Dear President Obama

Dear President Obama,

At one point in your speech to the United Nations General Assembly from this past September, you quoted your predecessor Franklin Roosevelt, saying: “The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, one party, or one nation…. It cannot be a peace of large nations—or of small nations. It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world.” “The choice is ours,” you said over and over to representatives of the gathered nations of the world. “We can be remembered as a generation that chose to drag the arguments of the 20th century into the 21st; that put off hard choices, refused to look ahead, failed to keep pace because we defined ourselves by what we were against instead of what we were for. Or we can be a generation that chooses to see the shoreline beyond the rough waters ahead; that comes together to serve the common interests of human beings….”

I hear this, and I can’t help but feel inspired. It’s the poem from your inauguration, where poet Elizabeth Alexander says,

What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light….

What if? We ask this as well, as Unitarian Universalists. What if more people affirmed the interdependent web of all existence, which applies as much to international affairs as to the natural world? What if more people affirmed the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all? Love, casting a widening pool of light. These are values of my own religious tradition that I am hearing in you, and I am inspired.

That’s why I’m celebrating the message you’ve been bringing to the world in the past eleven months. You remind me of one of our Unitarian Universalist ancestors: Adlai Stevenson, Ambassador to the United Nations during the JFK administration and also candidate for President of the United States in 1952 and 1956. (As a brief aside, it’s said that when the Unitarian Universalist Association was formed in 1961, Stevenson wrote to the Rev. Dana McLean Greeley, its first president, “Congratulations on your election as president. I know from hearsay how satisfying that can be.”) Despite not winning the Presidency, he was a great visionary who said that “It is no longer possible—if it ever was—for local communities to be more secure than the surrounding world. Our ultimate security therefore lies in making the world more and more into a community.” That’s what Adlai Stevenson said, and it’s your message too, over and over again. The mightiest word of love. Not unilateralism and militarism as a first resort, but multilateralism and diplomacy. Interdependence in world community.

Thank you for spreading values we Unitarian Universalists affirm. It’s why I think that Unitarian Universalists everywhere (whatever their party affiliations might be, whether Democratic or Republican or Independent) will have something to cheer when, on December 10th, you are in Oslo, Norway, receiving the prize—a prize which you have said you will accept as a call to all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century. Warm congratulations to you!

I laughed when I heard about what happened right after you received the news. Your daughter Malia walked in and said, “Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it’s Bo’s birthday!” And then your other daughter Sasha added, “Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up.” Kids, helping keep things in perspective. Although it sounds like you are doing fine with this on your own. “To be honest,” you said to reporters, “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by the prize.” This is what you said.

Of course, the Nobel Committee disagrees. In announcing that you are the recipient, it said, “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.” “The question we have to ask,” said Nobel committee chair Thorbjorn Jagland, “is who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world. And who has done more than Barack Obama?”

It’s a controversial question—whether you have accomplished enough. Already, you have plunged into the rough waters of multiple tough issues: prohibiting the use of torture by the United States; ordering the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed; working on finding effective ways of rooting out al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan; stopping terrorism at its roots by promoting human rights, economic opportunity, and security in countries that are hurting; partnering with Russia to substantially reduce nuclear warheads and launchers; advancing the cause of two states—Israel and Palestine—living side by side in peace and security so that justice for all in the Middle East can become a reality; moving America from a bystander to a leader in international climate change negotiations; helping coordinate an international response of over $2 trillion in stimulus to bring the global economy back from the brink; and re-engaging the United Nations, joining the Human Rights Council, bringing America back to the world table. To the United Nations, in September, you said, “I have been in office for just nine months—though some days it seems a lot longer.” I wonder why. Definitely, you are not putting off any of the hard choices required to create a better world. You are plunging right in.

But I do understand why you still think you don’t deserve the award. It is only the beginning. You have only just begun. The world is still in the midst of rough waters. The shoreline is still far off. And yet, perhaps the award was given not so much to honor past accomplishment as future promise. Perhaps, as Stanford University scholar Clarence B. Jones suggests, the award is about strengthening your resolve as you go forward, encouraging you to see your vision through all the way to the very end. He saw this with Martin Luther King Jr., when he received the Peace Prize. MLK Jr. had been struggling with what to say about the Vietnam War—this man who had already fought extraordinary fights for justice and peace—and the Peace Prize convicted his conscience, pressed him to break his silence and speak out. “Just knowing that hunk of metal was in his bureau drawer,” says Clarence B. Jones, “forced someone as strong as Martin Luther King Jr. to publicly comment in a way he might otherwise not.” I think the world wants you to continue making the hard choices that need to be made. I think it wants you to stay strong, and to finish this ironman race you’ve started. As the New York Times put it, “Americans elected Mr. Obama because they wanted him to restore American values and leadership—and because they believed he could. The Nobel Prize … shows how many people around the world want the same thing.”

But this is not the first time that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has acted contrary to popular expectations. I was fascinated to learn that an early Peace Prize controversy had to do with whether non-governmental peace activists only should receive the prize, rather than heads of state and politicians. Before 1905, only private peace activists had received the award. And then came 1906. The recipient was none other than American President Theodore Roosevelt, for his efforts in helping to negotiate an end to the war between Russia and Japan. People around the world screamed. What’s this? What’s this? they cried. Yet the Nobel Committee was ahead of the curve. It saw, after the turn of the century, how governments were increasingly promoting peaceful solutions for international disputes, and it wanted to encourage this even more. Private peace activists no longer owned the work exclusively. To ensure relevance for its prize, the committee risked changing with the times, together with the resulting wrath.

Today’s committee, I believe, took a similar risk. Said committee chair Thorbjorn Jagland, “Some people say—and I understand it—‘Isn’t it premature? Too early?’ Well, I’d say … that it could be too late to respond three years from now. It is now that we have the opportunity to respond—all of us.” American multilateralism and diplomacy can’t wait. America modeling the kind of leadership that needs to happen in every country around the world can’t wait. Hope can’t wait. The mightiest word of love has to happen now.

Clearly, honest confusion has surrounded this year’s award. But there’s been some real ugliness as well. I mean, it seems to me that when someone gets an amazing award like a Nobel Peace Prize, a reasonable response is delight. Good for you, President Obama! Good for you, America! Delight, even if people might not be sure exactly why you got the award. The not-knowing then becomes transformed into a positive curiosity to find out why—to discover just exactly what it is you have been saying and doing on the international scene that would merit such an award. Yet from some quarters you’ve seen the absolute opposite of curiosity and delight. New York Times columnist David Brooks, calling it a joke, saying, “Nobody cares what five Norwegian guys think”—demonstrating, regrettably, an arrogant disdain for the rest of the world that is part and parcel of ugly Americanism and cowboy diplomacy. Those five Norwegians (not all guys, by the way) see how you’ve single-handedly set a new tone throughout the world, and David Brooks thinks that this is a joke?

Reminds me of something I read in U. S. News and World Report a while back. An interview with Cullen Murphy, about his book entitled Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America. For a time, comparisons with Rome had been positive ones: the Pax Romana living anew in the Pax Americana, providing worldwide cultural benefits and worldwide security. But now the dominant view worries about America’s decline and compares symptoms of this to what people saw in Rome’s decline. And so the interviewer at one point says to Cullen Murphy, “You say there was an almost fatal parochialism among the Romans. Are we in danger of duplicating it?” Here’s Murphy’s reply: “I was looking the other day at one of the new Pew Center polls about ‘what Americans know.’ Americans in general aren’t that interested in, or aware of, the outside world, and increasingly even our elites don’t seem to put much stock in that kind of knowledge either. We don’t have [enough] Arabic speakers; the number of foreign correspondents continues to shrink. Compared with the Greeks, the Romans were not passionately interested in the outside world. And they were often taken by surprise. The great disaster suffered by Varus in Germany in A.D. 9, when three entire Roman legions were annihilated, stemmed partly from ignorance about the tribes they were up against.”

It’s been called “Omphalos syndrome”: the misguided belief that one’s nation and way of life is at the center (or navel) of the world. Rome had it, and suffered for it. America has it too, and we are suffering. We need to start caring about what five Norwegians think. We really do.

Ugly Americanism has come up in connection with your receiving the Peace Prize, and so has an all-consuming ugly cynicism. Writer H. L. Mencken once said, “A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.” This is definitely what some people have been doing around your award. Looking around for that coffin. Some of it is just blatantly racist—the presumption that the Peace Prize committee gave you the award just because you are the first African American president. And then there’s the cynicism summed up in something that Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said: you won because of “star power.” The world has a crush on you. Things are just in the honeymoon phase. It’s all illusion, smoke and mirrors.

Now, my congregation is listening in on this letter, so I say this to them as much as to you: that our Unitarian Universalist values transcend political parties. We are doing the best we can to stand on the side of love, that mightiest word, and part of our job is bringing prophetic critique to the public sphere when necessary, whether that sphere is Democratic or Republican, because our Unitarian Universalist values demand it. To be faithful to our religious call, there must be independence from political parties; we must be able to speak from out of a higher point of view of shared values. Today I bring warm congratulations to you, but when your policies and actions go contrary to our values, expect a different kind of letter. And if ever doing this becomes not OK in a Unitarian Universalist congregation—when my religion becomes a mere adjunct of the Democratic Party, and there’s absolutely no room for Republicans, or others, then I am out of here.

So when I call what Michael Steele is saying as cynical, I’m not trying to win one for the Democrats. I’m doing the best I can to speak up for that love which is

beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light….

But the “star power” comment takes the love you are trying to spread and tries to make it an unworthy thing. He’s trying to rebuild his political party, while you are trying to lead America into a new chapter of international cooperation. He says it’s just all words, but, first of all, words are a kind of action too—words change things. As a preacher, I have to believe this. Second, you know very we’ll that words alone are not enough. That’s why, over and over again, you say that “the future will be forged by deeds and not simply words,” that “the magnitude of our challenges has yet to be met by the measure of our actions.”

On the other hand, maybe some star power is exactly what we need right now. But here, I’m talking about power to forge international consensus and move the world’s conscience. It was something we saw lacking in the previous presidential administration—how President Bush squandered the world’s goodwill after 9/11. He started a war of choice with Iraq. On such critical global issues as arms control, torture, and climate change, he stepped back from the world table, disengaged, thumbed his nose at everyone. Unilateralism, cowboy diplomacy, Omphalos syndrome. But then came the genocide in Darfur, hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced in waves of violence that showed no signs of abating. President Bush spoke movingly to this in 2007, at the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. “It is evil we are now seeing in Sudan—and we’re not going to back down.” He was exactly right. Yet his call went nowhere. Multilateralism and diplomacy was what solving the problem in Darfur required and continues to require—yet this had not been the established practice of the Bush administration. It was like singing a completely different tune. And then there was the accumulated skepticism and distrust of the world that drowned him out, made it impossible for his absolutely worthy message to be heard.

But it’s a different time now. How you’ve turning things around, in just eleven months, is why you’ve been awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. The Committee wants you to see things through, this long journey you started. Your vision of four pillars, which are “fundamental to the future that we want for our children:” stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, pursuing peace, meeting the challenge of climate change, and the creation of a global economy that advances opportunity for all. “Now is the time,” you are saying, “for all of us to take our share of the responsibility for a global response to global challenges. […]The time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments, are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people. They lead nations to act in opposition to the very goals that they claim to pursue…. They build up walls between us and the future that our people seek, and the time has come for those walls to come down.” The time has come. The choice is ours.

beyond marital, filial, national,
love casting a widening pool of light….

President Obama, I thank you for your inspired service, and I’ll be there with you in spirit when, on December 10th, you’re in Oslo receiving the prize. Thanks for asking What if? What if the mightiest word is love?

Sincerely,

Rev. Anthony David, Senior Minister
The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta

Planting Seeds of Soul: The Seed of Clear Thinking

I want to start out this morning by introducing you to a tongue-in-cheek syndrome called Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. Meditation teacher Warren Lee Cohen talks about this, in his book Raising the Soul. “This is how AAADD manifests itself: I decide to wash my car. As I start towards the garage, I notice that there is mail on the hall table. I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail in the trash can under the table, and notice that the trash can is full. So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the trash first. But then I think, since I’m going to be near the mailbox when I take out the trash anyway, I may as well pay the bills first. I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only one check left. My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go to my desk where I find the can of Coke that I had been drinking. I’m going to look for my checks, but first I need to move the can of Coke aside so that I don’t accidentally knock it over. I notice the Coke is getting warm and decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold. As I head towards the kitchen with the Coke, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye. They need to be watered. I set the Coke down on the counter, and I discover my reading glasses that I’ve been searching for all morning. I decide I’d better put them back on my desk, but first I’m going to water the flowers. I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly I spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table. I realize that tonight when we want to watch TV, we’ll be looking for the remote, but nobody will remember that it’s on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I’ll water the flowers. As I pour water on the flowers, some of it spills on the floor. So, I set the remote back down on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill. Then I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do. At the end of the day,” concludes Warren Lee Cohen, “the car isn’t washed, the bills aren’t paid, the trash hasn’t been taken out, there is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter, there is still only one check in my checkbook, I can’t find the remote, I can’t find my glasses, and I don’t remember what I did with the car keys. Then when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I’m really baffled because I know I was busy all day long, and I’m really tired, but now it’s time to check my email.”

Can you relate? It’s Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. Busy all day long, but nothing really gets done, because it’s hard to maintain undivided attention on the task at hand. Hard to focus on just one thing at a time and not allow ourselves to be distracted by additional problems that inevitably pop up along the way.

And if it’s this way with the things in our outer world, how is it with the inner world of our thoughts?

The careful, deliberate, reasoned search for truth is a cornerstone of our free faith. Says the father of Unitarianism in America, William Ellery Channing, “Without … inward spiritual freedom outward liberty is of little worth. What [does it matter] that I am crushed by no foreign yoke if, through ignorance and vice, through selfishness and fear, I want the command of my own mind? The worst tyrants are those which establish themselves in our own breast. The man who wants force of principle and purpose is a slave, however free the air he breathes. The mind, after all, is our only possession, or, in other words, we possess all through its energy and enlargement.” That’s what the father of Unitarianism says. A capacity to be principled and purposeful in our thinking is simply basic to our way of faith. Without it, as we sail on OUR passenger ship, we’re lost. We can’t reliably read the signs of the times, nor discover what to do next. As Channing says, we fall prey to “a narrow, dark, confused intellect, which sees everything as through a mist, gives to everything the color of its own feelings, confines itself to what coincides with its wishes, contents itself with superficial views, and thus perpetually falls into errors….” This is not free faith. This is not who we are.

This morning, we tend to our most intimate relationship: the one we have with our thoughts. What are some of the tyrants that can establish themselves in us and muddle our thinking? And how might we develop our thinking so that it can be clearer? Today’s sermon is the second installment of the “Planting Seeds of Soul” series, so remember what I said last month about “wax on/wax off.” We’re going to learn our second “wax on/wax off” exercise today, to raise Unitarian Universalist soul in this place. That’s the goal.

But first: tyrants. One that comes immediately to mind is fallacious reasoning, or patterns of thinking that are bad according to logical standards but nevertheless make an impression on people who don’t know any better. Here’s an example of what I mean. I opened my Atlanta Journal-Constitution from yesterday and read that Georgia Congressman Nathan Deal “wants the president to prove he is an American citizen.” The article clarifies: “In June 2008, Obama’s campaign office released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate … that shows he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug, 4, 1961. Government officials in Hawaii have verified that the document is official. Yet Deal and others say they still have doubts.”

In any introductory level logic class, you’d learn that this is an textbook example of an ad hominem fallacy in formation, which tries to discredit a person’s policies and viewpoints not by presenting genuine evidence against them but by attacking the person, rendering his or her character so disgusting that no matter how good the policies are, no matter how penetrating the viewpoint, no one’s paying attention, no one’s listening. This is what the Birther movement hopes for, as it continues to nurture doubts about Obama’s citizenship status even in the face of an official birth certificate….

It’s just been one ad hominem attack after another. Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, joking about the similarity of Barack Obama’s name to that of the terrorist Osama bin Laden—and using the machinery of his organization to spread the joke around until it becomes no joke. Tea Party participants, carrying signs that feature Obama’s face with a Hitler mustache. A Thomas Sowell article, where he says, “Recent videos of American children in school singing songs of praise for Barack Obama were a little much, especially for those of us old enough to remember pictures of children singing the praises of dictators like Hitler, Stalin and Mao.” Do you see the steady building pattern of character assassination here? And too many Americans are completely persuaded by it, too many Americans vulnerable. The tyrant of fallacious reasoning, securing a place in our minds, and we don’t know any better. Not as a Democrat, but as an American, does this concern me, for how can I think about what President Obama is trying to do when psychological strings are being pulled and I can’t think straight? It’s horrible for democracy.

It’s definitely been horrible for reasoned debate about health care reform. Ad hominem fallacies one after another, together with others kind of fallacies. How about this one. I spotted it in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution just a few days ago: “Opponents Rally Against Health Care Bill”: 35 year-old David Seward, saying, “I think health care is expensive, but I like it and I’m scared to death of the government running it … I’m worried about the bureaucracy of the federal government getting involved.” This is what he says, and besides his completely ignoring the fact that government-run Medicare is a great success, do you see the underlying false dichotomy? It’s either big government or small government, and no other alternatives are possible…. Yet the issue is not so much big government vs. small government as the right amount of government really needed to solve the problem, to cut through the greed and the waste of the third-party payer medical-industrial complex. Big government vs. small government doesn’t tell the whole truth about how to solve this problem.

I could go on and on—all the kinds of fallacious thinking that have muddied up the debate around health care reform. Rep. Candace Miller from Michigan, commenting on yesterday’s passage of the health care bill in the House, saying, “We are going to have a complete government takeover of our health care system faster than you can say, `this is making me sick,’” adding that Democrats are intent on passing “a jobs-killing, tax-hiking, deficit-exploding” bill. Sounds like a classic slippery-slope argument to me, one that says that if government takes action to reform the health care system, if it sets a public option side-by-side with multiple private options and enables some REAL competition to take place, then all of a sudden, down the slippery-slope slide we go, and all sorts of horrible, fateful consequences are sure to follow. A classic appeal to fear. I don’t care what political party you belong to. I don’t care which president is in the White House. To me, manipulative language—Republican or Democratic—doesn’t help to create a great country. “Civil institutions,” said William Ellery Channing, “are to be estimated by the free and pure minds to which they give birth.” But our institutions are not being civil, and our minds must struggle against great odds to be free and pure. What would Channing say, if he could see what we see today?

This leads us to a second inner tyrant to become aware of. Besides the tyrant of fallacious reasoning, there is the tyrant of hyperconnectedness in our interactive, digital world. Here, we become experts in skimming and scanning as we flit from Facebook to text message to email to video game—and this can leave our ability to bring a full attention to one thing at a time severely underdeveloped. It can make us unfit to think great thoughts.

Marilee Sprenger talks about this in her wonderful article entitled “Focusing the Digital Brain.” “Let’s look,” she says, “at what happens in the brain of Emily, an average teenager, as she thinks she is focusing on a homework assignment. Emily sits in front of her laptop. Her iPod is playing music by Coldplay. She has three windows open on her computer screen: her Web browser through America Online, MSN Messenger for sending instant messages and e-mail, and her word processing program. Her homework is to write about five causes of the U.S. Civil War.

As Emily is putting her heading on her paper, her cell phone rings. She quickly picks up her phone and a picture of her friend Ivy appears on the screen. ‘Hi Ivy, what’s up?’

‘You’re not going to believe who texted me,’ Ivy says. Emily squeals as she hears the name of someone Ivy is interested in dating. Just then Emily’s computer flashes, ‘You’ve got mail!’ The executive part of her brain drops the conversation with Ivy as she reads a new e-mail from another classmate asking for the homework assignment. Emily answers the e-mail as Ivy rambles on, but she realizes she should get back to work. ‘I’ll text you later, Ivy. I have to get some work done.’

Emily shifts her attention back to the word processing screen. Let’s see, where was I? Her brain must let the snippets of social conversation drop out of her working memory. Attending to the assignment causes Emily’s brain to retrieve long-term memories of her readings and lectures on the Civil War. As she begins to think about the differences between the North and the South before the Civil War, her mind drifts to picturing Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind.

Refocusing takes several seconds as she remembers what Mr. Montgomery told them in class about slavery. Emily types ‘causes of the Civil War’ into Google. Immediately, 12,900,000 hits come up. She clicks on the first link, realizes it doesn’t have any information she is looking for, and tries the next Web site.

Immersed in her search, she is startled by a jangle from her Blackberry. Emily sees Jackson’s text message ‘What r u doing?’ Jackson is Emily’s new love interest, so her brain floods with pleasurable chemicals as she types her reply—these chemicals make it hard to return to homework.

So it goes among the net generation. Multitasking? Not many tasks are getting done.”

Now, I quote Marilee Sprenger at length not to pick on the net generation—after all, I openly confess that I myself have a serious case of Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. In fact, whatever generation we happen to be in—whatever degree of proficiency is ours in up-to-date communication technologies—it seems that the general tenor of the times is rush and gush. Continuous partial attention. How are we going to do the deeply spiritual work of thinking clearly when we have a limited capacity for patience to follow a chain of thoughts from beginning to end—to resist interruption—to focus on one thing and allow it to unfold its secrets?

“[H]onesty of mind,” says William Ellery Channing, “bears an exact proportion to the patience, steadiness, and resolution with which we inquire.” And that’s exactly what we turn to now. Developing this patience, this steadiness, this resolution. How?

Our wax-on/wax off spiritual exercise for this month—for those of you who choose to practice it with me—is “about learning how to cultivate interest in even the most mundane object and by maintaining your undivided attention on it to increase your ability to focus on anything. This is a step in learning how to give your attention freely and completely, whatever and whenever you should choose.” (Warren Lee Cohen).

Four steps:

Step one: Choose a simple, human-made object—an object manufactured rather than one found in nature, like a cup, or a pencil, a pin, a pair of chopsticks. Warren Lee Cohen, the source of this and all the other exercises, says that the less interesting your object appears at first, the more powerful the effects of deliberately focusing on it.

Also be clear on how many objects you’ll focus on over the course of the upcoming month, and for how long each session will be. I’d recommend one object per week, for around 5 to 10 minutes, at the same time every day. Make the decision, and lay out your plan clearly in your journal. Warren Lee Cohen tells the story of a man who spent 20 years contemplating the same pair of wooden chopsticks. Each and every day, he was able to find something new and interesting to think about; and clearly, it wasn’t the chopsticks that were changing—it was him, the quality of attention he was bringing to them. If he can contemplate the same pair of chopsticks for 20 years, surely we can contemplate the same object for a week, at 10 minutes a pop….

That’s step one. Step two is when you’re actually ready to do the exercise. Situate yourself in a comfortable place, and prepare yourself for the exercise by relaxing your body, calming your mind, just like an athlete stretching before a workout, or a musician tuning up an instrument.

Step three is to place before your mind this object that you have chosen to contemplate. This object that, initially, appears boring: A cup, a pencil, a pin. Train your thinking exclusively on this object in a clear and factual way. Focus on one fact and then link it to the next—in step by step fashion, follow your thinking as you deepen your understanding and interest in this simple, ordinary, human-made thing.

For example, say you choose to focus on a pencil. (Thoreau would like that—he was a pencil maker, you know…) You might start by describe how the pencil appears and of what materials it’s made. Then you might go on to describe how these materials were processed to get them into this form—to think through all the stages of manufacture. Then you might go on to consider how the object is used. Then you might think about who invented it, and how its invention is connected with the invention of other similar things. And so on—inquire with patience, steadiness, and resolution….

Notice that in this approach, you just jump right in. But there are alternative approaches to keep in mind. Do the one that works best for you. One alternative is to do a little research about your object first, before you start thinking about it. Another alternative is to do no research in advance but to develop questions naturally through the course of your own thought processes and then, when the time feels right, seek out answers through research. Enriched by that, return to the object and keep on thinking about it, keep on going deeper.

Finally, there’s step four. When your five or ten minutes is done, review the general direction of your thinking. What was the initial fact that grabbed your attention? Where did you go from there?

And this is the exercise. Do it along with the “review of the day” that I introduced last month. “Even if you cannot slow down the pace of your life,” says Warren Lee Cohen, “you can create regular moments of slowness or concentration each day. These can then become seeds, essential reminders of the qualities you would like to cultivate more in life.” That’s right. We’re planting seeds of soul. They look small—focusing on a boring-looking object for 10 minutes seems small—but if we do the exercises faithfully, the results will be big. Will strengthen our minds against manipulation. Will counteract Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder and counterbalance the continuous partial attention of the digital brain. “The mind, after all, is our only possession,” says William Ellery Channing; “we possess all through its energy and enlargement.” So let us energize and enlarge it. Make Channing proud!

Remarks at a Healthcare Reform Prayer Rally, sponsored by Atlantans Building Leadership for Empowerment (ABLE)

“Of all forms of inequality,” said Martin Luther King, “injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” We need a world that works better for all, not just some. And I know that the way there involves figuring out so many details. But this is not a time to peck our vision of a better America to death with an endless number of “how” questions. How this, how that. You can stall anything by demanding to know every detail up front. In the case of health care reform, the answer to how is YES. We need to take advantage of this historic opportunity to create real change to the status quo. The answer is YES.

But we face tremendous obstacles. Reminds me of an old story by Aesop, about a man and his son taking a donkey to market. Didn’t matter what they did, they did it wrong. Bystanders screaming at them. Mocking and jeering. Don’t let the donkey go without a rider—what’s a donkey for, but to ride upon? The boy shouldn’t ride while his father walks—it’s disrespectful! The father shouldn’t ride—what about his poor little son? Scoffing and jeering like this. By this time the boy and his father don’t know what to do—they are besides themselves. They try something different—both ride the donkey—but the complaints still come: this time they are being cruel to animals. The boy and his father think hard—how can we make sure that no one is going to be dissatisfied by what we do? And then the solution hits them. They cut down a pole, tie the donkey’s feet to it, raise the pole and the donkey to their shoulders, start walking. When they get to the Market Bridge, the donkey gets one of his feet loose, kicks out and causes the boy to drop his end of the pole. In the struggle, the donkey falls over the bridge, and because his forefeet are tied together, he drowns. Please all, and you will please none.

I’m thinking about this story today. We need to bring quality, affordable health care to market. We need to get it safely across the Market Bridge, get it there all in one piece, don’t allow ourselves to go to crazy lengths to please everyone, don’t allow ourselves to be dismayed or discouraged by bystanders along the way who are saying one thing and then saying another thing. Blue dog Democrats who criticize the public health insurance option, even though this is truly the tactic that will create the most change and challenge the greed of the medical-industrial complex. Then there’s the right-wing propaganda machine—screamers on talk radio and Fox News—spewing out lies about death panels and government take-overs and how reform is going to ruin the economy and mortgage our country’s financial future. And then there’s the gullibility of people who believe the lies. All of these represent bystanders telling President Obama and telling the Democrats that that they are doing it wrong. But it’s the Democrats who are wanting to get that donkey to market. Leaders in this country have been trying to get that donkey for almost a hundred years now. And now is the time.

Clearly, health care reform—especially with the public option—is not going to please everyone. It’s absolutely not going to please Republicans and right wingers who care more about ruining Obama and galvanizing their party than doing the right thing. It’s absolutely not going to please insurance companies who speak out of both sides of their mouths, saying that they want to ensure a competitive market but then refusing to see how the public option will do just that. My prayer is that we don’t fall all over ourselves to please these groups. Got to love them—they are children of God like we are. But we have to be strong in our resolve. We have to bring that donkey straight to market. Get it across Market Bridge safely. The answer to how is YES. We need a world that works better for all, not just some. Let our prayer be for God to strengthen our leaders, strengthen the moral vision in them to do the right thing. May they be undistracted. May they be undaunted. Though screamers surround them and cast frightening visions of how the world will end if health care reform with the public option is passed, may they be calm and confident. Calm and confident. Let it be so.

Abortion, Euthanasia, Stem Cell Research, Oh My!

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav once said, “The world is a narrow ridge. The key to crossing is not to be afraid.”

We take this to heart this morning as we consider some of the most controversial, hot-button ethical issues of our time: abortion, euthanasia, and stem cell research. The narrow ridge that each of these separately and together represent. The key to crossing.

But why these three issues, and why now?

Simply this: because of current events close to home and close to heart. Just two weeks ago, on May 31, we heard the news about Dr. George Tiller, shot to death as he stood in the foyer of his church in Wichita Kansas. His women’s health clinic had long been a flash point in the battle over abortion rights because it was one of the few that performed late-term abortions. Dr. Tiller’s murder is especially ironic because just several weeks before, President Obama had delivered the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, talking about “how we must live together as one human family” in order to address the pressing problems of our times, including “violent extremism.” He says, “The question, then, is how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without … demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?” “Nowhere do these questions come up more powerfully than on the issue of abortion,” says President Obama, and then, two weeks later, as if to underscore his point, Dr. Tiller is murdered. A great tragedy. My heart goes out to his family as well as to all health care workers and professionals who put it on the line every day to protect women’s health and constitutional rights. Just right across the street—the Feminist Women’s Health Center….

It’s close to home and close to heart. And then there is euthanasia. Regarding this, the current event that comes to mind happened back in late February and early March. I remember opening up my Atlanta Journal-Constitution and reading the March 1 front-page headline: “Suicide group tests society’s limits.” Here’s the first several lines of the article: “Critics charge that the Georgia-based group Final Exit Network is undermining national efforts to make assisted suicide universally accepted and legal. But supporters and members of Final Exit Network said the group merely wants to extend the right to die beyond people who are terminally ill to include those who simply believe their quality of life isn’t worth living. They believe Georgia—where four members of the group are being charged with assisted suicide after a Georgia Bureau of Investigation sting operation last week—is now the new battleground in the fight to extend this right of ‘self-deliverance’ to those whom doctors have not diagnosed as terminally ill.” These are the opening lines of the article. There had been a sting operation, in this state. Four people charged, one of whom (I learned later) is a Unitarian Universalist. In a very public way, the euthanasia issue had come home to roost.

Reading through the article a little further, I saw a quote from the controversial assisted suicide advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian, indicating his disagreement with what the Final Exit Network group is doing, as well as his firm belief that physician-assisted suicide should be reserved only for people judged to have no more than six months to live. And I was struck by this. A diversity of opinion about what a good death means, within the euthanasia movement as in all other movements. Of course. Diversity of perspective on when the prolongation of life goes against human dignity and is truly worse than death. Publicly the debate goes on, and it goes on privately as well, even when an aging parent has made clear his or her do-not-resuscitate request, and yet in the heat of the moment, faced with the doctor’s urgency to save life at all costs, faced with our own grief at the loss of a loved one, do we withhold antibiotics or surgery—do we say no to life-support—and allow death to take its natural course? What do we do?

It’s close to home and close to heart. Abortion, euthanasia, and stem cell research as well. Last week, a congregant shared a story with me about her grand-nephew who has hemophilia. Born with it. Discovered by his parents in a horrible moment when, after his circumcision, he would not stop bleeding. From that time till now, he’s had to take a special infusion twice weekly—delivered by needle—so that his blood will clot normally. Yet there is hope that this twice-a-week needle regimen might end someday, through stem cell research. When Peter’s sister, Selena, was born, the parents had her umbilical cord frozen and handed over to a private research facility. In five years, the private researchers say, they hope to have achieved enough progress in working with the stem cells in Selena’s umbilical cord that they can be used on Peter, enabling his body to produce the blood-clotting factor on his own.

A cure like this is just the tip of the iceberg. Diabetes, blindness, Parkinson’s disease, glaucoma, AIDS, cystic fibrosis, stroke, lymphoma, infertility, cancer: all of these and more are potentially resolvable through stem cell research. No wonder some people call the stem cell “the Aladdin’s Lamp of biology.” Rub it, and a genie pops out and grants wishes. But President Bush wasn’t buying, because for him, days-old embryos are destroyed in the process, and he sees this as the taking of life. Some liberals stood with him too, although for very different reasons. Pro-choice feminists concerned about how such research might turn women’s eggs and wombs into commodities. Environmentalists wary of biotechnology and cautious about genetic tinkering. An odd-couple of conservative and liberal standing together—the result being the banning of federal funding for research into stem lines created after 2001. Only research on the 22 stem cell lines already in existence would be federally funded, but the problem here is that these lines “lack genetic diversity and were generated with early methods that produced poorer quality stem cell lines than are now available.” This last point comes from Unitarian Universalist Molly Walsh, who adds that they “also include no disease-specific lines, so scientists can’t use [them] to study diseases. [To make matters even worse,] the original lines were all isolated using a mouse-based media, and these lines would run the risk of introducing mouse viruses to humans, so they will not be usable to treat humans.” It’s true: newer and better stem cell lines could still be developed and studied, but without any federal finding, and this is the big problem. As a 2001 Chicago Tribune article puts it, “federal finding is key because it can unleash a huge army of university researchers who could greatly speed up important discoveries. Without federal money, embryonic research would proceed at a snail’s pace in privately funded labs.” In 2001, the Aladdin’s Lamp of biology was within reach, but President Bush stepped back.

But that was then, and this is now. This past March, President Obama reversed the ban on federal funding, meaning that the pace of research would step up tremendously with a focus on newer stem cell lines. “Medical miracles do not happen simply by accident,” he said, and then he promised his administration would make up for the ground lost under his predecessor. “Rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values. […] But I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly.”

So much has happened in just the past three months. Abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research coming close to home and close to heart.

We are braving the narrow ridge. And now it is time to ask, What’s the key to crossing? How to move forward?

We know what Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav says about this: Be not afraid.

In particular, there are three sources of encouragement that I would have us consider today.

The first is this: that we should not feel like failures if these controversies are hard to resolve and evince a “push-down, pop-up effect”—as in, we push down conflict over here, but over there it pops up again…. We should not feel like failures because abortion, euthanasia, and stem cell research are all new faces of an ancient storyline which is this: human ingenuity engaged to ease suffering and enhance life, with the ironic result that feathers are ruffled and arguments explode over limits, over the difference between playing doctor and playing God. The storyline is ancient, and we do well to remember this in the present, as hot-off-the-press news breaks over us like a tide.

The specific myth I’m thinking of is at least 3000 years old, from ancient Greece. Prometheus, who is said to have created human beings out of clay, in the image of the Gods. Prometheus, who gifted humans with the arts of civilization, such as writing, mathematics, agriculture, medicine, and science. Prometheus, who saw his children’s suffering and, out of compassion, wanted to improve their lot in life—so he gave them technologies to focus their minds and strengthen their hands, including the use of fire. He stole fire from the Gods and gave it to us. Why he had to steal it is an open question. But steal it he did, and for this, he was punished by Zeus. Chained to a rock for all eternity, where an eagle would come everyday to feed on his liver (which, because Prometheus is an immortal, would regenerate overnight, allowing the whole scene to repeat ad infinitum). It’s an ugly picture. Vicious harm coming to one who sought only to help humanity, because in doing so he transgressed limits established by the Gods. He stole.

It’s fascinating to take this myth and overlay it on the issues we’re talking about today. All sorts of resonances emerge. One in particular relates to the role of technological innovation in driving conflict. For Prometheus, it’s the arts of civilization, especially firemaking. Today, it’s the availability of modern abortion technologies that are safe and ensure women’s reproductive health; it’s aggressive end-of-life care protocols like ventilator support, resuscitation, and the feeding tube that can keep people alive long after their quality of life has diminished irreparably; it’s also powerful microscopes and lab techniques that enable work on a cellular level. What the ancient myth is trying to say is that technological innovation changes our world immeasurably—generates all sorts of new questions—and thus can’t help but spark conflict. It did for Prometheus, and it does for us, it will continue to do so in the future.

The task before us, as we walk the narrow ridge, is only to do all that can be done. Not to shoulder a burden of shame for being unable to clean up that which is inherently messy—and by that I mean the human condition. Technological innovation will shake things up. Established orders will be transgressed, in pursuit of what some people think is progress. Each side will see the other as some kind of thief, and feelings will run high. (Remember this last point in particular, when we get to a quote from Tom DeLay in a moment.)

It’s just the human condition, and we can do only all that can be done. This honesty about ourselves can be a source of encouragement for us, and now here is another source: this insight: that acknowledging the complexity of issues surrounding abortion and euthanasia and stem cell research is OK to do—that it doesn’t represent some kind of evasion or avoidance of duty, as when some politicians filibuster a bill to death, or some fundamentalists spout bumper-sticker theology, as in “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” The issues are just too complex for this. Each specific case has unique aspects that can’t be ignored as we evaluate them. There can be multiple moral principles that appear to apply equally and yet are in conflict with each other. There can even be a single moral rule we all agree on—people on all sides of the debate—and yet this single rule is interpreted and applied differently.

Take the Terri Schiavo case. For about 15 years, Terri had been in a persistent vegetative state. If you had looked at a CAT scan of her brain, you would have seen that large portions of it were gone, replaced by cerebrospinal fluid. Recovery was simply not possible. So in 2000, Florida state judge George Greer ruled that Terri would not have wanted to continue living under her circumstances because they were undignified, the quality of her life was negligible, so he ordered her feeding tube removed. That was in 2000, and after that, the controversy only increased. The tube was removed only to be replaced by virtue of a civil suit coming from Terri’s parents. They wanted her to remain alive as long as possible because they believed that all life, no matter what its quality happens to be, is sacred. On March 18, 2005, Terri’s feeding tube was once again removed. That’s when congressional leaders decided to intervene. House Majority Leader (at the time) Tom Delay called it “an act of medical terrorism” and also said, “one thing that God has brought us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America.” That’s what he said—and I wonder if this is how Zeus might have sounded, when he found out about Prometheus stealing fire—all self-righteous and pompous…. In the end, in an act that was widely hailed as unconstitutional, all but five House Republicans voted for emergency legislation throwing the Schiavo case into the federal courts, the Senate agreed, and President Bush signed it into law.

It was a mess. Feelings running high on all sides. Highly ironic, since all sides saw themselves as speaking on behalf of human dignity. The Golden Rule. Love One Another. Do No Harm. Revere Life. This is the spiritual core of morality, the center, the essence, and we are united in this. Every religion on this planet, from every age, says the same basic thing. Love One Another. How can we disagree on that?

Yet this core religious value, which unites us in the abstract: what happens when we use it to help us figure out social policy—or the politics of whether or not to remove Terri’s feeding tube? All of a sudden, we find ourselves deeply divided, because what does Human Dignity mean, exactly? How do you interpret it in terms of legislation, or rules?

Human Dignity: these two simple words hide a world of complexity. Are we talking quality of life, so when the quality is poor, one’s human dignity is violated and the right-to-die practice of euthanasia is justified? Or does human dignity mean the sanctity of life no matter what, no matter what the condition, so even if you have someone in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years you keep the feeding tube in, because life is an absolute value, life is a great mystery, like a star shining, and who are we to say exactly when the shine should end?

In other words, we’re not all reasoning from the same set of premises. We might possess a different set of facts, or a different set of errors. How about different social biases? Different takes on science, or scripture? Different emotional premises? Though we all start with the same Golden Rule, different premises will lead us to different conclusions.

Things can’t help but be complex, and communication difficult, when a reality like this is before us. That’s why President Obama’s commencement speech at Notre Dame is so important and yet another source of encouragement—the third and last source for our purposes here and now. How do we work through the conflicts? Not by “reducing those with differing views to caricature.” Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, for example, referring to Dr. George Tiller as “Tiller the Baby Killer,” saying “He’s guilty of Nazi stuff.” And then some liberal activists, on the other hand, taking the worst side of the pro-life camp (exemplified by people like Bill O’Reilly) and making it sound like this is the best it has to offer, and thus easily and instantly dismissing it.

Not like this. But through “fair-minded words.” “Because when we do that,” says President Obama, “when we open up our hearts and minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe, that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground. That’s when we begin to say, ‘Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any women is not made casually, it has both moral and spiritual dimensions.’”

Life is perennially messy. The ancient myth of Prometheus tells us that. Yet we must again and again strive to find out how we can live together as one human family. Stop the increasing trend towards violence and hate speech. Hold the Bill O’Reilly’s of both the right and the left accountable. Begin again in love. Discover at least the possibility of common ground, and courageously move forward. That’s how we cross the narrow ridge. That’s how.

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.