Author: Doug Slagle

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

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In ancient Greek mythology, only gods and goddesses possessed fire.  Its energy and power were considered too dangerous to be given to humans.  But one god, Prometheus, appealed to Zeus, the head of all gods, to give fire to humans.  Zeus said no but Prometheus disobeyed and gave it to people anyway.

As punishment to humans for accepting such a dangerous thing, Zeus sent to earth the beautiful but impetuous goddess Pandora.  With her, he sent a sealed jar and told her it could be considered a prized gift only if she left it unopened.  But Pandora was unable to resist.  She opened the jar and immediately out poured all forms of evil – hatred, anger, murder, envy, greed, bigotry, and all other forms of nastiness.  At the bottom of the jar, however, remained one promising thing that, if left in the bottle, would be a helpful force for people.  That one thing was hope.

Today marks the next to last day of the Jewish holiday Hanukkah.  Being an eight day celebration, it ends at sunset tomorrow evening.  As most of us know, Hanukkah celebrates the ideal of hope in a dark and troubled world. 

Approximately two-hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a dictator named Antiochus Epiphanes took control over all Judea – present day Israel.  His hatred of Jews was so extreme that he did all he could to insult the religion and its people.  He held sporting games in the holy Jerusalem Temple where the participants were naked.  He slaughtered thousands of pigs in synagogues and in the main Temple sanctuary.  Worst of all, he demanded that Zeus, and a statue of him, be worshipped as a god by all Jews.  He ordered his soldiers to kill anyone who even slightly resisted.  Each of his orders, and many more, were direct affronts to pious, monotheistic Jews.

About thirty years later, a Jewish man named Judah Maccabaeus and his four brothers organized an army to confront Antiochus and his military.  Using guerrilla style warfare, in two years Jewish forces defeated the dictator.  Upon doing so, they rushed to the Jerusalem Temple to rededicate and restore its holiness.  They found its lamp stand and lit it in the sanctuary – as prescribed in the Torah.  To their dismay, they found it held only enough oil for one day.  It took several days to make sacred oil,  so the people were disappointed that the Temple would lose its holiness once the lamp went out.  Over the coming week, however, they were overjoyed to see that the lamp remained lit – keeping their sanctuary holy for eight days during which enough new oil was made.

This event, which Jews have celebrated ever since and will do so again this evening, is a symbol of hope and persistence.  Opposing a brutal dictator, fighting against his powerful army, winning the war only to find their country and their Temple in ruins, the Jewish people refused to give up.  They held onto their faith, which was founded on active hope.

And that theme of hope for Jews has persisted.  I’ve told before the true story of a prisoner in the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp who jumped into an empty vat that had contained lard to feed prisoners.  He slid around in the vat for some time before rushing into his barracks where he stripped off his shirt and tore it into long thin strands.  The guards and other prisoners thought he had gone mad.

Later that night, however, the man took the fat smeared strands of his shirt and arranged them into a crude menorah.  He promptly lit the middle strand and then one of the others.  It was the first night of Hanukkah and he alone had remembered.  Hundreds of starving prisoners prayed in silence around that menorah.  In the midst of the most terrifying Jewish calamity ever, when they as a people faced being wiped out, Jews refused to give up.  They held onto their faith and hope.

My theme for my four December messages is “It’s a Jingle Bell Rock Holiday.”  That likely sounds far too upbeat for what I’ve said so far, but my intention with this theme is for us to closely consider the ideals of well-known holiday songs.  For today, I want to look at the song “Light One Candle” by Peter Yarrow of the Peter, Paul and Mary trio.  Over the last forty years the song has become perhaps the most beloved of Hanukkah songs – one that sings of commitment to a more just and peaceful world and the hope that it will happen.

(Michael sings “Light One Candle”)

For us, the song’s plea for social justice describes our UU values.  More importantly, and what I want to focus on today, is the idea and psychology of hope as expressed in the song’s lyrics.

Life, as the ancient Pandora myth and the song suggest, is filled with hardship.  We experience times of great joy only to also be confronted with multiple challenging experiences.  What does Hanukkah teach us about such times?  With the current world and its people divided, with freedoms being threatened, with prejudice and hatred getting stronger, with many of us facing personal heartache in some form, how are we to respond?  How might the lyrics of “Light One Candle” inspire us?  Where does hope come from and how might we light it, nourish it, and keep it bright?  Hope, I submit to you, is a vital emotion to have.

Over the last few decades, psychologists have defined the emotion of hope as the perceived capability to solve a dilemma.  Using self-confidence as motivation, people set reasonable goals and plan reasonable ways to meet them.  Hope, in this regard, is not just a feel good emotion.  It’s a cognitive response to difficult circumstances.  For us as Unitarian Universalists, reason based hope could also be described as our form of religious faith.

The magazine Psychology Today says hope is analogous to the little engine that could.  When confronted with a crisis, genuine hope fosters in people the creativity to see beyond their suffering and instead visualize ways to overcome it.  Doing so causes them to make plans, and armed with a new optimism based on their own plans, people then believe much like the little train engine of children’s stories, “I think I can, I think I can.”  Psychologists therefore see hope as an emotion that directly comes from mental cognition and sound thinking.  And that’s a key point.  If our rational brains inform our emotions, instead of our primitive instincts doing so, we are more likely to act with wisdom.  Genuine and lasting hope is not naive.  It is formed by reason and logic.

To think in a way that fosters real hope is to have confidence in one’s abilities to solve a problem.  It also involves, according to psychologists, the ability to formulate realistic strategies to do that.  We, in this church community, have confidence that we can have an impact on reducing homelessness and poverty among children and teens – one of our goals for doing good in the community.  Our confidence leads us to plan ways to do that – to raise money and then volunteer as a church with local organizations.  Our confidence, strategizing, and actual work produce in us genuine hope much the same way that Jewish resisters opposed a tyrant, and Holocaust inmates refused to give up their humanity and their faith.

The song “Light One Candle” implicitly endorses that hopeful but reason based approach.  The song asks us to “light one candle for the wisdom to know when the peacemakers time is at hand.”  It also encourages us to “light one candle for all we believe in” and to remember past pain and the ways we dealt with it.  It calls us to light one candle not just as a spiritual gesture, but as something to inspire social justice action.

The song also tells us to light a candle for the sacrifice required to achieve our goals of peace.  By lighting Hanukkah candles, we are reminded of our responsibility to create change for the good.  We’re reminded of ways to do that – to honor our values, employ our wisdom, and use memories of past hardships – all to not dream of good that magically happens, but to instead believe and then act in ways that will make our hope and faith a reality.

And that is a fundamental premise of Unitarian Universalism.  It’s something else to remember when we tell others just what it is that we believe.  Our hope, what some call our faith, does not rely on a god to address the ills of our lives and world.  We do not worship a savior who rescues humanity.  Instead, UU’s believe that it is us who are one another’s saviors.  That’s a nutshell expression of our spirituality.  We have faith and hope in people, not gods or goddesses, to heal the world.  We accept the wisdom of many religions and we adopt truths from many sources not to please a deity and avoid his or her punishment, but to instead serve humanity.  That’s our duty and it’s what we were born to do.

Our hope, therefore, is not grounded in fear based religion.  Our hope is based on an informed and confident worship of universally true values.  We have the wisdom, ability and heart to work for the dignity of all, to advocate for equality and peace, and to seek truth.  Our cognitively based hope is what I consider the only provable form of religious faith people can have.  That hope creates for us both a better world that we help build, but it also creates our symbolic afterlife.  How we marshal hope to serve others in this life, and all the ways our service is paid forward far into the future, those are our legacies and our figurative heaven.  Personally, I’d rather be on the frontlines of doing good in my life – and thereby changing things for years to come – than I would praying, reading ancient texts, and selfishly trying to earn my ticket to heaven.  Any lasting legacies of good that I do now will be my afterlife reward in how I have affected the future.

Rational hope, expressed in the song Light One Candle, exemplified by Hanukkah, and as the basis for UU spirituality, comes because of three things: 1) we must set realistic goals for what it is we desire, 2) we must craft realistic plans of action to achieve our goals, and, 3) we must think confidently and positively that we will succeed.  Of these three, the most difficult is the ability to think positively.  Experts assert, however, that capability lies within every person.  We each can remember how we have overcome past challenges.  We’ve seen others overcome them too.  We know that success in achieving a goal is not just a prayer, but a proven reality we’ve experienced and seen.   When we remember these, fear, doubt and depression lose their power over us.  We’re able to confidently repeat “I think I can” when any hardship stands in our way.  Reason based hope and faith are only true if they are based on informed – and not emotional – goals, plans, and positive thinking.

I have a good friend who fifteen years ago was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.  Doctors told her only 20% of all similar patients survive past a year.  My friend, though, has an amazing spirit.  She believed she would beat cancer and live to see her young children grow into adulthood.  She first set out to learn all she could about her cancer.  After doing so, she underwent the best treatments available – ones that were daring but promising.  After her treatments, she committed to regular and painful screening.  She also began living in ways that boosted her body’s ability to beat the cancer – by eating the right foods and continually exercising to strengthen her overall condition.  Five years later, doctors declared her cancer in remission.  Ten years later she was told her cancer was not detectable.  Fifteen years later, a milestone she celebrated this past May, doctors told her she was in peak health and effectively cured of cancer.  She now delights in her adult children and six young grandchildren.

Many of you know similar stories.  Such stories, I firmly believe, are not based on a religious miracle or twist of luck.  My friend made her luck.  She is the goddess that caused her so-called miracle.  Committed, confident, informed and strategic, she had a faith and hope based on the kind of positive outcomes you and I can achieve too.

This is the realistic hope of the Maccabee brothers who defeated a tyrant.  It’s the hope of Jews who fought, died and survived during the Holocaust.  It’s the hope of people who refuse to allow democracy or equality die, and it’s the hope of all of us who serve, give and remain committed to this good but imperfect church knowing that it helps improve many lives.  All of us, and all of these people, exemplify the spirit of Hanukkah and rational faith.  Tonight and tomorrow evening, let us therefore light one candle of hope not as some misguided fantasy for a better world, but as a confident assertion that we can, and we will, make it happen.

I wish you all much peace and joy…

Please click here to listen to the message:

Please click here to listen to the message:

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

 

Click here to listen to the message.  See below to read it.

 

I said last Sunday in my message on Native American values that they are remarkably similar to Unitarian Universalist seven principles.  That similarity points to the expansive nature of our spirituality – that UU’s do not confine themselves to specific religious doctrines and philosophies.  We instead commit ourselves to the seemingly perplexing idea that we do not, and cannot know the answer to eternal question humans have posed: Where did the universe come from and how was it created?

Those two questions get at the mind-bending mysteries about eternity and the source of all creation.  If the universe was created by God, what existed beforehand?  Where did God come from and what was she doing before the universe began?  The same question arises from a non-religious notion of the Big Bang as creator of the universe.  What was the stuff that exploded in the Big Bang and where did it come from?  A creative explosion has to have been caused by something.

These mysteries, while we don’t often think about them, are the foundation of Unitarian Universalism.  As UUs, we confess that people cannot answer such questions and we cannot rely on ancient myth to do so.  We ask more questions than we assert having dogmatic answers.  What we DO claim to know are seven principles that guide our thoughts and actions. 

Having more questions about spiritual matters than absolute answers, as an amusing point, is the basis for one joke about UUs.  How do people who disagree with Unitarian Universalism express their disapproval?  They burn a question mark on a UU church front lawn!

But as much as we take pride in our questions about spiritual matters, and our seven principles, we like all people are prone to often ignore our own so-called values.  I unfortunately do not always respect the inherent worth and dignity of every person – perhaps most especially toward a certain orange skinned, fake blonde haired politician – which is not good of me.

I also suggest we do not always understand or practice the UU seventh principle: the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.  And for the purposes of my message topic today, that is why I believe we must heed the Native American value of moderation and balance in all things.

Our seventh principle states not only scientific fact, but also a fundamental belief in how everything in the universe SHOULD function.  The universe is not a collection of different things that function independently.  Indeed, as we all know, all life forms and all of the cosmos operate dependently on other forces and things.  A tree, for instance, cannot grow into a towering living organism unless it is nourished from the soil, watered by the rain, and energized by the sun.  The same is true for humans.  We exist and each us thrive because of the finely tuned balance of many complex natural functions.  If any of them should operate outside a balance – for instance if the sun would suddenly become far hotter – we would perish.

As pre-scientific people, Native-Americans understood that truth.  And it was for that reason that they deeply respected the natural world and believed they must live within its well-balanced systems.  They therefore did not over-hunt animals and take their existence for granted.  They did not foul the water, abuse land used for growing crops, or assume they could own any part of nature. 

Their understanding of the universe also informed their philosophy for getting along with one another.  The harmony and balance they saw around them in nature was not just how the universe operates.  They understood that harmony and balance are critical for how people should live.  They must coexist in a harmonious, cooperative and empathetic way.

As I’ve pointed out the last two Sundays, that stands in stark contrast to white European values and philosophies.  Our individualistic approach to life comes from how we see the universe.  Employing a misguided understanding of science, western thought sees the universe as   “atomized” or divided into distinct parts.   Each piece of the universe, westerners often believe, functions more or less independently and according to Darwinian principles – the strongest survive while the weakest are soon eliminated and evolved out of existence.

Western European ideas about how to live are thus guided by such atomized individualism.  People, we tend to believe, succeed or fail due to each person’s ability to fend for him or herself.  And that philosophy has created a white European value to compete aggressively against one another – which has led to what we have today: a divided and very competitive humanity separated by meaningless divisions of race, gender, sexuality, politics, and nationality.  We look past the beauty of our many shared values to instead focus on relatively minor differences.

        Individualism also led white Europeans to believe they could simply take the new American land as their own and plunder its resources for their enrichment.  Individualism led white Europeans and their forebears – including us – to see the universe as something in which all creatures MUST compete – NOT cooperate – to survive.  In order for my so-called race to thrive, others must not.  In order for the US to be great, other nations must be less great.  In order for any of our opinions to prevail, other opinions must be defeated and demeaned.  White Europeans too often fail to understand the interdependence of human relationships, and thus compete aggressively so that one side wins and all others lose.  We fail to see life as Native-Americans did – that there must be a win-win outcome for everyone – so that humanity can live in balance.

Native-Americans knew by experience that humans and their communities cannot thrive as isolated loners.  People are not so smart or powerful that they can exist outside the balance of nature, or without harmony between one another.  Native Americans understood that people thrive only when they live within a cooperative community that constantly works to maintain peaceful coexistence.  Indeed, as I related last Sunday, natives valued tribal harmony so much that they honored all decisions made by tribal councils – even if they felt some were bad decisions.  Indigenous people understood that good decisions will naturally succeed and bad ones fail – to eventually be corrected.  Their wisdom told them that collectivist cooperation and peace were far more important than competition with one side winning and an angry imbalance as the outcome.

Most natives therefore lived in large communal lodges with adults and children eating and sleeping immediately next to multiple other unrelated persons.  Indeed, polyandry and polyamory – having multiple romantic partners – was a common native practice.  Sex was seen as a natural way to strengthen bonds between different people.   Indigenous people did not hold the western view of monogamous marriage as a way to insure that the property of a man would pass down to his progeny.  That western view of marriage originated from an individualist philosophy based on the perpetuation of wealth.

Natives, however, owned no property, but shared equally and widely.  Since it was therefore not important to determine who was the father of a child and thus to whom property will be inherited, sexual relations between natives was very open.  Women in many native tribes were the ones who chose their romantic partners – not men.  In that regard, most native cultures were often socially female centric.  An entire tribe assumed responsibility for the well-being of a child since paternity was often not known.  Even more, human sexuality was seen as fluid so that many indigenous cultures welcomed same sex relationships.

Such cultural practices extended to other attitudes as well.  Believing in the balance within nature, natives did not believe there was anything wrong with other abled persons or animals.  There was, for instance, no native word for disabled.  Their views on many things were not binary – as they are in western culture.  People and things are not good or bad, normal or abnormal, gay or straight.  Instead, all things and all people exist equally, in harmony, and in delicate balance.  Something can be both good and bad, masculine and feminine, abled and other abled.  Indeed, as I’ve suggested in past messages, there is great value in the so-called grey areas of life – the zones between two opposites.  And natives believed this.

Once again, their values contrast with white western views that life IS binary and that people and things are either one extreme or the other.  And that, I believe has led to our culture’s disharmony and lack of balance –  resulting in anger and hatreds toward one another.

Juli Rose shared last Sunday that natives incorporate circles in their spirituality.  Circles, for them, symbolize the continuity and balance of life.  Circles are unending and definitely non-linear.  Indeed, perfectly straight lines do not exist in the natural world.  Bends, curves and complexity are instead the norm.  Circles therefore represent how people should think, act and understand one another – in a non-linear way. 

        The all encompassing quality of a circle epitomizes Native values to understand the universe in a holistic manner.  The universe cannot be taken apart and considered by its atomized parts.  It’s instead a balanced amalgam of many things all existing, cooperating and working together.  A holistic way of thinking, therefore, accepts multiple ideas and truths – much like Unitarian Universalists do.  We do not believe in a linear approach to spirituality – that a person takes one direct line from question to one absolute truth.  Instead, life and spirituality are complex and encompass a wide range of truths.  We celebrate the timeless hope and resolve of Jews, the sacrifice and forgiveness of Christians, the solemn dedication of Muslims, and the reverence for nature of pagans and indigenous people.  Life is not about separating into supposedly right or wrong ways of believing, thinking and living.   It’s instead about celebrating diversity and harmonizing differences into a balance of synchronized cooperation.   

Natives did not have the ability to fully understand how stars and planets operate, but they saw how the moon, sun and stars moved in regularity and balance.  That awareness was ahead of its time, but it proved for natives how nature works and how people must act the same.  One planet in our solar system, or one group of people in our congregation cannot separate from others without chaos or volatility resulting.

The clash between Native-Americans and white Europeans was and is, therefore, a clash between two different sets of values and philosophies.  Natives were collectivists who valued respect, cooperation, unity, harmony, balance and sharing.  White European conquerers of this continent, our ancestors, were individualists who valued competition, aggression, hoarding of wealth, and dominance.  I believe, however, that native culture and spirituality was most in tune with what Unitarian Universalists say they value.  In that regard, I want to move away from a more western oriented way of thinking to begin to think and act collectively as natives did.  They valued respect for all people – even their opponents.  They valued harmony in human relations – trusting that time will determine whether decisions were correct or not.  They refused to fight amongst themselves.  They valued empathy and understanding of differences.  These collectivist values are Thanksgiving ones I want to give thanks for and begin to adopt  – which means I must accept that life is not about my personal wishes, but about everybody’s wishes working together for the common good.

        In that regard, I ask for your indulgence for just a moment.  I believe this congregation is a loving one that is currently imbalanced.  The debate and vote that occurred over the last several months has affected all of us.  Several of our dearest friends say they can no longer be a part of this place because of the vote outcome.  That wounds me not for my sake, but for the sake of this good place.  My message today on moderation, balance and harmony has convinced me that Native American thinking was right.  And, ironically as I pointed out in my recent Harbinger column, that is what our recent banner vote reflected. Two thirds of us essentially wanted the same thing – a banner that would at least in part say “black lives matter” – but that 66% super majority could not agree on how that would appear.  In truth, what seems a negative outcome was actually a positive reflection that GNH IS mostly united and committed to social justice.

But our current imbalance and smoldering angers indicate we do not always practice our seventh principle – to honor the interdependence of human relationships such that we practice balance and harmony in this congregation.  Our passions can get the best of us such that we sometimes hurt those near to us, or who disagree with us.  Disharmony in this place has been caused by all of us – me and you.  I confess to you sorrow over my role in that. 

We must harmonize, we must come together, we must see that even when we disagree, we should not be disagreeable.  I humbly plea for empathy toward each other.  I humbly plea for cooperation, compromise and love to prevail.  Instead of blaming someone else for any imbalance, let’s look in the mirror to see our role for the imbalance.  What we do here, what this place stands for, are so important in the world today.  Will we thrive in loving harmony, or will we be like our culture that is divided into warring camps that dislike and disparage one another?  Let’s look to Native-American values for our answer.

I wish you peace, joy and a Happy Thanksgiving.   

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

 

Click here to listen to the message.  See below to read it.

 

All of us are familiar with Steve Jobs and his accomplishments.  Not only did he and his work partner Steve Wozniak develop the first widely used personal computer, Steve Jobs had the inspirational vision to develop the first smartphone – a device that has had a revolutionary impact.  Jobs believed that having a computer in our pockets would not only be popular, it would change how we live.  And, indeed it has.

Jobs’ advice on the secrets of creative success have therefore been widely listened to because they are different from what we often hear.  Hard work, intelligence, and persistence are all a part of any success story, but more important to success, for Jobs, is the diversity of someone’s life experiences.  Multiple life experiences, he said, expanded his creative inspiration.

Jobs said that having a life of diverse adventures and challenges, ones that are unique from the experiences of other people, provides someone with a lot of knowledge.  When that person then “zooms out” to consider those dots of experiential knowledge, he or she can see how they might be connected.   And it is in the connection of dots of knowledge that we are most wise.  In other words, wisdom comes from thousands of diverse experiences we have had – and our creative combination of them into useful and often profound ideas.

As Jobs said, our task is not just to learn facts, but to instead actively live out new and constantly changing experiences that help us evolve.  He encouraged Apple employees to take time off to be a poet in Paris, volunteer in a third world country, practice zen buddhism or dare to try things that they are afraid to try.  He offered the example of Walt Disney who once tried LSD.  While neither Jobs or I advocate the use of illegal drugs, that new experience for Disney enlarged his creativity and gave him the idea to develop his revolutionary cartoons.

Too many people, Jobs believed, live in a bubble of familiarity and watch the world happen around them.  Creative and wise people, however, are those who venture outside their bubble to no longer watch the world, but instead immerse themselves in it to experience amazing things.  When we collect multiple good, bad, challenging, inspiring, boring, or dangerous experiences that are outside our everyday lives, we have the stuff that builds wisdom.

Ironically enough, I’ve connected dots of knowledge and experience to craft my message today – one entitled “Thanksgiving Values of Native Americans: Honoring the Wisdom of Our Elders.” 

Steve Jobs, Native Americans, and elders may not seem related, but in an unusual way they are.  Within all of the many Native-American cultures is a deep respect for elders.  That is not simple respect for older people.  It was and is respect for any person who has lived a full and diverse life.

For us and for indigenous people, full and diverse lives are usually those of older people.  But that is not always the case.  An elder to Native Americans is a leader, teacher, healer, or spiritual guide who is recognized by others as having acquired useful awareness about how to lead a worthwhile life.  The key attribute of an elder is someone – usually an older person – who has used life experience to develop great wisdom.

That Native American value to honor elders is one that originated from a realization that for a tribe to survive, it must rely on the wisdom of a few.  Those few persons knew from experience ways to hunt effectively, the signs of changing seasons, strategies to live peaceably, treatments to cure the sick, advice for leaders and warriors, and a host of other effective and virtuous ways to live.  Elders did not just have a mental storehouse of facts, they had an uncommon intuition into the human heart and the workings of the natural world.

Since the lifespan of most ancient indigenous people averaged less than thirty years, those who lived a lot longer had survived not just by luck, but by doing what Steve Jobs advocated.  They used their life experiences to gain insights and thereby live longer.  They connected the dots of their knowledge to form a wise philosophy – which they then shared.

Most of all, elders passed on a Native-American belief that old age and death are not to be feared but instead embraced as a part of the great circle of life.  We’re born, we live for a time, and we have an afterlife physically and spiritually.  That Native-American belief contrasts with white European fears of growing old, dying and being judged.  Our culture fetishizes youth all in order to avoid thinking about the inevitable facts of aging and death.  But indigenous people have a far more positive and uplifting understanding of them.  One indigenous poem about the circle of says this:

We understand who we are –

We know where we came from –

We accept and understand our destiny here on Mother Earth –

We are spirit having a human experience…

While it is dangerous to apply indigenous beliefs to all native cultures, most embrace the idea of the circle of life – that of birth, life, death and then rebirth of the body, and an afterlife of the spirit.  People, natives believe, are just what the poem I read states.  People are physical manifestations of spirit.  Spirits come from the stars and inhabit people and all other creatures.  During one’s life, the challenge is much like what UU’s believe – a person is to use his or her talents to benefit humanity and all creation.  When one physically dies, most natives say, Mother Earth, who has nourished the body, reclaims it in a different form – as a flower, a moose, or a mountain.  But the spirit of a person moves into the sky, towards the light, to dwell forever in a beautiful spirit world.

And these native beliefs shape their acceptance and even celebration of the aging process and of dying.  There is no fear but only reverence for wise older people.

Modern Native-Americans, however, have sadly forgotten to honor their elders.  Many contemporary Native-Americans have adopted the white cultural obsession with youth.  Traditional indigenous leaders, teachers, and healers are now often ignored with the result that ancient tribal customs and languages are being lost because young people do not learn or practice them. 

New studies have shown, however, that ancient indigenous ceremonies and healing practices were and are effective in the emotional and physical well-being of natives.  The use of natural herbs for healing, and sacred native ceremonies to inspire participants, were and are highly effective in maintaining native physical and emotional health.  But, as I said, that is being lost.  Even worse is the current isolation and mistreatment of many Native-American elders.  One older Native-American, who is one of the last persons able to fluently speak his tribal language, says he is often mistaken by whites as hispanic – and is thus accused of being an illegal immigrant.  The truth, of course, is that he and his ancestors are more a part of this land than any white European.

The wisdom of elders, according to most indigenous people, comes in four ways.  First, people must be part of a large community – and be willing to always expand that community.  Meeting and interacting with a diversity of people extends our awareness of other beliefs, lifestyles and cultural practices.

Second, people should purposefully seek new adventures, challenges and even hardships.  Learning a new skill, persevering through a crisis, or traveling to a new land are all ways to open our minds, evolve,  and experience the freshness of life.

Third, people should embrace the mission statement of life.  For indigenous people that was to enjoy the work that humans are to do – to serve, love, share with, and teach others.  Living is not a hardship, but instead a joyous way to improve humanity and all creation.  When we live out our purpose, natives and modern neuroscientists agree, we find great contentment.

Fourth and finally, people must be active in order to evolve.  Sitting in a figurative bubble to watch or read about the world has minimal value.  To learn and grow, we must get in the arena of life and do the things others are too lazy, arrogant, or too afraid to do.  In other words, by living out our life purpose, we not only improve the world – we improve ourselves. 

My own life experience proves this last point.  I attended seminary for a time and it had some value.  But I did not evolve into a half-way decent minister until I’d spent time actually doing the work of one.  And it is precisely that idea that natives understood.  The humble and active servants in native tribes, both men and women who experienced all the ways to effectively live and serve, were the ones who became wise elders.

For me, this Thanksgiving, I plan to listen to the wisdom of Native-Americans – the first true pilgrims to this land.  I have so much to learn from non-western, non-white cultures.  I want to begin to practice the good values of people un-like me – particularly marginalized ones of this nation – Native-Americans and African-Americans.  In many ways, they respect people and nature far more than money and wealth.  That’s a wise but difficult value to adopt for this 59 year old white man, but it’s a challenge I hope to meet.

I wish you each much peace and joy.          

   

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

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Sometime between 16,000 and 20,000 years ago, large areas of the earth were covered with glaciers.  That resulted in lower ocean levels which in turn opened up a land bridge across the Bering sea from Asia to present day Alaska.  People from Asia migrated across that land bridge and spread by land and sea southward.  They were America’s real first Pilgrims.  By at least 11,000 years ago, these indigenous people, known as Clovis people, had settled across much of western North America and into Central and South America. 

Moving with the Clovis from Asia and across the land bridge were buffalo.  They too spread into the wide open areas of North America.  At one time, bison ranged from Northern Canada south to Mexico, and east to west from California to New York and even south into Florida.  Although buffalo are large animals and difficult to hunt, they were a vital resource for indigenous people.  Many indigenous tribes moved with buffalo herds since they were so dependent on them.

Indigenous people hunted buffalo by surrounding slower ones, or by chasing some over cliffs.  Every part of a buffalo was used – the skin and fur for clothing and shelter, the meat for food, horns and bones for carving into tools, and tendons and sinew for rope and sewing.  Luther Standing Bear, a current member of the Lakota tribe, says that when buffalo roamed in the multitudes, indigenous people were “frugal in the midst of plenty.”  They killed only what they could use.  That allowed for the bison population to accommodate the relatively few taken by natives.

The relationship between bison and indigenous tribes therefore had a spiritual dimension.  Natives believed spirits of their ancestors inhabited buffalo and other animals.  All of creation, they believed, are animated by a great spirit.  Indigenous people were part of a spiritually harmonic co-existence with the animals they hunted, the plants they gathered, the prairie and mountains on which they lived, and with the sun, moon and stars that directed their lives.   And so buffalo, like all of creation, were deeply respected.. 

As recently as 1800, there were over 200 million buffalo on this continent.  But then white Europeans began spreading across the landt and, with their guns and horses, initiated a mass slaughter of both buffalo and indigenous people. 

Contests were held for killing the most number of bison in a short time.  One settler in Kansas set a recored by killing 120 buffalo in forty minutes.  Passengers on trains were encouraged to shoot buffalo – just for fun – from the windows as they rode.  Most white hunters only took the skin – leaving the rest of the animal to rot.  Wiping out bison was also seen as a way to eliminate indigenous people.  One Army general said buffalo hunters did more to defeat indigenous people than did soldiers.

In a little over one-hundred years, from 1800 to 1907, buffalo were rendered nearly extinct.  Only a few hundred survived in the first national park of Yellowstone. 

A similar mass slaughter happened to indigenous people in North America.  At the time of the white Pilgrims in 1620, there were approximately 18 million indigenous people in North America.  By 1900, there were less than 250,000.

The near extinction of bison and indigenous American people offers, for me, a sobering insight into Thanksgiving values I should honor.  The story of the first celebration of that holiday is one many of us know.  A small remnant of English immigrants to North America had survived a difficult first year to then reap a decent fall harvest.  Their survival was largely due to the help they received from local indigenous people, the Wam-pan-o-ag, who taught the Pilgrims hunting and farming techniques suited for the continent, and introduced them to a new crop – corn.

A feast of gratitude was held at which Pilgrims and Wam-pan-o-ag attended. The majority of food was provided by the natives.  Thanks were offered by the Pilgrims for their own hard work, and for the blessings of God.  If any gratitude was expressed to the natives, it was not lasting.  Less than fifty years after that first Thanksgiving, the Wam-pan-o-ag tribe had been mostly eliminated by a war with the white immigrants and by diseases brought by them.  Surviving Wam-pan-o-ag people were sold into slavery.

This November 24th, most of us will honor that supposed first Thanksgiving with a celebration of our own.  Thanksgiving has largely remained non-commercial because it’s based on Pilgrim values of gratitude and giving.  While those values are good, they overlook ones from the first true Pilgrims to this land – those of the Clovis people and their descendants –  a people who have dwelled upon this continent for twenty-thousand years.   White Europeans and their ancestors have been here for only 400 years.

It is Native American values, ones that continue today in all Indigenous cultures, that I believe ought to be honored at Thanksgiving.  Their values are timeless ones that represent the highest aspirations of humanity – ones like respect, sharing, mutual cooperation, and reverence for nature.   

White European values stand in stark contras to those of indigenous people.  Indeed, those values determined what happened to Native-Americans and to the buffalo.  Unrestrained individualism, for instance,  has resulted in a dog-eat-dog ethos – every person for him or her self.  The land, sea and air are abused for values of convenience and profit.  Competitive values cause aggression, violence and prejudice.  Values honoring the accumulation of great wealth foster inequality and poverty.  Instead of valuing ethics of indigenous people like the inter-dependance of all things, sharing, and cooperation, people today often define themselves as separate from others – based on politics, opinion, race, nationalism, gender and spirituality.

I submit, therefore, that many of the values honored at traditional Thanksgiving meals are ones to question and perhaps abandon.  We need a return to values practiced by people who lived close to the land and who survived and thrived not by competition, individualism and pursuit of wealth, but by selflessness, collaboration and, most importantly, by respect.

I believe respect is the basic law of life – and indigenous Americans agreed.  While there were and are many indigenous tribes each with their own spirituality, all of them believe respect is a foundational value.    For indigenous Americans, respect means treating every person with decency.  Extra respect is shown to elders, parents and teachers.  People must avoid hurting the feelings of others – much like they avoid a deadly poison.  One should be humble at all times since all are equal.  Every person’s privacy must be honored.  Respect means, to indigenous people, to never intrude on another’s quiet moments or personal space.  It means speaking in a soft and non-threatening voice.  It means never interrupting others, and never demeaning someone in their absence.  Respect includes honoring the beliefs and opinions of others, listening to others with courtesy, and following the wise advice of others.  Indigenous people believe that the respectful sharing of ideas brings about what they call the “Spark of Truth.”  An essential component of the search for truth, most indigenous people believe, is to respect decisions made by leaders, councils and meetings.  Even if a decision is a bad one, natives believe the mistake will make itself known – and be corrected – in due time.   Respect, therefore, does not mean agreement with others, but rather the honoring of a cooperative decision making process.  In other words, indigenous people understood the merits of collaboration.

Also, very important to indigenous people is a respect for the earth.  Since all people come from and are nurtured by the earth, it must be honored as our mother.  One should equally respect all of earth’s creatures – and rise up to defend them against abuse.  As many Native-Americans believe, special scorn should be heaped upon those who literally or figuratively spit upon their mother – and the earth is our ultimate mother.   Disrespecting her is the greatest of misdeeds.

Above all else, indigenous values define who they were and are as a people – and how they live.  White Feather, a current Navajo leader and Medicine Man, recently said, “Native-American isn’t blood;  it is what is in the heart.  It is the love for the land, the respect for it and all who inhabit it.  It is the respect and acknowledgement of the spirits and the elders.  That is what it means to be Native-American.”

While few of us can claim indigenous heritage, we can nevertheless adopt values to which Native Americans adhere.  In truth, we already do so if we do our best to live by the Golden Rule.  Respect, for me, is all about treating others as we wish to be treated.  Echoing my belief, Black Elk, a past indigenous American leader said, “All things are our relatives;  what we do to everything, we do to ourselves.”  And the Pima indigenous tribe’s motto is, “Do not wrong or hate your neighbor.  For it is not he or she who you wrong, but yourself.”

Such expressions enhance the overall ethic of the Golden Rule.  All creation is interconnected in a way that the well-being of one affects the well-being of all.  Since that is true, if I hurt you, I hurt myself.  If I bless you, I bless myself.  We cannot be human unless we are equally blessed or equally oppressed.  We stand or fall together.

Indigenous spirituality, like almost all other forms of spirituality, understands that logic.  Since all people and all things come from the same source and all are made of the same elements, then all things are worthy of dignity.  Respect is therefore the law of life.

What I lament is the current proclivity to not practice that essential law – this Golden Rule for all things.  People today often think only in terms of “me” and “I.”  You hurt me.  Or, you are different from me.  Or, you disagree with me.  You want food and things that I want and so I must oppose you.  Because you are against me, I must hate you and even try to eliminate you.  Only I am responsible for my well-being.

The white European value of individualism has thus run amok.   What began as an Enlightenment value promoting the natural rights of individuals, has become instead a philosophy of selfishness, arrogance, and abuse of others.  That was the ideology of the first white Pilgrims and all who followed.  Arriving on a wide open continent where nobody owned any of it, they arrogantly presumed to take for themselves all that they could get – the land, the water, the animals.  And they cruelly eliminated the people who stood in their way – people who from centuries of mostly peaceful coexistence, could not imagine deception, hoarding of wealth, violent arrogance, and individual ownership of land.  Indeed, their attitudes of cooperation, sharing and mutuality seemed simple-minded to white Europeans – and was all the more reason to kill them.

This Thanksgiving, I encourage us to ponder the greater meaning of respect – a meaning that the first real Pilgrims to this continent understood.  To be true to ourselves, we cannot just look at obvious examples of disrespect – people with open arrogance, bigotry and hate.  I want to blame the hateful passions swirling in our nation on far right politicians and white supremacists and yet, if I am honest, I know such divisive passions can also come from me.  How have I disrespected those I disagree with?  How have I failed to cooperate, affirm and support my family, my friends, my church, my community and nation?  How do I abuse nature, pollute her and disrespect that of which I am part?

Like any of us, Indigenous Americans were not perfect.  There were fights between tribes and some natives were selfish.  But across the broad spectrum of their many cultures, were values that came directly from a basic respect for the earth and for each other.  For me, I want to abandon many of the values of our current culture to honor instead values of the true first Thanksgiving – one celebrated fifteen thousand years ago when a small band of Asiatic immigrants ventured upon this continent, saw its teeming abundance and breathtaking grandeur, and then vowed to worship and respect it……and one another too.   

I wish you all much peace and joy.    

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

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On November 6, 1860, Americans went to the polls in order to choose one of three candidates for President.  As most people know, Abraham Lincoln won that election – but with only 40 percent of the vote.   The result was a deeply divided nation.  A simple majority won, but a sizable Southern minority was very angry.

Almost immediately after the election, deep South states began to  secede from the United States.  South Carolina seceded first, followed by six other states.  By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, those seven states had formally established the Confederate States of America and elected its own President and Congress.  The very survival of the United States – what the Founding Fathers had risked their lives to create – was at stake.

In that atmosphere, Lincoln took the oath of office and delivered his first inaugural address.  He held out an olive branch to the South – saying the Federal government would not interfere with the institution of slavery where it already existed.  He also pledged not to send troops into seceding states while differences were negotiated.  But, he also argued the non-negotiable premise of the US constitution.  Every US State agreed, when they entered the Union, that they enjoy some rights of self-government, but only within a constitutional boundary that granted the Federal government overall authority.  Implicit, but unsaid in his speech,  was that secession is illegal.

Lincoln finished his speech by extending another offer of reconciliation to the South and calling upon the common ideals that  formed America. “We are not enemies,” he said, “but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Six weeks later, however, dark angels of aggression led Confederate troops to fire on Fort Sumpter – and the Civil War began.  Over 600,000 people died in America’s bloodiest war.  It ended four years later with the abolishment of slavery.

Last year, the well known historian Jon Meacham wrote a book entitled The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels.  He borrowed the phrase “better angels” from Lincoln’s first inaugural address – just as I borrowed it for the title of today’s message.

Meacham was motivated to write the book because of widespread shock over the policies of President Trump and a sense that America faces a crisis of values and even of its very existence. Many people, including me, view our current government’s policies as regressive.  The US, it seems, is moving backward as immigrants, women, people of color, and LGBTQ persons are further marginalized and stripped of their rights.  The institution of democracy appears to be used against itself.

  As a capable historian and writer, Meacham tries to calm these concerns.  While he clearly says that we live in divided times, he is optimistic America will endure, based on the durability of our values.  Our nation’s better angels, he says, will prevail despite these troubled times – just as Abraham Lincoln said they would at another moment of national division.

What is necessary for the survival of America, according to Meacham, is to heed the better angels of which Lincoln spoke.  A careful reading of his words show that he appealed to the common bonds of unity, to our nation’s historic fight for human rights, and to the even greater ideal that people are connected the Golden Rule ethic to love our neighbors, our sisters and our brothers.  We must not, he said, be enemies divided by our passions.

Lincoln spoke at an existential moment for America.  Would it survive with its values intact?  Or would violence, angry passions, and division destroy everything?  As I’ve said, many people believe we are in danger of a similar crisis moment today.

I discussed positive Halloween masks in my messages the last two Sundays as a way to focus our thoughts on ways we can be models of goodness.  We have no credibility speaking against hate and a lack of civility unless we model love, unity and kindness amongst ourselves – and in our community.  In this time of trouble, we resist best by being examples of decency and love that stand in stark contrast to the forces of hate.

I chose all female masks to discuss this month for a reason.  I believe the virtues, ideals and good inclinations that can help lead us out of troubled times are mostly feminine.  The policies and attitudes put forward by the President and his government are a form of hyper-machismo.  Arrogance, bullying, angry speech, fear of those who seem different, tribalism, misogyny and lying can only be stopped if a majority of people adopt attitudes opposite to them.  We must celebrate facts and truth over opinion and so-called alternative facts.  The common sense search for truth is symbolized by goddesses Justicia and Prudentia whom I discussed two weeks ago.  To celebrate the courage of women who stand up to male harassment, we can wear the positive mask of the handmaid – a figure I talked about last week.  And, to reject mostly male attitudes of acrimony and violence, we should wear better angel masks – the topic of my message today.

I submit what has too long defined our nation is a form of masculinity characterized mostly by aggression and violent anger.  Indeed, those dark angels are what Lincoln spoke against by appealing to the good angels of peaceful reconciliation and cooperation.

And we can appeal to those same better angels today by following them ourselves.  We must aspire to compassion, selflessness, truth, resilience and empathy.  As I’ve said, those are mostly feminine attributes.

Ultimately, to heed our better angels is to be guided by the authentically feminine in each of us – women and men.  While biology and the influence of gender specific hormones determine some of our attitudes – for men to be more action oriented and for women to be more open to peace – all men are not necessarily aggressive and all women do not necessarily support reconciliation.  As sociologists point out, global cultures have historically been male dominated despite the population being over 50% female.  That is because many women have accepted male dominance.  If a woman wants to succeed in a man’s world, she learns to sublimate her feminine better angels to instead think and act like a man.  Men have no incentive to think and act like a woman since society has not valued them.  The result has been a persistently masculine culture of competition and aggression supported by both sexes.

Women have thus been caught in a catch-22 situation.  Even as women may want to follow their better angels, they cannot.  They must neglect their good instincts and embrace aggression instead.  When they do so, however, women are criticized for being power-hungry, pushy and rude.

On the other hand, if a woman is sensitive, cares what other people think of her, and advocates for discussion and compromise, she is accused of being emotional and weak.  Men don’t want women to be like them, and they don’t want women to be who they are either.  I believe that is why there is so much anger and hatred toward diversity, social justice and cooperation in our nation.  We seem to have lost touch with female inclinations that exist in all of us.  But that must change.  And as we often say, we must be the change we want to see.

The benefits of heeding more feminine instincts are well documented.  Steven Pinker, a Harvard professor of psychology, in his book entitled The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, says that there has been a continual decline in violence throughout history.  Wars have gradually become less frequent and less bloody.  Murders, tortures and random killings have declined as well.  Entire societies are no longer wiped out as they were only a few hundred years ago when male dominant colonial powers killed large native populations.  Today, Steven Pinker argues, is one of the most non-violent times ever – even though wars, murders and rapes still happen.   He attributes this continual violence decline to several factors, but a primary one has been the ever increasing influence of women and their values.

Women have helped reduce wars because of the human cost they exact.  Women understand the sacrifice it takes to raise children – and the waste that occurs when sons and daughters become cannon fodder.   Women have thus historically encouraged their husbands, and taught their sons, to be less angry and violent.

Women have advanced other social benefits as well.  One global study indicates that the more women who serve in parliaments and congresses, the better a nation’s education system becomes.   Women not only advocate for the rights of women, they do so for the rights of children and other marginalized people.  Female politicians help reduce political corruption.  Women, more than men, promote increased charity.  Female business owners, managers and members of Boards of Directors bring about, studies show, more success for an organization and greater benefits for its employees. 

Women have equally encouraged world religions to be more inclusive.  Women have promoted the use of gender neutral language when referring to God, Yahweh, and Allah.   Christian, Jewish and Islamic feminists have pushed male religious leaders to share spiritual leadership and reduce gender discrimination.  Since religion has historically been used as a pretext for war and oppression, women have pushed religions to be true to their ethics of peace, compromise and equality.

What all of this indicates to me is that today’s troubled times ironically offer an opportunity.  Just when it seems our culture is headed toward disaster, the truth is likely very different.  Dark angels may now be rallied in opposition to humanity’s good inclinations, but they do so because they know they will lose.  Abraham Lincoln and the historian Jon Meacham will be proven correct – the better angels of our nature, those that mostly come from women, will prevail. 

It’s no accident, I hope, that as women are ascendant in their willingness to speak out against male dominance, human culture will advance for the better.  I remain hopeful that President Trump represents one of the last gasps of success that white, straight men, as a group, will have.   People and forces who fight with deceit and hatred do so only when they are weak.  Strength, instead, has no need to attack or cheat.  Truth and goodness may seem diminished right now, but that is only because of the temporary shadows dark angels cast.

My own life, while not extraordinary, tells me that hopes for the nation and world are not in vain.  People can overcome a reluctance to embrace mostly feminine attributes.   For too much of my life, I bought into the fallacy that male aggression is good and, because I’m not that way, I thought of myself as deficient.  I’m still told by some people to not be sensitive, and to stop caring what other people think of me.  I’m far from perfect, and I sometimes fail to follow better angels, but when I do, when I’m not afraid of showing compassion, of caring how my actions affect others, of encouraging cooperation and compromise over fighting, I know I’m at my strongest.  Indeed, that often requires me to summon the courage to be what society has told me I shouldn’t be – a man who occasionally believes, speaks and acts with inclinations that are identified as feminine.

That does not mean I’m ineffective or weak.  I hope it means instead that I’m human – someone who thinks and behaves in ways that are neither all male, or all female.  I hope to live as balanced as possible – one who understands the few evolutionary and biological benefits of maleness, softened and complimented by the goodness of women.  That is a kind of balance I wish for everyone – and for our culture.  We need to rebalance and allow ourselves and our culture to embrace feminine inclinations to affirm what is true and virtuous.  

In these current troubled times, when hyper-masculinity has made too many people lose sight of eternal human virtues, we need more than ever to wear the positive masks of our mostly feminine better angels.

I wish you each much peace and joy.

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

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In the book of Genesis, which is the first book of the both the Christian Bible and Jewish Torah, a story is told about one of the supposed great patriarchs of ancient Israel – a man named Isaac.  He and his wife Rachel have difficulty conceiving a child and so, with his wife’s approval, they purchase a handmaid, named Bilhah, to be a surrogate birth mother – and sex slave to Isaac – so the couple can have children.  Bilhah, in the story, conceives two sons by Isaac  – both of whom are immediately taken by Rachel as her own.  Bilhah remains a handmaid to Isaac which, in Biblical euphemisms, means she is a sex slave.

The story is shocking to modern sensibilities and, in some respects, it’s unfair to judge and condemn the story since it is from a pre-modern culture.  It is also hypocritical to judge the story too harshly since many of it’s customs are evident in today’s world..

Women in ancient societies had little status apart from their sexual purity, fidelity to a husband, or ability to bear children and be a servant.  In essence, girls and women were valued for their bodies – objects to be sold, bought and used by men.  It was a male dominant culture in which women had no rights and were, for all intents and purposes, property themselves.

That status for women is, I believe, mostly still true today.  In 1984, Margaret Atwood wrote a novel entitled “The Handmaid’s Tale” about a dystopian America that uses the story of Isaac, Rachel and the handmaid Bilhah as the foundation for its laws and government.  Due to a terrible rise of female infertility, caused by environmental pollution, a group of elite, religiously fundamentalist men stage a coup.  In Atwood’s story, the coup leaders rename America as Gilead, they suspend the Constitution, send armed men into the streets to shoot protesters, and immediately pass laws stripping women of their money, their property and their ability to work except as a direct servants to men.  Gilead’s government is a moralistic theocracy similar to Iran’s – only Christian.  Women are rigorously controlled because the focus of society is to serve God, men and the increased birth of children. 

Virginal daughters from upper class families are ordered to become stay at home wives of well-off men – and caretakers of their children.  They are to wear blue clothing as symbolic of their moral purity.  Since most women in Gilead are infertile, these wives collude with their husbands to enslave the few women who can still bear children.  Nevertheless, these elite women are merely adornments for their husbands – and caretakers of children they did not bear.

Women of the middle class who can conceive are forced to become handmaids. They are women whose sole purpose is to serve as breeding surrogates for the elite men and their wives.  Children that the handmaids bear become children of those couples.  Handmaids wear red robes symbolizing the blood of birth.

Middle class women who are infertile are forced to become prostitutes for the elite class of men.  They must wear purple clothing and spend their lives in brothels.

Women from lesser classes are forced to be cooks, maids, and servants to the elite men and their families.  They must wear striped clothing as a symbol of their prisoner-like status.

Atwood’s novel focuses on the life of one handmaid named Offred – which literally means “of Fred” or, belonging to Fred.  All handmaids are similarly named as “of” their male master’s first name.

The novel has found new resonance over the last two years with the election of Donald Trump and the start of the #MeToo movement.  As much as the book is dystopian fiction, its depictions of men, and the women who collude with them, ring frighteningly similar to paternalism existing today.  As in the story, too many men and women today, particularly religious fundamentalists, consider a woman’s role to be either as an object for display, as a bearer of children, as a sexual object, or as a domestic servant.  If we think about it, that is mostly how the President treats women in his life.

Equally as frightening for me is the ability of today’s religious fundamentalists to control our current nation’s laws and government much as they completely do in the fictional Gilead.  Atwood’s book offers a vision of how fundamentalists could take control of the US.  Religion and false morality are used to control people and pass restrictive laws – particularly against women and others considered immoral.  For instance, in the fictional Gilead, gays and lesbians are arrested and quickly executed for being “gender traitors.”  Like women, homosexuals have historically been marginalized and targeted by straight men and religious zealots who, due to insecurity about themselves, cannot abide anyone who attacks the myth of religion or of male power.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” is now a TV series playing on the streaming service Hulu.  It is one of the most watched and talked about TV shows today.  Margaret Atwood says her book, and the TV show, should be warning calls to what is happening now in the US – and how much worse it could get.

My October message series is entitled “Positive Halloween Masks” and I intend for it to champion the values women offer society by suggesting positive female masks women and men might wear.  My message last week suggested we wear masks of ancient Roman goddesses Justitia and Prudentia.  Jusiticia represents the search for truth and how that ideal must replace a rush to judgement and the use of opinions to replace facts.  Prudentia is Justitia’s goddess companion who guides her in a search for truth with common sense and virtue.

Today, I suggest the possible wearing of a Halloween mask and costume that represents a handmaid.   As a seemingly negative costume, I believe a handmaid instead represents sacrifice, courage and strength.  Indeed, she is the ultimate sexual assault victim who heroically transcends her victimhood.  As Hillary Clinton recently opined about #MeToo women, they are courageous figures who “resist, insist, persist and finally enlist.”

The story of Biblical Bilhah, the story of Margaret Atwood’s handmaid, and the true stories of millions of other women throughout history who have been abused and exploited by men – are all ones of quiet strength and fighting back.  I believe its time for such women – heroes all of them – to be positively celebrated.

Like almost all sexual assault victims, Offred the handmaid realizes that in order to survive both mentally and physically, she must remain silent about her traumas.  And her self-imposed silence is reinforced by men who literally force Offred and other Gilead handmaids to wear leather straps across their mouths – so they cannot speak or scream.

As surrogates whose sole purpose is to procreate, Offred and the relatively few other women who can conceive are controlled in what they can and cannot eat.  Their monthly cycles are also closely monitored so masters can assault them on the best days for conception.  While Gilead calls such intercourse “sacred ceremonies,” they are in truth rapes of the handmaids – all while masters’ wives watch, much as the Bible implies that Rachel allowed and watched Isaac’s rape of Bilhah.

Offred learns to mentally erase her rape experiences.  In one harrowing scene, she is shown dreaming and thinking of another place and time, mentally oblivious to what is happening to her, all during the several minutes her master has his way with her.

The attacks on handmaids in Atwood’s story are also routinely done against women today.  Many men still assume they have a right to use and abuse women’s bodies as they wish – often in the name of supposed morality.  They seek to control women’s reproductive decisions and her rights as an autonomous and fully equal person.  And such actions take a profound toll on many women. 

Studies show, for instance, that the reaction of sexual assault victims is often to compartmentalize memories of their trauma.   They store them in remote parts of the brain as a way to avoid, as much as possible, reliving the assault.  Other negative effects can also be unconscious – such as irrational fears, anxiety, sleep and eating disorders, relationship problems, depression and addictions.  Many sexual assault victims, studies show, cannot recall details of their trauma unless they are remembered after intensive therapy.  Other victims, instead of mentally forgetting an attack, regularly experience vivid flashbacks of their assaults and feel once again the terror and humiliation of what happened.

All of these conditions result from what is commonly called post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD – a dysfunctional emotional response that is widely acknowledged as a problem for combat soldiers and victims of horrific accidents.  But, as we saw with the Kavanugh hearings, women are not believed to suffer symptoms of PTSD.  Sexual assault victims are also taught by our society to think they caused, deserved or even wanted an assault.  Women’s reaction is therefore to remain silent – often for many years – until an assault is too late to be charged as a crime.

The result is a culture, supported by both women and men, that utterly fails to understand sexual assault, its negative effects on victims, and the well documented reasons why they frequently suppress the harassment and do not immediately report it.  Only 40% of all sexual assaults are ever reported – and reasons for that are several.  Women fear that their every behavior will be scrutinized, that they will be shamed for their sexual history, or they will be labeled as mentally unbalanced, manipulative or simply as a liar.

Indeed, according to a study by Stanford University, myths about false reports of sexual assault are widespread – ones like “women cry rape when they regret having had sex,” or “women accuse wealthy and powerful men of rape in order to enrich themselves,” or “there was not enough physical evidence to charge a man with rape so the woman must be lying,” or, as I earlier mentioned, “if a woman was truly raped, she would have immediately called the police.”   Because of these myths, ones recently repeated by Donald Trump, a women is far more likely to be believed when she is robbed than when she is sexually assaulted.  The truth is, according to Stanford’s study, only 2% of all sexual assault reports are made up – the exact same percentage as that for all other false crime reports.

Women of the #MeToo movement, for whom I’ve used the handmaid to represent, should therefore not only be believed, but also honored for the courage to share their stories – despite all of the negative repercussions that befall them.  Indeed, news reports this last week indicate that Dr. Blasey Ford and her family are still unable to return to their home because of continuing death threats against them.  Meanwhile, Mr. Kavanaugh, as a member of the Supreme Court, now enjoys free federal protection for he and his family.

The Handmaid’s Tale, as both a book and TV show, is resonating with many people today because the characters are depicted as strong and intelligent resisters.  They are not meek and fragile.  Offred submits to the overwhelming state power against her, but she also resists – secretly conspiring against Gilead’s government while she gains the confidence to confront her male master with a forthright awareness of his true position.  She understands the implicit power female victims hold over abusive men.  Misogynists are actually very insecure.  They must constantly assert their manhood because, at their core, they’re quite weak.  The women they abuse, harass and diminish, however, persevere with quiet dignity and are far more resilient.  It is their truth, power and legacy that will ultimately prevail.        

In that light, Offred enjoys a close sisterhood with other handmaids.  Enslaved as they might be, the handmaids nevertheless refuse to sacrifice their humanity and compassion.  Simply by refusing to be defeated, by surviving to fight back – they exemplify the spirit of #MeToo women today.  Strong in courage and coming together to validate and support one another, women are no longer silent victims.  They are instead victors.

And it’s that paradoxical truth that tells me the #MeToo movement will not be easily stopped.  Men have extraordinary power, but they are no match against women with truth on their side.  To support them, I encourage a continued celebration of all who stand against abuse, who come out of the shadows to share their assault stories, and who represent handmaids across the millennia – women like the Biblical Bilhah who was exploited by one of the supposed great men of the Bible. 

Try as men like Donald Trump might – to control, humiliate and disbelieve handmaids, their efforts will fail.  The era of cultural, economic and political control by white, straight men will soon end.  I believe that is a primary reason why some white straight men are so angry and fight so hard against many social justice causes.  An age of dawning equality for both genders, and all people, is now emerging.  This new age may suffer occasional setbacks as it is birthed, but it will nevertheless have the final victory.  And for this old, white, gay man, that time will gladly come. 

 

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

Click here to listen to the message.  See below to read it.

 

Mahatma Gandhi once described himself as a humble but earnest seeker after truth – which, as he said, is another name for god.  Gandhi’s sense that truth is an embodiment of god also causes me to capitalize Truth and often use it to indicate my concept of god.

When people ask me, as they often do, what Unitarian Universalists believe, I offer them my basic theology – one which I had before I became a UU.

I believe every person is proverbially climbing one great symbolic mountain in the universe.  It’s summit is what everybody spends their lives seeking, but nobody ever makes it.  The summit is to know all truth or, in other words, to meet god.  We each want to know the mysteries of life and death, as well as a complete awareness of what is good and evil.

But we all seek the summit of Truth, or god, in different ways.  Some search for it with the Bible and through the teachings of Jesus.  Others do so through Buddhism………or the teachings of Muhammad……..or the study and applications of science.  It need not matter how we seek Truth – just that we pursue it.

The essential idea of Unitarian Universalism is that all paths to find Truth are good since they all aspire to the same goal.  They’re also all good since each offers unique and valuable insights on how to get to the summit.  UU’s don’t proclaim any path toward it is better than another.  We look to each path for what is helpful.  Our worship, if you want to call it that, is NOT for any specific path or spirituality, but rather to honor and engage in the act of seeking truth.  That’s why I’m here and I imagine it is why you are too.

That search for truth leads me to my October message series theme and my topic for today.  Along with most of you, I’m disgusted with the negativity, nastiness and brutality of today’s culture.  As enlightened as we may think we are, humanity today can be as indifferently mean spirited as its ever been.  And I believe that is precisely because people all over the world no longer seek truth.  They believe they already know it and then angrily state only they are right and all others are wrong.

So instead of celebrating traditionally scary masks that children and adults like to wear at Halloween, I want to promote positive masks to wear as a way to encourage a less mean spirited and more united culture.  As spiritually minded people, we want to avoid things that divide, and instead embrace values that unite.  And so I plan to offer, over three Sundays, masks I believe reinforce all that is good in the human spirit.

For today, I want to encourage the wearing of two goddess masks and costumes – those of ancient Roman goddesses Prudentia and Justitia.  Justitia is otherwise known to us as Lady Justice but her literal purpose is to represent the search for truth.  She is usually depicted blindfolded, carrying a sword, and holding balance scales.   All three items are intended to symbolize ways used to determine truth.  A blindfold is worn by Justitia to prevent bias and promote an unbiased examination of facts.

She also holds balance scales symbolizing the intent to weigh facts and determine which are most truthful.  They also indicate a desire for fairness.  Truth does not deny one set of facts in favor of others. 

Finally, Justitia carries a sword as a way to say that truth is sharp edged and the line between truth and untruth is razor thin.   A sword also indicates that truth is absolute and unsympathetic.  Emotions should be avoided when determining what is true.

Ancient Roman philosophers, following the teachings of Aristotle and Plato, understood that while Justitia is a virtuous figure who symbolizes a search for facts, she must crucially be paired with the goddess Prudentia.  Prudential, or prudence,  is associated with the virtue of wisdom but her primary value is in using common sense to determine the most virtuous actions.  She holds in her hands two items – a mirror and a snake.  The mirror symbolizes what is real versus what we may hope something to be.  It’s purpose is to also foster self-awareness.  We may hope that things, or ourselves, appear a certain way, but a mirror depicts reality.

She also holds a snake to represent practical wisdom.  Indeed, that is what Prudentia is most known for and why she is always a companion to Justitia.  Something may be true alongside something else that is also true.  The key is to use common sense to determine what is most virtuous and thus most true. 

       For instance, Lady Justice stands for the universal proposition that killing another person is wrong.  But she also supports the truth that the right of self-defense and fighting against evil are good.  Prudentia guides Justitia to understand that seemingly competing truths demand a resolution – in this case the idea that rational self-defense, even if it means killing another, is good and more true than the general ideal of “thou shall not kill.”

I believe these Justitia and Prudentia can tell us a lot about how we and our culture should think and act.  We need Lady Justice to search for little ’t’ truth as well as capital ’T’ Truth.   But we need Prudentia to insure our fact finding search is virtuous and wise.  In that regard, Unitarian Universalists represent, at their very best, the ideal of prudence.  Millions of people may shout from their pews and Temples that their vision of god or Truth is absolute.  No other versions of Truth, they say, are possible.  Their claims, as we know, lead to fundamentalism as well as anger and violence.  Global human culture is now divided and filled with hate all because people think only their god or Truth is right – instead of allowing prudence to guide them in the awareness that all religions (or no religion) have elements of truth and that what everybody seeks is the same thing.

We rely on Prudence to tell us that the truth we all can agree on is that we each seek, we each SEEK, capital ’T’ Truth – the summit of the mountain I earlier spoke.  As UU’s, Prudentia’s mirror of reality, and her serpent of wisdom, inform our common sense that the one value that can and should unite Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Atheists and many others in a spirit of collaboration and respect is Justitia and her search for Truth.  In other words, the UU plea for religions, cities and nations is that we live in peace with one another because we are all bound by a common desire.  We must therefore embrace Justitia, as she is guided by Prudentia, and come together as we each seek what us true.

Our UU approach to spirituality should therefore be applied to how we approach other aspects of life.  Just as we turn to Prudentia to guide Lady Justice in spiritual matters, so too must we use her for secular matters.  Common sense must guide us in determining what is true and good in every matter.

I believe it was intentional that ancient Romans assigned the virtues of prudence and justice to female deities.  Indeed, of the four ancient primary virtues – Prudence, Justice or Truth Seeking, Fortitude, and finally Temperance – all but Fortitude were female goddesses.  Women were seen by the ancients as having the moral purity to behave with decency, care and kindness.  Ancient Roman culture was no less male centric than today’s society, but it at least had the awareness to see in women unique qualities that come, perhaps, from women’s biological roles as bearers of new life and essential sustainers of it.  Such responsibilities demand not only common sense and an even temperament, they may impart in women a hunger for what is good and true – justice – so that their progeny will be accepted into a world that is often unfair and unequal.

It’s dangerous to stereotype since one can always find an exception to any generalization.  But in my mind, a majority of women, along with some men, exhibit the kinds of attributes needed to counteract the sometimes angry, violent and rash attitudes of many men.  And so it’s the positive values women hold that I believe are essential in today’s world – particularly the values I discuss today. 

We need more common sense SEEKING of truth, a primarily feminine value, instead of claiming to already know it.  And that extends, as I’ve said, not just to spirituality but to politics, climate change, wealth and racial inequality, and other important matters.  Today’s culture is often defined by a primarily male approach to truth – which is that beliefs are arrogantly stated as fact.  Open mindedness and the virtue of withholding opinion until evidence is judiciously determined is not valued today.  Nor is the value of prudence used to determine the most virtuous course of action.

The recent suggestion that Brett Kavanaugh assaulted a female student over thirty years ago was met, by many men and even our President, as worthy of derision.  Boys will be boys, many said, and that should have no impact on whether Kavanaugh is good enough to sit in judgement over millions of people for the rest of his life.  Led mostly by older, white, straight men, many were and are so convinced in their belief that women lie or that they secretly want to be sexually assaulted, that leaders of the Senate refused to order a full and comprehensive FBI investigation and allow a Justitia search for truth.

        Such a paternalistic attitude extends back to the male writers of the Adam and Eve story.  Reading that mythic story carefully, you’ll note that Satan deceived Eve and it was she who then deceived Adam into eating the apple – an act that many male artists and ministers over the years have attributed to Eve’s use of sex to tempt Adam.  That story has been a major reason why women are not trusted since, as many men assert as fact, women are easily deceived and then act as deceivers themselves.  Many men refuse to seek the real truth about themselves and their learned misogyny and gender bias.

While it might seem logical that such attitudes would divide the sexes – and in some respects they do – the truth is that our entire society is now defined by predominantly male attitudes.  Close-mindedness, a lack of prudence, and an unwillingness to seek truth have been imprinted on our overall culture.  Both women and men act with prejudice toward those they disagree with.  We are polarized as a nation, and even to some extent as a congregation, along fault lines of assertions of truth instead of a united and prudent seeking of truth.  That attitude characterizes both sides in any debate.  As the late Senator Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but NOT their own facts.”  Truth is truth no matter what one may believe but our culture has forgotten that.  People now assert their beliefs are fact and so we have competing interpretations of spirituality, politics, morality and even science such that there is no firm ground of truth on which to stand.  As President Trump’s administration said last year, there are even so-called “alternative facts” – which is an implicit way of saying you have your truth, we’ll have ours.  This nation, our church community, and most of all each of us need to put on the costumes of Justitia and Prudentia and their desire to search for truth – a truth filtered by virtue and common sense. 

We as Unitarian Universalists believe in Justitia – in the search for truth and justice for all.  The very definition of truth, however, is that it is NOT belief but instead provable fact.  Our minds must be open, therefore, to seek truth and to rely less on what we simply believe.  That means we are open minded not only to the influence of our own biases in what we think, but we are also open to learning new insights on any subject.  Most of all, I believe we must apply the UU standard for spiritual matters to secular matters.  If we each earnestly seek what is true, then we ought to  unite in that search, with love for one another, and stop the division, rancor and ill will that can sometimes be held toward those who are taking different paths toward truth..  If we don’t do that, then we will act the same as religious fundamentalists who presume to tell the rest of humanity that that they’re wrong and headed for hell.

I hope you will remind me in the days, weeks and years ahead to  wear the masks of Prudentia and Justitia in a spirit of open minded, common sense search for what is true and good.  I promise to encourage the same of you.