Transformation through suffering became the theme of the day.  I spent this afternoon with a book I want to commend to all:  An American Awakening:  From Ground Zero to Katrina The People We Are Free to Be by Episcopalian scholar Courtney Cowart.

The story begins on that beautiful morning of September 11, 2001, as Cowart prepares herself for an important day in her life.  She is working as a scholar in spiritual formation and American church history by night and a grantmaker at Trinity Church Wall Street by day.  She begins with this sentence:  “At 6 a.m. I open my eyes in a fairytale bed:  a curvaceous nineteenth-century Second Empire sleigh, drawn by curved swans keeping watch over me at night.”  She then describes her work of making grants to people working for social justice and honing the art of spiritual formation.  She says, “I do this work, however, from an extremely comfortable and decidedly unsqualid perch.  I am very afraid of suffering.”

Preparing for a meeting of her own spiritual mentors who will be filmed in a documentary, Cowart starts her day with gratitude, focusing on each person who will be part of the filming.  As she moves from the people to the project, she finds staying in the present moment more and more difficult–too much excitement.  Her outfit for the day follows the pattern of luxury she has already described in detail from the curvaceous bed to linen sheets to marble mosaic floors.  She chooses a royal blue raw silk tunic, favorite black suede Manolo shoes, and pearls.  We readers know what awaits her.  She does not.

Cowart’s story traverses the path she sets up in the beginning.  She already has achieved the material American Dream.  Every beautiful passage she sets up, from early awakening to joyous greetings of the stars of the film, is tinged with irony.  She rejoices in the pleasures of love, successfully shielded from the suffering she fears.   She is about to discover a deeper, more connected, form of love.

The moment of awakening for this already spiritual, but fearful, woman comes as she runs over the rubble after the first tower has fallen and the earth trembles, groaning in anticipation of the death of the second-tower leviathon.  As the toxic ash speeds over and around her, Cowart cries out, “Take me!” Her description of the huge rush, near violent, release she feels is as powerful as the story of Paul on the road to Damascus.

Cowart writes beautifully and movingly about transformation. St. Paul’s Chapel, one of the properties owned by Trinity Church becomes the epicenter for healing at Ground Zero.  Cowart becomes a spiritual first responder, helping to coordinate many gifts that poured in from around the country and around the world.  In the process, she loses her fear, finds her courage, and begins to move from a distant Good Samaritan to an activist working to transform the Jericho Road itself.

Years later, when Katrina hits Louisiana and Mississippi, Cowart takes what she learned in Manhattan after 9/11 and applies it to the new suffering.  She has moved from “take me” to “send me” as her heartfelt cry.

Her last chapter, “Live Like You Are Dying,” invites the reader to join the call to compassion in reshaping the American Dream.  Cowart realizes that the millennial generation, those 16-25 years old today who were children during 9/11, hold the keys to a new America.  She celebrates that 1.1 million volunteers, many of them high school or college students, responded to the call to help rebuild New Orleans and other ravaged cities and towns.

Cowart recognizes the profundity of Mr. Rogers’ response to a journalist who asked what to tell the children who witnessed 9/11 either in person or on television.  His response was, “Tell them to keep their eyes on the helpers.” They obviously learned a deep lesson.

The 9/11 generation helped elect Barack Obama to the presidency after this book was published, but Cowart already saw their potential and believes the seeds of national transformation planted by millions of acts of kindness in these two great tragedies will bear seeds in a new kind of fearlessness born of compassion.

Her own transformation of moving from privilege to passion, of awakening from luxury to suffering to joy, could not be greater, and her concluding words are worth quoting in their entirety:  “As we write the next chapters of this story together we know there is another national narrative unfolding in America–not the war story but a spiritual narrative about the way God is entering our lives and waking us up to his compassion.  In the extraordinary acts of self-sacrifice, the unprecendented acts of collective generosity, the sanctification of suffering, the large-scale awakening to a sense of shared fate, the mobilization of millions of volunteers–many in their teens and twenties–we see a glimpse of the conversion of life of which we are capable, and the fire of God’s own life which can and is bringing all of us into his eternal joy.”

Written in 1995, when Obama was a mere 34 years old, this book amazes me with its psychological and spiritual insight even though I have only reached p. 46. Willa Cather once wrote that the most exciting thing in the world was to get inside the skin of another person. Obama does in this book what he did in his famous speech on race earlier this year–he helps us get inside the skin of “the other.” He has been the “other” himself all his life. His very existence occupies the space where other’s dreams had been. This process began in his own family, and it is a large part of his “rock star” appeal today. When we look at him, we see a deeper version of the American Dream than the one peddled by advertising. Hidden under American bravado are deep wounds, doubts, and guilt feelings for atrocities committed in the past and still continuing.

While the book is about an absent parent, his father, Obama writes movingly about his mother. How many male authors have written convincingly about what it is like to be a woman? How many men in their 30′s have curiosity about their mother’s inner lives, let alone empathy and insight? Obama may struggle with arrogance, as his critics claim, but that very arrogance may be rooted in recognizing that the average person does not perceive, intuit, and ponder the same way he does.

To illustrate my point, here’s a scene from the book. Young Barry and his step father Lolo are outside talking about “man things.” Barack’s mother is watching them, not hearing them, but imagining their conversation: “She looked out the window now and saw that Lolo and I had moved on, the grass flattened where the two of us had been. The sight made her shudder slightly, and she rose to her feet, filled with a sudden panic.

Power was taking her son” (p.46).

I will read on to discover how power, cultural and religious differences, mother love and a childhood full of journeys molded the man who may soon become our president, but first, I want to savor what this passage tells me about him. His language is powerful, succinct. The verbs sing on the page. The outward motions convey inner realities. And the author, the “I” of the story, is outside the action. The details tell the story–for example the grass flattened where the older man and younger boy had been. The theme of the presence of absence is all contained in that one image.