Terrorism

Tree of Life Synagogue and the Need for Weariness

/ Heather Strong Moore / Leave a comment

Some families take vacations to Disney World. My family would vacation in Pittsburgh. This was partly because my grandparents lived there, partly because Pittsburgh is a wonderful city. I spent 12 years post-college living in the Pittsburgh region and in many ways regard it as my home city. It is a city known for its many distinct neighborhoods, my favorite of which is Squirrel Hill. I have spent countless hours there with family and friends. A predominantly Jewish community, it also houses restaurants and shops from a wide range of cultures and nationalities. It has the best movie theater in the city, and is a welcoming neighborhood full of vibrant culture and life. Despite the terrible violence there on October 27th, nothing will change that.

When I first starting seeing breaking news that a Pittsburgh synagogue was being attacked, I knew it was likely in that lovely community. Watching the story unfold, my primary response was weariness. After a week that was already marked by hatred and violence with the mail bombs, this was overwhelming. I felt sadness and anger, but mostly I felt numb. This has to stop. Things have to change.

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When we look at God’s history with the community of faith, He has used weariness in the past to move us forward. Buried in the middle of the Old Testament book of Numbers is a remarkable passage about some unexpected fruit of growing weary. Numbers in general is an often overlooked book that packs a punch. It follows the time of the Israelites leaving their enslavement in Egypt and their forty years wandering in the wilderness. God led them out of Egypt through signs and wonders and guided them straight to the Promised Land. But the people were not ready. They were so accustomed to slavery that they could not imagine freedom. All they could do was look back at their bondage and believe that it was normal and as good as it gets. They could not imagine that the unknown could be better than the comfortable past, so they believed it must be worse. They froze because all they could see were giants, not milk and honey (Num. 13:31-33).

So God consigned them to 40 years in the wilderness, one year for every day that the spies were in the promised land (Num. 14). Enough time for the generation that was born in Egypt to pass away. An entire generation is born in the wilderness, a generation that is listed in the middle of Numbers (chapter 26). The genealogies in this book is typically where readers get bogged down, but they are there to show us when a change begins. Something significant happens with this generation born in the wilderness. They no longer look back, they start to dream about what is ahead.

The daughters of Zelophehad son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Makir, the son of Manasseh, belonged to the clans of Manasseh son of Joseph. The names of the daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milkah and Tirzah. They came forward 2 and stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the leaders and the whole assembly at the entrance to the tent of meeting and said, 3 “Our father died in the wilderness. He was not among Korah’s followers, who banded together against the Lord, but he died for his own sin and left no sons. 4 Why should our father’s name disappear from his clan because he had no son? Give us property among our father’s relatives.”

5 So Moses brought their case before the Lord, 6 and the Lord said to him, 7 “What Zelophehad’s daughters are saying is right. You must certainly give them property as an inheritance among their father’s relatives and give their father’s inheritance to them. Num. 27:1-7 (NIV)

The daughters of Zelophehad begin to imagine possibilities of things that have never been before. What if women could own land? Not only that, they are envisioning life in the Promised Land. They are thinking about what it will entail and they do not want to miss it. No longer are the people looking back to slavery as their frame of reference. They are looking ahead and dreaming about things that have not yet been.

These young women represent what God was trying to do in the people through their wandering. To bring change in their desires. To wear them out on life that is sub-par so they start dreaming about abundance. So that when they are led back to the edge of the Promised Land, they want to go in and never look back. They want to take hold of God’s rest, provision, equity, and goodness. They were meant to hate the wilderness and former bondage so they would love the fulfillment of God’s promises.

This story offers a similar application to our weary hearts today. It is normal and good to feel sadness and anger. It is fitting and right for us to hate the works of evil. And our Godly response can be to dream rather than freeze. Many giants of evil are dominating our cultural landscape, but we serve a God with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm (Deut. 7:19). Take your weariness to your community’s inter-faith gatherings and support your Jewish neighbors. Use your platform to remind yourself, and others, that acts of hatred and violence are not normal or as good as it gets. Research the candidates running for office in your region and go vote for people who will pursue righteousness and peace. Pray for the Lord to move all of our hearts away from selfish complacency and towards new possibilities for Kingdom flourishing. May we be a people who are shaped by the promises and power of God and who dream of things greater than we have yet seen.

 

Nowhere is safe

/ Heather Strong Moore / Leave a comment

I was a freshman in college on 9/11. We were in morning chapel when the first tower was hit, and we came upstairs to the cafeteria in time for the big screen TV to show the second tower fall. It seemed like a movie, none of it felt real. That day changed so many things; the way we feel when we see the New York City skyline, the way we travel, the way our military has operated, the way we perceive threats of violence, the way we perceive each other. That fear has only escalated, particularly in the past few years. Now we have other major cities and other public places to add to the list: Nairobi, Paris, Orlando, Istanbul, Brussels, Aleppo…the list goes on. It can be easy to feel unsafe, to be tempted to just not go anywhere anymore.

In the middle of these years of escalating fear I first watched the documentary “Man on Wire” and the subsequent feature film “The Walk“. They tell the story of Philippe Petit, a young tightrope walker and performance artist who in 1974 illegally hung a tightrope wire between the Twin Towers and walked back and forth across the gap. Petit captured my imagination with his stunt because of the way he viewed the event.

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When Petit was 17 he had a toothache and was sitting in a dentist office in Paris. While flipping through a magazine he came across a drawing of the plans for the World Trade Center that was soon to begin construction in New York City. At that moment, Petit’s primary goal in life became to walk between the towers. He single-mindedly practiced his craft, what he considered his art. He never used a safety harness, it was always just him and his balance pole and the wire. He practiced constantly on a wire strung between trees, having his friends hang from the wire and shake it to simulate the high winds that would be blowing at the altitude of the WTC.

He flew back and forth from Paris to NYC multiple times to scout the location and to find insiders who could help his very elaborate scheme. Preparing for the walk was like a bank heist for performance art. When the day finally came it took them all night to hang the wire, and as one of his friends said, “It was the worst wire we ever hung.” Petit’s face was uncertain as he was getting a feel for the wire and the conditions. His friend goes on with tears in his eyes, “but then I saw his face change, and I knew it was all ok.” Petit walked back and forth eight times. He lay down on the wire looking up at the sky. He sat on the wire and looked down at the crowd that had formed on the street. He only came down because the police threatened to bring a helicopter to forcibly remove him from the wire. Reporters and police immediately asked him why he would do such a crazy thing. Petit answered, “I just danced at the top of the world and you ask why?!”

The Walk

That’s the joy that I want to draw from Petit. I’m terrified of heights and “The Walk” is stressful to watch in that regard (he didn’t have a harness…he didn’t have a harness!!!). But you get to share in Petit’s love of his art, the beauty that he sees in “dancing at the top of the world.” He wasn’t thinking about the fear of the fall, he was thinking about the beauty of life and of doing what he was made to do. Watching both films gave me a new memory of the World Trade Center, and a new way to think about places that we associate with fear.  I remembered that our gathering spaces can be marked by friendship and beauty rather than death.

9/11 changed everything for my family too. My brother Jesse had joined the Marine Corp Reserves that summer, when none of us thought a foreign conflict was imminent. He spoke to my mom on the phone that day and told her, “Mom, I’m ready. This is what I was trained for.” He was deployed in the fall of 2004 after finishing college and starting seminary, and was killed in action on January 26, 2005. The absolute worst case scenario for my family had become a reality.

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Tragedy brings you to your knees and when you look up you realize you’re kneeling at a crossroads. You can either be paralyzed by the knowledge that pain and loss are always a moment away, or you can cast yourself upon God’s limitless healing and the hope of the resurrection from the dead. It took me two years to leave the crossroads, but God’s mercy led me down the path of healing and hope.

One of the things I learned in the process was that Petit isn’t the only one whose life dangles on a wire. Every moment of every day each of our lives are hanging by a thread. We’re each one slippery patch of ice, one faulty jet engine, one cancer diagnosis, one angry bullet away from death. How do we live with such an ever-present reality? By embracing the truth we repeat from the prayer book, “We have no defender but you, O God.” We live in an age of darkness by following the Light that no darkness can overcome. Our risen Savior gives us the courage to board an airplane, to get behind the wheel, to attend public events, to enter the voting booth, and to love others deeply without fear and without loneliness.

It’s true that in today’s climate any public place could be a potential target. And it’s also true that this is still our Father’s world. We were still made to love the goodness of all that God has created, and we were made to be together rather than alone. Even if the worst case scenario does happen to us or to people we love, we are assured that death and violence are not God’s final word. Each day we live in the hope of being raised with Christ and of God’s world being restored to a place that is free of death and sorrow and pain. Each day we have the freedom to not live in fear but to welcome each morning as a gift from God, our true Sustainer of life.

This is my Father’s world.
O let me ne’er forget
that though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world:
why should my heart be sad?
The Lord is King; let the heavens ring!
God reigns; let the earth be glad!