Author: Doug Slagle

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering at Northern Hills, All Rights Reserved

 

Click here to listen to the message or see below to read it.

 

I encourage us for the next few minutes to assume an unbiased and objective mindset.  Let’s review a set of facts I’ll present and then make a reasonable conclusion about them.

We all know about the two recent hurricanes which struck the U.S.  Never before have two hurricanes with such strength hit our country in the same year.  Hurricane Harvey caused unprecedented flooding in Houston.  Nearly fifty inches of rain fell in that area within a forty-eight hour period – the most ever recorded there in that amount of time.  Weather experts say it was a one in one-thousand year event.

Hurricane Irma completely devastated multiple Caribbean islands.  It became a category 5 storm earlier and farther to the east than any other recorded hurricane.  At one point, it nearly exceeded the upper limits of hurricane strength categories with winds over 190 miles per hour – something unprecedented in history.  When Irma reached Florida, it was over four-hundred miles across – entirely covering the state.  Only by Irma losing some strength over Cuba was an even worse Florida catastrophe averted.

Many people believe climate change helped make these hurricanes stronger than they would otherwise have been.  Proof of that connection is not direct or absolute.  Nevertheless, both hurricanes traveled over ocean waters that were very warm – much warmer than what has been normal over the past hundred years.  Warm oceans evaporate at higher rates – and water vapor is hurricane fuel.  In fact, three hurricanes are churning in the Atlantic as I speak – one possibly following Irma’s path.

It’s not just tropical hurricanes that are causing worry.  Storms of all varieties – blizzards, tornadoes and torrential rains are increasingly more intense.  Their levels of rainfall or snowfall far surpass what used to be considered extreme. 

On the opposite end of weather, droughts are more intense and longer lasting than historically normal.   The California drought that ended this past winter lasted over five years.  Water aquifer levels below ground were brought to never seen before lows.  Parts of Africa continue to suffer longer than normal droughts that are rendering many areas uninhabitable.

Warmer ocean temperatures are also blamed for melting large areas of glacial ice – in Greenland, the North Pole and in Antarctica.  Such ice is thousands of years old but it has only recently rapidly melted.  In July, an ice berg the size of Rhode Island melted enough so that it separated from Antarctica.  It’s now drifting north to melt and further increase sea levels.

In the North Pole arctic area, sea ice is now mostly gone during summer months when only a few years ago it never melted.  The Arctic ocean is thus open in the summer between northern Europe across the North Pole to Alaska and Asia.  A luxury cruise liner just completed a voyage across the Arctic sea for the first time in history.  Once again, warmer than normal ocean and air temperatures are the cause.

Finally, rising sea levels due to melting glaciers and ice bergs are affecting low lying coastal areas.  The city of Miami regularly has its streets flooded during full moon high tides.  Sea levels across the globe have risen in the last one hundred years by almost a foot.  At that rate of increase, cities from New York to Miami to London to Hong Kong will be under water a hundred years from now.

Few people doubt that climate change is occurring.  Most scientists, however, assert climate change is caused by rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere which creates a greenhouse effect and higher temperatures.  This, they say, is primarily due to one factor: human caused air pollution.  Other human caused air pollution comes from gasses in spray cans, from the raising of cattle and other ruminant animals that produce methane flatulence, and from widespread deforestation of trees.

Scientists say climate change can be caused by natural factors such as increased solar radiation, a change in the Earth’s orbit, or variations in the reflectivity of the Earth’s land mass.  In hundreds of studies, however, several facts have been proven.  Natural factors that could cause climate change have been ruled out.  Solar radiation hitting the earth has remained constant.  So has the Earth’s orbit. 

On the other hand, human caused factors that could cause global warming have all increased.  Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have steadily increased over the last hundred years.  Gasses from aerosol sprays have also increased.  And, large areas of the earth that used to be forested have been cut down to make room for the raising of livestock.

All of this has led the International Panel of Climate Change Scientists to conclude recently that, “It is extremely likely that human activities have exerted a substantial net warming influence on Earth’s climate since 1750.  And by ‘extremely likely,’ we conclude a probability greater than 95%.”

Many people, however, strongly disagree with that conclusion.  They believe climate changes are natural and that there is no direct evidence to link the events I’ve recited and human made pollution.  Indeed, they claim the evidence is circumstantial and thus weak.

The definition of circumstantial evidence, however, is any fact that relies on an inference to connect it to a conclusion —much like a fingerprint at the scene of a crime implies someone who left the fingerprint is the criminal.  By contrast, direct evidence supports the truth of a conclusion explicitly – like a video showing a person commit a crime.  In other words, direct evidence is evidence that does not need inference to prove a conclusion.

To prove a scientific conclusion using circumstantial evidence – like human caused climate change, one piece of evidence cannot be relied upon.  Scientists must use the sum of many circumstantial facts to reasonably prove something – much like the International Panel of Climate Change Scientists used hundreds of studies to conclude they are 95% certain people are causing it.  Indeed, in criminal convictions that use circumstantial evidence, the standard is that the collected pieces of circumstantial facts must show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.  That does not mean guilt beyond any doubt.

According to the magazine Psychology Today, there are three kinds of human ignorance.  One is ordinary ignorance which means that one simply does not know something.  A fact has not yet been learned.  There is nothing wrong with ordinary ignorance.   Another kind of ignorance is called higher ignorance which means a person acknowledges his or her ignorance on a certain subject and has the intention to gain knowledge to erase the ignorance.  Higher ignorance admits there are some things which cannot be 100% proven by direct evidence. 

The third kind of ignorance is willful ignorance which means that a person intentionally knows what is reasonably true, but chooses to ignore that.  Willful ignorance is when a person refuses to abandon their beliefs and instead learn or accept knowledge that contradicts his or her beliefs.

My point and the subject of my message today is this:  our goal as spiritual people is to embrace higher ignorance and work against willful ignorance.  For most of us, that is a common sense argument.  Most of us accept the higher form of ignorance which says we cannot absolutely prove human caused climate change, but an examination of the facts says it is reasonably true.  That contrasts with the willful ignorance of those who deny it. 

The same is true of Biblical creationists who claim God made humans and animals only six thousand years ago.  They refuse to abandon their beliefs even in the face of countless pieces of scientific circumstantial evidence indicating there has been a natural evolution of species over billions of years that has led to present day humans and animals.   Are there direct pieces of fossil evidence showing a sequence of one lower life form having evolved to its more advanced cousin?  There are a few but not a couple complete sequence of fossils.  Just as with climate change, such direct evidence is very rare because its difficult in almost all matters to directly prove something.  We almost always must rely on circumstantial evidence – and our reason – to conclude what is true.

It is easy for me and perhaps for you to point fingers at those who deny the science behind climate change or evolution.  I’m a rational person who would never want to be willfully ignorant.  And yet, if I honestly examine all my thoughts and actions, I am often willfully ignorant.  I’m blind to many of my faults.  I can refuse to heed medical advice, I don’t always act, speak or listen as I know I should – with decency, kindness and respect.  I admit to holding implicit bias within me – stuff that I hate but it’s nevertheless there.

Psychologists say there are three reasons why I and others are willfully ignorant.  First, I can be what is called a “cognitive miser.”  I do not cognitively examine the evidence of something if I don’t feel I have to.  As I related in a message last month, I avoided having a colonoscopy for over seven years even though I knew facts prove that for anyone over 50, it saves lives.  When I finally did have the test in June, a small but treatable cancer was found and a few weeks later surgically removed.  I will be fine.  But had my willful ignorance continued, I could be standing here five years from now with a much worse prognosis.

I can also be a cognitive miser about my flaws and weaknesses.  I often fail to examine my deficiencies and thereby don’t try to improve myself and grow.  This willful ignorance about my health or my weaknesses is itself a flaw.  Self-awareness, however, requires I embrace higher ignorance and admit the things about me that I refuse to accept.  Only then might I embark on a useful endeavor to grow, learn and change.

A second psychological reason I can be willfully ignorant is that I – like many people – prefer conformity.  Like many people, I frequently rely on group-think to direct my actions and thoughts.  Conformity has positive aspects that can encourage us to cooperate, find common ground and live at peace.  But it also leads people to ignore alternative facts, ways of life and things that go against popular beliefs. 

The third and last reason people are willfully ignorant is that most hate to admit when they are wrong.  White supremacists cannot admit the  abundant studies that show Blacks, Hispanics and other people of color have equal or higher intelligence capabilities than do whites.  Fundamentalist Christians cannot admit portions of the Bible are wrong. Far too many politicians and those who support them dangerously refuse to believe people are causing climate change.   For these people, misguided or bigoted beliefs define who they are no matter what the facts otherwise show. 

The antidote for willful ignorance is education and a willingness to acquire new knowledge.  Indeed, the foundation of all education is a humble admission of ignorance.  I assume that’s why many of us attend here.  We have the humility to know what we don’t know and the courage to want to learn and grow.   Our presence here is also an implicit admission that we are flawed – or at least I am!  Any spiritual community is worthless unless it serves as a symbolic school for the flawed, as opposed to the pretense that it is a museum of the perfect. 

In a gentle and loving community like ours, we encourage, inform and, at times, hold each other accountable.  We do this not to judge, demean or shame.  Instead, we come here with a common desire to be more self-aware and then to change for the better.  And that in turn will help us change the world for the better. 

That is why higher ignorance is crucial for us and for the world.  It’s why willful ignorance is so dangerous.  Higher ignorance is firmly rooted in using reason to conclude, with circumstantial evidence, what is true and what is not.  And so I encourage us one and all to be be gentle educators of others about climate change, evolution, God and other universally important subjects.  But I also encourage us to examine ourselves and find where we too can be willfully ignorant – in our flaws of bias, arrogance, disrespect, and unkindness that we refuse to acknowledge or change. By embracing a higher ignorance, we will create beautiful change – in ourselves and in the world.

I wish you all much peace and joy.

Meditation Moment…

Please click on the below audio files to hear a sample of service elements for the special 93rd birthday celebration of Mr. Leslie Edwards, retired U.S. Air Force Tuskegee airman, community leader and activist for racial equality, beloved member of the Gathering at Northern Hills.

“Africa Unite” sung by Emmanuel

“I saw Jesus at Home Depot” by Ray Nandyal

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering at Northern Hills, All Rights Reserved

Listen to the message by clicking here or read the message below.

 

Some of you may know of the famous progressive evangelical speaker, writer and minister Tony Campolo.  He’s written over thirty books, has appeared on many TV shows, he was the personal minister to President Bill Clinton, and he is widely acclaimed for his impassioned speaking abilities.

Others of you, particularly former Gathering members, know of Tony’s son Bart.  Bart Campolo ran a street ministry in Walnut Hills.  He was also a progressive evangelical Christian.  As an accomplished speaker, he guest spoke at the Gathering twice.  He was recently on the cover of the New York Times magazine and a story about him was featured inside.

In 2013, after being seriously injured in a biking accident, Bart had a born again experience.  He realized that thoughts about God, Jesus, prayer or Heaven rarely crossed his mind and were never a part of his ministry to help marginalized people.

After he explained to his wife Marty that God and Christ were not the center of his life, she asked why he still claimed to be a Christian.  “You don’t believe in God, Heaven, or the resurrection of Jesus.  And neither do I.  Why are we pretending to be something we are not?”

Bart Campolo was stunned by her question.  He was not a Christian, he admitted to himself.  He was an Atheist.  That admission led him to reorient his life.  A year later he and Marty moved their family to Los Angeles where he became the first ever Humanist Chaplain at the University of Southern California – and one of the first in the country.  He’s also become a regular speaker at the Sunday Assembly of LA – otherwise known as an Atheist Church.

The Sunday Assembly is a new movement established in 2011 by two British comedians.  The first Sunday Assembly was held in London and it now has assemblies in over 45 cities around the world.  Members of assemblies meet regularly on Sundays, they sing pop songs, listen to TED talks or messages from other speakers, and work to help local charities. They are churches without God.

Bart Campolo’s reverse conversion has been controversial.  So too is the rise of Atheist churches.   They are both attacked by religions on one hand, and by fundamentalist Atheists on the other.  Christians ask just what Atheist churches worship.   “What’s the point?”  they say.  They also pray for Bart while accusing his mom and dad of failing as parents – since they did not raise a son who kept his faith.

Fundamentalist Atheists, on the opposite side, decry Bart’s efforts to make Atheism function like a religion.  They oppose Atheist churches and their seeming religiosity.  Anything, they say, that invites even modest superstition like Buddhism, yoga, or pantheism and paganism, are myth oriented and based on emotion.  These critics contend that Atheist churches are copies of what religions wrongly do – like wasting people’s time and money.

Christopher Hitchins, one of the so-called fundamentalist Atheists, self-defines himself as not just Atheist but Anti – theist.  He is vehemently against all gods and all forms of spirituality.  He believes the primary purpose of an Atheist is to actively fight against any spirituality and the religious indoctrination of children.

My odd spiritual journey includes my own reverse born-again experience – similar to Campolo’s.   I was raised in an unchurched home. After marrying and becoming a father, I began to have strong doubts about myself.  I had gay attractions and those felt inconsistent to what I wanted to be – a so-called normal, heterosexual man. 

I began attending a Methodist church after my youngest daughter was invited to be a part of its children’s choir.  I would attend to listen to her and therefore had to listen to the sermons.  They told me that I was sinful and headed to hell because of my thoughts.  I could cleanse myself and be right with God, however, if I believed in Christ and his death on the Cross.  The power of that message for me was very strong.  I had been depressed for many years and felt tremendous guilt about my gay thoughts. 

I immersed myself in religion by studying the Bible and Christian doctrines.  I enjoyed relating to people and caring for them in times of need.  I attended seminary and was encouraged to become a minister.  A large evangelical church on the eastside hired me as an associate minister for Pastoral Care – to visit the sick, perform weddings and funerals, and provide pastoral advice.

One particular belief I learned as a Christian is that the Holy Spirit, or God, inhabits the mind and soul of every believer.  Through prayer and study of Scripture, the Holy Spirit removes a believer’s temptations and sinful thoughts.  And so I honestly believed, prayed, studied and even hired a Christian therapist to guide me as I tried to change.

To my profound disappointment, that never happened.  As hard as I tried to think differently, to stay occupied in church work, to pray and believe with sincerity, my inner gay attractions remained.

That dissonance between who I wanted to be, and how I actually thought, reached a crisis point.  I was miserable and felt I was the worst of people – a hypocrite and fallen Christian.  But soon I began to question God instead of myself.  Why have you forsaken me God, I asked.  After changing my life for you, after devoting my livelihood and my family to you, after truly believing in your power to create a better me, why have you not cured my thinking?

I concluded that if God loved me as the Bible says, God would either change me – or accept me as I am.  Since my attractions were not changed and since I was told many times that God does not accept homosexuals, I concluded God and religions are therefore hateful frauds.  Soon thereafter, I came out, left my ministry job, and embarked on a journey to understand myself and the truth about religion.

I began a two year process to reverse study the Bible from a scholarly perspective – to learn about its inconsistencies, its many false assertions, and its frequent lack of connection to proven history.  Much of the Bible, I learned, was written by ancient men to encourage beliefs they wanted to promote – much like fables were written.  I also explored what it means not to believe in God or Christ. 

For many people, Atheism is a dirty word with connotations of immorality.   But that is clearly not so.  Atheism simply means to not believe in a theistic, supernatural being, or beings, who created and now controls the universe.  During the years after I became an Atheist, I investigated the philosophical reasons why supernatural gods are unproven and false.  I also studied how Atheism is guided by reason and provable fact.  For my message this morning, that is my intent – to offer my belief that Atheism, secular Humanism or simple non-belief are positive and moral alternatives to religion.

When I became a Christian, emotion ruled my brain and reason did not.  That’s a primary issue I have with religion.  They are rooted in emotionally motivated beliefs which are far removed from dispassionate and rational knowledge.  Fear of death, hell and eternal judgement are strong feelings – ones that can overwhelm an otherwise rational mind.  Facts are difficult things when they contradict what a person emotionally wants to believe.

Once I began to examine religion, however, I realized my earlier belief in God was motivated by dislike of myself and my fear of being judged.  Despite all the claims by religious people that there is proof of God in their changed lives, that is subjective – as it had been for me.  I had no verifiable evidence God exists other than my desire that there be one. 

Religious folks also rely on supposedly common sense arguments for God’s existence – like the watchmaker proposition.  The universe is so complex, like a watch they say, that common sense proves there must be a watchmaker god who designed everything. 

Laws of physics and science, however, are more impersonal, random and complex than believing in a watchmaker god.  Reason, experiment and mathematical truths indicate that there is a grand designer of the universe – but it is one rooted in observable fact and governed by provable physical laws.  That truth reminds me of a favorite bumper sticker: “Gravity.  It isn’t just a good idea.  It’s the law.” 

Almost all physicists agree – the universe is governed and defined by math.  It’s equations are exceedingly complex and are still being discovered, but everything from you, the I-Pad from which I’m speaking, to planets orbiting stars millions of light years away – all are defined and governed not by God but by math.

Central to most religious critiques of Atheism is the accusation that without God, Atheists must be either amoral or immoral.  They echo the author Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s claim that if God is dead, everything is permitted. 

Since God is the all powerful creator of the universe and the source of truth, as theists and religious people believe, everything she or he commands must be good and moral.  Since Atheists do not believe in God, how do they decide what is moral?  They can’t, and thus lack any sense of good or bad.

From an Atheist perspective, however, just because the universe is governed by natural laws, and not the commands of some god, does NOT mean there are no universal moral truths.  Objects and ideas in the universe have value independent of whether or not any god created them.  Truth is a concept that has value.  Humans and their well-being have value as do animals and plants.  Things that sustain life also have value.  Such value does not come from god but rather from the inherent goodness of something – simply because it exists.  Such is a natural law that Atheists and many others believe. 

In other words, Atheists think and act morally, and Atheist churches promote morality, by emphasizing the value of people, as well as the earth and all life upon it.  This form of Atheism, what some call Humanism, focuses on the well being of people and whether or not their value is respected and honored.  Such morality sees injustice, poverty, and oppression as great sins. 

But critics of Atheism do not stop there.  They say that since Atheists believe the universe is operated by mathematical laws, there is no meaning or purpose in life.  And some militant Atheists like Christopher Hitchins help make that argument.  Since the universe is governed by laws of evolution and natural selection – or survival of the fittest – theses Atheists claim people SHOULD be self-interested, self-focused and selfish.  That’s simply how the universe operates – or so they say.

Once again, these arguments against classic Atheism miss a crucial fact.  Human existence may have been determined by evolution, but that does not mean human lives are not valuable.  As a I pointed out, the moral law of the universe is that all things and all life have inherent worth – simply by existing.  That’s underscored by the seventh principle of Unitarian Universalism – all things exist inter-dependently and deserve respect. That precisely states our life purpose – to honor and serve the value of all things.

That morality rejects a survival of the fittest philosophy.   Our survival is not a “win – lose” proposition – the strong live, and the weak must die.  That’s a type of individualism and me-first attitude based on selfishness and greed.  Instead, life is a “win – win” proposition.  We live because we value each other, strong or weak, and we strive to cooperate instead of compete.

Such is a life purpose for everyone – not just Atheists.  It’s a lesson taught and promoted by Atheist churches.  This universal morality has proven through millennia of time that when people or other species cooperate and care for one another, instead of compete, everyone does better.  And because of that truth, we are called to morally promote cooperation, peace and well-being.  When we practice that, we have no need for selfishness.  As part of a compassionate and caring whole, individual well-being is insured.

Many people assume Unitarian Universalists are Atheists.  I reject that definition.  UU’s instead emphasize an open minded approach to spiritual matters.  World religions are not completely wrong.  They offer many helpful insights for how to live.  Indeed, most of history’s great prophets, like Jesus, were religious and their teachings help direct us in how to be compassionate people.  What is important for me and for this church is to see the good in Atheism and see in its philosophy the ideals that guide us – that the universe and all life within it uhas value.  That’s something we intuitively believe, but it must inform how we live.  Black lives, like all lives, have value.  The poor, hungry and homeless have value.  Empathy, humility and gentle kindness are moral things to practice because they are directed at people – all of whom are valuable.  Atheists, therefore, serve a morality and life purpose founded on the implicit worth of what the universe has created.  God is not a puppet master floating on some metaphysical cloud.  God is all of us

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering at Northern Hills, All Rights Reserved

Listen to the Message here or read below:

 

Black, Poured Directly into the Wound

BY PATRICIA SMITH

Prairie winds blaze through her tumbled belly, and Emmett’s

red yesterdays refuse to rename her any kind of mother.

A pudge-cheeked otherwise, sugar whistler, her boy is

(through the fierce clenching mouth of her memory) a

grays-and-shadows child. Listen. Once she was pretty.

Windy hues goldened her skin. She was pert, brown-faced,

in every wide way the opposite of the raw, screeching thing

chaos has crafted. Now, threaded awkwardly, she tires of the

sorries, the Lawd have mercies. Grief’s damnable tint

is everywhere, darkening days she is no longer aware of.

She is gospel revolving, repeatedly emptied of light, pulled

and caressed, cooed upon by strangers, offered pork and taffy.

Boys in the street stare at her, then avert their eyes, as if she

killed them all, shipped every one into the grips of Delta. She sits,

her chair carefully balanced on hell’s edge, and pays for sanity in

kisses upon the conjured forehead of her son. Beginning with A,

she recites (angry, away, awful) the alphabet of a world gone red.

Coffee scorches her throat as church ladies drift about her room,

black garb sweating their hips, filling cups with tap water, drinking,

drinking in glimpses of her steep undoing. The absence of a black

roomful of boy is measured, again, again. In the clutches of coffee,

red-eyed, Mamie knows their well-meaning murmur. One says She

a mama, still. Once you have a chile, you always a mama. Kisses

in multitudes rain from their dusty Baptist mouths, drowning her.

Sit still, she thinks, til they remember how your boy was killed.

She remembers. Gush and implosion, crushed, slippery, not a boy.

Taffeta and hymnals all these women know, not a son lost and

pulled from the wretched and rumbling Tallahatchie. Mamie, she

of the hollowed womb, is nobody’s mama anymore. She is

tinted echo, barren. Everything about her makes the sound sorry.

The white man’s hands on her child, dangled eye, twanging chaos,

things that she leans on, the only doors that open to let her in.

Faced with days and days of no him, she lets Chicago — windy,

pretty in the ways of the North — console her with its boorish grays.

A hug, more mourners and platters of fat meat. Will she make it through?

Is this how the face slap of sorrow changes the shape of a

mother? All the boys she sees now are laughing, drenched in red.

Emmett, in dreams, sings I am gold. He tells how dry it is, the prairie.

 

Mamie Carthan was born on November 23rd, 1921 in the small town of Webb, Mississippi.  Shortly afterwards, she and her parents moved to Argo, Illinois so her father could work in a corn processing factory.  They were part of a large exodus of African-Americans from the Jim Crow South who looked for greater opportunity up North.

Mamie was a hardworking and intelligent youth.  She was the first African-American student to make the A honor roll in the nearly all white Argo High School – and the fourth African-American to graduate from it.

At age 18, she met and fell in love with an amateur boxer, Louis Till.  Mamie’s parents did not approve, but she married Louis anyway and nine months later gave birth to her first and only child – Emmett Till.

After a divorce two years later, Mamie raised Emmett as a single mother on the South Side of Chicago.  She worked as a clerk for the Air Force and earned wages that placed her well within the middle class.  When Emmett was five, he contracted polio and was hospitalized.  He recovered but, as a result of the disease, developed a persistent verbal stutter.

Mamie’s son was a happy, fun loving boy who loved doo-wop music and Jack Benny.  He was popular and the center of attention at school.  Emmett was also fiercely loyal to his mother.  Their relationship was loving, protective and close.

During the summer of 1955, Mamie’s uncle, Moses Wright, visited Mamie and Emmett.  He was a sharecropper and part-time minister in the Mississippi Delta region.  Emmett, who had only known life in a big city, was captivated by Moses’ stories of fishing and tromping through rural bayous and backwoods.  Mamie was pleased her 14 yer old son, who had never known his father, looked up to Moses.  When he suggested Emmett return with him for a vacation in Mississippi, Mamie reluctantly agreed.

Before he departed Chicago, however, she warned Emmett about how to behave as a black male in Mississippi.  She told him, “If you have to get on your knees and bow when a white person passes, do it willingly.”  In her book, The Death of Innocence, written years later, Mamie said she was anguished about allowing Emmett to visit Mississippi.  She was only two when she left that state but she’d heard stories from her parents about white supremacy and lynchings of blacks in the state.  For her, Mississippi was an alien and dangerous place.

Mamie’s fears for her son in Mississippi proved valid.  One Sunday morning, Emmett and other boys played hooky from his uncle’s church.  They went to a local grocery to buy candy.   The store was owned by Roy Bryant and managed by his wife Carolyn. 

What happened in the store is not fully clear, but most facts indicate Emmett encountered the young and pretty Carolyn.   Emmett may have been attracted to her, got nervous speaking with her, and began to stutter – due to his childhood bout with polio.  Mamie had taught her only child to whistle softly to himself when that happened – as a way to calm himself and speak more clearly.  His friends say Emmett never physically or verbally accosted Carolyn.   Forty-three years later, Carolyn admitted Emmett said and did nothing menacing.  Nevertheless, she acted offended at the time and quickly told her husband that a husky black teen had not only whistled at her, he’d made sexual advances.

Late the next night, Roy Bryant and his cousin drove to Moses Wright’s house and kidnapped Emmett Till.  They tied him, put him in the back of their truck and raced away.  Moses Wright spent the night searching for Emmett – hoping to find a beaten but still alive nephew.

Three days later, the body of a naked black boy was found floating in the Tallahatchie River.  It was unrecognizable.  It was later identified as Emmett Till because the body wore a small ring recently given to him.  Emmett was bloated, had barbed wire bound around his neck, he’d been dragged behind a truck, had his tongue cut off, one eye gouged out, and the side of his head smashed in.

The local sheriff encouraged a speedy Mississippi burial.  Mamie refused.  She asked that Emmett be placed in ice and returned to Chicago.  Later, she instructed that her son’s funeral be open casket.  His death had become national news – a young African-American boy lynched in the deep South for doing nothing more than whistling in the presence of a white woman.  Fifty-thousand people came to Emmett’s funeral.  Many were overcome by the sight and smell of his body.  Photographs of Emmett’s horribly disfigured face were published in newspapers around the world.

Mamie told the press that the world needed to see what had been done to her son.   In her book she wrote, “Have you ever sent a beloved son on vacation, and had him returned to you in a pine box, so horribly battered and water-logged that someone needs to tell you this sickening sight is your son, lynched?  People had to face my son and realize just how twisted, how distorted, how terrifying race hatred could be.”

One month later Roy Bryant and his cousin were put on trial in Mississippi.  Mamie flew down to testify.  Emmett’s uncle also testified and, in doing so, displayed the kind of courage few black men in the South dared show.  Defense lawyers questioned whether Emmett was dead by claiming the body pulled from the Tallahatchie was not him.  The ring had been placed on it.  Emmett, they suggested, had run away and was up to no good.  The all-white jury spent 67 minutes deliberating – with the foreman stating that if it weren’t for a soda-pop break, it would have been much shorter.  The two defendants were found not guilty.

One year later, now immune from prosecution under double jeopardy laws, the two were paid by Look magazine for an interview.  They admitted they murdered Emmett saying he’d still be alive if he hadn’t acted equal to whites.  He and other black boys needed to be taught a lesson.

Emmett’s lynching is credited with igniting the modern Civil Rights movement.  Langston Hughes wrote a poem soon after.  Toni Morrison wrote a play.  Bob Dylan composed a song and only three months later, Rosa Parks said that when she was ordered to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama bus, she thought of Emmett Till and thus refused.

Gwendolyn Brooks wrote her famous poem “The Last Quatrain of the Ballad Of Emmett Till” as a tribute.  Brooks is considered by most scholars to be one of the foremost 20th century American poets.  She was the first African-American to win a Pulitzer Prize.

This past March, an assembly of poets continued an annual tradition called the Golden Shovel Award in which writers are asked to honor a deceased poet by taking a line from their best poem and incorporating its words into a new and freshly written poem.  This year they honored Brooks and her poem about Emmett Till.

Patricia Smith, an acclaimed contemporary African-American poet, then wrote the poem I consider today – Black, Poured Directly Into the Wound.  This message is the second in my August series I’ve entitled “Summer Poetry for Reflection.”

What I find poignant in Smith’s poem is its focus on Mamie and her grief.  The poem is immediately relevant because it captures not just the feelings of every grieving mother, but more importantly of today’s black mothers whose sons have been unjustly murdered.   The poem is neither political or angry.   Instead, it goes beyond surface emotions to plumb the depths of grief felt by a black mother – her pain, her struggle to make sense of horrific tragedy, her obligation to grieve in ways that transform a son’s killing into a cause.

In Smith’s poem, Mamie’s world is turned upside down.   Images in the poem evoke that kind of ironic inversion.  The world is no longer blue and green.  It’s red and full of doom.  Mamie is no longer pretty, pert and golden skinned.  She’s raw, red eyed, screeching, and threaded awkwardly.  She’s gospel – or good news – revolving into a symbol of bad news.  She’s a victim and yet she’s not.  Emmett’s friends blame her as the one who sent him off to be lynched.  She’s thus emblematic of how too often our culture blames black victims for their injury.

Mamie is still a mother, “once you have a chile, you always a mama,” the poem says.  And yet Mamie isn’t.  She, with a hollowed womb, is an echo of what she once was.  She’s nobody’s mama anymore. 

The once golden hued boys who played with her son, she sees them as drenched in red.  They too await a bloody end.  And Emmett, whose body is literally fat meat, he inhabits her dreams wreathed in gold – a halo wearing son marching through a dusty eternity.  Mamie’s grief wound is thus aggravated not by salt poured into it – but by all the history of blackness.

I often encourage empathy.  Patricia Smith’s poem does the same.  Her poem cries out with the anguish of a black mother – emotions nobody but she can feel.   We’re asked to not just understand those feelings, but literally feel her confusion, anger, disconnection, numbness, and gut wrenching grief. 

It takes all I can muster to imagine the worry and grief of a black mother.   When tragedy comes to the Mamie Tills, Sabrina Fultons (mom of Travon Martin) or the Samaria Rices (mom of 12 year old Tamir – killed by Cleveland police as he played with a toy gun), they are expected to be the face of every mom’s grief – all the better for whites to feel empathy.  And yet whites can’t fully offer that.  Our experiences of sorrow and prejudice and fear is too limited.

Black mothers and their sons have a distorted relationship due to centuries of racism.  Mother’s who were slaves had to watch as their beloved babies – particularly their sons – were ripped away and sold for profit.  Solomon Northrup’s narrative in Twelve Year’s a Slave describes seeing the mother Eliza plead and cry hysterically for her master not to sell her son – and then be threatened with whipping unless she stopped.

The same scene was replayed under different circumstances, but identical context, when Leslie McSpadden, mother of Freddie Gray who was tumbled to death in the back of a police van, collapsed with anguished cries after hearing her son was dead.  She later said the news made her feel as if she had been killed.  “There was,” she said, “a feeling that there was no respect, no sympathy, nothing for my son.”

Black mothers are often blamed for their tough discipline of boys, for their seeming lack of tenderness, for their often angry attitudes toward men.  Patricia Smith reminds us, however, of the love a black mother has for her sons, for her keening grief at their deaths, and for their obsessive protections over them – yelling, cajoling and even encouraging their emasculation – all to somehow save them from tragedy.

My relationship with my mom – and that of other gay men with their moms – is nowhere near as fraught and pained as it must be for black men and their mothers.  But I believe there are faint echoes of similarity.  Reflecting on Smith’s poem, I can hear those faint echoes in my past.  They help me empathize with black moms.

Bullied as a boy, I recall my mom comforting me – encouraging me to be strong and reassuring me I’m loved.   She openly cheered at my little successes – hoping to empower my self-esteem.  She even had me transferred to a small private school – all to better protect me.

Years later, after I came out, I recall her stern looks at dad when he told a crude joke about gays, or laughed at something I’d wear or say that was not masculine enough.  She mourned my divorce – but she also understood why.  She never spoke the word “gay” with me, but she knew. And she never stopped enjoying my company, cheering my adult little successes, or acting the protective lioness.  Perhaps like a black mother, she feared for me out in a hostile world.  I wonder about the nights of worry she may have had for me – as a bullied young boy, as a quiet teen moving into adulthood, as a gay man venturing into a new life.  My mom, like black moms, had a bond with me forged not just by love…..but also by worry.   

The lives of sons matter deeply to almost ALL mothers.  Patricia Smith’s poem reminds us that Emmett Till’s life mattered to Mamie – as did the lives of his many friends – all symbolically drenched in red.  The same is true of Sabrina Fulton for Travon Martin, Leslie McSpadden for Freddie Gray, and the slave mom Eliza for her son Randall.  The lament of most black mothers is one I want to understand and feel.  It’s the cry of a whole nation of black mothers saying together – “the lives of our sons, their black lives, they matter.”  That’s a cry that goes far beyond white counter arguments.  Of course, police lives matter.  Of course, all lives matter.  No black mother would ever disagree.

But history’s terrible images of black men swinging lifeless from trees, of weeping boys sold away from their mamas, of young men languishing in prison for drug addiction, of Emmett Till, Travon Martin, Tamir Rice and thousands like them dead too young – and their killers walking away unpunished – such images plaintively implore the truth that black lives deserve the spiritual imperative of respect and dignity.  To understand that, to feel that, to empathize with that, and then be drawn to advocate for that, we need only listen and reflect on a black mama’s cry…

I wish you peace.

Michael Tacy will now sing for us Billie Holliday’s song “Strange Fruit.”  I encourage us, while Michael sings, to meditate on the ongoing tragedy of racism and hate in our nation.  In doing so, I encourage us to imagine the hurt and grief and anger of black mamas.  I encourage us to inhabit their pain and then use that feeling to touch our souls…

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering at Northern Hills, All Rights Reserved

Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church

BY EMILY DICKINSON

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –

I keep it, staying at Home –

With a Bobolink for a Chorister –

And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –

I, just wear my Wings –

And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,

Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –

And the sermon is never long,

So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –

I’m going, all along.

 

 

          There is a story about a mom who knocks on her son’s bedroom door on a Sunday morning.  “Wake up, dear” she says.  “It’s time to get ready for church.”

“I don’t want to go to church,” the son replies. 

          “Why not?” the mother asks.

“I’ll give you three reasons,” the son says.  “One, church is boring.  Two, the people don’t like me.  Three, I want to stay home.”

“Well……. dear,” the mother says sternly.  “I’ll give you three reasons why you ARE going to church this morning.  “One, we honor the sabbath in this house.  Two, you are a grown man and should not act this way.  Three, you are the minister!”

Another story about not wanting to go to church has Bob arriving at a stadium well after the game has started.  “Wow.  You are late,” Bob’s friend says.  “What took you so long?” 

“I was deciding between coming to the game or going to church,” Bob replies.  “I had to toss a coin to decide.”

“That shouldn’t have taken too long,” the friend replies.  “Yeah,” says Bob, “But I had to toss it forty-two times!”

These stories are funny, but they highlight why many people avoid attending church.  On a day of supposed rest, by coming to church you have to get up relatively early, get dressed, drive fifteen minutes or more, sing songs that you’d never sing otherwise, listen to a long and boring message, drink weak coffee, exchange pleasantries with people you may see only once a week, and then arrive back home with the day half over.  And, after all of that, you’re asked to pay for the experience!

As Emily Dickinson implies in her poem, why bother taking all that effort to attend church when church can be right outside your door?  Many people feel most at peace, most reflective, and most connected to great forces in the universe when they are in the midst of nature – in one’s backyard, in a park, or someplace far into the wilderness.

With her seemingly simple poem that we just read, Dickinson relates a gentle skepticism of traditional religion and its declaration that religious buildings are the only places to worship, learn and grow.  She implies that what man has made, God has made better.  As she writes in the first line of the poem, some keep the Sabbath by going to church.  Her implication is of a traditional religious structure, or place, for guided worship.  She, however, honors the Sabbath at home – in an orchard in her yard.  She capitalizes the words ‘Home’ and ‘Orchard’ to indicate they are just as holy as any cathedral.

Dickinson tells us that in nature’s church, one not crafted by human hands, her worship is led by things much more authentic and holy than those found in religious churches.  A bobolink bird provides the music instead of a human choir leader or music director.  (By the way, I love hearing songbirds – but for me, I prefer hearing Michael!). That same bird is the one who calls her to worship in nature’s church – instead of a clanging bell. 

Some Sabbath keepers wear a surplice – a religious vestment much like a long robe.  Dickinson, instead, wears her angel’s wings – once again implying that the items people use to enable worship are less holy than the things people cannot make – like song birds, an orchard, or a good heart worthy of angel’s wings.  These are the items, she implies, of a real church, of Nature’s church, of one people cannot make.

Above all, Dickinson is guided by the voice of god in her church.  No person is needed to come between Emily and her god.  It’s not a human clergy person who tells her of spiritual matters – of kindness, charity, and humility.  It’s likely her inner voice – a godly conscience heard in reflections as she sits in her garden.  Without any description in the poem, we can nevertheless imagine the short sermon god offers in her in nature’s church – wind whispering through trees, crickets chirping their endless chime, and birds trilling – one to another.  Such a sermon need not be any longer or more profound than nature announcing the miracles of life. 

Who makes the wind and what causes a bird to sing?  Such are reflections to ponder when listening to nature’s sermon – one that if we think about it is perhaps the greatest of all sermons.  The ultimate Truth of the universe, whatever we believe that is, speaks and sings and shines and echoes in Nature’s church.  That’s a miracle for all to accept.

Dickinson claims in her poem a Transcendentalist and even  Unitarian perspective on faith and salvation.  We do not claim a rightful place in heaven because we regularly attend church, or follow religious rules.  Instead, we claim a place in heaven simply by our existence and by our appreciation for the majesty of creation.  We see god in the intricate beauty of life, the interdependence of all things, and the respect that each deserves.  Our place in heaven, Dickinson writes, is not something we await for in an afterlife.  Heaven is all around us.  It’s right here, right now.  Much like the French philosopher Voltaire said, our life purpose is to tend our garden – this earthly version of Eden, paradise or heaven.  That is our responsibility – to help build a place of peace and goodness for all.

As Emily implies, we may think we build mini-versions of heaven with our church buildings – places in which we think we hear god.  When we do that, however, we miss hearing the real god, and we miss experiencing the real heaven.  Church, god and heaven are as close as our back door – out in the fields and forests and vast cosmos.  Man-made Church structures, Emily Dickinson says in her poem, are essentially irrelevant.

As a minister, as one who Dickinson implies is irrelevant, too preachy and long in his messages, it might seem odd that I agree with her poem.  It  says in verse much of what I believe.  Large and ornate churches offend me.  Like her, I love Nature’s church.  Pretentious Pastors, Ministers, Bishops, and Popes are equally offensive in my mind.  What makes them more holy and more in tune with spirituality than any of you?  To wear a cleric’s collar, to solemnly fake-worship in flowing robes, and then to perch oneself on a high pulpit and preach down upon a supposedly sinful congregation, all of that is the height of arrogance in my opinion.  I assume, by now, you know that is not the kind of minister I am.   

My role here is one among equals.  I’m a fellow traveler on our journey of spiritual exploration.  I am simply one who enjoys taking the time to explore spiritual subjects in depth – and then raise questions for me and you to consider.  I facilitate and I coordinate, but I hope I do not try to tell you what is Truth or what you should believe.

Like Emily Dickinson, I will encourage you to find your church out in nature and to ponder therein the great questions of existence.  As a facilitator, I help manage – along with you – this physical place in which we meet.  In my opinion, it might as well be called a launching pad, or a center of empowerment.  All of us come without any belief that we enter holy ground here.  This is not a place to hear the voice of whatever we believe is god – or is not god.  This place is, as I said, a launching pad we use to send us forth out there – beyond these windows – to go out to where god DOES dwell.  It’s in nature’s realm – as well as in the streets, byways, homes, hospitals, and homeless shelters that we will find god – whatever it is she might be.  The place to hear her, to worship her, to learn from her and do her good work, is out in our garden, the earthly realm that is our heaven and ours to continually improve.

For Emily Dickinson’s nineteenth century time and place, our understanding of what defines a church did not exist.  Even Unitarians of the time saw churches as sacred places.  With greater insight as to what might constitute god, however, we as Unitarian Universalists now define church as something very different then before.  Church is not this room of wooden beams, a lectern, piano and chalice.  It’s not our Quimby room, classrooms, or offices.  As comfortable as this structure is, it is not holy, it is not even super special in the eternity of time.  It is definitely not church.  Church, instead, is flesh and blood.  It’s all of you.

And it’s in that regard that I claim church, as we define it as a congregation of people, IS important, valuable and worthy of our Sunday morning time.  Amongst each other – in church – we find the support, human connections, shared insights, common interests, friendships, learning, growth and empowerment that we need in order to tend our garden and thereby hear the voice of whatever is god to us.

These four walls do little for us beyond providing shelter and a meeting place.  As I said, this physical place is not church.  Church is this congregation in which we feel loved and appreciated.  It’s our community  in which we are supported in times of need – and to whom we support in their times of need.  Church is this community that helps refine our thoughts about the universe and what is god.  Church is this community that encourages our better angels – imploring us to be gentle, peaceful, compassionate, just, and humble.  Church is this community that lovingly challenges us in ways we fall short – in any of our misguided thinking, or behavior.  Church is this community that intentionally focuses on the education and well-being not just of our children – but all children.  Church is this community that enables us to serve the outside world – a group that combines resources of money and time so that we can feed, clothe, comfort and advocate for the poor, lost and hurting.

This congregation, what I say is the real church, is nothing like the stale and false church of tradition, or the one some go to that is described in Emily Dickinson’s poem.  It’s not one that makes holy the man-made.  It’s not one that I suggest you, or I, or anyone else, should avoid on Sunday mornings.  By ourselves we cannot support, grow, serve and practice all the things that 120 of us can better do together.  It’s also, I humbly claim, not one we should take for granted.  This church, this community, needs our regular presence.

That gets to the heart of why this church, this congregation, exists.  As individuals, we are not here for ourselves.  We are not here to be served and waited upon.  We are here to do the exact opposite.  We instead serve and wait upon others in countless ways – with our time, resources, and encouraging words.  We do these things in order to mutually equip one another to go out into the world and serve it.  When any of us are away for long periods of time – from this church of people – we miss out on needed ways to love and serve.  And those who are away miss out on ways others can serve and love them

I strongly believe in short breaks from anything we regularly do.      All of you generously give me a Sunday a month off.  That helps me to re-energize for my ongoing work.  Time off is essential for all of our well-being.  But time off is limited and a return to work is a necessity.  For us as a community, as a church, when some are away we deeply miss them.  We hope for their quick return.  We need them as much I believe they need us.

Emily Dickinson’s vision of a true church – one found in nature and outside man-made walls, is one many of us embrace.  That true church is not this building.  It’s not me, or Michael, or our Board.  As I’ve said, the true church is all of us being launched from here out into the world.   It’s all of us pondering, learning, and working in our respective gardens of influence.  It is all of us searching for, and sometimes finding, the reality of god in all of her gritty beauty – in the loveliness of nature as well as in heartaches of poverty and injustice.  That’s the realm of heaven – a place we, as Dickinson writes in her poem, we go to all along…

I wish you much peace and joy.

TalkBack

To listen to the message, please click here:

You may recall that the song Les Tacy just played, “The Entertainer” was the title piece to the 1981 movie “Ragtime.”  It was based on a novel, with the same name, by E.L. Doctorow.  The movie and book were named after the musical genre that was popular during the first two decades of the 1900’s.

The Ragtime story focuses on a wealthy New York family who are not named.  They are simply “Father, Mother, Mother’s Younger Brother, and little boy.”

Father earns his wealth owning a fireworks and flag factory.  Like many rich men of the time, he has lots of idle time and gets bored.  So he joins the first expedition to the North Pole. 

While he is gone for many months, Mother experiences independence for the first time.  She becomes a suffragette and advocate for women’s rights.  After finding an abandoned African-American baby, Mother adopts the child.  The child’s mother Sarah eventually finds her way to the house and Mother rescues her too.  Later still, the baby’s father, Coalhouse Walker, begins to live in Mother’s house.  Coalhouse is an accomplished pianist who earns a living playing ragtime music in fancy New York nightclubs.

Mother’s younger Brother is an expert in explosives and fireworks.  He manages the family business.  He too becomes bored and begins an affair with Evelyn Nesibit, who was a real life American chorus girl with a salacious reputation.

Miss Nesbit meanwhile takes an immigrant single father named Tateh under her protective wings.  He is an accomplished artist who supports himself by working in a large factory.  He is caught up in a worker’s strike, meets the real life progressive activist Emma Goldman, and becomes a socialist.  Tateh realizes the promise of supposed American equal opportunity – is a myth.

Coalhouse Walker gets caught in the major drama of the story.  While driving to work in his Model T Ford, he is stopped and humiliated by a racist fire crew and its Chief Conklin.  They demand a huge sum of money to allow him to proceed.   They are upset a black man owns a car.  Coalhouse refuses to pay and the fire crew then dumps human excrement into the car and finally burn it. 

Coalhouse pursues legal action against the fire chief in an attempt to get his car and, more importantly, his dignity back.  His efforts are blocked by a legal system that is prejudiced against African-Americans. 

Coalhouse then begins vigilante attacks on New York firehouses.  He threatens to continue them until his car is restored and Chief Conklin is punished.  He escalates his attacks by recruiting other disaffected blacks and whites to join him.  Younger Brother is one of them who, with his expertise in explosives, helps Coalhouse build bombs.  The gang takes over, and threatens to explode, the famous J.P. Morgan Library with its valuable collection of books and art.  The real life Booker T. Washington negotiates punishment for Chief Conklin in return for the safe escape of Coalhouse’s volunteers.  When Coalhouse surrenders after his men are safe, he is shot and killed by police.

Into these interwoven story lines, Father returns from his adventure.  He’s shocked to find profound changes in his family.  Mother is now a feminist who adopted a black child, its mother and it’s outlaw father.  The manager of his factory, Younger Brother, is not only having an affair with the scandalous Evelyn Nesbit, he has also joined Coalhouse as a bomber. 

Father is deeply shaken by these changes.  In despair and to flee from changes he cannot understand, Father embarks on the ship Lusitania headed to Europe.  He dies when the ship, as students of history know, is sunk by German U-Boats.  After his death, Mother meets, falls in love with, and marries Tateh, the immigrant father.  The story ends as Mother and Tateh settle down to raise their three very diverse children.  Mother and Father are thus symbols of change in America and how to deal with it.  Fight against it and sit on the wrong side of history, or embrace it and find peace.

The novel Ragtime has been acclaimed by numerous critics as one of the hundred best books of the twentieth century.   Importantly, the book’s themes highlight the profound changes in the lives of Mother and Father AND those in the United States and world.  Human culture, economies and social structures were all upended by industrialization.

The Industrial era, most historians agree, spanned from the 1850’s to the conclusion of World War Two.  It was followed by the post-Industrial era lasting until approximately the 1990’s.  After that, began the period in which we now find ourselves – that of the Digital Age with its own major economic and social changes.

The Industrial era, however, reached its inflection point during the first decades of the 1900’s – precisely when ragtime music was most popular.  Industrialization created massive dislocations in society.  Cities grew to be very large as people moved from rural areas to work in newly built factories.  Those factories needed lots of cheap labor to run their machines.  That encouraged the immigration of millions of poor farmers from most of Europe.

Factories needed huge amounts of coal and oil to fuel their machines.  That created opportunities for a few businessmen to build large monopolies like Standard Oil, New York Central Railroad, and US Steel.  Great wealth became concentrated in the hands of a few.  An educated, managerial class of professionals was needed to run the factories and large businesses.  They became a new middle class.  Those who worked in the factories, coal mines and steel mills – the uneducated rural poor, immigrants, women and children – they were the new lower class.  They worked long hours, toiled in unsafe conditions and were paid minimal wages.

I relate the Ragtime novel’s story, and the history of Industrialization, as my introduction to a larger point.  Economic, technological and social change can be shocking and disruptive, but they have happened throughout human history.  I assert that societies and people must learn to adapt to change, and help minimize its worst effects.

As a symbol of the early twentieth century and its many changes, ragtime music is one of America’s contributions to the world.  As a musical genre, it was known for unique syncopation and upbeat energy.  Melodic accents and harmonic sounds come between major beats in the music.  A pianists left hand plays the beat while the right hand plays the syncopated, rhythmic melody.  This “ragged” sound gave the music its name.

It was a radically new musical genre that many say was a modern update to Mozart’s minuets and Brahms’ waltzes.  It influenced later classical music – that of of 20th century composers like Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky.  It’s no coincidence that the music is a symbol for change.  People around the world reacted to industrialization changes in multiple ways.  The Russian Bolshevik revolution of 1917 was one reaction.  Colonialism and rampant greed in Europe was another – one that led to World War One as nations competed against each other for control of natural resources. 

In the US, progressives like Teddy Roosevelt enacted their own solutions to industrialization and its negative changes.  Labor unions, the right to strike, child labor laws and minimum wages were their solutions.   Added to those, constitutional rights of free speech and the right to assemble helped American women create positive change for themselves – by gaining the right to vote in 1920.  American institutions of democracy and built-in checks on forces of power helped this nation deal with the profound changes.

It goes without saying that we are today witnessing cultural, economic and social upheavals similar to those caused by the Industrial revolution.  Today’s changes, however, have been caused by the so-called Digital Revolution in what many sociologists believe is the single fastest and most profound economic shift in history.  People of every nation are struggling with how to answer such change.  Do we embrace current dislocations and innovations – those of globalization, immigration, the demand for minority rights, and new technology in the form of computers?  Or, do we react like Father in the Ragtime story – with disbelief, shock, anger and retreat?  In other words, is the answer to widespread economic, social and technological change one that accepts change and tries to soften its blows?  Something we call progressivism?   Or is the answer to deny change, retreat to the past, and embrace a conservative response emblematic of that name – to conserve what was once had?

Regardless of political reasons why it is essential to accept change, I believe it is a spiritual one as well.  Ragtime music and Ragtime the story both implicitly endorse that.  Ragtime music was, and is popular because of its radical newness in sound – one that is almost robotic.  Scott Joplin, ragtime’s foremost composer, said it was intentionally written to mimic piano music rolls – what were an early prototype of digital computer cards.  It’s acceptance and popularity helped spawn ragtime’s musical offspring- jazz, R&B, and rock and roll.  In other words, much like industrialization and the changes it caused were eventually blended into a new economic and social culture, so too was ragtime.

Change, as a basic fact of life, is thus not something we can ignore.  All around us, change happens constantly.  All forms of life mature, grow old and eventually die – consistent with the fact that nothing in the universe stays the same.  Physical laws of entropy and thermodynamics confirm this.  Since change is a fundamental law of existence, then it holds true for human society as well.  To ignore or fight against change is a Don Quixote like effort – useless. 

Spiritually, change is also a fact of life.  All religions have used change to encourage new ways to understand life and the universe. Judaism began as a way to change human behavior through religious rules of morality.  Jesus radically changed that idea by saying rules of behavior have merit, but values of compassion and equality supersede them.  The Buddha and Mohammad taught the same.  Virtually all forms of spirituality were and are change reactions intended to further human decency.

Progressivism in the early 20th century, symbolized by ragtime music, was also a way to initiate positive change in human behavior.  And so it is today.  A common definition of progressivism, however, says nothing about politics.  Instead, progressivism is defined as “a philosophy based on the idea of Progress, which asserts that advancements in science, technology, economic development, and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition.”  Underlying that definition is the spiritual notion that our purpose for living is to improve the condition of all humanity such that the world becomes a better and more humane place.

When I say GNH is spiritually progressive, I mean the same – that we embrace change as a means to improve ourselves and the world.  In fact, we are each called to be change agents – people who work to change themselves so that they can then work to change the world.

But humans being human often reject change out of fear.  The act of becoming something different is not easy, physically or mentally.  With change, we move into unknown territory, where life is unfamiliar and seemingly unsafe. 

Church congregations, for instance, are notoriously averse to change.  Both myself, and some of you, are not immune to that response.  We like our traditions – our rituals, hymns, committees, and policies we’ve used for many years.  Adopting new ideas for how we worship, sing or govern ourselves – such things are scary.  I still lament that some of the former Gathering members, who chose not to continue with the merged congregation, did so because they did not want to change.   A new congregation, in a new location, with some new practices, those were unsettling.

Certain segments in our nation are reacting strongly to the social and economic change they see.  Attitudes against LGBT rights, globalization, immigration, Black Lives Matter, global warming, and new forms of technology have manifested themselves in a conservative response.  Such people say, “Let’s ignore these sweeping forces for change.  Let’s stay the same or retreat backwards.  Let’s refuse to educate ourselves and evolve.”

But as much as it is easy to wag our finger at others who resist change, we must look within ourselves and how we also resist change.  I resist change in my life – that I’m getting older, that I am having new health problems, that the patterns of my life and work evolve, that forms of social media like Facebook or Twitter can be useful.  At times I can sound like a grumpy old man who sits on his porch and yells at kids in the street who make too much noise!  Take a chill pill Doug and move with the onward flow of progress!

I therefore try to encourage evolutionary change here and in myself by allowing things to move forward gradually.  I believe a progressive attitude in politics, spirituality, economics and society can help us change in ways that is balanced.  Progressivism is neither revolutionary nor ultra-conservative.  It accepts change but it also tries to manage it in ways that are compassionate to those hurt by it.  Progressivism echoes Martin Luther King’s belief that the arc of moral history is a long one, with many temporary backward steps, but it always bends toward justice.

With that hopeful thought, my encouragement for us is to listen to the implied message of ragtime music.  Change is a universal fact.  It is a force for good.  Change in us, in life, in human institutions, or in technology may be frightening, but it will ultimately be for good if we take time to adapt.  We can act like angry white men in any area of change – with technology, at church, with our jobs, families, health, foods, sexualities, and lifestyles – or we can act like Mother in the Ragtime story – an open minded, compassionate woman who heard the new syncopated call of ‘The Entertainer’ and boldly moved into a better future.           

     

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering at Northern Hills, All Rights Reserved

 

Last Sunday, as a part of my July message series entitled “Summer Songs for Fun and Inspiration”, I examined the folk song “This Land is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie.  During the talkback time, several interpretations of Guthrie’s lyrics were offered.  It’s often difficult to perfectly know an artist’s intentions.  People have different thoughts about what a piece of art, music or writing means.  And… that is as it should be.  Almost any great piece of art speaks with many ideas.

That is true for the song I highlight today – George Gershwin’s song ‘Summertime’ from the operetta ‘Porgy and Bess.’  From its first release in1935, the operetta has been controversial.  It’s been most criticized because it portrays the lives of African-Americans – but it was written and composed by white men.  From today’s perspective, Gershwin and the librettists Dubose Heyward and Ira Gershwin appropriated – or stole – black culture which they did not “own” or even understand.  They profited handsomely from that.

Of added concern is that the story of ‘Porgy and Bess’ is seen by many to stereotype African-Americans with racist characteristics.  The story is one of murder, misogyny, promiscuity and abandonment – actions all too easily applied by bigots to blacks – but which are, in truth, evident in all cultures.  Duke Ellington, for one, decried the operetta and said people must “debunk Gershwin’s lampblack Negroisms.”

Another critic of the song ‘Summertime’ says that it is not what it seems to be – a tender lullaby from a mother to her newborn child.  Instead, this critic says it depicts a black woman nursing and singing to a white child she has been hired – or enslaved – to care for.  Lyrics such as “your daddy’s rich and your momma’s good looking” do not describe most African-Americans at that time.  Very, very, very few black men of the 1920’s were wealthy and the standard for female beauty was to be white.  In other words, this critic believes the song highlights how black women were routinely forced, through enslavement or economic necessity, to nurture white babies at the expense of their own. 

The operetta’s apologists, however, say that Gershwin researched and appreciated African-American culture.  As a liberal Jewish man of his time, Gershwin portrayed in “Porgy and Bess” a unique slice of America – that of its black citizens.   Indeed, he said that his operetta was an addition to the American melting pot.  Much like jazz is an expression of black cultural vibrancy, it is also an expression of American energy and freshness.  Gershwin said that ‘Porgy and Bess’ should be interpreted the same.  As he said, the operetta is both black and white – a piece that portrays the American experience as opposed to just the black experience.

Today’s commentators are also as divided about how to interpret the operetta.  Some say it is racist and unworthy of attention.  Harry Belafonte refused to appear in it even as many other African-Americans from Maya Angelou, to Sammy Davis Jr. to Sidney Poitier did appear in it.  Others, like Leontyne Price and Ella Fitzgerald recorded beautiful and popular renditions of the song ‘Summertime.’

Some commentators argue ‘Porgy and Bess’ and its signature song are period pieces that must be understood from the perspective of the time when written.  Much like we better understand historic anti-semitism from Wagner’s opera The Ring Cycle, the same holds true for ‘Porgy and Bess.’  Jim Crow racism and the response of blacks and whites to its oppressions are better understood, some say, because of the operetta.

Just as I hope is the case with each message I offer, however, what we discuss and learn here is to find spiritual meaning.  We do that not just for the sake of acquiring knowledge, but to seek universal truths that help build peace and compassion in ourselves and in the world.   That makes this place different from a classroom or civic organization.  To that end, I believe the song ‘Summertime’ reminds us to respect the dignity of others and their unique cultures.  Their foods, clothing and art forms are not ours to take and use as we wish.  To do so is to disrespect our black sisters and brothers. 

The song also reminds us that we must adopt an attitude of humility when considering the subject of racism.  We must listen to African-Americans and their thoughts, feelings and suggested solutions to the subject instead of offering our ideas for a solution.  To do that reinforces attitudes of white supremacy.   Our white ears must open, while our white mouths must shut.

That is clearly not what Gershwin did since the song ‘Summertime’ was essentially stolen by him – something he admitted doing.  Its melody, key and lyrics were based largely on the slave spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”  Indeed, Gershwin said that when he heard some blacks sing the word “sometimes” he heard them instead pronounce “summertime”.  Like “Motherless Child”, “Summertime” was written in a minor key and was intended to be a lament – like many African-American spirituals – a song that sings of hope in the face of despair.

Frederick Douglas, the famed African-American abolitionist and former slave, said of slave spiritual songs that they “breathed the prayer and complaint of souls overflowing with the bitterest anguish. They depressed my spirits and filled my heart with ineffable sadness.  Like tears, they were a relief to aching hearts.”  Indeed, it’s clear that most black spirituals were a way to release emotions slaves and later African-Americans under Jim Crow could not otherwise freely express – ones of hope, deep sorrow, or even ecstatic joy.

Despite misappropriating the song ‘Summertime’ and then profiting from it, Gershwin was able to capture the black spiritual style and even historic black emotions in the song.   It is for that reason ‘Summertime’ remains both popular and yet also controversial.  It’s melody and its themes still resonate with many people, including African.-Americans.  Like other black spirituals, the song is loving and tender but in a deeply sad way.  It’s as if the singer’s assurance that all is well for the newborn baby is more a wish than a fact.  Was life so easy and good for the characters in the operetta?  The story is one of tragedy, anguish and abandonment.  The child is eventually deserted by both its mother and father.  How can that be good?  Even more, life in 1930’s America for African-Americans, especially in the South, was hardly languid and easygoing.  Lynchings still occurred.  Jim Crow was in full force.  The nation was in the midst of a Depression.   

Since Gershwin confessed that he based the song ‘Summertime’ on the African-American spiritual ‘Sometimes I Fell Like a Motherless Child’, it’s evident he intended his song to have a downbeat melody to contrast with its positive lyrics.  Indeed, the accusation that ‘Summertime’ was written to be the lament of a black woman forced to nurture a white child is well taken.  In that case, the positive lyrics are not inconsistent with the sad melody.  The white child was born into a life of privilege and happiness while the black woman, who sings the lullaby, her life is one of servitude and misery.  How could her singing be anything but downbeat and sad?

Another interpretation of the song’s lyrics is that they are an ironic lament of a black mother to her own black child.  The words that all is well – the cotton is high, the fish are jumping and the living is easy – those can be seen as bitter and even sarcastic.  Here’s my beloved child, the woman sings, born into a life with little happiness.  I’ll reassure my baby that all is well, even though I know that’s not true.  But one day, dear child, you will rise up and fly high into the sky! 

        Such a symbolic flight might be your escape to a better life up North, or your passing into a heavenly afterlife.  Those kinds of hopeful lyrics are characteristic of other African-American spirituals – ones that sing of escape and freedom, or of a merciful death and a heaven that awaits. 

‘Summertime’s lyrics, in this regard, match with those of ‘Motherless Child’ – lyrics for which you can find on an insert in your programs.  In a life where children and adults are often orphans, their parents having been sold to other owners or, under Jim Crow, their parents having abandoned children for economic necessity, feelings of loneliness and separation must have been strong.  Even more, ‘Motherless Child’s lyrics might also symbolize separation from Africa and one’s homeland, or perhaps from one’s eternal home – heaven.  Those good places are a long way off – separated by a vast ocean, or separated by many difficult and sad years of life ahead.

Both songs, I believe, sing of heartache no matter one’s interpretation of them.  Even so, the troubling fact remains that ‘Summertime’ is essentially a stolen song.  Gershwin, I’m sure, did not believe he was stealing.  He likely thought he was honoring black life and black spirituals by modeling his song so closely on. ‘Motherless Child’.  But that attitude was nevertheless symptomatic of many white liberals of the time.  He might think he honored African-Americans and their culture, but in reality he was using and profiting from it – much like slave holders once used and profited from African bodies.

Indeed, Gershwin’s cultural misappropriation of black culture and musical styles removed them from their historical contexts.  The tragedy and turmoil depicted in ‘Porgy and Bess’ cannot be separated from a history of black slavery and oppression.  Many African-Americans of the 1930’s were direct descendants of former slaves.  The lingering physical, emotional and economic impact of slavery on their lives was significant.  Indeed, Gershwin’s research for his operetta was done in “gullah” areas of North Carolina – the swampy, mosquito infested land near the coast.  It was into those areas that blacks were relegated.  With few or no schools, terrible land for farming and no infrastructure such as paved roads and electricity, African-Americans had little prospect to advance.  Crime, drinking and promiscuity were natural outlets for frustration and hopelessness.

Gershwin took that lifestyle and then dramatized it as typical of all African-Americans.  He removed it from the historical contexts I just described.  Produced for mostly white audiences in the U.S. and Europe, the operetta offered a false understanding of black culture.  White audiences could and did judge ‘Porgy and Bess’s depictions of crime, illiteracy and abandonment as emblematic of dysfunction in all blacks.  

It’s doubtful white audiences, as they watched the operetta, thought of the negative legacies of slavery, or of the negative effects of Jim Crow, or even of the reasons I discussed earlier why it’s signature song ‘Summertime’ is so sad.  Indeed, some whites might incorrectly assume its lyrics that daddy is rich, the cotton is high and life is easy are literally true for African-Americans.

It’s because of these reasons, and many others, that cultural appropriation is immoral.  It’s why whites must be very careful when using black art and music.  What is our purpose for using it?  Is it to better empathize with and thus understand black pain?  Or is it to steal something seemingly exotic to make whites appear more enlightened or cool?  Or perhaps we want to peer into other cultures simply out of curiosity – to judge, demean and ridicule?

Cultural appropriation also reminds us that the era of white supremacy must end.  With it must come, I believe, an overall attitude of humility.  For me, my spirituality says that in any conversation or dialogue, I must listen and learn more than suggest and opine.  This is particularly so in matters of race.  Such is the practice of empathy which I frequently encourage.  I must discern and understand the emotions and feelings of African-Americans – to hear not just their words, but their deeper and more heartfelt pain or anger.  In that regard, I believe my role in helping to solve racism is to allow African-Americans to tell me what I can or should do.  Simply by extending them leadership, I help end white supremacy.       

As I said earlier, Gershwin was white and liberal.  He sincerely believed he honored blacks with his operetta, and by employing them as singers and actors in it.  The song ‘Summertime’ does capture the lament and style of black spirituals and, for that reason, it’s been adopted by many African-Americans as a song that is now theirs.  Gershwin culturally misappropriated it – and they have taken it back.   Nevertheless, for me, ‘Summertime’ will always have an asterisk appended to it….that being it was written and composed by white men.   For this reason, I personally find the song “Sometimes I Fell Like a Motherless Child” – and all other African-American spirituals – to be more honest, true and accurate.  I want to hear black voices, their hurt and their ideas on how to realize full equality and justice.

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering at Northern Hills, All Rights Reserved

To listen to this message, click here.  To read it, see below.

The song “This Land is Your Land” was once seriously considered as our official national anthem.  For many people, its lyrics about the vast sweep of American land seem to extol what has long defined the nation.  Citizens and immigrants alike often see our wide and open land as a symbol of American freedom and opportunity.

That patriotic idea was not, however, what Woody Guthrie, the song’s writer, wanted to convey.  He composed the song in 1940 in response to Irving Berlin’s hugely popular “God Bless America” released a year earlier.  Widely played on radio stations and sung by Kate Smith, “God Bless America” sang of ideals that Guthrie did not believe were practiced – those of brotherhood and goodness.

Instead, Guthrie used the symbol of American land as one of social equality and economic fairness.  Open and abundant, our land had once been freely available for everybody –  citizens, immigrants and former slaves.

By the time Guthrie wrote the song, however, he believed America had changed and become selfish and overly greedy.  His song “This Land is Your Land” instead promotes a communal ideal of sharing.  Land, the defining symbol of America, should be owned by everyone who lived and worked upon it.  Indeed, Guthrie was an avowed socialist and belonged to the communist party.

His views were shaped by experiences of his youth and young adulthood.  Born to a well-off father who lost everything, Guthrie came of age during the Great Depression.  Later, after marrying and having three children, Guthrie was unable to support his family.  With no job and living in the midst of the dustbowl drought, Guthrie left his family in Oklahoma and ventured to California where he hoped to find a promised of land of opportunity. 

Instead, Guthrie was shocked to find California divided between the haves and the have-nots.  Tens of thousands of desperate Okies and Arkies, like him, had moved there.  But they were met with derision and discrimination.  There was great wealth in California, as in the rest of the nation, but it was walled off for the rich only.

Fortunately, Guthrie had skills as a songwriter and singer.  During his journey to California, he sang in the campgrounds of dustbowl refugees, became well known and, after arriving in Los Angeles, was hired by a local radio station.  It’s there that his fame spread. Guthrie’s simple folk music addressed the struggles and dreams of farmworkers, immigrants, and dustbowl refugees – all who’d been impoverished by the Depression.

Guthrie hated money and saw how the love of it destroyed both his father and the nation.  Property ought to be owned by everyone in a utopian society where everyone works and takes care of each other.   In that light, we can better understand his lyrics: “this land is your land, this land is our land, from California to the New York Island.”  America does not belong to the Rockefellers, Hearsts, Trumps and big businesses.  It belongs to everyone.

This month of July, I intend to use the theme of summer music to examine a few songs and some deeper ideas within them.  For today, the subject of economic justice, as expressed in Guthrie’s song, is more than a question of government and politics.  It’s a spiritual concern.  If every person is a member of the one human family and deserving of equal dignity, then every person deserves the right to live free from poverty.  Every world religion believes this.  We are spiritually called to be our sister’s – and our brother’s – keeper.

Large portions of the Old Testament teach that Jews are to be generous – particularly to the poor.  Greed is considered a sin and ancient Israel is said to have been conquered because it had become arrogant and uncaring to those who were in need.  Concern for the poor was considered the highest of ethics by the Jewish prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah, writers in the Old Testament.  A society is not moral unless it helps the least of its citizens.

And Jesus, perhaps more than any other prophet in history, was an advocate for the poor.  He taught that those who do not feed the hungry or shelter the homeless are not followers of him.  In other words, they are not Christians.  The first churches, formed only a few years after his death, were models of socialist communalism.  Home churches were not simply groups who met for worship, they were small communities who followed Jesus’ teachings by sharing resources with one another to insure the well-being of all.

Muslims are likewise commanded to be compassionate to the poor.  Any Muslim who does not give liberally to help them is not a true Muslim.  Indeed, charity is a requirement for Muslims to go to paradise.

Economic justice has always been a spiritual concern because it addresses what many religions see as humanity’s root sin – that being egotism.  We are selfish from the moment we are born many religions believe.  All our worst misdeeds – greed, arrogance, murder, theft, and warfare – come from egotism.  To be spiritual is to believe in the opposites of selfishness – cooperation, sharing and concern for others.  One of the main purposes for spirituality, therefore, is to encourage and help foster economic justice.

1930’s America brought that concern to the forefront.  Western economies had essentially failed.   Millions of people were laid off work.  Businesses and banks failed.  Wealth became even more concentrated in the hands of a few.  The Great Depression seemed to prove that capitalism is unworkable since it promotes greed, corruption and leads to economic collapse.

It was in this context that Woody Guthrie composed “This Land is Your Land.’   Numerous artists and writers joined Guthrie in condemning America’s capitalist system.  They did so on political grounds and their solution was to replace it with socialism and communism.  Upton Sinclair, in his book “Oil!” laid bare the immorality of both American individualism and American religion.   Individualism encourages a dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest mentality, Sinclair implies.  The weak and poor should be allowed to die because they hold back society.   The other pillar of American culture, religion, was seen by Sinclair as a perversion of Jesus’ original teachings since it mostly promotes salvation and a better afterlife instead of improving life right now. 

And those ideas against American individualism and religion are clearly evident in Guthrie’s lyrics.   A big high wall with the words “Private Property” on one side – with the other side blank – was Guthrie’s image for two possible American economies – a capitalist system that benefits the few, or a socialist system that benefits everyone. 

The lyrics “In the shadow of the steeple, near the relief office” stand hungry people, were intended by Guthrie to condemn religious hypocrisy.  Economic justice is a Christian ethic and yet it often went unpracticed.

The 1930’s were thus a crisis point in America.  While events and conditions of that era cannot be fully compared to what exists now – a crisis for capitalism is once again, in my opinion, looming on the horizon.  The 2008 Great Recession fostered a sensitivity to economic inequality but many of those left behind by our economy have turned to demagogues and far-right politics as a solution.  There is a sense that the wealthy control our institutions of power and they must be taken down. Unless our nation finds a middle, balanced way to address job dislocations and increased poverty caused by globalization and technology, there will be a radical revolution, of either the right or left, at some point in our future. 

A possible solution, in my opinion, lies in looking to what was put forward in the 1930’s.  Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal polices were framed not to attack the premise of capitalism but to instead prevent its worst excesses.  That effort was not only political, it was rooted in spirituality.  Into that debate came one of history’s great theologians – Reinhold Neibuhr.  He is widely admired today as a father of progressive spirituality.  Fairness for all humanity was seen by Niebuhr as a moral and divine requirement.  God, in his view, did not create the universe to be enjoyed by a few.  She implored humans to be fruitful and multiply – thus offering the good of creation to as many people as possible.  She also gave humans the freedom to act as they wish – thus emphasizing that liberty and individualism can also be spiritually good. 

But humanity often chooses the sin of pride and selfishness instead of adopting God’s generosity ethic.  Sins of greed have ruined her creative intentions, Niebuhr believed.  We must re-learn and re-adopt her original purpose for all humankind.   Niebuhr’s book Moral Man, Immoral Society, published in 1932, encourages this spiritual view of society and bridges the divide between communism  – which Niebuhr came to detest – and capitalism, which he thought was often equally wrong.

He noted, however, that capitalism, in its best form, initiates a positive work ethic to better oneself and provide for one’s family.  That ambition is motivated by greed but it can cause positive outcomes – people gain confidence and skills that enable them to help launch their children on similar paths.  Individual greed can also create opportunities and jobs for others.

Niebuhr compared greed to what Saint Ignatius, the medieval philosopher, called passion.  Humans are born with selfish passions for pleasure, power and wealth.   These are so-called original sins.  Ignatius and Niebuhr promote what they called temperance as an answer to those passions.  Instead of trying to banish passions – as a socialist or communist society might, or instead of allowing them uncontrolled freedom – as in capitalism, religion and governments should work to instead balance our worst instincts.

In other words, passions are not evil by themselves.  It is the excess of passion that is evil.  Sexual desire, for instance, is a good and creative force when it is tempered.  Greed is a similarly good and creative force when it is likewise tempered.  Greed to amass hoards of money and property, at the expense of others and beyond what one needs, is a form of uncontrolled passion.  That is what must be restrained.

Niebuhr based his argument firmly in the teachings of Jesus.  The Bible does not condemn wealth.  Instead, it echoes an important teaching of Paul in one of his Biblical letters.  It is the love of money –  the excessive passion for money – that is the root of all evil.

Jesus also taught that ethic with his admonishment to a rich young ruler.  Go and give all your money to the poor if you wish to be a moral person, Jesus told him.  By itself, that verse promotes socialism.  Instead, the very next verse indicates that Jesus issued the command for that man only – because he knew the rich young ruler loved his money.

Niebuhr praised Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal because he saw them as expressions of pragmatic spirituality.  Such pragmatism accepts human nature for what it is – but within a context of balance.   In other words, such spirituality has empathy for our flaws – like our propensity to think only of ourselves.  But in that empathy we are asked to find balance by limiting selfishness and encouraging generosity.

Niebuhr wrote in his book Moral Man, Immoral Society that the primary purpose of any government is to “rationally direct the irrational impulses of people.”  Those are exactly his views about how we should practice spirituality.  Yes, humans have irrational or sinful impulses, but spirituality is designed to rationally and morally counteract them.

All of this brings us back to Guthrie’s song “This Land is Your Land.”  A reasonable perspective of the song realizes that Guthrie’s choice of individualism and selfishness – versus collectivism and selflessness – is too limiting.  It says we only have two choices.  But why can’t we choose a mix of the two?   Interestingly, the Dalai Lama echoes that suggestion in the Book of Joy that we recently read.  We can be “selfishly unselfish” he said.  In other words, we cannot help others unless we first insure our needs are met.

That also echoes the universal Golden Rule.  It is taught by all world religions and says that we should treat others at least equal to how we wish to be treated.  Implicit in that ethic is that taking care of ourselves, to a reasonable extent, is not bad.  The crucial point is that we take care of all others equal to what we want.

That well states what I believe is a spiritual approach to economic injustice.  Limiting human freedom with a socialist economy that hinders the ability to work hard and achieve a level of wealth needed for one’s basic happiness, that is not a moral option.  Liberty is denied and innovation suffers.

But equal to that is the mistake of a purely capitalist system which allows human passions of greed and egotism to go unchecked.  Massive inequalities happen such that a few prosper beyond what they need – while millions of fellow humans suffer.  A solution is to find balance between the two extremes – an approach encouraged by Jesus, the Buddha, Niebuhr, the Dalai Lama and many others.

“This Land is Your Land” simply and beautifully expresses a moral case for economic justice.  But it’s version of only two possible Americas is lacking.  We need an spirit based economy rooted in justice……..that is also pragmatic enough to empower our individualistic – and, yes, greed based impulses – for the equal benefit of everyone.

(c) Doug Slagle, Minister to the Gathering at Northern Hills, All Rights Reserved

Most of you know that I’ve spent the past few weeks with my family in California as we watched my father slowly, and often in pain, slip away.  My dad suffered a stroke that we were told was not only survivable but one from which he could recover most of his abilities.  Unrelated complications to his treatment, however, began to occur.  After he was l placed on a ventilator and began having seizures, my siblings and I made the emotionally difficult decision to end life support and his suffering.  Very quickly he crossed the line separating living from dying.

A Palliative care team with a doctor, nurse and social worker surrounded him and us.  Everything possible was done to minimize evidence of medical intervention.

After the ventilator was removed, his breathing quickly changed.  We gathered around him, held his hand and poured out our love and assurance that he would soon be comfortable.  We told him we were ok, that he’d been a good dad, and that we would take care of our mom.  Within an hour of our decision, he breathed his last.  He went quickly and peacefully.

Since he passed, the time he was in the hospital, and his death, seem unreal to me and like a bad dream.  I haven’t felt myself and still don’t.  Did I really witness him go through that?  Is he really gone?

These past few weeks I’ve spent lots of time thinking about death and, more importantly, about living.  I’ve concluded that at the end, it’s vitally important that one is fully at peace – physically and mentally.  Indeed, I realize even more than I did before that dying should emerge from the shadows in which our culture often keeps it.  We do our best not to think about death even though it is as fundamental to life as is birth and growing up.   We fight mightily against death – devising expensive and often painful procedures to hold it off – even though such interventions often prevent or delay its gentle and natural occurrence. 

Much like birth is a joyous introduction, death should be a gentle conclusion.  The dying of a loved one ought to end for us much like we finish a good book.  Yes, there are no more pages to turn.  Yes, we put the book up on a bookshelf.  But the lessons, the memories, the joy, the entertainment, the values, the inspiration we gained from someone’s life – they all continue.  We don’t fear a book’s finale, nor are we depressed when it arrives.  For every beginning, for every story, there must always be an end.  Unfortunately, that’s not how we often think about death.

Another lesson I’ve learned from time at the edge of my dad’s life is that how we die is determined by how we live.  Leonardo da Vinci once said that as happy sleep comes at the end of a fulfilling day, a happy death comes at the end of a meaning filled life.

My dad’s final days, however, were not very happy.  Doctors fought hard to save him and he went through a lot of pain and suffering as a result.  In retrospect, it all seems so needless.  Much of that is because my dad avoided the topic of dying when he was well.  As a doctor, he was strangely quiet when faced with a terminal patient.  He was otherwise an outwardly confident and boisterous man.  But death frightened him, and so he did not talk about it.  When death suddenly loomed for him, we did not know what he wanted – to fight hard against the dying of the light, or to go gently into the good night.

Fortunately, however, my dad must have evolved his thoughts about dying within the last few months.  This last March he told me that he could not make the decision to end my mom’s life when she becomes terminal.  After 59 years with her, that decision would be too hard for him, he said.  Such a statement revealed how much he loved her – something which he rarely revealed.  But the important thing for me was that dad finally talked about death.  He was thinking about it.

Two days after his stroke my dad told my brother that when a person’s time is up, it is simply up.  That matter of fact assertion is further proof to me that dad had evolved.  No longer were thoughts of dying to be avoided. 

Later still, only hours before he was placed on a ventilator, he looked intently at me and said, “Let’s end this.  I don’t want to be a burden to my family.”  While my siblings and I later debated those words and if he was able to understand what he said, they were added evidence my dad stood at the edge of life and thought not of himself or his fears, but of my mom, me and my siblings.  Dying would not only be a relief to him, but he wanted us to be relieved as well.  His words helped us later understand that he was  was at peace about dying.  When we reluctantly realized he’d had enough, we were able to lovingly give him his last wish.

What I’ve learned, though, is that we need to make our wishes about dying clearly known before we reach that edge.  I’ve also learned that in order to die well, we need to evolve throughout life to reconcile relationships and be at peace with others.  Fortunately, my dad did that.

He and I had a complicated relationship.  I know I am not the son my dad would have preferred.  I’m not macho, a so-called jock, a man’s man.  I’m introspective and often quiet.  My dad was the exact opposite – often speaking with a loud, boisterous voice.  He usually filled a room with his presence.  He liked the rough and tumble sports of football and basketball – and he was good at them.   As a doctor, he was the epitome of a surgeon – self-confident and a bit arrogant.    I once playfully teased him with a joke – “What’s the difference between God and a surgeon? ……God knows he’s not a surgeon.”

When I came out as gay eleven years ago, dad was clearly disappointed.  I had confirmed his lifelong fears about me.  He had often made fun of gay men – affecting a limp wrist or telling vulgar stories about them.  Those hurt me and their memories can still sting.

I think in many ways his attitudes toward me led me to deny who I am when I was younger.  I wanted to be the kind of man my dad could admire.  My inability to accept that I was gay, however, was not all his fault.  At some point in life we must take responsibility for ourselves and not blame others. 

Even so, I used to be angry with my dad.  At one point many years ago, I broke off my relationship with him and told him he could not see my daughters.  If he thought it amusing to regularly make fun of me, then he could not enjoy his granddaughters.  That was a cruel and immature response on my part.  I regret it a lot.  But it led my dad to appear at my door three months later.  He came in, fumbled for words, and apologized.  I immediately accepted his apology and offered my own.  Just before departing, he turned to me and with a catch in his voice, told me for the only time in my life, that he loved me.  I value that memory a lot.

        My dad showed other evidence of evolving several years ago.  He began to listen to my thoughts and opinions.  He showed me new respect.  Perhaps my courage to come out impressed him.  Still later, he was kind and welcoming toward Keith.  Last September when Keith and I visited my parents in California. I was impressed at how open and communicative my dad was with Keith.  He fully accepted him as a part of our family and thereby, I think, he fully accepted me.

As my dad evolved, I evolved too.  One thing I’ve learned is to let go of past hurts and forgive those who have hurt me – especially family members.  I mentally made my own peace about dad several years ago.  I’ve always loved him but I evolved to be able to also like him simply for who he was. 

It’s a truth that has stood the test of time – when all is said and done and one nears the end of life, it’s family whom we want nearby.  Forgiveness, empathy and old fashioned love triumphing over hurt and past wounds are what helps insure that at the most sensitive time in life, families are united.

As I said earlier, in order to die well, one must be explicit in telling others what your wishes are for when you are seriously ill or near death.  Some want to fight their illness no matter what.  Others value quality of life versus quantity of life.  If quality of life will be severely compromised, some people often want all treatment to stop.

Living Wills are helpful but they are limited in scope and written for when a person is clearly beyond hope of recovery.  Experts indicate one should consider preparing instead a statement of five end of life wishes.  I’ve listed those on the back of your programs along with the website.  Who do you want to make health care decisions for you when you can’t?  What kinds of medical treatments do you want, or not want, if you are severely ill?  How comfortable do you want to be when you are very sick?  Medications are used to keep people comfortable but they can compromise treatments.  How do you want people to treat you near the end of life?  What do you want your loved ones to know when you are near death?

These are questions I wish my father had answered when he was well.  They would have made the decisions my sibling nags and I made  easier.

One of the seven Unitarian Universalist principles states that every person should be treated with dignity.  For me, that must include dignity at the end of life.  Medical science has many tools available to keep people alive, and the first instinct of most health professionals is to do exactly that.  Their mindset is guided by our culture which insists that death should be avoided at all costs.  But a compassionate approach to life should also include a compassionate approach to death.  I believe most people value quality of life over quantity of life.  We must insure that each person has a reasonable quality of life – and when quality is greatly reduced or cannot be recovered, natural death ought to be encouraged.

Approximately ten years ago the World Health Organization endorsed what is called Palliative Care for the very sick and dying.   It is, “an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering.”  This is done by addressing the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of a patient during the end of life process.

Fortunately, such a Palliative Care team works at the hospital in which my father was treated.  They were simply wonderful.

The most important lesson that was reinforced for me, however, is what I said earlier.  How we die will almost entirely be determined by how we have lived.  Make your end of life wishes very clear, write them down and communicate them to whomever you’ve asked to represent you.  Find in your heart the ability to make peace with yourself and all family members and friends.  Forgiveness is a gift not to an offender, but to yourself.  We should each exit life full of love for everyone – whether or not they have hurt us in the past.

Our sense of well-being when we die will also be determined by a sense that death is not our true end.  No matter what one believes, or doesn’t believe about a literal afterlife, we live onward in the things we do now.  How much love have we put into the world?  How have the lives of others – and of future generations – been improved because we lived?  What are the legacies of service and generosity we leave behind that will echo long into the future?

My dad volunteered with Operation Smile, an organization that sends surgeons to repair cleft lips and palates in children free of charge. I accompanied him on one of those trips about fifteen years ago and I helped facilitate my dad’s surgery on one 11 year old boy.  He was very shy, very reserved and timid.  His father told me other kids teased him about his different appearance.  My dad’s surgery on the boy was successful and when I returned to Belize a year later, the boy had markedly changed in personality.  He was happy, more talkative and clearly more confident.

I thought of that boy in the past few weeks – a boy who is now a man, perhaps married and raising children of his own.  My dad impacted that boy’s life in a significant way but he also indirectly affected the lives of that boy’s future wife, or husband, and his children.  Echoes of my dad’s generosity and compassion thus extend outward in many ways.  Those affected will never know my dad’s name but he nevertheless lives onward.  That’s one of his resurrections.  That is one of his after-lifes.

I deeply pray that each of us, when our time comes, will go gently into that good night – knowing we move into eternity at peace with our life legacy, at peace with death and how we die, and most importantly at peace and in love with everyone.