Soul Food

Michele Marr

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who

curse you and pray for those who spitefully use you. For God is kind to

the unthankful and evil.”

-- Jesus (Luke 6:27-35)

Last month I watched “9/11,” the story of Gedeon and Jules Naudet who

were in Manhattan making a film about Engine 7, Ladder 1 that morning.

Jules shot the only known footage of the first plane flying into the

World Trade Center. For the first time since that Tuesday in September I

watched those astonishing moments unfold again.

On Sept. 11, I wasn’t sure I would ever want to see those images

again. Watching them, all the sensations of being in the front car of a

roller coaster making its steepest decent, washed through me again.

Just like that morning six months ago I felt like I wanted to run, but

I couldn’t move. Still and breathless I wondered what the people who were

actually there -- the people in the streets, the people in the planes,

the people in the buildings -- could possibly be thinking. Could they be

thinking? Could they believe their eyes?

On the morning of Sept. 11, I had an appointment with Mark Lebsack,

pastor of Hope Chapel Huntington Beach. When I walked into the church he

and his staff were already preparing for a service that evening.

Churches all over the country held services that afternoon and

evening. People gathered at churches and synagogues and mosques all week,

in the U.S. and all over the world, to mourn and pray. I was struck by

the compassion others showed for our nation.

I have spent enough time living abroad to know the sentiment toward

Americans is often less than fond. I have caught a glimpse of us through

eyes that see us as arrogant and aloof.

I have watched my back during threats by the Baader-Meinhoff against

our military presence in Europe. I watched the bemusement of Italians

while the U.S. bombed Libya in 1986. I walked alongside graffiti,

“Imperialist pigs die,” in Spanish subways, not sure if it was written by

Basques against the Spanish or Spaniards against the U.S. military in

Spain.

So I was touched by how few danced when the giant stumbled. I wondered

if our compassion shone as bright through the unspeakable calamities of

others, friends or foes.

Everyday, somewhere in this world, ordinary people, children, men and

women -- young and old -- suffer and die at the hands of their enemies,

national or religious. I wonder how much share in their suffering. I

wonder how well we hear their cries.

In the evening after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the

Pentagon, Lebsack and other pastors across our nation lead their

congregations in prayer. They prayed for comfort, strength and healing.

They prayed for justice without revenge. Many prayed for our enemies, the

very people who flew our own planes into our own buildings, killing our

loved ones and changing lives forever.

When Jesus told the crowd that gathered around him in Galilee to love

their enemies, to do good to those who hated them, to bless those who

curse them and to pray for those who spitefully used them, he was cluing

us in. Do these things, he was saying, because you are not that different

from your enemies. And God, he said, is kind to you.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer and graphic designer from

Huntington Beach. She has been interested in religion and ethics for as

long as she can remember. She can be reached at o7

[email protected]