Say Their Silence

Rosa Say has said it bet­ter than any­body this week regard­ing the killing of Osama Bin Laden. In a beau­ti­ful, mov­ing post titled, “Hel­lo? These are your val­ues speak­ing,” she rec­om­mends a process of reflec­tion to answer the inter­nal ques­tions we might have about our own pri­vate reac­tions to the event. 

photo by www.triplem.com.au

Like many of you, despite the enor­mous pain Bin Laden caused, images of peo­ple cheer­ing his death sent a shiv­er up the spine. And con­trary to how nor­mal (at least for men) this response might be, as sug­gest­ed by this WSJ arti­cle, I still can’t find any­thing sweet about revenge. For sure, I’m sym­pa­thet­ic to any­one who wan­dered down to the twin tow­ers site to mourn and com­mem­o­rate the loss of friends and col­leagues — yes, I get that total­ly — but not the flag wav­ing, chant­i­ng, drink­ing patri­ots at the gates of the White House singing The Star Span­gled Ban­ner. Those images will last, a book-end to images of 9/11 itself — and they don’t seem to me to relieve any­thing of the grief; to the con­trary, they add to it because they are, as Uni­ver­si­ty of Nebras­ka pro­fes­sor Ari Kohen points out in a pop­u­lar blog post, not about jus­tice at all, but about vengeance. 

For what its worth, I wrote a song the day after 9/11. I got it out today and re-read the words. It’s called, “Say Their Silence,” and it’s about the peo­ple who died falling from the tow­ers. It’s a lit­tle corny now when I read it, you know, but it helped me get through the next few days after the tragedy. And, in truth, silence is indeed what it seems to me we’ve still got, a whole lot of it about the much deep­er issues of vio­lence and revenge. Whether or not it’s pro­grammed into us, part of our chem­istry, makes not a bit of dif­fer­ence. The point is we all have it in us. You have it and so do I. So some­thing must be added, a con­scious­ness, that is pow­er­ful enough to lift us all out of what­ev­er anger and ter­ror and suf­fer­ing dri­ves it and cel­e­brates it. It’s too late in the life of the world for this kind of stuff, and the seeds are still with us, in those images of flag-wav­ing, in the voic­es that turn this sad event into an oppor­tu­ni­ty to for revenge across the polit­i­cal rifts in our coun­try. The sound of revenge, more than cheers of vic­to­ry or oppor­tunis­tic speech­es about “jus­tice,” is the silence of death that reigns as back­ground to it all. 

Osama Bin Laden’s killing brings it all up again for me, the pain, and what, if any­thing — if any­thing — we’ve learned, and just when we’re going to start pay­ing atten­tion to revenge itself as the ene­my instead of rev­el­ing in this nasty game of eye for eye and tooth for tooth. You can bet that the rev­el­ing is not much more than an invi­ta­tion to more of the same, but that’s not the mean­ing of it, either. The mean­ing is in the irrepara­ble loss of our humanity.

We think we own this place;
we think we can control
what hap­pens on this island,
what hap­pens in the soul.

We’ve got a lot to learn
Before we can cel­e­brate that dawn;
I mourn you though I don’t real­ly know
what to feel now that you’re gone.

O say, say their silence
and tonight suf­fer the hours;
for we might need to learn from them
before their dust is ours.

The deal is we can learn. If we can just pay atten­tion for a moment. We can see how the whole wheel turns, and what we must do to begin to stop it. This isn’t some philo­soph­i­cal argu­ment about whether or not Bin Laden should have been killed. It’s about our reac­tion to it, and just how long we plan to be chained to the wheel.

DSC_0410 - Version 2

I pray for you; I pray for me
I pray in con­fu­sion’s night
to learn how to open now
that flower of love and light.

I say O…Silence.

I say O…Silence.

Technorati Tags: . Link to blog posting. Link to Oestreich Associates website. Thanks to Vincenza Mueller for the epigraph.

By Dan Oestreich

I am a consultant, coach, facilitator and trainer supporting the growth and development of leaders and teams. For further information about my work and services, please access my Oestreich Associates website.

12 comments

  4. Thank you for sharing…I was ter­ri­bly sad to hear peo­ple on the news tout­ing it as a glo­ri­ous day.…time for a cel­e­bra­tion. In my opin­ion, that response reflects a seri­ous lack of spir­tiual evo­lu­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I know many peo­ple agreed with the broad­cast. Amazing.…with all of our intel­lec­tu­al achieve­ments, it seems we still do not get it.

  5. Dan, I am with you and Rosa on this issue. Evil lead­ers do not war­rant cheers. I felt rather emp­ty for what they did to oth­ers on this earth. An aura of sad­ness washed over me for all the grief they caused. I am sad the world had to endure their mer­ci­less, angry acts that killed and maimed so many. 

    Your poem, “Say Their Silence,” express­es all of this well. Thanks, Dan.

  6. Thanks, Mar­cy. I’m com­ing to see what an incred­i­bly chal­leng­ing thing it is to inte­grate these pri­vate reac­tions. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, com­ments on my blog post do not repost here, so you might want to take a look by fol­low­ing the “Link to blog post­ing” shown above to see how oth­ers have replied, includ­ing access­ing the link Kar­tik sug­gests. As you point out, our spir­its have not alto­geth­er caught up to where we need to be.

  7. Thank you for sharing…I was ter­ri­bly sad to hear peo­ple on the news tout­ing it as a glo­ri­ous day.…time for a cel­e­bra­tion. In my opin­ion, that response reflects a seri­ous lack of spir­tiual evo­lu­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I know many peo­ple agreed with the broad­cast. Amazing.…with​ all of our intel­lec­tu­al achieve­ments, it seems we still do not get it.

  9. Robyn, thank you, too, and may we all find our way for­ward. I find as time goes by some soft­en­ing inside of me when I think of the “cel­e­brants.” It isn’t easy but there’s a need for some kind of com­pas­sion­ate response and under­stand­ing. I’m not all the way there yet, but I’m work­ing on it.

  10. Kar­tik

    Thanks so much for pass­ing along the link. It’s a very inter­est­ing read and I sug­gest oth­ers take a look at it, along with Rosa’s post.

  11. Life has a way of bring­ing us (all too often through our man made tragedies) back to silence. And we also have a way of turn­ing away from this gift at the first oppor­tu­ni­ty, only to suf­fer and then return again to this invi­ta­tion that life offers us to iden­ti­fy with the bound­less Peace & Joy that pre-exists in the silence of our core.
    Thanks Dan 🙂

  12. Nick, it’s great to hear your voice again! Your reminder is pro­found — as always. 

    You help me see that there are real­ly two kinds of silence in my post and the lyrics from my song. The first has to do with the silence of death and the empti­ness I felt watch­ing peo­ple cel­e­brate; the sec­ond has to do with the inte­ri­or silence you refer to, which I asso­ciate with a deep com­fort and lov­ing kind­ness. The les­son for me is always to wait through the first silence long enough to expe­ri­ence the second. 

    That’s an eas­i­er thing to do with some events, more dif­fi­cult with oth­ers. The more dif­fi­cult, how­ev­er, the greater and more wel­com­ing the “invi­ta­tion” and the sweet­er the return home.

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