What is terror?
If we are old enough, we all remember just where we were and what we were doing on September 11th, 2001 when we got the news. The images are seared into our memories. These acts of mass murder were meant to terrorize us, and they did. We were changed. So was the world.
Twenty years later, we still grieve for the dead, the injured, and the bereaved; victims of the attacks. But we also have had time to reflect. A great deal of reflecting has been done around this 20th anniversary year, both about the attacks themselves and about the U.S. response: the massive "War on Terror."
We have not, as far as I know, done much reflecting on terror itself. One might think we would, given the way in which it has become such a central word in our domestic and foreign policies, and to our very consciousness. Talk of terror, terrorism, and terrorists is everywhere.
But what is it? What is terror?
A close friend of mine commented post-911, as we watched the unfolding of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, "The reason terrorism works is because we are terrified." Acts of terror are essentially acts of fear, whether they do them or we do them; whether that fear is desperation (9-11), or revenge (Shock and Awe). This gets to the root of things. Terror is the inner condition that breeds acts of terror. The acts do not create terror. They express and enflame it; spreading to more terroristic acts in response.
Think about that. The reason we are terrorized...is not because of terrorism, terrorists, or armed attacks. These could not terrorize us if we simply were not terrified. They are effective because they provoke the terror that is already in us. It would not work without that.
None of us likes all of what happens. No one lives with no fears at all. Fear, when it arises, is an invitation to something beyond fear: eternal life.
This is not acquiescence. It is rather to loose our grip on outcomes. It is to realize that our lives do not depend on any particular outcome or set of circumstances, however good and desirable they may be; or however horrible they may be. When Jesus says, "Are not your lives more than food or clothing? Why do you then worry?" he is not just talking about food and clothing, he is talking about worry itself. Worry ruins us. It disconnects us from our true selves, the present moment, and from others.
It is possible to live, love, struggle, resist, hope, pursue, fight and die--all without worry; without terror. But this only is possible when we loose our soul's attachment to "necessary" outcomes, and likewise our attachment to avoiding "unthinkable" outcomes. Though these attachments may seem quite reasonable to most people, they are the source and cause of suffering for ourselves and others. Another way is possible. I say another way is possible, not because I am a master (I am a learner). I say it because I have seen it.
I saw it in Martin Luther King Jr. In his "I Have a Dream" speech, King admitted that he would prefer to live a long life, but that he did not expect to do so. It is safe to say he had fears, but he was not terrified. Not afraid enough to waver from his message of equality and love of enemy. Not afraid enough to stop standing in truth.
I see it in the stories of Jesus. He had fears, no doubt, but he was not terrified to face his own untimely death, which became inevitable as long as he kept speaking the truth that was threatening to those in power.
We saw it in NYC fire fighters who climbed the stairways to what they knew would likely be their own death.
What is there to lose? It is deep and profound and real question. What do you fear to lose? And what do you lose when you cling to your fear of loss? "What does it profit a person to gain the whole cosmos (the Greek word for world) and to lose one's own soul?" "Whoever seeks to save one's life will lose it. But whoever loses (please read here: "looses") one's life will keep it for eternal life." (Mark 8)
Eternal life is not what happens after we die. Eternal life is eternal. No beginning and no end. Eternal life is life, period. It is the life that is truly life. It is the life to which Jesus came to bear witness; not a later life, but a now life. Here and now. A quality of life, not an after-life. What robs us of abundant life, is a mistaken case of identity. We think of ourselves in terms of many things: successes, achievements, relations, possessions, failures, mess-ups, status, reputation, and so on.
Our lives are not these things. These things pass away along with our bodies and the memories of us. Poof. So why do we cling so anxiously to what we cannot keep? There's an invitation to the spiritual life here. To learn to let go in our hearts of the things, even the really good things, that we will most certainly lose. So that we--ironically--can learn to enjoy them for what they are: gifts. It is an initiation to a life beyond the grip of fear and terror, to unassailable joy and love. No strings attached. No terror to fear.
We say, "God is Love." I wonder whether and how we believe it? Do we feel it? Is that what is really real? Perhaps this is eternal life?
