If We are One

First Universalist Unitarian Church ~ www.uuwausau.org

Rev. Paul Beckel

February 18, 2007

I can be angry. I can hate. I can rage. But the moment I have defined another being as my enemy, I lose part of myself, the complexity and subtlety of my vision. I begin to exist in a closed system. When anything goes wrong, I blame my enemy. If I wake troubled, my enemy has led me to this feeling. If I cannot sleep, it is because of my enemy. Slowly all the power in my life begins to be located outside, and my whole being is defined in relation to this outside force, which becomes daily more monstrous, more evil, more laden with all the qualities in myself I no longer wish to own. The quality of my thought is then diminished. My imagination grows small. My self seems meagre. For my enemy has stolen all these.

from The Way of All Ideology, by Susan Griffin

OPENING WORDS  from Holy the Firm, by Annie Dillard

Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth

nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead—as if innocence had ever been—and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready,having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved. But there is no one but us. There never has been.

REFLECTIONS, Part I:

Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from Viet Nam after working unsuccessfully for reconciliation between the North and the South. He has written a devastatingly beautiful poem entitled “Please call me by my true names.”

 Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch,

            to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest,

            to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope,

            the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing in the surface of the river,            and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond, and I am also the grass snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the 12-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate, and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of [congress], with plenty of power in my hand, and I am the [enemy combatant, perhaps guilty of a heinous crime...perhaps not... detained indefinitely]

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.

My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills up the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once,

so I can see that my joy and my pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.

==

I’ve been reading this poem for years, and I usually find myself in deep turmoil when I do so. It reflects such complex emotions and complex experience: I am so connected to all things, so guilty, and so overwhelmed.

 Vietnam, Iraq, Darfur, Cyprus, Rwanda, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Colombia, my German heritage, my Midwestern living on land from which indigenous people were driven by my European ancestors....

 In the midst of my wealth and comfort, How do I come to accept my powerlessness – my inability to escape connection to all that is... and at the same time how do I recognize that powerlessness (no less than power) is a terribly corrupting characteristic. Powerlessness is no virtue.

 Today we’re talking about the poor of the world, the AIDS victim, the refugee. Why would I put a quote on the cover of the order of service regarding enemies? Surely I don’t think of the poor as enemies. Or do I? Do I recognize them as part of me, and me a part of them, or do I see them as a threat? One more reason to feel overwhelmed, guilty for having survived, guilty for having won the cosmic lottery of comfort?

 Do I see the rest of humanity as my brothers and sisters, or as enemies? Do I in even a small way wish they would just go away and leave me alone? Do I blame them for my feelings of powerlessness? If their images did not repeatedly encroach on my consciousness, wouldn’t I be so much better able to savor and enjoy the blessings of the universe? Would I not be so much better able to glorify and thank god for the astonishing abundance which the earth provides?

 But no, I am a Universalist. I cannot wish away my connections. I cannot deny the power, the goodness of which I am capable. I believe in a transformative power which resides in each person, in each of “them,” in each of you, and in me too.

 I believe in pragmatism. I cannot rest on wishes and ideals, but know I must pay attention primarily to what works. What accomplishes the ideals most effectively and compassionately.

 I believe in persuasion. I cannot coerce this world, I cannot force another person to see things as I see them, to want what I want, or to benefit from what I have to offer. I can only offer. I can only invite. I can only volunteer.

 I can only say with Howard Thurman, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

 I recently completed a book that Gerda Klement gave to me. Since she fled post WWII Nazi Germany, it was not surprising that she found the book profound and wanted to share it with someone. It is a memoir of two lives, An Uncommon Friendship  between two men [Bernat Rosner and Frederic Tubach] now retired in San Francisco, who spent their childhood in the midst of WWII. One grew up in a village in Bavaria, the son of a Nazi officer. One grew up in a village in Hungary, the son of Orthodox Jews, the only survivor of his family. 

The two became friends late in life after both had emigrated and in many respects abandoned all ties to their lives as children. They attempted to build entirely new lives in the United States, to put their pasts behind them. But eventually they recognized the power potential in writing this book together. They took trips together to their home villages to see how marvelously things had changed, and how things had remained distressingly the same.

 At one point they had the opportunity to present their stories to the annual meeting of a group of German business leaders, academics, and government officials who gathered regularly to discuss the ethical implications of building a market economy in postwar Germany. Many of these people, unsurprisingly, had intimate connections to the Nazi regime. Bernie Rosner and Frederic Tubach spoke to them at a conference that the group had convened to debate the appropriateness of holocaust memorials – how far did the country need to go to remember?

 Bernie, the survivor of Auschwitz who had not been back for 50 years, told them, “What do I think of Germans and Germany? I totally reject the concept of mass and national guilt. Everyone, not just Germans, should be aware of the first signs of a drift toward the abyss, and stand up against it.”

 “I totally reject the concept of mass and national guilt. Everyone...should be aware of the first signs of a drift toward the abyss, and stand up against it.”

 Compassion Fatigue and Liberal Guilt are poisons. Whether we ingest them intentionally or not is beside the point. We are not responsible for fixing everything in the world, but this does not mean that we are powerless. We are not responsible for all of the horrors that have been perpetrated by our ancestors and by our brothers and sisters. And by all to whom we are connected.

 But because we are connected to all, we are able to respond to suffering around us. We are not powerless to respond.

SINGING TOGETHER        We are Not our Own                 #317

REFLECTIONS, Part II:      AIDS, Poverty, Justice, and Hope   

Mike Batell, from Bread for the World, spoke about the capacity that today’s first world economies have to eliminate disease and hunger in developing nations. It is not for lack of know-how but lack of collective will that the cycles of human suffering are perpetuated.

OFFERING OF LETTERS & PRAYER OVER LETTERS

Letter-writing materials were provided to encourage people to contact Rep. Dave Obey about sponsoring debt relief and aid to developing nations.

SENDING SONG                  We Would Be One                    #318

BENEDICTION       from The Seven of Pentacles, by Marge Piercy

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground. You cannot tell always by looking what is happening. More than half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.

Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet. Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree. Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden. Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

 Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses. Live a life you can endure: make love that is loving. Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in, a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as though you liked yourself, and it may happen: reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in. This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always, for every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting. after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.