First Parish of Watertown

“Judging and Genocide” by Mark W. Harris

First Parish of Watertown - October 28, 2007

Opening Words- Israel Zangwill

Come into the circle of love and justice,
Come into the community of pity,
Of holiness and health --
Come, and ye shall know peace and joy,
Let what ye desire of the universe penetrate you,
Let lovingkindness and mercy pass through you,
And truth be the law of your mouth.

Readings

D. H. Lawrence - “There is my creed”

This is what I believe:

That I Am I,
That my soul is a dark forest.
That my known self will never be more than a little
clearing in the forest.
That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into
the clearing of my known self, and then go back.
That I must have the courage to let them come and go.
That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but
that I will try always to recognize and submit to the
gods in me and the gods in other men and women.
There is my creed.

Matthew 7 : 1-5, 7-8

‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye. . .  ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

Sermon
Everyone judges. Come on. You know it’s true. We do it all the time. If we see unruly children in a restaurant, we may judge the parent as incompetent or irresponsible. With their eyes, their sighs or even their words our fellow diners may implore us, “Can’t you keep them under control?” And so we may quickly try to finish up our meal so that we can exit, or one parent takes the children outside, or we may even defiantly say to ourselves, “If they don’t like the way my kids behave, tough luck.” But there may also be instances when we feel judged by another, and it is entirely appropriate. As a parent I was shirking my duty. Bad behavior can be more than just a quiet meal interrupted. Children running through a parish hall, for instance, can be dangerous to the elderly and others. When a fellow driver runs red lights, or weaves in and out of traffic, we judge them as a danger to public safety.


The point is we can’t help but judge others. They are not doing their job. They are not paying attention. And we say, shape up. We also have views about what we think is appropriate behavior, dress, lifestyle choices, the right amount of exercise to get or eating habits right down to the brand of ketchup we think is superior. If we see Hunt’s instead of Heinz, we may grimace and say, Yeech, my brand is better. This is a regular topic of discussion with my boys. They all love video games, but they have different preferences for what they like. Sometimes they cannot seem to avoid saying to one another - “you are stupid for liking that game,” or “that is a lousy game, I can’t believe you like it.” When one of them feels judged by the other, they go on the attack As parents we try to say they need to realize that everyone has preferences, and it is ok, if you like something that I do not, and you are not stupid or ignorant for liking it.


This came up in a more serious way not long ago with two Boston firefighters who were killed in the line of duty. We all have tremendous respect for firefighters, as evidenced right now by those individuals who are endangering their lives to save countless homes and land in California. It is a job with a tremendous amount of risk involved, and that was the case with the two firefighters who rushed into a restaurant and were engulfed by an exploding backdraft. We admired their bravery and dedication to duty so that we the public might feel safe. After the massive outpouring of grief in support of the families and affirmation of the firefighters at their respective funerals, some shocking news surfaced. Autopsies showed that one of the firefighters was legally drunk, and the other had cocaine in his system. This besmirched the brave epitaphs with the revelation that firefighters may behave in ways that can endanger their own lives, and the lives of the public at large.


This raises many questions. If he was sober, would he have gone into the building? What if he had to rescue someone? What kind of firehouse environment permitted him to work in this condition? Do we want a drunk firefighter driving erratically down the street in a swaying, massive red truck, or making some kind of erroneous decision about your health and safety because he/she couldn’t think straight? They might be both a danger to themselves and us, and our property. We later learned that Boston is the only firefighting unit in a major city that does not require drug testing. The immediate reaction to this news was most enlightening. The Union seemed to imply this was a private matter, and they immediately announced they wanted to “protect the families of our fallen brothers.” Even the next day, when I was walking through Harvard Square, a newspaper dealer was hawking his headlines by shouting “these men risk their lives by going into burning buildings. You’d have a drink, too. I think he was missing the point. This wasn’t a lifestyle choice to drink socially because of a stressful job. The firefighters need to be judged for irresponsible actions that could endanger themselves and the public.

Up until recent months, the town of Watertown participated in an apparently innocuous program to promote equality and diversity, and more seriously to speak up and act if there are public instances of hate being spoken about a particular person or group in a community. This program, called No Place for Hate, is sponsored by the Anti-Defammation league, which for many years has held community events, workshops and printed materials to help communities battle against prejudice and discrimination, especially anti-semitism. A few of our First Parish members were involved, including me as their treasurer, and as the chief organizer of Watertown’s annual Martin Luther King Unity Breakfast. The Town Council were official supporters of this No Place for Hate program, and a police officer was the co-chair. This was clearly a non-controversial, mom and apple pie way to try to embrace a community vision of how we can all get along and understand and accept one another despite our differences. A number of interesting and informative programs have been sponsored over the years, including sessions on hate crimes and immigration issues. Yet this summer we learned there was a seamy underside to the “peace, love and understanding.” theme.

This seamy underside has to do with the fact that 1.5 million Armenians were intentionally killed by the Turkish government between 1915 and 1923. This intentional killing of a national or ethnic group constitutes what has become recognized as a genocide, the same term that is currently being applied to the human destruction in Darfur in the Sudan. It turned out that the Anti-Defamation League had failed to recognize the slaughter of the Armenians as a genocide, and seemed to view the carnage in Turkey as the consequence of tragic wartime conditions, much as the Turkish government has. In short, a regrettable consequence of war, but not intentional killings. Because the Turkish government is Israel’s only friend in the Middle East, the ADL refused to say that the Turks had intentionally perpetrated these acts. The ADL chose political expediency over integrity, which makes it difficult for them to legitimately define themselves as a group which decries all forms of hatred when they refused to affirm and name the truthfulness of a terrible historic event that was the very epitome of hatred.

The uncovering of this failure of the ADL to live up to the integrity of their own mission led the No Place for Hate Committee, led by our own Will Twombly, to work with the Town Council to remove Watertown from this official program. A new group is forming around these issues, and if any of you are interested in participating, I encourage you to speak to me, or Will or Sue Kuder. This local turmoil has led to some interesting national and international repercussions. The ADL has reconsidered its positions, and a US House of Representatives Committee has endorsed a measure labeling these events a genocide. Affirming the truthfulness of this genocide, which is a non binding resolution without the force of law, has unnerved President Bush, and resulted in the Turks calling their US ambassador home and the government doing some saber rattling in northern Iraq against the Kurds. For years the Turks have tried to silence the discussion around this genocide, and like any attempt to censor, it has only led to more attention being focused on Turkey, and in a way the present government makes itself more of a party to events that it was not responsible for in the first place. The denial and cover-up make it worse.

I believe this Armenian genocide discussion is a helpful reminder to each of us of how and when we judge, and why it is crucial that we reflect on how we judge at certain junctures in life. The scripture passage from Matthew is instructive here because I believe a typical liberal interpretation of this would be that we should never judge others. It tell us, “Judge not, so you will not be judged.” In keeping with liberal thought on tolerating other perspectives or understanding others, we are likely to affirm that we should not judge whether someone or something is right or not. We tend to fall on the personal decision side of ethical decision making. We affirm people following their own bliss. But there can be harmful effects to this approach. This came up at a recent study group meeting of mine. One of my colleagues had a quandary that he could not address. One partner in a marriage was having an affair. Our liberal inclination is to not judge that person because our faith tends to focus on the individual and on individual needs. We affirm each person and minister separately to the sad and angry partner who was betrayed; to the philandering spouse who is looking for something more in life; to the person seeking power by being chosen over someone else. So that failure to judge does not acknowledge the immoral nature of the act, which is what the more evangelical church would do, but moreover it fails to acknowledge how someone is getting hurt. The person is destroying a relationship. Shouldn’t a minister speak to him about the destructive nature of his acts?

Most of us are sensitive to being judged, or feel ashamed. And so if we have the courage to share something we feel badly about, it is not helpful to be told how awful this act was. We already know that. We seek forgiveness or understanding. We forget sometimes how easy it is to make someone feel bad with our judging. I was speaking to someone this week about a group she used to be in, which involved sharing some very painful experiences. A common first reaction after a person had told the group of some painful trauma was, “I could never survive that” or “how could you stand it?” Perhaps meant as an attempt to admire strength, it also comes across as judgment. You were stupid to put up with that. You endured too long. We want to share without fear of being judged critically, in the hope that we can make amends and find a new way to live. So the context of the judging is crucial. Is it to affirm me and my beliefs, or is to to affirm the other and help them feel supported? Is it giving or is it selfish?

People don’t want to be judged, and yet we must call each other to be our best selves. So I think the more helpful way to understand Jesus’s comment on judging is that we do judge, but when we do so it must be with honest and helpful intent rather than in a destructive, attacking or controlling kind of manner which always implies that I am right. Could it be that sometimes we need to judge or be judged? For example, I feel judged every time I visit my doctor. I am going to step on his scale, and then tell him how little exercise I get when I go for my annual physical exam, which of course I have delayed scheduling because I am going to be judged. We are reluctant these days to be critical of those are overweight or out of shape, despite the obesity epidemic among children. But we could also say my doctor is judging me because he has my good health in mind, which he has sworn an oath to uphold. If I still smoked cigarettes, he would judge my decision about that, too. So his intent in judging me is to serve a greater good, my own health. The idea is not to insult someone or make them feel bad about themselves, which is not what you would expect from a doctor. He is also not trying to imply that I am a bad person, but that it is my actions that need changing. As with children, we make the distinction between the behavior and the boy. My doctor is trying to help me feel better, and live better, and I need to make the decisions in my own life to help me do that.

Liberals may live by the mistaken presumption that if we do not judge we are really being very accepting of others, but our acceptance may indeed be an unwillingness to engage with the other person or issue. It may be a silent avoidance of confronting the real problem. By this I do not mean the stereotype nosy, controlling in law that tells you or shows you what she perceives is the right and only way to do your dishes or fold your laundry or how everything you do seems wrong . That is a judging that feels consistent with my boys insulting each other for liking a video game that one of the others dislikes. There is another helpful kind of judging that we need. This says that a child’s behavior does needs correcting sometimes. Or that a person needs to be judged when they are hurting someone else in our wider community by violating appropriate boundaries. If we are unfair in our judgments it will be reflected by the log in our own eyes. Judging is not about my being right and you being wrong, but it can be something that helps us see those times where we are hurting ourselves or another. And then our friend, our partner or even our doctor, is being helpful, even loving to judge what we are doing. So the idea is to judge fairly, and not in any selfish way.

The problem is that we sometimes live with the notion that we are better people if we do not judge at all. I think we teach our children to just be nice and accepting toward others, and think of everybody as good and worthy. Unfortunately being nice has its limits, especially when someone perpetrates an act of selfish judgment on another. One person may say to another, “what you like is horrible, and it reflects how ignorant you are, too.” The judgment often feels as if it is about the person, as well as about the action. Here is where D.H. Lawrence’s creed has some religious value for us. He says the soul is a dark forest. Our tendency as people is to protect ourselves. We think it would be better if we all got along, but achieving that goal is easier said than done. The dark forest is how complicated human nature is. With the No Place for Hate situation we have a seemingly faultless sponsoring group which is actually protecting its own interests, and compromising its own integrity for political purposes. Here protecting the alliance was more important than recognizing the genocide. They needed to be called to task for not owning up to the truth. Judging them made them face the truth.

Liberals tend to have this belief that if we allowed all perspectives equal time everyone would feel welcome and accepted, right? There is no judgment here. I just finished teaching a crucial session in my class on the history of Unitarian Universalism. Liberals in the early 19th century wanted to avoid conflict and have one big happy Christian fellowship where your faith was measured by what you did, and not by what you believed. But giving room to everybody, as nice and nonjudgmental as it sounds, means that those who believe in something strongly are not permitted to do so because we don’t really want that kind of dogmatic faith in an inclusive setting. Inclusiveness is actually an ideology. I believe we should be courageous enough to admit that, and in this context we should also be courageous enough to say that we are judging those who have strong beliefs. We may judge them as wrong, but it is also true that that judging may be appropriate, especially if they are slinging homophobic or racist words. In other words, in the context of the community, we take a stand based on our values.

What is crucial is whether the judging we do is calling others to their better selves, or is it prejudicial or vindictive? In our avowed nonjudgmental way, we often voice hyper critical judging. Historically, liberals believed they knew what was right for the ignorant masses. We saw ourselves as the better educated, more cultured people, and judged others as incapable of doing what was right for the communities where they lived. But perhaps it is just our own rational fear of deep religious experience, or faith that is simply present, persistent. If you are a person who has had an experience of visionary dreams, or had inexplicable religious experiences happen to you then you may feel judged within a Unitarian Universalist context because that is not an acceptable way to be religiously in our paradigm of understanding truth. I think of my father telling me of the amazing experience he had going into his pea patch early in the morning as the dew was glistening on the leaves, and the pods were bursting with green circular morsels of delight, and the sun was rising over the tree tops, and the birds were sounding their first songs, and he said he heard the voice of God. Students in the class I teach say that people they know, are fearful of sharing this kind of experience in a Unitarian Universalist congregation. They will be judged they say, as crazy.

Perhaps these are D.H. Lawrence’s strange gods that come forth from the forest that we need to be less judgmental of. We remember that under the peace, love and understanding of No Place for Hate or liberal religion there is a dark side of our apparent nonjudgmental ideology. There are truths we don’t talk about. We are always judging things - my issue is paramount, your experience is wrong. We are not exempt from judging the speck in the other’s eye, while the log sits in our eye. This is when D. H. Lawrence’s creed comes full circle We recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. We all judge all the time. I think it is part of our very nature that we cannot deny. Those gods of judgment in us are calling us to remember how often we think we are right, and that is a judging that makes the log in our eye grow. But when our judging calls others to see and listen to the gods in each other - Armenian and Turk, Jew and Palestinian, liberal and conservative, reason and experience, then we can truly be reconciled, to the truth, to our better, more healthy, more loving selves; then it is a holy kind of just judging.


Closing words - by Frederick Gillis
May the love that overcomes all differences,
  that heals all wounds,
  that puts to flight all fears,
  that reconciles all who are separated,
Be in us and among us
  now and always. Amen.

Nature’s Delights: The Life of Beatrix Potter by Mark W. Harris

First Parish of Watertown - October 21, 2007

Call to Worship - from Beatrix Potter

In our Unitarian Universalist faith we have a strong tradition which encourages each person to pursue a free search for truth. Our way of life is more important than any creedal statements. Beatrix Potter, a British Unitarian, reflected this approach when she said: “All outward forms of religion . . . are the cause of endless strife. What do creeds matter, what possible difference does it make to anyone today whether the doctrine of the resurrection is correct or incorrect, or the miracles, they don’t happen nowadays, but very queer things do that concern us much more. Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself, and never mind the rest.”

Nature’s Delights: The Life of Beatrix Potter by Mark W. Harris

See : Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature by Linda Lear. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2007

Narrator:

When we say the name Potter to children today, they are most likely to picture a young man flying around on a broom at a Quidditch match or wielding a very powerful wand to fend off the forces of darkness in the person of Lord Voldemort. But the name Potter in Great Britain has another significance that may prove to be more enduring than the famous literary creation of J. K. Rowling. This Potter created characters who continue to be among the most famous in the world, one hundred years hence. We need only to say, “Once upon a time there were four little rabbits, and their names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter,” and we have entered the fantasy world of Beatrix Potter. Helen Beatrix Potter was born on July 28, 1866 in Kensington, England. Her father was a lawyer, but had made his fortune from the cotton industry in Lancashire. Beatrix lived a lonely life growing up. Her one sibling, a brother Bertram, was sent to boarding school. To compensate for this isolation Beatrix developed deep friendships with all the animals she kept as pets, and encountered in nature. She had an incredible talent for artistic expression and pursued this drawing skill by sketching her animal friends. These drawings also included other forms of life, especially fungi. She became an amateur scientist, and made a discovery about the germination of spores. Unfortunately the paper she wrote on the subject could not be given in person because women were not allowed to attend the meetings of the Linnaean Society of London. Feeling the need to make something of her life, she turned to drawing. She illustrated stories about mice and frogs and rabbits, and even a hedgehog who took on human characteristics. Friends encouraged her to publish. Printed privately at first because no publisher was willing to pursue the project, “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” appeared in 1900, and then the publisher Frederick Warne reprinted it in 1902. It was followed by “The Tailor of Gloucester.” Eventually Warne would publish 24 of her books. Ever since those books have sold millions and millions of copies. Beatrix became engaged to Norman Warne, whose father owned the publishing company, but he died before they could be married. She found happiness though when she bought Hill Top farm in the Lake District in the north of England, where her family had often summered. Here she continued to write, and in 1913 at age 47 she married William Heelis, a lawyer who had assisted her with her various properties. Here, at their sheep farm, we meet them around 1920.


William: Oh Beatrix, there you are. I was wondering what took you so long, I thought perhaps one of your stubborn sheep had fallen trying to climb some craggy hill, and was stuck there. I was picturing you putting all your weight under her to lift up, and then being stuck there yourself.

Beatrix: No, I was not doing anything so useful and necessary as saving a downed sheep. No, I was lost in thought out there, surveying our beautiful Hill Top farm. I was recalling how sad I was when I first bought this marvelous home of ours. It was the autumn of 1905, and Norman had only just died of that infernal cancer in his blood. How my life has changed since then.

William: Aye, this is a far distance from life in London.

Beatrix: But it isn’t just being far from London that changes things, is it? It is because we are happy together, here. I suppose London does foster all those pretensions to being important that mattered so much to my mother. I wish she could have been a little less snobbish. I think she wished to deny that she was born and bred in the north country, but I find it perfect.

William: She certainly tried to narrow your horizons. Poor Norman. I recall the story when he came to your house, and your mother reproved you by saying, “I wish you wouldn’t invite tradespeople into the house.

Beatrix: Yes, she had the gall to say “they carry dust.”

William: Yet she and your father gave you many gifts despite whatever shortcomings they had. Your faith was a long standing family tradition on both sides.

Beatrix: That is true, but their very Unitarianism is what prevented mother from attaining some of her lofty social climbing. We were not Church of England which meant once upon a time we could not go to university, were discouraged from the learned professions, and in fact, were heretics. Our livelihood only two generations ago came from those tradespeople she so despised.

William: But it is a faith that has given you a strong foundation to live by. That counts for something, Beatrix.

Beatrix: There were advantages I will admit. I never thought that creeds mattered very much, or whether Jesus was raised from some cross. What matters is now. We must rely on our own strengths to be good and do something with ourselves in the world. Plus a little rebellion against the staid norms is good for us. I could use more of it. Even our own services are often a little timid, and a weak imitation of the national Church, and this frustrates me. Yet I shall always call myself a Unitarian because of my father and grandmother. (Lear, p. 42)

William: I should say that it was that independent religious zeal to discover the truth that led you down the path to your own scientific discoveries.

Beatrix: I tried to use the application of reason in my observations. It is unfortunate that those scientists, who were trained to be the rational observers were governed by blind prejudice.
Did you know that I grew between 40 to 50 different kinds of spores, and wrote down all that I did to cultivate them? But I could gain no audience.

William: I know, it is a contribution that no one ever gave you credit for. As a woman, and as an amateur you had no opportunity to be recognized, but I think you were brilliant. And I know you think it, too, Beatrix! Cultivating algal cells and the fungal spores in your kitchen was brilliant... But being right, and even brilliant, doesn’t mean you’ll be taken seriously by scientists, does it?

Beatrix: No one can be smarter than our stodgy, fellow countrymen who called themselves scientists , and so they dismissed me to do some more research . But all they had to do was open their eyes! My illustrations captured details about fungi that other scientists simply failed to see. I drew everything I saw. Drawing made it real, made it come alive.

William: Well, Beatrix that’s a gift from your father. He truly seems to have encouraged this love of art. I know your childhood was lonely sometimes, but at least your parents arranged for drawing teachers to come to the house. You could have been at boarding school like Bertram.

Beatrix; You are right! Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.

William: Each summer your parents brought you to the best school of all - wilderness retreats, including here in the Lake District, where we now make our home.

Beatrix: I do not remember a time when I did not try to invent pictures and make for myself a fairyland amongst the wild flowers, the animals, woods and streams, all the thousand objects of the countryside; that pleasant, unchanging world of realism and romance. Here in our northern clime it is stiffened by hard weather, a tough ancestry, and strength that comes from the hills. Funny to think of my mother turning her back on what I most love.
(Beatrix to Bertha Mahony Miller, November 25, 1940. Quoted in Lear, p. 419. )

William: I think you were born with an uncanny understanding of animals, as if you knew what it was to be one.

Beatrix: Yes, it is strange, almost from the very beginning of my life I understood animals and their behavior. Of course Bertram and I snuck every conceivable animal into the house as pets, and I examined them and drew them. I wanted to know so much how every move was made. We even boiled them down to the bones after they died to understand their anatomy. Each duck, squirrel, rabbit or mouse was a real animal to me, and so I drew them that way in their natural habitats. Yet they all seemed rather human, too. And so my dear Peter Rabbit was anxious and ravenous like a rabbit would be, but also as we might imagine him as a hungry, nervous, naughty little boy as well.

William: Beatrix, do we have this long parade of animals now here on our farm to keep your children with you? Are they ours now here on Hill Top? They did always seem like us with their instincts for safety, warmth and above all, good food. And Peter did know how to avoid coming to the table inside the rabbit pie!

Beatrix: Oh, William. I guess it is all about children as I think of how it all began. I always had fond memories of the governesses who stayed with me, as they were often my only companions. One particular former governess had children who I wrote to. Once when little Noel Moore was ill I sent him a story letter with this special tale I had created. I was hoping to cheer him up. It began “My dear Noel, I don’t know what to write to you, so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy,Cotton-tail and Peter.”

William: You were always thinking of the children. Why even here at the farm you have insisted we keep some rabbits in the event that children might visit. When you first began to work with Norman didn’t he tell you he wanted your books to be small for small hands?

Beatrix: The books have all been small that is true, and sometimes I have even wondered about their appeal. I have never quite understood the secret of Peter’s perennial charm. Perhaps it is because he and his little friends keep on their way, busily absorbed with their own doings. They were always independent. Like Topsy - they just `grow'd' ."

William: And you managed to keep finding interesting characters and stories.

Beatrix: When there are children to write to; it just comes . . . Most people, after one success, are so cringingly afraid of doing less well that they rub all the edge off their subsequent work. But this work kept me going when I felt so alone. I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result, and when I have a bad time come over me it is a stronger desire than ever. So it is about me, but also about my way of giving, and connecting to others.

William: It is more than making a pretty book, as you say. If we could develop the seeing eye, as you, then as we lie in bed we can walk step by step on the fells and rough land seeing every stone and flower and patch of bog and cotton pass by. We can make these natural settings we have known into the ideal places of the heart.

Beatrix: It is in these beautiful places where the worlds of humans and animals overlap. I have found some enduring meaning in that place-- like you have, here, William. It isn’t just the landscape; it is the land itself, and you are the one who knew that and saw it first, don’t you think? Before I came here, my mind was set on this idea by the American Joel Chandler Harris, and his Uncle Remus. I am not sure what old mother Goose was thinking though with that old woman who lived in a shoe. I think if she lived in a little shoe-house— That little old woman was Surely a mouse!"

William: Mice, yes we have a few of those around the barnyard here. And if that old woman was truly a mouse who had those human qualities, then I am pleased to have a real woman come into the heart of this sheep infested world. For once I looked after your properties and animals here, but pretty soon it was you I began to want to look after. My own little, lonely mouse as beautiful and enduring to me as Peter Rabbit is to the world. Together we see and understand, and even preserve the delights of nature - maybe because we know of the dangers of Mr. McGregor’s garden and other more cultivated places.

Narrator

After her marriage to William Neelis, Beatrix’ interest in writing and producing books declined. Her personal energies were devoted to land conservation and raising Herdwick sheep. Altogether she saved 4,000 acres of land in the Lake District of England from development by giving it to The National Trust. She died at home in 1943, and William succumbed less than 18 months later. Despite her talents for drawing, and botany, and her commitment to preserve England’s beautiful countryside, we remember her today primarily as the children's friend, as we see embodied in her wonderful books for children. Since its publication in 1902, The Tale of Peter Rabbit alone has sold 25 million copies, and countless stuffed rabbits, dishware, cards and other memorabilia. Beatrix Potter had an uncanny ability to merge a biologists understanding of nature, an artists talent to create beautiful images, and a storytellers magic to make animals come to life and share their all too human adventures with us. She also came from active Unitarian families on both her mother’s and fathers sides in Great Britain. Today we celebrate her life as an embodiment of our religious heritage, caring for and learning about our natural environment, and developing her own talents and believing in herself. Beatrix Potter found spiritual balance in this beautiful world of ours by exploring the mind’s imagination for fantasy mixed with an immense curiosity to know the truth.

Closing Words - from Beatrix Potter

“I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and commonsense..."

“Only the Lonely” by Mark W. Harris

October 14, 2007 - First Parish of Watertown

Call to Worship - from Bets Weinecke

Each of us is familiar with solitude. We have looked up into the night sky and felt our insignificance. We have been lost in a crowd of strangers. That is why we have come today. Here there is the possibility that we might share memory and hope. Here there is the possibility that we might touch and be touched; that we might be encircled by love and sharing. Here there is the possibility that we might meet with others who also know what it is to be alone and, as we worship, rejoice in being together.

Readings - from “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner“ by Alan Sillitoe
from “Forbidden Fare” by Orhan Pamuk

Sermon

On Friday morning Andrea was making lunches for the boys, and I came downstairs after a nice eye opening shower ready to face the day. After leaving a couple of dirty dishes in the sink to await their own cleansing shower, I turned and headed back toward the living room. But I was stopped short by some muffled sounds of men’s voices ringing in my ears. For a brief, scary moment I had to ask myself, “Am I hearing things?” Moments later some music started and I realized thankfully that Andrea had put a CD on to play, and I could assure myself that I was not losing my mind. We laughed about it, as I told her I thought I was hearing voices. But as I was preparing to write this sermon I realized I do in fact hear voices in my head all the time. It is not the experience of our Puritan ancestor Anne Hutchinson, who tried to convince the authorities in Boston in the 1630’s that she was talking directly to God, and soon found herself exiled to the wilderness of Rhode Island. No, it is merely me, talking to myself. In this context I love the title of a new book by Alan Alda, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself. I cannot share with you what he says since I have not read the book, but the title reveals how much important reflection can surface in those most private of conversations, but we also know that many of us might be reluctant to admit we have so many of those conversations, and even try to avoid them.

Early last week, after dropping the boys off at their schools one day, I was listening to Sports Talk Radio, and they had a recording of Red Sox manager Terry Francona. He was excitedly referring to a recent time when he was talking to himself about the emotional intensity and personal meaning of this time of year as the World Series approaches. What was interesting was that these radio hosts, certified male sports fanatics, were playing a recording of this interview in order to mock him for talking to himself. They were guffawing and jibing each other about having a good time talking to themselves. Yet, despite their public taunting of those who talk to themselves, it is what I do all the time. Most of my sermons are the result of conversations I have with myself, perhaps inspired by you the parishioners, or a book I’ve read or some incident I have observed, but they only see the light of day, when I am thoroughly talked out. I believe that finding meaning in life, facing our own loneliness and despair, and finding the courage to be true to ourselves all surface when we take the time and opportunity to talk to ourselves.

We see this in the book "The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner" by Alan Sillitoe. Because of the movie of the same title, we may have an image of Colin Smith, the young working class man, running, alone, along a bleak country road in rural England. Colin tells us that running is the way his family has always coped with the world's troubles, and as the reading shows this lark is the best of all, because he says, “it makes me think so good and I learn things even better.” In the end, the runner is always alone and left to cope with life on his own. We learn in the book that the Governor, the warden of the reformatory prison where Colin is incarcerated wants the young man to win an important race, so the governor can procure another trophy and feel self-important. Colin leads the race until the very end, and then shows he will not be appropriated for someone else’s purposes, but will remain true to his own values. He will not sell out his free soul to the authority. In effect it seems like inner calm or contentment are born from the reflections on his own loneliness, and this gives him the courage to stand up for himself, even though we see in the end of the film he is punished and put back in the machine shop and ignored by the Governor. These running conversations with himself make Colin feel as though the world could come alive from being dead, rather than being “dead after being alive.”
There is an almost Zen like quality to his running, as he says later in the story, “I wonder if I am the only one in the running business with this system of forgetting that I’m running because I’m too busy thinking.” He know the others runner are not on this same lark because they are too busy racing.

It seems to me that we are always racing, too. We are racing to try to forget how lonely we are. Thomas Wolfe once wrote, “The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.” This is the same message that is implied in the paintings of the American artist, Edward Hopper, who recently had a retrospective exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. Of his art, Hopper said that he was trying to “project my most intimate reaction to the subject.” He wanted his art to be his emotional impression of nature, and so we see human beings alone, or seemingly lost in thought and alone even if they are pictured with someone else, empty buildings, hollow houses, haunted almost with a bleak, even barren landscape. In one of his most famous works, “New York Movie”, the theater attendant stands outside the screening area, detached from what is playing inside, and she is depicted lost in her own thoughts and alone, perhaps wishing she were somewhere else, or even talking to herself.

Most of us want to avoid being that lone Hopper figure, and so we race instead. We race to fill our time with scheduled events. We do what others ask of us rather than really asking ourselves if it is what we want to do because we like making them happy. We win the race for the governor because we want to be accepted and affirmed by others. There is the stigma of sitting in the cafeteria alone looking as if you have no partner or friends, and so for many the idea of eating out alone or going to a movie alone is too threatening. We learn early in life that we are suppose to partner up, and so the stigma of not being with someone hangs over our heads, traditionally so for women. We even stay with someone who is not affirming or supportive of us sometimes because it is better than facing the fear of being alone. But strangely, even if we are with others sometimes - business associates, friends, even a partner we can still feel alone. Perhaps it has to do with an inability to express or an awkwardness in feeling our own intimate thoughts.

It is easy not to face those intimate thoughts. If the radio is playing or the computer is booted up, or the phone is ringing, we have solved some of that seeming problem of aloneness. There is something to do or a person to spend time with. Yet we need and want others. After all isn’t life about people, and build up a community of friends? And if we are all racing together that seems like the accepted thing to do rather than be the alone one who thinks as she or he runs.
Yet being part of the race, and even wanting to be part of it sometimes, is not how life often works out. If the marriage or relationships fails, if the children are not part of the mainstream, or if a illness or death enters our lives, then we must learn that the race must be suspended. Often our loved ones are unwilling to let us stop the race. Take the grief of losing a loved one. We live in a culture where public grief is often judged as unacceptable unless it is in the context of a planned service or event. We also live in a culture where people want us to instantly get over things and move on to the next. So if I want to cry not only at death of my mother, but also for how much suffering she endured, or the fact she never got to enjoy her later years or ever saw my children, I need to be allowed to do that, perhaps at certain times for years to come after the fact. Grief like the loss of a parent makes us feel alone because we have lost such a central part of our lives, but when we are reminded that we need to get over it quickly, or that we should be happy in our memories, then we are glossing over the intimate pain we may feel. Feeling grief does not prevent us from doing good productive work in the world, and we should not, as one writer said, make being grief stricken into a handicap. And what is most significant in this context is that this kind of approach to getting over grief makes us feel even more alone because our friends and loved ones are not listening to us. If we share our intimate feelings of grief , if we are allowed to feel lonely and adrift, and not run the race to get over it, then in our loneliness we would find common truths and affirmations of life. Once we let each other truly feel our aloneness, and stop the race to avoid talking about it, or glossing it over, or putting on a good appearance, then we can find common ground together to build a community of care and concern.

In my description of this sermon in the newsletter, I said that ministry is a lonely profession. This is a complicated topic, and I certainly don’t want to wallow in any self-pity. One issue is that ministers often have a difficult time having friends. This is hopefully not because clergy are unlovable, but rather because we devote our lives to a calling where a certain professional distance must be maintained, even though it is a very personal and intimate profession, loving and caring for a congregation. Ministers must always remain somewhat apart, even from those in a community who might otherwise be their best friends, simply because they are ministers. And it is a profession that takes up all your life, and all your time. It is not what you do, but what you are. Some people even see you as a different kind of species altogether - men , women and clergy. Clergy are those whom some people refuse to swear in front of, as if we have never heard or said those words before. One of my favorite stories was told by a colleague who recalled the people in his parish who called him up to see if they could borrow his board games for their New Year’s Eve party, forgetting of course to invite him to come. It reminds me of my friends from junior high school who used to invite me to their parties, as long as I brought along my record collection. I ran that compliant race for many years.

The dilemma of finding friends is one that confronts us all. A few weeks ago when Darrick Jackson was ordained here, the preacher spoke about Jack Kerouac and his famous book, On the Road in the context of calling for a faith that is spontaneous. While I agree with the need for greater spontaneity, the reality is that in Kerouac’s case, the perceived risk taking and openness is a story of drinking and driving and being together with other men, but never really asking the question why. Their lives together are born from sadness and loneliness and a desire to be intimate, but because they cannot talk about their loneliness, they literally race across the country in their car to avoid confronting it. Facing our loneliness would help us find our inner well of love and intimacy with others. But of course you have to realize that you are lonely first, and we are usually too caught up in work to even think about it.

I recently saw a French film called “My Best Friend.” It is the story of Francois, a successful antique dealer, who has many business associates and other obligatory relationships, but is told by his business partner “you have no friends.” She says this because he has bought an expensive Greek vase celebrating friendship, and she cannot understand why. It is irrational to her. Francois does not seem connected to anyone, but he feels moved by the vase celebrating friendship. They strike up a bet over whether he has a friend or not. He soon discovers how alone he is, when his best candidates admit they hardly know him at all, and he must lower himself to ask two friends, how did you do it?. How do you be friends? Francois asks a talkative taxi driver to teach him how to be friendly, and then thinks he has succeeded at a department store, and tells Bruno, the taxi driver, “See they liked me.” He is brought to earth when Bruno informs him that they liked him because he was going to buy a toaster. He is a customer not a friend. Francois realizes he has no sustaining connection. He proceeds to give the vase to the man who desperately wanted it at the auction. His generosity to another opens the door to redemption as a friend.

The film “My Best Friend” underscores how in modern life we can easily lose sight of the kind of loyal and intimate relationships we all need to feel loved and accepted. Yet this seems to happen because we let work and schedules and commitments be our be all and end all. This helps us avoid the loneliness we all feel. Most often there is something in our lives - an illness we cannot share because people won’t know how to respond and will stay away - a child who has some disability, and we are afraid to talk about it because people won’t know how to respond, and will stay away, or a feeling of shame or guilt over something we did, and it is always easier to simply race on, and not confront that loneliness of having lost something that will never be changed or regained. Spiritually it would be best for us to embrace this loneliness, and find others who will let us feel our loneliness together, for then the loneliness of the long distance runners we all are, becomes the community of loneliness that no longer has to be quite so lonely. We are all alone together. Orhan Pamuk conveys some of this feeling in the reading, where the street vendors bring some of the love of home into the loneliness of the urban landscape, but also how we feel a very emotional loneliness in breaking those ties of home to enter the world.

Sometimes the noise and the intrusions in a household full of three boys becomes almost overwhelming. Parents who have children around all the time may well love them dearly, but at some point we must shout, I want to be alone. Of course we feel this way because there is never time or opportunity to properly reflect on anything or even give yourself some time for yourself. It is a microcosm of what a busy life too often can be. But it is also threatening to truly be alone because culturally we accept it as empty loneliness. I don’t think that is the case though. It is an opportunity to realize the pain of our aloneness of how we want to share intimately with others, our need to be close to others, our regrets at the past, our dilemmas and struggles in the present, and our hopes and fears about the future. Realizing this loneliness is the first step. I suspect it is why Jesus in the Gospel instructs his followers to go pray by shutting themselves up in the closet. Some pray in public, some to show off, but to truly confronting our intimate pain, first we must be alone. Every human being wants to be loved and accepted, and the pain from all our failures and rejections is emblematic of our loneliness because each of us experiences it in some way. And what we really want is not platitudes that everything is good or evasions of the truth, but fellow seekers who are also willing to admit how lonely they are, too. We are lonely because we cannot say to one another how much something hurts, or how we need to think about what to do. When we are able to do that, and not feel rejected, then that same loneliness you feel will result in a feeling of love and acceptance. You know what I am saying; you hear me. We are a company of lonely people, who, when we are able to be alone with ourselves, can discover a deeper sustaining love that upholds us all.

“Honey Bees and Herring Gut” - Mark W. Harris

First Parish of Watertown, Unitarian Universalist - September 30, 2007

Call to Worship - from Bo Bartlett

We are all part of the great dance. Gulls, ducks, ants, humans. With each decision that we make, we either move toward wonder or destruction.

Reading - from The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Sermon - “Honey Bees and Herring Gut” Mark W. Harris

Despite the summer temperatures, and the humidity in the air, it was just this week that one of my sons saw some geese in the sky in their distinctive “V” shape, heading south in anticipation of the approaching winter. The poet Denise Levertov saw just such a sight once and wrote:

Their high pitched baying
as if in prayer’s unison

remote, undistracted, given over
utterly to belief,

the skein of geese
voyages south,
hierarchic arrows of its convergence toward
the point of grace
swinging and rippling, ribbon tail,
of a kite, loftily

over lakes where they have not
elected to rest,

over men who suppose
earth is man’s, over golden earth

preparing itself
for night and winter
We humans
are smaller than they, and crawl
unnoticed.

about and about the smoky map.

I was struck in her poem by the elevation of the animal over the human, now small and insignificant below, a challenge to their dominion and control over all the animals and insects and birds. That control is the way we usually see things, and fear can strike us if we think that order of being is going to change. Shortly after Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1963, and the giant chemical company Monsanto was feeling the heat of adverse publicity that their pesticides were killing not only insects, but had the potential to lay waste to everything else, Monsanto struck back. They produced “Desolate Spring,” which envisioned a world where the insects had taken over, and we humans were exterminated. I suppose the implication was that unless we used pesticides the bugs would multiply and destroy us. The insects were everywhere - in water, in food, in us. This sounds like a good basis for a B movie, “the attack of the killer bees,” as it feeds people’s fears and phobias about bugs and other creepy, crawly creatures invading our space. Who cares about a few billion little creatures if they are a threat or even an annoyance to our serene way of life?

That is the way we often think of bees. We see them as a buzzing annoyance. I’ll bet every one of us has a bee sting story. I had a friend in seminary who was allergic to bees , and he often recounted the time when he nearly died because he was stung while climbing a mountain, and he did not have his antidote in his backpack. My harrowing memory is of my brother Bob who was haying our field once, and struck a bees nest that was hidden in an old mound of grass. He and the tractor were engulfed in a fog of hundreds of bees, and I remember him running toward the house with the cartoonish cloud of bees in hot pursuit because he had inadvertently disturbed their peace and quiet. We have this idea that bees can be ornery when riled.

Bee sting stories seem common in children’s literature, too. Winnie the Pooh gets stung because he is a greedy consumer of honey and cannot control his insatiable appetite. One of the better known Thomas the Tank Engine tales is called James Goes Buzz Buzz, when the proud, self-involved, splendid red engine named James gets his comeuppance. James has no time to be bothered by small insignificant bees, but one day they escape from the local vicar’s hives, and the swarm finds that James’ warm boiler is a cozy place to sit. He is driven absolutely insane by this intrusion, and trys a number of things to get them to come off - from sheer speed to a spraying shower. In the meantime he gets stung on the nose, which turns a mean shade of red to match his engine color. Finally, the bees are coaxed back into their hives, and James returns to work a little humbler for his adventure.

The Thomas stories were composed by the Rev. W. V. Awdry, a British clergymen. This association of bees and religion runs a little deeper though. Most beekeepers these days use hives that were designed 150 years ago by the Rev. Lorenzo Langstroth, a Congregational minister from Philadelphia. Langstroth had preacher’s block, which occurred when he was scheduled to preach his first time, and no words would come out. This would be a serious hindrance to employment for any minister. He tried to overcome what he called his “head troubles” by taking up beekeeping, which would get him outdoors where he hopefully could clear his head. Needless to say he found his vocation and developed the concept of bee space, that bees would only leave open passages big enough for them to squeeze through. From this, he determined that bees would build honeycomb that could be lifted from the hive. This helped make the production of honey more commercially viable. Left on their own, honeybees build their hives in cavities in trees, like the kind Pooh looked for, and construct them downward in cells that fill all their needs - housing the young, storing pollen and nectar, and preserving the honey (see The New Yorker. 8/6/2007)

Before the summer our First Parish member Peter Cudhea, came to me wondering if I had heard about the decimation of the honeybee population. Beekeepers all over the world have been opening their hives and finding them mysteriously empty. The disappearance of the bees was named colony collapse disorder, with as many as 70 per cent of some colonies dying off. What was causing this? It was recently determined that it is a virus, that is attacking the bees. Of course the immediate concern was how this would effect crops that we humans consume.

Bees pollinate a large number of fruits and vegetables. Could we easily go without broccoli, apples and peaches, and the 90 odd food, fiber and seeds crops they pollinate?. While we could try other insects for this purpose, it is only bees that have been successful commercially. Could we eat balanced diets without them? Would our world be as beautiful and plentiful? It all circles back on how dependent we are upon them, and how all of animal life is part of a sensitive, interrelated ecosystem. If we lose the bees, what are the long term implications? A number of targets have been suggested for the cause of this virus. Many of the dying bees are apparently hyper bred types that are larger than normal, sort of like an extra fat chicken or cow. What does this do to bee space? Other scientists say that bees are under too much stress. We truck them from place to place for pollination services, and thus push them too hard. Or is it pesticides in the hives that we use to fumigate, or antibiotics that we feed to the bees, or genetically modified crops or drought, or even radiation from cell phones preventing them from finding their way home, and so they get lost and die.

Noticing that certain species are dying off or have become lost to us is not anything new. In 1855 Henry David Thoreau sat down and wrote in his journal some observations about how much sweeping change had occurred in the landscape. He began with the wild grasses and moved on to the strawberries, which he said were once larger, and by implication more succulent. Then he went on to speak of changes in the forest, and the land animals that were once more numerous. He also spoke of the sea and air which now seemed more empty. There is a longing for a more pristine world we once had and will never regain. Yet we all know our need for earth’s resources to maintain life, and even the necessity of transforming the landscape for food and housing. Thoreau knew humans were sadly conversant with a natural world that they had maimed, and that there were deep spiritual implications for this separation from the natural, ecological order. We need to find ways to understand our interdependence with small creatures such as bees, and our littleness in the larger creation, just as the geese see us from above.

Thoreau was very much right about the sea. Within a century the cod population has been decimated, perhaps never to replenish itself. The cod is the most valuable fish ever, but wanton fishing of its territorial waters means that it is now scarce everywhere, nearly commercially extinct. What will happen to us when the fish are gone? Cod are known as ugly, non-discriminating fish with enormous appetites. Styrofoam cups have been found in their bellies. Their favorite food has long been the herring which they have chased around the North Atlantic for 500 years. Until this summer my main association with herring were those disgusting pickled fish that my father used to eat floating in sour cream. The thought of eating them turns my stomach upside down. But my children all participated in a series of workshops at a place called the Herring Gut Learning Center in Port Clyde, Maine. I had never heard this term before, but apparently it derives from the Herring’s rather constricted belly in contrast to that of the bloated cod. Technically the herring gut is a very sharp narrowing of the belly, with insufficient room for the abdominal contents. Topographically speaking, it is a narrow piece of land that catches all sorts of sea life, and thus aspiring oceanographers can have a field day. When we visited the learning center, I was able to pet a shark, contemplate eating a sea cucumber, and see a blue lobster. But this narrowness which holds all can also be a kind of insult. Perhaps it is fascinating to observe but fatal to the owner of such a belly. In Sherlock Holmes there is this exchange between Dr. Watson and the postman: Postman: "Awright, awright, Guvnor! I've got a right to my opinion. It's my opinion that Mr. Sherlock Holmes was an old herring gut." Watson: "You say that again!" Postman: "A herring gut! An OLD herring gut!" Watson: "I'll get you, worm! We'll see who's a herring gut!"

Ted Ames is a lobsterman from Stonington, Maine whose specialty is ghost or remnant schools of fish, mostly cod. He is an historical ecologist. Ames knows that one good thing about lobster fishing is that it is done with individual traps that go up and down with strict limits imposed as contrasted with much other fishing where giant nets are dragged across nursery floors with few limits on the size of the catch. Partly relying on oral history he has reconstructed the Gulf of Maine from the past. He has, like Thoreau, shown us what was there, and hypothetically what could be there. Government positions on fishing do not take into account nursery grounds, where the fish gather to migrate and their vulnerability at that time, and no account of the interdependence of species. For instance if you catch more herring simply because they are there for the taking, you may be depriving the cod of their food supply, and thus preventing them from thriving.

This is why the missing bees and colony collapse should concern us all. What does it mean when we can’t even take of our our smallest species, the pollinator of our plants? Will it alter the landscape so much we can never recover it? Thoreau and Ted Ames are people who want us to remember what it was like, and never forget, to reconstruct an ecological landscape that allows the natural order to flourish. It is a kind of finding our way home. We don’t know what has caused the virus to exist among these bees, killing them off. There are lots of wild speculations, some of which may hold truth. It feels a little like the tremendous upsurge in the number of cases of autism among children. Is it old fathers, or vaccinations, or pesticides, or cases that were never diagnosed before? We do not know, and may never fully know. But our speculations are a sign that we are worried. We don’t want our children to suffer and struggle, We don’t want the wildlife which sustains our world to be destroyed. We are worried. What is our technology doing? What is our materialism doing to our lives? How can we get back to the garden? This summer I saw an article which equated worry with prayer. When we worry, we are praying. So we pray to find out. We worry over the narrow areas praying to discover the natural order in air and sea and land. We pray to circle back to the ecology that came down to us. We pray to live more connected lives. We pray for more action on industry and government’s part. We pray as a community so that we have others who share our worry, and want to do something about it.

A hundred million years ago bees stopped eating other insects and began eating flowers. There has been an amazing evolutionary dance ever since. Honey bee are the only animals besides human known to have a representational language: they convey to one another the location of food by dancing. Bees also show us that we cannot exist as individuals. Identity is communal. They are a colony that works together. Understanding our past, working together, and finding love are all present in the novel The Secret Life of Bees. Here in the midst of the girl Lily and her nanny Rosaleen’s flight from trouble and chaos, Rosaleen says, “Oh, what have we gone and done?” These are words that echo our own frustration with the fragile ecology of our planet. These two fugitives, whom we meet in the store in the reading, end up living with a group of black women who make honey under the commercial label of the Black Madonna. Here among the beekeepers Lily rediscovers community and love, and becomes reconciled to her past, especially her mother. You can’t be a true beekeeper, she says, without getting stung. Yet this sting is helping us, like Lily, realize “that there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, and we don’t even know it.”

The missing honey bees, like the pain of Herring Gut reminds us of our connections to the animal world, and our need to sustain life and worship the mystery together as a community living with watchful prayer and love. Like Lily and her mother, we learn that every creature is special, even the cockroaches they lure from the house with a trail of marshmallows and graham crackers in order to save them. They cannot kill. The killing worries us, and like the bees we live with stress. The ecology of our planet is stressed, and we must use our language, and our lives to dance a dance of interdependence, and we must teach that dance to others. Last Sunday in the Globe magazine, Kate Braestrup, a Unitarian Universalist minister and the chaplain of the Maine Warden Service shared these words in the context of blessing the moose - we would share the same with the bees, the herring and the cod: “Please, dear God, bless the beasts and singing birds, and guard with tenderness all things that have no words.”

Closing Words - from Gary Snyder

Ah Power that swirls us together
Grant us Bliss
Grant us the great release
And to all Beings
Vanishing, wounded
In trouble on earth
We pass on this love
May their numbers increase.