Sunday, October 24, 2004
"The Future of Reason" - October 24, 2004
Alone in all history (Jesus) estimated the true greatness of (humans). One man was true to what is in you and me. . . But what a distortion did his doctrines and memory suffer . . . in the following ages. There is no doctrine of the reason which will bear to be taught by the understanding. The high chant in the next age was, "I will kill you if you say he was a man." Churches are not built on his principles. He spoke of miracles; for he felt that human life was a miracle, and all that we (do), and he knew that this miracle shines as the character (grows). But the word miracle, as pronounced by the Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.
In college I had a friend named Pete who came from Northfield, Massachusetts. Since we hailed from the same part of the state we often rode together to Maine and back for holidays. Pete was a great guy. He was warm and friendly, and also lived down the hall from me. Like me, Pete was a football player. While football at Bates College is hardly what you would call high powered or intense, people do become injured in this sport calculated to crush bones. One Saturday, Pete had some bones crushed, or at least twisted. We saw him carried off the field and into the locker room. After a trip to the local hospital, we learned when he returned to the dorm that surgery was recommended to repair his injured knee. Later when I saw him hobbling down the hall on his crutches, I asked him what his plans were. He mentioned the surgery, but then informed me that he would not be having this kind of invasive procedure on his body. In fact, he would be having no procedures, other than prayer. You see, it turned out Pete was a Christian Scientist. Others of us talked about my friend that day, saying basically, "he's nuts, he doesn't believe in doctors?, what's wrong with this guy?, how stupid can you get?
Stupid or not, Peter never had surgery, and never played football again. Physically the swelling went down, and in a matter of time, he walked again. After he graduated I did not stay in touch, and so I cannot say what the long term ramifications of his decision were. Since then I have been aware of a number of controversial cases involving Christian Science parents and sick children who were not treated medically. Some of the kids who were prayed over eventually died. These are not simple cases as they involve issues such as freedom of religion, parental rights, and the rights of the child to receive proper medical attention. What happens when a child who might have lived, dies because the parent believes with all their heart that prayer is the best response. Probably most of us would say save the child. A life trumps a religious belief any day. Or does it?
The central issue at hand is who has the truth? A Christian Scientist believes that someone becomes ill because that person has something wrong spiritually. Once you have adjusted your life by getting right with God through prayer, you should return to the pink of health. Otherwise it appears that something is fundamentally maladjusted about you, and God is punishing you, or helping you see a better way. Last week we said that we determine whether something we believe is true or not by testing it. Here is the perfect test: if you get sicker, the implication is you are not a good person. While most of us would readily acknowledge that a positive attitude helps when we are ill, or even that marshaling healing thoughts about others in prayer can give added strength, the idea that some vengeful God has picked you out for suffering for some unknown reason seems patently absurd. This is akin to the great revivalists of the 1700's saying that an earthquake was caused by God because he was angry about how sinful people are, and it was a sign that they should repent. While we acknowledge that others have the right to their own beliefs because we believe in freedom of religion, we also realize when we hear of the content of their faith that, even though we don't publicly condemn it, we certainly disagree.
We do not believe the same things are true, but sometimes our tolerance makes it seem that we do affirm things that we do not.
The problem is that when children die due to people's beliefs, we can't just smile and think to ourselves, oh it's nice that they have such an absurd belief. Our Parish Committee is presently wrestling with the question of whether to rent space to the spiritualist church. Spiritualists are a religious group that communicate with the dead. It is one thing to promote freedom of religion, but we also have to ask if we want this belief system to be inadvertently associated with us if they use our building. Spiritualism has a long history of quackery and sham to deceive people who otherwise grieve over the loss of loved ones. One of the odd things about this is that mainline Christian churches often question the legitimacy of this group who speaks to the dead, and yet their own central beliefs include such absurd things as virgin births, resurrected dead people, and heavens with angel wings. If they looked at themselves critically, they might realize it is an instance of the pot calling the kettle black.
Truth is a hard thing to discern. No one wants to see their own faults or foibles in the mirror, or in their constituency. Time Magazine featured a recent cover story on, "Who Owns the Truth," and described how political partisans want people to see the world their way. No where was the twisting of the truth more obvious than in the vice-presidential debate, when one of the candidates denied ever meeting the other, even though it was patently true that he had. This has unnerving implications no matter which way you read it. If he is just lying then there is a question of character with regards to his moral ability to govern. If he is not lying, then it appears that he is delusional, and we would have to question his mental capacity to govern. Do we want someone unstable occupying this office? There are your choices. It becomes so unsettling, we almost believe him, despite the evidence. In fact William James predicted and even okayed this when he wrote in his Principles of Psychology, that reality means simply relation to our emotional and active life. "Whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real. " This can make for any number of absurd possibilities that are considered real. No wonder James' descendent Alice in the novel Jamesland, is trying to avoid his influence!
One of Alice's friends in that novel is the Unitarian Universalist minister Helen Harland. In the reading from the novel we see Helen's fetish for making fun of religious oddities. The idea is that people's absurd little beliefs amuse her. Do we find them funny, too? Or is it potentially worse? People are sometimes amused when I relate my background in the Protestant Fundamentalist church of my youth. Many of you have heard of my childhood passion for dinosaurs and my Sunday School teacher who informed me that since these creatures were not in the Bible, they did not exist. The Bible with its non-scientific understanding of creation says that God goes straight from creatures like lions and tigers and bears to people with no millions of years before, after or in between. After she denied my scientifically tested truth, I was sorely tempted to make fun of her fantasies that were ancient myths at best and modern delusions at worst, if you understand them as serious science. She believed in a God who flooded the earth out of anger, sent every kind of plague to torture the Egyptians, and told Abraham to sacrifice his child. There was little historical or archeological truth that was known about this Hebrew tribe who escaped from bondage in Egypt, and yet she believed all the stories were literal truth because someone had once told her they were, even though there was no evidence whatsoever to confirm any of this. While I had all sorts of bones and books and carbon dating, my truth was simply not to be believed. I left fundamentalism behind because it was a religion that denied my mind's ability to think and to question or doubt any belief that seemed totally irrational.
A half century ago, the historian Earle Morse Wilbur said that the three cornerstones of Unitarianism are freedom, reason and tolerance. These foundations all grow from the beginnings of our faith in eastern Europe when the great Protestant reformer Francis David went on a personal journey from Catholicism to Lutheranism to Calvinism to Unitarianism. Freedom meant the free search for truth. No one should compel or force us to believe anything that we cannot believe. Tolerance meant that we should allow everyone to express their own opinion about matters of faith. In what is present day Romania, the first edict of tolerance in history was declared by a Unitarian king in 1568. Finally, there was reason in the interpretation of scripture, which then was central to all religious belief. This role of reason has, by its very use, expanded to mean the use of all our critical faculties in religious matters. For one thing it became quite clear when people examined the scriptures critically, they found the doctrine of the Trinity was a later addition. Other central dogmas of Christianity were similarly non-Biblical. There were scholars, like Erasmus, who knew this, but could not question the church, until these three hallmarks of Unitarianism, marking a new way to approach faith, emerged more than 400 years ago. Freedom, reason and tolerance meant: continue searching for faith, it is ever unfolding; listen to others, be understanding of their beliefs, and finally use your mind and determine for yourself whether some text or some belief is literal truth or not.
Over the centuries liberal religion centered its open search for religious truth upon the unfolding promises of humanity rather than upon total acceptance of old dogmatic truths about the nature of people and the world we live in. Reason became a liberal embodiment of an affirmation that science and religion could work together in accepting rational truth while still affirming the mystery and wonder of creation. My father once remarked to me that there was not enough fantasy in my religion. He wanted the old consolations of salvation and eternal life, but to me these seemed to be irrational hopes, that made life itself into a literal fantasy, a completely untrue fiction that had little basis in human experience. We Unitarian Universalists have developed a faith that can be discerned through nature, through experience and the world around us. This faith is captured in Emerson's words to the new Unitarian ministers in 1838 in which Jesus is characterized as a simple human being who merely fulfills the best that is in us, and his life's deeds are characterized not as supernatural Godly events from beyond, but as part and parcel of the miraculous nature of life itself.
One might assume that this rational approach to life would have gained general acceptance in the world in the wake of the growth of educational knowledge, but something drastic has happened to the future of reason. We have failed to use our critical faculties to challenge the growing world wide onslaught of fundamentalism.. Up until the 20th century most people lived by the meaning of myths. With the debunking of myths by the modern secular world and the use of reason, most people lost their sense of myth and meaning. In response to this, the rise of fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism, and especially as most publicized in Islam, means that we have large groups of people living around us who absolutely believe that they hold the key to truth, and will seek vengeance upon apostates like us who do not believe as they do. What Sam Harris makes clear in his book The End of Faith, is that it is not just fanatics who have brokered their use of reason for a ticket to absolute truth, it is our friends and neighbors who have accepted these handed down dogmas as primordial truths. What might be construed as mental illness in a different context is accepted as gospel. As Harris says, "While religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are."
The other night my wife Andrea and I were discussing the causes of this rise in fundamentalism. She theorizes that with the loss of community and the rise of modernism, people feel adrift in the world. There is too much information and too little time or connection to make sense of the things we see and read. The entire last century introduced genocide to the world on a mass scale, and now weapons of mass destruction exacerbate this fear while the media heightens the nearness of a sense of dread. There is heightened anxiety in the world that people's core understanding of life, family and community are being eroded. In response many people have abandoned reason for absolute truth, a feeling of belonging, and guarantees of salvation. The one sure thing for these people to make sense of the tragedies of life is to believe that it will all be made better by a God who takes care of you, and will guarantee salvation for you and your family. For Islamic terrorists whose world is dominated by Western values, a ticket to heaven is blessed assurance.
These absolute beliefs have implications for us. Whereas modern society was once happy to declare freedom of belief, what happens when our principle of tolerance of others begins to effect society? When a Christian Science child dies, or a pro-life fanatic murders a doctor who performs abortions, we have to take notice that the beliefs have important life ramifications. Sam Harris says this is why we can longer tolerate tolerance to the extreme. These people with absolute beliefs want to impose their absolutism on us, and it behooves us to not accept them with absolute tolerance. What kind of response can we make to a world where even people we consider normal and rational hold these absurd beliefs? I think it is up to us to say these religions play on your greatest fears about life and death, and give you false hopes that at best are just not true, and at worst are downright dangerous. I think it is up to us to be brave enough to live truthfully and help others to, as well. As Nelson Mandela said, it is not our darkness that scares us. It is our light, our strength and our power we are afraid of. We need to be less afraid of our power.
In the novel Jamesland, the minister asks, how do people live in the world? It is clear hat people need consolation for their fears, an understanding of tragedy, and sacred values to uphold them. After his paralysis, people told Christopher Reeve that prayer and faith in God would help, but he continued to be devastated. He tried, but he only ended up feeling there was something wrong with him spiritually, he writes: "Finally, I stopped beating myself up . . . Gradually I have come to believe that spirituality is found in the way we live our daily lives. It means spending time thinking about others. It's not so hard to imagine that there is some kind of higher power. (But) we don't need to know what form it takes or exactly where it exists; just to honor it and try to live by it is enough. Because we are human we will often fail, but at least we know that we do not deserve to be punished. That knowledge makes us safe and willing to try again." I think Reeve probably found he was using all his energy to believe in something ridiculous. God was not going to give him some free ticket to salvation. But he had to face that. There is a story from the Sufi tradition in Islam about Nasrudin. Nasrudin rode the train to work every day. One day the conductor asked him for his ticket. He fumbled around and couldn't find it. He even looked in other people's pockets, and then in their bags. Finally the conductor said, "I am sure you have a ticket. Why don't you look in your breast pocket, that is where most men keep it?" But Nasrudin said, "oh no, I can't look there. Why if it wasn't there, I would have no hope."
Nasrudin feared facing the truth that he might not have the ticket. What if his ticket to heaven was gone? He felt it was better to have false hope than know the truth. Yet Christopher Reeve found false hopes were merely that, false. He was going to have to find hope for himself and he then faced the truth about his situation, and realized how much love and healing he could bring to others, and thus to himself. He helps us realize that we are all loved and worthy however life finds us or what it does to us. Rather than taking the easy way out or follow false truths, Reeve adopted the spiritual discipline of reason. This is a gift we gave to the world long ago, and now it is one that needs to be offered once more. We must give reason a future before ancient, outdated religious absurdities consume us. Life, as we all know, is tiring, draining and difficult. Finding meaning, building relationships, and eventually facing illness and death is painful and difficult.
When we bring reason back to the world we help others focus on their true fears and concerns, and not some false promises. Our promise may be harder but it is the path to honesty and integrity rather than falsehoods and sham. When reason has a future once again we will have loving and truthful relationships, and eventually a more peaceful world.
In the process of learning to live my new life, I had no idea that I was becoming a Unitarian . . . Where people can be truly religious because they can be true to themselves, where honest doubt is not taken for heresy, and where the beliefs of the past and the present become the inspiration for future growth and discovery. "
Sunday, October 17, 2004
"The Values Game" - October 17, 2004
To worship God is nothing other than to serve the people.
It does not need rosaries, prayer carpets, or robes.
All peoples are members of the same body, created from one essence.
If fate brings suffering to one member
The others cannot stay at rest.
Christopher Reeve died this week. Reeve, who came to fame as our most recent incarnation of Superman, won further fame by the inspirational courage he had shown in recent years after suffering near complete paralysis in a fall from a horse. Reeve was a Unitarian Universalist who described his liberal faith in an interview with Reader's Digest. "It gives me a moral compass. I often refer to Abraham Lincoln, who said, ŒWhen I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion.' " Reeve went on to say, "I think we all have a little voice inside us that will guide us. It may be God. I don't know. But I think that if we shut out all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right thing to do." Reeve became a real life Superman by inspiring others to overcome their personal difficulties, and by doing the right thing to aid and assist others.
Do you believe in that still, small voice crying out inside you that this is the right way to live, or the right thing to do. Is there a conscience or a God there guiding you in your decision making? I am not sure if Reeve chose Unitarian Universalism because it helped him to simplify faith, to remove the clutter of dogma and creed to a pure faith of good deeds and right action, but that may have been part of the reason. Sometimes liberals, at least by reputation, have had a hard time knowing how to discern what their moral compass is saying. We have been accused of saying all moral truth is relative, and we have no firm standards of right and wrong. Every person struggles in their lives with finding what is true, what is the right thing to do in moral decision making. As Chanu says in the reading from Brick Lane, "all the things we are told, how do we know if they are true?"
If you watched the Presidential debate the other night, you realize that all the politicians now use values as a buzzword to convince you that they are the morally acceptable candidate. It seems this started years ago when Reagan tried to implement values in his policies, which he said the other candidates lacked. They didn't have the moral fortitude to stand up for what they believed in. Over the years we have heard defenses of family values, patriotic values, middle class values among others. The idea is that the candidate with the right values can lead us back to a morally upright America.This includes religious values, and so we have politicians telling us how much they pray, and about the power of religion in their decision making. Which candidate's values best match yours? In an editorial this summer, Ellen Goodman suggested that the question should not be the rhetoric that best matches my values, but the actual effect of those values on people's lives.
I think liberals tried to pay attention to these accusations that they had no moral fiber. Liberals often said we are pro-family, too, but our values are broader and more inclusive than others. In defining a family, we said love makes a family, not husband and wife only, not heterosexual partners only or patriarchal control only, but everyone working together. We also learned to say that we loved American values as much or more than the person who waves the flag and says God blesses us. We said upholding a free press and not detaining people without just cause were hard won American values, and dissenting from the government is a long held freedom, and respecting the checks and balances of the governmental branches is a constitutional truth. These are our values. We are patriots, too. What kind of family relationships we uphold or what kind of political activism we support are exponents of the basic question,What does it take to be a moral person?
Since "values" have been a powerful political word, there has been a simplification of morality. We have returned to basic dichotomies of right and wrong and good and evil. While relativism can lead to confusion, I think a basic yardstick for judging moral truth today cannot be a stark good or evil, but instead we must use Goodman's suggestion that we consider its effect on people. Is it humane or not? Abortion rights is a good example of this struggle to find what is true. Those on the pro-choice side know it is a difficult choice that is rarely simple. Those who are anti-choice in the abortion debate claim that abortion is a great evil, but that fails to look at any of the personal human pain involved in the decision making. It becomes a rigid, and inhumane dogma. The Catholic Church has threatened to impose this dogma in the campaign. While some liberals might argue for pro-choice on the grounds of the freedom of the individual, one can also find a greater good argument that while it cannot be called a choice of good over evil, it is in our morally complex world, usually the most humane moral choice to make.
I think all of us are aware that extremist thinking is dominating the world today on both sides of the conflict, if not in truth, then at least in our projected images. We hear the word Islam and we associate it with backwardness and suffering, oppression and violence. Over the last few years we have come to identify Islam with a small violent minority. Yet Islam is a world faith that has a message that speaks to the rest of humanity. This is a religion that can engage us in a conversation about the moral goodness of society. With Ramadan beginning this weekend, let us consider that Islam teaches that a jihad is a struggle of the soul to get closer to God. The highest form of jihad is the struggle within to cleanse oneself of the vices of the heart. Islam is a revelation, like all other great faiths, that can teach us something about moral truth, about how we can live together.
Because of the approaching election, there is much fodder for reflecting on the moral morass that floats around us. I believe what is happening in the political arena, especially the war in Iraq, is a useful gauge for determining our own moral compass with respect to finding the right values to live by. I will outline four guidelines that I think are useful in finding our moral compass in a complicated moral world. The first thing that could guide moral reflection is a sense of humility. The war in Iraq has progressed based on an assumption that we are better than you and know what is best for you. What this means is that there is a presumption that we have the right to Impose our values on them. We have said we will give them democracy. We will civilize them. This ignores their own history, and imposes our history and our traditions. They have a different sense of history and tradition. People must make their own history. Yet we see ourselves as their liberators. Who they are does not seem to matter because we will make them like us. There is simply no give and take in this inflicting of a morally superior position on another. How often do we feel that we know what is best for others, We say if only they were not so ignorant, we could show them how.
This approach reminds me of many UUs who say they want racially diverse congregations. We have traditionally said, come in and be like us. You are welcome here as long as you become one of us. There is an assumption there that we have no intention of changing. What you bring will make me feel better, but I will not risk anything in order to see it happen. All the risk is yours, and all the benefit is mine. This is a useful thing to remember as we contemplate bringing in more people to First Parish. They might change things. We must be able to listen to their values and their stories, and risk change. There will never be a new moral consensus anywhere as long as we say in arrogance that the world must be shaped according to American interests and values. Morally this means my position may not be right. You may have something to say especially about determining your own destiny. It is the humane moral choice because it involves everyone in the moral decision making. It is not me making a decision for you because I know best. Do we have the humility and the trust to risk the challenge brought by another's view point?
The second moral challenge in determining our values is to come to see our own role in any circumstance. The simple truth is we are all in this together. Nowhere is this more in evidence in recent history than in the moral lesson of Abu Ghraib prison. I saw in the paper this week that a young woman named Lyndie England had a baby. The last time we saw her she was posing with bound and naked Iraqi prisoners. The father of the baby was one of her conspirators in humiliating and torturing prisoners of war. England said she was just following orders and yet she was an active participant in these terrible deeds. She represents something that Hannah Arendt noticed about the Eichmann trial after World War II. She called it the banality of evil, but it means that these acts were perpetrated not by some monster, but by a normal young woman who could be anyone one of us. This gets to the heart of the matter because it shows that we too are capable of tending our gardens while Jews get shipped away by the train load. We can say we didn't know it was going on, or it was done in the interests of serving a higher cause. Today we hear, evil can be justified if we get the terrorists. Do you believe that to be so? Can we ignore the established world law of the Geneva convention? Can we ignore moral imperatives? The fact that she is just like us does not justify the actions, but it does ask us to consider our own role in moral conflicts. Years ago when I was married for the first time I blamed my then wife for the failure of our marriage, but there is also the question of why I let her behavior go on so long without ever saying anything to her.
Terrorists usually believe they are morally justified. They are redressing terrible wrongs done to their people. They have suffered centuries of oppression, and now this is a way to pay back the oppressors. Is one person's terrorist another one's freedom fighter? Today we in America honor John Brown as a martyr to the cause of freedom. He sought to foment a revolution to free the slaves. Was he a terrorist? Our own Unitarian minister Theodore Parker wrote sermons with a gun on his desk. We revere that today. But what would you say about a contemporary who was ready to shoot somebody? What is the difference between Brown's self-sacrifice, and that of a terrorist? Slavery was a moral evil, but what are Islamic terrorists opposing? They certainly believe they die for a holy cause. These question do not have simple answers, but they do help us frame our own moral struggles. What is my role in helping others see that normal people are engaged in the moral struggles of the world - who gets what resources, who preserves the environment for the future? We are all together on this fragile little planet hanging in space. It is foolish to say it is always somebody else's fault. We need to make ourselves part of the moral equation. A few weeks ago I talked about Judge Pynchon in Hawthorne's famous novel The House of the Seven Gables. Here the apparent good, successful person, the judge who was revered in society, was also conspiring to put his nephew in jail to secure all the family property for himself. What self-serving motivation makes the supposed good man, do inhumane things?
The third test of the moral compass is for us to take personal responsibility. The soldier at Abu Ghraib said she was just following orders. They said there was a larger purpose to this evil. This can occur when we name an inhumane act a lesser evil, and use it to justify bad behavior. Those of us who are parents may hear it in the context of, "all the other kids did it." I feel this moral pressure on a mundane level when I am sitting in the right hand lane at a red light, and there is a sign that says no turn on red. Yet everyone else before me goes through the red light, and now they are all honking at me to turn. Do I do what everyone else is urging me to, or do I take a higher moral path and refuse to turn. It is like the school child saying everyone else was talking when they get punished. It is either everyone was doing it, or better yet, someone else is worse. What I did is nothing compared to what they did. We say we must do terrible things in a righteous cause.
Personally, I don't find the comparative morality a very convincing argument. I must ask compared to what? In the context of the prison in Iraq a government official had the audacity to say it could be worse, at least we don't cut off heads. While some may find truth in this argument, I believe when we compare ourselves to these people whom we have labeled ultimate evil, we then proceed to go down to their level. This means we end up justifying torture. Where is the moral compass that says that it is wrong to torture prisoners. Instead, we say we are not as bad as them? How much lesser evil can you tolerate and still consider yourself virtuous, or moral, or even democratic? It is difficult to follow the scriptural imperative "hold fast to that which is good" but we have fought hard to achieve certain community values. We lessen the power of these values, even negate them, when we compare them to something we think is worse, or ignore them because we are committing a lesser evil. We need to reflect on the inhumane thing we are committing. I had learned from my parents that when I said a swear word, I would have my mouth washed out with soap. When my boys were younger I tried this a couple of times and realized what an inhumane punishment it was. There was a degree of cruelty here, which far outweighed the lesson I was trying to teach. When I was a boy this punishment was often accompanied by the phrase, "this hurts me as much as it hurts you." That is simply not true. Here comparative morality holds no moral truth, when you are inflicting a humiliating, mean-spirited punishment. And so I don't punish them that way anyone, even though the movie Home Alone taught them more bad words than I ever imagined.
In reflection on that punishment, I realize I learned from my mistake. This also represents the last of the pathways to finding the humane path on the moral compass. At a recent debate, one of the candidates was asked to name three instances when you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it. This candidate could not come up with an instance of wrong doing. He was never wrong . All along we have heard that his decisiveness alone is somehow viewed as making him superior. Even as he portrays the other candidate as a flip-flopper, we are expected to see moral superiority because he takes actions, he is not afraid, he has a course of action. This never takes into account whether there is ever any reflection upon the results of this decisiveness - are they good , humane decisions? Bill Clinton once told Dan Rather on 60 minutes that he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky "just because I could." When asked about this Clinton says that being a moral person means the one thing you don't do is do things just because you can. But if you think about most of the mistakes that we make in our lives - all kinds of mistakes - well, there was temptation and opportunity." There was a suggestion here that moral authority rises out of the ashes of our failures.
Many years ago when I was in college, I stole a book from the book store. It was an expensive book for a course I was taking. There was opportunity as Clinton suggested, and perhaps the high cost that made me feel justified in taking it. I went back to my dorm and reflected on how I felt about stealing this book. As Clinton says, we should resist doing things out of anger, revenge or feeling sorry for yourself. I could have been angry at the school or my parents. I could have been seeking revenge for charging so much in tuition. Or was I feeling sorry for myself, making it ok. I'll bet I probably reflected on all those things that day. This is wrong I concluded. I came full circle to the humility of not using this act to justify myself. The greater courage was to admit I was wrong, and return the stolen book. It was not about any moral excuse, it was not I am right and they are wrong, it was not I deserve it because I have been cheated, it was not everyone is doing it, it was because we must be in community together as morally responsible people, who do not choose self-serving actions that hurt the wider whole. We enter a moral conversation - we listen, we take responsibility, we act together, and all of these determine the test of what is true that Chanu says we must establish in creating the greater community of love, that we dream tomorrow will be. Put it to the test. Have I listened to the other person in making my moral judgment? Do I see my role in this test? Can I keep my integrity and humanity, and not follow the crowd or follow orders? Can I admit my failures and learn from them? Am I being humane, true to the other, true to myself, and what I know is the good choice. Then I can look into the face of love.
Pilgrims on the way! Where are you?
Here is the beloved, here!
Your beloved lives next door
wall to wall
why do you wander
round and round the desert?
If you look into the face of Love
and not just at its superficial form
you yourselves become the house of God
and are its lords.
Sunday, October 03, 2004
"Ruled By Fear" - October 3, 2004
If you set your heart aright,
you will stretch out your hands toward the holy one.
If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness dwell in your tents,
Surely then you will lift up your face without blemish;
you will be secure, and will not fear.
You will forget your misery; you will remember it as waters that have passed away.
And your life will be brighter than the noonday . . .
And you will have confidence,
because there is hope; you will be protected and take your rest in safety.
You will lie down, and none will make you afraid
"If you set your heart aright," Job says, "you will be secure, and will not fear." In the annals of Biblical literature no one suffered more than Job. With loss of his family, his health, his property, everything he held near and dear except his life, he surely must have felt cursed by God. In the best seller Tuesdays with Morrie, this conversation takes place. Okay, question, I say to Morrie. His bony fingers hold his glasses across his chest, which rises and falls with each labored breath. "What's the question?" he says. Remember the Book of Job? "From the Bible?" Right. Job is a good man, but God makes him suffer. To test his faith. "I remember" Takes away everything he has, his house , his money, his family . . .. "His health." Makes him sick. "To test his faith." Right. To test his faith. So, I'm wondering . . . "What are you wondering?" "What you think about that? Morrie coughs violently. His hands quiver as he drops them by his side. "I think," he says smiling, "God overdid it." Surely as one thing after another befell him, Job must have felt cursed by God. Where did he go wrong? Why did these things keep happening? His life becomes so horrible, the Biblical book says that Job curses the day he was born.
Curses, or continuing misfortune caused by outside forces fill the Bible In fact the book of Genesis is defined by alternating blesses and curses. For those of us who are rabid baseball fans the concept of curses is one Red Sox fans wrestle with every year. It has long been said that the Red Sox have failed to win a World Series since 1918 because of the Curse of the Bambino. What does it mean to define our local ball team as being cursed? The curse itself is that the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920, so that the owner of the Sox could finance the musical "No, No Nanette," resulting in Ruth going on to become the greatest player ever, sparking the Yankees to what became the beginning of a string of countless championships. Horrified by this colossal blunder, the story goes that the baseball Gods cursed the Sox so that henceforth they could never win anything, and they have tortured us fans with heartbreak and horror ever since.
Why is it that Red Sox fans believe they will never win? Well, there is history, one blunder can lead to another. If you inherit an assumed reputation that you are cursed or are a loser then it is difficult to beat that reputation. You have been labeled something, and if the weight of misfortune hangs on you, then you are more likely to fail. It is like a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it exists because all of the past builds upon itself and you end up feeling like you will fail like all the other times. It is your destiny. People do seem to believe this stuff. Fueled by a rabid press, countless fans decided 2004 was to be the year to break the curse. It was almost like the stars were aligned to destroy this wretched curse, and magical events were sighted as evidence. A teenager who lives in Babe Ruth's old home in Sudbury got hit by a foul ball at a Red Sox game off the bat of our current big slugger. Then a 1918 Lincoln penny magically appeared on the counter of some beer vendor, and he affixed it to his counter as a sign that things were going to change. There are mumbo-jumbo numbers games, too. The last time we were in the World Series was 1986, and it has been 86 years since the 1918 victory. This must mean that our time has come. Get out your incantations. Light the incense. This is the year to lift the curse.
The problem is that as irrational and silly as all this curse talk seems, we seem to buy into the predilection for failure, and thus add weight to those who promote the curse. While most of us don't really believe that mysterious forces govern the repeated failures of a baseball team, many of us live with the expectation that they will fail. The memories of the infielder holding the ball, the grounder going through the first baseman's legs, the star pitcher left in too long. Is someone playing with their brains? Defining ourselves as cursed, and the weight of past failures does make success more difficult. There are other facts as well. The best team usually wins, and selling the best player a long time ago may have been a blunder that led to defeat, but its not the same as a curse. What about things like chance, bad luck, or teams of lesser talent. People also seem to assume that there is a law of averages about these things. For instance Job had suffered some losses, and therefore he would not suffer any more. With baseball some people seem to believe that we will win one because of some law that says our time has time, or you cannot always lose. Having played on a team that lost 23 in a row, I know you can always lose, and there is no law of averages. Each time your chance is the same as it was before. There is no truth to the belief that your time has come.
We can readily see that a history of losses and a negative expectation that can't you can't win leads directly to inferior performances or failures at critical times. It may not be a curse, but it sure feels like a curse, and that is what matters. We live in fear. We live in fear of failure. One can see the impact of curses in two majors stories from Hebrew scriptures. They have led to one of the great problems in the modern world - the struggle with Islamic nations, and one of the great curses in our own country - racism and the legacy of slavery. In Genesis, Abraham and Sarah are unable to have children, and so Abraham eventually has a child with the handmaiden Hagar. After Sarah has Isaac, she worries that Hagar's son Ishmael threaten's Isaac's inheritance. Sarah has Abraham drive Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness. As the boy nears death after their provisions have run out, God saves them and promises Ishmael he will be the founder of a great nation, who we identify as Arabs. Later on Muhammad is inspired by this story, and comes to believe that his people and his new faith are part of the divine plan. Remember they are cursed in this story though, and in fact, Paul makes them inferior in the Christian scriptures. Hagar is a slave, and the implication is this is a faith, and a people who are not as worthy as us.
Earlier I said how the juxtaposition of blessing and curse is played out again and again in Genesis. God curses people who are disobedient. Eve disobeys God in the Garden, and she ends up cursed in the story, and must suffer pain in labor for evermore. Likewise the snake must crawl upon its belly as its curse. Today we often reinterpret the story to make Eve the hero. She realized that human beings must take responsibility for their actions. We must make choices about good and evil, and not be ruled by fear of obeying an omnipotent power, or suffer the consequences if we do not obey. The other infamous curse story concerns Noahs' son Ham, who sees Noah naked and drunk, and is called disrespectful. Ham is cursed forever more in this story to be the progenitor of slaves. Later on in history, especially in the American South, this passage, believed to be the word of God, on the cursed Africans was used as a proof text for continued enslavement and belief in inferiority. Curses like these have ended up being used by others to try to assert a rule by fear.
Even if we don't believe a curse or fight to prevent its promotion, its history weighs on us, especially when people have given it religious justification. We Unitarian Universalists are children of the Calvinist theology of the Protestant Reformation. Calvin was a firm believer in original sin, that God had cursed the entire race because of Adam's disobedience, and therefore we find ourselves in a natural state of sin, and deserve to suffer because of this curse. I suppose the idea is we must pay for the sins of the fathers and mothers with this inherited condition called total depravity. Most of the people, Calvin said, would pay by suffering damnation. There was nothing they could do to redeem themselves from this curse. And you thought the Red Sox had it bad. Or perhaps this is why we seem to enjoy suffering. The idea of suffering under the fate of some curse makes it difficult to act. The idea is that your actions are likely to be bad, and therefore you must rely on the authority who knows best. We fail to show respect for God's moral standards, and in order to show this respect, we must fear the Lord.
Fearing the Lord is something that is bandied around a good deal in the Bible. Fear is not suppose to be abject terror of an all powerful being, but rather this notion of respect. Yet many of us learned to live by the terror. If we were not good enough or if we did not go to church, then we would suffer the consequences. If you suffer under a curse like original sin then you probably believe that you not good enough in God's eyes. This leads to the belief that what we have to say or do is not important. Liberalism tried to turn this Protestant curse around by affirming that every person has the potential to make good moral choices and work out their own personal salvation. Slowly the curse of human sinfulness was emphasized less and less, and our divine potential was underscored. Yet in the 19th century Universalists were severely criticized by their opponents by declaring that God's love embraces everybody, and all will be saved. The opponents said that you must strike fear in people's hearts in order for them to be good. If you guarantee salvation, then it gives a license to people to misbehave.
While no one worries much anymore about salvation, it continues to be true that we try to use fear to intimidate people to behave or reform. Think first about what kinds of curses you feel you live under as an individual. While perhaps no God has cursed your behavior or your race, the historical struggles of your race, group or family may make you feel cursed. You may feel stuck with this condition, and there is little you can do. Your genes may give you a predilection for some disease like alcoholism or cancer that weighs upon you. How does it effect you if you feel like you are cursed to be the recipient of it, or do we radically alter our behavior because we fear we will get it. I am also aware that people often use these fears we have to try rule our behavior. Not long ago I receive an invitation to join a sports club. Now bear in mind that I am an individual who tends to be heavy, and I am a large person to begin with. Rather than touting all the wonderful weight machines they had or programs for swimming or aerobics, they began the letter by telling me that my inactivity was going to kill me, and it was costing the country money. If I joined their sports club, I might live and the country might not suffer economic collapse. It was that important. They might as well have said there is a curse on you if you continue to behave this way.
I might have had a different response if there was some effort on their part to positively affirm my capabilities to work with my deficiencies whatever they might be. This reminds me of a visit once to my brother's house when my three boys were acting especially rambunctious. My sister-in-law either excused their bad behavior or else gave up in frustration based on her past experiences with my nephews or both by saying to Andrea, "What did you expect, they're Harrises." This was the wild, uncontrollable behavior gene it was suspected we all carried. Perhaps there was some positive way that behaviors could be identified or improved, by setting limits, or diagnosed, but no, it was known, these are Harrises, and thus cursed to be bad. Now you know who your minister is. This past week, I visited the dentist. I was dreading the trip because recently I have had a dental hygienist who tends to not only brutalize me with her scraping, but also has used scare tactics, I suppose, to convince me to reform. There is a significant difference when someone says I am going to do an oral exam, or I am looking for mouth cancer. There is a significant difference when someone says these gum problems can lead to heart disease, massive infections and even death, than it is unfortunate that your lower front teeth are so crooked, but you are trying to do a good job in an area that it difficult, and here are some other ways to improve your home care. I now know conclusively that fear does not work on me. If tending to be heavy or having crooked teeth are little inherited curses I have, making me feel even worse about them by underscoring the most terrible consequences possible does not change my behavior. If I believe I have a curse or problem that they want to heal or fix by making me feel worse, then my response is to say no, like Job. I want to fix my heart aright, rather than live in fear.
Right now we have a president trying to get elected by playing off people's fears. Fear itself is a curse that prevents us from working with faiths and people who we have traditionally seen as inferior or cursed. Fear provides a permanent war for him to pursue. The problem with living in fear is that both sides live as though they are under a curse. This is true of Hawthorne's famous novel The House of the Seven Gables. Two families the Pynchons and the Maules have continued to feud over the generations, It began when Colonel Pynchon wanted land owned by a laborer named Maule, and had him executed as a witch in order to get his land. At his death Maule placed a curse on the Pynchons. Then Maule's son built the House, but on the day of its dedication the Colonel dies beneath his portrait. The wrong-doing of one generation tends to follow into successive generations. Both families fall on hard times. What's left in the house is Hepzibah, the Pynchon descendant who lives there with her poor brother, Clifford who has been imprisoned for 30 years. We meet Hepzibah in our reading in conversation with her tenant Holgrave, who is a descendant of Maule. He tells her she must grapple with all her troubles, and will find the curse to be unreal. He tells her not to be afraid to end her seclusion. In the end Holgrave marries a country cousin of the Pynchons and the families are united, and the curse is lifted.
This old story gives us some understanding of how we might overcome those curses that weigh on us and prevent us from living in the world without fear. How do we transform a house that has been stained by greed and arrogance and pride? We all know that past decisions, and past misdeed continue to curse us, or exact payment form the living. At one point Holgrave shouts, "Shall we never, never get rid of this past! Many of us have felt branded or cursed by past decisions, such as divorce or illness. With the story's marriage of the two sides, we come to learn that imagined curses can be lifted. They are not placed there by supernatural powers, but by the generations who have learned form the past, admitted their mistakes and then created a new life. Curses are lifted not by the pursuit of power over another or control of others, but through reconciliation and emotional fulfillment. All his life Hawthorne wanted to create a second garden of Eden. What that means is that sometimes our past, our history, our family life over the generations has given us an inheritance that feels like a curse. We can be imprisoned by that seeming curse and the weight of it alone helps prevent success, like failed Red Sox teams. Sometimes those in power, like Pynchons or Presidents operate by greed and fear and hope they can manipulate us or control us. they also act like they can never be wrong. Instead we must act like Eve in the Garden who stands up to the God who says I know what is best for you, like Phoebe in Hawthorne's story who helps Holgrave see with his own eye rather than with the reflected image of life of his photographer's profession. Our power is in our courage to make our own choices, our belief that past curses can be lifted by bringing people together from all sides at the table, that those who would curse others or never admit they are wrong would feel our united strength to stand up to them and be heard by keeping the flame of compassion alive. Rather than curses we live under the rule of blessing ourselves and others for our own knowledge in pursuit of truth, our own understanding of freedom and our sense of mutual responsibility to live in peace.
Are we not all refugees from something? Whether we stay or go or return, we all need refuge form the world beyond our fingertips at some time. When I was asked by a woman at the pub, ŒHave you come from Africa, away from that wicked Amin?' I said, ŒNo, I am an explorer on a voyage of discovery' . . . I was learning that human history is always a story of somebody's diaspora: a struggle between those who expel, repel, or curtail - - possess, divide and rule -- and those who keep the flame alive from night to night, mouth to mouth, enlarging the world with each flick of a tongue.
"The Future of Reason" - October 24, 2004
Mark W. Harris
Opening Words - from Emerson's The Divinity School Address
Alone in all history (Jesus) estimated the true greatness of (humans). One man was true to what is in you and me. . . But what a distortion did his doctrines and memory suffer . . . in the following ages. There is no doctrine of the reason which will bear to be taught by the understanding. The high chant in the next age was, "I will kill you if you say he was a man." Churches are not built on his principles. He spoke of miracles; for he felt that human life was a miracle, and all that we (do), and he knew that this miracle shines as the character (grows). But the word miracle, as pronounced by the Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.
Sermon - "The Future of Reason"
In college I had a friend named Pete who came from Northfield, Massachusetts. Since we hailed from the same part of the state we often rode together to Maine and back for holidays. Pete was a great guy. He was warm and friendly, and also lived down the hall from me. Like me, Pete was a football player. While football at Bates College is hardly what you would call high powered or intense, people do become injured in this sport calculated to crush bones. One Saturday, Pete had some bones crushed, or at least twisted. We saw him carried off the field and into the locker room. After a trip to the local hospital, we learned when he returned to the dorm that surgery was recommended to repair his injured knee. Later when I saw him hobbling down the hall on his crutches, I asked him what his plans were. He mentioned the surgery, but then informed me that he would not be having this kind of invasive procedure on his body. In fact, he would be having no procedures, other than prayer. You see, it turned out Pete was a Christian Scientist. Others of us talked about my friend that day, saying basically, "he's nuts, he doesn't believe in doctors?, what's wrong with this guy?, how stupid can you get?
Stupid or not, Peter never had surgery, and never played football again. Physically the swelling went down, and in a matter of time, he walked again. After he graduated I did not stay in touch, and so I cannot say what the long term ramifications of his decision were. Since then I have been aware of a number of controversial cases involving Christian Science parents and sick children who were not treated medically. Some of the kids who were prayed over eventually died. These are not simple cases as they involve issues such as freedom of religion, parental rights, and the rights of the child to receive proper medical attention. What happens when a child who might have lived, dies because the parent believes with all their heart that prayer is the best response. Probably most of us would say save the child. A life trumps a religious belief any day. Or does it?
The central issue at hand is who has the truth? A Christian Scientist believes that someone becomes ill because that person has something wrong spiritually. Once you have adjusted your life by getting right with God through prayer, you should return to the pink of health. Otherwise it appears that something is fundamentally maladjusted about you, and God is punishing you, or helping you see a better way. Last week we said that we determine whether something we believe is true or not by testing it. Here is the perfect test: if you get sicker, the implication is you are not a good person. While most of us would readily acknowledge that a positive attitude helps when we are ill, or even that marshaling healing thoughts about others in prayer can give added strength, the idea that some vengeful God has picked you out for suffering for some unknown reason seems patently absurd. This is akin to the great revivalists of the 1700's saying that an earthquake was caused by God because he was angry about how sinful people are, and it was a sign that they should repent. While we acknowledge that others have the right to their own beliefs because we believe in freedom of religion, we also realize when we hear of the content of their faith that, even though we don't publicly condemn it, we certainly disagree.
We do not believe the same things are true, but sometimes our tolerance makes it seem that we do affirm things that we do not.
The problem is that when children die due to people's beliefs, we can't just smile and think to ourselves, oh it's nice that they have such an absurd belief. Our Parish Committee is presently wrestling with the question of whether to rent space to the spiritualist church. Spiritualists are a religious group that communicate with the dead. It is one thing to promote freedom of religion, but we also have to ask if we want this belief system to be inadvertently associated with us if they use our building. Spiritualism has a long history of quackery and sham to deceive people who otherwise grieve over the loss of loved ones. One of the odd things about this is that mainline Christian churches often question the legitimacy of this group who speaks to the dead, and yet their own central beliefs include such absurd things as virgin births, resurrected dead people, and heavens with angel wings. If they looked at themselves critically, they might realize it is an instance of the pot calling the kettle black.
Truth is a hard thing to discern. No one wants to see their own faults or foibles in the mirror, or in their constituency. Time Magazine featured a recent cover story on, "Who Owns the Truth," and described how political partisans want people to see the world their way. No where was the twisting of the truth more obvious than in the vice-presidential debate, when one of the candidates denied ever meeting the other, even though it was patently true that he had. This has unnerving implications no matter which way you read it. If he is just lying then there is a question of character with regards to his moral ability to govern. If he is not lying, then it appears that he is delusional, and we would have to question his mental capacity to govern. Do we want someone unstable occupying this office? There are your choices. It becomes so unsettling, we almost believe him, despite the evidence. In fact William James predicted and even okayed this when he wrote in his Principles of Psychology, that reality means simply relation to our emotional and active life. "Whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real. " This can make for any number of absurd possibilities that are considered real. No wonder James' descendent Alice in the novel Jamesland, is trying to avoid his influence!
One of Alice's friends in that novel is the Unitarian Universalist minister Helen Harland. In the reading from the novel we see Helen's fetish for making fun of religious oddities. The idea is that people's absurd little beliefs amuse her. Do we find them funny, too? Or is it potentially worse? People are sometimes amused when I relate my background in the Protestant Fundamentalist church of my youth. Many of you have heard of my childhood passion for dinosaurs and my Sunday School teacher who informed me that since these creatures were not in the Bible, they did not exist. The Bible with its non-scientific understanding of creation says that God goes straight from creatures like lions and tigers and bears to people with no millions of years before, after or in between. After she denied my scientifically tested truth, I was sorely tempted to make fun of her fantasies that were ancient myths at best and modern delusions at worst, if you understand them as serious science. She believed in a God who flooded the earth out of anger, sent every kind of plague to torture the Egyptians, and told Abraham to sacrifice his child. There was little historical or archeological truth that was known about this Hebrew tribe who escaped from bondage in Egypt, and yet she believed all the stories were literal truth because someone had once told her they were, even though there was no evidence whatsoever to confirm any of this. While I had all sorts of bones and books and carbon dating, my truth was simply not to be believed. I left fundamentalism behind because it was a religion that denied my mind's ability to think and to question or doubt any belief that seemed totally irrational.
A half century ago, the historian Earle Morse Wilbur said that the three cornerstones of Unitarianism are freedom, reason and tolerance. These foundations all grow from the beginnings of our faith in eastern Europe when the great Protestant reformer Francis David went on a personal journey from Catholicism to Lutheranism to Calvinism to Unitarianism. Freedom meant the free search for truth. No one should compel or force us to believe anything that we cannot believe. Tolerance meant that we should allow everyone to express their own opinion about matters of faith. In what is present day Romania, the first edict of tolerance in history was declared by a Unitarian king in 1568. Finally, there was reason in the interpretation of scripture, which then was central to all religious belief. This role of reason has, by its very use, expanded to mean the use of all our critical faculties in religious matters. For one thing it became quite clear when people examined the scriptures critically, they found the doctrine of the Trinity was a later addition. Other central dogmas of Christianity were similarly non-Biblical. There were scholars, like Erasmus, who knew this, but could not question the church, until these three hallmarks of Unitarianism, marking a new way to approach faith, emerged more than 400 years ago. Freedom, reason and tolerance meant: continue searching for faith, it is ever unfolding; listen to others, be understanding of their beliefs, and finally use your mind and determine for yourself whether some text or some belief is literal truth or not.
Over the centuries liberal religion centered its open search for religious truth upon the unfolding promises of humanity rather than upon total acceptance of old dogmatic truths about the nature of people and the world we live in. Reason became a liberal embodiment of an affirmation that science and religion could work together in accepting rational truth while still affirming the mystery and wonder of creation. My father once remarked to me that there was not enough fantasy in my religion. He wanted the old consolations of salvation and eternal life, but to me these seemed to be irrational hopes, that made life itself into a literal fantasy, a completely untrue fiction that had little basis in human experience. We Unitarian Universalists have developed a faith that can be discerned through nature, through experience and the world around us. This faith is captured in Emerson's words to the new Unitarian ministers in 1838 in which Jesus is characterized as a simple human being who merely fulfills the best that is in us, and his life's deeds are characterized not as supernatural Godly events from beyond, but as part and parcel of the miraculous nature of life itself.
One might assume that this rational approach to life would have gained general acceptance in the world in the wake of the growth of educational knowledge, but something drastic has happened to the future of reason. We have failed to use our critical faculties to challenge the growing world wide onslaught of fundamentalism.. Up until the 20th century most people lived by the meaning of myths. With the debunking of myths by the modern secular world and the use of reason, most people lost their sense of myth and meaning. In response to this, the rise of fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism, and especially as most publicized in Islam, means that we have large groups of people living around us who absolutely believe that they hold the key to truth, and will seek vengeance upon apostates like us who do not believe as they do. What Sam Harris makes clear in his book The End of Faith, is that it is not just fanatics who have brokered their use of reason for a ticket to absolute truth, it is our friends and neighbors who have accepted these handed down dogmas as primordial truths. What might be construed as mental illness in a different context is accepted as gospel. As Harris says, "While religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are."
The other night my wife Andrea and I were discussing the causes of this rise in fundamentalism. She theorizes that with the loss of community and the rise of modernism, people feel adrift in the world. There is too much information and too little time or connection to make sense of the things we see and read. The entire last century introduced genocide to the world on a mass scale, and now weapons of mass destruction exacerbate this fear while the media heightens the nearness of a sense of dread. There is heightened anxiety in the world that people's core understanding of life, family and community are being eroded. In response many people have abandoned reason for absolute truth, a feeling of belonging, and guarantees of salvation. The one sure thing for these people to make sense of the tragedies of life is to believe that it will all be made better by a God who takes care of you, and will guarantee salvation for you and your family. For Islamic terrorists whose world is dominated by Western values, a ticket to heaven is blessed assurance.
These absolute beliefs have implications for us. Whereas modern society was once happy to declare freedom of belief, what happens when our principle of tolerance of others begins to effect society? When a Christian Science child dies, or a pro-life fanatic murders a doctor who performs abortions, we have to take notice that the beliefs have important life ramifications. Sam Harris says this is why we can longer tolerate tolerance to the extreme. These people with absolute beliefs want to impose their absolutism on us, and it behooves us to not accept them with absolute tolerance. What kind of response can we make to a world where even people we consider normal and rational hold these absurd beliefs? I think it is up to us to say these religions play on your greatest fears about life and death, and give you false hopes that at best are just not true, and at worst are downright dangerous. I think it is up to us to be brave enough to live truthfully and help others to, as well. As Nelson Mandela said, it is not our darkness that scares us. It is our light, our strength and our power we are afraid of. We need to be less afraid of our power.
In the novel Jamesland, the minister asks, how do people live in the world? It is clear hat people need consolation for their fears, an understanding of tragedy, and sacred values to uphold them. After his paralysis, people told Christopher Reeve that prayer and faith in God would help, but he continued to be devastated. He tried, but he only ended up feeling there was something wrong with him spiritually, he writes: "Finally, I stopped beating myself up . . . Gradually I have come to believe that spirituality is found in the way we live our daily lives. It means spending time thinking about others. It's not so hard to imagine that there is some kind of higher power. (But) we don't need to know what form it takes or exactly where it exists; just to honor it and try to live by it is enough. Because we are human we will often fail, but at least we know that we do not deserve to be punished. That knowledge makes us safe and willing to try again." I think Reeve probably found he was using all his energy to believe in something ridiculous. God was not going to give him some free ticket to salvation. But he had to face that. There is a story from the Sufi tradition in Islam about Nasrudin. Nasrudin rode the train to work every day. One day the conductor asked him for his ticket. He fumbled around and couldn't find it. He even looked in other people's pockets, and then in their bags. Finally the conductor said, "I am sure you have a ticket. Why don't you look in your breast pocket, that is where most men keep it?" But Nasrudin said, "oh no, I can't look there. Why if it wasn't there, I would have no hope."
Nasrudin feared facing the truth that he might not have the ticket. What if his ticket to heaven was gone? He felt it was better to have false hope than know the truth. Yet Christopher Reeve found false hopes were merely that, false. He was going to have to find hope for himself and he then faced the truth about his situation, and realized how much love and healing he could bring to others, and thus to himself. He helps us realize that we are all loved and worthy however life finds us or what it does to us. Rather than taking the easy way out or follow false truths, Reeve adopted the spiritual discipline of reason. This is a gift we gave to the world long ago, and now it is one that needs to be offered once more. We must give reason a future before ancient, outdated religious absurdities consume us. Life, as we all know, is tiring, draining and difficult. Finding meaning, building relationships, and eventually facing illness and death is painful and difficult.
When we bring reason back to the world we help others focus on their true fears and concerns, and not some false promises. Our promise may be harder but it is the path to honesty and integrity rather than falsehoods and sham. When reason has a future once again we will have loving and truthful relationships, and eventually a more peaceful world.
Closing Words - from Christopher Reeve, Nothing is Impossible
In the process of learning to live my new life, I had no idea that I was becoming a Unitarian . . . Where people can be truly religious because they can be true to themselves, where honest doubt is not taken for heresy, and where the beliefs of the past and the present become the inspiration for future growth and discovery. "
"The Values Game" - October 17, 2004
Mark W. Harris
Opening Words (Responsive) "To Serve the People" by Saadi #609
To worship God is nothing other than to serve the people.
It does not need rosaries, prayer carpets, or robes.
All peoples are members of the same body, created from one essence.
If fate brings suffering to one member
The others cannot stay at rest.
Sermon - "The Values Game"
Christopher Reeve died this week. Reeve, who came to fame as our most recent incarnation of Superman, won further fame by the inspirational courage he had shown in recent years after suffering near complete paralysis in a fall from a horse. Reeve was a Unitarian Universalist who described his liberal faith in an interview with Reader's Digest. "It gives me a moral compass. I often refer to Abraham Lincoln, who said, ŒWhen I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion.' " Reeve went on to say, "I think we all have a little voice inside us that will guide us. It may be God. I don't know. But I think that if we shut out all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right thing to do." Reeve became a real life Superman by inspiring others to overcome their personal difficulties, and by doing the right thing to aid and assist others.
Do you believe in that still, small voice crying out inside you that this is the right way to live, or the right thing to do. Is there a conscience or a God there guiding you in your decision making? I am not sure if Reeve chose Unitarian Universalism because it helped him to simplify faith, to remove the clutter of dogma and creed to a pure faith of good deeds and right action, but that may have been part of the reason. Sometimes liberals, at least by reputation, have had a hard time knowing how to discern what their moral compass is saying. We have been accused of saying all moral truth is relative, and we have no firm standards of right and wrong. Every person struggles in their lives with finding what is true, what is the right thing to do in moral decision making. As Chanu says in the reading from Brick Lane, "all the things we are told, how do we know if they are true?"
If you watched the Presidential debate the other night, you realize that all the politicians now use values as a buzzword to convince you that they are the morally acceptable candidate. It seems this started years ago when Reagan tried to implement values in his policies, which he said the other candidates lacked. They didn't have the moral fortitude to stand up for what they believed in. Over the years we have heard defenses of family values, patriotic values, middle class values among others. The idea is that the candidate with the right values can lead us back to a morally upright America.This includes religious values, and so we have politicians telling us how much they pray, and about the power of religion in their decision making. Which candidate's values best match yours? In an editorial this summer, Ellen Goodman suggested that the question should not be the rhetoric that best matches my values, but the actual effect of those values on people's lives.
I think liberals tried to pay attention to these accusations that they had no moral fiber. Liberals often said we are pro-family, too, but our values are broader and more inclusive than others. In defining a family, we said love makes a family, not husband and wife only, not heterosexual partners only or patriarchal control only, but everyone working together. We also learned to say that we loved American values as much or more than the person who waves the flag and says God blesses us. We said upholding a free press and not detaining people without just cause were hard won American values, and dissenting from the government is a long held freedom, and respecting the checks and balances of the governmental branches is a constitutional truth. These are our values. We are patriots, too. What kind of family relationships we uphold or what kind of political activism we support are exponents of the basic question,What does it take to be a moral person?
Since "values" have been a powerful political word, there has been a simplification of morality. We have returned to basic dichotomies of right and wrong and good and evil. While relativism can lead to confusion, I think a basic yardstick for judging moral truth today cannot be a stark good or evil, but instead we must use Goodman's suggestion that we consider its effect on people. Is it humane or not? Abortion rights is a good example of this struggle to find what is true. Those on the pro-choice side know it is a difficult choice that is rarely simple. Those who are anti-choice in the abortion debate claim that abortion is a great evil, but that fails to look at any of the personal human pain involved in the decision making. It becomes a rigid, and inhumane dogma. The Catholic Church has threatened to impose this dogma in the campaign. While some liberals might argue for pro-choice on the grounds of the freedom of the individual, one can also find a greater good argument that while it cannot be called a choice of good over evil, it is in our morally complex world, usually the most humane moral choice to make.
I think all of us are aware that extremist thinking is dominating the world today on both sides of the conflict, if not in truth, then at least in our projected images. We hear the word Islam and we associate it with backwardness and suffering, oppression and violence. Over the last few years we have come to identify Islam with a small violent minority. Yet Islam is a world faith that has a message that speaks to the rest of humanity. This is a religion that can engage us in a conversation about the moral goodness of society. With Ramadan beginning this weekend, let us consider that Islam teaches that a jihad is a struggle of the soul to get closer to God. The highest form of jihad is the struggle within to cleanse oneself of the vices of the heart. Islam is a revelation, like all other great faiths, that can teach us something about moral truth, about how we can live together.
Because of the approaching election, there is much fodder for reflecting on the moral morass that floats around us. I believe what is happening in the political arena, especially the war in Iraq, is a useful gauge for determining our own moral compass with respect to finding the right values to live by. I will outline four guidelines that I think are useful in finding our moral compass in a complicated moral world. The first thing that could guide moral reflection is a sense of humility. The war in Iraq has progressed based on an assumption that we are better than you and know what is best for you. What this means is that there is a presumption that we have the right to Impose our values on them. We have said we will give them democracy. We will civilize them. This ignores their own history, and imposes our history and our traditions. They have a different sense of history and tradition. People must make their own history. Yet we see ourselves as their liberators. Who they are does not seem to matter because we will make them like us. There is simply no give and take in this inflicting of a morally superior position on another. How often do we feel that we know what is best for others, We say if only they were not so ignorant, we could show them how.
This approach reminds me of many UUs who say they want racially diverse congregations. We have traditionally said, come in and be like us. You are welcome here as long as you become one of us. There is an assumption there that we have no intention of changing. What you bring will make me feel better, but I will not risk anything in order to see it happen. All the risk is yours, and all the benefit is mine. This is a useful thing to remember as we contemplate bringing in more people to First Parish. They might change things. We must be able to listen to their values and their stories, and risk change. There will never be a new moral consensus anywhere as long as we say in arrogance that the world must be shaped according to American interests and values. Morally this means my position may not be right. You may have something to say especially about determining your own destiny. It is the humane moral choice because it involves everyone in the moral decision making. It is not me making a decision for you because I know best. Do we have the humility and the trust to risk the challenge brought by another's view point?
The second moral challenge in determining our values is to come to see our own role in any circumstance. The simple truth is we are all in this together. Nowhere is this more in evidence in recent history than in the moral lesson of Abu Ghraib prison. I saw in the paper this week that a young woman named Lyndie England had a baby. The last time we saw her she was posing with bound and naked Iraqi prisoners. The father of the baby was one of her conspirators in humiliating and torturing prisoners of war. England said she was just following orders and yet she was an active participant in these terrible deeds. She represents something that Hannah Arendt noticed about the Eichmann trial after World War II. She called it the banality of evil, but it means that these acts were perpetrated not by some monster, but by a normal young woman who could be anyone one of us. This gets to the heart of the matter because it shows that we too are capable of tending our gardens while Jews get shipped away by the train load. We can say we didn't know it was going on, or it was done in the interests of serving a higher cause. Today we hear, evil can be justified if we get the terrorists. Do you believe that to be so? Can we ignore the established world law of the Geneva convention? Can we ignore moral imperatives? The fact that she is just like us does not justify the actions, but it does ask us to consider our own role in moral conflicts. Years ago when I was married for the first time I blamed my then wife for the failure of our marriage, but there is also the question of why I let her behavior go on so long without ever saying anything to her.
Terrorists usually believe they are morally justified. They are redressing terrible wrongs done to their people. They have suffered centuries of oppression, and now this is a way to pay back the oppressors. Is one person's terrorist another one's freedom fighter? Today we in America honor John Brown as a martyr to the cause of freedom. He sought to foment a revolution to free the slaves. Was he a terrorist? Our own Unitarian minister Theodore Parker wrote sermons with a gun on his desk. We revere that today. But what would you say about a contemporary who was ready to shoot somebody? What is the difference between Brown's self-sacrifice, and that of a terrorist? Slavery was a moral evil, but what are Islamic terrorists opposing? They certainly believe they die for a holy cause. These question do not have simple answers, but they do help us frame our own moral struggles. What is my role in helping others see that normal people are engaged in the moral struggles of the world - who gets what resources, who preserves the environment for the future? We are all together on this fragile little planet hanging in space. It is foolish to say it is always somebody else's fault. We need to make ourselves part of the moral equation. A few weeks ago I talked about Judge Pynchon in Hawthorne's famous novel The House of the Seven Gables. Here the apparent good, successful person, the judge who was revered in society, was also conspiring to put his nephew in jail to secure all the family property for himself. What self-serving motivation makes the supposed good man, do inhumane things?
The third test of the moral compass is for us to take personal responsibility. The soldier at Abu Ghraib said she was just following orders. They said there was a larger purpose to this evil. This can occur when we name an inhumane act a lesser evil, and use it to justify bad behavior. Those of us who are parents may hear it in the context of, "all the other kids did it." I feel this moral pressure on a mundane level when I am sitting in the right hand lane at a red light, and there is a sign that says no turn on red. Yet everyone else before me goes through the red light, and now they are all honking at me to turn. Do I do what everyone else is urging me to, or do I take a higher moral path and refuse to turn. It is like the school child saying everyone else was talking when they get punished. It is either everyone was doing it, or better yet, someone else is worse. What I did is nothing compared to what they did. We say we must do terrible things in a righteous cause.
Personally, I don't find the comparative morality a very convincing argument. I must ask compared to what? In the context of the prison in Iraq a government official had the audacity to say it could be worse, at least we don't cut off heads. While some may find truth in this argument, I believe when we compare ourselves to these people whom we have labeled ultimate evil, we then proceed to go down to their level. This means we end up justifying torture. Where is the moral compass that says that it is wrong to torture prisoners. Instead, we say we are not as bad as them? How much lesser evil can you tolerate and still consider yourself virtuous, or moral, or even democratic? It is difficult to follow the scriptural imperative "hold fast to that which is good" but we have fought hard to achieve certain community values. We lessen the power of these values, even negate them, when we compare them to something we think is worse, or ignore them because we are committing a lesser evil. We need to reflect on the inhumane thing we are committing. I had learned from my parents that when I said a swear word, I would have my mouth washed out with soap. When my boys were younger I tried this a couple of times and realized what an inhumane punishment it was. There was a degree of cruelty here, which far outweighed the lesson I was trying to teach. When I was a boy this punishment was often accompanied by the phrase, "this hurts me as much as it hurts you." That is simply not true. Here comparative morality holds no moral truth, when you are inflicting a humiliating, mean-spirited punishment. And so I don't punish them that way anyone, even though the movie Home Alone taught them more bad words than I ever imagined.
In reflection on that punishment, I realize I learned from my mistake. This also represents the last of the pathways to finding the humane path on the moral compass. At a recent debate, one of the candidates was asked to name three instances when you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it. This candidate could not come up with an instance of wrong doing. He was never wrong . All along we have heard that his decisiveness alone is somehow viewed as making him superior. Even as he portrays the other candidate as a flip-flopper, we are expected to see moral superiority because he takes actions, he is not afraid, he has a course of action. This never takes into account whether there is ever any reflection upon the results of this decisiveness - are they good , humane decisions? Bill Clinton once told Dan Rather on 60 minutes that he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky "just because I could." When asked about this Clinton says that being a moral person means the one thing you don't do is do things just because you can. But if you think about most of the mistakes that we make in our lives - all kinds of mistakes - well, there was temptation and opportunity." There was a suggestion here that moral authority rises out of the ashes of our failures.
Many years ago when I was in college, I stole a book from the book store. It was an expensive book for a course I was taking. There was opportunity as Clinton suggested, and perhaps the high cost that made me feel justified in taking it. I went back to my dorm and reflected on how I felt about stealing this book. As Clinton says, we should resist doing things out of anger, revenge or feeling sorry for yourself. I could have been angry at the school or my parents. I could have been seeking revenge for charging so much in tuition. Or was I feeling sorry for myself, making it ok. I'll bet I probably reflected on all those things that day. This is wrong I concluded. I came full circle to the humility of not using this act to justify myself. The greater courage was to admit I was wrong, and return the stolen book. It was not about any moral excuse, it was not I am right and they are wrong, it was not I deserve it because I have been cheated, it was not everyone is doing it, it was because we must be in community together as morally responsible people, who do not choose self-serving actions that hurt the wider whole. We enter a moral conversation - we listen, we take responsibility, we act together, and all of these determine the test of what is true that Chanu says we must establish in creating the greater community of love, that we dream tomorrow will be. Put it to the test. Have I listened to the other person in making my moral judgment? Do I see my role in this test? Can I keep my integrity and humanity, and not follow the crowd or follow orders? Can I admit my failures and learn from them? Am I being humane, true to the other, true to myself, and what I know is the good choice. Then I can look into the face of love.
Closing Words - "Pilgrims on the Way" by Rumi
Pilgrims on the way! Where are you?
Here is the beloved, here!
Your beloved lives next door
wall to wall
why do you wander
round and round the desert?
If you look into the face of Love
and not just at its superficial form
you yourselves become the house of God
and are its lords.
"Ruled By Fear" - October 3, 2004
Mark W. Harris
Opening Words - from Job 11
If you set your heart aright,
you will stretch out your hands toward the holy one.
If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness dwell in your tents,
Surely then you will lift up your face without blemish;
you will be secure, and will not fear.
You will forget your misery; you will remember it as waters that have passed away.
And your life will be brighter than the noonday . . .
And you will have confidence,
because there is hope; you will be protected and take your rest in safety.
You will lie down, and none will make you afraid
Sermon
"If you set your heart aright," Job says, "you will be secure, and will not fear." In the annals of Biblical literature no one suffered more than Job. With loss of his family, his health, his property, everything he held near and dear except his life, he surely must have felt cursed by God. In the best seller Tuesdays with Morrie, this conversation takes place. Okay, question, I say to Morrie. His bony fingers hold his glasses across his chest, which rises and falls with each labored breath. "What's the question?" he says. Remember the Book of Job? "From the Bible?" Right. Job is a good man, but God makes him suffer. To test his faith. "I remember" Takes away everything he has, his house , his money, his family . . .. "His health." Makes him sick. "To test his faith." Right. To test his faith. So, I'm wondering . . . "What are you wondering?" "What you think about that? Morrie coughs violently. His hands quiver as he drops them by his side. "I think," he says smiling, "God overdid it." Surely as one thing after another befell him, Job must have felt cursed by God. Where did he go wrong? Why did these things keep happening? His life becomes so horrible, the Biblical book says that Job curses the day he was born.
Curses, or continuing misfortune caused by outside forces fill the Bible In fact the book of Genesis is defined by alternating blesses and curses. For those of us who are rabid baseball fans the concept of curses is one Red Sox fans wrestle with every year. It has long been said that the Red Sox have failed to win a World Series since 1918 because of the Curse of the Bambino. What does it mean to define our local ball team as being cursed? The curse itself is that the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920, so that the owner of the Sox could finance the musical "No, No Nanette," resulting in Ruth going on to become the greatest player ever, sparking the Yankees to what became the beginning of a string of countless championships. Horrified by this colossal blunder, the story goes that the baseball Gods cursed the Sox so that henceforth they could never win anything, and they have tortured us fans with heartbreak and horror ever since.
Why is it that Red Sox fans believe they will never win? Well, there is history, one blunder can lead to another. If you inherit an assumed reputation that you are cursed or are a loser then it is difficult to beat that reputation. You have been labeled something, and if the weight of misfortune hangs on you, then you are more likely to fail. It is like a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it exists because all of the past builds upon itself and you end up feeling like you will fail like all the other times. It is your destiny. People do seem to believe this stuff. Fueled by a rabid press, countless fans decided 2004 was to be the year to break the curse. It was almost like the stars were aligned to destroy this wretched curse, and magical events were sighted as evidence. A teenager who lives in Babe Ruth's old home in Sudbury got hit by a foul ball at a Red Sox game off the bat of our current big slugger. Then a 1918 Lincoln penny magically appeared on the counter of some beer vendor, and he affixed it to his counter as a sign that things were going to change. There are mumbo-jumbo numbers games, too. The last time we were in the World Series was 1986, and it has been 86 years since the 1918 victory. This must mean that our time has come. Get out your incantations. Light the incense. This is the year to lift the curse.
The problem is that as irrational and silly as all this curse talk seems, we seem to buy into the predilection for failure, and thus add weight to those who promote the curse. While most of us don't really believe that mysterious forces govern the repeated failures of a baseball team, many of us live with the expectation that they will fail. The memories of the infielder holding the ball, the grounder going through the first baseman's legs, the star pitcher left in too long. Is someone playing with their brains? Defining ourselves as cursed, and the weight of past failures does make success more difficult. There are other facts as well. The best team usually wins, and selling the best player a long time ago may have been a blunder that led to defeat, but its not the same as a curse. What about things like chance, bad luck, or teams of lesser talent. People also seem to assume that there is a law of averages about these things. For instance Job had suffered some losses, and therefore he would not suffer any more. With baseball some people seem to believe that we will win one because of some law that says our time has time, or you cannot always lose. Having played on a team that lost 23 in a row, I know you can always lose, and there is no law of averages. Each time your chance is the same as it was before. There is no truth to the belief that your time has come.
We can readily see that a history of losses and a negative expectation that can't you can't win leads directly to inferior performances or failures at critical times. It may not be a curse, but it sure feels like a curse, and that is what matters. We live in fear. We live in fear of failure. One can see the impact of curses in two majors stories from Hebrew scriptures. They have led to one of the great problems in the modern world - the struggle with Islamic nations, and one of the great curses in our own country - racism and the legacy of slavery. In Genesis, Abraham and Sarah are unable to have children, and so Abraham eventually has a child with the handmaiden Hagar. After Sarah has Isaac, she worries that Hagar's son Ishmael threaten's Isaac's inheritance. Sarah has Abraham drive Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness. As the boy nears death after their provisions have run out, God saves them and promises Ishmael he will be the founder of a great nation, who we identify as Arabs. Later on Muhammad is inspired by this story, and comes to believe that his people and his new faith are part of the divine plan. Remember they are cursed in this story though, and in fact, Paul makes them inferior in the Christian scriptures. Hagar is a slave, and the implication is this is a faith, and a people who are not as worthy as us.
Earlier I said how the juxtaposition of blessing and curse is played out again and again in Genesis. God curses people who are disobedient. Eve disobeys God in the Garden, and she ends up cursed in the story, and must suffer pain in labor for evermore. Likewise the snake must crawl upon its belly as its curse. Today we often reinterpret the story to make Eve the hero. She realized that human beings must take responsibility for their actions. We must make choices about good and evil, and not be ruled by fear of obeying an omnipotent power, or suffer the consequences if we do not obey. The other infamous curse story concerns Noahs' son Ham, who sees Noah naked and drunk, and is called disrespectful. Ham is cursed forever more in this story to be the progenitor of slaves. Later on in history, especially in the American South, this passage, believed to be the word of God, on the cursed Africans was used as a proof text for continued enslavement and belief in inferiority. Curses like these have ended up being used by others to try to assert a rule by fear.
Even if we don't believe a curse or fight to prevent its promotion, its history weighs on us, especially when people have given it religious justification. We Unitarian Universalists are children of the Calvinist theology of the Protestant Reformation. Calvin was a firm believer in original sin, that God had cursed the entire race because of Adam's disobedience, and therefore we find ourselves in a natural state of sin, and deserve to suffer because of this curse. I suppose the idea is we must pay for the sins of the fathers and mothers with this inherited condition called total depravity. Most of the people, Calvin said, would pay by suffering damnation. There was nothing they could do to redeem themselves from this curse. And you thought the Red Sox had it bad. Or perhaps this is why we seem to enjoy suffering. The idea of suffering under the fate of some curse makes it difficult to act. The idea is that your actions are likely to be bad, and therefore you must rely on the authority who knows best. We fail to show respect for God's moral standards, and in order to show this respect, we must fear the Lord.
Fearing the Lord is something that is bandied around a good deal in the Bible. Fear is not suppose to be abject terror of an all powerful being, but rather this notion of respect. Yet many of us learned to live by the terror. If we were not good enough or if we did not go to church, then we would suffer the consequences. If you suffer under a curse like original sin then you probably believe that you not good enough in God's eyes. This leads to the belief that what we have to say or do is not important. Liberalism tried to turn this Protestant curse around by affirming that every person has the potential to make good moral choices and work out their own personal salvation. Slowly the curse of human sinfulness was emphasized less and less, and our divine potential was underscored. Yet in the 19th century Universalists were severely criticized by their opponents by declaring that God's love embraces everybody, and all will be saved. The opponents said that you must strike fear in people's hearts in order for them to be good. If you guarantee salvation, then it gives a license to people to misbehave.
While no one worries much anymore about salvation, it continues to be true that we try to use fear to intimidate people to behave or reform. Think first about what kinds of curses you feel you live under as an individual. While perhaps no God has cursed your behavior or your race, the historical struggles of your race, group or family may make you feel cursed. You may feel stuck with this condition, and there is little you can do. Your genes may give you a predilection for some disease like alcoholism or cancer that weighs upon you. How does it effect you if you feel like you are cursed to be the recipient of it, or do we radically alter our behavior because we fear we will get it. I am also aware that people often use these fears we have to try rule our behavior. Not long ago I receive an invitation to join a sports club. Now bear in mind that I am an individual who tends to be heavy, and I am a large person to begin with. Rather than touting all the wonderful weight machines they had or programs for swimming or aerobics, they began the letter by telling me that my inactivity was going to kill me, and it was costing the country money. If I joined their sports club, I might live and the country might not suffer economic collapse. It was that important. They might as well have said there is a curse on you if you continue to behave this way.
I might have had a different response if there was some effort on their part to positively affirm my capabilities to work with my deficiencies whatever they might be. This reminds me of a visit once to my brother's house when my three boys were acting especially rambunctious. My sister-in-law either excused their bad behavior or else gave up in frustration based on her past experiences with my nephews or both by saying to Andrea, "What did you expect, they're Harrises." This was the wild, uncontrollable behavior gene it was suspected we all carried. Perhaps there was some positive way that behaviors could be identified or improved, by setting limits, or diagnosed, but no, it was known, these are Harrises, and thus cursed to be bad. Now you know who your minister is. This past week, I visited the dentist. I was dreading the trip because recently I have had a dental hygienist who tends to not only brutalize me with her scraping, but also has used scare tactics, I suppose, to convince me to reform. There is a significant difference when someone says I am going to do an oral exam, or I am looking for mouth cancer. There is a significant difference when someone says these gum problems can lead to heart disease, massive infections and even death, than it is unfortunate that your lower front teeth are so crooked, but you are trying to do a good job in an area that it difficult, and here are some other ways to improve your home care. I now know conclusively that fear does not work on me. If tending to be heavy or having crooked teeth are little inherited curses I have, making me feel even worse about them by underscoring the most terrible consequences possible does not change my behavior. If I believe I have a curse or problem that they want to heal or fix by making me feel worse, then my response is to say no, like Job. I want to fix my heart aright, rather than live in fear.
Right now we have a president trying to get elected by playing off people's fears. Fear itself is a curse that prevents us from working with faiths and people who we have traditionally seen as inferior or cursed. Fear provides a permanent war for him to pursue. The problem with living in fear is that both sides live as though they are under a curse. This is true of Hawthorne's famous novel The House of the Seven Gables. Two families the Pynchons and the Maules have continued to feud over the generations, It began when Colonel Pynchon wanted land owned by a laborer named Maule, and had him executed as a witch in order to get his land. At his death Maule placed a curse on the Pynchons. Then Maule's son built the House, but on the day of its dedication the Colonel dies beneath his portrait. The wrong-doing of one generation tends to follow into successive generations. Both families fall on hard times. What's left in the house is Hepzibah, the Pynchon descendant who lives there with her poor brother, Clifford who has been imprisoned for 30 years. We meet Hepzibah in our reading in conversation with her tenant Holgrave, who is a descendant of Maule. He tells her she must grapple with all her troubles, and will find the curse to be unreal. He tells her not to be afraid to end her seclusion. In the end Holgrave marries a country cousin of the Pynchons and the families are united, and the curse is lifted.
This old story gives us some understanding of how we might overcome those curses that weigh on us and prevent us from living in the world without fear. How do we transform a house that has been stained by greed and arrogance and pride? We all know that past decisions, and past misdeed continue to curse us, or exact payment form the living. At one point Holgrave shouts, "Shall we never, never get rid of this past! Many of us have felt branded or cursed by past decisions, such as divorce or illness. With the story's marriage of the two sides, we come to learn that imagined curses can be lifted. They are not placed there by supernatural powers, but by the generations who have learned form the past, admitted their mistakes and then created a new life. Curses are lifted not by the pursuit of power over another or control of others, but through reconciliation and emotional fulfillment. All his life Hawthorne wanted to create a second garden of Eden. What that means is that sometimes our past, our history, our family life over the generations has given us an inheritance that feels like a curse. We can be imprisoned by that seeming curse and the weight of it alone helps prevent success, like failed Red Sox teams. Sometimes those in power, like Pynchons or Presidents operate by greed and fear and hope they can manipulate us or control us. they also act like they can never be wrong. Instead we must act like Eve in the Garden who stands up to the God who says I know what is best for you, like Phoebe in Hawthorne's story who helps Holgrave see with his own eye rather than with the reflected image of life of his photographer's profession. Our power is in our courage to make our own choices, our belief that past curses can be lifted by bringing people together from all sides at the table, that those who would curse others or never admit they are wrong would feel our united strength to stand up to them and be heard by keeping the flame of compassion alive. Rather than curses we live under the rule of blessing ourselves and others for our own knowledge in pursuit of truth, our own understanding of freedom and our sense of mutual responsibility to live in peace.
Closing Words - from Reef by Romesh Gunesekera
Are we not all refugees from something? Whether we stay or go or return, we all need refuge form the world beyond our fingertips at some time. When I was asked by a woman at the pub, ŒHave you come from Africa, away from that wicked Amin?' I said, ŒNo, I am an explorer on a voyage of discovery' . . . I was learning that human history is always a story of somebody's diaspora: a struggle between those who expel, repel, or curtail - - possess, divide and rule -- and those who keep the flame alive from night to night, mouth to mouth, enlarging the world with each flick of a tongue.