Stop the Clocks Unitarian Society of Hartford

Stop All the Clocks (October 01)

This space was originally reserved for a report on the health of our building, including the nature of our one-of-a-kind-in-the-universe Meeting House roof, whose repairs you have all been observing since August. That report will come in the November issue ... for now we must stop all the clocks and collectively mourn a much more pressing concern. This month's “In-Depth” page is dedicated to Rev. Cooley's service on Sunday, 9/16/01.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the
public doves,
Let the traffic police wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East, and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song:
I thought that love would last forever:
I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can come to any good.

W H Auden: April 1936

When our heads swim with images still too shocking to digest, we can't find the heart to carry out any of our previously laid plans. Whatever we were going to do with our weekend, however we may have planned to relax and enjoy ourselves, we know that somehow it will be empty now ... that its meaning will be lost, because we have in our souls a greater concern. People all over America reach out for their churches at times like these. We reach for we know not what ... we know there are no answers available yet, and yet we must be somewhere. And our church is there for us, as we had all hoped it would be.

Reverend Terasa Cooley told us that the most difficult part of the job of ministry is sitting with people in grief. We are, none of us, prepared for this... we are barely prepared for our individual losses. This is too much for all of us to bear. None of us expected to have to do this, but it is our calling to bring it forth. We want to leap over the hardest part of grief and seek closure, but we must bear with it ... follow it to the depths ... and yet something must sustain us through this. We can be that to each other.

What do our Unitarian Universalist Principles tell us? Our principles seem so obvious –– who wouldn't agree? Who could argue?

Perhaps our hardest principle to digest is that of the inherent worth and dignity of every person. What about the inherent worth and dignity of bin Laden? What about the inherent worth and dignity of the hijackers? What would it mean to affirm that? Can we do it? Should we do it? Could these actions have taken place if we had truly affirmed their inherent worth all along?

Principles are hard-edged things ... at times like these we need comfort, not just ideals, yet when the time comes to rebuild, we will need a plan.

There is one thing we do have control over.

“I have placed before you life and death that you may know the spirit. Choose life!” Deuteronomy

It is within us to do this.

... either we have hope in us or we don't –– it is a dimension of the soul, an orientation of the heart –– that something will make sense regardless of how it turns out ...

excerpted from reading taken from Vaclav Havel's “Disturbing the Peace.”

Let us know of any comments, errors and corrections - thanks (revised 2/21/05)