"In Love With Death"

Reflections on 9/11 – Tens years later

Perhaps you were like me over the past week listening to all of the reflections, memories, thoughts, projections, political implications and feelings people expressed about the planes that hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and an open field in Pennsylvania. I was especially moved by an article written by Jim Dwyer entitled, “In Love with Death.” He mentioned in this article that as the years went by, it was like climbing a ladder each year and viewing Ground Zero in a different way. Step by step from the rubble, you would rise to see new revelations from the events of that day.

He had one example that touched me and struck a cord in my heart. It was about a woman, Anne Mulderry, from upstate New York.

He wrote this:

"That morning, Anne Mulderry sat in the backyard of her home near Albany to wait for news about two of her eight children who worked in Lower Manhattan. Before

long, she heard herself howling to the heavens.

Her son, Stephen – scrappy college basketball player, family peacemaker – was, when

last heard from, in a conference room on the 88th floor of the south tower with a dozen other people, all of them sharing a single phone to make their essential calls.

Much later, struggling to find consolation, Anne Mulderry saw that the choices she faced also confronted the larger world. “How to resist falling in love with death was the question,” she said. “Depression and despair is one way of falling in love with death. Violence and aggression is another way.”

As I read this, I was confused at first by her statement that you could fall in love with death. But on further consideration, that’s always the seduction. The world is always trying to entice us with activities that bring us to death. Things can be so destructive whether it’s drugs and alcohol, violence and other shows on television of bad behavior or just succumbing to a despairing attitude of defeat. In so many small and subtle ways, our faith and our hope is nickeled and dimed away.

Mulderry becomes aware that the ache in her heart over the loss of her son could push her to embracing a hopeless and despairing attitude about life. But the lesson she shares is the same lesson that St. Paul tries to tell all of us. Death and hate and evil are not to have the last word. He even says, “Death where’s thy sting and grave where’s thy victory.” (1 Corinthians 15:55)

In the end, the Christian proposal for the whole world is that love is going to defeat hate and life will overcome death. This is the message for those of us who live on this side of the resurrection.

"The accessible God"

I was recently reading excerpts from Jane Fonda’s new book, “The Private Life of a Public Woman.”I also watched with interest, an interview she gave on Charlie Rose.She is an amazing person no matter what you think of her politics.Indecently, she claims over and over again, to be sorry and apologizes for ever bringing shame to herself and all of America as she sat on military equipment in Hanoi.Without a doubt, it was a major blunder.But that is not what interests me about her.It’s not her movies either, but it is her reflection upon her husbands and especially her father, Henry Fonda.I really liked Henry Fonda in so many movies.Of course my favorite is “The Grapes of Wrath.”But, actors are actors and some of us who have never been on the Silver Screen; continue to act like we care about other people.We also act as if we were Christians.Unfortunately, not much comes from the heart.

Interestingly enough, Jane Fonda claimed she married three men and all of them resembled in one way or another her father.Far from the characters that her father has played which were often sensitive heroes, Henry Fonda was a perfectionist and was very remote from his children, let alone his wives – one of which was Jane’s mother who committed suicide.

Jane Fonda spoke of always trying to win her father’s approval, affection and appreciation.She spoke in a recent interview, “my dad shadows me and I wonder if he approves of what I am doing now?”I have a feeling this is the case with many children as they seek approval from their parents.

Henry Fonda was not accessible as a father and probably not as a person.He looked accessible and played people on the screen that were accessible to others.In the end, he was remote and inaccessible.The more I thought about this, the more I think that people’s vision of God is really a vision of Greek mythology where the God Zeus lives in the clouds far away from human existence.All of this is just a misreading of the Christian faith and couldn’t be farther from the truth that radiates through the pages of the New Testament.

“What if God was One of Us?” as that popular song goes written by Eric Bazillian and sung by Alanis Morissette.

When we talk of incarnation, we are speaking of a God who is very accessible in Jesus Christ.The Christian proposal for the whole world is that God is very near and is embodied in the human race in the name of Jesus, our Lord.In his life, Jesus always made himself accessible to hungry people on a hillside, to widows who cried for help, to the sick and informed and to his disciples in a storm on the sea.So accessible that he was captured, put on the cross and dies for us!

The question is, “How accessible are we to his ministry?” Or do we simply remain remote and inaccessible to his call to follow me.