Boston in a Larger Context    

 

 

 

 

 

By Harry T. Cook 

4/19/13

 

Harry T. Cook
Harry T. Cook

My wife and I were walking into an airport concourse shortly after 3 p.m. on Monday and wondered why such a large number of people were gathered shoulder-to-shoulder gazing intently at a television screen.

 

One look told us in an instant about the explosions in Boston that, as it turned out, claimed three lives, one of an 8-year-old boy, and maimed a number of innocent persons for life.

 

There was no jostling in the crowd around the television screen, only the occasional polite apology for unintentionally blocking another's view and shy looks as strangers faced together into yet another murderous incident for which there seemed to be "no earthly reason," as one woman traveler was heard to say. There was a kind of mumble of assent to her remark.

 

It called to mind April 18, 1995, when our family was traveling by air to Albuquerque via Minneapolis and learned during the stopover of the Oklahoma City bombing in the same way -- thrown in with people we would probably never encounter again, but in the same moment feeling together fear, dread, outrage and helplessness at what we were being told was a disaster of the first order.

 

As I stood with the crowd in the Baltimore airport Monday afternoon staring at the television screen with jaw agape, words of John Donne, which I had first read before I understood their timeless profundity, came to me unbidden: 

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Most mornings of a week, I sit in my easy chair and, with a cup of coffee at hand, peruse the morning paper. As I live in metropolitan Detroit, the news that I read includes almost daily the shooting death or deaths of persons who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I sometimes check the death notices over the next few days to see if the names of the shooting victims appear among them. They seldom do.


And yet, if I let the coffee get cold and do not so quickly turn the page, I realize that Donne's bell has tolled for yet another unnecessary death by gun and that the deceased is my brother or sister just as much as those killed in Boston earlier this week are my brothers and sisters for whom the same bell that tolled to mark their passing will one day toll for mine.


Anyone's death diminishes me because, like it or not, I am involved in humankind.


That's the greater context of the Boston catastrophe. Any one of us might well have been one of the dead or injured. I walked down that same sidewalk along Boylston Street just five months ago on my way to Trinity Church in Copley Square.


That we are all involved in humankind is what the debate in Congress over gun control issues is really all about. It is about our bonds with one another whilst we occupy our places on this planet. It is what the debate about drones ought to be about. It's the cry that we hear -- if we are listening -- from the gulag that is Guantanamo. Our gulag.


We are all involved in humankind when it comes to undernourished children, homeless people, victims of corporate greed and overreach. We can read about it in the paper, see their one-dimensional images on the nightly news -- between commercials for depilatories and deodorant -- and then toddle off to bed unmoved. We must not be unmoved.


While what I was watching on the television screen in that airport concourse was remote from me and my present security, the images of panic, fear and unbelief drew me and my fellow viewers as far as we could be drawn into that dread day and its mayhem. I heard no wisecrack, no anti-Muslim accusation. In fact, I heard nothing but deep sighs from those near me. They knew that a bell was tolling in Boston, but that its sound would be heard far and wide and reverberate for a long time to come.


How to replicate that experience every time we learn of deaths by bombing or shooting anywhere, every time we are confronted by the images of homelessness, malnutrition and hopelessness?
And now we must add to our list the 15 and maybe more residents of West, Texas who perished in that fertilizer factory blast on Wednesday as many of them slept. Some number of the survivors are homeless now and bereft of loved ones. They, too, must be in the orbit 0f our thoughts.

Boston was a dramatic illustration of what goes on every hour of every day on this planet, in this country, in our cities and neighborhoods. If only the public resolve that emanates now from Boston and from people around America could be raised at every cry of human suffering. That would be the realization of what our founding parents called "a more perfect Union" and the Bible "the kingdom of heaven."


May the souls of the Boston and Texas dead rest in peace. May light perpetual shine upon them. The bell that tolls for them tolls for us.


� Copyright 2013, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit. 


Readers Write 

re essay of 4/12/13 How Stories Invent History                  

 

 

 

 

Diane Armes Wallace, Alton, MO:

Once again you ring the bell of truth and inner reflection with honesty.  My daughter and I go down memory lane on occasion, and I swear we were never even in the same place at the same time; neither of our stories have anything in common. I have stated for most of my adult life that perception, and only perception is an individual's reality.  And perception is as personal and different as a fingerprint.  Every truth, every reality is strictly a perception of ones inner mind, made up of ego and id and who knows how many other voices. Love your writings!

 

Charles White, Plymouth, MI:

I spent a few years testifying in automobile accidents.  I would read the testimony of eyewitnesses and there were always conflicts.  There were also scientific experts that analyzed the accident even though they did not witness the actual accident. What I learned from this was that witnesses and experts always have differences in their recounts of what happened.  But all of them recognize that an accident did happen event though their accounts differ. So it is with the resurrection of Jesus. There is no compelling physical evidence that the resurrection occurred but there is significant recounting of Jesus resurrection. I am glad I was never a student of yours with your flawed logic that if there is no compelling evidence that the documents stating Jesus resurrection must be no more than myth. Automobile accidents do occur as did the resurrection of Jesus. Go back to the bunny trails, hot dog.

 

Blayney Colmore, La Jolla, CA:  

[You wrote] "As for the resurrection of Jesus, you're on your own. Pick a story and stick to it. I will be no help as I have retired from hot-dogging." A couple of years ago I renewed a friendship from adolescence with a man who turns out to have been a highly decorated undercover agent with the CIA. And a "devout" Episcopalian. Finding him as intelligent, cynical and sophisticated as I regard myself, I risked describing my theological odyssey that is much like yours. He listened for a while then: "So, I think I've got it. You were ordained, served four parishes over thirty years, and was all that time secretly an atheist. You should have been in my line of work."Perhaps he was right.

 

Fred Fenton, Concord, CA:

Your essay about myth or story makes the point that stories grow with the telling. That is true. From childhood I loved to entertain my friends with stories. Most of them began with some real life experience but grew in my imagination and were shaped by the reaction of my listeners. I developed a reputation for telling "whoppers." Now, as I look back, I have trouble distinguishing between stories I told that were mostly true and stories that were entirely made up. In the end, the stories we prize point to some truth or serve some purpose like humor. The facts of the matter are of far less importance. Thus Luke's story of the Good Samaritan may be one of the greatest stories ever told, and it matters not whether it is based on an actual incident or simply the creation of a discerning heart. Likewise, the resurrection tales in the Gospels can be seen as "whoppers" or looked at as poetic expressions of immortal truth, namely, that life is always saying "Surprise," and how we respond is up to us. 

 

Helen Tiller, Charlottesville, VA:

Thank you so much for your essay about stories and history. I wish I had been connected with you and your thinking before lately. Because of your essay about Easter a couple of weeks ago, I could actually go to church on Easter Sunday with your thoughts in my head and not feel like a hypocrite. I think you do not know how many people you help.

 

James M. Sam, Algonac, MI:
Loved your essay. As a religious studies professor I encounter the same kind of intellectual resistance to modern scriptural scholarship by many of my adult age students. Inspired by the writings of Bishop John Spong, I am on a crusade to destroy fundamentalism/literalism. But the journey is discouraging. Like Don Quixote the quest seems like The Impossible Dream. I envy your retirement and contemplate the same in two years. Thanks for a very affirming essay.


Jack Lessenberry, Huntington Woods, MI:

Wonderful essay. I have a very good memory. But I remember standing on the corner when I was a traffic safety boy in elementary school and hearing a rock and roll song.  Except I later learned that particular song hadn't been composed yet.

 


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