Disillusion, and Beyond
February 27, 2011
Rev. Paul Beckel

First Universalist Unitarian Church ~ www.uuwausau.org


GATHERING SONG     There is More Love Somewhere     #95
CHILDREN’S FOCUS    Mole Music, David McPhail
Summary: Mole digs by day and plays violin by night, imagining, but never knowing for sure how broadly his music touches the world outside.

CHILDREN’S BLESSING    
OUR PRAYERS of JOY and SORROW
READING            from The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery
[Though] I have read so many books...I am never quite sure what I have gained from them. There are days when I feel I have been able to grasp all there is to know in one single gaze, as if invisible branches suddenly spring out of nowhere, weaving together all the disparate strands of my reading—and then suddenly the meaning escapes, the essence evaporates, and no matter how often I read the same lines, they seem to flee ever further with each subsequent reading, and I see myself as some mad old fool who thinks her stomach is full because she’s been attentively reading the menu.

MUSICAL MEDITATION    
RESPONSIVE READING     #666, by Thandeka        
Despair is my private pain
born from what I have failed to say
failed to do, failed to overcome.
 
Be still my inner self
let me rise to you, let me reach
      down into your pain
and soothe you.
 
I turn to you to renew my life
I turn to the world, the streets of
the city, the worn tapestries of
      brokerage firms,
 
drug dealers, private estates
personal things in the bag
      lady’s cart
 
rage and pain in the faces that
      turn from me
afraid of their own inner worlds.
 
This common world I love anew,
as the life blood of generations
who refused to surrender their
      humanity
in an inhumane world,
courses through my veins.
 
From within this world
my despair is transformed to hope
 
and I begin anew
the legacy of caring.

MESSAGE    
It’s been a funny week in Wisconsin. Late February. Freezing again after a tease of warmth. A time when many of us feel discouraged, uninspired or burned out. But it’s been a stimulating week. Regardless of your political persuasion, you gotta wonder how it’s all going to turn out. Protest and passion. And guarded hope for change.

And did I mention anger?
Because they say one thing and do another.
They make promises they cannot keep.
They always want more, don’t they?
They don’t return my phone calls.
And it seems they always have someone else to blame.

They obstruct the process. When they should be listening to the will of the people they stand behind their petty rules. When they should be enforcing the rules they bow to the pressure of the crowds, or to a prominent voice, or to the voice of their own self-interest or delusions of grandeur.

They’re imperfect! And it makes me angry. Because I’m not talking slightly imperfect. I’m talking dangerous. Sometimes I wonder if they don’t do more harm than good.

You know who I’m talking about.
 
Unions. Corporations. Governments. Political parties. Congregations and families. Wherever two or three are gathered there will be inefficiency, miscommunication, one person benefiting from the other.

==
No one argues whether churches should talk about political matters when we’re talking about issues that we imagine we “all agree on” -- especially when everyone knows we’re not going to do anything about them.

But every once in a while we cannot escape the fact that what we collectively do and say, and how we vote can have a profound impact. At times like these it’s worth reminding ourselves how, as an association of congregations, how we can manage to be zealous simultaneously for religious freedom, for separation of church and state, and for social activism. In legal terms it’s fairly simple. As long as we refrain from collectively endorsing a political party or a candidate for public office, the IRS considers the church tax-exempt.

And without crossing that threshold we routinely encourage dialogue and action on matters of social ethics. Peace, poverty, privacy, and human rights are public issues that have shaped Unitarian Universalist identity over the centuries.

It is rare that we make a collective statement of conscience as a congregation, but our ongoing learning and dialogue around social issues, our community focused collections, and a variety of hands-on actions supplement, support, and provide inspiration for our countless individual acts of social conscience that mark us as human, relational beings.

I won’t pretend today to have specific solutions for the ongoing struggles in Madison or Washington, Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain, but that does not mean I am without hope. My hope is in a set of principles shared not only among a modest-sized religious group but, I’m convinced, well beyond us. The principles I’m talking about, of course, are not some words on paper, words that change from time to time, thoughts expressed differently from place to place.

Rather, it’s an essential spirit, a collective conscience, just touched on by these words, that endures well beyond this time and place…
v    A spirit honoring the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
v    A spirit seeking justice, equity, and compassion.
v    A spirit calling us to accept one another as we are...while still encouraging one another to spiritual growth.
v    A spirit that invites and challenges us to a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
v    A spirit affirming the right of individual conscience and the use of the democratic process to negotiate our differences.
v    A spirit of global interdependence, with respect for the web of all existence – of which we are a part.

==
Affirming this, all of us together, we still have differing interpretations of how the spirit swirls through any specific political context.

Still, a broad interfaith coalition this week advocated for collective bargaining rights for those working in both the public and the private sector. Remembering Martin Luther King’s very last journey in 1968, to Memphis, to organize sanitation workers, the Interfaith Worker Justice coalition marched yesterday in Madison and collected signatures of over 700 clergy: Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Unitarian Universalists.

Catholic Bishops (both the Wisconsin and the US Conference of Bishops) have also issued public statements this week referring not just to a momentarily hot topic, but to their many years of teachings explicitly supporting the rights of workers to collective bargaining.

And public statements matter, I think, but these would be superficial if it weren’t for the ongoing institutional support that these faith groups and interfaith groups have shown for working people.

The Unitarian Universalist Association, its congregations and its members have often spoken and acted to apply our principles to the real world of social inequity and the marginalization of those without power. For example, for over 25 years the UUA Holdeen India Program has supported the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) which has mobilized over a million women in India into a labor union and social movement that effectively fights against poverty, oppression, and injustice through organizing, member education, and cooperative banking.

Holdeen India is one of hundreds of international and local organizations we’ve initiated or supported to challenge unequal power structures and exploitative social conditions. Not just giving people fish, not just teaching them to fish, but making sure that they have access to the lake.

==
I should disclose that I have a personal stake in this matter. My wife is a public employee. I’m proud of her work in the Wausau School District and have had no qualms about her pay being cut in half when she left the private sector. And I’m grateful to the taxpayers who contribute toward our family’s health insurance benefit. However, since we’re very healthy and paying nearly $500 per month for this insurance, I’m tired of being told that we’re getting an outrageously generous benefit.

I’m all for forming a more perfect union. My limited experience with labor unions (through Jane’s nursing and teachers unions) has been at times frustrating (for example when communication or administration goes badly) it’s been disheartening (when union rules appear to interfere with efficiency), and it’s been infuriating (sometimes it’s hard to believe that the dues paid lead to commensurate financial gains).

Unions screw up. They disappoint. Within the wide world of unions there is corruption and inefficiency. Those defended by unions can be incompetent and self-serving. And we always notice when they are. We pay attention to the faults of unions when we pay dues, pay taxes, or pay seemingly higher prices for consumer goods because of the existence of unions. We readily notice the mistakes of unions, and governments, and the mistakes of people with whom we disagree. We notice and keep mental records to confirm what we already believe. Which puts us at increasingly dangerous risk of separating further and further from those with whom we disagree.

Should we strive for a more perfect union? Of course. But unions exist, I believe, because of the flaws of management. And in the public sector, that management is selected and monitored by the people we elect. The ones ultimately responsible are you and me.

That doesn’t mean we have to put up with graft or poor performance all the way down. I would ask, though, that we begin the examination closest to home, here: where we know the most about the culprits (ourselves) and where we know we can do something to make it better.

==
I’ve taken solace in the notion (I don’t know where I heard it first) that Americans always do the right thing, after every other option has failed. Part of me wants to believe it: that we’ll finally find the right combination of law and practice and interpersonal understanding.

It’s neither a conservative nor liberal sentiment but a reflection that things aren’t satisfactory as-is, and that the future also is unclear, but that eventually we’ll get it right.

Of course by the time we get it right there will be new conditions that require a different approach. So to prepare for that future we teach our kids to be principled, determined; we model for them how to take responsibility for our own actions while supporting the work of the larger community. We face times of economic instability and accept the fact that everyone has to pitch in. (By the way if we’re going to continue to be tax exempt as a church let’s be sure to give back for the benefits we enjoy as part of this community.)

==
When we first enter into a relationship, we feel something fresh and alive in our soul -- a new friend, a baby, a new love... our very first encounter with a congregation, a public figure, or a cause that seems to have so much potential. But disillusion is probably inevitable in a relationship that lasts more than a few days.

But love is what happens after you’ve found out about your partner’s imperfections and annoying tendencies. Membership in this church is what happens after we’ve been disillusioned, after we’ve found out that it’s at least as hard for a group to live up to its ideals as it is for a person. Citizenship is what happens after the illusion fades – the illusion that we and our kind are special...after this fades and the work begins again to build a more perfect union.

Hope is what happens when we set aside our expectations for the future. And instead of an intense laser-like focus on a particular outcome, we expand our imagination of what is possible.

Once in a while when I’m facing a newsletter deadline and I’m tired...stumped for an idea of what to preach about, I’m tempted to indicate simply, “To Be Determined.” No one would know (right?) that I’ve run out of inspiration. You’d assume, I trust, that I’ll just respond appropriately to whatever is going on in the world that week, rather than choosing an arbitrary topic weeks in advance.

But I’m probably never going to do this because listing “to be determined” is a good way to ensure that no one will show up on a Sunday. And yet “being determined” is crucial subject. How to be steadfast, persistent, persevering in the face of long winters and unrewarding circumstances. How to go forward when recent experience has been uninspiring, and a bleak future is forecast.

Funny thing is, “to be determined” is not a fuzzy noncommittal position at all. Intriguingly, “to be determined” can serve as an open placeholder for whatever is to come. And it can mean, simultaneously, to be devoted. In a deep pragmatic sense. Committed to pursuing our values when there’s no guarantee of an outcome that will be to our liking.

A few weeks ago you may have seen the online video of Zach Wahls, a student who addressed the Iowa state legislature in response to a proposal to end gay marriage in one of the few states it is legally recognized. Having two moms had clearly not diminished Zach’s ability to speak eloquently and with warmth and passion. He spoke about the ordinariness of his family. “We go to church on Sundays...” he said, and I admit I felt a little smug then, yeah, I thought, that family must be UU. Turns out they are.

So is Tim DeChristopher, a member of our Salt Lake City congregation preparing for trial this month for having interfered with a hurried federal auction of gas and oil drilling rights on land near Arches National Park in Utah.

And so is Navy Commander Zoe Dunning, a member of our Berkeley congregation who stood beside President Obama recently as he signed the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

None of these struggles are over of course. But with loving kindness, who we shall be, through it all, is to be determined.
        
SHARING OUR GIFTS  
CLOSING CIRCLE         
We learned the song, Filled with Loving Kindness (#1031),  and during the final verses we moved into a circle encompassing the whole sanctuary, holding hands. The words to the song are: “May I be filled with loving kindness; may I be well; may I be peaceful and at ease; may I be whole.” In subsequent verses, we sang may You be filled... may They be filled... may We be filled.... On the “They” verse, we recalled those who came to mind at that point in the sermon, above, where “they” were perceived with frustration, or even contempt.