I had the great honor of serving as the lay speaker at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Eastern Slopes (UUFES) on Sunday, August 25. This is my sermon from that service.
One
night I was walking down Park St. in Concord, on my way to a NH Peace Action
board meeting. Along the way, I ran into a fellow board member and we chatted as
we walked. We began discussing some
politician who had said/done something stupid and I said, “I could just
slap the snot out of that guy.” We looked at each other and quickly I said, “Now
there’s a fine sentiment for a peace activist.” We laughed ruefully. But there
you have it. How do we work for peace in an increasingly angry world?
Every
day brings more reason to be aggravated – and that’s compounded by the
knowledge that we don’t even hear half of the stories we should be hearing.
Peace
activists are generally kindly, often spiritual people. Some are genuine
peacemakers; able to bring disparate groups together and reach agreements. Some
are peacekeepers; able to keep the peace at events where emotions are high and
can get out of control. Naturally there are many UU’s who fall into these
categories. They read spiritual texts, they meditate, they post Rumi quotes on
their Facebook pages. As for me: I
have all of the spiritual depth of a Dixie cup. I wince at what appear to me to
be platitudes. I’m cynical, sometimes bitter, and frequently angry. And I am
not alone. As a friend says, "I say what I mean, I mean what I say, but
sometimes I say it mean."
There
is so much to be angry about. Prisoners are still being tortured at Guantanamo
Bay. Still. Over half the federal discretionary budget goes to the Pentagon,
while we’re told we have to cut food stamps and Social Security. That same
Pentagon can’t pass an audit and can’t account for over a trillion dollars.
That’s just a crumb from the table of outrage. There is so much more.
In
general people seem angrier than they used to, although maybe that's just
because people's opinions are more widely known than they used to be because of
the internet and the ability to anonymously comment on news sites and blogs.
The day that Bradley Manning came out as Chelsea, one of the first stories I
saw advised, "Avoid all comment sections today." It was good advice.
Too late, but good advice that hopefully others heeded.
Recently
the Concord Police Dept. applied for a grant to the Dept. of Homeland Security
to purchase an armored vehicle called a BearCat. My first reaction was
predictable outrage. This was Pentagon/ defense contractor pork! This was the
militarization of police departments! I went to a public hearing, and listened
to the police chief. And against my will, I was swayed. I still disagree
strongly with the sweetheart defense contractor deals and Pentagon pork – but I
understand why the chief wants this vehicle. I’m very uncomfortable with how I
feel right now. Why didn’t anyone tell me that I’d spend my whole life growing
up? This thinking through stuff is painful. Knee jerk responses are so much
easier and more comfortable!
Thinking
can lead to anger. And fortunately, thinking can lead us out.
A fellow NHPA board member loaned me his
copy of William Sloane Coffin’s book Credo, saying that he reads it to feel
good. “He was such an optimist,” Frank told me. Other members of the board have
devoted a lifetime to peace activism, and have achieved a level of calm and
acceptance that I admire and hope to one day claim for myself. John helped
Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin attempt to levitate the Pentagon in 1967. He’s
involved in the ongoing work to close down the School for the Americas, in
Georgia – a US school that trains military leaders and future dictators of
Latin America. Frank and John are smart, kind, and peaceful men who just keep
going about the work that they have chosen to do. They’ve chosen their area of
interest to work on, and they just keep plugging away.
Ruth
McKay was a lifelong peace activist who died in 2005. She became a counselor to
conscientious objectors in the 1960’s. She was active in the Civil Rights
movement. After she married, she and her husband chose to live below the
poverty level, to avoid paying taxes that went to fund war. I met Ruth and her
husband Ralph in the 1980’s, while demonstrating at the nuclear power plant in
Seabrook. We were arrested together a few times. For decades Ruth had an ongoing vigil in front of the
weapons manufacturer Sanders Lockheed in Nashua, which is now known as BAE
Systems. Ruth called her actions dissent, saying that the word “protest”
sounded “too angry.” Her form of principled, peaceful dissent resulted in
numerous arrests for civil disobedience, where she won the admiration of police
and judges for her calm demeanor, her principles, and her joyous personality.
Ruth was a religious and spiritual person. Is there hope for those of us who
are not?
How
do we press forward in the face of outrage? How do we continue to believe in
the inherent worth and dignity of every person, when some persons might be
found not just wanting, but perilously close to worthless?
Only
with the greatest conscious effort. This is the real work of peace. It begins
within. And with that work comes a level of acceptance of who and what we are,
right here right now. I can continue to strive to be someone who posts Rumi
quotes, but right now I am not.
Acceptance
means accepting the excruciatingly slow pace of change.
Musician
Greg Brown’s lyrics to the song “The Poet’s Game” echo my frustration:
I watched my
country turn into
a coast-to-coast
strip mall
and I cried out
in a song:
if we could do
all that in thirty years,
then please
tell me you all -
why does good
change take so long?
Martin
Luther King assures us that “the arc of
the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
I
hate to get pushy about all this, but, I’m not getting any younger here,
Positive Change. Could you pick up the pace a bit?
In
this increasingly angry world, it's hard to know what to have faith in. So many
of the institutions we were brought up to believe in are in disarray. The very
rocks and trees are in peril as a result of our failures to take threats to
them seriously. And because some of us are so intransigent, how do we have
faith in our fellow humans? How do we have any faith in a positive future?
A
union organizer I know says that given the correct information, most people
will do the right thing. I'm not sure I share her optimism, but it seems to me
that we have little choice. We have to have that faith. Without it, how can we
go on?
Sloane
Coffin writes:
Socrates had it wrong; it is not
the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living.
Descartes too was mistaken; "Cogito ergo sum - I think therefore I
am?" Nonsense. "Amo ergo sum" - "I love therefore I am."
Or, as with unconscious elegance St. Paul wrote, "Now abide faith, hope,
love, these three; and the greatest of these is love." I believe that. I
believe it is better not to live than not to love.
In
the end there aren't many choices. We can detach from the frenzy and refuse to
participate. We can keep on swimming upstream, like salmon, battered
occasionally against the rocks but powerless to resist the pull of nature,
instinct - or the internet. We can strive for balance - find the work that
calls to us and do it, setting limits and making sure to take time to enjoy all
aspects of our lives.
What
is increasingly clear to me though, is that I must/we must all keep trying to
work for a peaceful world. In that, there is no other choice. When we fail at
the high standards we set for ourselves, we must return to the wise
words of Robert Eller- Isaacs in his Litany of Atonement (number 637 in the
back of the hymnal)
For remaining silent when a single
voice would have made a difference
We forgive ourselves and each other;
we begin again in love
For each time that our fears have
made us rigid and inaccessible
We forgive ourselves and each
other; we begin again in love
For each time that we have struck
out in anger without just cause
we forgive ourselves and each
other; we begin again in love
For each time that our greed has
blinded us to the needs of others
we forgive ourselves and each
other; we begin again in love
For the selfishness that sets us
apart and alone
we forgive ourselves and each
other; we begin again in love
For falling short of the
admonitions of the spirit
we forgive ourselves and each
other; we begin again in love
For losing sight of our unity
We forgive ourselves and each
other;
we begin again in love
For those and so for so many acts
both evident and subtle which have fueled the illusion of separateness
we forgive ourselves and each
other;
we begin again in love.
Over
and over. Forgiveness. Love. Swords into plowshares. Over and over till we get
it right.
