“The Lights are much brighter there…”
September 11, 2009
A personal remembrance of 9/11…
I woke up that morning and did what I always do – rolled out of bed, went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, meditated, and turned on my computer. The first thing I saw on my screen was a tiny picture of both towers with smoke coming out the side of one — and a headline that said, “Plane hits World Trade Tower.” My first thought was, “Wow! The pilot couldn’t see that?” It was early enough that there was no mention of terrorists in the paragraph that followed.
I ate breakfast – and I headed for the living room and my television. I clicked it on – just in time to see the first tower go down.
I couldn’t believe my eyes… I couldn’t move, I couldn’t pull myself away from the TV screen…
It was lucky I turned on my computer so early… It was my link to the world outside. That computer line stayed open all day because it had already been established. After the towers went down, neither of my phones worked. I worried all day about my family, about my friends… After the day was over, I would find no less than 8 messages from my son, each one more troubled than the one before, and lots of voice mails from all over the country.
The voice on the television called for blood donations in anticipation of all the casualties. I lived on the next street from the blood bank and soon the line curved around the corner, under my window, to curve around the next corner again. I have a mildly rare blood type and so I thought to do what seemed to be the only thing I could do – I went to the front of the line and spoke to the guard there, told him my blood type, and made an appointment to come back the next day. They were so over-loaded with donations right then, but rare blood was being taken on an appointment basis.
When I went back the next day, they told me that there was no need to donate – they had more blood than they could use.
The television screen showed well made-up gurneys outside hospitals, in preparation for all the bleeding and hurt who would surely fill them soon. That image would soon haunt us in the days afterwards as they stood there, pristine and empty.
By Thursday, I could no longer sit in front of my television, watching replay after replay of the towers collapsing. I called the Red Cross to volunteer. They took my name and told me they would call me back. I waited all day. They didn’t call.
On Friday morning, I heard the announcer on television say that the National Guard had taken over the armory at Lexington Avenue and 26th Street, and the victims’ families were urged to go there rather than to go anywhere near Ground Zero. I decided to go to the armory to offer whatever help I could. After all, I thought, I was a spiritual minister – I could pray with them, I could comfort them, I could do something…
The taxi couldn’t take me right to the armory – the street in front of the building was blocked off, and there were people everywhere. I walked the last block to the front door. There were guards lined up across the entrance, blocking the way in through the massive doors in front. I walked up to one of guards, told him that I was volunteering with the Red Cross, and he let me right in. No one asked for identification, so one looked in my bag. I didn’t know it then, but those days would soon be over…
I walked into the huge, cavernous room that is the main hall of the armory. There were people everywhere. High on the right wall, there was a huge television screen, playing the same news channel that I had been watching at home. I wondered if everyone who had missing family members really wanted to watch the frequently replayed scenes of the towers smoking and then collapsing.
Over the next few days, I would come to appreciate that huge screen on the wall as the only information available, and – as it was grounding for people at home to watch the television updates – so was it grounding for the families who had come to find out something – anything — about their missing family members — only to find that information was in the form of where their loved ones weren’t.
The Red Cross table was in the far right corner of the room. I announced myself and my intention to help. The man behind the table asked me what I could do. I explained that I was a spiritual minister and a form was shoved into my hands. I filled it out, noting that there was a list of societies, orders, and credentials for me to check off. I belonged to none of them. When I handed my form back in, the man looked at it and told me that I could not be a minister under the Red Cross rules. Not satisfied with that answer, I wanted to speak to someone else.
What happened next would always after strike me as the intercession of God in an otherwise “not-going-to-happen” situation.
It seems that the manning of the table was in the midst of a shift change. The man who didn’t want me was leaving and someone was taking his place. As he got up from his seat to go, he handed my form to the woman coming in and said, “She wants to be a chaplain.”
The woman took the form, didn’t look at it, and put it down in a pile to her right. She called over to another woman, got her attention, pointed at me and said, “Chaplain!” A yellow placard vest with “Chaplain” printed on the front and back was handed to me, and I was instructed to put it on. Then, she told me to go and stand near the front door and be on the lookout for anyone who was upset or seemed to be in distress.
That was it. I was a chaplain.
As I walked to the front of the huge room, what I noticed immediately was that hardly anyone was crying. While there were families sitting together, leaning on each other, many people were watching the screen on the wall or walking around in a daze. The shock of what was happening was so palpable, but it had not yet given way to grief.
A man came running up to me and a few of the other volunteers and told us that they were short-handed in the “hospital room” downstairs, and we were to go there right away. Hospital room? I was puzzled, but ran to follow him…
I moved down the stairs to the right of a long line of people that started at the top of the stairs, snaked down the steps, across the hall, and into a room. We walked up to the man in charge at the front door. He explained that he wanted a chaplain at each of the stations where the members of the families would go to seek information.
I looked into the room to see a series of tables arranged around the room in a big rectangle, with the chaplains and other volunteers sitting in the inside seats. As an outside seat was available, a person from the front of the line would go to sit in the vacated seat. I soon found out why this was called “the hospital room”.
In front of each of the volunteers was a fat white binder about two inches thick. The man in charge explained to me, “That is a list of everyone who has been admitted to the hospital. They will give you the name of the person they are looking for. You look up the name. If it is there, it means that they were admitted to the hospital. If the name is not there…..”. His voice trailed off.
I asked if people were still being admitted to the hospital. He turned and looked at me. He sighed and said, “Today is Friday. It happened on Tuesday. Anyone who was injured was admitted to the hospital right away. Most of them have already been released – most of those people were injured running away from the collapse.” He looked towards the line, “Many of these family members have been in here already.” As I turned to walk into the room, he said, “We can’t say anything more than that. The name is in the book — or it’s not…”
I stayed in that room all day and all night. I suppose I must have eaten or gone to the bathroom… I don’t remember…. There was only to stay present with each person who came to me, each at their own stage of grief – some dazed, some angry, some crying… Some were sure my book would be updated soon and their loved one would be found, their worry would be over, their lives could continue….
All I could offer was a word of comfort, a touch, a prayer… listening to them as they tried to sort this out for themselves…..
Some were ready to move onto the next stage of grief. One woman was. She was older, Spanish, fragile looking. I asked her name. “Maria,” she said (not her real name). Her voice was so low, I could hardly hear her. “Who are you looking for, Maria?” She gave me the name of a man. I looked in the big, white book. The name was not there. I looked up at her, “He has not been admitted to the hospital.”
She put her head on the table and sobbed quietly. I leaned across the table and put my hand on her arm. “Who is this you’re looking for?” “He is my husband,” she said. “He is my husband for 32 years.” I got up and came around the table and held her in my arms. She cried softly for a few minutes and then lifted her head and dried her eyes. “That’s it, then,” she said.
I thought to say, “You don’t know that. Come back later.” But, I couldn’t say it. I knew that, at some point – a different point for every person – each would have to come to that inevitable conclusion and, if Maria was ready to do that now, I could not take that away from her.
I said nothing.
At some point, someone noticed that I was there a long time and told me to go home. It was 2 in the morning.
I was exhausted, but couldn’t go to sleep right away. I needed to decompress. Over the next few days, a ritual evolved. I would go home, shower, change into a clean t-shirt and PJ bottoms, and sit at my computer…
In the middle of those nights, I purged myself onto long emails to my friends, reporting on what was going on here, what I saw at the armory, what people were saying, what they were doing, how we were holding up.
I sounded stronger than I felt.
When I wrote about what I was doing, what all the volunteers were doing, I found that it really mattered to me that people were comforted, that they had enough arms around them, enough shoulders to cry on, enough people to talk to — and that those people, like me, would simply listen as the speakers worked out whatever they had to work out for themselves. It wasn’t easy to simply listen… AND that is what there is to do when people are hurting….
What I did see for myself was that being a care-giver filled me up and used me in a way that I never felt before – it gave me a peace that money couldn’t, that my “success” never did. It seemed strange to me to think this: in the midst of the tragedy, I found purpose, a sense that I was contributing to people, that I was making a difference in their experience of this awful time, that I could be a source of love and comfort, and perhaps that love and comfort would register somewhere in their hearts so as to contribute to their healing…
In one of my email “newsletters,” I offered a Sufi teaching:
“Past the Seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them…he cried, “Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?” And God said, “I did do something. I made you.”
Months later, I would receive an email back from one of my high school friends, to whom I had sent that Sufi passage. She had forwarded it to her friends — and her friends had forwarded it to theirs around the world. Someone in Nepal read it and sent a message back to me — through all the different address lists – to tell me that message had touched her most of all…
…that people were helping people, that many were comforting others, that there was hope for humanity if that could happen….
Amen to that…
Deliciously yours in the Goodness of it All…. Linda
“Lord, take me where you want me to go
“Let me meet who you want me to meet
“Tell me what you want me to say
“And keep me out of your way.”
….The prayer of Father Mychal Judge, Chaplain of the Fire Department of New York City, who died while administering last rites on September 11, 2001. Father Judge was victim #001, the first official victim of 9/11.
© Linda Ruocco and “Spiritual Chocolate”, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Linda Ruocco and “Spritiual Chocolate” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank you.
“I’ll See You in My Dreams…”
July 22, 2009
Hi, it’s Linda again — and today I want to share with you the luscious “secret” to having your dreams fulfilled… Here’s a hint…. It’s all about what comes out of your mouth….
Your Words have Power and Magic in them…
I’ve often spoken and written about how we create with our Words… I wish I could take credit for that observation – the truth is that all the great traditions have known this for centuries. The Buddha himself said:
“The thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit. And the habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care. And let it spring from love, born out of concern for all beings.”
The Buddha lived from around 563 to 483 BC – so this is not new news!
Here’s a yummy story to illustrate my point….
A few years ago, I took the year-long Wisdom Course at Landmark Education. One of the areas that we work on in that course is “What are your dreams?” And the practice was to “Speak your dreams…”
At first, I thought, “Oh, that sounds nice…. but, REALLY….?”
Part of our homework was to make collages of how life “seems” to us… I didn’t realize it at the time, but those conversations that exist in the background of our lives are what keep us from having what we want… If we don’t believe we deserve it — or we say “Oh, that will never happen…,” it’s easy to see that we might just be the ones who are keeping those dreams at bay…. Out there, just beyond our reach…
My collages were very dramatic and dire…. I didn’t realize that I was holding it that I had “lost” so many things in my life…. even though, many of those very things I had chosen to leave behind: my glamorous career in the fashion business, going to fashion shows all over the world, staying in the most beautiful hotels, dinners with famous designers, living in a beautiful apartment off Park Avenue, my beautiful house on the beach in the Hamptons, and so on… and so on….
As I started to work on my collages, I started to come up with themes like, “It seems like I have destroyed everything that I love,” “It seems like I had my chance and I blew it,” and “It seems like I will never live in beauty again….”
As I worked on that last one, I noticed a picture on the worktable – it was a picture of an ancient temple, over-grown with vines and with big white trees growing up through the walls…. It spoke to me of a former grandeur that was no more…
“Like my life…”, I thought.
I grabbed the picture up from the table, turned to my group and said, “Who cut this out? Where is this? Does anyone need this one?”
Everyone said, “No, take it…. we don’t know what that is….”
I placed it carefully on my collage — it seemed to fit perfectly…..
We did other work with those collages – and I was able to shift my conversation about myself from how I had lost everything into “I am always triumphant!” It was a glorious moment for me when I got that for myself….
A few months later, I was invited to a special screening of a film created by two of the other participants in the Wisdom Course. The film is called “New Year Baby” and it is the director’s own story of her family’s survival and escape from the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
This award-winning film moved me to tears… By the time it was over, I wanted to know more about Cambodia, more about what happened during the reign of the Khmer Rouge, more about the director, Socheata Poeuv, whose story it was, and her co-writer and producer, Charles Vogl….
As I was speaking with Charles about Cambodia and how fascinating it was to me, he said, “We’re going with a group to Cambodia in February… Too bad I didn’t know earlier that you would be so interested… The trip is full…. Don’t worry, we’ll probably go again next year…”
I remember saying, longingly, “Oh, I really want to go…!”
The week after, my coach in the Wisdom course asked me to show my collages to the rest of the group and to tell them what I got from them. As I showed the collage titled, “It seems like I will never live in beauty again…”, a friend in the group, Deborah, pointed at the picture of the ancient temple and said, “I’ve been there!”
I just stared at her, “Where is that?” I said….
Deborah answered, “It’s in Cambodia….”
I got chills up and down my spine…
I looked at the board again, and I said, without thinking, “I’m going there…”
Three days later, Charles Vogl called me. He told me that three people had dropped out of the trip to Cambodia and did I want to come?
It was too perfect. I said “Yes” before I even asked how much it was!
I spent the next two months generating the money to go… it seemed almost effortless… “Effortless” is the way things seem to me when I am certain that I am on the right path. Obstacles dropped by the wayside, apartments closed with ease, the commission checks I needed to come through for the trip – Well, they just did…
I went to Cambodia for 10 days in February of 2007 – with 22 of the most wonderful people I have ever known. It was an adventure from beginning to end… both exciting and – at one point, scary – when one of the jeeps we were riding in on the way to a temple in the North, swung out of control and wound up flipping over several times to land upside down in a ditch on the side of the road. Charles’ parents were hurt and air-lifted to Bangkok, while Charles and my other friend, Ron, suffered less severe injuries – the jeep driver had to be taken to the hospital and remained there for months….
Several days into the trip, we visited a temple called “Ta Proehm.” Immediately, I recognized that this temple, with the white trees growing out of the walls, was the one from my collage. As I walked through the temple grounds, I felt myself becoming more and more captured by my surroundings… with each step, my anticipation grew…
Finally, I turned a corner…. and there it was… the very scene in my collage….
I couldn’t move… I was overwhelmed that I was standing there, in the very spot in which the photographer must have been standing when he took the picture… I felt led to that moment from the beginning of my journey so many months before….. The scene was awesome, a Presence palpable — how old the temple was and how many centuries it must have taken for the trees to grow up through the walls, how beautiful it all was…
“How beautiful it all was…!” As the thought struck me, I realized that my collage was titled, “It seems that I will never live in beauty again….” and here I was, standing in the midst of that raw, natural beauty – and I was a part of it….
A few of my friends who knew the story, came over to me… “This is it, isn’t it?”
I could hardly speak….”Yes… yes… this is it…..”
That moment will live forever in my memory… not only that I had manifested a dream by getting everything out of the way that prevented it from coming true… but that it had come true in an even greater way than I could ever have imagined…. to show me that what I once thought of as “over” and “lost” was really a new beginning….
Deliciously yours in the Grandeur of it All, Linda
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” …Goethe
This is Ta Proehm in Cambodia, February, 2007 — A temple that had been lost in the jungle for centuries — when it was rediscovered, the government decided to leave it in it’s natural beauty rather than to clean it up as it did Angkor Wat, the most famous of the temples of the ancient Khmer civilization. They are both magnificent….. Ta Proehm is also the temple in which Angelina Jolie shot many of the scenes for her first “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” movie…
If you want to know more about “New Year Baby,” the film that got me to Cambodia, please visit www.newyearbaby.net.
© Linda Ruocco and “Spiritual Chocolate”, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Linda Ruocco and “Spritiual Chocolate” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank you.
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!
February 11, 2009
Hi, I’m Linda Ruocco and this is my blog, “Spiritual Chocolate: Living inside a Delicious Relationship with the Divine.”
So, what does that mean, you say? Why this blog
For me, I grew up Roman Catholic and everything religious or spiritual was very solemn, serious, and severe – lots of rules, lots of ritual, lots of SIN!! I almost couldn’t do anything without which it was a SIN and wrong — and God was scary and distant!
On my own path, I have found that the spiritual road is rich with delights, the smooth path rather than the rocky road I thought it was when I was small…. and full of sweet and soulful surprises that warm the heart and pour into my mind like the molten delicacies that they are…. and so I aim to bring those delicious morsels to you…. those found moments, those delectable treats that appear in the love that only spirit sees and feels and hears…. my Valentines to you…. Valentines from The Divine.
I was married to a wonderful man, with whom I am still friends. His name is Fred. We divorced a long time ago and I have not been in a real committed romantic relationship since then. We have an incredible son, whose name is Josh, and he is 29 and lives far away in Minneapolis and works for Target and, well, I miss him even though I know that he has his own life to live, his own path to follow.
I tell you this because it is Joshua who taught me everything I need to know about love – that it is unconditional, it is always there, it gives us our strength, our beauty, our lives… and once it is created, it is never destroyed – even when we think it is. Oh, it may look different, it may feel different sometimes – but, love is love and it just IS…. and, if we let ourselves, we can see it everywhere.
When Josh was born, I couldn’t believe how much I loved him! One minute, he wasn’t there – and, the next – he popped out, I looked at him, and there it was – this feeling that we long for all our lives, the feeling that is indescribable, that is deep and rich and Oh, so sweet! The feeling that we call LOVE.
And, it never went away! In fact, I loved him more and more (How is this possible?) every day!
So, here’s my first delicious morsel: When Josh was about three, I was putting him to bed one night. I had my arms curled around his little body, so soft, so sweet, his little blond curls brushing at my cheek as I sang him a song to sleep. I was overwhelmed with him and feeling so blessed. I whispered in his ear, “Josh, you are better than the treasure at the end of the rainbow, you are better than the most precious jewels in all the Universe, you are an angel, so perfect and so sweet. I am so lucky to have you for a son. Thank you for being my child.”
“You’re welcome,” he answered simply.
I was a little surprised. I felt like I wanted him to say, “Oh, Mommy, I feel that way about you, too. You are so wonderful. You are the best Mommy that any boy could ever want!”
After I left his room, I thought about that. And, I got it that it was my ego that wanted those strokes, that reassurance, that admiration.
Josh? Well, he was just love – and his answer was a response from the Divine – my son was my prayer and God answered.
Over the years, I have come to realize that that love that I feel for Josh is what love is – and I can give that same love to anyone and to everyone. The only thing ever standing in the way is the ego that wants strokes, reassurance, and admiration. Love simply is. It doesn’t need anything.
Oh, and, because it’s Valentine’s Day, I’m giving myself a new possibility – the possibility of being in a deep, rich relationship with all my heart!
And, that means, with you…
SpiritualChocolate 