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. 

 

 

MLK Jr.: Lessons in Leadership

Tomorrow is a special day in the life of the nation. We celebrate the man who said, when civil rights marchers were facing the dogs and clubs and fire hoses of Birmingham, “We must face the forces of hate with the power of love.” He said, “All people are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.” He said, “I have a dream.”

Monday, we celebrate this great man, Martin Luther King, Jr. And then comes Tuesday. On Tuesday–not far from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, site of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech—Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible,” he said back in November, on the night of his historic election, “If there is anyone out there who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. […] It’s the answer that led those who’ve been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.”

What celebrations are before us. What high points in our nation’s history. The dream of racial and social justice unfolding. Though much more remains to happen, still—how wonderful to be alive in this time, to witness the parts coming true!  

But the journey has in no way been easy, or straight. Messy all the way, in America’s larger social life, but also in the personal lives of the leaders we are celebrating. The man who now says “Yes we can” once, as a sophomore in college, ridiculed such idealism, disbelieving that he or anyone else could make a true difference. Long before his political opponents charged him as all flash and no substance, he said, “Pretty words don’t make it so.” “That’s the last time you will ever hear another speech out of me.”

Can you personally relate to this irony? See in your own leadership story a time when you believed something couldn’t be done—or it could be done but by anybody but you—but then it WAS done, and the person who had done it was YOU?

“We are made for community,” says liberal Quaker and activist Parker Palmer, and so “leadership is everyone’s vocation.” That’s our focus today—exploring what this means, and doing it with the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. in the room, drawing on a messy moment in his leadership story to help us understand our own.

Here’s the story. Has to do with the time he was invited to become a part of the Montgomery bus boycott. As you may know, first there was Rosa Parks—her refusal to obey the bus driver’s demand that she give up her seat. What followed, as King’s biographer Marshall Frady describes it, was this: “That ‘No,” and Mrs. Parks’ arrest, quickly set off a spontaneous combustion among Montgomery’s black citizenry to boycott the city’s segregated bus system. Almost immediately, mimeographed leaflets calling for the boycott were coursing through the city’s black neighborhoods. But when, the night of Mrs. Parks’ arrest, [a local social activist by the name of E. D. Nixon] phoned [the young Martin Luther King Jr.] to ask him to join in the boycott movement, King, out of some uneasiness beyond just his absorption in his multiple other duties, seemed curiously reluctant: ‘Brother Nixon, let me think on it awhile, and call me back.’” Marshall Frady goes on to say that, “Concerned at King’s hesitation, Nixon called Ralph Abernathy…. Abernathy then called King to exhort him about the elemental importance of cooperating in this boycott effort. King finally agreed to lend it his support if it would not entail his having to aid in any of the organizing.” And that’s the story, with three things of note to lift up: the initial call to leadership, King’s hesitation to accept, and Ralph Abernathy’s intervention.

Starting with the call. What might it look like? As it did for King, sometimes the call takes the form of widespread social crisis, like the spontaneous combustion of the Montgomery bus boycott, against the larger backdrop of the burgeoning civil rights movement. This crisis gripped our congregation as well; we too were swept up in the civil rights movement, and in 1954 we affirmed desegregation, becoming the very first multiracial religious community in all of Atlanta. It represents one of the high points in our collective leadership story, here at UUCA.  

And may more highs ever be before us. Tomorrow, megachurch pastor Rick Warren will be the keynote speaker at Ebenezer Baptist Church as part of the MLK Day festivities. No doubt this is connected to his being invited to deliver the invocation at Tuesday’s inauguration, and both decisions, frankly, have been enormously controversial. Warren doesn’t just oppose gay marriage, he’s compared it to incest and pedophilia. He doesn’t just want to ban abortion, he’s compared women who terminate pregnancies to Nazis and the pro-choice position to Holocaust denial. Now Obama strongly disagrees with Warren here—he’s clearly said so. He’s invited him to deliver the invocation as a way of symbolizing his commitment to building bridges to parts of America he may strongly disagree with on some things but yet, on other things, there’s plenty of common ground—and right now, emphasizing common ground is the way forward. This is classic community organization strategy. Yet I would hate to see, because of this high-level emphasis on common ground, a tendency at the grassroots level towards apathy. You and I to stop disagreeing with Warren’s point of view because we’re afraid of being disagreeable. You and I to stop speaking out and letting people know who we are, what kind of place this is. People, our commitment to civil rights here at UUCA cannot merely be historical. It must be ongoing, and I believe that protecting abortion rights, as well as working for full social rights of GLBTQ people, constitute a key part of the civil rights movement that is here and now. Consider yourself called. Monday at 12:30 in the afternoon, the official MLK march will begin. Join us as we demonstrate our commitment to civil rights for ALL.    

It’s the call. We can hear it in the various crises and issues that trouble the larger world; but we can also hear it closer to home, when there is a crisis is our congregation, or a crisis in our family. A crisis of personal health. Even a crisis of spirit. You can feel two wolves inside you, in your heart, circling round and round, snapping at each other; one represents hatred, the other represents healing, and the one that you feed is the one that prevails. Something happens or does not happen in our congregation, for example, and you have an instant negative reaction—right here is a call to leadership. So what do you do next? Do you indulge your suspicions, cultivate your disgruntlements, insist on “my way or the highway,” believe that the rules don’t apply to you, perhaps even divide people into US vs. THEM, spread a spirit of war around rather than of peace? If you do this, you did NOT answer the call. You fed the wolf that destroys, not the wolf that heals. The leadership moment was missed.

We’ve got to be there when the moment comes. So much is at stake in how we use our influence. And it’s not always a matter of responding to crisis. Parker Palmer puts it this way: “I lead by word and deed simply because I am here doing what I do. If you are here, doing what you do, then you also exercise leadership of some sort.” Even just to smile across the room at someone you know—just to acknowledge their existence—can be a kind of leadership, an exercise of influence that is truly important. Just by smiling across the room, you are living into a larger vision of a community that strengthens and encourages. Someone was talking about this just the other day—how horrible and withering it feels to notice someone looking at you but they don’t smile, they don’t acknowledge your existence…. Leadership is about making the vision real, in acts both big and small. You see a piece of trash on the floor, and you pick it up even if you aren’t the sexton, even if you aren’t part of the paid staff, even if you hear a voice in your head that says, “Ahh, this is a BIG congregation—surely someone else will do it.” No. YOU do it, and as you do it, your simple act of leadership is helping to create the Beloved Community vision that says, We are all in this together. It’s up to all of us. Pull together and not apart. Everyone chip in. The ministry here involves every friend, every member, because that’s what it takes to live out our mission of changing lives. That’s what it takes. 

Leadership is everyone’s vocation, expressed through acts both big and small. It’s about how we use our influence, towards the direction of some larger vision. It’s about how we respond to the call, when it comes.

Which takes us to the second thing of note in Martin Luther King’s story: his hesitation to accept. It represented a momentous crossroads in his life, although he could not have known it at the time. Ultimately he did accept the call, and in this way achieved great visibility and respect as leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which in turn led to his role in founding (with others) the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and then to his leadership in civil rights campaigns in Albany, then Birmingham, then Augustine and Selma, and then the March on Washington and his soaring “I have a dream” speech. It all got started with Montgomery, and King’s ultimate answer of yes. But what if he had said, instead, NO? What then? Without Montgomery, would there ever have been “I have a dream”?

Hindsight is 20-20. “We live forwards,” said philosopher Arthur Schopenhaur, “but we understand backwards.” With only the knowledge that is given us in the moment—already full of the pressures of existing responsibilities and anticipations of future work we already know of—it is truly understandable and fully human to hesitate when a call to something new comes before you.

King was only human, and this is something we need to be reminded of, so that we can be confident leaders in our own right. Here’s why I say this. We take a hero figure like Martin Luther King Jr. and we lose touch with his story. Soon enough, someone who had just as many flaws and complexities as the rest of us becomes transformed into a superperson, untouchable. A change agent who leapt from the womb holding a protest sign. He was fearless, but we feel fear. The work came naturally to him, without any effort or awkwardness, but as for us, we endure setbacks, mistakes, trial-and-error. He was bottled lightning, but we have to pinch ourselves to stay awake. The perfect snappy comeback was always on his lips, but as for us, it’s usually only 12-24 hours later when it pops into our minds.   

We lose touch with our heroes’ stories, and in this way we lose touch with our own powers and potentialities. We hear a call to leadership, but our response can be, Who, me? Yet the message of the life of every hero who has ever gone before us, or who may be in our midst right now, is that you don’t need to be perfect to have a dream. You don’t need to be perfect to make the world a better place. You don’t have to already know how to preach if it is your dream to preach. You don’t have to already have the right credentials or know everything there is to know to step up. And if you are feeling the need to do something in your life to make the dream real, you don’t have to wait to start until the circumstances are absolutely ideal, as in: I am the right age (not too young, not too old), the kids are grown, the job is secure, I have enough money, my relationships are all better, I even have all the big questions of life figured out, related to God, immortality, the meaning of life, the existence of extraterrestrial beings. Just do it. I am so grateful for a hero like Martin Luther King Jr., a man who, at a critical juncture in his life, hesitated. The world did not need a perfect person to do what he did. The world did not need that. The world needed him. And the world needs you and me.

Leadership is everyone’s destiny, in some form, big or small. And now we turn to the third and last part of King’s story: Ralph Abernathy, talking King into accepting the call. His intervention.

This represents another aspect of the hero story that is easily passed over. Often the message put out there (or the one received) is about rugged individualism. One person acting alone. Nothing or not much about family, the larger supportive community, the worship services, the committee work, the coalition building, the flurry of letters and emails and phone calls, and, in the midst all of it, above all, key sustaining friendships. People whose judgment you trust, so that even if all the world is criticizing you, if THEY believe in you, you believe. People who will lift you up when you need it; people who will bring you back down to earth, when you need that. Nothing about any of this. Just one person acting alone. Rugged individualism.

It’s just not true. You can’t get to Martin Luther King Jr. without his parents and family and teachers, the black church community, liberal communities like this one, all the committee meetings, all the worship and prayer and hymn singing, all his friends and colleagues. You just can’t get to him without Ralph Abernathy—the man who reconnected him to his sense of call and purpose when he hesitated. The man who was with him throughout, until the very end and beyond.

I’m asking you this morning: Who is your Ralph Abernathy? Who believes in you, so you can believe?

This place—this community—can itself be a support to you. But you’ll get out of it only as much as you put in. So, how much are you putting in?

We need our communities of support. We need our Ralph Abernathys, to grow into the leadership that is naturally ours.

On Tuesday, when Barack Obama is up there with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, being sworn in as the 44^th President of the United States, using Abraham Lincoln’s Inaugural Bible, I want you to think of a person named Regina, whom Obama knew in college. He had just delivered his very first political speech, about apartheid in South Africa and the need to stand up for social justice. He felt swept up in this; he was feeling the call. Yet at the same time, he was full of self-doubt, and cynicism. At a party that evening, Regina congratulated him, calling his speech wonderful, but he cut her off, said, “Listen, you are a very sweet lady. And I’m happy you enjoyed my little performance today. But I don’t believe we made any difference in what we did today. I don’t believe that what happens to a kid in Soweto makes much difference to the people we were talking to. Pretty words don’t make it so. That’s the last time you will ever hear another speech out of me.”

Barack Obama, hesitating….. But what happened next was this. He shares the story in his book Dreams from My Father: “Regina stuck a finger in my chest. ‘You wanna know what your real problem is? You always think everything’s about you. The rally is about you. The speech is about you. The hurt is always your hurt. Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Obama. It’s not just about you. It’s never just about you. It’s about people who need your help. Children who are depending on you. They’re not interested in your irony or your sophistication or your ego getting bruised. And neither am I.” That’s what Regina said. Right words at the right time.

“Strange,” says Obama, “how a single conversation can change you.” ‘What was she asking of me, then? Determination, mostly. The determination to push against whatever power kept [a person] stooped instead of standing straight. The determination to resist the easy and the expedient. You might be locked in a world not of your own making … but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.”

Godspeed, Barack Obama. Keep on pushing. We too, in our own lives, whatever our situations happen to be, as we realize the leadership story that is uniquely ours, and our destiny to fulfill. Undaunted by obstacles both within and without. Determined. Always before us … the Dream.

READING BEFORE THE SERMON

Our reading for today comes from Barack Obama’s autobiography, Dreams from My Father. The time is 1981, and he’s a sophomore at Occidental College in Los Angeles, protesting the apartheid system in South Africa.

It had started as something of a lark, I suppose, part of the radical pose my friends and I sought to maintain, a subconscious end run around issues closer to home. But as the months passed and I found myself drawn into a larger role—contacting representatives of the African National Congress to speak on campus, drafting letters to the faculty, printing up flyers, arguing strategy—I noticed that people had begun to listen to my opinions. It was a discovery that made me hungry for words. Not words to hide behind but words that could carry a message, support an idea. When we started planning the rally for the trustees’ meeting, and somebody suggested that I open the thing, I quickly agreed. I figured I was ready, and could reach people where it counted. I thought my voice wouldn’t fail me.

Let’s see, now. What was it that I had been thinking in those days leading up to the rally? … I was only supposed to make a few opening remarks … [but] when I sat down to prepare a few notes for what I might say, something had happened. In my mind is somehow became more than just a two-minute speech, more than just a way to prove my political orthodoxy. [I thought of how powerful a speaker my father was.] If I could just find the right words, I had thought to myself. With the right words everything could change—South Africa, the lives of ghetto kids just a few miles away, my own tenuous place in the world.

[I spoke passionately that day, but after other speakers took my place on the stage, I found myself] on the outside again, watching, judging, skeptical. Through my eyes, we suddenly appeared like the sleek and well-fed amateurs we were, with our black chiffon armbands and hand-painted signs and earnest young faces. […] When the trustees began to arrive for their meeting, a few of them paused behind the glass walls of the administration building to watch us, and I noticed the old white men chuckling to themselves…. The whole thing was a farce, I thought to myself—the rally, the banners, everything. A pleasant afternoon diversion, a school play without the parents. And me and my one-minute oration—the biggest farce of all.

At the party that night, [my friend Regina] came up to me and offered her congratulations. I asked what for.

“For that wonderful speech you gave.”

I popped open a beer. “It was short, anyway.”

Regina ignored my sarcasm. “That’s what made it so effective,” she said. “You spoke from the heart, Barack. It made people want to hear more….”

“Listen, Regina,” I said, cutting her off, “you are a very sweet lady. And I’m happy you enjoyed my little performance today. But I don’t believe we made any difference in what we did today. I don’t believe that what happens to a kid in Soweto makes much difference to the people we were talking to. Pretty words don’t make it so. That’s the last time you will ever hear another speech out of me….”

Here ends our reading for today.

 

Holiday Letter

The holidays are a season of Christmas cards, Hanukkah cards, snail mail cards and internet cards, cards of all sorts through which we reach out to family and friends near and far away, to let them know that we’re thinking about them and that we love them. 

 

And sometimes, in the cards, we include letters. Updates on main events of the past year.

 

Here’s one of these end-of the year update letters, written by humorist Bob Schwartz:

 

Dear Friends, Family and those others who are somehow lucky enough to receive this Holiday Greeting letter,

 

2008 was a fantastic, spectacular, phenomenal and incredible year for the Schwartz family. Life is so wonderful, so prosperous, so stupendous and astounding that everything is coming up roses and what good would it all be if we didn’t have the opportunity to brag about it with you?

 

There’s more to it, but you get the drift. It’s all about bragging rights, whose kids are best, whose family and life is shiniest. I’ve read a few real letters like this, and maybe you have too.

 

And then there are the letters which don’t so much brag as stay on the surface of things. After all, how much can you say in a holiday letter? And, really, how much do you want to say? What if in 2008 you lost your job? What if someone you love got cancer, or you are desperately lonely, or your child has been having a hard time at school? What if? 

 

But this is life. This is our humanity. Shiny and dull. Stuff to brag about, and stuff to grieve. It’s just as William Blake once wrote:

 

Joy and woe are woven fine,

Clothing for the soul divine:

Under every grief and pine

Runs a joy with silken twine.

 

Words that have been in the back of my mind, as I’ve been thinking about my holiday letter this year, to you. Here it is:

 

Dear Friends:

 

As I reflect on this past year, what comes up for me most forcefully is what’s on the inside, what’s been moving in my spirit and soul. Chalk that up, I guess, to being a natural introvert. 

 

To say what I need to say, I’m going to draw on a memory of something that happened several years ago, when my family and I were still living in Chicago. It’s about the time Laura, Sophia, and I went downtown to the Kristkindle Mart to do some Christmas shopping. The Kristkindle Mart features the wares of craftspeople and merchants from Germany and Russia and all sorts of other far flung places. Foods and sweets are also sold, as well as beer and a holiday drink they call glug. A few words about this glug. It’s red wine heated and mixed with spices, goes down like fire, and it feels GOOD. The secret ingredient has got to be brandy or something equally potent. It’s powerful stuff.

 

So anyhow–I’m wandering around this outdoor faire and the light is starting to fade. I’ve got my hot cup of glug in hand and, despite the Chicago cold, I’m feeling pretty toasty. Laura and Sophia are off looking at a booth somewhere. I hear Christmas music nearby, and eventually I find three men playing “Silent Night” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and other favorites. I stand there and, in the fading light, enjoy the smiles of the people surrounding the musicians, their red cheeks, the rising cheer.

 

It’s then that I notice, nearby, the almost life-size manger scene. I wander over to it, not really expecting that it will be any different from any other manger scene I’ve ever run across before. I stand there, looking, and the critical voice in my head starts up. It didn’t really happen like that, it says. It says, By the looks of the statues, you’d think that everyone involved in the gospel story was a blond-haired and blue-eyed WASP.

 

And so on. I almost turn away, but my eyes fall on the tight circle of Mary holding the baby Jesus, and all of a sudden a realization comes to me, like a bolt out of the blue, and it zaps the cynical voice in my head, replaces it with a floating feeling of utter awe. What had always been before my eyes, I now suddenly see: that the birth of this great liberating prophet and spiritual teacher—this Bearer of the Light—happens in a time and place that goes contrary to all expectation. Greatness, goes the expectation, ought to be received by greatness. The Buddha was born in a palace. But it is all so different for the Christ. The birth of this Son of God happened in a cold and smelly manger, in an obscure backwater town of Judea, in the time of Imperial Rome with all its crushing greed and brutality. In circumstances even this unpleasant, even this obscure, even this unjust and hopeless, God can be born. 

 

All this is what I realized, standing there in the Chicago cold, looking upon the manger scene. Didn’t matter anymore, all the ways it might have neglected the historical facts. Like a classic work of fiction—which tells moral and spiritual truths better than any work of fact—it was conveying one of the deepest promises of the human spirit: that Bearers of the Light like Jesus can be born anywhere. Justice, compassion, hope: born here and now. Born to you and born to me.

 

And that’s the story. It happened a while ago, but it says it all for me this year. My continuing sense that something is trying to be born in and through the imperfect circumstances of our lives—something truly wonderful, a creative courage and love that can save the world. I’ll admit—some days I wake up and in no way can I feel the miracle that is trying to be born. I witness the suffering around me—people struggling with illness, or unhealthy relationships, or resentments. I read the headlines, and every day brings evidence of crushing brutality and injustice. I see the brokenness—the lack of compassion and lack of hope. Those are bad days. I know you know what I mean.

 

But the mystery is real, nonetheless. The miracle is real. With or without the glug, Christmas reminds us about one of the deepest truths of the human spirit. 

 

For you, as for myself, I wish for eyes of faith to see this unfolding miracle. In the manger of our world which can be so often unpleasant, so often obscure, so often hopeless: nothing less than the birth of God.  

Life is so short. Let’s live it to the full, and let’s never stop expecting miracles to happen, here and now.  

 

Happy holidays, and much love.

Letter to Mary

December 21, 2008. Dear Mary: It was two thousand years ago in a stable, surrounded by oxen and donkeys and your husband Joseph, when the main event was supposed to have happened: your giving birth to Jesus. The image of it is one I have known all my life, from Christmas cards, paintings and works of art, outdoor manger scenes, and even from some Canadian and American stamps I used to collect as a boy. The image of you holding the baby Jesus; the strength and protection of your arms. To this my eyes would always go, even if there were other amazements to look at, like wise men, or shepherds, or the Star of Bethlehem. There’s something special about you. 

 

And I’m not alone in my feelings about this. Through the ages, and around the world, feeling for you has always run deep. Catholic, Orthodox, and some Anglican Christians out-and-out venerate you. In your honor, Mary, they compose poems and songs; they paint icons and carve statues; they kneel before your image; they even pray to you for intercession with your son. I know this personally, for my own grandmother was Ukrainian Catholic, and I can still remember her fervent prayers, the depths of her reverence.

 

But it’s not that Catholics like my grandmother, or Anglicans, or Orthodox are setting you up as some idol. They don’t see you as God. It’s just that honor is being given where they feel honor is due—you, after all, are supposed to be the bearer of a God. Even Muslims, who deny that Jesus is God, honor you. You are the only women in the Koran who is directly named; and along with Jesus, you are said to be Ayat Allah, or the “Sign of God,” to humankind.

 

That’s what I call special. You are important for so many people around the world. Hunger for you is great. And that’s what this letter is about, Mary. The comfort and protection of your mothering arms. Your strength. People can’t seem to get enough of it. It all begs for a closer look.

 

Though right at the start, I need to acknowledge that opinions differ about the exact nature of the strength I’m talking about. Perhaps it boils down to a question that Christians have had from almost the very beginning: what you needed to be like to give birth to one who was supposed to be without sin. To raise a person like this. Did you have to be without sin, too? Or was your ordinary, imperfect humanity good enough? Exactly what kind of strength are we talking about?

 

The question is one of perfection vs. imperfection, and Catholics in particular have opted for perfection. That’s the official position, anyway. They see you as having a miraculous kind of independence from sex and death. This is what gives you your perfection and your strength. All sorts of doctrines laying this out. The doctrine of the Virgin Birth, according to which God directly impregnated you. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which says that you yourself were the product of a miraculous virgin birth. The doctrine of Perpetual Virginity, meaning that all of Jesus’ brothers and sisters had to have been cousins, or they had to have been children from a previous marriage of Joseph’s. And then the doctrine of the Assumption, proclaimed by Pope Pius XII in 1950, which says that you never physically died, and that you ascended bodily into heaven at the end of your days. All of these are doctrines Catholics have discerned over the years, as ways of articulating your strength and explaining how you were able to be the kind of mother you needed to be, to nurture and support the perfection of your son. Your miraculous qualities made you strong. 

 

Mary, my own mother’s family believed this, being the good Catholics they were. But I myself grew up Protestant and eventually became Unitarian Universalist, and both influences lead me to balk at all these doctrines. I never grew up thinking that life in a body and all that it implies is tinged with sinfulness. As a Unitarian Universalist, I absolutely do not. In being born, in sensuality and sexuality (whether gay or straight), and also in dying, all people possess inherent worth and dignity. I believe it.   

 

I also believe that you did not need to be perfect to meet the challenges of raising your son. Your ordinary, imperfect humanity was good enough, and gave you the strength you needed. In fact, there’s a sense in which it’s to everyone’s advantage that you were imperfect, since the idea that God could be born through someone living just an ordinary life is scandalous in a wondrous sort of way. The thought that people could be used by God for great things despite any and all limitations is wondrous. A source of great hope.

 

Mary, I really resonate with this idea. That you could be strong despite your flaws and imperfections. That you could be strong exactly because of your flaws. The Unitarian Universalist in me loves this, and every day, I walk in trust that the universe will receive whatever I offer up to it, however flawed, and turn it to some good, somehow. This is the core of my religious faith, and above all, it’s the core of my faith as a parent. As a father, the responsibility of parenting would be unbearable if I didn’t believe that being good enough was good enough. Know what I mean? This belief is sometimes all I have to go on, to get me through the times when I feel I’m totally screwing things up, and there won’t ever be enough money in the proverbial therapy jar my daughter will draw on to set things right. I just have to trust that being good enough is good enough.

 

I don’t know. Did you have to be perfect to do true justice to your child Jesus? To be strong enough for him? What’s clear is this. I’ve read stories in the Christian scriptures that hint at your parenting style, and I’m impressed. You really knew what you were doing. Here’s one story that springs to mind. It’s the story of Jesus turning water to wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. There you are, at the wedding with Jesus, who by now must be around 30 years old. He’s never performed a miracle before, and let’s assume that he’s wanting to be very careful about choosing the right first miracle, since the first of anything can be a predictor of everything else to follow. The first miracle has got to be special. It’s got to be right. And Mary, you know this. You also know that people can get so anxious about getting things right the first time that they might never even allow for a first time—to them, no time will ever seem special enough, nothing will ever seem good enough. So when you learn that the wine has all run out at the wedding party, you see that this is your opportunity to do a little mentoring. Light a little fire under your son, the brilliant rabbi. So you go to Jesus … and nudge him. “There’s no more wine,” you say. Jesus catches your drift, senses the pressure you’re putting on him, and he replies, rather testily, “Woman, what concern is that to you? My hour has not yet come.” In other words, Mom, stop trying to rush me! Stop pushing, already! Jesus is not very nice as he says this—calling you “woman” is just not nice—but you know that the bark is worse than the bite. I’ll bet you even rolled your eyes. You are the Mom, after all. And the rest is history. Jesus turns the water to wine, and this really was the perfect first miracle. It really was. It couldn’t have happened at a better, more joyous time (during a wedding party)—and the central message it telegraphs, essentially, is that the power of God (or whatever Mystery that that word “God” stands for) is everlasting abundance. Everlasting abundance that people can tap into even in the midst of moments of scarcity and loss. Even after the worst has happened. Even after all that, the best wine can still come. Don’t give up hope. Don’t give in to despair. Mary, this is a great message, and you are the one who nudged Jesus into making it. You helped get him unstuck. You were part of a great mentoring moment.

 

That’s got to be one of the reasons for why people can’t get enough of you. It’s about your awesome responsibility as a parent, and the great job you did, perfect or not. There’s also this: the way other people have experienced your parenting and protection, long after your physical death (or, as the Catholics would have it, long after your bodily ascension into Heaven). Here’s what I mean. I was reading the other day about the history of a country named Portugal and its political struggles, particularly in the early 1900s. The country’s monarchy had been ousted and replaced by an almost totalitarian regime, and this regime was determined to eradicate the country’s Catholicism. Religion, it thought, was pure superstition, and destructive, and wrong. Tolerance towards religion is just part of the problem, and only makes things worse. So this regime closed the churches down, and it confiscated their property. It banned religious holidays, as well as the teaching of religion in schools and colleges. Its actions were so aggressive that even people in rural areas—people who are usually unaffected by the quicksilver fads of urban sophisticates—took notice and went underground with their spirituality. Things got very, very bad. This is when you came in. The story goes that, in 1917, you appeared in a vision to three children from the rural village of Fatima. You encouraged them to stay hopeful in their religious faith, to pray for sinners, to keep on saying the Rosary. You appeared any number of times, and it is said that in your final appearance, on October 13, 1917, the crowd was far more than three children—something like 70,000 people, including newspaper reporters and photographers. Eyewitnesses said that it rained heavily that day, but at one point, the clouds broke and the sun took center stage, at which point it spun like a disk, radiated flames of scarlet, yellow, and purple, and then plunged towards the earth in a zigzag pattern, finally returning to its normal place, and leaving the people’s once wet clothing completely dry.

 

That’s the story. And whatever the reality happens to be, at least one thing is clear: religion in the hearts of the people is irrepressible, and it’s going to break through the walls put around it, every time. Whatever political or intellectual regimes do or plan to do, you, Mary, are not going to allow them to carry the day. You are a defender. People hunger for your presence, and you show up. And not just in Fatima, but all over the world, over the course of centuries. That’s what the record shows. I’ll grant that all we might be talking about here is some kind of communal hallucination—many explanations presuming nothing supernatural have been put forward—but what’s definitely real as real can be is that you are in people’s hearts and minds. You are there. And when the threat to religion or to life is great, they draw on you for strength, they take comfort from you, their imaginations soar with and through you.

 

Dear Mary, again and again, people go to you for strength. Some people might say that you were docile, and compliant, and weak, but I don’t believe it. You were strong enough to parent Jesus and give him good guidance and mentoring, and you’ve been strong enough in the hearts and minds of Christians through the ages to appear to them as a protector in times of tribulation. That’s what I call strong.

 

Yet there is one more thing that comes to mind when I consider people’s fascination for you, and it has to do with a different kind of strength. The strength it takes to step into the unknown. The strength it takes to be vulnerable and let go. The strength it takes to step back from broken dreams, and let them die, and still know that you are OK. Mary, you understand all about this. Blessed among women, you were condemned to witness your son’s execution on the cross. That’s what I call a broken dream. You know all about broken dreams. You know all about what it takes to step back from a dream, and let go.

 

This is the real reason for why I am writing this letter to you today. Perhaps the influence of my Catholic grandmother is stronger than I knew, and really, this letter is a prayer. For, you see, I’m praying for the strength to move into the second half of my life, and to let go of all my sadness and regrets. I know it’s not as dramatic as the death of your son on the cross, and yet there it is. I’m firmly into mid-life now, and with this has come a strange pressure building and building in my life, one that is pushing me to perform what I guess is itself a kind of miracle. Forgiving the fact that my body is changing and is not like it used to be; forgiving the fact that I was not able to accomplish everything I wanted to; forgiving the fact that all the brilliant, beautiful Christmases of my childhood will never come back again; forgiving the fact that precious people have died out of my life, and I will never be able to share with them who I am as an adult. This miracle of forgiveness. Water into wine. I need to perform it. I need to. It’s so I can make peace with my regrets. It’s so I can draw from my past in a healthy way. It’s so I can truly appreciate all the wonderful things I have right now: my family, my friends, my job, my health, my future. It’s so I can move forward, and keep on moving forward. It’s so I can believe that the best wine of my life will indeed come last, never fear.

 

Mary, I need a nudge from you, just like you once gave your son. I need you to light a fire under me, I need you to help me know that there’s no perfect moment for forgiveness, that there is no better time than now. Mary, in this Christmas season, I am praying to you for strength, for myself and also for so many others who are where I am right now, in one way or another. Whatever the age. Whatever the situation. Experiencing life changes. Facing the unknown. Feeling vulnerable. Strengthen all of us. Nudge all of us. Light that fire. And if we should snap back at you like your son did, and say, “Woman, what concern is that to you?” I know you’ll understand that the bark is worse than the bite. Just roll your eyes. You are the Mom. You’ve been there, done that. You know. Just show us the way to the most amazing kind of strength there is: to be hurt and yet come back; to be broken and yet to be whole; to endure ruined dreams and yet still dream; to give up so much, and yet, in the end, find more than you ever used to have. Water into wine. The best wine saved till last.

 

Mary, I thank you for your life, and I bless your name. Be with all of us this Christmas time.  

 

I am yours, sincerely,

 

Anthony

Our Inner Ape

As Unitarian Universalists, we rally around a religious vision of people connecting with the Sacred in life—of being changed and transformed by this, called into acts of compassion and hope, expanding our circle of concern beyond self-interest so that we can be satisfied with nothing less than peace and justice for all. We rally around this vision of spiritual and ethical interdependency, and here at UUCA, we know that one of the essential ways of living the vision and making it real is being healthy in our relationships together: being mindful of how we communicate with and about others, seeking a peaceful and constructive resolution process when conflicts arise, celebrating the diversity within our community, building the common good. This is what we know, and rally around.  

 

Yet my question this morning is one of depth. The religious vision I just outlined, and its corresponding commitment to healthy relationships: how deeply rooted is it in our nature? Deep roots, or shallow? Teach a dog to fetch a newspaper, and that resonates with a basic capacity that is already deeply instilled in him—is this what Unitarian Universalism is trying to accomplish in us? Just cultivating and bringing to fuller expression potentials which are already ours in some way? Or, are we more like cats, and a capacity for fetching is just not part of who we are—and yet our religion foolishly persists in teaching us this anyhow?     

 

Scratch the surface of who we are, and what’s underneath?

 

It’s a question that has been asked with great intensity, especially since the savagery of World War II—the holocaust, the atom bomb, the willful destruction committed in Europe and Asia by otherwise civilized and scientifically enlightened people. Out of this, a dominant answer that emerged firmly rejected the “onward and upward forever” naïve optimism about human nature that so characterized nineteenth century liberal religion. In the harsh light of Nazi atrocities, or Soviet atrocities, this optimism appeared completely ridiculous. What seemed far more realistic was the grim idea that, deep down, humans are basically violent and amoral. And so, for example, a prominent scientist at the time, Konrad Lorenz, argued that aggression was a pressure within the human psyche that builds relentlessly, completely unrelated to frustrated desires and aims, without understandable and reasonable cause. The inexplicable pressure to destroy is within us, and it just builds and builds over time until it bursts through the thin veneer of human decency which religions and ethical systems like ours try so hard to shore up, but always in vain.

 

Then there was the thought of science writer Robert Ardrey. His 1961 book African Genesis argued what has since become known as the “killer ape” theory, which is that the ancient ancestors of humans were distinguished from other primate species by their greater aggressiveness, and that’s what drove their evolution, that’s the prime mover behind human development. It’s the famous scene in the classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, where a fight breaks out among a group of our ape ancestors, in which one bludgeons another with a zebra femur, and then that ape ancestor flings the femur triumphantly in the air, where, millennia later, it turns into an orbiting spacecraft. This is what the “killer ape” theory means: we’ve gotten to where we are today through genocide. Says Robert Ardrey, “We were born of killer apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments?” This is who we truly are, says Robert Ardrey. Liberal religion tried to throw away the idea of original sin, but secular science revalidated a version of it. Scratch the surface, rub off the thin veneer of religion and ethics and civilization, and we find something horrible which is nothing less than the secret of our success—which makes it even more horrible. (Not one of our favorite things….)

 

And so where do we go from here, if the horrible vision is true? Another movie scene comes to mind, this time from the classic The African Queen. Surrounded by the jungle, Katherine Hepburn’s character says, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.” In others words, work even harder to shore up the thin veneer of civilization, so that the jungle within us—the inexplicable pressure to do violence—is kept bottled up, pushed down. Sing hymns louder, perhaps—meditate more—repeat the Purposes and Principles regularly and often, as well as our Congregational Covenant of Healthy Relationships. Face your fate like a plucky and undaunted Katherine Hepburn, and rise above…

 

But this only goes so far. Putting on a brave face won’t take away the dread we’ll never be able to stop feeling about ourselves. The sense that there exists a murderous force within us, so alien to all that we hold sacred and holy, so untrue to the teachings of our greatest prophets, like Jesus and the Buddha. So alien to our hopes for peace and justice for all. So irreconcilable with the idea that people have inherent worth and dignity. No inner light within, but inner seething. Therefore we could never truly relax and trust our instincts; there would have to be constant vigilance to make sure that the thin veneer of sanity is maintained. Not freedom, but authoritarianism, would be the better way in religion and in life. Unitarian Universalism, in short, would cease to make any sense. This is what would happen.

 

All of what I’ve said so far is background for why the question about apes is so crucial, so momentous to our understanding of ourselves. Says Emory University professor Frans de Waal in his fascinating book Our Inner Ape, “If [apes] turn out to be better than brutes—even if only occasionally—the notion of niceness as a human invention begins to wobble. And if true pillars of morality, such as sympathy and intentional altruism can be found in other animals, we will be forced to reject veneer theory altogether.” This is what Franz de Waal says. Take a look at our closest animal kin—great apes like chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas—and see what their lives are really like. Perhaps humans can fool themselves and pull the wool over their eyes, but not apes. They are what they are, without deception, without shame. So put all the theorizing to the side. Put “killer ape” theory to the side, and just look at the evidence from the lives of our closest biological kin, with whom we share more than 97% of our DNA.    

 

And what do we find? A fine animal gorilla like Koko. A being who truly and deeply gets what we are doing here today. Blessing our animals companions, our pets—and Koko herself would do the same. Bless her beloved All Ball. Bless Smoky. We hold and rub and play with and talk baby talk to our cats and dogs, and so does Koko. “Koko love Ball. Soft good cat cat.” Stricken when All Ball was killed, as we are when our pets die. Sounding out a long series of high pitched hoots. Saying, “Cry, sad, frown.”

 

Now it is undeniable: when we look at our great ape brothers and sisters, some of the things we find are not nice warm fuzzies. Chimpanzees are notoriously brutal at times, and they are also incorrigibly tribal and xenophobic, fanatically patrolling group borders, viciously charging against strangers, fighting to the death to preserve the group’s territory if necessary. But, this said, the picture grows far more complex once you consider the larger picture: that there is amazing breadth and diversity within our biological family of great apes, and the behavior of chimpanzees cannot possibly represent the final word. Gorillas like Koko shed a very different kind of light on things. And then you have bonobos. Have you ever heard of bonobos? Bonobos make love, not war. Listen to how Frans de Waal compares them to chimpanzees: “One is a gruff-looking, ambitious character with anger-management issues. The other is an egalitarian proponent of a free-spirited lifestyle. [The chimpanzee’s] hierarchical and murderous behavior has inspired the common view of humans as ‘killer apes.’ […] I have witnessed enough bloodshed among chimpanzees to agree that they have a violent streak. But we shouldn’t ignore our other close relative, the bonobo, discovered only last century. Bonobos are a happy-go-lucky bunch with healthy sexual appetites. Peaceful by nature, they belie the notion that ours is a purely bloodthirsty lineage.” That’s what Frans de Waals says. Our human heritage, exemplified in our closest animal relatives, is mixed. Chimpanzees may be tribal and xenophobic, but bonobos, in the best United Nations way, regularly establish peaceful relations with foreigners. Our inner ape is just not one narrow thing, as “killer ape” theory suggests. What’s deep down in human nature is broad: as much love and compassion as it is murder. And our job is to choose wisely, which impulses we draw on.

 

Consider this story about a bonobo called Kidogo, who suffered from a heart condition. “He was feeble, lacking the normal stamina and self-confidence of a grown male bonobo. When first introduced to the colony at the Milwaukee County Zoo, Kidogo was completely confused by the keepers’ shifting commands inside the unfamiliar building. He failed to understand where to go if people urged him to move from one part of the tunnel system to another. After a while, other bonobos stepped in. They approached Kidogo, took him by the hand, and led him to where the keepers wanted him, thus showing they understood both the keepers’ intentions and Kidogo’s problem. Soon Kidogo began to rely on their help. If he felt lost, he would utter distress calls, and others would quickly come over to calm him and act as a guide.” That’s the story. The strong helping the weak. Genuine sympathy, genuine altruism, found in the sacred depths of nature, right there. Sending a message that our job as humans is not so much to follow Katherine Hepburn’s advice and “rise above” nature as it is to bring into fuller expression certain capacities it has gifted us with. To draw on the positive aspects of our inner ape so as make a better world. Hubert Humphrey once said that “the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” Now if in bonobo society we have the strong helping the weak, why not in human society, and MORE of it? Why not?

 

Story after story documents in bonobos—as well as in chimpanzees and gorillas—kindness and empathy, a capacity for peacemaking and reconciliation, creativity, even freedom—this latter part suggested by Koko’s capacity to tells lies and her sense of humor. Blind actors carrying out a pre-set genetic program just can’t do this sort of thing, aren’t capable of the kind of improvisation and imagination that deception and humor require. Story after story opens up our minds to the fact that “our humanness is grounded in social instincts we share with other animals.” Our inner ape is just not a killer ape. Don’t say to me, “scratch an altruist, and watch a hypocrite bleed.” That makes no sense, in light of the facts. Kindness and sympathy and altruism are not veneer-thin but deep. You can’t scratch it away. It is a gift to us from our great ape brothers and sisters. It means we don’t have to be afraid of ourselves. It means we can replace a feeling of dread with a feeling of wonder. It means that to creation, we belong. Unitarian Universalism is real. Our Covenant of Healthy Relationships is realistic. The animals bring us back to our senses. “Fine animal gorilla” teaches us to say—and gives us courage to say—“fine animal human.”  

 

 

Rev. Anthony David

August 23, 2008

UUCA