A Time to Celebrate? Reflections on the Death of Moammar Khadafy

November 3, 2011 —This week, our guest blog post comes from the Reverend Cricket Potter, Interim Co-Minister at Follen Community Church, a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Lexington, MA. Originally written as a letter to her congregation, the piece reflects on the widespread celebration of Moammar Khadafy's death this past month, and on questions that arise for Potter about good versus evil, pain, hatred, violence, and humanization.

Dear Friends,

News filtered in yesterday about the death of former Libyan despot Moammar Khadafy. Then this morning, I read the details of Khadafy’s violent death along with stories of celebration by many around the world. I am writing in response to these details because I have been struggling with them all morning. Just like Osama Bin Laden’s death and the subsequent celebrations that erupted in Times Square and elsewhere last spring, today’s news has me feeling somber, not happy. Let me explain.

When I was in seminary in California, I had to drive by San Quentin State Prison several times a week on my way to and from my classes. Once in a while, I would see a crowd gathered in vigil as I drove by. They were there to protest the death sentence and bear witness to another prisoner being put to death that night. The sight of those individuals in vigil always touched me deeply (and I regret that I never did skip class and embody my faith by joining them). They were standing up for another person’s life, even if it was a very flawed and violent one. They believed that adding to, or repaying, one death with the death of another did not solve or resolve things. I was so grateful for their presence. Yet, I also hated seeing them at the front gates of San Quentin because they were the sign that a human being was about to have their life taken from them. That awareness always left me shaken for the rest of the day. This was someone’s last day, and they faced death by lethal injection within hours. I prayed that that person could find some peace and feel the love of some family member in their final hours.

This morning, as I read the stories about jubilant rebels and others celebrating Khadafy’s death, I could certainly understand their relief at knowing that this man’s days of tyranny and violence are over—for good. Khadafy did inflict so much brutality on his own country and others. I, too, am relieved to know that his reign of terror is over. Yet, I cannot join in the celebration. I cannot rejoice at anyone’s death, even if that person is an enemy. Khadafy was a flawed—but still human—being. I can only feel somber about the way he lived his life and about his death.

I am reminded of a blog that I read after Bin Laden’s death last May, called "Needed: A National Day of Mourning." It is from the Tikkun Daily Blog, and is written by Amanda Udis-Kessler (a divinity student preparing for Unitarian Universalist ministry):

There is no simple division in the world between good people and evil people; the only division is between people who acknowledge that we all have within us the capacity for both good and evil, and people who insist that they are good and it is only others who are evil.

Then she goes on to suggest an alternative to celebration:

As much as anything else, I think we need a national day of mourning so that all of our pain that has been funneled into rage, into unhealthy forms of patriotism, into xenophobia, into militarism, and into all those other expressions of anything-but-pain can be reclaimed as pain, experienced as pain, grieved as pain, and eventually perhaps released as pain so that we are not held hostage to it quite so deeply. On that day and on that day only will I be truly convinced that we have conquered Bin Laden.

I wonder what your feelings are on this matter. What does another person’s death mean to you? Does any fear or pain linger for you? Tricia and I both welcome your thoughts and feelings as we ponder the news of this day and as we all consider how we can move forward in healing ourselves and the world around us.

In faith,
Cricket