“How to Be Happy” - April 24, 2005
Opening Words - from
I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face. . . It has
something to do with incarnation. You feel your obligation to a child when
you have seen it and held it. Any human face is a claim on you, because you
can¹t help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness
of it. But this is truest of a face of an infant. I consider that to be one
kind of vision, as mystical as any.
Sermon
How would you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do.
These words begin the children¹s poem, “The Swing” by Robert Louis
Stevenson. I remember my father reciting some of this classic poetry to me
more than I remember favorite children¹s stories. The words of Kipling and
Stevenson and Longfellow that my Dad probably heard as a boy, echo in my
memory, but now are mostly forgotten with the present generation of
children. It could be that Longfellow¹s “Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”
helped introduce me to a love for history. Stevenson¹s swing is one poem I
have continued to recite to my son Asher during the times when we have been
at the park together, and he has climbed onto the chain held, leg propelled
wonder ride known as the swing. What could make us more blissfully happy as
children than those carefree moments when we were swinging through life,
rhythmically moving back and forth.
Even if those moments of swinging were happy carefree ones, few of us
remember completely blissful childhoods. I see children today struggle with
their inability to read, or to perform in sports. The pressure to do well
or be perfect, or reflect exactly what our parents want all play a role in
making childhood less than pure happy bliss. Sometimes we adults fail to
understand or forget what we went through, as we mutter under our breaths
that we survived the stigmas of ridicule and failure at competition, and the
pressure to perform that made life challenging and anxiety driven for us,
too. So why can¹t these kids buck up? Of course childhood was never
completely happy for any of us. The memory many of us have is probably
mixed. We had fun hitting a baseball, but we may also remember the
indignity of striking out. We were told how great our art work was, but
also eventually learned that we had no real talent.
While the loving adult tried to tell us that it is the playing of the game
or the act of drawing itself that produces the happiness, we were never
completely reassured, or free enough to believe it. And yet sometimes we
could just swing, away from the pressures of competing and judging eyes.
If only we could swing all day. That sounds like a formula for
happiness. But it is a fantasy. As happy as it makes us feel, it is a
solitary act, and it can rain, and after a while even constant swinging
makes us dizzy. We learn in life that you cannot be blissful all the time.
Yet many of us grow up thinking there is a formula for happiness, as my
sermon title, “How to Be Happy” implies. On the day of a child dedication,
our thoughts also turn to our wishes and hopes for this child, and naturally
we say, may you have a happy life. But what does that mean? Each of us
probably thought that some combination of good education, a long term
relationship, meaningful work, and perhaps children would bring us happiness
as adults. Perhaps some of us would throw in where we would live, owning
property or lots of friends as elements in our formula of creating
happiness. The point is many of us develop this precise formula of what
will bring us happiness. If we have a firm idea of what it takes for us to
be happy, then we will never be happy until we have filled the necessary
blanks on our happiness chart. Those who grew up thinking they could never
be happy unless they had children may be miserable if they discover as
adults that they are not likely to have them. In some instances some of us
get more than what we wished for! The point is none of us can create a
preconceived notion of what will bring happiness, and then be happy or not
based on whether we have filled in the blanks.
The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us that if we are committed to
one idea of happiness, then we are going to get caught. The person who does
this may end up unhappy their whole life. If we don¹t have a long term
relationship with the particular person we thought would fulfill us, we may
never be able to find another relationship that we feel is as good. We may
pine for the relationship that never was, or that was suppose to make us
happy, but for whatever reason, did not do so. And there are many
circumstances that may derail our happiness formula, and end the
relationship. So the first step in having a plan for a happy life, is to
not have a plan or detailed formula of what you are convinced will give you
happy life. There are many ways to be happy, but a formula may catch you
both ways in a life of unhappiness. If you simply must fulfill all the
happiness requirements, you may find that you are not able to, due to time,
circumstance, or other events of life. Then you are stuck. On the other
hand, you might fill all your happiness categories, and still find yourself
unhappy. Then you are stuck. The plan for happiness must be broad and open
and welcoming of life.
The idea of having a plan for creating a happy life makes us ponder what
would be the basic conditions of happiness for us. Both liberal religion and
the ethos of American culture have emphasized happiness as central to their
focus and purpose. When
outlined the purpose of our existence as life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. Here he substituted happiness for John Locke¹s third element in
this trinity which was property. Even prior to this the liberal preacher
Jonathan Mayhew said that the purpose of government is the happiness of its
citizens - a happy enjoyment of life, liberty and property.
seen as a special land where it was expected people could attain happiness.
This was a reflection of the idea of endless opportunity. Yet there was
always a tension between acquisition and striving for more, and the pure
enjoyment of life and its gifts.
butterfly. When it is pursued it always seems to dart out of our reach, but
when we sit quiet it may alight upon us. Was happiness found in individual
gain, or in social amelioration? Was it found in transcending the world or
in material gain?
There was also this tension in religious faith. Here liberal religion
made the clear choice between the joy that is found in anticipating a life
in heaven or in obeying the will of God, versus a savoring of the wonders of
this world. Liberals declared we must do all we can to make this world more
beautiful and more just for all. Universalists very clearly declared that
God was not trying to magnify God¹s own glory, but rather desired the
happiness of human creatures. God wants everybody to be happy. The
religious question was how to achieve this happiness. Last week I suggested
that the tiredness we may feel is equated with sameness, and that new
adventures that excite us may lessen our feelings of exhaustion. I did not
mean that change alone will make you happy. In fact most of us will not
make radical changes in the place we live or in what we do for work. The
question is how we make the life we already have into a happy one. What do
we do with what swings before us in our lives. In his second stanza about
the swing, Stevenson writes: Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside -
How do we respond to the countryside of life that opens before us? If a
preconceived plan will not bring happiness, neither will change from our
present state of unhappiness. Far too often we come to believe that
happiness will follow from changing our present circumstances. We believe
our unhappiness is caused by the present job or the present partner, and
everything will become better once we get rid of the fountain of our
unhappiness. Benjamin Whichcote once wrote: “It is impossible for a man to
be made happy by putting him in a happy place, unless he be first in a happy
state.” It is commonly held that we are miserable because we live in a
particular place. but a more attractive city like
romantic city such as
is changing something outside of ourselves, and this is coupled with the
belief that changing the outward circumstances will change the internal
unhappiness. This path to happiness does not require any effort on our part
other than changing our surroundings. In the first instance of the correct
notions that cause happiness we believe we are unhappy because the right
things - job or relationship - have not happened to us. In the second
instance, we believe that different surroundings - new job or relationships
- will make us happy. It is always about something outside of us. William
Blake once wrote, “Perhaps the happiest people are those who are not, or
hardly ever, concerned about themselves. “
We commonly suppose that those who have difficult lives will be unhappy.
We think that I was jilted in a relationship, or I lost a loved one, or I
have a serious illness, and therefore, the result of this difficult
circumstance is that what small amount of happiness I had attained is now
lost because of this misery. Yet unhappiness has nothing to do with
difficult circumstances. People have often wondered how can someone with MS
have a sunny disposition? While there may not be any scientific basis for a
positive outlook being typical of people who suffer from MS, it does not
necessarily follow from a serious illness that the person is going to be
miserable all the time. While we all have different coping mechanisms, we
also can make life choices as to how we allocate our attention in the face
of major life challenges. The person with MS, for example, faces a serious
physical disability, but this does not mean they cannot enjoy books, art,
friends, good food, and other wonderful gifts that life brings us. It all
comes down to what you want to focus on in the circumstances you have been
given. Even for those with a severe disability or illness, we find aspects
of our life that bring happiness, help us understand others, or understand
human existence in deeper ways than we ever thought possible. If we suffer
a loss we can allocate all of our emotional energy and focus on how
miserable we are, or how we cannot go on alone, or how the world has
victimized us, or we can find, even over time, that we have received some
enormous gifts of life and love in the context of the life we have.
Stevenson leaves us with the third verse of the Swing:
“Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown -
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down.”
Life send us up in the air, swinging through circumstances of joy and
sorrow, up and down, until we find the happiness we can attain in the gifts
we have received. How can we find the greatest degree of happiness? The
Universalists said that in God¹s desire to see you happy, you are already
saved. Their message is we must become aware of the blessings of living
that are already ours. Happiness is not found in seeking more, or in
saying, if only I had this ... but in letting Hawthorne¹s butterfly alight
on what goodness is yours, and claiming the happiness you have. Clearly
letting go of those outward circumstances - those notions, those people that
were suppose to give us happiness, in our plan, or in our changes, but did
not, will help us look to where we can find happiness within, but most
especially in the wonders and joys we have been given in spite of our trials
of sorrow and pain. The act we have performed this morning helps reminds us
of this. It is reiterated in the reading from
Traditional theology has sometimes besmirched the beauty and happiness
that life could embrace by condemning our fellow travelers with such notions
as original sin, and then inventing schemes like baptism to wash them clean.
By this method they can choose the worthiness of some over others, and offer
true happiness in an after life to those chosen ones, while condemning the
rest of the race, who only want to enjoy the sweetness of life through its
bounty, its beauty, and its gifts of love.
is not that traditional effort to make others unhappy with their
unworthiness, but rather is the opportunity each one of us has to confer a
blessing on another person. The minister who narrates the long letter to
his son in
but acknowledges it. No church makes the lives in this creation any more
sacred than any other. We believe lives are all sacred equally. Happiness
then lies in acknowledging sacredness. I suspect we could call this
reverence.
Today we hold the life of this child before you. We say, have a happy
life. Some of us may think of degrees or high paying jobs, or being blessed
with children. It is good to have meaningful work, enhancing the life of
our minds, and being able to love others, but ultimately his happiness or
yours or mine will probably not be determined by external criteria - how
well we have filled out our chart of notions, or if we change our
circumstances. No, it will be on whether he loves the world. I mean all the
world. He will be happy if he finds joy in laughing with others, and in
creating a picture, or in singing, or writing, or speaking words of
compassion. He will be happy if the world is beautiful to him, and there is
a magical, unfathomable source of energy that seems to give it a common life
of eternal power that we see in a sparkling set of baby eyes, a smile, a
river¹s raging springtime torrent, a little crocus that fights the cold to
live. He will be happy if he knows that life is a joy, and it is up to us to
confer that joy and blessing on each other in as many moments of existence
as we can. It is a magical joy that Marcos is here. And a magical joy that
you are here. Happiness is finding joy in living.
How would you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do.
Closing Words - ”Happiness” by Mary Oliver
In the afternoon I watched
the she-bear; she was looking
for the secret bin of sweetness --
honey, that the bees store
in the trees¹ soft caves.
Black block of gloom, she climbed down
tree after tree and shuffled on
through the woods. And then
she found it! The honey-house deep
as heartwood, and dipped into it
among the swarming bees -- honey and comb
she lipped and tongued and scooped out
in her black nails, until
maybe she grew full, or sleepy, or maybe
a little drunk, and sticky
down the rugs of her arms,
and began to hum and sway.
I saw her let go of the branches,
I saw her lift her honeyed muzzle
into the leaves, and her thick arms,
as though she would fly--
an enormous bee
all sweetness and wings --
down into the meadows, the perfection
of honeysuckle and roses and clover --
to float and sleep in the sheer nets
swaying from flower to flower
day after shining day.
“So Tired” - April 17, 2005
My inside, listen to me, the greatest spirit,
the Teacher, is near,
wake up! wake up!
Run to his feet --
he is standing close to your head right now.
You have slept for millions and millions of years.
Why not wake up this morning?
Sermon
When I was little I often got poison ivy. This is of course partly
because I grew up in the country and the infernal stuff was everywhere.
Even if we tore it up by the roots it always seemed to grow back. We even
tried to burn the plants. So there were many occasions where my mother was
daubing my skin with calamine lotion, or else I was itching madly, making my
life even more miserable. My father once told me he never got poison ivy,
because as a boy, he had once mistakenly eaten it. Because it was
incorporated into his bio systems, he was somehow safe from this particular
affliction. I don¹t know if there was any scientific basis to this, but
perhaps there was, because as you know, we do take a bit of a live virus to
create the vaccine to ward off that very same illness. Initially this was
very dangerous, and still can be. The great revivalist preacher and writer,
Jonathan Edwards died of small pox in 1755, shortly after he was given an
inoculation for, you guessed it, small pox.
Can you take the poison to get rid of the poison? In college, when my
buddies tied one on, and got very drunk, I would occasionally see them the
next morning with a beer in their hand. The idea was gross to me, but a
couple of them swore by the theory that having a drink would cure them of
the hangover, because it would kick start their liver into processing all
the alcohol that was still in their system from the night before. This idea
of using liquor to cure the effects of liquor gave rise to the term, “hair
of the dog” as far back as the mid-16th century to indicate the more
drinking method for curing hangovers. Its origin dates from an even more
ancient practice of healing dog bites by putting an ointment that contains
the hair of the dog that bit you on those same wounds that the dog
inflicted. We can all imagine how effective that was.
I am not going to argue that the the ill effect is the source of it own
cure. In fact with this sermon on being tired, I am going to suggest the
opposite. I remember one time in my life when I could get all the sleep I
wanted. Back when I was a teenager living at home, or even when home for
vacation from college, my mother would let me sleep in, and in, and in.
While today I may complain of being woke at the crack of dawn by my
children, I could sleep forever then, especially on Saturdays. What I
remember about these Saturdays is not how refreshed I felt when I finally
get up in the middle of the afternoon, but how endless sleeping led to my
feeling more and more tired. I was useless the rest of the day. I would
wake up, lay in bed, go back to sleep, wake up, still feel tired, go back to
sleep in an endless cycle. The end of all this sleep was continually
feeling tired.
Today, there are many people in our culture who say they are tired all
the time. Do you know someone like that? We hear about being over scheduled
with too much to do, or working long hours to make ends meet. Many of us
give our children just as heavy a schedule with activities such as dance,
sports or theater. We keep them so busy there is never any time just to
have fun. Is it true that all we do tires us out, or is it something else
that may contribute to this feeling of exhaustion? Could it be a feeling of
endless sameness or emotional fatigue from hearing about a problem over and
over again, or even a hypochondria of the spirit that feeds off this
cultural malaise leading us to say, ”I¹m so tired.” When we feel
depressed, we also feel tired, and in that depression often feel as though
life is a rut from which we cannot escape, there is a cycle of sameness or
meaninglessness that we wish would end.
To me the feeling of tiredness or not is directly related to a sense of
enthusiasm or passion or renewal or meaning that characterizes an activity
or a relationship. There is a modern story called, “The Cricket Story,”
which speaks to the importance of context. Once there were two friends
walking down a sidewalk of a busy street during rush hour. The noise in the
city streets was intense - cars honking, feet shuffling, voices speaking and
shouting. While all this noise was occurring, one of the friends turned to
the other and said, “I hear a cricket.” Her friend responded, “there is no
way you could ever hear a cricket in the midst of this noise. You¹ve got to
be imagining it. Plus there are no crickets in the city. But the first
friend insisted, “No, I really mean it. Let me show you.” So they crossed
the street to a big cement planter that had a tree in it. Pushing back some
leaves, she found a little brown cricket.. ”That¹s amazing,” said her
friend, “you must have super sensitive hearing to have noticed that. What is
your secret?” But the first friend said, “no, my hearing is the same as
yours. There¹s no secret. Here I¹ll show you.” She reached into her
pocket and pulled out some loose change. Then she threw it on the sidewalk.
Despite all that noise of continuing traffic, and voices, everyone within
thirty feet turned their head to see where the sound of the money was coming
from. ”See,” she said, “It¹s all a matter of what you are listening for.”
The most obvious way to understand this story is to say that we all hear
what we want to hear. We have selective listening skills. Andrea is telling
me that all the time. Of course we might ask ourselves why we have
selective hearing, and the truth is we have for whatever reason, judged that
what is being told to us to not important, or is something we don¹t want to
hear. This can destroy a relationship. There is an important Biblical
passage that relates this inability to hear and being tired. It is when
Jesus is in the
has a crisis of faith. He tells God to “let this cup pass from me.” He
doesn¹t want to go through with his martyrdom. He then asks Peter to stay
awake and pray with him. And what does Peter do? He sleeps. He cannot
even stay awake for an hour. It happens a second time, and the disciples
still sleep. And then a third time. What we might take from this story is
that here is the most important crisis for Jesus, and they cannot listen.
They are tired. They sleep. Might we understand this story to mean that we
sleep walk through the most important, meaningful things around us? We make
ourselves tired through busy tasks, but fail to give ourselves over to what
is most exciting or interesting or important about our lives.
A very interesting thing happened to me in the fall of 2003. I was
already scheduled to teach an online course for my seminary, but was
suddenly given the opportunity to teach a history course at
First Parish. Throw in father of three young boys, and a church in the midst
of a capital project, and it sounds like a ticket to being tired and worn
out from too many demands. Do you know what happened to me? I had more
energy and enthusiasm for what I was doing than I had in years. Why? Sure I
was teaching history, something I love with a passion, but having that
passion also helped renew and refresh me for everything else I was doing.
Then I had a beautiful church to work in. I had students responding to me,
and something like that builds on itself. Conversely it is easy to just do
the same job over and over again, and not offer any new programs. It is
easy to just get by with the same old same old, but we begin to wonder in
that context why we might feel tired all the time. It is like more sleep
making you more tired. When an event gets old and stops engendering any
enthusiasm we say it is tired. Old solutions get tired. The same food
becomes wearisome. In church what happens to those people who feel like
they are doing coffee hour all the time. Church begins to feel like endless
work. Doing the same thing over and over again, especially if you feel
alone, ends up being no fun. It makes us tired of church. Now church
might still be exciting. There¹s new worship, new programs, new people to
talk to, but some folks get stuck doing all the work. We renew ourselves
with new people, sharing the load, and new programs.
We can become tired by failing to listen to the important things and
wrapping ourselves in busyness. We can become tried by doing the same thing
over and over again. Sameness can become an issue when we want to listen to
our friends and loved ones with compassion. We want them to know that we
care. Yet sometimes when we hear the same thing over and over again we lose
our ability to hear the cry of another. Even if we are the best of
listeners, the repetitive litany of problems can becoming tiring, and so we
are often drained of our ability to truly hear. There are emotional limits
to our compassion, especially if it feels like the other is always
complaining. We stop listening. In those times of being emotionally
drained, we feel tired. We are used up. I can¹t listen because I am worn
out. It is that problem where more of the same makes us feel tired. What
happens in all of these instances is we feel tired because we cannot truly
pay attention anymore. We stop paying attention to the friend when it seems
like all we hear about is their problem. How then can we understand what
happened to Jesus, and learn to stay awake for the truly important?
In Walden, Thoreau tells us we won't feel tired if there is an infinite
expectation of the dawn. We are not tired when we make things new. Similar
to what happened to me a couple of years ago, when we have something that
excites us, and we can share that, then we wake up, and the people around us
awake, too. What about a chronic problem that we share that seems to be
getting old and tired? The problem is the sense of sameness and the burden
of sharing that sameness in a small circle. What if we look at things a new
way, or share what we are doing about solving a problem, or share what is
bothering us with a new friend. What if we reach out and create that new
friendship? The sameness, the tiredness begins to evaporate when we stretch
ourselves in new ways. Saying the same thing, doing the same thing, sharing
with the same person means more of the same makes us tired. But when we
seek new learning, new conversation, or when we seek new friends who will
listen, we can wake up both of us by telling them what excites us, what is
good about what I am trying, what is hopeful. That fall I taught two
courses, I never felt so awake. When we neglect those moments of new
opportunities, new conversations, new ways to find excitement in our lives,
we may miss the truly meaningful, and like well meaning disciples stay
asleep. In a way this is like the coming of the spring. Winter leaves us
with a deadening sameness. It is a time that goes on forever. It makes us
sleepy with life. Spring¹s newness brings back to our souls the yearning to
awake and unfold, and seize the new.
Marilynne Robinson, the author of the recent novel,
interview that she believes that much of our culture is caught up in a
hypochondria that hears the direst predictions about things. He says these
cynical judgments we make of each other do not improve our energies. We
might say, they tire us out. In fact she says that this endless
repetitiveness about the moral or intellectual collapse of our country
causes grave harm. She says that she wants human beings to be artists of
their own behavior. We must create new patterns with our lives. Don¹t give
in to this judgmental cynicism, she says, awake to the beauty in your own
soul. If we are tired, we must rest from the activities of our own
contriving - our busyness, our sleep walking away from what is truly
important. In the baseball novel, The Natural, Doc Knobb comes to speak to
the players on the Knights to convince them to be receptive to their own
basic thoughts. He tells them they have created the notion that they are
not as good as the Pirates. All their worry about what¹s wrong with them
will make them tired. Roy Hobbs rebels against this mass psychology because
he wants to do it himself. He fears being lulled into sleep. He wants to
capture his chance to create new opportunities. In the 19th century Oliver
Wendell Holmes wrote eloquently about the chambered nautilus building a new
house out of the old. He carries the old around with him, but does not
leave it behind. The new chambers grow smoothly, larger than the last.
Holmes writes,”Still as the spiral grew, He left the past year¹s dwelling
for the new...” More famously he wrote,
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll: --
Leave thy low vaulted past.
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leave thine outgrown shell by life¹s unresting sea.
The message here is we can be transformed anew in the homes we occupy. But
it is not the same old routine or the same old ways of sharing with the same
old people. It is finding ways to create something new. Sameness is a trap
that will make us tired before long. As the nautilus grows it moves on
within itself. It may do so in its present home, but it also creates a new
home that extends the old in beautiful, shining alabaster in which it can be
awake, be vibrant, be new again. May we awake to the alabaster within us
all.
Closing Words - from Walden by Henry David Thoreau
We must learn to awaken and keep ourselves awake by an infinite expectation
of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep; for we are
encouraged that a man or woman can elevate his or her life by their own
conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a picture, or to
carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; But it is far more
glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we
look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the
highest of arts.
“Embracing Differences” - April 3, 2005
Mark W. Harris
Opening Words
- from Adlai Stevenson, Unitarian laypersonI think one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there’s nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless. Here lies the power of the liberal way: not in making the whole world Unitarian, but in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one’s own; in encouraging the free interchange of ideas; in welcoming fresh approaches to the problems of life; in urging the fullest, most vigorous use of critical self-examination.
Chalice lighting - from NELS group 2002
We light this chalice as a beacon to all,
Calling us to share together in compassion.
May it serve to inspire courage and
Service in our search and in our actions.
May the light from this flame illuminate
and guide us as we search for truth and meaning.
Let its brightness reach the darkest of places,
And guide us to that place we call holy.
Sermon
A sermonizer could do a number of different things with the word difference. In my younger years when my parents’ were still living, they always had a stock response whenever they tried a new food, which often seemed like anything they would label “foreign,” especially when it was swimming in a sauce. After a hesitant mouthful, my mother especially, would smile and say, “that’s different.” Of course she was just trying to be nice and affirm what I liked, even though if she could have brought herself to utter an honest response it would have been, “This is horrid.” I grew up in a household where there was an aversion to trying new foods, and general suspicion of anything that was different from our white bread Protestant home norm. While “different” was a generalized way of graciously saying I will try this, it was really code for I don’t like it, and am only trying it because you are my son. I never saw them gobble down aloo gobi, in fact the name alone would have frightened them away. These new foods were invariably left on the plate after the initial taste test.
On Thursday morning, I went over to Harvard Divinity School with Andrea to hear our First Parish member Johanna Erickson speak as part of a panel on the topic: “I Wish I Were Different”: The Problem with Expectations. Several of the speakers spoke of how the expectations of others led them to feel as though they ought to be different from what they were. As women they felt like they always disappointed those around them who they were trying to please. They were either not beautiful enough, or not smart enough, or not talented enough, and they wished, tried, sacrificed everything to be different, or simply felt unloved or unappreciated because they were different from what they should have been. I believe my sisters’ entire life was affected by my father’s disappointment that she was not his pretty little girl. Some of these expectations were also claims women made of themselves. Sometimes we buy into this challenge to be different, and try to remake ourselves to please others. Look at the demand for plastic surgery. Other times we want to be different. I tried to be different from my parents - my long hair, anti-war, educated liberalism was a way to defy their expectations of me. I wanted to establish my own set for values for what I thought was important. In my rebelliousness I want to embrace everything that was different from them. I sought out that foreign food, hippie lifestyle, just to be different. I realized late that many of their values were things I embraced, too. Like Mark Twain, I came to understand that with each passing year, my father was becoming smarter and smarter. Moreover, I discovered there are differences between people that I had not even begun to imagine.
Our opening words from former presidential candidate and active Unitarian Adlai Stevenson are a helpful reminder that an affirmation of difference is a vital part of our liberal faith. Part of the liberal genius is to encourage others to seek out those who have different opinions, different lifestyles, different viewpoints so that we can all learn from each other and build a community or a world that is vital and diverse. It is not easy to embrace a faith that celebrates difference. The other day at Harvard there was a brief reference to our failing to understand the differences between men and women. As mentioned in some previous sermons, many people who came of age with me believed that there were no inherent differences between boys and girls, or men and women, and that our differences were merely cultural, so that we would find in the proper environment that all boys could as relational as girls, or all girls as withholding of feelings as boys. Most of us would now say there is some kind of continuum, and certainly we believe that both nature and nurture play a role in the development of differences between the sexes.
Alleged differences between the sexes has been a controversial subject in recent months in the wake of the President of Harvard placing his foot in his mouth, and implying that women are inferior when it comes to math and science. The point of this sermon is not to argue if there is any kind of natural aptitude difference in these areas of study. The lived reality is what we are concerned with. Differences or not, society needs to be working toward a goal of justice and equality for its citizens. This means that even if there are differences, we need to ameliorate a situation where there is gross prejudice and inequality when it comes to opportunity in certain fields. Moreover, we might be asking, that if there are differences, how these differences between the sexes or the races or the sexual orientations in the cultures can provide a richer environment for the study or understanding of any subject or people.
This is the wonder of differences that the community of Watertown often fails to understand educationally. We have rich cultural diversity in terms of ethnic groups and traditions. We have populations who are differently abled in a number of ways, including the world famous Perkins School for the Blind. Yet there often seems a reluctance to appreciate this diverse history and culture. Instead our schools seem obsessed with the MCAS tests, and spend the whole year focusing on preparing for the test and then taking the test. There is an undercurrent of inferiority of we are not as good as Wellesley or the richer western suburbs, and so we obsess about not being them, when we could spend much more of our energy on what we could glean from the richness that is in our midst. Tied in with this underdog psychology are parents who want to perpetuate an inbred system of hiring our own. The problem with this is that new ideas and change are rejected as threatening, while failing to see that difference might mean something exciting or creative. Personally, the recent years of my life with the maturing of my children and their relationship to the schools have been rich fodder for trying to understand differences and embracing them. I struggled for years and continue to do so with the idea of not being normal. When we see someone and label them different then it becomes increasingly hard to see what positive thing they can contribute to the world. And so we then tend to protect the others from that which we see as different. We may outwardly include the different one, but it is generally not so they can develop their own skills, but so we are especially mindful that they do not disrupt the larger group, and we often fail to try to understand them or learn from them.
The marvel of understanding and embracing differences is that it affirms my Unitarian Universalist faith as the most empowering part of my life. My children have profoundly effected the way I see differences in the world. Perhaps we don't truly learn something until it comes home to us. If we follow that Unitarian Universalist principle of affirming the worth and dignity of all and truly apply it, then we must look across the sea of faces and bodies who are gathered with us today. We must think of the people we work with every single day. Truly paying attention means that we see, perhaps, for the first time, how unique we all are. Some of us process information in very different ways, some of us have very great anxiety about talking with others, some of us are depressed, some of us are more physically capable of doing a jumping jack or 20 or 50 of them. There are fast talkers and slow ones. There are thinkers and there are doers. There are all these wonderful differences, each present to help us learn and appreciate from the other. But too often we take those differences and we make one the right one, and conversely, the other wrong. That’s where those expectations come in. When we see ourselves as different, then it becomes increasingly difficult to build any kind of durable self-esteem. Those who are different must face the prejudice of others. Prejudice literally means to pre-judge. We decide the value of the other person right in front of us without any evidence. This child has trouble processing information may mean a conclusion that he/she is stupid. That child can be the kindest child in the world, but their slowness of response may provoke a prejudice reaction that they are lazy, not that they don’t understand or that the adult has not helped them by explaining how they could understand. To rephrase Rabbi Kushner, bad things happen to good people because we not only do not understand their differences from us, but we also fail to embrace those differences and see how they could help us grow intellectually and spiritually.
I recently had a nice trip to Washington , DC with my family. On the last day before we came home, we were in the American history museum, and went through the exhibit on the Star Spangled Banner. There has been a five year restoration project to preserve the original flag that hanged over Ft. McHenry when Francis Scott Key saw it survive the British bombardment during the War of 1812, and penned the words to our national anthem. I had never seen this national emblem before, and in fact, despite my history background, did not know it survived. I was struck by its size, seeming as big as a basketball court. It is huge. Now they are trying to keep it from falling apart and disintegrating forever. For someone like me who has spent some much time studying our history, the flag represents much about freedom and opportunity. But the flag has been used in different ways. When immigrants first began entering America in droves, there were nativist movements who promoted the use of the flag to Americanize children of immigrants. An early advocate of flag worship in schools, George Balch said immigrants were human scum, and he believed that flag rituals would help elevate the masses. The Pledge of Allegiance had its origins in a patriotic salute that Balch advocated. Originally the kids had their arms outstretched, prefiguring Hitler’s famous Nazi salute. For a long time, love of Christ was linked to love of country. The ethos behind the flag worship was not to embrace differences, but rather to inculcate obedience as a primary virtue of the American way.
Suspicion of the newcomers or suspicion of the outsiders has been a frequently recurring theme in history. One group assimilates, and another arrives to be humiliated because they are different. Some time ago I told you about an Armenian boy who moved to my home town of New Salem, and found his dark skin, his orthodox faith, and his ideas and very being different from the accepted culture. I took part in bullying tactics that were perpetrated on him. He was scum to us. Today I work with pride with Armenian colleagues, who have asked all of us in Watertown to help commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Turkish genocide, even as the Turkish government refuses to recognize that these atrocities occurred, and there is a new law there forbidding anyone to acknowledge the genocide. Embracing differences does not come easy. Noticing differences helps inform us how much needs to be done to truly affirm the worth of all.
In our own tradition we have much to celebrate in the life of Samuel Gridley Howe. Despite some naivete about the innocence and purity of those who were blind or disabled, Howe gave the world an astounding degree of hope when he worked to provide educational opportunities for everyone. Howe recognized among all our differences how much each of us has to give to the other, how much each of can learn from the other. Everyone should be given the opportunity to learn, implying that we should pay attention to our differences, and use them as springboards to new opportunities. One of the reasons we turn on the foreigner, or the newcomer, or the person with the disability is that we have historically lacked a relationship with them. People of color or people with handicaps are kept at a distance from us because of social discomfort or fear. Today people are still excluded for their differences. We don't help them with their disabilities as we more often protect the normal ones. Embracing differences are easy words, but a more difficult vision as a lived reality. I was struck by a distinction that one of the women at Harvard made in the struggle with differences and expectations. With expectations we usually ask the question, Why don’t you?” Instead of this kind of judging of self and others, she suggested the alternative of human possibility and potential with this question, “What can I?”
A second new experience that happened to me when I visited Washington was a visit to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. This is a series of outdoor rooms with fountains, sculpture and quotations. Some of it is touch friendly with a reminder of differences needing to be embraced and celebrated. Roosevelt is a symbol of some of this with his own disability, but it becomes much broader than that when we are reminded of the need to take care of everybody. I felt angry when I read this quotation, and thought of the injustices of our own time. “I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. “ Roosevelt vision was of an America that guards against injustice, that was revolted by the idea of a system of government based on the regimentation of human beings. That vision is echoed in Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath, where Tom sees we are not individual souls who get what we can for ourselves, but pieces of a larger soul that fights so hungry people can eat, that teaches those who need to learn, that protests injustice when it sees it. To create that world of justice where we embrace differences, folks need to get together, as Steinbeck says, and do some yellin.’ What are we going to yell about? May we express our hope in action in the future as people who believe all these different people given opportunities to work together and learn from each other, can build a more beautiful, more just, and more understanding world
Closing Words
- from a Franciscan source (via John Buehrens)May God bless you with DISCOMFORT . .
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
So that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with ANGER . . .
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with TEARS . . .
To shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war,
So that you may reach out to comfort them and turn their pain into JOY.
And may God bless you with enough FOOLISHNESS . . .
To believe that you can make a difference in this world,
So that you can DO what others claim cannot be done. Amen.