For what it's worth...

This one is about Tish B’Av, in a manner of speaking.

In my mind’s eye, the picture is so clear, except for what I’m wearing, which is strange, because I remember pretty much everything else about that day, including what I put on after I walked out of Caroline’s bedroom, across the hall to my room, and dressed in a pair of jeans, a red checked blouse, and a pair of running shoes. What I remember first about that day was that when the alarm went off, the guys on the radio sounded all wrong, but it was the height of ragweed season, and I’d just spent the whole day before out in the country with a busload full of teenagers, playing meet and greet for my fancy new job, so I hit snooze, and rolled back over to catch forty more winks before I had to get up and be a real grown up. And then the phone started ringing…right in the middle of one of those half-waking dreams that seem real enough to reach out and touch. And since the phone was right outside my room, and no one else was up, I abandoned the dream, and jumped up to grab the handset.

Celeste was on the other line, and she was talking so fast, and not making any sense, at all, and I was still half-to-three-quarters-asleep…all I really processed was that I needed to go turn on the television, LIKE RIGHT NOW, RACHEL. Caroline had a tv in her room, and I could hear her moving around, because the phone had roused her, as well. I stuck my head in, and told her that Celeste had called, and just said we had to turn on the tv, LIKE RIGHT NOW, CAROLINE. And so we did.

If I live a thousand years, I don’t know that I will ever see anything like what we saw. We turned the tv on just in time to see the first tower come down, and shroud Manhattan in debris and fear. What a strange thing to witness. I remember thinking that I totally understood the phrase “I didn’t believe my own eyes.” What in the holy hell had just happened?

I remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe, like I could hear every blood cell in my whole body rushing through my ears, and that my head was definitely about to explode. I remember being afraid that if I ever did get that full breath into my lungs, I would scream a scream that I would never be able to stop screaming, unless Caroline slapped me. I remember standing at the foot of her bed, covered with her green quilt (that Mrs. Marcel made for her, and quilted with bunny shapes), the two of us there in our pajamas, clasping hands like two little girls lost in the woods. I remember thinking that whatever happened, it must have been bad and was probably on purpose, and that things would never, ever, ever be the same. I remember thinking that this didn’t look like an accident, and that the other tower didn’t look so steady, and before we could get ourselves sorted out, and decide what to do next, we watched the second tower fall. I remember thinking a thousand thoughts a second, but the only one that could get enough traction was the one that screamed “OH MY GOD!” at top volume.

I went downstairs, called my office, and was told I needed to make haste in getting into the office. I grabbed my cell phone (the one I had just purchased the day before, two days after I opened up my very first bank account ALL BY MYSELF) and drove away from the apartment I shared with Caroline, and our other roommate, wondering the whole time if more planes were going to crash into more buildings before I made it to work. I think we all sat in front of the tv, all day long. I was so absorbed, I almost forgot I had a staff meeting. Wall to wall news, no commercials, nothing on the radio but news, no one on the phone but people making sure I wasn’t still working in DC, anymore…it was the strangest day of my life…stranger than any day I’ve had since, as well.

I was 22, almost 23. I was the age my mother was when she met my father. I was almost as old as my father was when I was born. Yet, I was, in so many instances, still very much a child on September 11, 2001. I am not the first person to say that day changed my life, irrevocably. The world was changed, and that much is for certain. The changes wrought inside of me would most likely have been wrought regardless of terrorist attacks or the PATRIOT Act, or anything else to do with those days and weeks immediately following that day. I know only what I know in hindsight, and that sometimes is not even as clear as we would all like to say it is. I can tell you that at almost-33, the last decade makes much more sense to me (personally, politically, theologically, globally, etc. ad nauseam) in reverse. Funny how that works, sometimes.

I know that for me, in some very real and concrete ways, September 11^th was the end of my childhood, I watched something I perceived to be invincible fall before my very disbelieving eyes—in concrete and steel, in flesh and blood, through the magic of television, in screaming technicolor. Once a person has seen that happen (over, and over and over…), she can no longer really be called a child, or at least can no longer be called an innocent. That event is the beginning of what I understood to be my very own, and very personal Babylonian Captivity. And yes, I mean that…on lots of levels.

Babylon is a real place, as real as it ever was, but it’s not confined to a particular geographical region or political stripe or socio-economic status. Babylon is the broken, barren, scary, hard place we all end up, whether we want to or not. Babylon is the desert of the real, in Matrix-speak…to live there is to understand the CS Lewis analogy of always Winter and Never Christmas. To learn to live in Babylon, without a Temple, without a home, as an alien, and as chattel is to make peace with the constant war between our desires for ourselves and God’s intention for us…but not just to make peace. That’s not enough.

Surviving Babylon is about utter and complete, total and unconditional surrender. For me, coming to terms with Babylon means physically and spiritually laying down on the floor of the deepest darkest part of myself, and admitting to God that I make a real pig’s ear out of my life, that I cannot create and sustain joy out of my own devices, that I am unable to fix all the broken and jagged edges of who I am, in this life. It’s a hard road, in either direction, whether we are staggering and stumbling into Babylon, or at a dead run, sprinting toward Zion.

Any way you slice it, regardless of what terms you come to, in Babylon there are days when joy seems so far off the path, it must surely live in a different country. There are days when the only music playing is a dirge or something loud, jangly, and obnoxious. But some days, when the wind blows just right, and a sudden stillness descends, the sounds of the story of God—songs of creation, praise, thanks, blessings, and love come wafting through, and nothing seems irreconcilable…like a mix tape from God, to speed us on our journey back to The Land of Milk and Honey.

One of my favorite things to do in high school was to make mixtapes. I would spend hours creating the perfect tape for a roadtrip, a party, a boyfriend, a friend who needed a pick-me up. I loved sitting for hours on my bed with a yellow legal pad and all my tapes, cds, and albums on the bed around me, figuring out just what to all to put together to say something good, hopeful, full of love. I-tunes has undeniably made this a dying art form, and no one has tape players, anymore. But I still find myself making cds and mailing them to people, and I still refer to them as mix tapes, just like how one of my professors in school always referred to Istanbul as Constantinople. Mix tapes are my love letter of choice.

This is a love letter, so you know that you are not alone, and that you can do this. It’s tough out there, and we’ve got to stick together. We have to remind each other that Jesus is real, and really loves us. We have to remind each other to be nice, and to share. We have to remember that the monsters under our bed, in our closets, in the middle of the living room can’t have the last word. So, this is my mix tape for all the people who live and work in Babylon, along-side me, for the people who remind me that I am a real person, that God has a plan, that nothing but the steadfast love of Jesus can fix a broken and dying world.

Turn it up, loud.

mil besos,

rmg