Flying home to Beirut (Photo: Emily O'Dell)
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.
— MLK, Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community
I took this photo about a week ago, when I was flying back to Beirut. My December travels to Sudan and Turkey fell in between the recent bomb attacks in Beirut. From above, you’d never know how high tensions are simmering in this sprawling city on the sea–overflowing with Syrian refugees. From above, you’d never know that car bombs were being planted in scattered pockets of this Mediterranean tableau. Or guess how many people from different backgrounds and beliefs shared the same terror, waiting for the next bomb to explode. From above, looking down on the snow-covered mountains and the offshore rock arches of Pigeon Rock, Beirut looks like a paradise recently rebuilt–but down there on the ground, the war next door is quickly turning Beirut into a place where nobody feels safe…and even the crocodiles have been hiding out…
Tens of thousands of feet above, drifting through the clouds and trying to locate my home below (one mile from where a bomb had detonated just four days before), I didn’t know that another bomb would rip through Beirut a few days later on the other side of town. Surveying this city that I love from above, I was reminded of a sermon I heard delivered near my home in Harlem by Dr. Calvin Butts III, when I visited Abyssinian Baptist Church (where back in the day Dr. King and Harry Belafonte discussed civil rights, and Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter paid visits too). Today I found a video online of Reverend Butts giving this same sermon at the Oakwood University Evangelism Council. To listen to Reverend Butts relate his experience of flying into New York City while contemplating its beauty from above, tune in at the 33:50 mark below…
God, it looks so different down here on the ground
than it did way up there in the air.
— Dr. Calvin Butts III
