America's Broken Heart
Finding Miracles in the Valley of Death
by Bill Douglas
Founder: World Healing Day
This horror we have witnessed as a nation reminds me of a personal
horror I had years ago. Many years ago I lost my youngest son after
watching him lie comatose in a hospital bed for a month. The levels
of consciousness I went through, are according to psychologists, the
same levels we are now going through as a nation. The first is a shocked
numbness, the next rage and anger, and this followed by a great sorrow
that seems so unbearable that sometimes people stay locked in the rage/anger
stage in order to avoid the sorrow that seems so desolate and overwhelming.
America will never be the same. What that means depends on where we
go from here. We can allow this tragedy and travesty to harden us and
throw us into the never-ending spiral of violence that Israelis and
Palestinians have found themselves for so many years. We can declare
war on a harboring nation and unleash the full might of the U.S. military
power to pound that nation into oblivion, including some civilians that
would be considered "collateral damage" just as the terrorists
considered these victims "collateral damage." Or we can have
our hearts opened by this enormous loss we have collectively experienced,
and forever be changed in the way we feel when we see a bomb explode
in the Palestinian homelands, Belgrade, Baghdad, or any other city in
the world.
Naturally I and other Americans felt black anger seeing the innocent
suffering unfolding in New York and Washington, and not really sure
of who, what, or how to direct that swelling rage. I had felt that before,
the night of my son's death I was so hardened and angry, at the doctors,
at myself, at God, at life, that I almost walked away from the most
precious experience of my life. My son's heart had failed several times,
and my wife and I agreed that if it happened again, we wouldn't revive
him by torturing his tiny frame with anymore shocks or needles. So,
on the night they called me into the hospital at 3 am with my two older
toddlers in tow, I knew how the night would end. But, I didn't really
because I allowed "something miraculous" to happen that night.
At first when the nurse asked me if I wanted to hold Isaac I said, no,
so thick with anger that I had told myself that Isaac's soul had passed
on and that this body was no longer my precious boy. But, a voice came
to my mind that said, "no, you must now stand in the center of
life, and feel it all, or forever run from the real meaning of everything."
So, I sat down among all the tubes and wires attached to my tiny son,
as the nurse placed his fragile being in my arms. The switch was turned
off and the earth stood still. Suddenly a flood of such unimaginable
sorrow and love as I have never ever felt before or since poured through
my hardened heart, I thought it would break me in two. And it did, I
left that hospital a shattered man that night, and it was the best thing
that had ever happened to me. My broken heart was so wide open and fragile
that I began to realize a compassion for others that I had never ever
felt before. All the suffering of everyone found a channel through my
open heart. I had never experienced such love for humanity and for the
fragility and humility of my human condition -- our human condition.
America, this tragedy can do this for us all, if we can pass through
the stage of hate/rage. It can sensitize us, causing us to rethink some
facts that may have seemed unimportant to us before. Sometimes our foreign
policy can seem so "over there" that it doesn't seem that
important, often those issues are relegated to back pages of the paper,
while domestic issues like "lotto winners" and "school
bonds" take the front pages. We can lose touch with the far-reaching
ramifications of US policy elsewhere. Such as the fact that the United
States is the largest exporter of weapons in the entire world, and one
of the only countries standing against the abolition of land mines,
as well as now unilaterally violating the anti-ballistic missile treaty.
This means that the odds are that when a bomb lands on people in the
world, or a landmine blows off a child's arm - it was made in the United
States. Today we will be conducting massive investigations to find out
where the weapons were made that enabled the hi-jackings to occur, and
we will hold that source responsible. Other humans are no different.
Environmentally and economically, we Americans are only 5% of the world's
population, yet we consume 50% of the earth's resources, with govt.
programs subsidizing our fuel thereby enabling American's to be quite
thoughtless and wasteful as we are the only industrial nation on earth
increasing our carbon dioxide (greenhouse gas) output. When the global
temperature continues to rise, and the world experiences higher costs
for fuel, fuel shortages, and less resources because American's are
wastefully and thoughtlessly creating larger and larger fuel guzzling
vehicles, and our government stands as the only government that refuses
to sign the Kyoto Treaty to reduce fossil fuel consumption, the world
sees the United States in a different light than we may have seen ourselves,
because the "lotto winners" are on the front pages, these
thoughts are buried.
When the earth's resources are increasingly plundered to satisfy the
endless desire for consumer products in the U.S., those who are left
with little or nothing because of a global multi-national corporate
economy suffer. Remember that this global corporate economy is designed
by the lawyers of those who the majority of poverty stricken world citizens
will never meet or know, yet suffer everyday from their decisions and
legal briefs.
The rage we feel today at our suffering and the suffering of our countrymen/
women/children, and the fact that we do not know quite where to place
the anger but only knowing that we rage against the injustice of it
all -- is felt by people worldwide when a bomb or landmine takes the
lives of their neighbors, their children, or when a world economy run
by people beyond their control or awareness leaves their families scrapping
and starving through no fault of their own.
You see, our own tragedy can now enable us to "feel" what
that desolate rage at a force we don't even really know or understand
feels like. It can awaken us to be more cognizant of what our nation's
policies are so that we do not allow our nation's policies to add to
this suffering - as human children we do not want to add to suffering
anymore, the world has enough of it without contributing to it in anyway.
To make our government's policies healing, we must become vigilant to
them, and be educated of their effects. As citizens of the world's most
powerful nation, we have responsibilities. Consider this, if we attack
a nation where the terrorists were supported, the innocent human "collateral
damage" of our attack will be people who very likely only committed
the crime of "not caring," being "ignorant of,"
or feeling "powerless to change" what their government was
doing.
The world is at a crossroads. We can use this horrible event as a catalyst
to see ourselves in the fragility and suffering of others worldwide,
to steer our world down the road of compassion, creating a world we
can ALL love living in. Or, we can use it as a reason to build yet more
weapons, to militarize our nation and world more, and to callous our
hearts and deafen our ears to the suffering of others worldwide. I found
my life when I allowed tragedy to break my heart, rather than thicken
it. I honor my son by opening my heart endlessly. I pray America will
find the miracle in this tragedy, and thereby honor those who have passed.
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