It’s been 23 years since four Islamist terrorists, members of al-Qaeda, engaged in coordinated suicide attacks against the United States in 2001. At 8:14 am EDT on that morning, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners scheduled to travel from the East Coast to California. Each year on the anniversary of that horrific event there are public ceremonies at each of the sites of the now holy ground, consecrated by those whose lives were lost on that day.
The long arc of grief from these crucible moments continues to change us as individuals and communities, and as a nation. It is a common truth that it isn’t what happens to us, it’s how we react to it. Initially, in the shock and disbelief we drew closer, and became more patriotic. But soon, the anger and rage at this assault on our autonomy and sense of security, caused us to go to war and seek revenge in that “eye for an eye” that Mahatma Gandhi warned “will make the whole world blind.”
Brad Wolfe, in the foreword to my recently released book, The Art of Grieving: How Art and Artmaking Help Us Grieve and Live Our Best Lives, suggests that there are only 3 broad responses to grief: 1) Repression. We can attempt to suppress grief’s emotional energy. However, we know this is unhealthy, ineffective, and almost impossible to sustain. 2) Harmful externalization: We let it out but in ways that are unhealthy, leading toward further suffering for ourselves, our loved ones, our communities, and even the planet. 3) Healthy externalizations, which my book suggests can be through the arts and creative communal expressions of love and remembering.
Lawyer and activist Valarie Kaur, became radicalized while traveling the country to assist members of her Sikh spiritual community who were being attacked, even murdered because they “looked like the terrorists” in their dress or their accents sounded like “dangerous strangers. “These experiences pushed her deeper into the wisdom of her ancestors’ Sikh tradition and in 2020 she wrote and published See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love.
Yesterday on the 23rd anniversary of 9.11, Kaur released her new book, Sage Warrior which explores responding to the world not from the wound but from a seat of wisdom, pleasure, rest, and joy. She recommends channeling our grief and rage into courage and action. The actions she is taking involve offering an immersive experience of the arts of storytelling, music, song, ancestral wisdom and community-building through The Revolutionary Love Bus Tour. There are stops in 40+ cities across the country. Let your action be finding a Revolutionary Love tour stop near where you– https://revolutionarylove.org/tour/#calendar
