Author: Doug Slagle

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

My message series this month explores the idea of “Who or What is God?”  Since some of you know I am NOT a theist, it might seem odd that I consider such a theme.  If you note the way I’ve written the title of this series, however, I do so with ‘God’ in quotation marks.  My use of the word is not intended to connote its traditional definition.  I use the word very loosely and only so that I can express concepts of God and not its literal meaning.

       I also use the feminine pronoun to refer to God.  That does not mean I believe God is a gender, much less a person.  I use the feminine to indicate that I believe if God was like a human, she would be a she.  I also purposefully want to renounce historic notions of paternalism and male domination connected with God.        

What is important, however, is that I believe people can come together under the concept that God is a force of love and unity – and thereby reject the standard concept of God which is based on fear. Contrary to traditional notions of God, she is not judgmental.   We have no reason to fear her.  Indeed, my understanding is that she is far more complex than a supernatural Being.  We can understand her with our minds and be like her by how we act.  She is, in essence, a force for good and a part of all nature and science based reason.   

That is the focus of my message today.  Next week I will assert God is truth.  Finally, in two weeks, I’ll claim she is timeless.  For me, these messages are my attempt to promote how concepts of God can and should bring people together.

Some of you may remember the film 2001, A Space Odyssey and its opening scenes showing very early humans foraging for berries.  They had to compete with wild boars for them.

Eventually, these hominids in the film discover how to attack, kill and eat the boars.  They realized large leg bones from other animals could be fashioned into weapons.  These weapons enabled humans to reduce competition for berries and eat more meat.  It also enabled them to defend against, and attack perceived threats.

The film depicts one early man throw a weaponized bone into the air.  We watch as it tumbles in a cloud filled sky.  That image immediately cuts to one of a space ship………soaring through interstellar space.  We see in two great cinematic moments the evolutionary history of humanity.

What is remarkable is that the early human scene highlights what was the time period when fear combined with religion and began to control human thought.  Humans had evolved larger brains due to a high protein,  meat based diet which enabled them to mentally be aware of death and to imagine abstract ideas.  A large bone, for instance, was abstractly conjured in ancient minds as something to fashion into a weapon.  The higher mental ability to think abstractly, and understand threats, these led to the first religion.

Archaeologists have proven that assertion by discovering Neanderthals buried their dead after adorning them with symbolic figurines and beads.  This indicates ritualistic behavior and the existence of early religion.  There was a purpose to such actions far beyond the mourning of dead.  Neanderthals prepared and ritually empowered their deceased for an afterlife existence.  That suggests they conceived of a higher power, or God, as a force that made such an afterlife possible.

Even more, believing in an afterlife also indicates they were acutely aware of their own mortality in more than an instinctual way.  Animals can sense when they are threatened.  But that sense does not suggest, experts say, a deeper awareness that one will cease to exist.  Once early humans evolved to become fully aware of death and ceasing to exist, they were frightened.  Indeed, death still scares many people.  With the understanding of what death means, ancient humans turned to the abstract world to find reassurance.  People do not really die, they hoped.  They move on to another form of existence.  The ancients could not observe that existence, but the idea of it soothed them, and they so they believed or hoped in an afterlife.  God and religion were thus created as a result of fear.

I’ve discussed here before the beginnings of my spirituality.  I was first drawn to religion and Christianity many years ago because of its promise for redemption.  At that time, I hated that I had gay attractions.  I was ashamed of my supposedly sinful nature.  I was afraid of the supernatural concept of God judging me and sending me to hell.  I began attending church and later got so involved that I attended Seminary and became a minister.   

There is a church sign I saw recently that that says “God answers knee mail.”  I remember being on my knees a lot praying God would make me “normal.”  It eventually dawned on me, however, that God could not change me because my concept of God, at the time, does not exist.

What I also realized was that my fears, about how I would be judged, had led me to religion.  Later, I understood most religious impulses are based on anxieties similar to mine – fears of death, of eternal judgement, hell, or simply nothingness.  Fears motivate many religious ideas about God – that one must win a supernatural Being’s favor in order to enjoy a happy and eternal afterlife.  Sadly, I believe, religions often foster even more fear.  Religions fear those who do not think or believe like them.  They stereotype, condemn and oppress others for their differences.  Such fear initiated Jewish conquest of ancient pagans, Roman attacks on Christians, Christians fighting Muslims during the crusades, and today’s discriminations against Jews and Muslims.  The world is divided based largely on fear – and how God is defined. 

What was true for early humans and for modern religions is that fear is not conducive to unity.  It’s exclusive and judgmental.  Fear is the opposite of love and unity which, as I say, ought to define our understanding of God.

Baruch Spinoza, of whom I often refer, was the philosophical father of this kind of a unifying God awareness.  He was, in his 1677 book Ethics, the first to articulate the idea that God and science work together.  God exists in all of nature and the forces that control it.   For Spinoza, God, and nature are almost interchangeable.  They are essentially united.

What we see all around us, Spinoza believed,  – in our bodies, in oceans, plants, animals and the cosmos – are things of beauty.  They are beautiful in their complexity and in the ways they work and came to exist.  We see in nature, therefore, the invisible hand of God-like creative forces.  But we know, thanks to reason based science, that those forces are physical laws such as thermodynamics, entropy, evolution, mathematics and biology.  Such observable and provable principles are not supernatural.  There is no magic in them.  There is instead a logical cause and effect to them.

Importantly, these forces and natural laws are not fearful things.  Death is part of nature as all things eventually decay and become something else.  But that is not something to dread.  I am made up of the stuff of stardust and will one day return to it.  So will you.  That is an amazing and wonderful truth.  Accepting this leads us to reassurance, celebration and love for all creation.  It also unites us.

As I said earlier, fear is the opposite of love.  Fear pits one person or one group against another.  Love, on the other hand, refuses to have that mindset.  And Spinoza’s thoughts about nature were that it is a good and creative thing.  It is not selfish or vengeful – wanting to exclude or condemn for petty flaws.   Spinoza’s concept of God is that she is expansive, generous, and part of everything.  Such a God concept understands the processes of nature and celebrates them.  Seeing God and nature as interchangeable allows people to embrace charity, gentleness, humility and peace.  Science based forces thus share what most religions describe as a God attribute.  God is Truth.  And Truth can never be divisive, scary or hateful. 

That idea was the foundation of Unitarianism.  Ralph Waldo Emerson, from whom Unitarianism derives many of its ideas, said this, “Within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE.”

Native American beliefs say God is the Great Spirit or simply – the One.  They also believe in a circle of life type of God – that what we are today will be something else in the future.  The molecules that course through our bodies at this very moment are the same as those found in all of nature.  Everything is related – everything is ONE.

Hindu sacred writings, the Upanishads, offer similar concepts.  They write, “Brahmin, or God, is without parts or attributes…it is One without a second.”  For Hindus, Brahman is the whole of reality and it is definitely not an anthropomorphic, personal Being.

Many Jews likewise sees a natural unity to the concept of God.  Hasidic and Kaballah Jews refer to God as Ein Sof – the One, a force that is immanent and a part of everything.

Open theology in Christianity explores that thinking as well.  God, according to open theology, is integrated into creation.  God is the sum of all truth.  God is not apart from sciences like evolution and astrophysics. 

       Sufi Islam is also a reconciliation between fundamentalism and the reality of science.  God, for Sufism, is a force that energizes and defines the universe.  God is not a Being but a unifying idea.

Finally, Buddhism perhaps best expresses this concept of God.  Even though Buddhism has no equivalent word for God, some say it is the Buddhist nirvana.  To reach nirvana, a perfect state of being, people must seek awareness of all that is real.  In that sense, reason and logic work in tandem with attitudes of peace and kindness.  When these are realized, something which only a few attain, one reaches a state of nirvana or what could be called God.  Many Buddhists refer to this as discovering All……..and becoming One.

What I found, after my disillusionment with religion, was a kind of spiritual atheism.  God is not a theistic Being but she is nevertheless real in the sense that I see an interconnection between all people and, indeed, all nature.

It’s a well used phrase but one that accurately describes the oneness that Unitarian Universalists believe – there are many many paths, but one Truth.  This means people do not each seek a God concept in the same way, but they seek the same thing.  For our beliefs as UU’s, we therefore affirm the wisdom of science and the primacy of Golden Rule morality.  God is the totality of reason and the completion of love and service to others.

Moving away from an abstract concept of God into one that is rooted in the natural world, we find the peace we all seek.  This is a God concept that quotes our minds and brings us together instead of dividing us with fear.  Whether we call her Ein Sof, Brahmin, Great Spirit, All in One, or nirvana, God is a unifier.  For me, God is everything that informs ours minds and our hearts with reason and goodness.

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

Last Sunday I quoted Leo Tolstoy from his book War and Peace about the true nature of love.  It is only real, he wrote, when it is a sacrifice of both soul and body for another.  Throughout history people have sacrificed their reputations, freedom, happiness and lives to love whom they wish.  Their stories highlight how most societies are often judgmental and discriminate against love between consenting adults that is considered different.  Forbidden love is, much like racism or religious intolerance, a serious and ongoing from of bigotry.

Antony and Cleopatra were two such hated lovers.  As the preeminent Roman military commander of his time, Antony fell in love with the Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra.  After she moved to Rome to be with him, and after they had a child out of wedlock, Roman public opinion was outraged.  A man of aristocratic birth should not marry an ethnically different woman.  The Senate stripped Antony of his command and banished them both.  Antony and Cleopatra later committed suicide after realizing their relationship was impossible.

Dante Alighieri and Beatrice Portinari were also forbidden lovers.  Dante is the famed Italian poet who wrote the classic Renaissance work Divine Comedy.  As young adults, they were strongly drawn to one another. They penned passionate love letters to the other and sought to be married. But they were forced by societal rules to remain apart.  Arranged marriages were the standard of the time.  Dante and Beatrice were engaged by their respective parents to other persons and thus were forbidden by law to be together.  Beatrice, three years after marrying another man, died supposedly of a broken heart.

Richard the first, better known as Richard the Lionheart, was undoubtedly homosexual.  As a military commander of courage and skill, he was a hero of his day – as he still is in England.  Numerous accounts written while he lived, however, indicate he was gay.  For many years, he had a young Knight as his lover and he frequently confessed and repented, in public and at church, for what he called “that sin”.

Richard later fell in love with King Phillip the second of France.  A writer of the time documented in official royal papers that, “They ate every day at the same table and from the same dish, and at night their beds did not separate them.  And the king of France loved him as his own soul; and they loved each other so much that King Henry of England, Richard’s father, was absolutely astonished at the passionate love between them and marveled at it.”

Richard, however, was forced to marry a woman since he wanted to be King.  The two never had children and their relationship was said to be strictly formal.  Numerous books about Richard, however, still refuse to consider these facts.  The Encyclopedia Britannica says that any accounts indicating Richard was homosexual are unproven.  That is, of course, true since such a private matter, from nine hundred years ago, cannot be proven beyond doubt.  Many in England today, and most members of the British royal family, refuse to acknowledge that the great, courageous and very masculine military King Richard the Lionheart was gay.

A more recent British King was also forbidden to love the person he chose.  In 1936, King Edward caused a constitutional crisis in England when he proposed marriage to a divorced American woman named Wallis Simpson.  English society was shocked that their Queen might be a divorcee.  Parliament considered forbidding the marriage.  Winston Churchill condemned it.  King Edward then announced on national radio that he would choose love over being King.  He abdicated his throne.

Richard and Mildred Loving were not of royal birth, but their forbidden love will also go down in history.  Married in Washington DC in 1958, this interracial couple moved back to their Virginia hometown.  A month later, at 2 AM one morning, police broke into their home, found them in bed, and arrested them under a 1924 law forbidding marriage between blacks and whites.   A judge later found them guilty of a felony and sentenced them to prison.  He said, “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents.  The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”  The judge said he would commute their prison sentence if they left the state – which they did.

In 1963 then Attorney General Robert Kennedy encouraged them to challenge the conviction in court.  Two ACLU lawyers took the case.  In 1967, in a landmark Civil Rights decision, the Supreme Court ruled in the Loving’s favor and struck down all laws forbidding interracial marriage.

In 2016, in another landmark case, Obergefell vs. Hodges, the Supreme Court used the Loving case as legal precedent to rule that laws forbidding same-sex marriage are unconstitutional.  Any two adult Americans, the Court essentially ruled, have the right to love and marry as they please.

Tragically, homosexuality is still illegal in 76 countries.  Miiro and Imran are Ugandan young men who just last year were arrested while sleeping together.  They were dragged through the streets naked.  They were evicted from their home.  Their belongings were burned and they were thrown in jail.

Imran was later paraded in front of all students at his school while they beat him and yelled horrible names.  His mother disowned him in front of the assembly saying he was not worthy to be her son and she preferred him dead rather then alive and gay.  To this day, Imran and Miiro live in hiding.  Many Ugandan politicians are heavily supported by American Christian evangelical churches and ministers who encourage them to uphold anti-gay laws.

All of these stories beg the question: how can any romantic love between consenting adults be illegal?  Whether it be laws or standards against divorced persons remarrying, interracial marriage, or ones against same sex unions, discrimination against different forms of love are usually based on religious beliefs – which are subjective, open to interpretation and not based on reason.

Experts say prejudice toward different forms of love comes from the human propensity to categorize and stereotype others.  Throughout history people have stereotyped Jews, blacks, Asians, homosexuals, the divorced, the other abled, the overweight, senior citizens, and now the transgendered.  By categorizing people into different groups based on appearance, or whether they conform to specific standards of behavior, societies determine who is a part of the “in-group”.  We socially discriminate because of our desire to elevate ourselves, or our group, over another.  That’s precisely the reason why Ta-Nehisi Coates in his book Between the World and Me says whites created the concept of race – so they could categorize people, make themselves superior, and thus diminish all others.

Logically and scientifically, such discriminations toward different variations of love make no sense.  People fall in and out of love all the time.   Others are victims of a spouse who leaves them.  Should a divorced person be any different from another? 

Same sex attraction has been documented in over 500 different animal species – it is a common part of nature.  Even more, it has been accepted and approved within many human civilizations – from ancient Greece to the Mayan culture where homosexuality was the approved form of love.

Discrimination against interracial unions makes even less sense especially given what science has proven.  Genetically, as shown by the mapping of human DNA, all people are virtually the same.  Every human shares 99.9% of genes.    We are biologically all the same.  Any differences between people are based on subjective categories societies create.  Furthermore, humans have engaged in procreation with people of different ethnicities and skin colors for thousands of years.  There is no single person who is therefore of so-called pure heritage.  We are all, even white supremacists, human mixtures. 

The right to love whom one wishes is a basic right – one implicitly codified in the U.S. Declaration of Independence that all people have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Since giving and receiving love is both a basic freedom, and a path to happiness, it is therefore a logical inalienable right.

It’s also a spiritual right embodied in the Golden Rule to treat others equal to how oneself wishes to be treated.   Reason tells us that when I  allow you the choice to love whom you wish – that is equal to the same wish I have to love whom I choose.  I should extend to you the same right I want  for myself.  Jesus said this Golden Rule is the foundation of ALL morality.  Buddha, the Quran, the Torah, the Hindu Upanishads, Native American wisdom, and Confucian ethics all promote the Golden Rule.

This idea gets at the heart of empathy.  If I purposefully try to understand your romantic attractions, I’ll realize they are essentially the same as mine.  As I said, we all want the same thing.  We want to love someone else and we want someone else to love us.  Spiritually, ethically and rationally, it makes no difference which consenting adult we choose to love.

Unitarian Universalists have always been at the forefront of advocacy for human rights.  As we all know, UU’s were leading abolitionists, proponents of gender equality, Civil Rights activists and gay rights advocates.  UU’s now – very, very tentatively – support ALL alternative love expressions between consenting adults – ones like polyamory.  There is a UUA sanctioned group called Unitarian Universalists for Polyamorous Awareness.  This group seeks to educate and advocate for the rights of adults to love, if they wish, multiple other consenting adults at the same time.  That advocacy does not extend to legal marriage like polygamy, but it does uphold the ideal of which I speak:  Any form of romantic love between consenting adults, that does not harm another, should never, never be stigmatized or forbidden. 

That fundamentally means that persons who engage in alternative forms of love are to be respected like all others.  There is nothing negative about their character or basic goodness.  Romantic love defines our common humanity.  Any love for another person uplifts the giver and bonds him or her to all that is true and sacrificial in the universe.  Expressed toward any adult who willingly receives it, love is never wrong.  Love is love is love.

I imagine most of us have experienced some form of discrimination in our lives.  Some of us have felt intolerance on extremely cruel levels.  The hurts I’ve felt from bigotry, as a gay man, does begin to compare with that felt by women, people of color or Jews and Muslims.  But that fact does not make the pain I’ve felt any less real. 

It hurt deeply when I came out – and the previous congregation I loved served for many years – turned its back on me.  Revealing one small piece of my identity – whom I wish to love – suddenly made me evil and grotesque – even though I was still the person I’d always been.  Fellow ministers said God hated me and that I was going to hell.  Close friends, persons whom I’d officiated at their marriages or their parents’ funerals, or sat with while they recovered from serious illness, they rejected me.  As I said, they have a right to their personal life choices about love, but do they have a right to judge the content of my character based strictly on supposed standards of whom I should or should not love?

No.  And neither do any of us.  I still choke up when I remember the first day I walked into the former Gathering.  At a time when I had rejected all forms of spirituality, when I believed them all to be hypocritical and often hateful, at the Gathering I was immediately surrounded by people who took interest in me as a person.  They expressed love and support for me in ways I’d rarely felt.  I’ll never forget that open-armed acceptance.

I felt the same thing when I first began coming here two and a half years ago.  I believe it was my fourth Sunday as a guest minister here when I told my story as a part of the message – including my coming out experiences.  Afterwards, many of you, whom I barely knew at the time, hugged me after the service and assured me I was in a welcoming place.

May we always be a welcoming congregation.  May we make our homes, schools and workplaces the same.  As enlightened individuals, let’s never judge others based on whom or how they love.  Instead, I pray we simply celebrate the fact that they DO love.  Quite simply, let’s celebrate the noble ideal of love in general – however it is shown.

I wish you all much peace and joy. 

     

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

Last month two men, who were referred to me by a friend, asked if I would perform their marriage ceremony on Inauguration day.  They contacted me just a few days before and so I was hesitant to do it.  I do not perform off the shelf, cookie cutter weddings.  I like to meet with a couple weeks beforehand and plan a ceremony that is special just for them.

But this couple explained that they had been so traumatized by the recent election that they wanted to do something positive on Inauguration day.  Having been partners for years, they had often talked about getting married.

Their hurry up ceremony, they told me, would not only be a statement of commitment to one another, it would be a statement of hope on a day when division and intolerance were seemingly honored.  I agreed to officiate their wedding on that basis.

January 20th began cold and overcast but by the four o’clock wedding hour the sun had come out.  We stood at a river-view overlook for the ceremony.  White, billowing clouds scudded across a blue sky.  The river sparkled beneath us.  The heavens seemed to smile.  A few of their friends gathered to watch.  Included with them were the son and ex-wife of one of the men.  As I pronounced them husband and husband, the boy and his mom burst into tears.  I was concerned that seeing their dad and former husband get married to another man was too much for them.

Instead, the newly married couple, the ex-wife and the young son quickly came together in a long and tearful hug.  The woman later assured me that she and her son were not sad.  They had cried tears of joy at the beauty of the moment and the fulfillment of truth for a man they still deeply loved.

I thought afterwards that such love is what life is all about.  On a day that many mourned as one defined by the victory of hate over compassion, I was blessed by being with this couple, and their families, who said “yes” to forgiveness, kindness and truth.  In so many ways, I identified with their feelings.  I know the pain and heartache that happens with coming out, with divorce, and with a decision that disrupts so many lives.  I also know the love I received when my own daughters, and my ex-wife assured me of their continued support.  Love, it seems, is far more than an emotional feeling.  It’s a gift of self and a statement of goodness when hate or anger could easily predominate.

At that wedding I recited a reading that is offered at many weddings.  The reading has become so common that I sometimes think it trite and I usually prefer not to use it.  But it has stood the test of time.  It still resonates and speaks wisdom.  And so, on this occasion, I thought it appropriate. 

In a letter that the Biblical Paul wrote to a Christian church in ancient Corinth, a church that was known for its wealthy and arrogant members who looked down on and mistreated marginalized persons, Paul expressed these beautiful words:

If I speak in the tongues of angels, but do not have love, I am only a loud gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and sacrifice myself and my body, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails.

Paul tells us that love is, indeed, a gift.  It is a way of telling or showing any person that against all the prompts of selfish instinct, I will be patient with you.  I will be gentle and caring to you.  I will feel joy for what you have and what you do.  Toward you, I will be humble and sublimate my needs to yours.  I will honor you by listening and serving.  I’ll forgive and forget the hurts you have inflicted.  Your feelings will be first, mine second.   I’ll believe only what is noble and true about you.  I’ll protect you from being hurt.  I’ll trust and believe in your goodness.  I will do all these things as long as I live.   

As I said last Sunday, whatever it is we believe God to be – or not to be – she is a force of love.  Love is quite simply what defines the universe.  It embodies all that is good, beautiful, positive and true.  Its opposite – hate – embodies all that is negative, cruel and false.

Leo Tolstoy, in his famous novel War and Peace, wrote, “Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.  Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.”  He tells us in these words what I believe is true about love in general.  Whether we serve the homeless, volunteer to teach our children, repair our church building, kiss and embrace our partners, sit quietly by a friend, or advocate against racism – we must do so motivated by a desire to be concerned, passionate and honest.  As Paul and Tolstoy wrote, such prompts, if they be sincere, spring from love.

And if that be so, then love is what conceived us.  It is a creative power that brings all new life, thar stirs distant galaxies, that defines the stuff of reason and truth.  Love is art, music, science, poetry, medicine, teaching and so much more.  When we do any loving act for another, we must do it with honesty and pure intent.   We must want to give away a piece of ourselves. 

In that regard, Tolstoy also wrote,

There is no love apart of that love which gives away its soul for a friend.  Love is only love when it is self-sacrifice.  Only when a person gives away to another not only their time, but when he or she spends their body and gives away their life…

I elaborated last Sunday on the relatively simple concept of understanding the love language of those who are special to you.  If you were not here, you can listen to or read that message on our website.  By learning which of the five so-called love languages that our partners, children, friends or colleagues most prefer, we extend to them a gift.  We consciously choose to love them in way they both prefer and completely feel.  In essence, we sacrifice what we prefer for their sake – for their sense of well-being and comfort.  We fulfill, with our deeds, our purpose for living – to let go of the self and love others.

Walt Whitman, in his well-known anthology of poems, Leaves of Grass, wrote this, 

Love the earth and sun and animals,

Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,

Stand up for the stupid and crazy,

Hate tyrants, devote your income and labor to others…

Re-examine all you have been told at school or church,

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

Love, for Whitman, is to sacrifice our lives, our needs, our prejudices, and our bodies for the sake of another.  In doing so, we love them at least as much as we too want to be loved.

Writing perhaps the quintessential love story, Shakespeare in his play Romeo and Juliet shares that sentiment.  Love comes by chance and is often fickle.  It can burn with a fiery passion that both wounds and inspires.  But above all, love is noble.  It defines itself through the goodness it creates.  When we see love, when we feel it, when it we give it away, our inner angels prompt us to do and speak even greater good.  Anger subsides.  Greed and intolerance stop.  Our hearts are open.  Shakespeare writes at the conclusion of Romeo and Juliet the ultimate purpose of the tragic, all consuming love he described in his play:

Two households, both alike in dignity

in fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

from ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,

a pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life,

whose misadventured piteous overthrows,

do with their death bury their parents’ strife.

The love of Romeo and Juliet, passionate, sacrificial and suicidal, nevertheless inspires reconciliation and an end to the hate between their families.  It is similar to what the two men I married wanted their ceremony to represent.  Our nation, riven by anger and intolerance, might be inspired in one little corner of it by the marriage of two people.    If so, love will serve its purpose.

To any of us as lovers past, present or future, Carl Sandberg also wrote a well known and oft recited poem.  He wrote this,

I love you for what you are, but I love you

yet more for what you are going to be.

I love you not so much for your realities

as for your ideals.

I pray for your desires, that they may be great,

rather than for your satisfactions,

which may be so hazardously little.

A satisfied flower is one whose petals are about to fall.

But the most beautiful rose is one, hardly more than a bud,

where in the pangs and ecstasies of desire are working

for larger and finer growth.

Not always shall you be what you are now.

You are going forward toward something great.

I am on the way with you

and therefore I love you.

Once again, a writer has captured the spiritual truth of love.  We often define love as the preference we have in a romantic partner, or the favor we have for our children and members of our families.  It might even be defined as the delight we feel in friends who support, care for and enrich us. 

But Paul, Leo Tolstoy, Walt Whitman, Shakespeare, Sandberg and other great writers all say something very different.  Love is not lust.  Love is not favor or preference.  Love is not a warm feeling.   Love is giving your all to me.  It is me doing the same for you.  It’s a parent working and struggling to feed and educate their child.  It’s a lover pouring himself or herself into the happiness of their mate.  It is our collective nation giving its resources for the well-being of the least of our inhabitants – the undocumented, the poor, the oppressed, the weak.  It is each of us forgetting  and letting go any prejudices or fears of Muslims, African Americans, the other abled and political opponents.

Erich Fromm, author of the book The Art of Loving, says it best…

Infantile love believes We love because we are loved…

Mature love understands We are loved……because we love.

        With those words, I wish you peace, joy and very a happy Valentine’s Day this Tuesday.

   

   

                

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

 

Unfortunately, miscommunication is one of the common causes for distress and dysfunction in relationships.  Consider these next three stories in that regard.  A husband washes and vacuums his wife’s car every Saturday.  Afterwards, he mows the lawn and usually finishes with other yard work.  After every meal, he clears the table, washes the dishes and cleans the kitchen.  He also regularly does the family laundry.  At a marriage counseling session, his wife exclaims that her husband doesn’t care about her – that he rarely kisses or hugs her.  The husband is stunned to hear his wife say that he essentially does not love her.

Or, there is the story of a fourteen year old boy who comes to his dad with the idea to hand make a sculpture for the family living room.  The dad tells the son that it’s a great idea, praises him for his artistic skills, encourages him to make the sculpture and then gives him $100.00 to buy the supplies.  Later that day, the dad is surprised when he overhears his son tell his wife that, “Dad doesn’t pay any attention to me.  He’s always so busy!”

And, there’s a story about a business owner who generously pays and rewards her employees.  Salaries she pays are at the top of what is offered in the industry and she also includes bonuses, several weeks of vacation, and medical / dental insurance.  But she is upset when two of her important employees quit and say that they were ignored in their work.  The owner, they say, rarely offered them direction and they had to figure things out for themselves.  They also complained that she never told them they had done a good job – even though the business is very successful.

In each of these instances, a failure to communicate deeply harmed a relationship.  The husband, dad and boss each respectively believed they were showing appreciation and love to the important people in their lives.  But it’s as if they were not heard.  It’s as if they were speaking French but the others spoke English.  Their languages of love fell on deaf ears.

Experts say this is an all too common problem in marriages, at the workplace, with friendships, and in families.  People with good intentions, who deeply love their partner, spouse, child, friend or colleague, are speaking one love language when the other responds to a much different one.

Consider the three stories I just related: the wife of the husband who is helpful around the house, she longs to be physically touched in a way that tells her she’s valued.   His acts of service are nice but they don’t fulfill her.

The dad who encourages his teenage son frequently offers him praise for things he does or thinks.  He compliments his abilities and tries to empower him in his goals.  But the son would instead like his dad to spend much more time with him, perhaps join him in making the sculpture, take him to a museum or just sit and have a long conversation with him.   The dad uses words of affirmation to show love, while the son feels loved when quality time is given.

The business owner gives her employees the independence to do their jobs without interference.  She also generously rewards them for their work.  These things, she believes, show that she greatly appreciates them.  But the employees want and need more time with their boss.  They want more instruction so they can learn and grow.  They also want to hear praise for work well done.  The boss shows her appreciation through giving.  Many of her employees want her time and her words of affirmation.

This concept, that humans express and receive love in five different love languages, those being words of affirmation, quality time, touch, acts of service, or giving, this was pioneered by Dr. Gary Chapman, a psychologist and marriage counselor.  In 1995, he published a book, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, which has been wildly successful and has been on the New York Times Bestseller list continuously for eight years.   Its concepts have been applied to the workplace, for children and for almost any interpersonal relationship.

Chapman believes every person has a primary love language that is meaningful to them.  As in all things, people have different likes and dislikes.  People feel most loved in unique ways.  We also express love to others in different ways.  In other words, we each have a strong preference in how we show and feel love.

The important thing, Chapman says, is to discover and learn the preferred love language of those who are important to us.  Doing this will dramatically improve our relationships, allow us to be more efficient, open channels of communication and improve our empathy.   Just as we want to be understood when we verbally communicate, we need to love others in ways they understand.

And that comes through communication as people share what “floats their boat” so to speak.  It also comes through listening and sensing the emotions that deeply move another.  In an open, honest and gentle conversation, the wife in my first story might tell her husband how she appreciates his acts of service.  She would then add, however, that what really makes her feel special is when he holds her hand, embraces her or shows physical affection.

The husband shows love by doing acts of service because that is the way he feels loved.  And in any gentle dialogue between the two, the wife will understand that fact.  Her goal is not to tell her husband to change his love language, but to tell him she would feel fully loved if he learned to also speak another one – hers!  In a healthy relationship, he will still do acts of service for her, and she will understand that’s his way to show love.  But he will also, also try to practice his wife’s preferred love language.

As I said, this idea is not limited to romantic relationships.  All parents want to connect with their kids in loving ways.  Parents of teenagers especially want this.  But many times parents express love to their kids in ways that aren’t clearly received.  Just as is the case for any human to human relationship, gentle communication is key.  One love language does not work for all.  Our unique personalities create in us unique ways we understand love.

To effectively show love to someone who responds to words of affirmation, you can express appreciation for something he or she has done.  You can praise a specific skill they have.  You can encourage them in a task they have undertaken.  You can often, but without prompting, compliment their appearance.   You can, on a special occasion like a birthday, tell them how much they mean to you.

You should avoid offering any non-constructive and non-gentle criticism – especially to someone who feels loved by words of affirmation.  For these people, words matter a lot.

For someone who feels love through physical touch, it is the oldest and most elemental form of love.  Before humans invented spoken language, touch was the way to express feelings.  To speak this language, you might offer a high-five, pat on the back, handshake or other gesture that extends appreciation and praise in a physical way.  Hugs, when appropriate, are also nice.  In romantic relationships, one should pay particular attention to making sure the other feels close and secure with your physical presence.  One should, however, avoid any form of touch when the other gives physical or verbal cues that it is not welcome. 

To those who feel loved through acts of service, you should perform tasks for the other that are unexpected and that make their life easier.  Taking time away from your work to assist a colleague with their project,  cooking a meal and delivering it to a sick friend, spending significant time doing extra household chores, surprising your child by picking them up after school, or making a surprise breakfast in bed, these are all examples.   You should avoid putting your tasks ahead of theirs and you should never fail to follow through on doing a promised task.

For those who value receiving gifts, one should not mistake that for materialism.  Usually, this person feels loved when receiving small gifts that show thoughtfulness and effort.  Handmade gifts are often liked as are ones that show creativity and special attention to what the other truly needs.  For a person who feels loved by receiving gifts, one should never forget to give something nice on a birthday, anniversary or holiday.  To such people, forgetting to give is especially hurtful.

Finally, to those who most appreciate receiving your quality time, you should regularly spend extended hours listening to and conversing with them on subjects important to them.  You might also suggest doing a project together or take regular vacations with him or her.  You should happily do an activity with them that they enjoy – but which you do not.   You should also avoid any distractions when with them.  The key is to tell them, without words, that no matter what you do together, it is their company that matters most to you.

To love and be loved is one of the essential needs humans have.  From the moment we are born, we yearn to bond with our parents and others.   All humans want to feel connected to another person in heart and soul.  To show love for another is ultimately a selfless act – one that says their needs come first.  But, as I’ve just discussed, the love we show is only effective if the recipient in turn feels loved.  That means we must use both our empathy skills and effective communication to hear and understand what the other needs and wants.

When we listen to another and identify how they feel, we speak a spiritual language.  We come to know them on a deeper level – one that understands their innermost fears, dreams and desires.  Loving them is then about soothing their emotions and meeting their needs.  Our goal with any form of love is to sublimate ourselves for the sake of another.  As I frequently say, I believe our human purpose is to build a life legacy of kindness, humility and service.  Quite simply, life is about loving others.  Whatever we believe God to be, or not to be, I believe the eternal and universal force that animates the everything is, indeed, love.  Since that is so, it’s essential we learn to speak love as often as possible – and only when necessary to use words.

I wish you all much peace and joy.

 

Please click on the title or audio player link to listen to Rev. Denise Tracy’s message on “Goodness”.

 

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

When Michael Brown was shot and killed by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer in the middle of a busy street, large protests and riots followed.  Many Ferguson businesses, homes and cars were looted and burned.  One more killing of a young black man, by a white police officer, was like a match to a powder keg.  Anger in that community had been building for a long time.

Writing to his son about such police killings, Ta-Nehisi Coates says on page 9 of his book Between the World and Me, “And you know now, if you did not before, that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body. It does not matter if the destruction is the result of an unfortunate overreaction. It does not matter if it originates in a misunderstanding. It does not matter if the destruction springs from a foolish policy. Sell cigarettes without the proper authority and your body can be destroyed. Resent the people trying to entrap your body and it can be destroyed. Turn into a dark stairwell and your body can be destroyed. The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions. And destruction is merely the superlative form of a dominion whose prerogatives include friskings, detainings, beatings, and humiliations. All of this is common to black people. And all of this is old for black people. No one is held responsible.”

The anger in Ferguson and many other cities after a police shooting of an unarmed black man comes from many causes.  In Ferguson, that anger can be directly connected to decades of discriminatory policies – ones which Ta-Nehisi Coates has written about extensively in the Atlantic magazine where he is a senior editor and writer. 

In 1934, as Coates has described, laws were enacted by the Federal Housing Authority that allowed “redlining” of certain neighborhoods.  Homes in redlined areas are ineligible for government insured mortgages.  These policies continue today.  Ferguson is one such redlined community meaning that residents and potential buyers cannot obtain low interest and low down payment mortgages.  Property values plummet as a result.  Most homeowners in redlined neighborhoods are essentially trapped.  They cannot sell their homes because there are no buyers.

These discriminatory redlining policies led to white flight from inner cities.  Between 2000 and 2010, St. Louis and its immediate neighborhoods, of which Ferguson is one, experienced a 7% population decline.  Outlying communities, ones not redlined, experienced a 27% increase.  The result is a St. Louis, and nearby communities like Ferguson, that are deeply segregated.  Ferguson today is 67% black when only twenty years ago it was majority white.  Property values for blacks in Ferguson plummeted with white flight – all due to Federal policies that enriched white home buyers at the expense of black home owners.

The average financial wealth that a black family has in their home in St. Louis County is $75,000.  The average wealth a white St. Louis County family has stored in their home is $217,000.  Such a wealth gap exists across the U.S. and is similar to the wealth gap in Cincinnati.  The inner city here, and its immediate neighborhoods, are mostly black and poor.  Outlying communities are mostly white and well-off.  This is due to white fear of integrated neighborhoods and, most importantly, to systemic racist policies.

Adding fuel to such discrimination and resulting black anger is the fact that the Ferguson Police Department, like many inner city Police Departments around the country, is mostly white.  Ferguson is 67% African-American but, at the time of Michael Brown’s shooting, was policed by a 94% white force.

Irregardless of what Michael Brown did or did not do, whether or not he robbed a convenience store before he was shot, there is no justification for his killing.  As Coates writes in his book, whether or not an unarmed black individual has committed a relatively minor offense, that does not grant the right to Police to act as Judge, Jury and executioner.  And yet that is exactly what Police often do – as Police did to Michael Brown for walking in the middle of a street, to 12 year old Tamir Rice for playing in a park with a toy gun, to Eric Garner for selling loose cigarettes, to John Crawford at a Walmart in Dayton, Ohio for picking up a BB gun, to Walter Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina for driving with a broken car tail light, to Freddy Gray of Baltimore for running from a stop and frisk police search, to Philando Castille whose had been stopped for speeding, and here in Cincinnati, to Samuel Dubose for not displaying a license plate on the front of his car. 

These are only eight out of thousands of Police shootings of unarmed black men and women who were stopped for minor offenses.  As Coates states in his book, these were and are 21st century lynchings.

Such are the reasons for angry and bitter words in Coates’ book and for the overall anger among many African-Americans.  This in an anger I ask myself, as I ask you, to ponder, reflect upon, and try to understand.  It’s a quiet anger Coates poignantly describes the mother of Prince Jones having.  She is a successful woman – one who distinguished herself as a successful surgeon.  Mrs. Jones compares herself to Solomon Northrup form the 12 Years a Slave story.  Even when an African-American succeeds and matches the aspirations of the American dream, he or she, and their family members, are still subject to death – for no reason – at the hands of Police.   

For us as fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, we must put ourselves in Mrs. Jones’ shoes, and in the shoes of every other relative of a black person unjustly shot and killed.  How would we feel if it was our child?  What level of anger would we express if the killing went unpunished?  What emotions would we have toward the Police and criminal justice system?

Psychologists indicate there are three primary causes for anger.  The first cause is to experience an affront to a sense of personhood.  Everyone feels deserving of respect and dignity simply for being born.  This is not only a spiritual ideal, it is a universal human right.  When someone feels disrespected, ignored, invalidated or misunderstood – essentially diminished as a person – he or she is very likely to feel angry.

The second cause of anger is from fear.  When a person feels afraid for their personal safety, and that fear is not quickly abated, he or she is likely to feel anger at being forced to live under constant threat.

Third, someone is likely to feel anger when an unresolved memory of a childhood wound or trauma is triggered.  Most people have such wounds and when they are not properly addressed and recognized, they can be re-opened when a similar affront is experienced as an adult.

Every one of these anger causes are eloquently described by Ta-Nehisi Coates as ones felt by African-Americans.  They are routinely disrespected.  They daily live in fear that they will be harassed or harmed.  Their children are routinely exposed to traumas of discrimination.  In sum, there are multiple valid reasons why Coates and many blacks are angry.

Commentators point out that Between the World and Me is controversial for some whites because Coates is angry – and an angry black man has, throughout history, been considered frightening.  That is one reason why black men are often shot, and why racist assumptions about them continue.   Many white readers, whether they admit it or not, are subconsciously threatened by Ta-Nehisi Coates..

The facts are, however, that his anger has value.  Numerous psychologists point out that while anger is considered a negative emotion, that is an incorrect label.  Anger, experts say, helps to protect people.  It’s an evolutionary and biological response that causes a person to fight or flee.  The benefit of Coates’ anger, and his book, may well be to protect more black men from being killed.

Anger can be an effective way to communicate.  By expressing anger, one conveys feelings that something is wrong and needs to be corrected.  Indeed, Coates’ book is an effective statement of reasons why African-Americans are angry and it is thereby helpful in building white empathy.

Anger is an effective way to bring about healing.  Suppressed anger is, as we all know, destructive.  But honest, non-violent anger can restore a dysfunctional relationship.  Coates is not gentle with his view of white people, but his words have the potential to create positive change in them.

Finally, healthy anger counter-intuitively reduces violence.  It’s a release valve, if you will, of strong feelings.  Coates’ book is a stirring black voice that may prevent future racial violence.    

Between the World and Me follows the guidelines for expressing effective anger.  As such, it is valuable and profound.  Despite it being uncomfortable for many white people to read, including me, that is because examining the truth about oneself is often unpleasant. 

There is a disease of hate and bigotry eating away at our nation.  America has addressed some of the disease’s symptoms, but it has not cured the underlying illness.  The disease of racism, fed by white greed and delusions of self importance, is the direct cause of African-American anger.  But that anger is valuable if it is listened to, understood, respected and addressed by most of us who tragically, as Coates writes, believe we are white, pure and good.

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

We all know of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech at the 1963 March on Washington.  In it, he spoke the famous line, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Implicitly, Dr. King spoke to a larger truth – one that has only recently been proven.  Racial distinctions between people are founded on external differences in appearance, and NOT on science.  There are zero genetic markers that distinguish one so-called “race” from another.  Indeed, in a 2002 landmark genetic mapping of world-wide human DNA, it was proven that every person shares 99.9% of genes.  Of the .1% different genes, none relate to supposedly racial identity features.

What this means is what people have anecdotally asserted for a long time.  Beneath our skin and external features, people are virtually the same.  We are all members of one human family, one human species.

Since that has been verifiably proven, does it mean the concept of race does not exist?  Ta-Nehisi Coates answers that question in his book Between the World and Me on page 7.  He writes, “Race is the child of racism, NOT the father.”    

In other words, race exists but only as an idea.  Race was created about five hundred years ago because people chose to determine differences between one another in order for group sought to dominate, hate and oppress other groups.  That group, people of light skin color living in Europe, defined five races based on differences in external appearance.  Hate essentially gave birth to the idea of race. 

Coates goes on to say, “Difference in hue and hair is old.  But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible — this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopefully, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white.”

Coates writes about me and most of you.  I am white only because I have accepted notions I have been taught by culture and society – that certain external features of mine, like my skin, hair or eye color, make me “white”.  Humanity has bought into the false notion of race based solely on appearance.  Genetics, however, have proven something very different.   There are no subgroups or divisions within the human species.  We are all the same.

I hope to frame today’s discussion around this fact – one which I trust you will accept as true.   I ask you to accept this fact because it is the foundation of Coates’ central argument.  Race is a way we organize society so that those who call and believe themselves to be white can dominate.  Race is a subjective, social distinction rooted in the age-old human propensity to elevate oneself, or one’s tribe, at the expense of another. 

The idea of race is a self-oriented, dog-eat-dog, me first way of thinking.  I must separate myself from others, and believe myself to be better, in order to look out just for myself, my family, and my group.  In order for me to survive and thrive, I must diminish all others.  Racism is, in truth, selfishness and greed run amok.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, like most other writers and experts, does not claim that racial classification is something any of us are responsible for creating.  It began hundreds of years ago when colonialism started.  In order to control new lands and their valuable resources, Europeans realized the people of those lands needed to be controlled.  The idea of race was created to do just that. 

Our problem today is that we were born into a culture that still uses ideas of race to define people.   From our earliest years, we are taught about the subjective differences between people.  We are also taught that our so called white group is dominant and superior.  Such false teachings are grounded not in science, but in opinion.

We are taught to perceive what anthropologists now call “race indicators” – those features of skin color and face used to separate humans into five divisions – caucasian, negro, polynesian, indigenous American, and asian.  But, as modern genetics has proven, “race indicators” are subjective.  They cannot genetically be linked to any particular group or population.     

Take a look at this slide of two persons – a woman who appears to be “black” even though she was born to two “white” parents, and a man who appears to be white even though he was born to two “black” parents.  When each of us look at these pictures, without reading facts about the persons, we immediately assume them to be part of a racial group based solely on race indicators we have been taught to associate only with a certain race.  As we see, those are often false indicators. 

This is the essential truth Coates wants to teach his son in his book.  Race is a way for white people to control others.  Bigotry towards those who appear different gave birth to the idea of race.  As Coates writes, racism fathered the idea of race.  Nature did not create different races.  We did.

For us as people called ‘white’, we are not the victims of racial identity.  We are the beneficiaries.  Because our culture defines us as ‘white’, we have access to better neighborhoods, better schools, better paying jobs, and a life free from injustice.  We are shielded from unjust suspicion or incarceration by the criminal justice system.  We are shielded from unequal treatment anywhere we go.  We have access to better health care and we live longer as a result.  We are free from fear that we will be bodily harmed because of our defined race.

Most whites – including myself – are therefore blind to racism because we do not experience it.  This obstacle to our awakening is, as I said last Sunday, because we are mostly empathy deficient.  Since we don’t experience racial discrimination, we mostlly do not think about it or understand it.

I said last week that I offer no solutions to racism.  But I will offer what Coates implies in Between the World and Me what those who believe they are white could do…

First, so called whites should, as many blacks say, be “woke”.  We must awaken to the fact that the idea of race is a social and cultural construct – not a genetic one.

Second, whites should admit the reasons why separation into different races began hundreds of years ago – and why it continues.  Race as an idea was created, and it continues, so that whites can dominate and prosper while other groups – blacks, Asians, indigenous peoples – are marginalized.

Third, and most important, whites should empathize and identify with black suffering, anger and frustration.  We must purposefully learn to feel what they feel, and why they feel it.

Fourth, we as whites should work to end all forms of brutality and discrimination inflicted on others based on the false idea of race.  We must end the fear for their bodies, as Coates says, that we cause.  

Fifth, white people should accept that, as a part of the dominant group, we enjoy unequal privileges.  As a popular black phrase goes, whites must “check their privilege.”  That means we should identify, acknowledge and then end the unequal privileges we receive.

If you have read even part of Between the World and Me, you know that Ta-Nehisi Coates has little hope these steps will be taken.  He ultimately has no hope in ending racism because much of history has shown humanity is a nasty, selfish and brutish species.  People would rather compete against, demean and harm one another – all in the false belief that survival of the strongest is the only way to live.

While Coates’ pessimism is understandable, and held by many others, it is a viewpoint that reduces all people to their lowest behaviors.  Any sense of spirituality, any sense that each person lives for a higher purpose beyond their own selfish needs, tells us that people can learn from, understand, listen to, and cooperate with one another.  Instead of life being a win – lose proposition, life can become a win – win for everyone.

Every spiritual prophet of history understood this.  As a species, humans aspire to noble and universal ideals  – that everyone deserves a life of well-being, equality, freedom and, above all, love.  These are the things that unite and motivate us all.  For me, I pray for myself and all who believe they are white, that we commit to change our minds, hearts and souls.  Those who think they are white must endeavor to build a world with equal peace and joy for the entire human family.    

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

This past November 17th at the ReThinking Racism discussion seminar held. in this sanctuary, the session had been running for barely ten minutes before a lone African-American woman stood and asked, in a voice tinged with frustration and a bit of anger, “Why are we still talking about racism fifty years after it was supposed to be settled?”

That question quieted this room.  Over ninety people attended that evening.  Almost a fourth of them were people of color.   Her question hung in the air until it was time to determine topics for each of nine discussion groups.  Her question was chosen as the topic for one group and it was one of the largest attended – almost twenty people including me.  This group grappled with the question and varying answers to it were suggested.  Five African-American women and one Latina woman offered ideas.  They were the most powerful because their comments came from personal experience. 

But despite well thought suggestions, it was clear nobody could definitively answer the question.  Why, after fifty years, after passing of landmark Civil Rights laws, after the election of a black President twice, why are we still witnessing unarmed African-American men, women and children killed by police for no reason?  Why are we still fighting laws designed to curb voting rights in Ohio and other states?  Why are schools still deeply segregated with schools in minority communities still underfunded and deficient in performance?

I left that evening full of appreciation for the opportunity to listen.  I especially was thankful to hear the thoughts of black men and women.  Racism is a subject I too often hesitate to talk about with people of color.

I wanted those discussions to continue but I mostly wanted them to continue in a way that caused me and other whites to grapple with our role in racism through enjoyment of white privilege.  I wanted this congregation to continue its year long effort to learn, understand and think through the subject.  I wanted all of that, and I wanted to hear an authoritative black voice speak above and beyond the voice of whites.  I believe whites must do far more listening than speaking on this subject.

It’s then I thought this congregation could jointly read a book by a black author as a way to listen to the thoughts of someone personally victimized by racism.  I came across Between the World and Me and I was both moved and challenged by it. 

Ta-Nehisi Coates, for me, is a writer of uncommon insight who uses beautiful phrasing to describe terrible things.  His anger, his bleak assessment of our nation, his refusal to champion small glimmers of hope – these are all aspects of the book that intrigue me.  The fact that the book is in the form of a letter to his son is also poignant. 

This is a book that is quite controversial in some circles, but one that is widely praised in the black community as profound and authentic. The book speaks the contemporary African-American voice and might fairly represent its communal thoughts and emotions.

The book was titled by using one line from a famous poem by Richard Wright – writing eighty years ago.  A portion of the poem is reprinted in the book but I will read a longer portion of it now.

And one morning while in the woods I stumbled

    suddenly upon the thing,

Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly

    oaks and elms

And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting

    themselves between the world and me….

There was a design of white bones slumbering forgottenly

    upon a cushion of ashes.

There was a charred stump of a sapling pointing a blunt

    finger accusingly at the sky.

There were torn tree limbs, tiny veins of burnt leaves, and

    a scorched coil of greasy hemp;

A vacant shoe, an empty tie, a ripped shirt, a lonely hat,

    and a pair of trousers stiff with black blood.

And upon the trampled grass were buttons, dead matches,

    butt-ends of cigars and cigarettes, peanut shells, a

    drained gin-flask, and a whore’s lipstick;

Scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the

    lingering smell of gasoline.

And through the morning air the sun poured yellow

    surprise into the eye sockets of the stony skull….

And while I stood my mind was frozen within cold pity

    for the life that was gone.

The ground gripped my feet and my heart was circled by

    icy walls of fear–

The sun died in the sky; a night wind muttered in the

    grass and fumbled the leaves in the trees; the woods

    poured forth the hungry yelping of hounds; the

    darkness screamed with thirsty voices; and the witnesses rose and lived:

The dry bones stirred, rattled, lifted, melting themselves

    into my bones.

The grey ashes formed flesh firm and black, entering into

    my flesh.

Wright’s poem continues for several more verses but the “punch to the stomach” lines, for me, are ones I’ve just read.  They lead me to the most important reason why I chose to use Coates’ book as the basis for our congregation discussions.  The book Between the World and Me, like this poem, asks readers to hear, understand and feel the emotions of African-Americans.

I often assert that the single most important spiritual quality a person can have is to be able to empathize.  Empathy is a human attitude in short supply today.  Mean spirited words are tossed across political, religious and racial divides without anyone taking the time to just listen, process and honestly place oneself in the proverbial shoes of another.

If every person empathized with the feelings of others, I believe our world would be much better.  Empathy involves active listening to the other – a conscious and studied effort to physically and mentally open oneself to hear the words of another and then work to understand and relate to them.  Understanding means to hear underlying emotions that shape the words.  Empathy is, as President Bill Clinton often said, to literally feel the pain the other talks about.

Reading about a lynching scene described in poetic detail grabs at the gut and forces the reader to stand in the same place, to see the grisly details, smell the burnt flesh, and imagine the horrific suffering the victim felt.

Reading Between the World and Me caused me to similarly hear the sadness, anger and pain of African-Americans.  It led me to put myself in their shoes – to imagine myself living constantly on guard for my safety or that of my children.  The book caused me to feel the frustration of Coates, and the woman In here with her question, why is white oppression and violence against blacks still a fact?

The ugliness of nasty racism is still prevalent.  We hear it everyday and we heard it all too recently when a New York politician spoke words about our President and his wife that could have been said two hundred years ago. 

But just as common as is overt racism, is the continued prevalence of white innocence and white privilege.  We are cocooned in homes, workplaces and communities so very separate from the black experience.  Such insulation is powerfully depicted in the painting on the covers of your programs.  As white people, we are oblivious and indifferent to black pain primarily because we fail to hear, understand and feel it.

I offer – and will offer – no solutions to racism in here.  As I said earlier, solutions are not up to me to offer – nor are they up to any white person.

I hope we will hear and accept Coates’ emotions and not dissect his words for their intellectual argument.  I hope we can find ourselves experiencing, on an empathy level, the same anger, sadness, lack of hope and frustration that he feels – as do many other African-Americans.

If there is any purpose to our discussion today, and in the next two weeks, I hope it is this:  that we grow as a community and as spiritually attuned people, if we feel, for a short time, as if we are victims of racism.  I believe we can thereby understand, in very small ways, the injury blacks feel today, and have felt for hundreds of years.

    

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

A well known contemporary writer, Larry Wilde, once said, “Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree.  In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall.”  And Erma Bombeck, a well-known humorist in her own right, once said, “There is nothing sadder in this world than to awake on Christmas morning and not be a child.”

Christmas and Hanukah, of all the year’s days, are ones most anticipated by children – and perhaps most dreaded by adults!  But as we have considered a very Dickens holiday over the past two Sundays, I hope this evening we will consider Dickens belief that the two holidays are best seen through the eyes of youth – and how they are often much wiser than adults.  

As we all agree, Christmas and Hanukah ought to be simple occasions when relationships, family, and service to others are valued more than gifts and lavish parties.  This is a season when we want to find meaning by remembering and practicing our values.   

Charles Dickens understood that.  In most of his novels, it is the adults who need to transform their thinking.  It’s the children in his stories who suffer the most, but who still retain the kind of wisdom, love and wonder that gives our world hope.

Such Dickens ideals echo those of Jesus who implored adults to let kids be true to their good instincts.  “Don’t hold them back,” he said.  “The realm of goodness belongs to children!”  That timeless truth tells us that the attitudes of children are ones to copy.   Indeed, I believe the holidays are best celebrated in the company of young people – or in the company of adults who act and think like children.  The spirit of Christmas and Hanukkah are found when we reclaim our inner child.

I remember the second Christmas of my daughter Sara – 30 years ago!  The must-have gift for kids that year was an animated wonder toy called Teddy Ruxpin.  This stuffed bear talked, sang, moved its mouth and blinked its eyes – all in some fantastic and never before seen way.  Sara’s mother and I thought that she was old enough for it.  So, expensive as it was for a young family, we bought it and made it Sara’s featured gift. 

After we helped her unwrap and open the box, and after I figured out how to insert the batteries and turn it on, Sara stared at that 1980’s technological marvel.  It perplexed her for a minute but, instead of then delighting in it, she quickly turned her attention to the brightly colored wrapping paper and a large red bow we had torn off the box.  She playfully tossed the paper around, wrapped it around her head, twirled the ribbon, crawled inside the large box and completely ignored the singing bear. 

Those simple things delighted her far more than the expensive toy.  Pulling the box over her head and playing peek-a-boo was much more fun.  Money, technology and costly things had not yet corrupted her – as they do almost everyone when they reach a certain age.  Whenever that happens, we lose something beautiful and pure – we lose the child in us that can make the holidays so delightful.

Along with memories of my daughter Sara on Christmas are ones I have of my maternal grandfather.  When I was young, I recall Christmases with him when, after a few glasses of holiday spirits, he became very, very silly.  He decorated his bald head with multiple bows, put on ugly clothing other people had received for Christmas, dangled tree ornaments from his ears, danced around the room and mugged for me and my siblings.  We thought he was crazy but absolutely hilarious.  My grandmother, who was much more serious, frowned at his antics, but that caused him to be even more silly.  He stuck his tongue out at her and continued on.  At Christmas, this older man became a child again – and he made the day alive and full of laughter.

Charles Dickens does much the same with some of the characters in his novels.  We easily remember the kids in his books – the innocent David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, the conniving and prank loving Artful Dodger, or the pure Tiny Tim who thinks more about the happiness of others.  Dickens identified with children who suffered because of his own traumatic experiences as a child.  He championed their interests and he was strategic in using them to prick the consciences of his readers. 

Victorian England, perhaps like contemporary America, distrusted the poor and questioned their work ethic and morality.  Prevailing thinking believed that people are personally at fault for being poor or in debt.  While Dickens knew such thinking is false, he also knew that nobody can question the work ethic or motivations of children.  They are innocents who have nothing to do with their suffering.  So he featured children as some of his most memorable characters – those who are poor and suffer but who offer profound wisdom.

It is Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol who captures our hearts and sympathies.  Despite his infirmity, he exclaims in the novel that he hopes people at church will notice his physical challenges, especially at Christmas.  It will remind them, he says, of the one whose holiday we celebrate – the man who advocated for the blind, the challenged and the lame. 

Later, it’s Tim who prays for Scrooge and it’s Tim who is given the most repeated line from the novel – “God bless us everyone!”  Tim does not feel the shame of his condition.  Like most kids, he sees himself and others with innocence.  Everyone is equal in his eyes.  He feels blessed – not cursed.   As Tiny Tim says, “It is good to be a child sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, whose mighty founder was a child himself!”

We do young people no favor, however, by over-idealizing them and making them more angelic than they are.  I know.  I survived raising two teenage girls and I well remember what I would often tell them when they were acting every bit a hormonal teenager – “I will always love you, but right now I don’t like you very much!”   

But the attitudes of youth, their innocent ways, their idealism, energy and hope for the future are qualities that enable their wide eyed wonder and a belief that the world can be made much, much better.  As we think about it, it was the youth of the 1960’s who ended a war, brought down a deceitful President and who now, as part of the millennial generation, have championed marriage equality, justice for African-Americans and a deep concern for the earth and our environment.  Children and youth are also naturally less inhibited about loving, playing and laughing with anyone.  They have no adult filters that can judge others based on looks, gender, income, race or whom they love.  At some point in life, however, we learn too much, we become a bit too cynical and much too serious.  We lose the wisdom we once had as a kid – a sense of trust and a happy-go-lucky joy.

It was Jesus who said that faith like a child is what will heal the world.  After a troubling past year, and perhaps troubling years ahead, we need to remember his words.   Most children are color blind.  Many have little use for money or expensive things.  The world, for them, is like a playground on which everyone ought to treat each other as friends.   Faith like a child is an attitude that trusts in the implicit goodness of others, that is deeply sad when others hurt, that is humble and simple.  It is the kind of pure faith that I remember in my very young daughters when they would toddle along beside me and reach up their little hands to hold mine and follow me anywhere.  Their sweet trust was so complete in their daddy.

That innocence in children can be dangerous, but as adults we can emphasize danger and demean youthful naiveté too much.  Real spirituality involves just the kind of trust and unconditional love that children possess.  We should never try to suppress that in them.  Children have no sense of self-importance and simply enjoy the beauty, fun and play found in every person.

Charles Dickens believed this.  How can we not see, he implicitly asks in his novels, in the face of any child – black, brown, dirty, crying, poor  or sick – great wisdom that adults should heed? 

I love this place when kids and teens are running around, playing and laughing – the more hectic, the better!  For me, the greatest value we have here – one that we state each week in our unison affirmation – is that we are committed to the future of children – ours and all others.  Such a future is one where the idea of one human family might come to pass because of the idealism of our youth.  It’s they whom I trust will promote a world where differences in race, religion, nationality or status are no more.  Where hate, bigotry and violence cease to exist.  Adults might say that is a utopian dream which will never happen.  But if we remember the wisdom of children, that anything is possible for those who see every Christmas tree as thirty feet tall, who trust and like everyone………..then such a future might happen.

When we go home tonight, when we awake in the morning – let’s resolve to let our inner child out.  Let’s see the world in new and fresh ways.  Let’s be playful, joyous, trusting and full of hope.  Let’s see in every face we encounter, as Dickens did, the image of the divine – someone to be loved and treated with dignity.  Let’s grab the tinsel, wrapping paper, boxes, ribbons and holiday spirits – and throw a party!  Let’s abandon our serious selves and reach out to family, friends and all others with a trusting hand –  “Here I am,” we might say, “It’s a holiday and I want to play!”

And I wish you all a peaceful Hanukah and a joyful Christmas!