Anyone who knows me, knows I am never at a lack for words.Yet this past week, the words have not been there. The impending 9-11 events and protests, and the prospect of burning scriptures holy for some, left me with much uncertainty of what words I wanted to gather together. With so much media attention focused on fear, hatred, and misunderstanding, I did not want to add anything that could be misconstrued or hurtful to anyone.
This time is like no other time in my memory - even though I know there have been similar periods of mistrust, even before humans learned to create words and to record them. People have been fearing other people forever. But I guess the optimist in me wants to believe that we have learned a few things in the course of human history.
Clem and I have been traveling recently and have been around people whose non-western European languages I could not identify. When we came home, we went for dinner at a favorite East Indian restaurant. I looked around the room. People with multiple hues of skin color eating with each other. Bits of conversations floated across our table about places people have lived or traveled. A few head scarves on women. A turban or two on men. Families composed of several generations with visibly mixed ethnic backgrounds. No one was shouting hatred or fear. And I said to myself that this microcosm of the world is where I want all of us to live. Enriched by our differences.
When I was growing up as a child, I never saw a person who was black nor met anyone who was Jewish nor heard a foreign language spoken. Everyone was "like me" with their northern European roots. (Except the Native American children who lived at the Indian School across the river in North Dakota.) Then I married - and several days later we were in the middle of Washington DC, where my husband was to begin his graduate education and I was to work at the NIH. It was a crash course in diversity! I will never be the same.
On this Monday, I live in a country in which I am trying to find perspective. Polls tell us one thing. The news media serves up the most dramatic events. What is really representative of the thoughts and feelings of the majority of Americans?
The image that comes to mind for me is a dog. A dog and his wagging tail - and I ask myself : is the dog wagging its tail or is the tail wagging its dog? What forms the nature of my beloved America? Has this Great Recession so unsettled us - and a president who is half black - and half white? Does all of this fear and hatred come out of some core deep within in us from ancient times, when humans first wandered across the water and land masses of this earth? Akin to the fears that some people have of snakes as personified evil, even though no actual event in their lives gives them rational cause to fear snakes.
Who are we? How have we come to use the creation of words to lash out at anything or anyone who is not identical to us? Or is the goodness of people across this diverse country being masked by the fears of a few that have been given such prominence?
Elizabeth
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