AND THERE WILL COME HARD RAINS

by Andrew Williams

"And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children

of men builded.

And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one

language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained

from them, which they have imagined to do.

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may

not understand one another's speech.

So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the

earth: and they left off to build the city.

Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there

confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD

scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth."--Genesis 11: 5-9

"Towers open fire..."--William S. Burroughs

Burroughs, who wrote about the Tower of Babel from a semantic/psychosocial

point of view, foresaw, in his way, the destruction of the Twin Towers. He

was a student of the word--not the word of God, but of man--its origins,

meanings and causes. And in the collapse of the Towers he would have seen

the Biblical scene recapitulated: peoples of many races gathered and

united in two great towers, which are collapsed and thus once again

fragment the peoples who once gathered in amity. One language returns to

many, heralding the return of the stranger, the "Other."

The attack on the Towers was a convenient vehicle for powermongers to

remind us of old divisions, to exacerbate old conflicts, to pour salt on

old wounds that had been reopened. "All this our world stinks peace!" they

declared (paraphrasing Pound) and set about blowing on brush fires,

heating them to the point of conflagrations. Our "leaders" have

promulgated a War on Terror, a golem compiled of myriad parts: a War on

Islam, a War on Arab-Americans, a War on Christianity, a War on Some

People with Some Drugs Who Aren't Afghani Opium Growers, and so on. And

here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

Is it any wonder this anniversary filled us with terror? "Beauty is the

beginning of terror," Rainer Marie Rilke wrote. "Every angel is terrible."

It appears, we see all our sins remembered, we shudder in awe. And

fear-filled people are the easiest to control. But what if we see the

angel as our angel? What if it holds, not a sword, but a dove? What if,

instead of moral condemnation, it gives us what Carl Rogers called

"unconditional positive regard"--unconditional love? Does not God love his

children? Is it not so written?

Personally, I no longer believe in the Old Testament deity. It's too

easy--a jealous god who condemns all who betray or reject him to eternal

flaming horror. A "god with the manners of a spoiled child," according to

Robert A. Heinlein. An all too human god.

It is interesting how God, in the Bible, is seen from two perspectives.

The Old Testament shows him to be an easily angered, highly judgmental

being--a cross between Dr. Laura and Judge Judy. The New Testament speaks

in quiet tones of love, grace and forgiveness. It is as if, between the

books, God--or his hagiographers--plotted his actions on a curve and

realized that implied force and threats of terror don't work very well.

That is in alignment with Eastern religious teachngs, which hold that

force or threats of force rarely work, and not for long.

So if God--and/or his scriveners--can learn this lesson, why can't we? Why

do we, as a race, still tend to resort to violence as a means? Why do we

still believe, as R. A. Wilson observed, that 1 + 1 = 0, that an eye for

an eye and a tooth for a tooth is fair exchange? There's a fascinating

book that addresses this subject titled *War Is A Force That Gives Us

Meaning* by New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges. This quote sums

his case nicely and personally: "War is a drug, one I ingested for many

years. It is peddled by mythmakers...all of whom endow it with qualities

it often does possess: excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above

our small stations in life, and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has

a grotesque and dark beauty."

As Bill Hicks observed, we always have to have an enemy because most of us

lead "lives of quiet desperation" filled with short walks down long

hallways filled with endless reams of paper. War fires up the blood, gives

us an outlet for our hatred and fear--"it's them, not us!" we cry, beating

our breasts and waving our flags. It is more than a shifting of

burdens--it is intoxication, a welcome respite from the civilized burdens

of thought.

And it is a respite from thought we desperately need--but not in action.

What we truly need is to find the stillness within ourselves, the point of

which we revolve around our inner beings--observing without acting, noting

without judging. As long as you hate yourself, you can be led to

slaughter. If you learn to love yourself--not narcissistically, but with

self-knowledge and forgiveness--you learn to laugh and sing in times of

trouble, to see joy in all creation, to rise beyond fear and hate. You

become love--the personification of the divine that is in all life. The

thoughts of hatred and fear are neither attractive nor repugnant, but

simply variables in the cosmic equation. And love is the power that

transforms and transcends lives and life itself.

It's a scary time. Rights are being taken from us right and left and

almost nobody stands up and asks, "Why?" People are so occupied with

working 1, 2 or 3 jobs they've no time or energy left to think about how

to live. Life becomes convenience--McDonald's, Prozac, Ritalin, cell

phones, malls, dollar stores, SUV's, DVD's, microwave food, music and

lifestyles. And this is the time when those who fight this Kulturkampf

either increase our vigilance or step back and view with detached

amusement the machinations of our so-called leaders.

I will recommend neither view. All I will do is repeat the one message of

all great sages and philosophers from all time: Think for yourselves.

Further, deponent sayeth not.