God Squad: Reopening communication in a letter

My children have rejected me and only see me a couple of hours a week. How could a loving God allow this to happen? I have done nothing to make them feel this way.

- M., via e-mail

I'm sorry for your agony. I'm a big supporter of letter writing as a way of dealing with family disputes. Sometimes, the ones on the other side of anger are just not ready to face you or hear you or love you again. If you could put into a letter to them a fulsome statement of your love for them and of your desire to someday be a part of their lives again, perhaps this might begin the turning that the biblical prophet Malachi wrote about in Chapter 4, verse 6: "And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." May the curse of hatred be turned to love by a loving God.

The mosque at Ground Zero

I've been deluged with responses to my column on the proposed mosque, and I thank all of you for your passionate concern. I remain convinced that most people of good will support the view I endorsed - that proponents of the mosque have an absolute right to build it because of our values. I also believe that the right thing to do is for them to move the mosque because of their own compassion for the families of the 9/11 victims. This must be their choice, however, and they should not be bullied or coerced into relocating the mosque.

I would hope they will come to understand, as Pope John Paul II did regarding the proposed convent at Auschwitz in 1984, that sometimes what you have the right to do is not the right thing to do. It is a mark of the greatness of Pope John Paul II that he didn't worry about appearing weak or succumbing to outside pressure. He simply realized that the purpose of a building is more important than the location of the building. If the purpose of the proposed mosque and community center in New York City is to build bridges; this can't be done by burning bridges.

The part of this controversy that ought to disturb all of us the most, and the part that troubles me in my soul, is the tendency on both sides to demonize those with whom they disagree.

Believing that all those people who oppose the mosque are covert bigots, and believing that all those who support the mosque are covert terrorists, does more than degrade the debate; it also degrades each of us who fall prey to this divisive thinking. We simply cannot live together if we think this way.

I'm thinking of the old Jewish legend that asks why God made just one person (Adam) at first. The answer given is that God never wanted anyone to be able to say in times to come, "My ancestor was greater than your ancestor." I'm thinking about the true story of an officer in Abraham Lincoln's cabinet who protested to the president about his practice of always mentioning the number of Confederate dead at cabinet meetings.

"Who are they to us, Mr. President?" Lincoln answered: "Thank God, the world is larger than your heart."

I'm thinking about the teaching of Rabbi Nachman, who died 200 years ago this year. One day, he was walking down the street and suddenly stopped short and pointed to a man across the street. He asked his students, who were walking with him, "Who is that walking across the street?" They looked and said, "That is nobody. It is just the man who draws water for the village." He yelled at them, "You are not my students and you will never be my students until you can look across the street and say to me, 'Rebbe, that is the image of God walking across the street.' "

I am not naive. To those who want war with us, they shall have war, but I refuse to believe the worst about my Muslim neighbors. I hope they have the generosity of spirit to move the mosque even if they don't legally have to. The solutions to the mosque controversy and to the problems of our world will not come from a zoning board or a courthouse. The solutions will come from the human heart.