution. The visual image is processed differently by the mind and is said to be more accessible to the female brain. Images of brutality, conjured by the mind’s eye, give unrelieving focus to the horrors bestowed by lust. Wars fought prior to Vietnam were not accessed with the same intimacy as that provided by the repetitive ritual of nightly newscasts. The sight of flaming planes and falling towers, coupled with the realization provided by images of abhorrent behavior on the part of “God’s men,” are seared into the consciousness with power unbeknownst to the written word. These images hit a nerve so sensitive as to be considered feminine in its origin. To begin to understand the velocity of this trajectory, it may require women, reluctant though they may be, to come to the fore. It may be that women will be better able to process this streaming media and more effectively communicate, with the necessary urgency and sensitivity, the absolute folly of unrepentant lust.
Now would be a good time for decent and honorable men to petition for their female colleagues’ inclusion at the negotiating table.
I highly doubt, having had the privilege to give birth to a healthy baby boy, that any significant number of women in this world would sanctify suicide martyrdom, given the opportunity to speak freely about their society and their concerns.
I believe it is of the utmost necessity for the women of the world, in seats of power and near to the seats of power, to shed their burkas, both real and imagined, and rise up through both the linear and visual mediums and cry out for mercy. We must no longer allow primitive lust to dominate and decimate our home, called Earth.
Captain Billy Burke tread where angels feared to go. Courage, my friends, courage. Had it not been for the women of Enron, a scandal of immeasurable lust would have gone unreported, and the powerbrokers would have gotten away with murder if, indeed, they hadn’t already.
Cultivate your gardens, work miracles every day, and speak in the language of love. Send images of abundance, of beauty, of harmony, of order, of simplicity, and of joy. Take the camera, point and click, scan and sort, and hit send! Now. Reclaim the connection to the future. Teach peace: send merciful images of prudence, temperance, courage, and justice.
Mary Elizabeth Ciccone 04-18-02
