Building Our Audacious Future

One day a mother mouse was out taking her babies for a walk, and a cat came out of nowhere to surprise them. The mother bade her children run and hide, and as they did,  she positioned herself between them and the cat, who was peering at them with his big grey eyes. He slowly came nearer and nearer, and then, just when it seemed like he was about to pounce, the mother mouse said, “BOW WOW! BOW WOW!” It stunned the cat; he simply did not know how to take this. He ran away, confused; and when the coast was clear, the children came running to their mother. She turned to them and said, “Children, now do you see the benefits of learning a second language?”

As a congregation, we have been on a collective journey of learning the second language of sustainability. The journey began last fall, when, at our Ingathering Service in September, we declared interdependence. Then came our Stewardship Campaign with its theme of “Creating Spiritual Community … Working for Sustainability” during which, in various ways, we took the conversation deeper, culminating on October 19^th when I asked you to let me and the Care of Earth Team know about the sustainability issues and dreams that were important for you. Out of this eventually grew the Happiness Challenges we heard about in worship from January to April of this year, as well as the Building Our Audacious Future Event last month, enabling us—given all the possibilities of all our various dreams—to arrive at four shared congregational sustainability goals, which people then voted on through their willingness to volunteer. When you think about it, this willingness to volunteer is really the only way of determining whether a goal has initial viability, or not. Given the volunteer results, we’ve got a green light for all four goals, and over the next three to six months, we’ll be getting four teams up and running, to champion the four goals. Just to get to this point is a great win for our congregation. Over the course of the entire year, one event led to the next, until today, Earth Day Sunday, we find ourselves in a place to begin the next phase of our Sustainable Living Initiative, when we actually get to work and start implementing goals. Declaring interdependence through more than just words.  

All of it has been about learning and using the language of sustainability, and it IS a second language. It takes effort to figure out and to use correctly. Sustainability is not equivalent to recycling. Sustainability is not just about the environment. What it IS about is doing whatever it takes to build communities of every size—from world community to nations to cities to congregations to neighborhoods—that last. According to the Earth Charter—a key document developed between 1995 and 2000 through the international cooperation of scientists, scholars, and religious leaders—development that is truly sustainable and is good for future generations as much as for the present generation can’t emphasize just one interest to the neglect or detriment of other interests. We’ve got to look for win-win solutions. We’ve got to think bigger and more systemically. We’ve got to look for solutions that honor the environment even as they grow the economy, create a more just world, and strengthen our individual lives. Honor all four points of the sustainability compass simultaneously—nature, economy, society, and personal wellbeing—and you have found the way. Forget about one or more of them, and you’re lost. The cat in our story from a moment ago has just eaten your children and it has just eaten you.

Thus the need for a second language, a way of standing up against all the forces that the cat represents, and scaring them off. Fragmentation is one of these forces. In the environmentalism community, such fragmentation was named back in 2004 by an article entitled “The Death of Environmentalism.” The article acknowledged the irony of environmentalism being so popular in the world and yet not much concrete progress having been made in combating global climate change despite the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars over 15 years or more. Earnest environmental lobbyists crying out, “You’re talking to me about your job and I’m talking about saving the world!” but the message nevertheless falls on deaf ears. The message of “change or else” just not working. Thus the article’s main point: how people who love the earth and want to heal it can no longer afford to be standoffish and isolate environmental issues from other issues like poverty, jobs, health insurance, war, national security, education, or spirituality. From now on, if we want our work to go to the next level of effectiveness, we must see environmental issues as interconnected to everything else. To truly address a problem like climate change, we’ve got to talk about how fighting it can lead to job creation like we’ve never seen before. To address climate change, let’s talk about brokering an alliance with auto companies so that environmental lobbyists will work to lower the costs of health care for the auto industry in exchange for higher mileage standards. Nearly 100 years ago, Sierra Club founder John Muir said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” An idea that is both beautiful and true. The point of the article was that modern environmentalism needs to hear the message as much as anyone else!  

“Problems,” Albert Einstein once said, “cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.” Sustainability is fundamentally an effort to resist a fragmented view of life and to see how old problems that look like they have nothing to do with each other are actually related at a deep level. That’s why here at UUCA our sustainable living initiative incorporates more than just the zero footprint goal. It also includes a service goal, a story goal, and a happiness goal. We need them all. All together represent our commitment to building our audacious future. If you’d like to volunteer for one of these goals, please visit the Care of Earth table in the social hall after services.

At this point, I want to say a few words about our happiness goal. Earlier, you heard Manette talk about the service goal, Tom talk about the zero footprint goal, and Dana talk about the story goal. The happiness goal is basically this: we seek to celebrate and strengthen individual efforts to live sustainably. It can happen in all sorts of different ways: eating that is more mindful; sustainable living in the home; stronger neighborhoods and communities; increased physical health and wellbeing; better habits around money and shopping; healthier relationships; or an increased commitment to spirituality. Do one or all of these, and happiness of a higher sort grows in your life and in the larger world. Thus our happiness goal as a congregation: we’re going to find ways of encouraging and supporting each other in this.

Please take a look at the yellow insert in your order of service. For a while now, I’ve been asking you to think about what your year-long happiness pledge might be. It was inspiring to hear Kimberly describe hers, and in a moment, I’ll share mine. But first let’s see how the pledge sheet works.

Turn to where it says, at the top of the page, “My Personal Happiness Pledge is….” This is the main side of the sheet I want you to look at. In the box at the top, you’ll write down your basic pledge in one or two lines. Let us know who you are and your contact information. We’d also like to post people’s pledges on the UUCA website, so let us know if we have your permission to do so—see where you can check off yes or no?

When you are done, carefully tear off your pledge sheet along the dotted line, and you’ll turn it in when the baskets come around.

Now take a look at the information under the dotted line. There, you have some example possible pledges, related to several broad categories. For example, look at the category “mindful eating”: beside it you’ll see five different possible pledges…. Each one represents something you could focus on doing all year long. “Preparing and eating food with others,” for example, could turn into a monthly practice of dinner with friends, where you develop your friendships even as you experiment with some healthier food recipes. And so on. It all depends on the kind of new direction you’d like to take in your life right now.   

Underneath, see the box where it says “A copy of my happiness pledge”? Be sure to write down your happiness pledge here too, so you’ll remember it and take it home with you.

Two things to say at this point:

1. What if you don’t want to make a year-long happiness pledge? You don’t wanna…. No problem—this is only a friendly invitation. These pledges are meant to encourage and support people in their lives. For some people, pledges like this give them focus and commitment, and they work.    

2. What if you want to make a year-long happiness pledge, but you aren’t ready? You need more time to think about it, or you’d like to talk to someone first? If this is the case, after services today and also next week, the Care of Earth Team will have a table in the social hall, and you can talk with someone there, as well as turn your pledge in. Beyond next week, you can turn your pledge in to the UUCA office.

As for my own year-long happiness pledge. It has to do with “retiring” a certain jersey of mine. Here it is: [a t-shirt that says, “I love bacon.”) In other words, I’m going to go without meat and poultry for the next year. I just feel ready for this, right now in my life. I’m still going to eat fish, so I guess that means you can call me a “pescetarian.” As with Kimberly, the reasons touch on all four points of the sustainability compass. Not eating meat or poultry is better for the environment; it represents a refusal to go along with the injustices of animal agriculture on a mass scale; it’s easier on the checkbook; and I just want to get healthier and lose weight—especially if I’m going to get back to competing in skating. I’m retiring my jersey. I’ve already gone two weeks without meat and poultry, and I’m feeling great.

Now it’s your turn. When you hear the sound of the happiness challenge, begin filling out your pledge form, tear it off the larger sheet, and in a couple of minutes, the ushers will begin picking them up.

[Happiness Challenge sound--people make their pledges. Then, in a few minutes, the ushers come round to pick them up. “De Colores” is played underneath…. ]

The Work of This Holy Season

My Easter homily draws from the picture book by Jane Cutler entitled, The Cello of Mr. O. Publisher’s Weekly summarizes the story as follows: “’At night, from my window, I can see the white trails of tracer fire and the orange flash of mortars in the sky. I pretend I am watching shooting stars and meteors,’ says the nameless girl protagonist of Cutler’s moving and, sadly, timely story of the healing power of music in wartime. With winter approaching, food scarce and her father off fighting, the high point of the girl’s week is Wednesday, when the relief truck arrives and the community gathers. Most days, she sits with the other children under the stairs until their high energy levels send them running through the halls, where they taunt an unsociable musician named Mr. O. As the girl stands outside his apartment, she remembers how her father described the craftsmanship of Mr. O’s cello and the command performances of the cellist’s youth. When a rocket destroys the relief truck, Mr. O surprises the children by courageously playing music in the middle of the square and lifting their spirits.”

For me, a key moment in our story for today comes when Mama, referring to the war her family and community are suffering through, says, “This is not the first time in history that such a thing has happened.” And then her daughter says, “It may not be the first time it’s happened. But it is the first time it has happened to me.” Thus the fear and anger. Thus the sense of hopelessness.

And thus the crucial and indispensable work of the holy season before us: Passover in the Jewish tradition, Easter in the Christian tradition, and, in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, carrying forward the universal insights of Passover and Easter as well as making our own unique contribution: the Flower Celebration. The work of this holy season is exactly like Mr. O after the rocket attack, marching out into the middle of the square where everyone can see him, and playing music—powerful reassuring notes—beautiful music that lessens anger and transforms it into energy that is more productive. Music that eases fear and strengthens courage, makes our faces shine.

This is what we are doing this morning. We march out into the middle of the square, and what we play is the complicated music of human nature and human history. With Jews around the world, we Unitarian Universalists play the music of Passover, we tell the story of the grinding, seemingly endless enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt. But then comes the tipping point: Moses, aided by the power and might of the Lord, leading the people out from bondage and into freedom. “Let my people go.”

We play the music of Passover, and we also play the music of Easter. With Christians around the world, we tell the story of the great rabbi Jesus, seen as a second Moses by his followers, who once said, “I have come that people may have life, and have it abundantly.” We play the harsh music of life in first century Palestine—the people enduring extreme social and economic oppression. We play the slow, sad music of Jesus’ last days, his devastating execution at the hands of the Romans. But suffering is not the last word here, either. Some call what happened next a miracle—resurrection. Whatever happened, it is unarguable how Jesus’ followers felt that, despite the brutality and finality of his death, his spirit was still with them, still alive and vibrant, as real as ever.  

The complicated music of human nature and human history is what we play, today: music of the Passover, music of Easter, and also the music of the Flower Celebration. We tell the story of the Unitarian minister Dr. Norbert Capek, who, serving in his native land of Czechoslovakia, created a ritual that would affirm the individuality and dignity of each person, as well as the sacredness of sharing this individuality with others, in the form of friendship and community. Ironically, this Flower Celebration ritual was born in a time that saw the emergence of a modern version of ancient Egypt or Rome in the form of the Third Reich. In 1939, the Nazis took over Czechoslovakia, and Capek was from that time on a marked man. The Nazis hounded him because he dared to preach about spiritual freedom, he dared to preach about the value of the individual, he dared to preach about the blessings to be experienced when individuals live in beloved community—ideas that simply couldn’t co-exist with Nazism. So they were just looking for an excuse to arrest him, and they found it when they learned he had been listening to forbidden British radio broadcasts. Eventually, in June of 1942, Norbert Capek was sent to the death camp in Dachau. The Nazis killed him by poison, an agonizing death that, as with Jesus, seemed final. But look at how Dr. Norbert Capek has been resurrected, in our midst. Look at how his ideals have triumphed and still live among us—in the end proven far stronger that the supposedly invincible Third Reich ever was.

This is the music we play, this morning; and ultimately it is about seeing the present in light of the past. “It is the first time it has happened to me,” says the girl in the story; but when she and we see the present in light of the past, we realize something. We realize that though the arc of the universe is so long that its bending towards justice is usually imperceptible, there are nevertheless moments in human history that stand out as unique, and you can actually see the bending. Enslaved Israelites freed. Jesus crucified and yet his spirit lives on. Norbert Capek’s death in a Nazi concentration camp, and yet the ideals he stood for still vibrant, still strong. Such stories have inspired Unitarian Universalists for hundreds of years bring healing and hope to the world, and they can continue to do so even if elements of the stories, interpreted literally, are inconsistent with current historical and scientific knowledge. You don’t have to take the stories literally to take them seriously. This is our privilege as Unitarian Universalists. Once we cut through all the literalism, we can begin asking the really relevant questions the stories suggest, such as, Who or what Pharaoh enslaves us today? What Red Sea rises up before you, and how are you going to cross it? Have you ever had a crucifixion-like experience of your own, when you have felt so down and so depleted and even destroyed that the very possibility of coming back to life again seems as absurd as the possibility of the literal resurrection of Jesus’ physical body?

We need to remember these stories, as this morning we step out into the middle of the square. Thankfully, no recent rocket attack here in Atlanta motivates this; there are no white trails of tracer fire and orange flash of mortars in our sky, as there are in too many other parts of the world. Yet war is only one variety of suffering—there are so many others evident all around us. On a personal scale, we could talk about all the ways we nurture resentments in our relationships and imagine the other person to be less than human—and so, as the children in the story did with Mr. O, we pop paper bags right outside their doors, we laugh and run away imagining their fear, we wage a more innocent and less consequential kind of war but it is war nevertheless. So many varieties of suffering. On a collective scale, we could talk about the recent string of mass killings around the country—how some suggest the underlying factor to be the dismal economy, the epidemic of layoffs and uncertainty. Bonuses for top bank executives, bubkus for the working man and woman. Glimmerings of improvement in the economy, yes, but this in itself can cause a special form of suffering, because then you wonder: are we fooling ourselves? Perhaps we only think we’ve hit bottom, and worse is yet to come?

It’s just like our story for today. War has already taken its grinding toll. The beloved father is gone, with the other fathers and older brothers. The streets of the city are broken. All the wood has been used up for heat, food and water are scarce, nothing is as it was. How could things get worse? And then … it gets worse. The relief truck is destroyed. Supplies will no longer come to the people. To get them, the people will have to walk for miles….

This is exactly when Mr. O steps out into the middle of the square and begins to play. This is exactly what the holy season before us is all about. No matter how bad it gets—even if what’s bad has a false bottom, and you break through to something worse—nevertheless, the work of Passover and Easter and our Flower Celebration is to remember that, in the face of the worst, seemingly impossible beautiful things have happened to people just like ourselves. A Moses rose up, and slaves were freed. Jesus’ spirit and sense of abundance were unkillable, and lived on. A ritual involving something as frail as flowers outlasted the might of the Third Reich. Impossible things happening. Meaning that suffering need not be the last word, unless we allow it to be. Meaning that hope is real, if we believe.

May the music of this holy season make your face shine.