The mysteries of history; events beyond our knowing

Courtesy of Larwyn, we have this very strange but provocative piece by Gerald Vanderleun. Illustreated with a haunting picture of Ground Zero, this is at once unsettling and strangely hopeful, or at least that is how I read it:

The Wind in the Heights

And then the first tower came down.
[…]
The cloud lightened and then darkened again and the wind rose and fell away and came back. It rippled your clothing, and the smoke must have had a smell to it because it hurt the lungs when you breathed, but I don’t remember the smell only the sensation of small needles in my lungs and the gray mucus that came up when I coughed.

The wind pummeled my back for the five minutes it took me to make my way to my apartment, get inside and shut the windows. I stood there at the windows and watched the others rush by, blurs in the smoke, and noticed when, as suddenly as it had come up, the wind died away and the air was almost still. The smoke and the ash still moved in the street outside and high overhead. The day was still darkened but the initial violence of the blast and the wind had passed.
[…]
The yellow flecks stayed like small stars on the surface of everything in the Heights for three days until the first rains came on a late afternoon to wash them away. I walked out into that rain and back down Pierrepont to the Promenade where for months the fires would burn across the river. The rain came straight down and there was no wind. As I walked down the sidewalk I noticed the rainwater running off the trees and the buildings and moving down the gutter to the drains that would take it to the harbor and the sea. And that water was, for only a minute or so before it ran clear, gold.

For those of us who breathed the air of 9/11, or had family and friends who did so as we waited and watched, the events of that day live perhaps more vividly within our memories than they do for others. Those who breathed in the great violence, the great ash, the great loss of life took it all not simply into their memory but into their cells and fluids. Such commingling – recognized for what it is – never leaves one unchanged.

Is there something in the wind? For the past few days, the following quote has been shoving itself into my awareness, repeatedly, ever since I saw it alluded to here and looked it up:

“You can’t conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.” Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

That was quoted (abridged) by Michael Gerson in his excellent column this week on Mother Teresa, and while I have been holding on to the link, planning to write about Teresa, I’ve been feeling all week that the quote is apt for me, personally, and perhaps for all of us in these strained and strange days.

Is there something in the wind? Rusty Shackleford links to word and audio purporting to discuss an imminent attack on our shores. Some are saying, “only alarmists are making much of it,” others are saying there will be a new tape released Osama bin Laden.

I say, will anyone really be surprised if terrorists try again? That’s what terrorists do. How many of us spent the end of 2001 and part of 2002 waiting for “the other shoe to drop?” How many of us have thought it remarkable that we have not been attacked again since 2001? How many of us think it only logical for terrorists, seeing a country solidly divided – and emphatically diverted by pop minutia and technical toys – to take action to get out attention again, particularly before a general election? Particularly when they watched us yawn and promptly move on from the latest reports of a terrorism plot/bust in Germany?

People who really want your attention will do whatever they need to do to get it, whether they are terrorists, infants or teenagers.

There is something in the wind. I had an extraordinary conversation today with a priest I ran into by chance. He said nothing about terrorism, about tapes or 9/11, or the yellow starlings of ash that faded away in rivulets of gold. What he said to me was entirely personal – it was an observation about one of my sons – and yet it was an observation whose meaning was wide-reaching, as well.

Vanderleun’s piece reminded me of this quote, which I initially had posted here:

“Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all nations during World War II?” – Dr. Takashi Nagai 1908-1951, on Martyrdom, from All Saints by Robert Ellsberg

(More on how Nagasaki affected an allied soldier here).

At that time I also wrote:

Martyrdom is not about justice – it is not about reasonable death. It is about exactly the opposite, it is about facing down what is completely unreasonable and unjust and offering oneself to the cause of what is just – is reasonable. And yes, there is victory in it. But belonging, as it does, to the realm of the Supernatural, that victory is not always obvious and clear. Still, we all know that simply because a thing is not obvious does not mean it is untrue. The Carmelites of Compiegne and Takashi Nagai knew that.

Am I urging the West toward martyrdom, here? No, I am not urging it. But I am suggesting throughout history, martyrs have spilled blood and it has made a difference. I am suggesting that down the line some may well be called to martyrdom, and we might be wise to anticipate it and understand its use. I am suggesting that when one is caught in a fight between darkness and light – a fight that is more super than natural – such blood might well be required. It always has been, before.

We know we live in interesting times. Never forget they are – as ever – Supernatural times, too.

Now might be a good time to unplug the iPods and Blackberries, turn off the E! Channel and take a good look around. All manner of things can take you by surprise when you are distracted, when you are engulfed in noise and image and are unwilling – or unable – to find the silence in which so much may be heard.

Maybe there is nothing at all in the wind. But if that is true, it will be unusual.