La Noche Buena
Letter from Mexico | January, 2002
FEAR OF THE FUTURE
A hundred days have passed since The Event of last fall. Yesterday, as if to close the first chapter of this epic cultural awakening, it was announced that the fires at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan have finally been extinguished. One hundred days of fire: it sounds almost Biblical.
Today is the Solar New Year -- the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, the longest night. It is the end of fall, the start of a new season. Soon we will be into a new calendar year. Like you, I imagine, my thoughts are about the Old and the New, the past and the future.
Back in October, a month after The Event, New Yorker staff writer Jeffrey Goldberg, interviewed on "Fresh Air," said, "These are people [the Taliban] who fear life itself -- they fear the future."* As it has turned out, their fear was justified: three months out from the adventure of fundamentalist religious warriors to destroy "modernity," the Taliban who nursed and harbored them are themselves running from destruction.
Meanwhile, our culture appears to have succumbed to its own fear of the future. This morning NPR's "Morning Edition" is reporting on the vast numbers of Americans who are dashing to write their wills. This follows news that sales of guns are up by astonishing percentages: The rise was anywhere from 9 percent to nearly 22 percent during September, October, and November, according to FBI statistics on background checks for purchases. The total peaked in October, at 1,029,691.*
AN APPETITE FOR PARANOIA
Our leaders continue to fuel our fear of the future, issuing "alerts" and "alarms" every few days. Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary, told NATO last week that "September 11 was only a preview of what is to come." We must all brace ourselves for "big terror attacks" in the near future.* Today the press reports that the President wants money for "first responders" -- local police, firefighters, and hospitals -- so they can be prepared for future terrorist attacks..."Doomsday rehearsals," bioterrorism research and airport security equipment are part of the package. All of this gets amplified by a media that, after the emotional rush of autumn, appears to have little to do -- feeding a seemingly endless appetite for paranoia in the public.
Fear is everywhere abroad in the land. The image that keeps coming to me is of a child touching a hot stovetop for the first time and recoiling immediately: first there is a shout of utter surprise, then a cry and tears, then the seeking of comfort. At Ground Zero the fire may be out, but the memory of having been singed by it is not. Our culture is recoiling from the heat of The Event, and flopping itself on the nearest couch for safety and comfort.
"Shoppers are clamoring for comforting apparel," says the owner of Sleepyheads in the Mall of the Americas in Minneapolis.* And the same yearning for old-fashioned things, including toys from the past, is providing one of the few comforts for retailers during this holiday season.
Other comforts include our entertainments. Frightened into paralysis about the real world, we are flocking in enormous numbers to the comfortable celluloid geography of Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Middle-Earth, where we can snuggle up for a couple of hours and try to forget that Everything "out there" is in the process of radical change.
Not even the movies may help us avoid reality for long, though: Hollywood has announced that "The Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring" will be followed next year at this time by the second installment of the hobbit trilogy..."The Two Towers."
COMFORTS OF PATRIOTISM
But the greatest "comfort" that is being hogged up right now is...patriotism. On the CBS Evening News the other night a couple, in Florida, I think, had decorated their front lawn with hundreds of American flags. There they were among the Santas and the reindeer and the manger figures. Each flag stood for -- here my memory fails me...firemen? police and rescue workers? the victims? of the September 11 attacks. The gaudy gesture way overshadowed what it was supposed to be commemorating. Similar patriotic stuff is going on all over the country.
We are smarting from hurt feelings; patriotism is the salve we are putting on the bruise. All the flag-waving supports the prevailing attitude in the US: "We are innocent, we were wronged -- let's kill the scoundrels who did it." But a recent poll of 275 opinion leaders, conducted by the International Herald Tribune and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, reveals that our culture may be out of touch with the rest of the world: "Asked if most ordinary people consider US policies to be a major cause of the September 11 attacks, fewer than 1 in 5 respondents from America said they do. But in the rest of the world, nearly 3 out of 5 agreed that they would."*
The poll concludes that "the findings again underscored the divide between Americans' idea of their image and role in the world, and the way the world says it views them."
Unwilling or unable to engage the emerging global consciousness, our culture is retreating into the familiar comforts of the past and the sentimentality of patriotism, waiting for things to return to "normal,"* But outside the US, the same poll says there is "a strong sense around the world that the events of September 11 had opened a new chapter in world history, that nothing would again be the same."
LA NOCHE BUENA
In Mexico, we are about to celebrate La Noche Buena (the Good Night) -- Christmas Eve. Fresh flowers are being carried into churches by the armloads; side altars look like the hillsides of ancient Bethlehem. The Jardin, the central square of San Miguel, is decked out with colorful paper lanterns. Scents drifting out of the bakeries are of spicy Christmas sweets...cinnamon, anise, vanilla.
Reflecting on the name Mexicans have given to the most sacred night of the year, the night when the Eternal New is born, I am thinking of Dylan Thomas -- another name associated with Christmas -- and one of his most famous poems. "Do not go gentle into that good night," he cautions us about death. But without death there cannot be rebirth. Without facing the dark, we can never come into the Light.
Without the "good night," there cannot be Christmas morning.
All of us at the retreat center send you our affectionate regards,
Joseph Dispenza
LifePath
San Miguel de Allende
Mexico
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