The Mirror: Looking Forward, Looking Back, Looking Within

The Photographer comes from the museum of images. She turns the corner to Town Hall, to find no tickets available. A small circle of Muslims stands, facing each other before the doors. They are smiling and the Shaikh is saying, “You are the mother and the grandmother and the young girl” as she passes. And energy passes into her.

Through emptying streets the photographer walks erratically, as if she has lost something. She recalls the visit to Biloxi after Katrina. There, the first floor of the mosque has been swept by the sea and stood vacant. But in the mailbox on the wall she had seen the mail stuffed in as usual—including a copy of this newspaper, The Mirror.

Now, as twilight falls, the air is preternaturally clear and cool. Looking back, the weather on 9/11 was much the same. A chord of memory vibrates, deep within her.

What has been lost? What has been found? The energy of this question is always with us. We think about where we have been and perhaps we consider where we are going. But are we really aware of where we are? It is time, as we look back on the years of Mirror publication, to also look within.

As paper, a newspaper is held in the hands and chosen, picked up or purchased in the midst of the community. As paper, a newspaper consumes trees and other material, which is then (to some extent) recycled. We take for granted the paper in our hands, its softness and its rustling music. Even more perhaps we take for granted this flesh we wear and the light that lets us see. From 92 million miles away the sun’s bright beams visit you so you can see.

The Mirror reflects the light of the community and the darkness of the world as well. As in a family album the snapshots of our community album show a variety of moods. Do we see patterns emerging; signs of health and hope?

The society we live in remains haunted by 9/11, and the ongoing war hype. A surveillance state emerges, and the emptying streets echo strangely. Will New York City some day remind us of New Orleans after the waters fall? Will other cities face disaster, in the US, Iraq, Somalia, Palestine, Israel and Iran? Will the waters rise to cover our ancestral lands? Is global warming, like US health care, simply a new subject for disaster films? Surely the show must go on.

And so it goes, in Washington. Last week a threatened Republican filibuster killed an amendment requiring utilities to produce 15 percent of their electricity from wind and other renewable energy sources. But at least Democrats managed to pass the first real improvement in the nation’s automobile fuel-efficiency standards since 1975.

Of course Muslim nations should also stop chasing after war and nuclear energy, and consider greener industries. Without the regimes that exploit these fossil fuels we have more of a chance for individual freedom from exploitation, from the machine of globalization uprooting populations to chain them in privatized prisons of production and consumption.

And let us remember our brothers and sisters in prisons. This week a 693-page dossier on CIA activities will finally be released, covering the 1950s to early 70s. But current activities also need to be exposed to light. Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty confirmed in a report released Friday that the CIA did indeed run secret prisons in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2005 to interrogate detainees. More recently, Special Ops have been deployed to the US. The scope of US government power (and stupidity) may be unprecedented. Will we ever manage this present danger?

Trying to examine Bush administration innovations, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted last Thursday to subpoena Bush Administration documents related to eavesdropping on Americans' overseas emails and phone calls without court approval. But the White House replied Friday that both Vice President and President’s offices are exempt from a presidential order requiring government agencies to submit to oversight. Also on Thursday, the House voted 214-203 against a bid to eliminate money for the controversial Army facility formerly called the School of the Americas. So the school will not close and the violent show will go on.

You and I need to act politically. But Justice is sometimes mysterious. There is a greater pattern. Energy comes in different forms. So let us open the circle of Time, and be man, grandfather and young man. Let us recall time’s circle in Times Square, as the crowds surge around the quiet Sufi gathering on the sidewalk. Let us continue the conversation about our community, here in the midst of life.

The Prophet brought us guidance. Let us not forget to read and learn, even when this news comes as a virtual Mu’allaqat. Some mosques and community members still do not subscribe to email. They may miss the Mirror when it moves to cyberspace.

So as this spaceship takes off let us wish each other well. Something is lost but something is found. Do you feel lost? Recall this–a man knew he had lived wrongly and was afraid to meet God at his death. Nearing the end, he asked his children to burn him to ashes and scatter him to the four winds to hide him from his punishment. They did so. But Allah gathered him, and asked him to state why he had acted thus. He confessed his awe of God’s Justice. Allah pardoned him—saying, “My love is greater than your fear!”

We look for love in the wrong places and in the wrong way. Unity comes in dialogue, in question. Beauty comes from reflection, from the energy emerging from within. Even in frathouse America, the skull and bones society of pirate capitalism, we can be aware of ourselves, not of opinions. Know that God exists. And will exist, after this paper and you and I are ash. And with love, we will exist with Him.