NYC MOSQUE

I think the worst form of bigotry to associate the Cordoba initiative with the terrorists who struck us on 9/11.  Anyone who knows anything about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf knows that his form of Islam is at the very minimum Orange, and more likely Green or higher.  The guy's a Sufi mystic, not a violent Wahabbi.  Did you know that this community center is going to contain Jewish and Christian prayer rooms as well as the mosque?   The name "Cordoba" was meant to evoke a time in history when all three Abrahamic faiths lived in harmony.  And people are acting like it's supposed to be some Jihadi recruiting center.  Give me a break.  Projects like this are the best weapon we have in the War on Terror.

I just don't recognize this country anymore.  You get a black president and a financial crisis, and suddenly the ugliest pathological forms of Amber come out of the woodwork.  Bigotry in all its forms becomes more and more a part of the daily news cycle.  I try doing some shadow work on it, trying to understand people where they're coming from, but it's just too horrible for me to bear.  It just breaks my heart to see the levels of intolerance that are poisoning our society every day.  It's almost enough to make me lose hope.

Steven,

I feel these aspects surfacing in the collective mind (amplified by news cycles) to be one piece with much of my life and love and work. For most of 2001 I worked in the North Tower, where, beginning on Sept.11, 2000, I would silently chant the old Sanskrit dharani, The Gatha on Averting Calamity, while in between tasks or walking the hallways (which I wrote of on the Multiplex).

Such an intimate enactment has me feeling that I'm lived by unfolding history simply by going about my serendipitous life. The business I was in there I considered 'the heart of the WTC' (the Papyrus card shop in the ground floor mall), where I gave a pep talk to coworkers saying that, "…we're selling relationships". Our customers, mainly tower employees, would come choose cards for family and friends, have invitations printed for weddings, bat or bar mitzvahs… we were a vortex for their own remembrance of their loved ones. A pause, in their rush hours or lunch hours, of reflection and appreciation. I feel blessed with that opportunity of place and time. My open mourning began a month after 9/11; standing on a ledge of Canyon De Chelly, recalling hearing of entire families leaping to their deaths there when surrounded by cavalry.

Last week I returned to the canyon for the first time since (the place Joseph Campbell called the most sacred place on earth) where I had cried not just for a particular incident but for the entire long habit of inhuman harm ever inflicted one on another. Contexts are also continuums. The contents of us-and-them, then-and-now, either evolve or perpetuate with the presence of our own intentions.

A decade before 9/11 I had spent over a hundred hours in prayer with Imam Feisal, who had done a Zen retreat at our monastery, and who I recommended as a representative of Islam for the Integral Spiritual Experience about a month before Obama's Cairo speech.

Reading the news on the cultural center I hold both the memory of a dad carefully selecting a card for his daughter, and the warmth of the imam's hug, the gentle intonations of his call-to-prayer… both equally precious, both now part of who I am. With humility, I feel an awesome passion for embodying apparent division in my simple unshaken love for everyone.

I feel for the original Tea Party, the colonists who dressed in native garb for their political statement, not to deflect blame had they been sighted, but to honor the Iroquois Confederacy's contributions to their nascent form of governance. And I feel for the abuse of their precedence, whereby 'Tea Baggers' unwittingly seek to reverse collective gains built on the vision of the U.S. founders.

As a child I climbed a tree in my hometown seeing the Towers in the sunset some 50 miles away. I imagined the two parallel lines intersected by an 'S' shape making an enormous dollar sign. So I can vaguely spot, in my own development, a version of the sentiment noted by terrorist Mohammed Ata when he saw the golden arches of a Cairo MacDonalds superimposed over the pyramids. Except, as an American, these were our pyramids. And my tracing a dollar sign over the towers wasn't quite through resentment but acknowledgment, an identification.

So the topic, the "NYC Mosque", is rife for me with appreciation of a few of the angles it's seen from, valued as aspects of my own humanity. It's not merely out there, but alive as me. Or so it feels.

Stephen, Jonathan, Kerry, Stefano and many others who, hopefully, will join this thread. I appreciate all of you bringing this to the community for a timely and needed discussion. I had the honor to be in on the conversation with Kerry, Stefano, Bill and, of course, Ken and Corey talking about religion being the needed conveyor belt to thaw out the spiritual line and, hopefully, begin filling the gap between amber ideas of a projective, exclusive God and orange ideas that have repressed God altogether.

When we look upon the planet at this time in our history, these two perspectives are bringing together all the perspectives thus far to participate in this great demonstration, producing the greatest show ever played on the world stage. Its as though we're in the final act, before our great transformation, waiting to see how this great mystery will unfold.

All of you have made this so personal in your comments and in the orginial thread created by Steven. Because, you know what? It is personal isn't it? It is our life, our ancestors lives and our future generation's lives. It is very up close and personal for all of us. And, for me, maybe all of you too, we need to get this as right as we can. But what is that right, as you all ask?

As you say Steven, so we take a more Integral approach and say, yes build the Mosque, maybe even extend some gratitude.......hold deep love and appreciation for the slayers and those who have been slayed. Did these Souls, at some higher essence, take this great sacrafice for all of us so we can begin to step back and ask, 'what are we doing to each other and our planet'? This is all part of the great mystery now isn't it? But to take the other perspective, "fuck em, they don't deserve shit on our turf," could create an even greater gap, causing an even greater war of terror that we have ever faced.

Jonathan you make a great statement to all of us here, Feusal Abdul Rauf is a great Sufi mystic and not a violent Wahabbi and this center will offer a community for all religions to come and worship, however that worship applies to them. This is just what Ken has so brilliantly stated......religion has created this frozen gap and it will be religion to start thawing out this gap and allow the spiritual line to begin moving.

Kerry, sometimes you feel like my twin Soul brother.......your service to humanity is breathtaking and I appreciate you, all of you, so much. When I was a child, to run from my own terror inside my home, I often climbed into a tree, hiding from everyone but greater Presence within me.....I felt so protected in that tree then one day I fell out and broke my collarbone. A great metaphor, today, to say we can't hide from the terror, we must face it and slay the dragon so that we can truly all live in the freedom of peace and harmony together on our beautiful planet.

Stefano it is so complex isn't it? Yet, if we all stand back and look at this unfolding complexity, we see that a simple gesture of taking each other by the hand and begin walking across that great chasm, that gap, we've all helped to create, and seeing our own hands as the rope of deeper connection, just maybe, we can build this Mosque together, and let it become another great NYC symbol, like the statue of liberty, to remind us we are ONE, albeit, uniquely different. That maybe our unique complexity can be understood in a more simple light; God simply wants to create, love, and find many expressions through the many of us.

With love,

Mary Linda