Pioneer Square

The attempted Pioneer Square bombing


For me, the recent bombing attempt at Pioneer Square brushed closely by, like the brush of the feathers of a dark bird. My son and his girlfriend were there. Last year the whole family and I were there. I know some of you were too, or had family and friends who were at Pioneer Square, “Portland’s living room.”

I ask myself as I write how my reflections might be different had the attempt been successful, and if my son and his friend had been killed or injured. I do not know the answer to that question. Perhaps none of us do until we are tragically in that position. Nevertheless, as a follower of Jesus and a priest as well as a father and husband and citizen, I write as I feel the compelling need.

I am not immune to fear, and I am not immune to anger arising from fear. I have been proximate to enough violence and death to know how life can change or be erased in the blink of an eye. I have sat and sought for words with those who grieve, and more often have sat with them in silence.

And yet I say, with all of the conviction of my soul, that we are called and empowered not to allow our lives and our responses to be ruled by that anger and that fear. The teaching of the Christ whom I follow is clear—forgive, as you would be forgiven; love your enemies, do good to those who offend you, pray for those who persecute you. We make a grave mistake if we imagine that these clear teachings of Jesus were somehow easier and less complex in the 1st Century when he spoke them, or are only meant to apply to peaceful and simple times. They were never simple or easy, and they are meant to apply always.

We clergy often commit the sin of acting as if the teachings of our Lord are easy and palatable and intended for our comfort alone. In the name of maintaining numbers and contributors in our congregations we often gloss over the hard sayings of Jesus. We are not called to comfort and to a false “inner peace” that ignores the enormity of what is done in our world, done often in our name and on our behalf.

In the face of a potential act of mass violence, we cannot lapse uncritically into language like “the war on terror”, coined not by the Gospel but by a past political administration, in reflecting on how to respond with our faith and our integrity intact. Any easy alliance between the Gospel and militant zealous patriotism needs to be strongly examined in the light of our best values. Sadly, voices proclaiming their faith in the Prince of Peace have in the same breath advocated violence, religious intolerance, and revenge.

I am grateful beyond words that that bomb did not go off, that it was a contrived fake. My eyes sting with a father’s relieved tears as I write these words.

I am deeply grateful that there are those who pay the price to search out and to act on dangers to my family, my neighbors, and my people. I admit that, paraphrasing an English writer, that I sleep safely knowing that rough men and women are willing to deal out violence to those who would deal out violence to me. But I believe we must never excuse ourselves from the moral complexity and ambiguity of that fact. The price that is paid for our sense of security, borne by those whose lives and souls are endangered by that work as well as those who are the recipients of violence on our behalf, should trouble us and place before us the question of how to do we actually change such a brutal world.

I grieve for that 19 year old young man, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, whose life as he knew it is over. It is true that a confused, alienated young man is fully capable of making conscious choices and of harming a lot of people. But a 19 year old is a very young person, very impressionable, as I remember I was at 19. Fortunately I chose and embraced value-systems that were more humane and more responsible than did Mohamed. The spectacle of his arrest and trial is to me mostly about the problem of alienated immigrant youth, desperate and angry at being adrift in a culture not their own. People I know and respect work with Somali children and youth in Portland and can speak to the legacy of political violence, the memory of refugee camps, and the cultural alienation suffered by those children. In spite of any fear and anxiety we feel, we cannot begin to understand what those children carry within their minds and souls. As a nation of immigrants, save for those of Native blood who have been made to feel like aliens in their own land, we need to recall our own family stories and know some empathy.

I am glad that Mohamed will have his “day in court.” And I am glad the defense will call into question the procedure used in the development of the case against him. The best strength of our nation, that which makes us distinct in the world, is that we are concerned with the individual rights of all, that our law enforcement is not immune to scrutiny and accountability, and that all are presumed innocent until proven otherwise. These basic civil safeguards are often threatened in times of fear and anger. Sometimes officials and law enforcement have found the practice of accountability, public scrutiny, and legal defense awkward and frustrating in the pursuit of their goals. But this is the price of a participative democracy in which individual rights are protected. It is messy, complicated, and slow. But we compromise these rights and practices at risk of losing what is most worth defending about this nation. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, democracy is the second-worse system in the world—the only one worse is all the rest.

I grieve for the fact that, in the words of one frustrated Muslim citizen, one incident like this takes the five steps towards understanding laboriously taken forward and flings us ten steps back. We all should feel outrage and a sense of common threat by the arson committed in the Corvallis mosque. It is directed against any who publically witness to their faith. I am deeply moved by the response of the people of Corvallis and of faith-communities there to rally around the people of the mosque. I do think that leadership of the various Islamic communities (for there are many, distinguished by history and teachings and ethnic roots as are Christians) have an obligation to speak out clearly against violence and the distortion of their teachings represented by terrorism. But I also believe that we Christian folk have the same obligation, to speak out against the violence and coercion done in the name of our own faith, and we usually avoid it. Too often we turn a blind eye to language sprinkled with the name of Jesus and imagery from the Bible used to justify military action overseas as well as prejudice and violence against vulnerable people and groups and communities among us. There are too many planks in our own eyes for us to feel self-righteous about the splinter in the eye of another.

There is nothing easy about living in these times, even amidst the relative serenity and illusion of isolation that some of us enjoy here in Portland, Oregon. There is nothing easy about how our best and most fundamental values, both as citizens and, for those of us who profess faith, live side by side with the potential violence of our times. It is vital that we do not leap to any easy conclusion that makes it easy. Even had that bomb been real, these hard questions remain. How costly is the achievement of a sense of security if we lose what is most vital, most precious about our core values? Or in the words of one far more eloquent, “What does it profit you to gain the whole world, and yet lose yourself in the process?”