Author: Doug Slagle

Message 140, Summer Poetry to Enlighten and Inspire: Jim Ferris and the Voice of the Challenged, 8-18-13

 

To Download and listen to the message, click here:

 

During this month of August, I’ve used three different contemporary poets to not only highlight great poetry, but to also lead us on a path of empathy for others.  Two weeks ago we looked at Richard Blanco and his poem about his immigrant mother.  Through his simple but beautiful verse, we read of a gay son’s love for his mom but also his pride in her American story – her life as an immigrant.  Last week, we looked at a poem by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Rita Dove and her distinctive way of telling stories with her poems – ones that prompt a reader to feel and experience universal emotions.

Today, we consider the poetry of Jim Ferris to take us on a journey of empathy for the so-called physically and mentally challenged.  Ferris is the winner of the prestigious MSR award for Poetry and he is the acclaimed leader of what is now referred to as “disabled” or “crip” poetry.  This artistic movement, which is joined by many other disabled writers, seeks to reorient thinking and understanding about those who are physically or mentally different.  While some decry the fact that such poetry calls attention to disability, others have praised this expanding genre as a unique way to change the perspective and understanding society has for the handicapped.

Ferris is most known for, and won his poetry award for, his book entitled Hospital Poems which details the many years he spent as a young boy and teenager in hospitals undergoing surgeries and treatments for a birth condition of one leg significantly shorter than the other.  The experiences he underwent were painful, humiliating, emotionally scarring and mostly unsuccessful.  He still has great difficulty walking.  Most of all, the poems call attention to how he was treated, and how many disabled persons are still treated, by the medical community and by society at large.

In a poem entitled “Meat” he describes how he and other young patients were literally treated like slabs of flesh – processed through operating rooms without any consideration of their humanity.  In the poem “Standard Operating Procedure” he mockingly offers advice to the surgeons who treated him, “Tell him this is for his own good, this will hurt you more than him….Then press the drill to his thigh and squeeze the trigger….He won’t like it much, children are like that.”

In another poem entitled “Coliseum” he writes of being subjected to the grand rounds of doctors as they discussed his case – analyzing how to make Ferris supposedly “normal”.  The poem resonates with all who do not measure up to what society expects – and how professionals seek to make them acceptable to a culture that hates abnormality.   “You are a specimen for study,” Ferris writes in the poem, “a toy, a puzzle—they speak to each other, as if you are unconscious.”

In another poem, Ferris writes of a young teenage boy’s nightmare – a poem that adds mordant humor to the indignities he faced.  He writes in a poem entitled “Fear at Thirteen” how he felt as he lay naked on an operating table just before a surgery (and forgive me if these words offend you): “Hatchet men waiting to cut you, and what you fear most, in all the world, is that you’ll pop a boner, and die embarrassed, on this green yet sterile field.”

Finally, in a poem entitled “Mercy”, Ferris describes a time when all of his eighth grade classmates visited him in the hospital.  All being non-disabled, his fellow students approached him and treated him like an object of pity – one to be gawked at, whispered over and used as a way to claim a good deed for the day’s effort.  He writes about them in that poem, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall have mercy.  But not from me.” 

W.H. Auden, the famous writer, once asked, “What good is poetry?  It accomplishes nothing.”  With all due respect to him, I totally disagree.  Ferris’ poems are not intended to elicit pity nor are they written as a way to wallow in the horrors of what happened to him.  Rather, they stridently decry the inhuman treatment shown to most who are disabled – the condescending sympathy offered, the view of them as different, non-functioning, and defective, the interaction with them that is devoid of normalcy and the everyday dignity most others enjoy.  Instead, Ferris takes us on a journey to the hospitals of his youth, into the crowded wards, the operating rooms, and the theatre like arena in which he would stand to be studied and probed as if he were a specimen or, as he writes, a piece of meat.  Ferris wants us to feel the humiliation, to understand the indignity, to know of the indifference with which not only he has been treated, but so too are all other physically and mentally challenged persons.  Ultimately, like the other poets we’ve looked at, he calls us to understand and empathize with the disabled – not to offer sympathy or meager pity – but to fully know and understand how they feel so that they will be treated not as outcasts or objects of compassion – but as fully human worthy of respect.

And that is the fundamental message of Jim Ferris’ poetry.  He demands we understand the difference between sympathy and empathy.  He asks that we treat the disabled or any person, for that matter, much like we would treat a person who has fallen into a deep pit.  Our inclination will be to stand around the rim of the pit and peer down on the poor soul at the bottom.  We’ll offer the usual platitudes of sorrow and perhaps a bit of encouragement.  We offer our sympathy.  But, the person at the bottom of a pit feels little solace – how can we at the top understand his or her perspective and feelings?

On the other hand, as Jim Ferris implicitly asks in his poetry, we can figuratively climb down into the pit with the person who suffers or is in a difficult situation.  Down there we can understand what it feels like to be in a pit, to hope for a way out and to feel fear.   So too can we offer tangible help to the other – we’re with them, beside them and fully aware of how they suffer and what their needs are.  That’s the difference between sympathy and pity versus empathy – to undertake the time and the effort to listen, feel and experience the plight of the other.  That is what we are called to offer the disabled and, indeed, all people.

When it comes to being physically or mentally challenged, Ferris reminds us in one of his poems how we can empathize.  As he writes, we too are disabled and we, too, are challenged.  For the poem we consider for today, read it with me on the back of your programs as I read it aloud…

 

 

Poet of Cripples

By Jim Ferris

Let me be a poet of cripples,

of hollow men and boys groping

to be whole, of girls limping toward

womanhood and women reaching back,

all slipping and falling toward the cavern

we carry within, our hidden void,

a place for each to become full, whole,

room of our own, space to grow in ways

unimaginable to the straight

and the narrow, the small and similar,

the poor, normal ones who do not know

their poverty. Look with care, look deep.

Know that you are a cripple too.

I sing for cripples; I sing for you.

          Ferris’ poem draws heavily on the influences of other famous poets.  It is highly evocative of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass poems – ones where he writes of the song of the body, of its essence, of its oneness with nature and creation.  So too does Ferris use references from T.S. Elliot’s poem “Hollow Men.”  As Elliot wrote in that poem, “We are the hollow men, We are the stuffed men, Leaning together, Waiting and leaning, drawn, they stand in that – Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion…”

As humans, we worship the body while taking healthy bodies for granted.  We idealize the body’s symmetry, its form and its vibrant, sensual beauty.  For bodies misshapen by disease, birth anomalies, injury, or age, we are reminded of death, of the aging process and our fears of them.  And so we diminish the disabled bodies.  They are imperfect.  They are to be pitied.  They are to be studied, worked upon and made supposedly normal.

But Ferris reminds his reader that we are all hollow people.  And, we all have a void within – the inner cavern that we long to fill, the void that defines how we too are crippled and challenged.  Even as Ferris is physically challenged, many of the so-called normal people are challenged by inner demons, inner deficiencies, inner fears, inner depressions.  What is your void that needs to be filled?  What is mine?

As Ferris writes, the disabled have the unique gift of knowing the void they must fill.  They long to be whole, to feel human and able bodied.  As I so often say, such feelings as those come only through one’s mind and cognitive perceptions.  As one thinks, so one is.  While I might smugly reassure myself that I am healthy and abled, I must see the crippling void in me –  my psychological feelings of inadequacy and an insecure desire to be liked and loved.   The physically and mentally challenged persons, however, are daily confronted with their handicap.  It can’t be overlooked or ignored as I do with my more hidden challenges.  And so, as the poem tells us, the disabled find ways to fill that inner void – their missing piece – with a sense of contentment, with strength, confidence, and acceptance in who they are.

How many people, how many of us, struggle with handicaps of addiction, depression, arrogance, materialism, inadequacy, work-a-holism or anything else to fill their inner voids and missing pieces?  As Ferris writes, we are all crippled.  We are all stunted and deformed.  We all need to find the kind of personal awareness that comes from knowing ourselves, from finding self-assurance, inner love and the satisfaction that brings what I repeatedly wish for me and for you – peace and joy.  As the Buddha taught, when we let go of what we lack or what we wish for, we will find that despite our disabilities we are rich beyond our dreams – in life, in friends, in family, in the inner security that surpasses all understanding.

Jesus also taught that we fill our inner voids not by trying to be good enough, not by wealth, not by being hypocritically pious, but instead by claiming and owning our imperfections and our flawed humanity.  We find the god within that is strong, capable, giving, loving and good.  No longer do we fill our voids with false idols like drugs, alcohol, relationships, work, religion or anything else.  We all have feet of clay with our missing pieces and disabilities.  We are born and shaped as the creator made us.  As Ferris says, all humanity is crippled and yet all people are beautiful and worthy in their imperfections.

It is in that light that we identify with the physically and mentally challenged – people like Jim Ferris.  In this recognition of our own challenges, we can discover our ability to empathize with the disabled and understand their perspective.  Such an enlightened and inspired attitude enables us to love them as fully human and to stop our condescending, superior attitudes.  By recognizing the many ways we ourselves are challenged, we can see and understand their struggles.

I have shared with a few of you my challenges the last two months in assisting my parents as they move.  What I have not mentioned to many, and not in here, is how I and my siblings have been confronted during this move with my mom’s advancing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.  She is slowly fading away from us, becoming a confused, frightened and overly paranoid person.  This move has only added to her confusion and fears.  She’s become combative and angry at me, my siblings and my dad as we helped her move – as we arranged with movers, charities and an estate sale company to transport or dispose of belongings.  Her loss of short term memory and cognitive function has sped up with all of the trauma in this move.

And, she should have stopped driving months ago but she insisted she was fine.  This past Monday she was in a bad car accident that she caused – banging and bruising herself terribly – but thankfully not hurting anyone else.  She admitted on the spot that she should no longer drive and yet that has caused her still remaining faculties to become deeply depressed – her whole life, her home, her mind, her independence all slowly slipping away.

As with most of the messages I deliver, I speak to myself as well as to you.  I’ve had to reflect most especially this month on what I’ve encouraged in here – to find empathy for others. In saying a slow goodbye to my mom, in seeing her terrors, frustrations and combativeness for a move she wasn’t able to understand, I had to let go of my simple sympathy and occasional frustration with her.  Doesn’t she understand what we are doing and why?  No, she doesn’t.  Her whole world was turning upside down.  She’s moving permanently away from her home of half a century – the house she made her own, the house in which she made a family, the sense of place she created.  Many of her belongings that had given her identity and comfort were suddenly ripped away.

This past Wednesday, just before I drove she and my dad to the airport to leave their home and their city – perhaps forever – she asked me to get the gun my dad owns, put a bullet in it, and give it to her.  In that moment, I understood what she meant and how she felt.  I don’t know if she was serious – but then she broke down and all I could do was hold her like she was my child, so small and vulnerable, as she sobbed in my arms.

Placed in her shoes, I would likely be reacting the same way.  The mind is a terrible thing to lose – and as she is losing hers – along with her home, her hometown and so many of her friends.  In that moment when I held her in my arms, I could feel her loss.  I could feel her fear.  I could feel all of the anger and confusion in her life.  I understood.  I knew of her present disability.  I had, totally unplanned, climbed down in the pit with her – to console and help and listen and do – to understand the dimensions of her loss and the depth of her emotions.

Dear friends, we are all a Jim Ferris in our physical limitations.  I have a bum knee, some of you have aches and pains in joints and muscles.  And, we are all my mom in our mental incapacities – emotionally drained or challenged, sad, threatened, afraid.  But in our shared challenges, we feel the humanity in us.  We see the beauty of creation that flourishes in us – the body and mind fantastic in their design and complexity, each person different, each person diverse in ability, each human so very, very wonderful.  We see that empathy is both a way to understand and way to truly help.

To close, I echo the last line from Jim Ferris’ poem: “Poet of Cripples.”  I echo his themes and messages of empathy as well as the other poets we considered – Richard Blanco and Rita Dove.

Know that we are all immigrants in this life.  Understand that we each face times of loneliness and longing.  Believe that we too are crippled.  We sing not for the immigrant.  We sing not for the lonely or for the disabled.  We sing for us.  We sing for humanity.  We sing for the beauty that all possess.                          I wish you much peace and joy…

Message 139, Summer Poetry to Enlighten and Inspire: Rita Dove and the Voice of Loneliness and Longing, 8-11-13

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

To download and listen to the message, click here:   

 

I don’t know about you, but I have experienced times in my life when I have felt terribly lonely.  There have been a few occasions, however, when I have purposefully chosen to be alone – hiking into the wilderness, curling up at home with a good book or retreating into my yard and garden.  Those are times I have sought solitude – time and space to think, reflect and bask in the company of self.  Those solitude times give me the energy to go back into the world and engage it as much as possible.

But then there are the times when I have felt as if I am adrift in the middle of a vast lake – alone, lonely and sad.  There are people all around me, available to me and even reaching out to me.  But I have felt isolated and disconnected.  My loneliness is not a literal fact but rather a state of mind.  I isolate inside of myself, close the doors and the windows to my soul, and feel all of the darkness of my circumstances – like the trials I experienced when I came out, the void when I did not have a partner, my shyness, my years spent in the closet praying to be made straight and terrified someone would discover my secret.

I imagine all of us have felt such isolation at some point in our lives.  Life’s burdens weigh on our shoulders, we see no light at the end of our tunnels, our pain is acute and it is difficult to explain to others.  It is difficult to feel any comfort from those whose lives seem better than our own.  What we feel is depressed, but such feelings are also experienced as loneliness – times when one IS truly the loneliest number and we have no idea how to correct that.

Loneliness in all of its manifestations is a human disease of the mind and soul.  There are many who are abandoned in the sea of life – the elderly who are shut within their houses or in nursing homes, the sick, the dying, the imprisoned, the outcast and the socially awkward.  But, there are many more who are lonely for lack of a lover, lonely as they face major difficulties, lonely as they feel unable to meet other souls who also long to be connected.

For so many persons – old and young alike – the most profound loneliness is often from the lack of a life partner, spouse, or soulmate.  And, sadly, loneliness is found even for those who have a partner but who feel deeply disconnected from him or her.  As most of us know, it is quite possible to feel the pain of loneliness even when one is married or partnered.

Just as I did last week when we looked at a poem by Richard Blanco to spiritually empathize with immigrants, today we look at a poem by Rita Dove as we seek greater insight into loneliness and longing.  As an African-American woman and graduate of our local Miami University, Rita Dove writes about the small moments in people’s lives as a way to empathize.  Her most famous work, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, details the big and minor moments in the lives of her grandparents.  Thomas and Beulah, as the book is entitled, is a partially fictionalized anthology of poems about her grandparents and how they made a life in the midst of Jim Crow America.  It’s a poignant work that finds its voice not by preaching the benefits of Civil Rights but rather through telling of the daily indignities and struggles her grandparents faced – and the quiet ways they overcame them.

And that is a hallmark of Dove’s poetry.  She tells stories in her poems that prompt introspection.  In their own way, her poems lead readers to identify with and understand feelings.  Today’s poem, “Golden Oldies”, speaks of the feelings of all women and men who are lonely or longing for a lover.  As I read the poem aloud, you can follow along with the printed version on the back of your programs.

 

Golden Oldies

I made it home early, only to get

stalled in the driveway – swaying

at the wheel like a blind pianist caught in a tune

meant for more than two hands playing.

The words were easy, crooned

by a young girl dying to feel alive, to discover

a pain majestic enough

to live by. I turned the air conditioning off,

leaned back to float on a film of sweat,

and listened to her sentiment:

Baby, where did our love go?-a lament

I greedily took in

without a clue who my lover

might be, or where to start looking.

The poem gives us a clue about the song that prompts such strong feelings in Rita.  The line “Baby, where did our love go?” is from the Diana Ross and Supremes song of 1964 – their first of five songs to reach the pop charts number one ranking.  Rolling Stones magazine has rated it #472 on its list of 500 greatest songs of all time.

As I speak these three Sundays of empathy and figuratively placing ourselves in the shoes of another, let us use Rita Dove’s poetry as a way to now listen to the song “Where Did Our Love Go?”  Imagine it is a hot, sultry evening.  Close your eyes and sway to music if you will.  Recently, life has been difficult, you’re alone, lamenting the absence of love or a lover in your life, and on the radio comes this song:

(Play “Where Did Our Love Go?”)

Interestingly, Rita Dove has been called an American Romanticist.  Her style of poetry is not literally romantic, but rather follows in that form of expression.  Romanticism as an art form began in the early nineteenth century largely in reaction to the aristocratic and elitist ideas of the enlightenment and rationalism.  In paintings, sculpture, literature and music, romanticism focused on the natural world and its transcendent, awe inspiring aspects.  Emotions and feelings were the focus of romantic art – such feelings as longing, passion, love, despair, apprehension, and religious inspiration.  Described as a spontaneous expression of emotion, romanticism in art seeks to reflect the sublime and the ineffable – the kinds of feelings that can overwhelm.

American romanticism is unique in its own way.  American romanticists focus on the feelings of everyday people – the laborers, farmers, clerks and others.  It is democratic and embracing of ideals identified with America – freedom, the individual, and non-traditional themes.  African-American artists embraced the romantic style and made it their own.  Deeply expressive music like jazz and Motown rock and roll are a part of that genre and are fully American in their originality. Rita Dove’s poetry is fully within the American romanticism genre.

The poem Golden Oldies describes a moment we can all understand.  Music has a way of drawing on emotions and memories that remove us from reality.  Maya Angelou, another great poet, says, “Music is my refuge.  I can crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”   To hear Diana Ross sing her lament, we feel the emotions, as Rita describes them in her poem, of a young woman dying to feel alive.  The incongruity of those words describe exactly how many young women feel when love is lost.  Their world has ended, nothing else matters, their pain is the height of all pain and death seems a fitting Romeo and Juliet ending.

Dove wonderfully captures feelings in her poetic images.  We feel the swoon and the sway as she moves to the music, with her eyes shut, and imagines another place – and four hands, a lovers and her own, caressing and searching.  How many times has a certain song inspired us to imagine, hope for or remember the same, to recall moments of courtship, passion or love?  For one who is alone and lost in loneliness, we can understand the emotion and the longing in Dove’s poem.

And the pain of her moment is not immediately apparent.  We sense the memories the song evokes, the remembrance of lost love, the stirrings of longing once felt, but not the full heartache – until the poem ends and we process her words.

Diana Ross’s musical lament “Baby, where did our love go?” not only pulls the reader into a feeling of loss, longing and loneliness, we learn that  Rita feels it too.  The music first stirs her memories or, perhaps, her fantasies of romance.  But it also confronts her with her present reality, her present pain.  Where and when will she find the love she has lost, the love for which she hungers, the passion and desire that floats on a film of lovemaking sweat?  In that sudden realization, we understand even more the lament of her rhythmic sway where four hands move across entwined bodies and of her identity with young love and a soaring pain so sharp it feels like death.

Such is the lament of too many women and men – those abandoned by past lovers, those who have not experienced the rapture of romantic love, those who hope and yearn and dream of a future lover.  And in that regard, such is also the lament of anyone who feels isolated in their suffering – in the trials of relationship, illness, or poverty.  As I said last week, good poetry evokes such shared feelings.

In those sentiments of empathy, we find spiritual ways to show compassion and care for those who ache in their loneliness.  In his life and teachings, Jesus drew the abandoned and the outcast into his circle.  He touched and healed them.  He advised and counseled them.  To the lonely Samaritan woman at the well, one who had been married six times, he gently encouraged her to seek genuine love – the kind that lasts and is not bound up in promiscuity.  To the blind, the lepers, the women shunned by Jewish society for infirmities and bleeding disorders, Jesus was a presence of compassion – one who purposefully inserted himself into the pain and hurt of their loneliness and them offered the redemption that only feeling loved and included can provide.

Loneliness and longing are experiences of the mind, as experts tell us.  Usually, they are experiences of perception and not of reality.  Even so, the suffering is real.   Humans have evolved to be social creatures in need of nurture, and relationship.   God determined that it was not good for Adam to be alone – as the Genesis creation myth tells us.  And so God gave Eve to Adam – to be his companion, lover and soulmate.

Job suffered losses and pains that would destroy most people.  His wife and children all perished.  His business, wealth and physical well being were taken away.  Job was abandoned and shunned.  But he did not wallow and perish in his suffering.  He persistently sought to understand the purpose and the why of his suffering.  He sought the advice of friends.  He pondered, prayed and reflected – beseeching God and other forces for the ability to cope, understand and find renewal – all of which he did.

The Biblical David was also largely abandoned by his family and friends.  Guilty of adultery and murder, harassed by enemies, David was a chastened man who sought forgiveness and understanding.    He found purpose in seeking redemption from his sins and in making amends for them.

Experts tell us that just as loneliness is a state of mind, so too is a sense of contentment, happiness and fulfillment.  We have the cognitive power to change our circumstances – not by changing our surroundings or the people around us, but, instead, by altering our outlook and perception of life.  Persons who feel alone can refocus their thoughts and actions toward helping others in their pain and toward finding meaning in being active.  Dr. John Capiccio, an expert on loneliness from the University of Chicago, says that those who feel alone must step outside of their own pain long enough to serve others.  Real change, he says, begins by doing.  In serving, in getting involved, in doing random acts of kindness without any agenda to meet another person – but simply to serve and care, one will be transformed.  One will become a person who no longer engages in a pity party of their own making but, instead, one who is capable, giving and content.

Surprisingly, one will likely experience the paradox of serving and giving.  When we give, we receive.  When we let go of the sorrow, longing or actively seeking a lover, we may well find him or her.  When we focus not on our own suffering but on that of others, our pain ironically ends.  A new life purpose is discovered.  New friends are made.  Life reorients itself to be the kind we are called to live – it’s not about us, it’s about others.  It’s about our family, our friends, our colleagues, and even total strangers.

How often have I, over the past few weeks, had to remind myself that the difficulties I face with my mom, her dementia and helping my parents move is nothing?  I’m their son.  I’m called to love and serve them.   That’s what children do for their parents.  That’s what people do for each other.  Out of the ashes of our despair and our loneliness can emerge the seeds of renewal – and that comes only by forgetting the self and remembering others.

We come full circle back to the poem “Golden Oldies.”  As a woman past the prime of her youth, as a woman experienced with lost love and the desire to find it again, Dove calls her reader to remember the power a certain song can hold over us, to feel the ache of young love shattered and lost, to share the reality of deeply wanting something – but not knowing how to get it.  With her beautiful images, we feel all of the emotions of longing and loneliness.  And in our feelings, comes our understanding and our empathy.

That is what we are asked to do in life.  When we meet a dirty and smelly homeless man on the street, we’re called to understand his plight – the pain of poverty, the prison of addiction, the daily indignity of neediness, the inhumanity of living in the midst of plenty but having nothing.   For the immigrant, the criminal, the lonely, the depressed, the enemy, the single mom on food stamps struggling to feed her kids, – we can only show true compassion, we can only offer real help – if we have a heart, if we seek to understand, if we figuratively place ourselves in the midst of their affliction.  Empathy is a path to shared feelings, a path to understanding, and thus a doorway to offering the kind of concern that leads to help that truly heals.

Let us stop offering opinions and judgement of the other.  Let us stop talking.  Let us stop condemning and demeaning.  Instead, let’s listen.  Instead, let’s hear the cries and see the tears.  Instead, let’s feel the pain of another.  In doing so, we will understand.  And in understanding, we will then effectively, and compassionately, serve.

The poem “Golden Oldies” is a good one.  It reminds us of our own experiences of loneliness.  It provokes us to find ways out of our depressions and sense of isolation when we experience them.  Most of all, like all great art, the poem enlightens our minds, inspires our souls and pricks our hearts.  Let us go forth and be empathetic people.

I wish each one of you much peace and joy…

 

 

Message 138, “Summer Poetry to Enlighten and Inspire: Richard Blanco and an Immigrant’s Voice”, 8-4-13

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

To download and listen to the message, click here:

 

 

Imagine, for a moment, that you are an eight year old boy or girl, growing up like many youth, enjoying cartoons, playing action hero games, idolizing sports figures, attending school and living within a close-knit family and community.  On the surface, life is good.  But, for you and most of your friends, there is a darker life.

You live much of your life in fear.  You fear, more than most kids, standing out in school, being called to the principal’s office or being noticed as you walk, or ride in a car.  You fear getting sick or that someone in your family will get sick because a trip to the doctor or hospital invites the danger of too many questions.  “Who are you?”  “May we see your identification?”  You’ve been taught to avoid the police and firemen – any official in a uniform – even if you are a victim of crime or an emergency.  Your parents darkly warn you that the family could be broken up at any time – some could be taken away forever.

A favorite aunt of yours was stopped a year ago for driving with a broken tail light and you never saw her again.  You heard she was taken to a camp far from home where she was held in a stifling hot tent for many months, forced to wear pink underwear and pink clothing so she and others could be easily identified and, of course, humiliated.  She was often told to strip naked and throw her bedding and clothes into a large pile for burning – while she and others stood in long lines for showers, under the watchful eye of male guards, to ostensibly be cleaned of lice and bedbugs.  Such an event evoked images of long ago showers and even gas chambers, when hate signaled humanity gone mad.

Your aunt never spoke to an attorney and was only once in the presence of a judge, by way of video.  Along with many others, she was convicted of a misdemeanor, similar in severity to a speeding ticket.  She was found guilty of being in the nation without proper documentation and then deported from the land she loved.

For all practical purposes, you could be Jewish and living in Germany during the 1930’s and 40’s.  In truth, you live in America and it’s today – 2013.  You are an American – born here and entitled to all of the rights of any native born girl or boy.  Your parents are hard working, pay taxes and want only what millions of other parents want – to build a life for their children that is better than their own – a life in the case of your parents that is far better than the grinding poverty they experienced before.  But, besides being American, you also happen to be Latino or Asian or African.  You’re the American child of undocumented immigrants.  You live in one of many states in the nation where all of the above actually takes place even as I speak.

I ask you to find some place in your heart and soul that empathizes with and understands that child.  What if that was you?  What if you were born to such parents?  What if these were the circumstances you or your parents and family faced?  How would you feel?  How would you react?

My series this month is one that I have used the past three Augusts.  It’s a series on poetry that both enlightens and inspires.  I’ve chosen this month three poets well known in the world of poetry but who are not widely known outside that small community.  They write, like all poets, of love, life, pain and joy.  As good poets, they speak to a reader’s heart and mind – provoking new ways to think and feel.  The poets I’ve chosen write with layers of complex emotions and ideas that resonate deeply – often in unsettling ways.  Just as most Scriptures are poems that teach and inspire, so too are modern versions of the art – contemporary scriptures that are profound and worthy of spiritual exploration.

Today we’ll consider the poetry of Richard Blanco, a gay Cuban-American immigrant.  Next Sunday, we will look at the poetry of Rita Dove, a product of Miami University, who won the Pulitzer Prize for one of her poetry books.  As an African-American woman she writes of small moments in daily life that resonate across racial and ethnic lines.  In two weeks, we will read a poem by Jim Ferris, an award winning disabled poet who often writes of the pains and joys of his life.

For today, however, we look at Richard Blanco who uses his poetry to humanize the lives of immigrants, gays and lesbians.   His poems offer us a window to peer into these lives and thereby, hopefully, find something in common – something that is universal.

Blanco achieved some fame this past January when he became the first immigrant, the first openly gay man and the youngest person to serve as the poet at a President’s inauguration.  The poem he wrote and read on that day a few months ago, “One Today”, attempted with its simple verse to capture the sweeping nuances of life in America.  As he wrote, dawn’s light moves across our land, illuminating people of many backgrounds, professions, and abilities each living separate, different but ultimately American lives that are a part of who and what we are as a nation – one people, one life.

Blanco was born in Spain but conceived in communist Cuba.  His mother was in transit for only a month when she gave birth to Richard in Spain.  She and he stayed there only a bit longer before they reached her ultimate destination – the U.S.  Both have become naturalized citizens and Richard went on to earn a Civil Engineering degree which he still uses since.

Like many gay men, Blanco is close to his mother and she, like most moms, loves her son unconditionally even as she struggles with a socially conservative Cuban view of homosexuality.  Just after finishing reading his inaugural poem and shaking President Obama’s hand, Blanco turned to his mother and said, “Well mom, I guess we are finally Americans.”  It was a poignant statement for him and for so many whom he represents – not only immigrant sons and daughters but also gays and lesbians.  We’re all a part of the “One Today” of which he spoke.

He writes often of his mother in his poetry and I chose for today a poem that captures many of the feelings he has about her – and thus, many of his feelings about being an immigrant.  From Blanco’s acclaimed book City of a Hundred Fires comes this poem:

 

MOTHER PICKING PRODUCE

She scratches the oranges then smells the peel,

presses an avocado just enough to judge its ripeness,

polishes the Macintoshes searching for bruises.

She selects with hands that have thickened, fingers

that have swollen with history around the white gold

of a wedding ring she now wears as a widow.

Unlike the archived photos of young, slender digits

captive around black and white orange blossoms,

her spotted hands now reaching into the colors.

I see all the folklore of her childhood, the fields,

the fruit she once picked from the very tree,

the wiry roots she pulled out of the very ground.

And now, among the collapsed boxes of yuca,

through crumbling pyramids of golden mangoes,

she moves with the same instinct and skill.

This is how she survives death and her son,

on these humble duties that will never change,

on those habits of living which keep a life a life.

She holds up red grapes to ask me what I think,

and what I think is this, a new poem about her–

the grapes look like dusty rubies in her hands,

what I say is this: they look sweet, very sweet.

 

Blanco uses his poetry to express his feelings about his life – as a gay man and as a Cuban-American.   “Mother Picking Produce” captures, in the description of an ordinary moment in his mom’s life, many of the challenges of the immigrant – nostalgia for an old life, the hardships once endured, and the bright satisfaction of picking produce to buy, instead of picking produce as a low paid laborer working in the fields.  Blanco’s poem is touching and sad in its way: his mother has lost the flower of her youth, lost the vibrant folklore of her past, lost her husband and, perhaps, lost her dream of a son who is straight and gives her grandchildren.

Despite the underlying emotion of the poem, it also celebrates the quiet dignity in his mom.  She’s a humble woman, without self-pity.  With an eye for picking produce taught to her by generations before who toiled under a hot sun, she picks now at corner fruit stands or large grocery stores.  It’s an immigrant – but also American life – that Blanco describes: his mother’s life of stoic sacrifice, of persistent work, of being uprooted from a native land and planted in a new, of aging, of death and, yes, of a gay son.

Implicit in the poem is Blanco’s assertion of his mom’s humanity and American identity.  She’s the face of all moms in her sacrifice, service and love.  She’s the face of all Americans in their daily tasks – shopping, cooking, working, living.   In Blanco’s simple words detailing a simple task, we cannot help but empathize with and understand this mother – much like I asked us to do in my opening description of an immigrant child.

Such is the beauty of good poetry.  It asks us to consider, on a basic level, words and deeds that seem quite ordinary.  But, on a deeper level, we find in Blanco’s words something extraordinary in their simple gloss.  We find a humble human spirit full of the same dignity each of us possesses.  That reminds us of the natural rights of which I spoke in my messages last month:  all are equal, all are free, all have the right to happiness, all have intrinsic value because nature and nature’s god have seen fit to grant us life.

Through Richard Blanco’s words, his mom is no longer an immigrant woman, no longer a widow, no longer a loving mother of a gay son.  She’s my mom.  She’s yours.  She’s an American.  She’s a human being.  Indeed, in the love and pride that Blanco expresses for his mom, I feel the same for my mother – one who has been there for me all my life, but who is now moving into the twilight of hers.

And that, precisely, is the larger point I hope to make in my message today – and one that underlies Blanco’s poem.  Immigrants are people.  Immigrants are just like us.  Immigrants are not worthy of demeaning labels as “alien”, “illegal”, or worse.  No human should be labeled by such hateful words.  Our call is to understand, to empathize, to feel and to know the lives and experiences of others.  In doing so, we find not superficial differences that underscore our petty bigotry.  We find deeper similarities.  We find ourselves.

If we are, as Jesus and the Golden Rule asks of us, to love our fellow humans in the same way we love ourselves, then we have no choice.  We must love the immigrant.  We must show compassion.  We must honor and esteem them.  In doing so, we love ourselves and our own heritage.

Here in my hand I hold an old and tattered Bible – one that is at least one-hundred and sixty five years old.  It’s simple and small but it belonged to my great, great, great grandfather, Hugh Jones, who inscribed in it the date and place he likely obtained it – Montgomeryshire, North Wales, Great Britain, 1848.  His daughter and my great, great grandmother also inscribed in it her name and place – Lydia Jones, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1870.  Hugh immigrated here.  His daughter was a second generation immigrant daughter.  In my own similar, but unique way, I’m Richard Blanco in my immigrant heritage.  Lydia Jones is my ancestral immigrant mom.  I’m her gay son.

And all of you have your own immigrant family stories….

Whether we are six generations removed from being an immigrant, or ones of more recent status, we’ve found our piece of the American dream.  And, we have also contributed in big or small ways to the success of the nation.  It is an old but true fact that we are a nation of immigrants – unless we are Native-American.  We are a nation of mutts – so called cross breeds of many ethnicities, cultures and backgrounds.  On my mom’s side, I’m mostly English.  On my dad’s side, mostly German.  But, in truth, I’m all-American.

First and second generation immigrants are the fastest growing population group in the U.S.  There are over 36 million second generation immigrants in America – the citizen sons and daughters of first generation immigrants.  By 2050, they will account all of the growth in our working age numbers.  In the very near future, the United States will be a “Majority – Minority” nation  – one where the majority of people are members of a minority group.

But such numbers need not scare us.  Over 90% of second generation immigrants speak English as their primary language.  100% of third generation immigrants do.  The children and grandchildren of immigrants assimilate quickly and successfully.  36% of all second generation immigrants have college degrees – compared with 31% of all adults.  Second generation immigrants are less likely to live in poverty than other adults.  By a huge number, second generation immigrants tell pollsters they value hard work.  Immigrants and their sons and daughters are 27% more likely to start a business than are non-immigrants.  And their businesses succeed.  63% of all immigrant entrepreneurs earn at the top one-third of incomes compared with just 51% of all others.   Immigrants founded 40% of the Fortune 500 largest corporations in the U.S.  Sergey Brin, the founder of Google, is an immigrant.  So too is Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo.  Together, their companies have added millions of jobs and trillions of dollars to the U.S. economy.  The Social Security Administration estimates that the immigration reform law will add over $300 billion to that fund and, overall, immigrants will help reduce the Federal deficit by $685 billion through the payment of their fair share of taxes – if immigration reform is passed.

Immigrants epitomize what is called the “chutzpah” quality.  Those who are willing to risk it all and leave the only land and life they have known, such people have chutzpah – the kind of motivation, persistence, and work ethic that has made America.

Beyond their economic benefit to the nation, we are still called to show kindness and understanding to the immigrant.   That is a spiritual ethic.  Jesus pointedly praised the immigrants of his day – the Samaritans and non-Jews who were despised by the people of Palestine.  He implored his followers to show concern for them as he praised the immigrant attitude of charity over the self-righteous and bigoted sentiments of native born.  Indeed, Jesus and his parents, according the Bible story of his birth, were immigrants in Egypt when they fled the jealous and murderous King Herod.

In the Old Testament, the people of Palestine were reminded to show compassion to immigrants and foreigners.   They too, the Bible says, were once persecuted aliens in a strange land when all of Israel departed the drought devastated land of Palestine for the riches of Egypt.  How could they mistreat the immigrants of their day when their ancient ancestors had suffered as immigrants?

The same question must be asked of any of us.  Persecution of Italians, Hungarians, Germans, the Irish and many others is a historical fact in our nation’s history.  The term “illegal immigrant” was coined in 1892 when Congress passed laws banning all Jews and Eastern Europeans from entering the U.S.  Without a doubt, some of those same persecuted immigrants are a part of our own ancestral family trees.  If we are the products of those who had been mistreated, how can we do the same to the immigrants of today?  It is to our lasting shame – as humans, as spiritual people – if we do so.

My friends, I’ve used a simple poem to frame my discussion about the issue of immigration.  With our minds, we can read Richard Blanco’s spare words about picking bruised mangoes or ripe avocadoes.  But with our hearts, we can also read of an immigrant mom, proud, determined and yet sympathetic.  Great poetry can do that.  It can lead us to empathy and to deep understanding of the condition of others.  Those are spiritual endeavors and ones which we must practice in all aspects of life – in any situation, think about how the other person feels.  In the poem we read today, Richard Blanco makes a simple plea.  His immigrant mom is an Everymom, an All-American mom, and he is her gay, All-American son.

I wish you much peace and joy…

Message 137, Great Moments in American Spiritual History: John F. Kennedy and July 21, 1963

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

To download and listen to the message,  please click here:

 

Lucius Cincinnatus, the namesake of our fair city, was a well regarded ancient Roman patrician, retired army general and elected Senator who lived during the 5th century BCE.  At one point in his life, his son became ensnared in criminal activity, he was caught and then sentenced to prison along with an obligation to pay a very large fine.  Senator Cincinnatus was understandably humbled by the crimes of his son.  He paid his son’s fines, resigned from the Senate in shame and retreated outside of Rome to a small farm.

In 458 BCE, Rome faced a crisis.  Surrounding Italian tribes were threatening the Republic and, at one crucial battle, they defeated the last Roman army protecting the city.  The Senate was thrown into a panic and a delegation quickly travelled to Cincinnatus’ farm to implore him to return to Rome to help save the Republic.  He did so and was quickly appointed by the Senate as dictator – holding absolute and total rule over all aspects of business, the military and government.

Cincinnatus quickly organized the city, closed down all businesses and commanded every citizen to prepare defenses.  He put together an army and marched out to meet the invaders.  In one day, Cincinnatus and his army defeated the invaders and forced them to abandon any hopes of conquering Rome.

Cincinnatus was hailed as a hero on his return to Rome.  As the savior of the Republic and holding total dictatorial power, literally everything was within his control.  He could have remained dictator for life and Rome would have been happy to agree.  But, only fifteen days after his return, once Rome was assured of its safety, Cincinnatus resigned as dictator, returned power to the elected Senate, and returned to his farm.

Cincinnatus would again be appointed dictator later in his life when Rome faced a political crisis.  Once again, he solved the problem almost single-handedly, resigned and then retreated for a final time to his small farm.

Ever since, Cincinnatus has been looked to as the model statesman – one who placed the common good above his own individual interests, one who did not seek the benefits he might GET from Rome, but instead the benefits he could GIVE to Rome.  In our own American history, George Washington is often compared to Cincinnatus.  After defeating the British army and forcing their retreat back to England, Washington was at the apex of power and popularity.  Commanding a large army and hailed as a hero, Washington could have dictated the creation of a government on his own terms.  Like Cincinnatus, Washington disbanded the army, humbly resigned his commission as general and went back to farming.  Like the many men in his Continental army, he was a citizen soldier, a farmer soldier, and one who acted not with self-interest but in concern for the needs of others, the community, and the common welfare.

In concluding my message series on Great Moments in American Spiritual History, I look today at a more modern moment in our American life.  I look to the inaugural address of President John F. Kennedy on January 21st, 1961.  It is a speech that spoke to the high ideals and ethics of Cincinnatus and Washington – inspiring a nation and the world to seek peace, end petty bickering, sublimate selfish interests and instead work for the betterment of the community and humanity in general.

Whether or not we believe Kennedy himself lived up to those ideals, his speech on a very cold and snowy day is considered a landmark event in American and human history.  It is ranked as one of the four best Presidential inaugural speeches and, according to William Safire, a conservative columnist and adviser to Republican Presidents, one of the 100 best speeches of all time.  It has even been favorably compared to Lincoln’s Gettysburg address and to several discourses by Jesus.

Kennedy’s inaugural address was only 1,346 words long.  It lasted 13 minutes and 42 seconds.  It was one of the shortest inaugural speeches in our history.  It was shorter than my message will be today – proving the point that great comments and statements are usually brief.

But, like the Declaration of Independence and the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments in behalf of the rights of women, of which I discussed in my last two messages, Kennedy’s inaugural address was a deeply spiritual message.  It touched on almost no controversial, political or partisan issues.  He specifically avoided those topics as he wanted his speech to speak to high ideals that are universal in their appeal.  He intentionally aspired, as he wrote the document, to match the power and impact of other great speeches in history.  He succeeded.

The speech began simply but eloquently:  “We observe today not a victory of party,” he said,  “but a celebration of freedom—symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning—signifying renewal, as well as change.”

The address concluded with words that still resonate today:   “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.  My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.   With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

True to our own Gathering ideals, such an assertion implicitly tells us that God is not some outside force ordering our lives and our existence.  God is us.  It is we, as little gods and goddesses, who build a better earth.  If that is so, then as Kennedy asserted we must put the interest of others ahead of ourselves.

While the speech was not immediately recognized for its greatness, the New York Times and Washington Post barely mentioned it the next morning, within months it received high praise.  Its words have only grown in stature with time.  They captured the universal ethics that ennoble humanity as it reaches for the spiritual ideals of justice, liberty, equality, love and compassion.  The speech was and is a uniquely American statement but also one that clearly speaks to all people everywhere.  In the address, Kennedy said that civil speech toward one another is good, that human dignity is a basic human right, that poverty and disease must be fought on all fronts, that wealth and power must be humble and giving, and that our purpose in life is not to receive, but to give.

President Kennedy was no Jesus or Gandhi in the goodness of his life.  He was, as later history has shown, all too human and all too prone to the common foibles of arrogance, selfishness and sexual license.  But those flaws perhaps only enhance his greatness and the nobility of his ideas precisely because he was so human – like most of us.  As a man born to wealth and privilege, he did not shrink from serving during World War Two and famously saving the lives of over thirty fellow sailors.  Like many people who find themselves unusually blessed in life, he felt a keen sense that he must do his extra share to give back, to serve others, and to show compassion to the poor and powerless.  Such thinking clearly reflects Jesus’ teaching that to those whom much has been given, much is expected.

While Kennedy rode the coattails of a rich and powerful father, and having never experienced poverty himself, he, like many wealthy people of the twentieth century, purposefully tried to empathize with and understand the suffering of others.  We can credit him not with mythological perfection but, at his core, with a deep sense that humans, and more specifically citizens, are called to serve others more than themselves.  Human liberty is not a path to libertarian selfishness.  Individual rights are NOT a means to indulge one’s personal wants.  To have any meaning and any universal goodness, we enjoy the natural and spiritual rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in order that we work to insure them for all people, to insure the common welfare and to thereby secure those rights for ourselves.

These spiritual ethics were profoundly stated by Kennedy in his address.  He offered not new ideas but rather re-stated truths for the modern era.  Kennedy reminded America of our almost sacred purpose for existence as a nation and as a people.   Such a reminder was as necessary then as it is now, 52 years later.  America does not exist to enrich itself.  Its purpose is not to amass wealth and power.  Its greatness, despite its many flaws, is not found on Wall Street, in the corridors of the Pentagon, or along suburban streets filled with large homes, two cars and an abundance of material wealth.  Kennedy implored Americans and people around the world to consider much higher goals in life – we exist as neighbors, brothers, sisters and fellow humans, each responsible for the well being of one another.   As he said in his speech, “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”  Such words speak of a moral imagination for cooperation and mutual care.  The rich will not long be rich if too many languish in poverty.  The powerful will soon be weak if too many are prevented from climbing the ladder of success.  Speaking to all in our land who are economically comfortable, Kennedy insisted that the only way they will maintain their status is if they offer hands up to the poor and disenfranchised.

Kennedy continued in his address, “For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life…Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans — born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage — and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.  Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty…”

Such words speak powerfully to our souls.  They beautifully express the spiritual sentiments of people of every religion, race, and class.  Human liberty, in all its forms, is an essential and natural right – one granted not by men or women, but by nature and by nature’s god.  If people are to enjoy their right of liberty – they must be free from the scourge of poverty.  They must be free from the oppression of bigotry and hatred.  They must be free from the suffering of hunger and disease.  They must be free from the sting of inequality and injustice.

To enjoy liberty, as a responsible citizen of the world, one is not free to turn a blind eye to the needs of others.  One is not free to pursue selfish happiness at the expense of others.  One is not free to abandon all duties to care for, give to and serve one another.  For the privilege of simply living, to those whom have been granted the blessings of good health, intelligence and ability of body and spirit, there exists a duty, a calling and a responsibility.  We must serve.  We must give.  We must look beyond ourselves to the needs, hopes, fears, hurts and dreams of one another.   That, THAT is what it means to be an American.  That, THAT is what it means to be human.

The legacy of John F. Kennedy is a long one, despite his short time as President.  Consistent with his call to service, he initiated the Peace Corps, in which over 200,000 persons have served in 139 countries.  He initiated the idea of Medicare to which countless millions of elderly Americans have found a health care freedom from fear.  Our nation awaits the day when ALL its citizens might share that same freedom – a form of liberty to which Kennedy spoke – freedom from fear of illness and freedom from fear that one cannot afford equal access to affordable health care.

Kennedy initiated calls for greater Civil Rights.  While it took President Johnson and his courage to confront a racist south and get Civil Rights laws passed by Congress, Kennedy importantly set the tone in his inaugural address and in his administration – none are free unless all are free, none are equal unless all are equal.  We carry forward that appeal in today’s battles for equal rights for women, gays and lesbians and, yes, after so many long years, for African-Americans and our immigrant brothers and sisters.  Ultimately, we do none of us any good when even one teenage boy must walk through his neighborhood in fear that he will be assaulted simply for the color of his skin.  We harm every marriage in the land when any ONE marriage is dishonored and unequal simply because the partners are of the same gender.  We demean men and their desire to live true to their human spirit as dads, husbands and citizens of the world when even one woman is denied the right to an education or to the control of her own body.  As the Bible implies in its many verses about love, compassion and understanding, there is neither male or female, neither rich or poor, gay or straight, black or white in those who follow and practice the teachings of Jesus.  There is simply us, one common species huddled together on this small planet, limited to but a few years of life out of an eternity of time, sentenced to bear the pain of disease and death, but linked in being ONE flesh, ONE blood, ONE human family.

That common heritage and mutual humanity compels each of us to stop our hatreds, stop our bitter name calling, cease our intolerant attitudes, end our failure to empathize with how others must live, and open our blind eyes to injustice and inequality.  As I have discussed in my three messages this month of July, let us sing that ancient song begun when the universe first formed: the song of natural rights whose words were captured by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, shared by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1848, and memorably evoked by John F. Kennedy in 1961.  Equality.  Freedom.  Justice.  Opportunity.  Service.

Much as it was for the Roman General Cincinnatus, for George Washington, Jesus, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa and other great figures in history, our life legacy will not be counted by all that we have received, but, instead, by all that we have given.

I wish each of you much peace and joy.

 

Message 136, Great Moments in American Spiritual History: July 19, 1848, Seneca Falls, New York and Equal Rights for Women

 

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

To download and listen to the message, please click here:

(Some images displayed during the service can be seen by scrolling down through the below text.)

 

I preface my message today with a disclaimer.  As you might have guessed, my message today will explore the great moment in American spiritual history when the equal rights movement for women began on July 19th, 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York.

It is not, I admit, entirely appropriate for a man to recount the details of that event and to discuss spiritual implications of women’s demands for full equality.  As a man, I cannot intuitively understand all of the complexities in how women feel, and how they have been hurt and demeaned.  The same must be said whenever I discuss racism against African-Americans or hispanics.  As much as I want to understand and empathize, I am limited by my race and my gender.  Indeed, as a member of the dominant race and gender over the past many centuries, a white male should be one of the last to speak on such issues.  The era of white male domination of culture, politics, religion and family life is rapidly coming to an end – and that is a good thing for America and all humanity.  This new reality in our nation and the world will not exclude white men from conversations about life, politics and culture, but it will result in a more balanced discussion.  The role of white men, in the future, ought to be one of greater humility and a willingness to listen and participate as co-workers and not as leaders.

And so I proceed with caution in my message today along with the disclaimer that what I say is limited by my gender along with my hope that each of you, women in particular, will add to, or correct my words.

The first half of the nineteenth century in America was a time of rising self-confidence in American identity and national life.  The nation had achieved independence, written a constitution that worked, won three wars, asserted its influence over the western hemisphere in the Monroe Doctrine and expanded its territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  Culturally and politically, it wrestled with stated ideals of freedom and equality.  The anti-slavery abolitionist movement was a rising force and battles were already being fought over whether the institution of slavery could expand westward and thus survive, or die a slow death confined to the relatively backward south.

A religious second great awakening was also taking place.  Fundamentalist Protestant churches were rapidly growing in numbers and influence.  A primary focus of this religious awakening was on the supposedly imminent second coming of Christ.  Americans sensed a need to put themselves and society in order, to be prepared for the return of Jesus.  Fueled by a reaction against reason and Deism, Americans hungered for a less hierarchical religion – one based on the pure teachings of the Bible.  Most new converts to such fundamentalist churches were women who sought to diminish traditional roles and power of men in the church.  Faith and the Bible should be interpreted by individuals without the control of Priests or ministers.  That empowered women in an area where they dominated – the teaching and practice of Christianity in the home.  Appropriately, in 1831 the famous evangelist Charles Finney began allowing women to pray aloud during his church services.  This was not only a monumental change in religious practice, it openly defied the Biblical command that women must be silent in church.

In this fervent mix of anti-slavery abolition and the second great awakening, many women became aware of their second class status and the incongruity of living in a nation that asserted ideals of equality.  Women were at the forefront of the anti-slavery movement and most of those women came out of the Quaker religion that allowed for greater gender equality.

It was at one abolition meeting in 1840 that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott met and began planning for a convention to address women’s rights.  Mott had achieved rare fame at the time for being an accomplished speaker – since women were usually not permitted to speak to crowds of any size.  She, along with other Quaker women, organized the Seneca Falls Convention that took place on July 19th and 20th, 1848 – a great moment in American spiritual history.

The convention comprised 300 participants of whom about one-third were men.  Frederick Douglas, the African-American anti-slavery advocate, was one of the most notable participants.  On the second day, the Convention considered and approved a Declaration of Sentiments written almost entirely by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  She wisely used the Declaration of Independence as her blueprint.   While the majority of delegates to the convention considered the document too radical for them to sign, the convention as a whole voted to approve it and 100 people signed it.  A forceful speech by Frederick Douglas, in which he compared the plight of women to that of blacks, carried the day and insured its passage.

The Declaration of Sentiments followed Jefferson’s 1776 document almost word for word while importantly including phrases that say, in part, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal……The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.”

Among the grievances against women listed in the document were: the denial of the right to vote, the passage of laws affecting women without their consent, the denied right of women to own property, the forced declaration by women to obey their husbands, the absence of any right by women to divorce or own a share of marital property, the denial of a right to education, a forced subordinate role in all aspects of religious and cultural life and, last but not least, being taxed without representation.  In conclusion, the Declaration of Sentiments states, “We insist that women have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.”

          While the Declaration’s statements of equality seem obvious in today’s culture, it was a revolutionary document at the time – one which even many female advocates for greater rights refused to support.  Male reaction was, predictably, demeaning.  One newspaper called the Declaration of Sentiments signed at Seneca Falls “the most shocking and unnatural event ever recorded in the history of womanity.”

          Just as I asserted last Sunday that the Declaration of Independence was and is more of a spiritual document than a political one, the same is true of the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments.  Like Thomas Jefferson, Elizabeth Stanton rooted her demand for female rights in the laws of nature and nature’s God.  Such laws of nature, such human and moral rights are at their very essence deeply spiritual ideals.   Equality of status and rights pertains to the human spirit and not to anything material or physical.  Ideals like freedom, dignity and equality inhabit a realm of the spirit that are beyond anything of the material or scientific realm.  We cannot touch, see or hear equality.  But we know it by intuition, experience and feeling.  In that regard, equality is a core spiritual idea and one that echoes back to the very beginning of time when the universe ordered itself and put into place the kinds of natural laws that, as I defined last week, are timeless, universal and not man-made.  They simply are.  They have been true since the beginning of time and will be so for all eternity.

          As we know, however, history tells us that humans have not always enjoyed a full expression of their natural rights.  Men and women have not been universally free, equal or able to pursue happiness for themselves and their communities.

The Seneca Falls convention was a landmark moment in history that captured the emerging feelings of women that they must equally enjoy all natural rights.  The convention spawned many other meetings and even laid the groundwork for anti-slavery and equal protection claims by African Americans in the 1860’s.  Indeed, when the 15th amendment was first debated in 1866, one that would grant citizen and voting rights to blacks, rights for women were included.  Sadly, many advocates of full equality for blacks argued that including women in the amendment would insure its defeat.  Women who had advocated for abolition and equal rights for blacks were deeply hurt that they had been abandoned.  It took until 1920 and the passage of the nineteenth amendment, for women to be granted full citizenship and the right to vote.  Elizabeth Stanton along with Susan B. Anthony played crucial roles in writing and getting that amendment ratified.

I accuse fear based, fundamentalist religion as the primary culprit in denying basic spiritual rights to women and blacks, and more recently to gays and lesbians.  Jesus, however, famously treated women with dignity, included them in his inner circle of followers and advocated for their rights.  Interestingly, Paul claimed that according to the ethics of Jesus, there is no male or female, Jew or gentile – all humans are the same.  But almost hypocritically, Paul in his other Biblical letters insisted that women remain silent in church, that they submit in all things to their husbands, that they wear a head covering symbolizing their submission to men, that they be ineligible to serve as church leaders and that they have no authority over any male older than 13.  Despite the sentiments of Jesus, Paul crucially set the tone for how women would be treated by Christians for almost two thousand years – up to and including today.

But the Old Testament and other Jewish writings were no different.   According to the book of Ecclesiastes, sin and death entered the world because of “the wickedness of women” – which is why God ordered women to suffer in childbirth.  In the Old Testament, women are considered unclean during their monthly period and for nearly a month after giving birth to a boy.  If she gives birth to a girl, she is unclean and must isolate herself for twice that time.  A man can divorce his wife for any reason – even for burning his food.  A woman can never initiate divorce and is controlled by her husband much like a slave.  Women cannot testify in courts of law and their status was beneath that of male slaves.  As Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, “The Bible in its teachings degrades women from Genesis to Revelation.  The Bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipation.”  She wrote what she called a Women’s Bible in which she both praised notably strong female characters in the Bible while highlighting the thousands of verses that demean women.

When President Obama said at his second inauguration, this past January 21st, that from Seneca Falls – to Selma – to Stonewall our forebears have been guided by the idea that all humans are created equal, he implored today’s generations to continue that struggle.  We do the legacy of the many unknown heroes who fought for such rights no good if we fail to continue their efforts.  The Gathering is but one of many spiritual organizations that has committed itself to this fight for human equality and so we must NOT just remember the words of Elizabeth Stanton and Seneca Falls, we must engage ourselves in that yet unfulfilled but deeply spiritual effort.

As overt examples of America’s continuing sexism, I turn to easy examples.  Of 535 members in Congress today, 98 are women.  Of 50 current governors, 5 are women.  We have yet to elect a female President.  Of CEO’s to Fortune magazine’s 500 largest US corporations, 21 are women.  Of the 100 largest churches in the US, only two are Pastored by women.  On average, women in America earn only 78 cents for every dollar that men earn.  Across all racial groups, women comprise substantially more than half of those living in poverty.   94 per cent of all single parent homes are led by women.   While even such meagre numbers of female equality would have been unheard of at the time of Seneca Falls, it is sobering that 167 years after that great spiritual moment, women are still not equal.

Just as it is with racism, sexism today is often a subtle but insidious disease.  It lies hidden within our unconscious selves and is often more destructive than overt male chauvinism.  As an aspiring enlightened man of the 21st century, I want to claim I am not sexist.  And yet, I know there are sexist vestiges within me.  If I am to BE the change I want to SEE, I must first admit my own latent sexism and work to correct it.

How often do I and other men defer to women as the supposedly weaker sex?  How often do I unconsciously look to men as strategic leaders and fail to see women in the same light?  How often do I assume women will bear the responsibility of raising children – that they, instead of the father, will sacrifice career or education to do so?  How often do men refer to female colleagues, not by their names but as “Honey” or “Babe”?  How often does our society sexualize and objectify women, discounting their intelligence and ability?  How often do we assume men are stronger, smarter, more stable, and less emotional than women?  How often does our society demean so-called female jobs like nursing, teaching or social work, through lower pay and lower status? Even worse, how often do men and women demean women who work within the home – so called housewives who raise children, maintain a house and serve as a hidden source of strength?  As a side note on that subject, I despair that my own mom sometimes sees her contribution to society, as a lifelong housewife, as meaningless and trivial.  Like so many homemakers – women and men – she is a hero, a woman of dignity and someone who touched the world for the better in countless ways.

How often do we stereotype women as poor drivers or as frivolous people who enjoy shopping, eating and leisure – while men do real work?  How often do we allow boys and men to dominate discussion in classrooms or meeting rooms and thus diminish girls and women?

Advertisements are a reflection of our values and thoughts and they clearly do so in how we view women.  Take a look at how women have been portrayed in a few contemporary advertisements and some from the recent past.  Each conveys ideas that women are naive, simple, unskilled and useful only as sex objects.  Such thoughts reinforce the overt and subtle sexism still alive today.

My point in this month’s message theme on spiritual moments in American history is that we often take for granted the seminal events that advance the well-being of humanity.  Ultimately, what all great spiritual prophets of history did – those like Jesus, Mohammad, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King – was to cast a vision that foresaw a better world where inequality, cruelty, discrimination and hatred does not exist.  Such spiritual prophets saw humanity as it WANTS to be, as it ASPIRES to be, as it YEARNS to be.  In our hearts, we want a world that respects the life, liberty and happiness of each person.  But our actions and our thoughts too often work against that vision – we hate, we don’t forgive, we act with arrogance, we’re cruel, we discriminate, we are indifferent.  And, as a progressive congregation, we are not immune from such thinking.  Men must repent of their sins against women and, I say this will all due respect, women must claim their natural rights without a fear to be leaders, speakers and decision makers.  They should also speak out.  They, along with men, should tell any man when he has acted in sexist ways – no matter how unintended.

Deeply rooted in all of us are racist, sexist, homophobic and class focused demons that are sinister in their hidden and unconscious nature.  Those are the worst kind of demons.  As a father of two girls, I wish for them and their children a more equal world.

Our calling, therefore, is to remember, learn from and carry forward the spiritual battles of our forebears – in today’s example, those of the brave women and men of the Seneca Falls convention of 1848.

I wish you all much peace and joy.

Message 135, Great Spiritual Moments in American History: July 4, 1776

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

To download and listen to the message, click here:

Alexis de Toqueville, the early nineteenth century French historian who remarkably chronicled American culture and politics in his classic work Democracy in America, wrote that unlike in Europe, Christianity was destined to play a pivotal role in our nation’s development.  In the U.S., Christianity was not tied to ancient ideas like the divine right of kings or Priests and Popes exercising political power.  However, as de Toqueville noted, even as our constitution forbade state support of any particular religion, Christianity strongly influenced American life.  Indeed, some sociologists have proposed that the so-called American creed has, in fact, become a de facto national religion where our country is seen as the Biblical shining city on a hill – ordained by God to be one to which all other nations look.

Americans routinely invoke God’s blessing upon the nation, our currency places our trust in God, the President is seen as a national Pastor, our flag is worshipped as a symbol much like the Cross and we pledge our fidelity to this one nation under God.

Not surprisingly, far too many Christians have conflated their religion with the civil and political affairs of America.  George Washington is our Moses, Abraham Lincoln our Jesus and the constitution our Bible.  Our laws derive from the Ten Commandments and they must continue to be based upon them.

Arguing against this theological view of America are many secularists who assert that the founders never intended our nation to be identified with one particular religion.  Indeed, they actively worked against such a notion.  These critics of an American creed or religion, however, often assume there is no spiritual heritage in our history and overlook the very real spiritual events and thought streams in our nation’s history – ideas that are profound in their concern for the welfare of not just Americans, but of all humanity.

My series this month of July will look at particular events in our history that are deeply spiritual – ones that invoke not a specific theistic God or savior but ones that clearly call on the principles of a universal higher power that knows no nationality, race, religion or ethnicity.  I hope to explore with you ideas that suggest that America, despite its many imperfections and hypocrisies, has continually tried to discover and advance rights and privileges that are creator given to all people.  Our history, therefore, can be seen in such a light – not as a jingoistic story of American greatness but as an evolving effort to advance humanity as a whole.

Sitting at a small wooden writing desk in a cramped, fly infested Philadelphia apartment,  Thomas Jefferson wrote the seminal document in American history and one of the most important in all history.  The Declaration of Independence was intended, however, to be an eighteenth century version of a press release.  It announced the specific reasons for the colonists’ rebellion and separation from England.  Beyond its more mundane list of grievances – like anger at British denial of colonial free trade or the stationing of armed troops in the colonies – Jefferson grounded arguments for rebellion on high minded ideals.  His preamble contains some of the most quoted words in our history and the best known sentence in the English language.

Jefferson boldly asserts Enlightenment ideals that speak to the universal and eternal rights of humanity – ones that most philosophers of the time believed came from nature itself.  Not only that, his appeal begins with a firmly rooted notion that all of us are born of the same creative force.  Implicitly, Jefferson’s use of the words “Laws of Nature” and “Nature’s God” bestows on humanity both a common heritage and a common right to the privileges of mere existence.  These are not subtle Christian words.  They were and are words that transcend religion and politics.  They are words and rights that harken to the earliest days of existence – mysteries that resemble scientific laws but which are profoundly deeper and beyond physical proof.  Such natural rights simply are.

Like all Deists, however, Jefferson invoked human reason as the way to determine our natural rights.  Far from being a Christian statement of belief in a supernatural deity, Jefferson plainly states the universally spiritual view that humanity is an intrinsic part of the natural world.  We are not only a part of that world, we are subject to its laws.  And such laws, the Laws of Nature as Jefferson called them, are eternal and immutable ones that philosophers from Aristotle to Cicero to John Locke have attempted to define.  Jefferson relied upon the thinking of all three men.  The Laws of Nature for them were not only scientific laws, but also ones that are immanent and transcendent.  These laws are discovered and observed and are NOT of human creation.

As Jefferson eloquently wrote, Natural Law and Nature’s God grants humans intrinsic, immutable and unalienable rights.  God did not give such rights.  A King did not give such rights.  No Parliament or other group of humans granted such rights.  The Laws of Nature and Nature’s God – however we define them – granted those rights to the first humans, to the colonists of 1776, to each of us, and to future humans exploring far flung galaxies.  They are implicitly timeless.

And chief among such rights is the idea that nature creates without favoritism.  Reason alone suggests this truth.  We are born equal in our humanity, our fallibility, our mortality and our common privilege to life.  The random birth of one destined to be King grants him or her no greater status in the realm of existence than a farmer or laborer.  Each will live and die and each must be accorded the dignity that comes from simply being human.

If nature has given us life, than by reason and logic we have the sole unalienable right to it.  Such is a monumental but fundamental spiritual right for all people – one which we too often take for granted but which is foundational for all other rights.  If we have the right to our own existence, than nobody may own our bodies, our labor or our thoughts.  Nobody may legitimately kill us and nobody may limit our life in any way that is not subject to our consent.

And if we own our very lives, then by extension we own the freedom to live it as we choose.  Reason and logic tell us that natural law grants us absolute liberty to pursue our dreams, thoughts, hopes and abilities.  No King, no slaveholder, no religion and, indeed, no government may infringe upon the right of liberty without just cause to which we have consented.

And if we have – following the progression of logic from the rights of life to the rights of liberty, then we implicitly have the right, as Jefferson asserts, to the right to pursue happiness.  Such rights to happiness are not blank checks, however, for hedonism.

Jefferson was expressing centuries old philosophies revived during the Enlightenment that natural law designed humans to be social creatures.  We are not loners who act and live unto ourselves.

Since that is so, natural law compels us to use our reasoning abilities to best determine how to live peaceably with others since we cannot survive alone.  The pursuit of happiness for Jefferson meant that humans must increase the common good of all people so that the individual may then be happy.  This mutual cooperation, one I have before referred to as the moral imagination that guides our existence, is the only way by which humans experience lasting happiness.  In other words, for Jefferson and others, the right to pursue happiness is a spiritual and cooperative right – one that demands my concern for your well being in order to realize my own.

And it is for that reason that Jefferson asserted this unique right.  Others, like Locke, had asserted the rights to life, liberty and property.  But Jefferson clearly understood that we must be allowed to mutually secure the common well-being if we are to pursue happiness – including the ownership of property.  If we fail to secure the common well-being, or if one person or group of persons prevents the common well-being, than the pursuit of happiness for everyone is also prevented. The Laws of Nature are defied.

It is in many ways ironic that Thomas Jefferson wrote such a spiritual and moral document.  Like many of us, he was all too human.  While he stated a belief in the duty to work for the common good, he often acted in ways that were selfish.  He spent his life in debt due to lavish personal indulgences.  And, as one who penned the famous words that all men are created equal, he owned many African slaves, treated them as his personal property and abused them to the extent that he used at least one of his slaves, Sally Hemmings, as his concubine.  Her six children, all believed to have been fathered by Jefferson, were also held by him as slaves.  Most other founders were no better and few objected to the flagrant assertion of the equality of all people while living in a land that sanctioned racial slavery.

Despite that overt hypocrisy, inconsistencies which were noted by members of the British Parliament, the document is not diminished in its moral or spiritual power.  Indeed, Abraham Lincoln said that Jefferson’s words are timeless – words that will echo through the ages as the voice of our human conscience demanding a more perfect world.  As Lincoln said of the Declaration, it is a “standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”

Lincoln clearly understood the Declaration’s eternal significance as an implicitly moral statement for all social movements – past, present and future.

In that regard, the Declaration has the moral and spiritual force of the words of Jesus, Gandhi, Mandela and other prophets. Rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness demand the logical complimentary rights to affordable health care, food, shelter and basic well-being.  It is a simple but too often overlooked fact that people cannot enjoy the natural rights of life and liberty unless they have the basic means to experience them.  Is one born truly free if one is born into poverty?  Is one born equal if one has little or no opportunity to improve, learn and grow?  Can one pursue happiness if he or she is denied the equal right to love and marry whomever one wishes?  Can one find happiness if the reality of racism and sexism still exist?  Natural Law does not insure an equality of outcomes, however.  Nature has determined that life is not and never will be fair.  But Natural Law implicitly demands an  equality of opportunity to all and that can only be realized by access to decent food, shelter, education, justice and healthcare.

Whatever force that created the universe and the human species – whether it be the Big Bang, evolution, God, Yahweh, Allah or all of the above – that force granted rights and privileges by the mere fact of initiating human life.  I exist.  Because I exist, I exist with dignity.  As a person with intrinsic dignity, I have the right to freely determine how I live and to live in a way that builds peace and happiness for society and myself.

These are the plaintive demands of medieval indentured servants, of African slaves, of persecuted religious and ethnic minorities, of women, of children, of the disabled, the poor, the sick, of gays and lesbians, of marginalized people everywhere.

Such truths of natural law and Nature’s God are self-evident not because they are derived from a theistic God – as many American Christians might assert – but because they emanate from nature, as Jefferson wrote.  However we might define nature, it is not something subject to definition by the Bible or any other Scripture.  Nature and its laws are vast, expansive, and mysterious but subject to laws that reason permits us to discover – laws such as gravity, thermodynamics, the evolution of species and interactive behaviors between humans.  These natural laws can be observed, predicted and explained.  Nevertheless, they are deeply spiritual in their mysterious origin, their timeless truth and their universality.

As a Deist who believed in a creator god of some unknown type but one who does not interfere in the affairs of the universe, Jefferson worshipped a natural and reason based system that was far removed from the pages of the Bible.  As he once said, “Question with boldness the existence of God, because if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”  He believed only in the ethics of Jesus as he is famous for rewriting the Gospels to exclude all supernatural claims and acts of Jesus.  Nature’s God, as stated in the Declaration, is not the God of Abraham, Moses, or Christ.  Nature’s God, like natural law, is far more complex and, in many ways, appropriately not fully known.

The Declaration of Independence is one of the greatest documents of all time precisely because it is not a narrowly focused political or religious document.  It follows in a long history of spiritual statements about the worth of all persons.  It echoes the fundamental reason why churches like the Gathering exist and why we exist as individuals: we work and advocate for a more perfect world of equality, freedom and universal happiness.

Our calling, therefore, is to reject appeals to an American civic Christianity or religion that seeks to rewrite the history of 1776.  But, we are equally advised to embrace the clear spiritual words and ideas in the Declaration of Independence.  In its own way, it is a profoundly holy document.  We must treat it and honor it in that spiritual light.

 

The below audio file contains the entire one hour celebration service.  It is a large file and may take a while to download.

Featuring: Ron Jandacek, Jack Brennan, Jenn Hackman, Rev. Steve Van Kuiken, Nada Huron, Sue Cline, James Helm, Dick Buchholz, Pastor Doug Slagle and the Gathering Choir…

 

Message 133, “The Gathering at a Crossroads: What Does It Mean to Serve?”, 6-16-13

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

To download and listen to the message, click here:

 

 

 

 

There are many famous speeches given by Martin Luther King, Jr.  One that stands out is a sermon given near the end of his life entitled “The Drum Major”.  In it, King used as the illustration for his message an episode described in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus is talking with his disciples.  Two of them, John and James, get into a debate over which of them would sit at Jesus’ right hand once he became King.

The book of Mark is often considered the most accurate of the four Gospels.  It was the first and earliest to be written, there is no narrative of the miraculous virgin birth and a vital portion of the last chapter, number 16, detailing Jesus’ bodily resurrection, is widely considered by almost all scholars to have been appended to the text many years after the original.  Such a fact calls into question the veracity of the resurrection but it also highlights the probable truth of the rest of Mark.

The account of James and John arguing over who would be the right hand man to Jesus is therefore likely to be a true story.  They were not debating over who would sit next to Jesus in heaven but rather who would would be his most trusted adviser when he became King of the Jews – a David like figure that many followers of Jesus hoped he would become.  Indeed, few contemporaries of Jesus saw him as a supernatural Messiah.  He was instead the hoped for great leader who would rally Jews to defeat the Romans and re-establish the powerful nation of Israel.

As King told this story in his 1968 sermon, the disciples of Jesus did not get it.  They were as blind as many people were to the essential message and purpose of Jesus.  As Jesus himself said, he acted as a teacher and rabbi not to be waited on, and fawned over, and treated like an indulgent celebrity, but instead to serve others and to be an example of the true heart of God.  Indeed, in the Bible story recounted by Martin Luther King, Jesus tells his disciples that his mission was not to be an earthly King with great power.  Rather, he envisioned a more transcendent Kingdom – a Kingdom of the heart where ethics of compassionate service, humility and forgiveness ruled the day instead of religious hypocrisy and false piety.  No matter who would sit at his right hand and thus enjoy that dubious status, Jesus pointedly reminded his followers, and Martin Luther King was implicitly saying the same to his followers, that the greatest of people are not Princes, Army Generals or muti-millionaires, they are lowly servants.  Those who are great, serve others.  Those who are great, are humble.  Those who are great, put others first.  Those who are great empower not themselves, but other people.

King implored his listeners at the Ebeneezer Baptist Church to work against the all too human impulse to be a drum major.  All people, he said, crave attention, praise, power and status.  We seek such things, he said, in the cars we drive, the houses we live in, and the ways we treat other people.  Racism is the result of the drum major syndrome, he said.   One group of people seeks to assert itself and act superior to others based on skin color.  War is also the result of the drum major syndrome as nations brutally seek domination over weaker ones.  King pointed to the example of America’s war in Viet Nam as our own national drum major attitude of arrogance.  Great people seek not to be the first among races or the first among nations.  They seek to be first in love.  First in generosity.  First in serving others.

I find it fascinating that one great prophet of history, Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about the example of another great prophet – Jesus.  Both led non-violent movements against the oppressors of their day while calling people to radical compassion, humility, gentleness and the moral standard of decency and justice for all people.  Both died for the sake of their cause.

King looked not only to Jesus as an example but also to Mohandas Gandhi – another prophet for the ages.   Gandhi was born with a servant’s heart.  His passion in life was to serve the poor by teaching them the means to self-sufficiency.  When granted great power because of his large following, he gave it up to others – preferring to cede the limelight and instead lead a life of profound simplicity.  All three men – Jesus, Gandhi, and King – rose to historic greatness not because of their strength, their cunning or their physical power, but because they nurtured and empowered other people.  They were classic servant leaders.  Jesus washed the feet of his followers, Gandhi offered his life as an example of how to live simply and justly, King surrounded himself with other intelligent people to whom he gave power and responsibility so that the Civil Rights movement would endure without him.  As much as they taught about the ethic of serving others, they lived it out.

Indeed, looking at all of the prophets depicted in the painting behind me, they each have one thing in common.  They were first and foremost servants.  As Martin Luther King said in his “Drum Major” sermon, “Everybody can be great.  Because anybody can serve.  You don’t have to have a college degree to serve.  You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve.  You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.  You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.”

As we reflect on our ten year birthday as a congregation this month, we have rightly acknowledged our primary purpose and reason for existence is to seek inner growth in ourselves so we can go out and serve others.  Our ultimate reason for existence is not to sit here and enjoy our cozy club of friends, it is to serve.  Many of you, during our discussion time after last week’s message on what it means to grow, suggested new ways we can serve others.  I applaud those thoughts as I am heartened by this congregation’s hunger to serve.

In order to serve others, my message last week on the importance of growth and my message this week on the importance of service to others, are intrinsically tied together.  We cannot continue to serve others unless we grow.  We cannot grow unless we each serve.  While it is comfortable to remain who, what and where we are today, that is not and never has been our purpose.   As much as it would be easy for me to find comfort in our status quo and simply coast along, I am not satisfied with where we are today.  I hope none of you are either.  We are a progressive church.  We have so much more to do and so many more places to go.

Jesus did not tell his twelve disciples to join him in a small club and retreat from the world.  He expanded his following to include and serve women, the disabled, non-Jews and many others.  Thousands eventually followed him.  Gandhi was not content to practice non-violence and simplicity on his small ashram farm in South Africa.  He moved back to India precisely to expand the number of people he could reach by empowering them to self-sufficiency while demanding their rights.  Martin Luther King did not limit his protest march to Birmingham or his bus boycott to Selma.  He empowered our entire nation to enter an era of greater justice.  This congregation was not content, at its beginning, to closet itself in a small huddle around its rejected leader.  It incorporated itself as a church, opened itself to the wider community and moved to a new space that brought many new members – myself included.  Such acts were undertaken as a mission to serve as many people as possible.  We must never forget that mission.

All servant prophets have a moral vision.   They refuse to retreat to the comfort of their small clan.  They are not visionaries of growth as a means to power, prestige and wealth.  They are visionaries of growth in order to serve – to expand their compassion and their moral ethics of justice to as many people as possible……..precisely because they are SERVANTS.  As Martin Luther King said in another speech of his, “Life’s most urgent and persistent question is: what are you doing for others?”

As the Gathering embarks on its next decade, we must emerge from a decade of formation into a teenage time of growth in wisdom, maturity and greater service.  Our mission to be a progressive servant leader in this community calls us to actually get out there and serve – to be the hands and feet of compassion to homeless and impoverished youth.

To be a servant leader in our community, our call is to remain humble in who and what we are.  Our vision is not to seek beautiful and elaborate buildings or large, applauding crowds of people.  We know our limits while also acknowledging we have wisdom and insight.  We have a progressive, non-religious message of spirituality that is important in a world where fundamentalism hurts so many.  Our call is to humbly offer our message to as many people as possible.

We will be servant leaders by living true to our ideals.  By understanding that ethics like forgiveness and non-violence are essential qualities in any human, our work is to practice them toward one another and toward the wider world.  This involves listening to other opinions, refusing to engage in angry or hate filled speech and remaining respectful of all opinions – political, faith based or otherwise.  As individuals and as a congregation, we will act and speak with peace.  We will model to others, as a means to serve them, the way of tolerance, respect and peace – even for those with whom we disagree.

We will be servant leaders through collaboration between ourselves and with other people and organizations in the community.  Far from believing we have all the answers or all knowledge, our goal is to work with others in ways that leverage the abilities of many.  We will hlep empower others to find meaning and purpose in life by serving and coordinating outreach to the poor, hungry and homeless.  We will empower people in ways to facilitate, lead, innovate and create.  We will help empower homeless children and youth in our community to break the cycle of poverty – to learn, work, grow and achieve self-sufficiency.

We will be servant leaders by our celebration of all people.  We will embrace diversity as a way to serve a community of many cultures, races and sexualities.  We will serve our world by welcoming the unique contributions and differences of any and all people.

Finally, we will be servant leaders by our emphasis on the spiritual nature of servitude.  We are all interconnected in the grand design of life.  What affects others, affects us too.  We serve not just to benefit one child or even a few.  We serve to touch the future of all life – us, our children, the strangers outside these doors.

The topic of this message asks what does it mean to serve?  For any of us, serving defines our very reason for existence.  Church is not a social club that offers a brief but nice Sunday interlude.  From the simple to the extraordinary, we touch other lives.  From making a pot of coffee, to holding the hand of one who is sick, to greeting another with a smile, to cleaning a bathroom, to feeding the homeless, to offering soothing music, we sublimate our needs, our wants, our comfort for the sake of another.  We sacrifice.  We give.  That’s our calling.  That’s our duty.  That is the only way we will survive and the only way we will grow.

Only thirty-four days before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “Drum Major” sermon.  At its close, he spoke poignantly of what he wanted said at his funeral.  He did not want to be known as a Nobel Peace Prize winner.  He did not want to be known as a leader of a movement.  He did not want to be known as a speaker or a drum major of anything.  He wanted it simply said that he fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the imprisoned, and cared for all humanity.  He wanted it known that he was first and foremost a servant.

My friends, let that be said of any one of us.  That we were a servant.  That we served above and beyond ourselves.  That we served with our love, our humility, our generosity, and our passion to learn and grow so we can serve even more.  For each of us, and especially for this place called the Gathering, we live to serve……………….and we serve to live.

I wish you all much peace and joy.

 

 

 

 

Message 132, “The Gathering at a Crossroads: What Does It Mean to Grow?”

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

To download and listen to the message, please click here:

 

Recently, when a reporter noted that the currently popular singer Britney Spears had experienced some significant improvements in her bustline, the thirty year old celebrity quickly protested.  “I have not had breast implants.  I have merely undergone a growth spurt!”

As ironic as it might sound, Britney speaks to a larger question we each face.  How much do we change due to external influences that artificially cause us to enlarge, and how much do we instead initiate a process of deliberate and planned inner growth of the mind and soul?  In other words, do we simply change, or do we actually grow?

As we all know, change is inevitable.  Importantly, however, change is not necessarily growth.  When we grow, we qualitatively improve for the better.  We’ve learned something valuable.  We’ve gained wisdom, hard won experience and expansion that is good and helpful.  Growth is almost always intentional.  Indeed, growth is a process that should never end.  The status quo is not an option.  In a world that is rapidly changing, we can either grow or fall steadily behind.  By failing to plan our own growth, we have paradoxically planned for our failure.  We will change, but it will not be for our good.

As the Gathering nears its ten year birthday, we have a justifiable reason to celebrate.  Very few churches of our size last more than a few years.  More importantly, very few churches that begin from nothing reach a point where we find ourselves today – a congregation that attracts new members, is consistently able to meet an annual budget of $50,000, and is actively serving and changing lives for the better.  Henry Ward Beecher once said that, “We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but rather by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”  By that measure, the Gathering has grown substantially.

Birthdays that matter, however, look not so much to the past but rather to the future.  Holidays and anniversaries clearly celebrate what has already happened, but they importantly look forward to the “yet to be.”  What comes next?  How do we build upon the past?  What can we do to insure continued birthday celebrations far into the future?  Ultimately, how do we continue to grow and what strategies must we commit ourselves so that change is not forced upon us?   How do we, instead, embrace growth that is planned and derives from our inner values and beliefs?

I would be seriously remiss as a Pastor if I did not encourage growth in every one of us.  I would also be guilty of malpractice if I did not promote our growth as an organization and community.  Whenever I depart my position here, I pray that any legacy I leave behind will be one of positive and planned growth.  And I don’t hope for modest growth at our  margins.  I hope for real, durable and significant change for the better in you, in me and in the Gathering.  What I most pray for is that the amorphous thing we call the Gathering will be firmly on a path to long term survival and impact.  I pray for a progressive faith community that endures far into the future and one that nourishes and serves the needs of our grandchildren’s generation – a faith alternative to dogmatic and harmful religion.  As I often like to repeat, we give and serve today for the sake of others – both present and future.

But, as much as we serve others, we indirectly give to ourselves.  By planning to grow, we also serve our values and our purpose for living.  The Gathering has helped me to substantially grow into a more open-minded, confident, and capable man.  Spiritually, intellectually and emotionally I am a different man than I was almost four years ago when I began as Pastor.  And, I hope many of you can say the same due to your time at the Gathering.  If that is so, then we must both selfishly and selflessly plan for continued growth.  We must go deeper, broader and more boldly into the future in ways that expand who we are and what we do.  That must be a mission not only for us as a community, but for each one of us personally.  What can we do for ourselves and for others that stretches us and grows us in new and challenging ways?

For most faith communities, four engines of growth have been identified.  These so-called engines enable both individual and collective growth in ways that deepen the faith experience and help invite new members.  The goal for us is not just to expand numerically, but to expand in deeper but profound ways.  How many more volunteers are we sending out into the community?  What new areas of service do we build and promote?  How do we encourage fellow members to be increasingly at peace with themselves and the world?  What new insights into life do we discover and share?  Ultimately, how do we make a difference – individually and collectively – in other lives?

The four engines of growth in most churches are: 1) Engaging children’s and youth programs;  2)  Adult community-building experiences that foster supportive relationships and friendships; 3)  Meaningful and diverse ways to serve others, and 4)  Interesting and inspirational adult Sunday services.  Faith communities that focus on those four engines of growth will, it is said, grow in depth and in numbers.

Indeed, according to statistics on why new visitors return to a church, 36% say they do so because of the so-called sermon, 32% return due to the friendliness and welcoming nature of the congregation and 30% return because they enjoyed the overall worship experience.  For us, we would be wise to focus our qualitative and numerical growth efforts on these areas.

We obviously lag in offering children’s and youth programs at the Gathering.  While this is a chicken or egg issue for us – we don’t have many youth as a part of the congregation – that may well be due to our lack of programs for them.  I challenge us to work to rebuild a children’s program.  We can begin small and offer an engaging children’s experience perhaps once a month – thus requiring a rotating group of perhaps four adult teacher volunteers who would only serve a few times a year.

We do offer multiple opportunities to build adult friendships at the Gathering.  Indeed, this is one area many of us feel is best about our church and what keeps us coming back.  I challenge us, however, to seek growth in our racial diversity and in how we become even more inclusive for women in leadership roles.  We must be intentional in those efforts – perhaps purposefully inviting African-American friends or electing women as our leaders.  I also challenge each of you to help us grow by taking the initiative in planning community building events.  I cannot organize them alone.  I need other organizers and idea makers to plan and execute movie nights, pub nights, field trips, pot-lucks and other creative and fun events.

In serving our community, we have grown tremendously over ten years.  As a still small church, we have grown over the last few years from serving one charity to now serving five.  While I caution us not to over-extend ourselves, there is still room for growth in this area.   Out of approximately fifty regularly attending members, 19 serve in outreach efforts.  While almost everybody serves our congregation in some way, I challenge us to raise the number of volunteers who serve in outreach.  Even if it involves baking a few cookies for homeless kids, there are countless simple ways to serve in outreach.  As we expand our volunteer numbers, we can then explore more ways to serve the community.

Specifically, I call us to explore new outreach projects like obtaining new financial grants to further serve homeless youth – perhaps by joining or starting a tutoring program.  Also, we might partner with an organization like Habitat for Humanity and actually help, along with other groups, build a home for a homeless family.  Once again, we need ideas and organizers to plan and implement such new projects.

I firmly believe that a faith community that is primarily oriented toward serving others will never fail.  Volunteering in our city builds community between those of us who do serve, it underscores our purpose for existence as individuals and as a church, and it offers the kind of inner satisfaction that only giving and serving can bring.  As long as I am Pastor, we will be an outreach oriented faith community constantly seeking new and better ways to serve.

Finally, there is room for growth in how we conduct our Sunday services.  I want to continue to grow as a speaker and I seek your honest but gentle thoughts on how I can improve.  I encourage growth in the types and varieties of musical expression we offer – specifically looking to occasionally include more African-American music, inspirational songs by contemporary pop and rock and roll artists as well as other types of music.  I challenge us to be more inclusive and diverse in our so-called worship liturgy – occasionally including inspirational poems, dramas, videos and member participation in our services.  Overall, I challenge us not to become stuck in always doing things the same way but to expand our worship to sometimes include practices that speak to the wide diversity of age, gender, race, culture and sexuality.

As always, we need visionaries and thought leaders to facilitate those initiatives.  While I am responsible for Sunday services, I am not an island.  I welcome not only fresh ideas but also people who will lead the effort to execute them.  We are an intelligent and creative group who can collectively respect our Sunday traditions while engaging those of the future.

Last on my list on how we can grow, I encourage us to honestly consider moving to a new space.  As I have already discussed, such a move is not an answer to our growth.  Brick and mortar will never be more important to us than hearts and minds.  But our church space is a reflection of who we are and it sends out subtle but strong messages to those who might attend.  While our current space has served us well, I believe we must plan for a space that will add to our qualitative and numerical growth.  We want a space that can help us grow in each of the growth areas I’ve listed – in a youth program, in building stronger community, in serving outside charities and in our worship experiences – those on Sunday mornings and also those for our weddings, child dedications and funeral services.

If we think of the great prophets throughout history, they did not seek mass numbers of followers.  Rather, the huge numbers of people who did follow them came as a result of their deliberate plans and ideas.  Who we are as individuals does not happen by random accident.  We exercise, we read, we learn, we work, we eat, we seek medical care – all to help us grow.  If we choose to stagnate, we initiate our slow demise.  The Gathering is no different.  We need your help not to maintain who and what we are now, we need your help in how we become deeper, stronger, and better.   If this place matters to us and to our personal growth, we need everyone’s help.  We need ideas and leadership so that on June 23, 2053, there will be a Gathering birthday celebrating a thriving progressive community built upon the planned growth that we initiate.  By our past hard work and dedication, we have this unique gift called the Gathering – one that comforts, serves and enlightens.  Let us boldly and creatively build its future so that this gift will keep on giving.

To download and listen to Bart’s message, please click here: