A Time for Small Things

Amid so many confusing proclamations of war; so many calls for action in which action is understood as bellicose; so many flag-waving cheers for armed retaliation; I am concerned that the very real pain of those killed, wounded, and mourning is in danger of being swept away. The toppling of the towers of the World Trade Center and the breaching of the Pentagon are events whose grandiosity, played and replayed in images across the world, is such that the smallness of human life, its everyday quasi-public intimacy, finds itself hard-pressed to compete. Smallness has long been endangered, of course, for mammoth buildings can generate an extraordinary sense of strength and power, a sense meted out in such words as citadel, fortress, bastion, and even tower. It is not surprising, perhaps, that the collapse of such strong buildings, such powerful symbols, has met with strong and powerful responses. I do not mean the response of firefighters, rescue workers, doctors, nurses, the police, and average New Yorkers, for whom strength and power are continually kept in check by the devastation itself. Rather I mean the response of a considerable number of national politicians, pundits, and religious leaders, whose rhetoric of grandeur barely pauses in awe, sorrow, and, yes, terror before proceeding, forthwith, down a well-worn path. We, the people of this great nation, so repeatedly blessed, might do well to reflect on the price of what we call greatness, and on what is lost by discounting smallness, weakness, and vulnerability.

On Sunday, I went to a religious service for the first time in 22 years. Tired of weeping in front of the television, and troubled by my ability to guide students without having some guidance myself, I went to a church that I had been told was progressive (the Unitarian Universalist Church in Boston) and that had been rebuilt from the ruins of fire. I went, moreover, as someone whose faith is, and may be always, small and weak. I felt strange walking to church, and stranger still entering it, for I am prone to skepticism, particularly where matters of the spirit are concerned. I know about the death wrought by religion, the divisive, imperial-laden turns it can take, the hatred it can pull out of the mouth of love. Much the same I could sayunpopular as it is to do soabout the United States of America, a nation that has wreaked havoc on other nations in the name of peace and freedom and justice. Something about church and state, their ever-incomplete separation (In God We Trust and so on), compelled me however to bring them together, intimately and inadequately, for an examination that is very much also a self-examination.

In some queer respect, I took my cue from George W. Bush. For it was Bushs recital of a Biblical verse (from Psalm 23) in his dispassionate address to the nation on the night of the attacks that impressed upon me the necessity of grappling, yet again, with religion and nationality, or, more precisely, religious nationalismnot just that of the attackers but also, and more importantly, that of many of the most outspoken and influential defenders of the United States. It is not insignificant that Bush has spoken more than once since then of a crusade, a violent movement that has the cross of Christianity at its core and, once upon a time, the Saracen as its target. Today, in the midst of so much confusion, it remains to be seen to what degree the recent murders (or robberies gone bad) of a Pakistani-born Muslim in Texas, an Indian Sikh in Arizona, and an Egyptian Christian in California are part of a crusade that is already spilling out of the hands of its would-be commander- in-chief. The terror of those who hate us can spin into the terror of those who love us, and in both cases we, understood in any but the meanest and most exclusionary of manners, are at a loss. The United States has promoted itself as a nation of immigrants, and yet immigration continues to arouse fervid reactions against it. Accordingly, the we that I have been deploying is far from easy; it shifts and slouches along, flies and falls.

For me, the we includes, for instance, Ariel Dorfman, author of Death and the Maiden, a tale of state-sponsored, U.S.-backed torture and terror in Latin America. Born outside the United States but living now in North Carolina (the state where I was born), Dorfman confronts the accidental fact that a democratically elected government in Chile was toppled on September 11, 1973, a Tuesday, like September 11, 2001. In Dorfmans view, the recent attack against the United States, in which thousands have disappeared, recalls an attack supported by the United States against Chile, in which thousands also disappeared. This latter attack is hardly as infamous, at least for most Americans, as the attack on Pearl Harbor, the point of comparison for most media polls. Other attacks, other comparisons, nonetheless obtain. A retired firefighter, I believe, and whose name unfortunately I cannot remember, reminded viewers on one of the networks that groups of Americans danced in the streets upon hearing of the bombing of Hiroshima. The attacks, and comparisons, can proliferate, depending on ones perspective, memory, and knowledge. It is just such proliferation that, I submit, we must heed, and resist. But how?

I do not have many, if any, answers. I know, after all, that my commitment to progressive politics, consonant with my commitment to peace, is out of sync with so-called popular opinion polls. Beyond that, though not entirely, I know, or believe, or feel that we, regardless of our opinions and political positions, are marked by nationality in a way that does not hold for religion (there is no religious equivalent to the national passport).

I also know, or believe, or feel that a return to religion, a willingness to engage it and be engaged by it, does not necessarily entail a retreat from progressive politics: liberation theology in Latin America and inter-faith alliances in North America have certainly complicated notions of religion as alienation. That said, a return to religion does not necessarily entail a reentry into progressive politics either, for a church is not a church, let alone a temple or a mosque, and Jerry Falwell is not the minister whose non-televised words I took in, amid many tears, this past Sunday. I am thus terribly wary of converting my return to church, limited so far to one hour of one day, into an exemplary tale. The truth be told, I am frightened, now more than ever, of exemplary tales, of the lives of saints, martyrs, heroes, and other great individuals. I am frightened because such tales can spur emulative actionsmore martyrs and more heroesthat do not always, by any stretch of the imagination, advance the cause of peace.

Already, however, peace is once again uttered wrathfully, as something beyond, as a place and time deferred. Peace, like heaven, is cast from us by those who claim that they would lead us to it. In the meantimethat is to say, our timepeace is only realistically envisioned by way of war, as the aftermath, or depleted afterlife, of war. And yet, to my eyes, what is envisioned by way of war is, realistically, only more war, a potentially\ unending spiral of suspicion, hatred, violence, and death. To seek or champion peace is not an easy task and is prone, it too, to exemplary stylizations, grandiose aspirations, and expressions of strength and power. To be sure, peace needs emulation if it is ever really to be; it needs a replication of certain protocols and positions, a reiteration of smallness, weakness, and vulnerabilityi.e. humanityon a grand, global scale.

As workers pick through the very real pieces of the symbols of U.S. economic and military vigor, we who are shielded by so many television and computer screens, and who wonder what the reality of such work is, might ask ourselves and each other if strength is susceptible to different renditions, less grandiose, more fragile, and, dare I say it, all too human. It is time to comfort those in pain, to reflect, and perhaps, if we must rebuild, to do so differently. It is not, however, the time for yet more grand machinations of death and destruction, more people to be mourned by more people. There has already been time enough for that.

Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Brad S. Epps spearheaded the faculty support of last springs Living Wage Campaign and student sit-in.