Copyright, © Thomas D. Wintle, 2002

I

For some 30 years in my previous church in Lancaster, the services always began with singing the last verse of "My country 'tis of thee" – the verse beginning "Our fathers' God to thee, Author of liberty." The custom was started by my predecessor there, Dr. Alexander St.-Ivanyi.

I've thought a lot about him this past week. War was a very present reality in his life. He had been minister of the Unitarian Church in Budapest during World War II, helped hide escaped Allied POWs during the Nazi occupation, survived the long Russian siege and capture of Budapest. I visited his church and home there not long ago, and there were still unrepaired bullet and shrapnel marks on the back side of the building. After knowing war, and after fleeing Hungary when the Communists came to power, it was important to him to sing every Sunday "Long may our land be bright / With freedom's holy light."

I understand now, better than I did then, what it meant for him.

If last Sunday was a time for grieving, this week we are beginning to ask more seriously "what next?" And that's what I want to talk about this morning – I want to raise a note of caution.

II

Now, to be sure, you did not hire me as a geopolitical strategist, so what I am going to say this morning needs to be viewed with that caveat. I am speaking beyond my level of expertise . . . but that has never stopped me before. And you always have the right to disagree.

My note of caution is this: when war-drums begin beating loudly, it is time to heed the advice of St. Paul to first of all tend to our prayers and supplications. One of my colleagues put it this way: "We need to catch our breath," we need to remember to breathe. It's good advice. When we stop to breathe and to pray, we allow our emotions to settle, and our best thoughts to come to the surface.

Let me suggest three areas for caution.

The first is to avoid the temptation to blame the Arabs. That sounds obvious. The President made it clear that neither Arabs nor Islam is the enemy. But we're talking about emotion here. Be honest with yourself: if you had been boarding a plane the first day they were flying again last week, and you saw an Arab-looking fellow, with a beard, and an angry look, also boarding . . . would you have hesitated? Would you have put your 12-year-old child on that plane?

My point is that when emotions are running high, reason is sometimes running scared. It was our parents' generation, we remember, who interned thousands of Japanese Americans on the west coast at the start of World War II.

We need to take a breath, and say a prayer with Arabs and Muslims — for it usually reminds us that those who share our prayers are our brothers and sisters.

My second note of caution has to do with those war-drums. I don't know about you, but I was becoming a little unnerved last week with the talk of "smoking enemies out of their holes," of capturing bin Laden "dead or alive," of mounting a "crusade" in the Middle East (just the wrong historical image to win support from moderate Arabs!). I was glad that the President's address to Congress avoided such language, and was indeed restrained and thoughtful — a powerful speech, I thought.

My concern here is this: who will we attack?, what are our objectives? how will we know when to stop?

I cannot imagine how an attempt to eliminate all terrorism can work. There will always be somebody who hates somebody else, for rational or irrational reasons. Apparently the Al Qaeda terrorists, however, are not just a few fanatics in the Afghan desert – they are a sophisticated and well-financed international network – and they may be an identifiable target. So may be the states that harbor and support them. What they have done to us is not just a "crime," it is an act of "war," from one sovereign nation to another. It needs a serious response.

But it is the scope of that response that worries me. How, for example, would we topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan? Would we launch a ground invasion? There are thousands of Afghani refugees in flight right now, some still suffering from a three-year drought as well as from the excesses of the Taliban; their government may not care about them, but are we prepared to see millions of people starving to death in the midst of a war? A relief agency estimated this week that 3.5 million Afghanis face starvation, with only two weeks of relief food available. Even before this business started, the UN said that 5.5 million Afghanis will be dependent upon food aid by December. The United States has been providing the bulk of aid to them for some time (some $124 million worth in the first half of this year). But in a war such shipments get disrupted. One only needs to remember the massive aid the world sent to Ethiopia and Eritrea some years ago, only to see much of the food rot on the docks because the civil war there prevented distribution. My fear is that if there is wide-scale suffering – far worse than we have suffered – would this not play into the hands of those extremists who want to provoke a war between the Islamic world and the western world?

And how successful would a ground war be? The Russians are next door and failed through ten years of fighting.

It's time to take a breath. Now, some of you may remember that I spoke against the war in Kosovo, predicting that an air-war would be unsuccessful and we'd be dragged into a long-term ground war. I was wrong. I hope I am wrong again. It's just that when I take a breath, and pray, these questions keep coming up.

And finally, my third note of caution is about how much liberty are we willing to give up for greater security? Three hour waits to board airplanes? – Sure. Armed marshals on airplanes? – OK. Increased wire-tapping authority – perhaps. But I am concerned that the Attorney General's proposals for counterterrorism measures receive careful scrutiny. Last Thursday night the Senate passed on a voice vote several counterterrorism measures as a attachment to the regular appropriations bill for the Commerce, State and Justice departments. No separate hearings. We need to take a breath. It is important that in the process of protecting ourselves, we not make everyone in this country into a suspect.

III

So what am I saying, my friends? Simply: take a breath. Think through, as a free people, what we will do. A Globe editorial had the good line "Prudence lies somewhere in the vast distance between paranoia and complacency." When Jesus told the parables about "seeking the lost", I think he was also reminding us to be careful not to lose things that are precious to us.

We have a baptism today. As I thought about how I would ever pull together the theme of this sermon with that baptism, I suddenly remembered hearing one of those tapes of World War II radio shows. It was a show called "The Goldbergs." One of the characters was worried about having a baby, "what kind of world is this to bring babies into?" And her friend replied: "what kind of world is this to bring babies into? Was there ever such a world as this, millions of Joe's and millions of Bella's giving everything, from their deepest hearts. If there was ever a time to have children, now is the time; if there was ever a time to live, now is the time; now is the time for everything human, because it's a more human world we're building."

We take a breath. We pray. We remind ourselves what is truly important.

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