Category: Uncategorized

Message 102, “Poetry to a Spiritual Theme: Seize this Summer Day”, 8-5-12

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

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

Just after the end of World War Two, a young soldier and his commanding officer get on a train together.  The only available seats were in a small compartment across from a beautiful young woman and her grandmother.

As the train began its journey, the young soldier and young woman exchanged sly glances.  They smiled shyly at one another and then would look away.  It soon became clear, however, that they found each other very attractive.

After a while, the train entered a long and dark tunnel.  The compartment was plunged into pitch blackness.  Almost immediately came the sound of a loud kiss – a “smack” – followed quickly by the even louder sound of a slap – “whack”.

The grandmother was horrified and thought to herself, “I can’t believe the young soldier kissed my granddaughter and I’m glad she gave him the slap he deserved!”

The young girl was inwardly happy.  She thought to herself, “I’m glad he kissed me but I wish my grandmother had not slapped him.”

The commanding officer had a bemused but startled look.  He thought, “I don’t blame the boy for kissing the girl, but I wish she hadn’t missed his face and hit me instead.”

As the train emerged from the tunnel into bright sunlight, the young soldier could barely suppress a broad grin.  He had just seized the opportunity to kiss a beautiful girl, slap his commanding officer and get away with both!

Such a story captures the kind of “seize the moment” attitude many of us wish we had.  How many of us have been presented with a golden opportunity to revel in the delights of life but have been too timid or fearful to act?  Indeed, we are often envious of those who find the thrill in life and who seize countless opportunities to find and then experience happiness.

What holds some of us back from living life with such an attitude?  Why do we allow worry, fear, anger or doubt to creep into how we think and thus how we experience life?  If our goal is to be fulfilled in this one journey of years we’ve been given – to find contentment in who we are and to build a legacy of helping others – can we say “yes” to joy, laughter and compassion, and “no” to the things that defeat and hold us back?

For me, summer is the symbolic season that reminds one to grab a hold of all that life offers.  Summer is the fulfillment of a hopeful spring.  It is the so-called salad days of warmth, expansive opportunity, and joie-de-vivre.  To make the most of summer is, for me, to make the most of all that is good in life.  Gone are thoughts of winter despair or a chilling fall.  Everything around me is alive and vibrant and in full maturity.  If I seize a summer day, I believe I seize life itself and find in it all that gives pleasure and meaning.  And that is an attitude I want to have each and every day I live…

Let’s read two short Japanese shinto poems that speak to a spirituality of finding joy, living in the moment and saying “yes” to life.

The Ink Dark Moon                                                    The Song

by Izumi Shikibu, ca. 1000 CE                                   by Issa, 1763-1827

 

Although the wind                                                     On a branch

blows terribly here,                                                    floating downriver

the moonlight also leaks                                         a cricket, singing

between the roof planks

of this ruined house.

 

          These spare poems highlight Japanese style and culture.  Much like Japanese art and architecture, they draw the mind into introspection such that ideas and interpretations are subtle and nuanced.  In their seeming simplicity, Japanese poems are highly complex in structure and symbolism.  They paradoxically speak volumes while using the fewest words possible.   Typically, Japanese poems employ images from nature to address universal human themes of life and death while emphasizing the inherent beauty and joy of life.

We need not be reminded that our lives are difficult and that struggle defines many of our years.  The human condition is certainly not one of perpetual paradise and that fact daily confronts us with how we might live and react.  We struggle in our minds and in our souls to open our difficult lives to moonbeams of contentment – or to songs of joy in the midst of river streams that threaten to overwhelm and drown.

What Issa and Shikibu eloquently convey is our human yearning to overcome the struggles of life, to transcend them not by mere force of will but by recognizing, embracing and saying “yes” to life itself.  Indeed, it might be said that all we really possess in this world is our own life – the experience of living – and how we choose to care for this one fragile possession – that defines who we are and what we might become.

What this boils down to is the great question we are asked to answer in life: do we figuratively seize the day, carpe diem, or do we say “no” – refusing to bask in moonbeams because of doubt, fear, worry and timidity?

Spiritually speaking, saying “yes” to peace and joy in the moment is the goal of almost any world religion.  It is, in essence, to find the peace that passes all understanding – peace in who we are, peace in our circumstances, peace in how we live.  It is the Buddhist effort to find nirvana and rest in perfect balance, it is the Christian desire to find solace in the promise of a better existence, it is the Jewish and Muslim life of duty, obligation and purpose to a higher God, it is the humanist’s design to dwell in unity with all creation. Such are all the common “yeses” of world religions.

In that regard, Issa’s cricket might be a symbolic figure found in any faith – singing joyfully that this life is not all there is, singing peacefully content despite what life brings, living obediently to a god controlling its destiny or drifting in union with water, air and nature.

Jesus implored his followers not to worry about tomorrow and to live in the present – tomorrow will take care of its own troubles, he said.  He also employed images from nature to encourage a contented human mindset.  The lilies of the field bloom in glory and abundance just for a day, he pointed out, knowing that tomorrow they will wither and die.  They have seized their day.  The birds of the air do not store and save but live in the abundance of the here and now.  “Can all of your worries,” he said, “add one moment to your life?”

King David, in Jewish mythology, is described as returning from victorious battle and exulting in the moment by literally stripping down to his tunic – his underwear – and dancing through the streets.  This decidedly non-royal behavior was ridiculed by a few but implicitly sanctioned by his God of celebration.  Like the young soldier in my opening story, David chose to revel in the sheer joy of his moment – a Biblical story used for approval of the exultant life.

And we find in the Islamic tradition the quest for salam – for peace through submission to Allah.  He will prosper his followers with paradise and usher in a realm of eternal contentment.  Most importantly, life is to be one of devotion and obedience thus experiencing the elusive salam – and thus allowing Allah’s moonbeams to leak through the cracks of troubled lives.

Like the Japanese poets and world religions, other writers, philosophers and comics have all pointed to the carpe diem ideal.  Mother Theresa said, “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”  Erma Bombek wryly noted, “Seize the moment.  Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.”  And in his haunting novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway wrote, “Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet.  Now and forever now.  Yes now.  Always now.  And not why, not ever why, only this now and always, please always, now.”   What Hemingway beautifully conveyed was his own fictional soldier seizing life in the moment – refusing to consider that life is oh so fragile and could be snuffed out in the horrors of World War One carnage.  For that soldier, to live in peace, it must only be “now.”  So it must be for us.

What we note is an encouragement to adopt a mindset of Presence – which is the title of a book many of us read as a part of our Book Club several years ago.  Such a philosophy captures much of what we believe to be spiritual ethics – like empathy, forgiveness, trust and love.

If we live life with a desire to “BE” – to seek being rather than doing – we find empathy with and for others comes easily.  Listening and understanding another person in the moment of now is our goal.  Indeed, such empathy is not merely for people or creatures – it is an identification and presence with all that happens in the lifetime of a moment.  Sights, sounds, smells, tastes and emotions felt in the eternal “right now” are acknowledged and experienced deeply.  The young soldier in our original story felt the excitement of his attraction to a beautiful young woman and fully lived in one glorious kiss; the cricket sings joyfully at the bliss it feels drifting down a stream; the religious worshipper finds lasting peace in a moment of prayer; each person seeks the eternal now in contemplation of an eternal death.    The one who says “yes” to life, he or she forgets the past, its shame or heartache, and refuses to consider an unknown future.   We yearn to live forever in the recurring now, the now of ALL nows.

So too comes the spiritual ethic and process of forgiveness.  We choose to let go of the past.  We do not condemn ourselves to an unhappy future.  We choose steps and ways to refuse to live in anger and find, instead, a present peace with enemy and friend alike.

Love also exists, for me, only in the present.  What I felt about another person yesterday or last year is gone.  I have only its memory which may have been love at the time, but is now a distant emotion.  Who and what I dream to love in the future is just that – a longing for something I may or may not experience.  For me, love is REAL only in the moment – the devotion, loyalty and rapturous affection I feel and experience RIGHT NOW.

Such ideals constitute the philosophy of existentialism described by the French writer Jean Paul Sartre.  We exist, we know, we love and we act only in the moment.  All else is either the past, which might be interpreted a thousand different ways, or the future which is unknown mystery.  My being is HERE and my existence is only now.  Such is the only reality and truth.

What all of this means for us in life is as complex and simple as the Japanese poems I read earlier.  In our ruined homes of life, how do we let moonlight leak into our minds and souls?  When drifting down uncharted rivers – heading for rapids, whirlpools and certain death – how can we sing like a cricket, a Japanese symbol of happiness?

The answers we offer for the how of that process are many, and none are conclusive.  Indeed, as much as life itself is a struggle, so too is the effort to be at peace and live in happiness.  As simplistic as it is to carpe diem – to seize the day – or as it easy as it is to note that we should sing like crickets – the means we take to do so are more complex.  We must listen more than we speak.  We must observe and watch more than comment or judge.  We must choose to unshackle our minds to thoughts of worry, sadness or fear.  We must determine to simply BE – to rest in the breathing and heart beating and exist alongside all else that happens in a moment – the traffic outdoors, the stirrings of people around us, the sound of my voice, the light through windows.  This is reality.  This is truth.  This is finding pleasure only in that.  Nothing else exists.  No worries.  No anger. No fears.  Now.  Now.  Now…

I find myself so often living contrary to such truth.  I too often live in my past – in my pain and hurt and doubt of all that I have experienced.  As much as I have worked to be real – to be the Doug that I am in this moment – I too often retreat to the son who feels the slights of his father, to the fearfully closeted gay man I was for so many years, to the people pleaser who only wants others to like me.  Just as I sometimes dwell with ghosts of my past, I fear the prophets of my future – the unknown forces waiting to bring me down through illness, loneliness, or failure.

In such thoughts of my past and my future are the seeds of present unease or discomfort.  I don’t want to die alone.  I don’t want to feel the pain of a failing body.  I don’t want to reap the displeasure of others.  I yearn to be at peace, grateful, joyous and really alive.  I hope to matter and make a difference so that I am not soon forgotten.  As much as I mourn my unorthodox schedule and life patterns, in doing so I miss the beauty of friends in my midst, of my daughters reaching out to me, my work that is enjoyable and fulfilling, my very existence that is a privilege if I ponder the alternative.  Failing to live in the reality and celebration of now, I miss out on really living.

This summer day can be one of capturing the warm sun on my skin, a humid breeze that cools me, the smile of a person I know, the sound of music in my ear.  In my ruined house, in my small branch drifting in the river of life, I’m alone and scared and saddened.  In that reality, in that recognition of the pain of my life, I must answer the eternal question all of us are asked.  Will I right now kiss the young girl or guy, will I dance in the street in my underwear, will I bask in the moonlight, will I sing strong and loud?  Will I say “yes” to this reality, this life, this moment in time and embrace it all, or will I say “no”, and forever let slip that one moment’s chance to find peace?  Let me, I pray, choose this day – and only this day – to truly live.

I wish each of you, in this moment and on this day, much peace and joy.

Message 101, Summer Songs for Inspiration: ‘Rolling in the Deep’ by Adele, 7-15-12

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

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

 

Using song as a means to get revenge on a past lover or partner has long been a part of rock and roll.  Famous revenge songs go way back – at least to the 1970’s.  Nancy Sinatra wrote one of the first revenge songs.   She sang, “These boots are made for walkin, and that’s just what they’ll do, one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you!”

Carly Simon offered her own version of a revenge song directed at a previous lover – reportedly the actor Warren Beatty.  Her song “You’re So Vain” claimed that a past lover would be so arrogant he would assume the song was about him.  Of course, that must mean she had several past lovers all of whom might boast she was singing about them.

And the early 1980’s singer Blondie – who I remember from my college days – sang a famous version “One Way or Another”, an upbeat dance song, in which she fantasizes – one hopes – about doing off with her past lover by feeding him rat poison.

Today, one of the leading songs on the Billboard Top 100 is a piece entitled “Rolling in the Deep” by the newly famous singer Adele.  She won six grammy awards this past January including best pop singer and best album.  That album, entitled “21”, surpassed the late Whitney Houston’s “Bodyguard” album for the most weeks at #1 in the nation.  The song “Rolling in the Deep” was selected by Rolling Stone magazine as the best song of 2011.  It is also the most popular world song in nearly three decades – finding its way to the top of lists in Britain, France, Latin America and 9 other nations.  Let’s listen now to “Rolling in the Deep”…you can follow along with the lyrics printed on the back of your programs.

Some of you may remember our April message series entitled “The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss”.  I found positive insights from The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham and The Lorax but I disagreed strongly with Seuss’ last book Oh, the Places You Will Go for its simplistic message that one’s success in life will be determined solely by hard work, perseverance and a pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality.

I have done the same thing with the songs I chose for this July series on finding inspiration in various current songs of note.  “This Land is My Land” recently re-recorded by Neil Young and “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess both offer positive themes which speak to universal spiritual ideals.  But what about today’s song “Rolling in the Deep”?  Instead of finding helpful inspiration from it – I was struck by its angry and bitter tone.  Far from offering spiritual inspiration, the song appeals to our baser selves – the inner demons in us that lust for revenge – especially against a lover, partner or spouse – who has deeply hurt us.

I don’t want to play the pious Pastor and wag my finger at a song which is, after all, mostly for entertainment – and one that I enjoying for its beat and sound.  Even so, as we have discussed over the past two weeks, songs have a unique ability to speak to the deepest parts of our souls.  For any song, we must ask ourselves, does it ennoble us or does it pander to the darker recesses of human nature?

Experts and anthropologists note that the human desire for revenge comes from a survival instinct to lash back at someone that threatens.   Such behavior, experts assert, comes from the earliest days of our evolution.  The human sense of reciprocity is operative – if you hurt me, I must hurt you back to keep things even.  In order to maintain early social order, no individual could prosper through unfair actions – like stealing, murder or rape.  Fairness demanded retribution.

Consistent with the idea that cooperation builds moral imagination, as humans evolved and moved toward organizing themselves into clans, tribes, cities and nations, individual vengeance became counter-productive.  Violence tends to create more violence and vengeance is often more severe than the original misdeed.  While humans are rational beings, nature has also given us passions far beyond our survival instincts.   Instead of reacting to an attack with defensive actions designed to protect – and then moving on, humans remember and ponder a perceived injustice long after any threat to one’s survival has passed.

Vengeance, for humans, is thus often not a survival reaction but a selfish impulse.  Our sense of self has been violated and we can only feel good about ourselves if we equally punish the other.  Since humans lie, cheat, steal and act selfishly all the time, acts of vengeance could be very common.  Social order and communal cooperation demanded humanity adopt attitudes to diminish anger.

While Adele laments the hurt of knowing she and her lover could have had it all – the so-called British slang term of rolling in the deep of total, loving commitment – she also angrily hopes he will suffer, despair and be forced to worry what she will do next.  Beyond the humiliation of having her side of the break-up immortalized in song, this cad of a lover must now ponder the angry fire in her belly – the hate, bitterness and bile she has for him.  Indeed, Adele admitted that the song was written as an “f – you” to her former boyfriend.  He hurt me.  I’m gonna hurt him even worse.

While some may cheer Adele’s strength and resolve not to be treated as a doormat, the ultimate message of the song is not uplifting.  It tears down not only the ex-boyfriend, but Adele as well.  She has descended to his apparent level of one who speaks and acts with selfish disregard for the other.  BOTH of their actions are defined by their self-absorption.

Many experts and therapists, therefore, advocate the spiritual and practical benefits of forgiveness in romantic relationships.  Instead of acting out and causing further hurt, or suppressing anger and putting it off for another day, forgiveness acknowledges anger and then consciously chooses to let it go.  Forgiveness is a healthy response to a hurt.  This not only benefits the offender but also the offended.  Do we wish to stew in our own toxic brew of bitterness and bile, or do we aspire to live in peace?  Which is more satisfying, less time-consuming and likely to produce happiness?

Too often we assume that forgiving someone is an act of weakness and that it encourages or even rewards bad behavior.  One of the reasons Adele’s song and other revenge songs are so popular is that they appeal to baser notions that we must fight back.  The only way I can prove I am as strong as my opponent is to hit him too.

Counter-intuitively, to forgive is not a weak act.  As Gandhi put it, “Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.”  When we consciously refuse to hit back, when we turn the other cheek, when we choose love over anger, we choose to step outside the boundaries of natural behavior and into the realm of sublime and spiritual human power.

Indeed, to forgive a partner, spouse or anyone else is to offer one of the few forms of unconditional love we have to give.  To forgive is to offer love in response to hate without any expectation of return.  If the other does change or is truly contrite, love has accomplished its goal to enlarge itself.  If the other does not change, one has still extended love into a world where there is so little of it.  And one’s soul has been enlarged as a result.

Such soul enhancement comes directly from moving beyond common human behavior.  Striking back against someone who hurts us is a gross form of arrogance.  We assume we are too good to be hurt.  What we fail to remember is that we are also flawed and weak creatures.  Each of us has hurt others.  Try as we might, we are not perfect and we will hurt again – many, many times.

What Jesus encouraged and many experts echo is that we must refuse to render judgement on others.  Moral indignation at a slight or hurt we suffer prevents us from seeing the act as part of human frailty.  One of the most beautiful story lines in the New Testament is that of Jesus lovingly defending the woman caught in adultery.  He challenged those who condemned her to a stoning death.  “Which one of you has not also sinned?” he asked.  “Which one of you is blameless?  Which one of you self-righteous men have not also lusted or sexually sinned?  Let only he who is perfect throw the first stone.”

Implicit in Jesus’ defense of the woman is the idea that by forgiving others, we are ultimately pleading to be forgiven ourselves.  I have hurt many people in my life and yet, if I choose to react with anger towards someone who has hurt me, I implicitly shut the door to receiving any forgiveness myself – past, present or future.  Jesus said that we must forgive as we too wish to be forgiven.  “But I tell you who are willing to listen,” he said, “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you.  To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer also the other.”

By understanding the human frailty of our offenders, we empathize with their actions and thus enlarge love.  We need not condone the hurtful acts but we instead seek to understand the deeper motivation behind them.  The offender may not have intended to do harm or he or she may have acted because of some past injury to his or her soul.   Empathy involves choosing to walk in their shoes and see as they see.  If we do so, we not only draw closer to the offender, we deliberately promote love.

Such was the case of the adulterous woman Jesus saved from stoning.  Later on, we see her pouring extremely expensive lotion on Jesus – using her hair as a cloth.  By experiencing his forgiveness, she was a changed woman and her heart overflowed with love and gratitude.  The power of forgiveness was greater than any misdeed.

When we choose to understand hurtful behavior, we might also discover our own role in being hurt.  Many times, in big or small ways, we have contributed to the situation.  We are often partially at fault.  In many relationship disputes, blame can be assigned to both persons.  Genuine forgiveness of the other then must include a sincere examination of one’s own role in the hurt – followed by forgiveness for the offender and oneself.  The goal, once again, in relationship disagreements or break-ups is to diffuse anger, restore peace and renew love.  Holding onto bitterness, anger and thoughts of vengeance do not create peace or build love.

It is important to recognize that forgiveness does not mean one prevents the law of consequences from happening.  Forgiveness does not replace justice.  It merely diffuses hate and anger.  Justice may demand compensation, apology or changed behavior.  The law of consequences assumes that boundaries are established so that offenders reap what they sow and cannot indiscriminately repeat their actions.  If you strike me, I will forgive you and work to eliminate my anger and thoughts of retribution, but I will take steps to prevent myself from being struck again.

Indeed, to forgive is a loving act that may also require tough love.  I will not hate you for what you have done and I will not seek vengeance against you but I will explore ways to encourage you to change.  I will not be a doormat but I will also NOT enable your negative behavior by seemingly condoning it.  If you lie to me, I may not trust you until you re-earn it.  If you verbally hurt me, I may not engage in conversation with you when you are angry.  If you continually hurt me, I may choose to separate myself from you but I will not hate you nor will I speak to you in anger.

Ultimately, what we gain when we forgive and refuse to harbor anger is a triumph of our goodness.  By refusing to play the victim, by refusing to see ourselves as someone who is hurt and angry, we not only renounce the petty demands of our selfish demons, we assert our power and strength over the situation.  No longer does the offender have control because of his or her actions.  When we forgive, we take back control.  We are the ones determining the course of events.  We are not the pitiful victim wallowing in a sea of self-focused anger and despair, but the one who has truly overcome.  We are not the loser but the victor.

I have told some of you about my past divorce from the mother of my daughters.  Despite the hurt from finding out I am gay, Kirby was not angry or vindictive.  In ways that I can only partially understand, she must have felt all the confusion a woman feels when she realizes a man she loves is not attracted to her.  That must have hurt her very deeply but it did not cloud our years of mutual affection.  Neither of us were perfect in our marriage and yet we did love each other.  She came to understand why I married her and she empathized with my need to move on.  We easily managed a division of our assets and we committed to jointly raising our girls.  We remain good friends and I will always know her as my first love.  This gracious and beautiful woman gave me a gift of unconditional love and forgiveness for the pain I caused.  What I did was not deliberate, but it was still an act born of fear and cowardice.  But the past is the past and we produced two gorgeous and thriving daughters whom we would not have were we not married.

The pathway to forgiveness is easy to know but difficult to follow.  First, one should acknowledge the hurt one feels.  Don’t suppress such feelings.  Second, find ways to be at peace about the hurt – use meditation, prayer, or reflection.  Third, take inventory of the offender – be willing to see the whole person and focus particularly on what is good.  Work to think loving thoughts toward the other by remembering his or her kindnesses and positive qualities.  Fourth, find empathy for the one who hurt you.  Seek to understand why he or she acted as they did.  Put yourself in their shoes and see the situation from their perspective.  Fifth, honestly examine if you contributed to the hurtful act.  Don’t accept blame where there is none, but be willing to see your own role in the episode if there is one.  Sixth, accept that true love for the other may include appropriate boundaries designed to protect yourself and prevent future pain.  Allow for natural consequences to occur – not ones you create to punish the other.  Seventh, make a conscious decision to speak with peace and kindness to the other.  Tell him or her you forgive them and express your love for them.  Forgiveness is not an instant act.  It is a process.

My friends, hurt happens.  We can often act as brutes toward one another – especially those closest to us.  But the greatest statement that might be said of any of us – now or long after we are gone – is that we were a forgiving person.  As Jesus said, those who build peace, who work to diffuse violence and retribution are those who will truly inherit the earth.  This is a vision which I believe is an evolutionary possibility for humanity one day – hatred will end, cooperation will prevail, diversity will be embraced, selfishness will cease, and the lion will, indeed, figuratively lie with the lamb.  If this world that we envision is to come to pass, it can begin with us – in our relationships with partners, family and friends.  There is far too much hurt in the world.  Let us do the work we are called to do as a part of any faith community – may we strive to diminish pain in ourselves and in others.  May we sing not songs of bitterness, but songs of love, peace and forgiveness…

I wish you, one and all, peace, joy and love…

 

Message 100, Summer Songs, “Summertime” and the African-American Spiritual, 7-8-12

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

 

 

On a number of Sundays, we have explored in here how we might find inner peace during times of struggle and hardship.  When a crisis hits – either big or small, when our health gives out, when the weight of the world seems to be on our shoulders, how do we cope?  How do we survive not just the physical threat during times of stress, but the inner emotional and spiritual pain?

Surprisingly, as I have noted before, humans have an amazing ability to cope with crisis.  Despite great psychic pain, most people are resilient enough to emerge from difficult times with their emotional health intact.  Through friendships, prayer, meditation, support by loved ones and personal strength, issues like depression and grief are largely overcome.  As individuals and as a species, we find ways to survive.

One of the remarkable aspects of African-American culture has been its communal power to overcome and to weather, together, the horrific times of slave ship, plantation, Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights.  African-Americans have relied on family, strong community ties and their faith to maintain a heroic sense of possibility, hope and positive thinking.   Black spirituals – the African-American musical contribution to our national culture – have been primary tools in their arsenal of ways to cope.  While often repetitive and seemingly simplistic, black gospel and spiritual music emotionally resonate within their community.  Spirituals forge and reinforce bonds of togetherness.  The music emphasizes eternal verities of persistence, hope and even ecstatic joy that suffering is but a temporary roadblock.  Dawn will come in the morning, heaven awaits at the end, joy will defeat darkness and all will be well in this life or the hereafter.

George Gershwin was asked in 1930 by the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York to compose an American opera.  He was offered free reign to choose the story or libretto.  Gershwin had the perfect story in mind – a relatively obscure play called Porgy by Dubose Heyward.  The play was set in South Carolina and its characters were almost entirely African-American.  But the Met was part of the racist Jim Crow institution of the time, refusing to permit any black singer or performer.  For characters who are black, the Met insisted on using white actors in blackface.  Gershwin refused to compromise the inherent African-American power and poignancy of the story by using white actors.  He turned down the Met’s commission but composed the opera anyway.

He began writing his piece in 1933 and a new American opera, Porgy and Bess, debuted in 1935 using an all black cast.  It was produced by the Theatre Guild of New York.  It ran with mixed reviews – critics were not sure if it was a comedy or serious piece of social commentary.  Some African-American critics decried the portrayal of the black experience by a white librettist – Dubose Heyward, and a white composer – George Gershwin.  Overall, though, it was accepted within the black community as one of the first mainstream opera productions that paid homage to the black experience and black spiritual music in particular.  While the first production would run for just over 100 performances, its fame grew and it was soon revived and produced across the nation – running even at the Met less than ten years later.  In 1959, it was adapted into a motion picture starring Sidney Poitier and won the Best Picture Academy Award.

Steven Sondheim and other music and opera commentators have since hailed Porgy and Bess as perhaps the greatest of American operas.  While its lyrics and music were written by whites, its songs have been largely embraced by the African-American community – finding their way into the jazz and blues repertoire of such greats like Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.  Gershwin had taken seriously the endeavor to recreate the black musical sound.  He travelled South Carolina extensively and visited hundreds of black churches – listening to their indigenous music and choral sounds.  The cadence and rhythm of Porgy and Bess songs almost perfectly recreate not just the sound of black spirituals but their emotional resonance.  The signature musical piece of the opera, a song entitled “Summertime”, is now considered a jazz and blues classic – one of the foremost pieces in the distinctly American contribution to world music.

And in that regard, “Summertime” is a perfect fit for our July effort to find spiritual inspiration from songs.  Much like the song we looked at last week, “This Land is My Land” by Woodie Guthrie and Neil Young, “Summertime” may not seem to be profoundly spiritual.  But its power and its enduring legacy is that it is exactly that – it offers a deeply spiritual message in the tradition of black gospel music that has roots in the slave ship and plantation field experiences.  Let’s listen to the song now as performed by Billie Holliday in 1936 – a jazz style interpretation versus the operatic one.  You can read the lyrics on the reverse of your programs.

The story of Porgy and Bess is set in the fictional Catfish Row area of Charleston, South Carolina.  That area was based on the actual Cabbage Row section – the low country regions of the outer bank islands east of the city.  This was swamp land perfect for the cultivation of rice…….and the breeding of malaria infected mosquitoes.  Africans were largely immune to such diseases but whites were not.  Historically, this low country area was abandoned by white land owners and left to poor white overseers and black slaves imported from eastern Africa who were used to work in swampy rice fields.  These African slaves created their own unique identity called the Gullah culture -free of white influences and one which remains vibrant today.  Gullah culture has its own language, food, music, art and traditions which largely borrow from black African roots.  It thrived in its isolation from the white world and is therefore hailed today as an inspiration for blacks precisely because it preserves much that is African.  Heyward and Gershwin borrowed heavily from Gullah culture in their writing of Porgy and Bess.

The opera is a tale of despair, death, murder, and drugs.  Like all great tragedies, however, it also embodies themes of uplifting loyalty, love and hope.  Ambrose Heyward, who wrote the libretto, based his story about the character Porgy on an actual man.  The story’s tragedy is thus founded not on white racist mythology but on elements of truth.

As I said, many critics even today decry this story as one that perpetuates the worse aspects of black life.  It seems to validate white racist views that African-American culture is one of loose morals, fighting and rampant crime.  Indeed, its story might just as easily be set in the confines of Over-the-Rhine and yet, to reduce its themes to one of drugs, murder and infidelity is to miss its evocative nature as a universally human story.

Porgy is a crippled man of little means who nevertheless has a cheerily positive outlook on life and who loves, from afar, the beautiful and flirtatious Bess.  She continues to succumb to the seductions of life – men who want sex and who buy it with drugs and crime.  As an essentially good person, Bess is an addict and eventually flees Charleston for New York City, pulled along by the drug pusher who plays to her weaknesses.  Porgy is in love with Bess and even murders one of her nefarious suitors.  In the midst of this central story line, a hurricane hits the coast and takes the life of Clara and her husband Jake – two members of the community and associates of Porgy and Bess.  At the conclusion of the story, Porgy is setting off for New York City, a place he did not know.  In an image worthy of Don Quixote, Porgy departs by goat cart in a desperate but hope filled crusade to find and rescue the woman he loves.

In the tradition of Hamlet, Othello or Don Quixote, Porgy is a tragic hero – crippled in his own way but determined to overcome.  In the same manner, Bess is crippled by her addiction to drugs and men.  Far from being a caricature of black life, the story brings to mind universal themes of human weakness, failure, pain and loss.  As tragic as the story might be, it refuses to wallow in human misery.  Like all of us who face struggle and hardship, the characters are amazingly resilient in their effort to overcome.

And that is the central message of the opera and of its signature song “Summertime” – one that is sung at three different times by three different characters – thus lending to it the hope that any person harbors in their soul.  The song is first sung by Clara to her baby – a lullaby intended to soothe and calm.  It is sung again by Bess – this time after the baby’s mother and father die in the hurricane.  Finally, Porgy sings pieces of the song in his hope filled preparations to find Bess in New York.

Such hope and positive thinking are persistent themes of this song and of other black spirituals.  Life may be full of pain, and despair may be a reality ….. yet, in our minds, we must conjure the easy life of languid summer days full of peace and plenty.   Don’t you cry, child.  Mommy and daddy are here – life is tough but hope is stronger.  One of these days, child, you will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of this life, spreading angel wings to fly off in your own resurrection to find heaven on earth.

This theme of finding peace is a hallmark of black spiritual music.  It is a hallmark of the African-American experience.  Black spirituals are a means to cope with years of slavery, hellish discrimination and bitter inequality.  Drawing strongly from Biblical themes and imagery, “Summertime” continues the tradition of black spirituals that originated during slavery – ones like “Sweet Chariot”, “Down by the Riverside”, and “Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho” – all speaking to the hope and promise of redemption.  African-American slaves identified strongly with the Jewish exodus story – that of Egyptian slavery, escape, endurance and freedom in the promised land.  Moses and Jesus were figures of deliverance to the black slave or poor share-cropper – god-like heroes who will redeem the enslaved, poor and weak.

Black spiritual music indeed captures the essence of genuine spirituality.  It is a spirituality that refuses to give up, refuses to languish, refuses to accept defeat.  Such music and spirituality envisions the promise of heaven on earth –  a realm of justice, comfort and peace – and our human calling to help build it.  Much like Moses was a flawed man given to indecision and violence, Porgy is literally crippled by his physical limp and his all too human anger in the face of injustice.  But Moses and Porgy both rise up in their refusal to be beaten down.  They are heroes in their own way – deeply flawed persons who fight the good fight.  Bess is like all of us – one who is weak when tempted and too easily overwhelmed by the crippling forces of life.  But she too is a heroic figure – one who loves and comforts others while trying to be a better person.

In 1930’s America, many African-Americans were just beginning to retreat from rural and agrarian lifestyles.  Many were ashamed of that poor and seemingly backward culture.  The opera Porgy and Bess depicts this rural culture and even celebrates its rough and tough life.  For many critics, even some who write today, the opera is a racist depiction of the worst of black culture.  It perpetuates, they say, racist ideas about how African-Americans live and act.

While the opera was, indeed, written by white men, it nevertheless is symbolic of the black and, for that matter, universal human experience.  The Jewish slaves depicted in the Bible were not paragons of virtue despite their heroic suffering.  Just days after their miraculous escape, they began to bitterly complain and fall into depression about their food and long hot desert days.  In time, they too succumbed to their temptations and indulged in wild worship of the golden calf – celebrating sex, booze and riches.

It is often too easy for me and many whites to wonder about the lives of African-Americans who fall into crime, drugs, out-of-wedlock parenthood and unemployment.  What I and white America often forget to understand is that such flaws are not unique to blacks.  Whites too suffer from issues of addiction and temptation.  Such is the eternal fate of humankind – we are all fallen people struggling against our weaknesses that enjoy sex, strong drink, bouts of depression and other forms of self-focused living.  We, as humans, are all too consumed with the needs of the self.

Such flaws are not only common, they define us as humans – as creatures dwelling for a time on this cruel earth while aspiring to a better life and a better soul.  To be flawed is to be a member of the human race.  Too often we are victims of our own humanity – inflicting on ourselves or on others the indignities of hate, violence and emotional distress.   The black experience of struggle against the forces of pain in their culture – addiction, infidelity and crime – are direct manifestations of the hurt inflicted on them by white America.  Such is often the case for any individual or culture.  We react, often badly, to the pain we experience.

The triumphant glory of the black experience, however, is their persistent ability to cope and ultimately thrive.  As I said earlier, black spiritual music was one of their primary survival tools.  And the song “Summertime” is a classic rendition of such spiritual music.  Hope is not an empty emotion.  Finding peace in one’s heart and mind are not worthless endeavors.  Claiming the strength and will to overcome is not an idle boast.  They are powerful truths that speak to what spirituality is all about.  We are called to be ever growing, ever learning, and ever aspiring to grow wings and fly as transcendent angels bringing justice, compassion and love to a hurting world.

White, protestant America – of which the Gathering follows in its traditions – is too often stuck in the western mindset of dour determination and rational thinking.  We arrogantly assume our ways to be better than African, oriental or latino cultures.  We enjoy our music and watch our westernized operas and symphonies believing them to be superior or more complex than simple and repetitive African spirituals.  Also, in a form of subtle racism, whites demean the black experience of struggle against personal demons – ignoring the fact they have their own.  The vagaries of crime and drugs and infidelity in urban American are no worse and no better than the inside trading crimes, alcoholism, multiple divorces and psychological therapy endemic to white, middle class suburbia.  Black, white, yellow or brown, we are all humans prone to the same inner demons.  Like all humanity, we all also yearn to act as better angels.

Listening to the song “Summertime” in the dog days of our own summer is a rapturous experience.  Even more so, however, is the realization that the song evokes the pain and promise of not only the African-American experience but of the universal human experience as well.  Such experience is truly one of overcoming hardship through positive thinking and refusing to accept defeat.  The black tradition has always been about endurance while yearning for what is good in human nature.  We, as largely members of a white culture, would be wise to learn from that.

I, like many of you, know too many stories of people fighting personal temptations, people aching with physical pain, friends in deep grief, dear ones in anguish.  But, my friends, for any of us caught in such everyday trials of hard work, mourning, poor health, loneliness, addiction or depression…………it’s summertime and the living is easy.  Your daddy’s rich and your momma’s good looking.  And one of these mornings, child, you’re going to rise up singing, spreading wings and you’ll take to the sky.  Life is tough but hope is truly, truly stronger.

I wish you all much joy and even more peace…

Message 99, Summer Songs, This Land is Your Land, 7-1-12

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

Click here to listen to the message or read it below:

 

 

Woodie Guthrie, one of the 20th century’s acclaimed folk music artists, was born in 1922 in Okemah, Oklahoma.  As he grew up in Okemah, he experienced firsthand its oil boom years and sudden crash when the oil ran out.  Drilling and oil companies quickly departed and left the town shaken and largely unemployed.

On top of those experiences, Guthrie came of age just as the Great Depression hit.  He married and had several children.  But in the midst of an oil bust, a national depression, and the extreme drought of the dust bowl years, Guthrie could not find work to support his family.  And so he took to the road – heading to California – to find work and thus send money to his wife and kids.  California, at the very edge of the symbolic American frontier, was viewed (as it often still is) as a land of promise – a golden state of warm weather, lush agriculture and buzzing commercial activity.

Guthrie became part of the greatest migration in American history – over 400,000 homeless people left their Midwest homes in the 1930’s, desperate in their search for the elusive American dream.  On that homeless journey across the west, Guthrie found fame among the dust bowl refugees, or “Okies” as they were called.  His songs about those years – the desperation, hope and fears of people decimated by the depression, defined his folk identity.

Guthrie found a different California from what he expected – one dominated by greed, intolerance, racism and a gaping gulf between the haves and the have-nots.  He found few differences from the dog eat dog ways of the oil fields he had left.  Money and wealth were the lubricant of the culture.  Poor migrant workers were at the lowest of the social strata – scorned for their lack of culture, their poverty, their dirty, dejected and sweaty appearance.  These Okies from the dust bowl Midwest replaced Hispanic workers and were demeaned as a result.  Guthrie, however, found work at a Los Angeles radio station – writing and singing the kinds of songs popular with the expanding migrant population.

His fame grew so that he eventually moved with his family to New York City where he was feted by that city’s liberal elite.   He became a noted song writer, novelist and poet.  In 1941, he was hired by the New Deal Arts project to document his dust bowl travels and experiences.  His songs, novels like the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and photos by Dorothea Lange, whose haunting images document that exodus, all these seared into the American consciousness the face of grinding and hopeless poverty.  Sadly, it is said that such poverty only resonated with the greater public because dust bowl refugees were largely white.  Even so, Guthrie was their figurative spokesperson – one who evoked the pain and yearnings of people who literally had nothing.

In 1940, Irving Berlin’s song “God Bless America” had become hugely popular – one made even more famous by Kate Smith’s regular radio performance of the piece.  Guthrie, however, was offended by the song’s hypocrisy and lack of truth.  Its first verse sings, “While the storm clouds gather far across the sea, let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free.  Let us all be grateful for a land so fair, as we raise our voices in a solemn prayer:  God Bless America.”

How was America free or fair, Guthrie wondered?  To those born in the midst of the dust bowl, to the workers laid off and then standing in long bread lines just to survive, Guthrie and others asked if a person is really free if there is no opportunity to enjoy it?  Is America truly fair when the circumstances of one’s birth and parentage determine one’s lot in life – instead of how hard one works, or wants to work?

And so he wrote the song “This Land is Your Land”, one recently re-recorded by Neil Young and the Crazy Horse Band for their new album “Americana”.  On the album, Neil Young reinterprets classic American folk songs – like “Oh Susanna” and “My Darling Clementine” – that are well loved but little understood.  And Guthrie’s song “This Land…” is perhaps one of the most misunderstood.  Young interprets the folk songs with a hard rock sound that gives them a more contemporary feel.  Young purposefully included “This Land” on his new album as a statement that little in our nation has changed since the 1940’s.  “Americana” is now fourth in overall sales as listed on the Billboard top 100.  Let’s listen to the song and, as we do, you may follow the lyrics on the back of your programs…

Click here to read the lyrics to the Neil Young song while you listen.

Guthrie’s song “This Land” challenges a 1930s and 1940s America that was increasingly being bought and sold; an America that stood for equality, justice and liberty but often did not live up to those ideals.

The three most pointed verses, the ones speaking about a land of “No Trespassing” signs and lines of people forming outside of relief offices – in the shadow of a steeple – these were intentionally removed from most published versions of the song.  Guthrie was later accused of being a socialist and communist – a freely used epithet against anyone who expressed concern for the poor.  An examination of Guthrie’s original manuscript and his original recording – produced long before the sanitized version became popular – all contain the controversial verses.  They change the entire meaning of the song.

As a fourth grade kid, I remember singing the song at a school assembly – but these verses were not included.  Indeed, until listening to the song recently on iTunes – after learning about Young’s “Americana” album – I had never heard those verses nor understood the song’s intended meaning.   The deletion of those verses has led many people to believe the song is a patriotic hymn of praise for our nation.

To the contrary, Guthrie intended, as Young does now, to point out the irony of the ideal that America belongs to everyone.  Implied in his lyrics is the notion that America may be out of tune with its Christian and democratic values.  Guthrie and Young make a bold statement: despite the willful privatization and exclusion that goes on in our nation, America is not truly owned by the wealthy or by large corporations.  It was made by the creator for all of us.  It was created and founded as a land open to all.  “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” this nation has long vowed.  This land is your land – a land of opportunity to the children of slaves, migrant field workers, laid off steelworkers, single moms fighting to feed their families.  For Guthrie, it is not enough to say America is a land of opportunity, it must actually be so.

On this Sunday preceding the Fourth of July holiday, it’s important to heed the message of Guthrie’s song.  What is REAL patriotism?  Much like authentic spirituality or genuine love, such patriotism does not assert untrue boasts.  It is humble and well aware of national flaws.  Real patriotism is unafraid to confess the many ways a nation does not live up to its ideals.  Indeed, real patriotism calls the nation – much like spiritual contemplation challenges us as individuals – to change and grow for the better.  America, like us, must constantly aspire to be one that equals its stated promise.  “This Land Is Your Land” speaks this voice of authentic patriotism.

The American Political Science Association recently issued a report claiming that the wealthy have an outsized voice in American government – a voice that leaders and politicians of both parties readily heed.  Citizens with lower to moderate wealth are speaking with a whisper, the report asserted.  It concluded by saying, “progress toward realizing American ideals of democracy may have stalled, and even, in some places, reversed.”

As if to prove this point, the Washington Times – a strongly conservative paper, noted that the May statistics on giving to the two presidential campaigns showed almost one third of all funds collected by the Obama campaign came from those giving over $10,000.  Almost half of all donations to the Romney campaign came from such donors.  Much as in Woodie Guthrie’s day, money speaks.  There is a “No Trespassing” sign erected at the gateway to American government – one that prevents the poor, marginal and middle class citizen to cross.  Does this land belong to me and to you, or is it just an illusion?

Offering a viewpoint similar to that of the Political Scientists, The Economist magazine – one also noted for its strongly pro-business and pro-capitalist opinions – claims that there is a growing income disparity in the United States.  As an example, thirty years ago the average compensation of the top 100 business chief executives in the US was 30 times that of the average worker.  Today, top 100 CEO pay is over 1000 times the pay of the average worker.  Such rising pay inequality is reflected across the workforce.  American corporations used to be agents of upward mobility for workers, the magazine noted.  One gained an entry level position and, through loyalty, hard work and skill, could rise to the highest levels.  An individual often worked his or her entire life for one company.  Today, that is rarely the case with corporations turning to individuals graduating from elite colleges and graduate schools, instead of promoting those from entry positions.

The American education system is also no longer one of equality, The Economist noted.  The system is increasingly stratified by class, with poor kids attending schools with limited resources while the wealthy attend schools with vastly greater resources.  Children born today have opportunities in life based on the educational level of their parents – and that is highly dependent on one’s economic class.  Children born to wealthy parents have far greater opportunities to succeed.  Children born to parents of low or moderate income have sharply limited opportunities.  This is in stark contrast to how it once was.  The Economist concludes its editorial by saying, “the United States risks calcifying into a European-style, class-based society.”

My friends, this is a deeply spiritual issue.  The greatest of history’s spiritual leaders all promoted issues of economic fairness.  Jesus was a radical for his time – he often attacked the elites of his day and their hypocrisy.  Many theologians believe his revolutionary ideas about poverty and wealth were what really led to his arrest and execution.  Elites of the time loved to brag about the size of their offering, they used the Temple as a space for profit making, they cheated the poor, ignored the needy and abandoned the sick.  Do not be arrogant or haughty, the New Testament tells the wealthy – give liberally and never place your trust in money.

The Old Testament implores the rich to speak up for the poor who cannot speak for themselves.  The Jewish prophet Ezekiel clearly states that the real sin of Sodom – verses ignored by many fundamentalists – is “that Sodom was arrogant, overfed and unconcerned…they did not help the poor and needy.”  Muhammad said those who fail to liberally give to the poor are sinful and not true Muslims.  The Buddha taught that charity is the highest of spiritual ideals.  Gandhi’s movement was one to empower India’s poor – no matter their religion.  Mother Theresa devoted her life to the care for the poorest of humans – the untouchables of Calcutta, India.

Spiritually, each of us knows that selfish living is a zero sum game.  We enrich our bodies at the risk of our souls and our collective community.  We become people who do not love, care for or support the needs of others.  Moral imagination calls for a re-examination of how success is achieved.  Cooperation and mutual support is the key to individual and national well being.  And that has always been the great strength of this nation – that the American dream was founded on the idea that given freedom of opportunity, the vast majority of citizens, working together, can realize an enjoyable middle class life – a house, a car, adequate food, occasional vacations, and college education for the kids.  But the foundations on which that American dream was built are crumbling – unequal school resources, expensive health care, college costs out of reach, and limited upward mobility in employment.

Indeed, that is the spiritual and patriotic message implicit in Guthrie’s and Young’s song.  Wealth and capitalism are not despised or attacked.  In a capitalist economy, not everyone will equally prosper.  But the American dream has never been based on equality of wealth, but on equality of opportunity.

Wealth and capitalism are implicitly and ironically supported in Guthrie’s song.  A return to ideals of fairness and opportunity for every person who wishes to work hard is a means to protect capitalism.  Unless the worst excesses of rampant, selfish greed are held in check, we risk the outcome that The Economist magazine predicts – a class based economy that stagnates and eventually collapses.

With such a decline, America risks the loss of its vibrant diversity and upward mobility that fosters innovation, creativity and a fertile economy.  Class based economies waste the inherent intelligence and expertise locked in the minds of those who cannot rise through lack of a decent education or limited access to the levers of power.  Great cultures like ancient Rome and 19th century Great Britain arguably lost their great power status largely because they perpetuated class based systems that stifled inclusion and opportunity.  Indeed, in a recent study, France is now ranked higher in opportunity for upward mobility than the United States.  Rising inequality of income and education puts American capitalism at risk.  And that puts us all – rich and poor – in jeopardy.  Even worse, we risk becoming a hollow nation – one that comforts itself with false patriotism while the reality is something far different.

The ultimate fear is that America will lose its evolving spiritual ethic that has always cherished justice and equality.  America has never been perfect but is has, from its earliest days, been a place that increasingly offered upward mobility, freedom and opportunity to each citizen.  In the shadow of our steeples, we must not lose our concern for the poor, the weak, the disenfranchised.  We must not lose our sense of fair play and belief in the intrinsic worth of every person.  We must continue to foster inspiring life examples of men like Lincoln born to illiterate parents in the backwoods of Kentucky, like Reagan who rose from a childhood in rural Illinois – born to an alcoholic shopkeeper dad, or to an Obama who defied centuries of racism and rose as a biracial son of a single mom – all these men ascending to the pinnacle of prestige and power.   Any of us should be able to realistically tell any child – black, white, rich, poor, male, female, gay or straight – “one day that could be you!”

Woodie Guthrie and Neil Young have expressed in song a tune not of protest, but of hope and promise.  Far beyond the geography of this nation – calling America “this land” evokes much of what is unique about us.  We began as an expansive but unknown frontier of hope, and that image remains a part of national identity.   America, the land, is by its very nature a quasi spiritual realm – a refuge for all humanity where universal ideals of compassion, fairness, justice, freedom and opportunity might be lived out.  John Winthrop, the founding governor of Plymouth colony, first coined the phrase that this land is like a city on a hill – evoking Jesus’ great image and even greater ethical teachings.  While sincere men and women will disagree on how that image can continue to be realized, a fundamental truth still remains.  All humanity – not just Americans – are called by millennia of spiritual reflection and truth to love others and treat them as they too wish to be treated – the Golden Rule.  If a child is born into the streets outside these windows and cannot hope to escape a cycle of poverty, is that love?  If in this very city children gather in “state of the art” elementary and secondary schools while others, only a few miles away, gather in schools that would make a third world nation embarrassed, is that love?  When access to the corridors of power are restricted only to those with great wealth, is that love?  When millions of citizens live in daily fear that they could be diagnosed with a serious illness but have no health insurance to pay for treatment, is that love?

Our answer to these questions must frame our actions.  Guthrie and Young sing a plea to you and to me.  We must honestly examine our consciences and ask the question – is this land – this land that embodies dreams of opportunity – is it your land, my land, and the land of each and every citizen?

I wish you peace, joy and a Happy Fourth of July week…

Message 98, Destination Life: Easy Street, 6-17-12

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

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

 

Winning a big lottery jackpot is dream for most of us.  I confess to buying a ticket or two when the winning amount gets large enough.  Rationally, I know the odds of winning are greater than me being elected President – but I buy a ticket anyway by consoling myself that somebody must win.  And, during the time leading up to the drawing, I think about all the ways I might use the money – often thinking of the many ways I would help family and friends.  You can just imagine the wonderful church building I’ve built in my mind with my fantasy winnings.

Sadly, though, many people only half jokingly refer to the lottery as their retirement savings plan.   And, as we know, the lottery and other forms of gambling are highly regressive forms of taxation.  The poor and those least able to afford buying tickets are often the ones who buy them the most – visions of becoming an instant millionaire dance in their heads too.

Just as sad, though, are the very common but unlucky stories of some who do win lottery jackpots of significant size.  Michael Carroll of Great Britain won nearly 20 million dollars but within ten years had lost it all.  He says he spent it on gambling, drugs and prostitutes.  “The party is over and I haven’t got two pennies to rub together,” he says now.  “I find it easier for me to live off of 42 pounds than to have millions.”

Evelyn Adams won 6 million in the New Jersey lottery but also lost it to a drug addiction.  She now lives in a rented trailer with a roommate.  “I made mistakes, some I regret, some I don’t.” she says.  “I’m human.”

Or, take the example of the Greenwich, Connecticut group of office workers who split a 245 million dollar jackpot.  Office lunches became impossible because of resentment by those who did not win.  There were many lost friendships, bitter office fights, lawsuits and many of those who won decided to move to new homes even though they had planned to stay where they had lived.  It seems their neighbors no longer spoke to many of them and some even had their properties vandalized.

Oren Dorrell thought he and his wife were being prudent when they invested all of their lottery winnings in low risk savings bonds.  He wanted to continue working at his old job and use the winnings as his retirement fund.  But, it seems friends and neighbors turned away from he and his wife.  “There go those lottery snobs” people would say.  Dorrell believes most people are resentful of someone who instantly wins big.

Finally, there is the story of William Bud Post who won 16 million in 1998.  His brother hired a hit man to kill William after conspiring to being named in the will.  Other relatives of William persuaded him to invest in a business that soon failed.  In 2006 he declared bankruptcy and six months later died of respiratory failure – due mostly to smoking which he had picked up again after winning the lottery.

The most obvious lesson from such stories is that, clearly, money does not buy wisdom, friendships or happiness.  And this might also be said of almost any other form of prosperity in life – an abundance of good health, great intelligence or fantastic wealth.  Finding ourselves on the easy street of life is not always an instant ticket to contentment.  As we have looked at over the last two weeks, determining our destiny is not a simple matter.  Our lives are subject to often mysterious forces that have great influence over us.   Who we are, how we think and what we do in life are shaped by our genetics, how we were raised and by random events.  But, we also know that we can and must take charge of our lives – acting as so called Captains of our souls – helping to guide our lives despite the unseen forces that affect us.  In that regard, when faced with inevitable hardships, we need not be mere pawns at the mercy of cruel fate.  Adversity can be surgery to our souls – helping us grow as people, even as we struggle through pain and heartbreak.  As Nietzsche said, “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”

But what should our response be to the times in our lives when we figuratively land on easy street – when life is going well, when we are generally happy, healthy and wealthy enough to provide for our basic needs and a few modest pleasures?  We intuitively know that adversity can be good for us and that we should use hardship as an opportunity, but how do we react to prosperity?  How do we respond to the good times in life?  What is a spirituality for easy street living?

According to the teachings of Buddha, there are three types of people in our world.  The first type of person is figuratively blind in both eyes.  One eye is blind to opportunities for prosperity or success in any area of life.  He or she will sadly fail at almost every life endeavor.  The second eye is also figuratively blind.  The person has no wisdom and is blind to seeing or understanding right from wrong.  He or she has no virtue and never will.  Unsuccessful and lacking in common morality – this person is not a model citizen.

The second type of person is blind in only one eye.  He or she will succeed in at least one area of life and find basic life security.  One eye, at least, is able to see ways to achieve.  But, most importantly, this second type of person has only partial perception of right and wrong.  There is limited ability to act with kindness and one is often angry, bitter, depressed or hate filled.  This person will only partially prosper in life and will struggle to find real peace.

The third type of person is symbolically fully sighted.  He or she has the wisdom to see and know how to succeed and find prosperity.  This third type of person is also able to see and know right from wrong.  As the Buddha said, only a person who is capable of seeing out of both eyes, how to succeed AND how to be at peace with the self and the world, only this person is an ideal human.  He or she is humble, patient, content, empathetic, compassionate, even-tempered, free of strong temptations and just.  Indeed, this person has achieved a state of enlightenment – an elusive way of being that is the goal for any person.

Most people live somewhere in the second category, somewhere between the two extremes of total blindness and complete sight.  We know how to navigate the responsibilities of life to work and care for ourselves but we lack full enlightenment in how to find inner peace and in how to be perfectly loving and compassionate people.  Life, for many of us, is a continual quest to see things in a better and more generous light.

What we ultimately seek is soul prosperity.  While financial prosperity sounds wonderful, most people usually come to a realization that a better form of easy street living is to have a prosperous soul – one that is wise, virtuous and at peace.  From the Buddha, we see that many people find certain forms of prosperity in their lives – financial wealth, work success, strong health, great intelligence or athletic prowess.  But very few find the kind of soul prosperity that leads to enlightenment.  It is that soul prosperity which speaks to any of us – Buddhist or not – as a response to how we respond to the easy street times in life.  How can we prosper our souls not only when the going gets tough – as we looked at last week – but when the going is smooth and easy.  Indeed, I contend that it is far tougher to find soul prosperity when times are good.  We are prone to grow and learn more during adversity.  But easy street living can also be times for growth if we are so intentional.

Paul tells us in the Bible that money is NOT the root of all evil.  Indeed, he turned to several wealthy followers for his support.  Jesus also did not condemn wealth.  He even befriended and used the efforts of a rich little man named Zaccheus – the one who climbed into a tree, the better to see the famous Jesus – and the one who repented of his greedy ways and committed himself to a life of giving and serving.  The Buddha acknowledged that money and the making of money are not bad.  Indeed, Buddha taught that money can bring moral happiness – happiness in the owning and taking care of things, happiness in knowing one’s money was earned by a right livelihood – one that benefitted and does not harm humanity, happiness from not being in debt and happiness from sharing one’s wealth.  Prosperity, he taught, is a good thing if it is used wisely and rightly.

In that regard, any form of personal prosperity is good if it is used rightly.  If one is blessed with great intelligence, does one use it for the good of humanity or to do harm?  If one has great athletic ability, does one use that strength to help others or for selfish and narcissistic reasons?  What the Bible and Buddha both imply through their teachings is that having a surplus of money or of anything else are not bad.  What harms our souls is to love money, love our intelligence, beauty, or athleticism over and above a love for other people.  And that is a clear danger area for easy street living.  Do we come to love that which has brought us to easy street?  Or do we recognize an obligation and a soul necessity to use the prosperity for higher goals?

A Buddhist ethic for any form of prosperity is to do good.  “When you protect others,” the Buddha said, “you protect yourself.”  When we are living on easy street and find ourselves comfortable, the goal must be to live a balanced life.  One must not relate happiness with prosperity nor sadness to a lack of it.  We are called not to waste wealth but to use it wisely.  And, hoarding wealth for its mere accumulation is equally harmful to our souls – we learn to love what we unreasonably save.

The Buddha said there are three virtuous advantages to having prosperity.  First, one can assist and take care of friends and family.  He compared this to a beautiful lake with crystal clear waters that flows deep and teems with fish.  Such a lake lies next to a village and serves its people who draw from it to drink, bathe and eat.  Prosperity is also a safeguard against misfortune – the same as having enough water to put out a fire.  And, having wealth allows one the pleasure to give it to worthy charities and organizations.

To live a balanced and virtuous life when living on easy street, the Buddha urged people to practice sacrifice.  All people must practice some form of renunciation – to give up and sacrifice for the well being of others.  While the ethical ideal is to give up everything and live as a monk, the Buddha recognized this was not wise for all people.   Even so, all people must sacrifice, in some way, for others – through liberal giving, caring for one’s family or fellow beings, or volunteering time to strangers. These all require a sacrifice of money, time and talent.  Such sacrifices prevent us from falling in love with what has made us comfortable.  Indeed, sacrifice makes us uncomfortable, and that is a good thing.  We intuitively remind ourselves that while life might be easy one moment, it can turn difficult in a split second.

In my research for this message, I came across a story about one of the wealthiest men in America but one whom I doubt very many people know.  John Feeney made his fortune, estimated at over 8 billion dollars, by founding the Duty Free Shopping system.  Despite his massive wealth, this 80 year old man wears very cheap suits, he wears an old Timex watch, he uses a plastic bag for a briefcase and he lives in a cramped one bedroom reantal apartment in San Francisco.  Feeney was changed, he says, after reading Andrew Carnegie’s 1889 essay entitled “The Gospel of Wealth,” in which Carnegie admonishes the wealthy to use their money to help others and to “set an example of modest, unostentatious living and shun displays of wealth.”

In 1996, Feeney set up a foundation and proceeded to give it nearly all of his money.  Contrary to how most foundations are run which try and preserve wealth for as long possible – the better to enrich executive directors and board members,  Feeney structured his foundation so that it would give away all of the 8 billion dollars by 2016 and thus cease to exist.  Feeney’s favorite Irish proverb says this, “There are no pockets on death shrouds.”

Feeney refuses to allow so much as a plaque be placed in his honor at any location receiving his money.  He will not allow his name to be used in connection with his giving and it is a part of a contract with any recipient organization that if they disclose he is a benefactor, his money will stop.  ‘It doesn’t matter who paid for a building,” he says.  “The important thing is that it gets built.”  So far, he has given away nearly 4 billion dollars – mostly to biomedical research centers – but also to progressive causes like efforts to stop homophobia in Africa, lobbying efforts against the death penalty in New Jersey, medical supplies to Cuban doctors and money to support the Irish Republican Army political wing Sinn Fein.  His favorite charity is Operation Smile – an organization that provides free cleft lip and palate repair surgery to children around the world – one that I am proud to say my father served for several years as a surgeon.

Feeney recently agreed to allow a biography be written about him – one entitled “The Billionaire Who Wasn’t”.  His motivation to be more open is to try and nudge other wealthy individuals to share their wealth.  He likes to cite the fact that if the wealthiest 14,000 taxpayers in the country gave away only one-third of their annual income, that would amount to 61 billion dollars each year.  He cannot understand why those who have no need for more money continue to hoard it and will not give some of it away.  “Its not my role in life to tell rich people what they should be doing with their money,” Feeney says. “I’m just convinced if people gave money to things they’ve identified as being in the public interest, they’d get a great satisfaction out of it.”

For all of us – as mere mortals who are likely to never win a lottery or be worth 8 billion dollars, we can still find lessons in life for how to deal with material, financial, physical or emotional prosperity.  At those times when we are living large on easy street, Buddhist ethics sound convincingly wise.  Live in balance.  Refuse to derive happiness from prosperity.  Look, instead, for opportunities to find well-being and soul prosperity from giving, serving, loving, and growing.  Adversity will likely soon enough teach us its own lessons.

Our call, my friends, is to live under constant reminder that we are richly blessed.  No matter who we are or what we have in life, we have been given so much.  Yes we work, yes we seek wisdom, yes we strive to be humble.  But life itself is a gift, loved ones are like icing on top of our cakes, pleasures in life are cherries of satisfaction.  With all that we have, we truly must find ways to sacrifice for the sake of others.  And we must find ways to sacrifice for the sake of our own souls.  At the end, when we are beckoned into a beautiful eternity, may it be said that we each entered that journey with the wealthiest of souls.

I wish you all much peace, joy and a Happy Father’s Day.

Message 97, “Destination Life: Heartbreak Hotel”, 6-10-12;  © Doug Slagle

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

 

In the classic story about suffering, one that has its roots in myths dating to before 1000 BCE, a good, righteous and faithful man named Job suddenly finds himself in the midst of almost unimaginable distress.  As described in the Biblical Old Testament, Job is very wealthy, he has a large family with many sons – a good thing in his male oriented culture – and he is quite happy.  His trust, in what he believes to be a loving God, is strong.  Life for Job is as good as it gets.

The story describes how Satan, walking to and fro in the heavens, notices Job’s life and begins to taunt God about the nature of Job’s faith.  Is it real or is it a mere byproduct of a very comfortable life?  Would Job be so faithful if he were not so blessed?  Satan is finally allowed by God to have complete power over Job’s life and thus test him.

Soon, Job’s abundant flocks of cattle, sheep and camels are either killed or stolen.  Such flocks were the currency of his day, a living bank account of wealth.  As Job is financially ruined, he is also devastated by the deaths of his seven sons and three daughters.  Children were beloved family members but in ancient cultures they were also sources for parents of future security.  In short order, Job is reduced to wrenching grief and total destitution.

But all is not over for poor Job.  Satan knows Job’s suffering is not complete and so he asks God for permission to directly attack Job’s health.  Soon, large and painful boils erupted all over Job.  Having a visible and nasty appearing skin condition are particularly hideous in traditional Jewish cultures – a sign of uncleanness and God’s disfavor.  Along with other unusual commands in the Book of Leviticus, people with boils, rashes or leprosy are to be shunned.  At this point, Job could not fall any lower.  Even his wife tells Job that he should curse God and die.  Give up, she implies.  You have no life that is worth living.

In this June message series entitled “Destination Life”, I want to consider a spirituality of life itself.  As we looked at last week, who or what controls our lives?  How do we respond to the powerful forces that seem to determine our destiny?  Are we captains of our souls?  And when we figuratively check into the “Heartbreak Hotel” – as we will consider today – how do we conduct ourselves?  What is a spiritual response to hardship?  Finally, as we will examine next Sunday, when we land on “Easy Street”, what is our response then?

Woody Hayes, the former and infamous Ohio State football coach, once said, “There’s nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.”  An apparent confirmation of such wisdom is the Chinese written word for “crisis”.  It is comprised of two characters – one represents “danger” and the other represents “opportunity”.  This Chinese blending of two meanings into one word can inform our understanding of “hardship”.  In any calamity, setback or problem is a seed for potential growth and change.  Indeed, we rarely change our ways when we are successful.  Prosperity, or coasting along with no problems in life, too often breeds contentment which can encourage complacency.

What we find in the story of Job is that hardships in life have always elicited age the same responses – those of shock, confusion, denial, anger and then, hopefully, acceptance and change.  Job is confronted after his fall by a trio of friends who tell him he must repent of grave sin in his life, but they cannot diagnose what that sin might be.  Indeed, such advice has been common for thousands of years.  Too often we believe, as I discussed last week, that individuals are alone responsible for their good or bad fortune.  Such is the myth that “free-will” alone determines fate and that the poor, sick or destitute deserve their hardship because of poor choices, just as the successful deserve their largesse solely because of their right choices.

Job refuses to accept the advice that his hardships must be his fault.  Even so, he remains unsure what his response should be.  He had been a faithful man, after all.  What sin could he have committed that is so grave as to deserve his distress?  If he had not sinned, why was God punishing him?  Absent any great sin in his life, Job must struggle with the eternal question of why bad things happen to good people.  Answers to that question are difficult for most world religions to address – either God is in control and thus allows for evil and suffering, or else he is not in control and is therefore impotent in the face of human pain.  The former idea points to an indifferent God who is NOT compassionate and loving.  The latter idea, points to a God who is unable to prevent evil.  Both ideas run contrary to most religious thinking about the Divine.  Job, as I said, does not know what to think.

He eventually confronts God with anger and bitterness.  Just as it is said Jesus lamented on the Cross – “Why have you forsaken me God?”, Job also demands answers.  “What have I done to deserve this form of living hell?”

Whether or not we believe in a theistic God, we must still wrestle with why evil and misfortune exist in our world.  The conclusions we reach about why hardships exist will shape our understanding of how to respond.

If we believe gods or goddesses cause, or allow for, our hardships, then our likely response is to live in fear of these deities.  We obey them.  We honor them in an effort to please them.  We profess belief in them in order to win their favor.  Fear, as we have discussed in here before, is not a sound basis for life.

If we believe hardships are the result of natural but uncaring forces in our universe, then we respond either with abject resignation (what can we do in the face of such forces working against us?) or, we work to change them and thus be sources of light and love in a pain filled universe.  Fear or love: which do we choose?

In order to survive the suffering in our lives, we must change.  We must grow.  We must refuse to give up.  We must fight and work and rally against human suffering – that which we experience and that which others experience.  And this, my friends, this is the “Ah-ha” moment for us about the reason for heartbreak and evil.  They exist for our good.  They exist for our growth.  They exist in order that we change.  Of all the forces active in our world, what seems like evil may not be evil after all.  Indeed, so-called evil serves a good purpose.

Such an idea is not mere platitude.  It is a literal and scientific fact.  When a weightlifter or long distance runner exclaims that there is no gain without pain, such is a biological fact – the fibers of our muscles must be microscopically torn in order to gain new strength.  Trees grow stronger and more resilient – their roots grow deeper – the more they are stressed by wind or drought.  Psychologically, we know that only when we deal with our pain, when we confront our inner demons, when we acknowledge our addictions or depressions and the harm they do to us, do we begin a road to recovery.  For many of us, we refuse to change unless pain begins to outweigh pleasure.  Pain forces a response – avoid it or confront it.  But first, we must reach a point where we cry out into a dark and indifferent universe – “Why me, God?  Why me?”

And in that moment of brokenness, we will hopefully find clarity and answers.  “Why NOT me?  Why am I so special that I should not suffer like everyone else?  What can I learn in the midst of this crisis?  Where is the opportunity from my pain?”

Charles Stanley, an evangelical Pastor at a large church in Atlanta, compares dealing with adversity to medical surgery.  We willingly undergo surgery knowing it is for our good – even if it will be painful and difficult.  Surgery is the means to a healthy end.  Adversity works in the same manner, he says.  It is surgery to our souls.

Muslims offer similar wisdom.  Islamic teaching points out that everybody suffers.  As the Quran says, all of the great Scriptural prophets suffered.  Noah was laughed at.  Abraham was denied a son until he was an old man and then he was ordered to personally sacrifice that son.  Elijah was physically attacked by his critics.  Isaiah was ridiculed and insulted.  Jesus was crucified.  Muhammad never knew his father, his mother died when he was young, his wife was killed, his son died and he was stoned almost senseless.  Of modern day prophets, Gandhi was jailed and murdered; Martin Luther King was also jailed, mocked and martyred.  From the ashes of their misery, from the depths of their personal hells, came flowers of insight, strength and greatness.

We too must be humble in our suffering.  By crying out “Why me?”, we claim to be special and somehow less deserving of pain than other people.  If we accept the fact that pain in our lives is to be expected, that everybody suffers at some point, we might stop feeling so isolated and alone.  Indeed, adversity is a fact of life – one from which we cannot escape.  Instead of seeing life as a series of misfortunes, we can see it as a series of learning opportunities.

Such is the ironic mystery of hardship.  Ultimately, our distress should not even be seen as something bad.  Friedrich Nietzsche, the famous philosopher, frequently wished his friends ill fortune – and he did so with the purest of motivations.  He knew adversity would strengthen his friends and cause them to grow into better people.  As he said, “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”

And that is precisely the understanding that Job finds.  He did not suffer because he was bad.  He suffered expressly because he was good and in need of further refinement.  In his complacency, in his comfortable cocoon of easy street living, Job was like many of us.  A fortress of well-being induces feelings of invulnerability, self-righteousness and egotism.  What good are such attitudes in shaping us as better people?

Job needed to be stretched.  While it might be said that God was cruel in his testing of Job, we should remember the story was not intended to be literal history.  As with all allegories and myths, exaggeration was necessary to teach a point.

Job’s long search for understanding in the depths of his despair is a journey of growth and of finding inner strength.  He found that he could endure.  He would not give up, curse God and die as his wife suggested.  He would even find a way to offer thanks for his suffering and offer his appreciation to God for the tough love.   Left alone to a life of ease, Job would have died a shallow and incomplete man.  Through his suffering, he gained wisdom, humility and perspective.  Ultimately, the Biblical and religious lesson is that humans must trust God no matter what.  His or her ways are perfect and not ours to question.  What might seem like suffering is really a part of the Divine plan.

For others who do not believe in a theistic God, the lesson from the story is similar.  We must trust the little ‘g’ god inside of us – the god who does not give up, the god who struggles against adverse forces, the god who accepts that pain is a soul cleansing agent, as Woody Hayes said.  If we truly accept that hardship is good for us, we do not mock it by pursuing it in some masochistic manner.  Instead, we accept hardship as fact and as opportunity.

Most experts assert that resiliency and positive thinking, in the face of hardship, are self-fulfilling.  Those who are resilient, who bounce back despite adversity, are happier people.  And, happier people are more resilient when faced with adversity.   Studies show that resilient people are those who actively seek strong relationships in their lives – with friends, family members, clubs and organizations like faith communities.  In doing so, they have a built-in network of support when adversity strikes.  Resilient people are confident in their abilities and have a positive view of themselves – they believe in their power to overcome.  Resilient people have strong common sense and problem solving abilities – they are able to understand and think about situations they face.  And, they are able to manage and control the powerful emotions that affect any of us.  They can control temptations, anger, depression and loneliness.  They have learned hardship coping skills.

In the midst of adversity, there are several suggested ways to cope.  First, we should plan ahead for difficulties – the more we think through strategies for coping ahead of time, the less influenced we will be by emotion.  Second, it is OK to grieve and mourn any loss or difficulty.  Grief is a part of the healing process.  Third, it is OK to laugh and experience joy in times of trouble.  If we cannot find humor on our own, we should seek it by watching funny movies or TV shows or reading a book that is light and silly.  Fourth, we should make goals for ourselves and then take action to accomplish them.  Inaction encourages further depression and self-pity.  Fourth, we should be aware of our growth and what we have learned.  In any hardship, we often discover new friends, a new sense of spiritual awareness, a greater feeling of strength, an improved sense of self-worth or a deeper appreciation for life.  It is a cliché to say, but there are always silver linings along the dark shroud of difficulty.  Fifth, we should remain hopeful and refuse to give in to the feeling that all is lost.  Sixth, we can diffuse feelings of loss by serving and helping others.  Finally, we must find opportunities to pamper ourselves just a bit – eating a delicious meal, spending fun time with a friend, taking time off to shop, visit a park, or exercise.

One additional lesson from the Book of Job is that while friends and family are helpful, we should avoid those who choose to lecture.  At the conclusion of the story, God condemns the friends of Job for their lack of empathy.  They represent an analytical approach to problem solving instead of a deeper, heart-felt and introspective examination of hardship.  If we choose to piously tell someone who suffers that it is for their own good, how have we helped?  Indeed, I pray my message today is not taken as insensitive to those who are in the midst of a difficult time.

Most people have amazing abilities to cope with crisis.  What people need in such times is not advice, but empathy.  And empathy is not simplistic sympathy.  It is an effort to listen and understand the other.  Empathy involves putting oneself in the other’s shoes and feeling their pain.  Those who are empathetic to suffering do far, far more listening than they do talking.

Job’s friends were not truly there for him in his suffering.  They were too busy showing how self-righteous they could be.  Job, on the other hand, was finding his own way through the darkness.  What he wanted was help in finding the god within himself – the power to persevere, overcome and be thankful.  When we act as a loving and empathetic god to someone who is suffering, we are joining them on the path to healing.  We are implicitly telling them that we too understand pain.  They are not alone in that journey.

Dearest friends, we all ache at the pain we see others experience.  We all wish that hardship did not affect our own lives.  Why, oh why, is there hurt in the world?  Why must the Heartbreak Hotel be a frequent destination and yet never display a “No Vacancy” sign?  It can be a dark and lonely place.  Or, it can be a bright and hopeful transition to a new life.  Paradoxically, adversity is a necessity in our wondrous world.  Without hardship, how would we experience joy?  Without evil, how would we understand goodness and love?  Without death, how can we truly appreciate life?

I imagine in my mind’s eye individuals before me and listening online who are coming to terms with who they are as a gay or lesbian, who are working to support a family, who are fighting to create justice in an unfair world, who are doing all they can to find healing and power in their bodies and in their minds.   Let us inspire one another with our determination in the face of hardship.  Let us check in to the Heartbreak Hotel of life and, with loved ones beside us, may we find our stay short but full of promise and change for the better.

Peace, I pray, be with you…

 

Message 96: “Destination Life: Are We Captain of Our Souls?, 6-3-12

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

 

Click here to listen to message, see below to read:

In my never ending search for message topics of interest and meaning, a few months ago I came across the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley.  The poet contracted tuberculosis of the bones at a very young age.  By the time he reached adulthood, both his legs required amputation.  He faced an uncertain future as the disease continued to ravage his body.  Like all of us, Henley thought deeply about his life, his destiny and how to make sense of it.  Unlike many who face tragedy or suffering, Henley turned not to God and religion for solace but to an inner core of strength and to Atheism.  The poem “Invictus” echoes his beliefs.  The poem reads as follows:

Out of the night that covers me,   Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be   For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,  I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance  My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears  Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years  Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:  I am the captain of my soul.

The victors in life, the poem implies, do not wince or cry in the clutch of tragic circumstance.  With head bloody but unbowed, one faces the dark shade – death – without fear.  In complete renunciation of a wrath filled god waiting to render judgement, Henley declares that religious parameters for eternal salvation – the narrow gate of eternal judgement cited in the Bible – do not matter to him since, as he writes in the poem’s famous last lines, “I am master of my fate: I am captain of my soul.”

From a theological perspective, Henley stakes out a position on one side of an eternal human debate.  What controls our destiny and our lives?  Are we motes of dust floating in a vast universe whose destinies are controlled by gods or forces beyond our control?  Are we born, given life, forced to suffer, given prosperity and then die all by some capricious design?  Is there a master puppeteer pulling strings of our lives?

For some in the Gathering who come from a Presbyterian past, you might find such theology familiar.  Drawing from Paul’s words in the Biblical book of Romans which states that God shows mercy and saves some, while he hardens the hearts and condemns others, John Calvin originated this theology of Divine predestination.  It is a hallmark of Presbyterian belief and doctrine.  God ordered our lives long before we were born and He even dictates the decisions we believe we make on our own.

Other seventeenth and eighteenth century theologians like John Wesley, who founded Methodism, argued strongly to the contrary.  God gives us each the free will to choose and determine our destiny.  We are not predestined to hell or heaven before we are born – as Calvin believed.  We choose.  We decide.   We are captains of our souls – although God will render judgement on our decisions and we will pass through the narrow gate to Heaven or the gaping abyss into hell.

What struck me as interesting about the “Invictus” poem is that it also calls into question science that has emerged over the last hundred years – since the poem was written.  Moving beyond theology, scientists point to startling studies indicating that we are not controlled by a capricious god but by a capricious design embedded within our individual genetic codes.  Our personalities, our bodies, our intelligence, sexuality and longevity are all determined, according to many geneticists, by the DNA strands in our cellular make-up.  Whether or not we get cancer or become a star athlete, all aspects of our unique selves, and thus our actions, are predetermined by the genes we inherit.  The god of genetics controls us and, as biological determinists argue, we are not captains of our souls irregardless of whether or not a theistic god exists.

Lest the physical scientists believe they have all of the answers in regard to our destiny, social scientists have weighed into this debate and shown equally significant studies that it is our environment – and not just our genes – that plays a dramatic role in our destinies.  Recent studies indicate that the degree to which parents attach themselves to children at very early ages determines things like personality and sexuality.  Time magazine recently featured a profile of Dr. Bill Sears and his theories on parental attachment.  He soundly rebukes ideas from baby psychologists like Dr. Benjamin Spock who encouraged parents to foster independence in children by, for instance, allowing babies to cry themselves to sleep.  Dr. Sears, however, says that babies who are showered with affection, who are breast-fed for at least a year and who are nurtured and attended to on an almost constant basis grow into more secure, confident and empathetic adults.  Parents do not spoil young children, he says, as much as they act like loving parents should.

What all of these competing ideas mean for us on a spiritual level is of profound importance.  Not only do these theological and scientific theories propose from whence we came and where we are headed, they deeply affect how we live and how we treat our fellow humans.  Do we resign ourselves to having no control over what happens to us – accepting that we are mere puppets of a distant god or, even more disconcerting, of uncaring biochemistry like DNA strands?

What we discover, however, is that like Henley proposed, we are captains of our souls even if we allow for the fact that genes and environmental forces try their best to determine our fate.

Enlightenment philosophers determined, in efforts to diminish the role of God in human life, that free will rational thinking is a sole determinant of destiny.  Rene Descartes and others proposed that our minds and our mental choices alone chart our lives.  Such rationalist theories place the individual at the figurative center of the universe.  Humans choose their destiny.  They are in control.

How humanity understands the forces that shape individual lives determines our ethical, moral, spiritual and social ideas about human society.  Biological determinism or social Darwinism can be a slippery slope toward human profiling based on genetics.  A gay or lesbian gene might be isolated, studied and then tested for – thus prompting some parents to abort fetuses with a gay gene.  The same might be true for all sorts of genetic characteristics – from a propensity to being overweight to having only average intelligence.   Parents might eliminate fetuses or even choose their mating partners based on genes alone.

On the other hand, those who believe in the complete free will of any person will argue that we alone receive the credit or blame for our fate.  According to such thinking, if we are rich, smart and successful, we made good choices in life.  Good for us.  If we are poor, homely and struggle just to eat, we made bad choices in life and we deserve our ill fortune.  The plutocrats of Wall Street deserve their fortunes just as the homeless person outside our doors deserve their suffering.  Is that free will theory about fate one which we want to follow?

In the 1920’s, some scientists believed criminal behavior was genetic and thus encouraged the forced sterilization and even castration of convicted criminals.  Sterilization programs were carried out in many prisons.  Nazi Germans and racists in our own nation have used genetic profiling to support their prejudices.  Such theories believe a person is predetermined by their race to act in certain ways and thus racial stereotypes are acceptable because they are grounded in supposed science.  Is this a theory we wish to follow.

Recent studies, however, show environmental influences and our genes work together.  One study indicates that parents and other adults strongly – but unconsciously – favor attractive and calm babies.  Those babies who are unattractive or who have agitated demeanors receive less attention from parents, teachers and coaches.  Attention from adults toward babies is shown to significantly affect things like intelligence, personality, social skills and overall emotional stability.

Such studies not only show nurture and environment influence our destiny, they also indicate these factors interact in tandem with our genes.  If our genes make us physically unattractive, according to the research I just cited, our parents won’t nurture us as much as they do babies with good looks.  From the genes we inherit to how we were raised, we can blame all our faults on our parents!

But can we?  No.  And that gets to the rub in determining our life destiny.  To use William Henley’s poem as a guide and drawing from his analogy that we are captains of our souls, we should think about a true ship’s captain.  He or she sets a course and then navigates a boat throughout its journey by making thousands of big and small decisions.  But wind, weather, water currents, actions by other crew members and even the condition of the ship itself strongly affect how the journey ends.  A captain reacts to factors beyond his or her control.   His or her hand is firmly on the ship’s tiller, but forces beyond control heavily influence the ship’s course for good or bad.

Completing this analogy, one’s early environment, parents and genes may have strong influence, but we can course correct for those  influences.  We have the innate power to change the seemingly uncontrollable effects on us.  Through friendships, advice from others, reflection, study, cognitive change and / or psychological therapy, a person can reassert control over his or her destiny.

Recent news stories describe the fact that Barack Obama heavily used marijuana as a Hawaiian teenager.  His absent father and the lures of tropical hedonism were leading him astray.  He and his teenage friends used pot heavily for a time.  He admits to this fact in his autobiography but, he also writes that through the influence of his mother and his own resolve, he turned away from a life path that led to no good.  As the biracial son of a single mom living in Hawaii, Obama could have succumbed to the adverse forces shaping his life – those over which he had no control.  Instead, he chose to help determine his own life – working to overcome his genetic and environmental obstacles.  As we know, he went on to Harvard College and Chicago Law School – places where potheads do not often end up.

As an added sobering fact,  we not only make decisions affecting our own lives, we dramatically affect the lives of others.  Such is the intersection between our personal free will and how that freedom can changes other lives – people who have little control over what we choose to do.  If we reflect on this fact, we realize we are like gods and goddesses to others – manipulating strings of power over them.  And in such a recognition, we find a great responsibility to act appropriately and with care.  This is the stuff of great mystery and spirituality – our ability to irrevocably shape other lives.  We find then, that not only do genetics and our environments influence our destiny, but so do the actions of other people – friends and strangers alike.

I’ve talked to some of you about a chance meeting I had with of a member of Mount Auburn Presbyterian church out in Sedona, Arizona several years ago.  I met Dan by chance on a hike and after exclaiming surprise at both of us being from Cincinnati, I shared a bit of my life story.  He highly recommended that I visit a small church called the Gathering where he has many friends.  On my return, I did so and my life has not been the same ever since.  For good or bad, I now have some small influence over other lives at the Gathering.  From one minor and completely random event – one that may not have taken place had I slept in that morning or chosen another hiking trail – my life destiny and the lives of others were changed.

From experiences like that, we learn that there are mysterious forces beyond our control that heavily influence who we are today.  We might, as the poem “Invictus” implies, despair at random influences that seemingly dictate our lives.  We might protest any influence that hurts or controls us.  But the poem is ultimately a victory song we should follow.  Yes, life is unfair to some and overly generous to others.  Yes, we meet life forces over which we cannot control – from our genes, to our parents, to the random events of life.

But we are not impotent pawns in this game of life.  As I have asserted many times, God is not some outside force controlling our destiny.  God is us!  We are him or her.  A spiritual force works within our genes, our birth and our lives to help shape who we are…….but we too, we too have that same force in us that we use to shape our destiny.  We work to build heaven or hell in our lives.  We work to build heaven or hell in the lives of others.  Such is the ironic message in the poem “Invictus”.  As much as Henley claimed to be an Atheist, he exalts the little ‘g’ god in himself and in others.

The wind might batter our ship.  Waves might push us towards rocky shoals.  Rain and storm might threaten to sink us.  As captains, though, we fight against such challenges.  We steer our ship and no matter what happens, we do not give up until we claim a victory over fate itself.  We worship the god of our own victorious selves.

In my last message here about Dr. Seuss’ book Oh, The Places You Will Go, I related the life history of a woman I know named Mary who lives in Madisonville.  I talked about her persistent hard work to overcome great obstacles in life and how I believe we as a society are responsible to help people like her.  Mary is appropriately named, however.  As the grandmother to a young boy she raises by herself, she asserts a god-like power over him.  His mother was an addict and the boy was born with fetal alcohol syndrome.  He has some learning disabilities.  But Mary is a ferocious grandmother tiger to him – challenging him, sternly disciplining him, protecting him from indifferent teachers and neighborhood bullies.   She also smothers him with affection and love.   The whims of fate did not deal a great hand to this young boy and yet Mary is a god influence in his life, determined to help create for him a version of heaven where he can succeed and flourish.

Such is also our call and our responsibility.  We cannot allow fate to control us.  We cannot sit by and allow capricious forces at work in our universe to dominate.  Indeed, as human beings endowed with fantastic abilities of intelligence, reason, compassion and empathy, we are perhaps one of the most powerful forces active in our world.  We cannot begin to understand the thousands of small and large influences that shape our destiny but we can enlist ourselves in the effort to help control them.

We strive to overcome forces in our lives.  We do not give up.  We press on.  We work.  We persevere in life no matter what.  We seek growth and understanding.  That is one reason why we are a part of this congregation – to nourish our lives with spiritual wisdom and thus change ourselves and our world.

To someone like Lisa Blankenship, a former member here whose longtime partner Gen Critel just died at the age of 31, how does Lisa  reconcile this idea to press on when the love of her life is now gone?  How do any of us reconcile such a death – of someone in the full flower of life, who just finished her doctoral degree and had realized her dream to be a professor teaching young minds?  For all of her planning and diligence to set her life course and be captain of her ship, a rogue wave came out of nowhere to snuff the breath from Gen Critel in her sleep.  What can we say about such circumstances?  We shudder at the realization such fate could happen to any of us – we go to sleep tonight and simply do not waken in the morning. But do we despair for too long?  Do we give up knowing our lives are so fragile?

We must never give up.  Never, ever give up.  As long as there is breath in our lungs, thoughts in our minds, and love in our hearts – we must choose to remain at the helm of life – doing battle with wind and wave – and forbidding that unseen and unknown forces should find us defeated or giving up.  No matter how old, how young, how strong, how weak, how sick or how healthy, life and all we have to give others are too precious to waste and too dear to abandon.

We do, indeed, worship a great god and goddess.  You will find that god sitting next to you.  You will find her when you next look in a mirror.  She was in Gen Critel.  He is in you as he is in me.  May we praise that spiritual force inside us from whom all blessings flow…the captain of our souls.

Message 95, “The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss:  Oh, The Places You’ll Go!”, 5-20-12

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

 

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

 

As most of you hopefully know, I try my best to avoid politics in my messages.  As Jesus pointedly told his followers, we are to render unto Caesar what is his and unto the Divine what is hers.  In other words, the civic realm must be kept separate from the spiritual.  And vice versa.  This is an ideal enshrined in our constitution and one that I take very seriously.

I say all of that as a preface to my words today which might, to some, seem political.  They are not so intended.  I hope to pose spiritual questions.

Last October 11th, on the conservative website RedState.com, a man posted the following statement: “I am making $5 an hour less in my current job than in my previous one.  My wife and I live in a house that we are upside down on.   We have 2 used cars and couldn’t afford a new one if we wanted to.  I don’t blame anyone who is successful for my situation.   I don’t want the government to fix things for me.  Pick yourself up by your own bootstraps.   That’s what I am doing.”

On the exact same day, a woman posted the following on the website “We Are the 99 percent.com”:  “My husband lost his job 2 years ago and can’t find full-time work—he takes temp jobs at low pay to help make ends meet.   He still owes money on student loans.   I work 40 plus hours a week for barely over minimum wage.  We need a government that helps those who are trying to help themselves.”

What fascinates me are the similar situations of these two people but their very different attitudes about assistance to folks like themselves.  The man speaks to an American ideal of self-help, hard-work, initiative and persistence.  He echoes what Theodore Geisel wrote in his book Oh!  The Places You Will Go.  The woman, on the other hand, speaks to a belief that governments are instituted among people to assist in the well-being and protection of society.   Such is the ethos that we are stronger together than we are alone.

Most characters in Dr.Seuss books have no identifiable ethnicity.  They are animals or funny, unknown creatures of his own imagination.  This makes them universal in appeal because they embody aspects in us all.  In Oh! The Places You Will Go, however, the main character is a young, Caucasian boy.  Some critics contend this diminishes the impact of his book – how can it speak to females or those of different races?

In truth, Dr. Seuss or Theodore Geisel expressed in Oh! The Places You Will Go an autobiographical understanding of his own life – one marked by both extreme highs and great lows.  Success as an author came to him in his sixties.  Such success came after long years of hard work and persistence – a theme of this book.

Just as meaningful for Geisel in terms of understanding his success, was coming to terms with his failures.  He divorced his first wife of over thirty years and married his lover – the woman who became his second wife and trustee of his legacy.  He was also not universally loved or admired.  He was widely attacked for influencing young minds in ways that many did not approve.  Seuss’ determination despite such failures and criticisms is also a theme of Oh! The Places You Will Go.

Writing this book only two years before his death, Geisel describes his theory on success in life – mostly from his own life experiences.  Success comes to those who work, to those who create their own opportunity, to those who refuse to sit and wait for good luck.  We are masters of our own fate, he implies.  We choose the paths to follow and, if we do so with discernment and a willingness to be adventurous, we will succeed.

Despite fear, setbacks and enemies, those who continue the hike up their mountain will reach its summit.  Success is virtually guaranteed to anyone who is diligent, hard working and who never gives up.

As ironic as it might seem for a man who worked in the Franklin Roosevelt New Deal administration and who wrote for several progressive magazines, Geisel’s advice in Oh! The Places You Will Go is remarkably traditional.  Our lives are guided by decisions we alone make, by common sense, by persistence and by sheer hard work.  To those who practice such ideals, success is assured.  And, the implied corollary to this notion is that those who do not succeed are people who give up in the face of hardship, who are lazy, make poor decisions, are timid or sit and wait for good fortune.

Much like the man whom I quoted at the beginning of this message, Geisel expresses an American ethic: success comes to the rugged individualist who achieves it by determination, brains, and hard work.  Geisel’s book is the Horatio Alger story set to rhyme – no matter who you are or where you were born, you can succeed no matter what.  To accept help, to ask for the compassion of others, or of society in general, is to admit failure.  In America, one is solely responsible for their success or failure.  According to Oh! The Places You Will Go, we either pull ourselves up by our bootstraps or we don’t.

Is this gospel according to Dr. Seuss – this gospel of American life – reality?  As inspiring as his words might be for youth embarking on the journey of life, is success guaranteed to anyone who just works hard?  Can any person, after suffering a setback, reverse their ill fortune by sheer determination?  If our answer to such questions is “yes”, what should our response be to those who are in need – those whom it appears have failed at the game of life?  Is Geisel’s formula for reaching mountain top of achievement – something that applies to everyone?   What do we say to individuals like those whom I quoted at the beginning who have worked hard and tried to make good decisions but who are still far below the mountain-top?

The Bible tells us in the book of Proverbs that, “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.  The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.”  In the New Testament, Paul writes that those who do not work should not eat.  For them to expect a hand-out is the same as theft.

In his parable of talents, Jesus tells a story about a rich man who gives to each of his servants several talents of gold – a talent being a unit of money.  This rich man then goes away and does not return for several months.  When he returns, he asks his servants what they did with money he gave them.  One man says he bought land and used it to grow abundant crops.  Another invested in flocks of sheep which also prospered.  But the final servant tells the rich man that he simply buried the gold entrusted to him – the better to save it.  He is immediately and soundly rebuked for his laziness and lack of initiative.  The implied moral of the parable is that we are to work and invest and not, as Dr. Seuss says, simply sit in the waiting room of life.

But just as the Bible seems to echo the words of Dr. Seuss in praise of industrious people, it also teaches us to have compassion and understanding for those who live on the margins of life – those who seemingly have not succeeded.  God tells the Jewish people in the Old Testament that, “There will always be some people who are poor and in need, and so I command you to be generous to them.” 

Jesus offers a guiding principle for us: “Come into my kingdom…I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you made me welcome in your home, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you took care of me, I was imprisoned and you visited me.  I tell you, if you did this for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it for me.”

There are over 300 Bible verses that encourage care for the poor.  Alms giving to the poor is one of the five pillars of Islam – a pivotal requirement for Muslims.  In Hinduism and Buddhism, concern for the poor is part of becoming enlightened .  Does one focus on the self or on others?  Clearly, this is a spiritual matter of grave importance to people of all faiths.  If one is thankful, if one is empathetic, if one feels a part of the whole human family, one cannot help but love, serve and give to the so-called unsuccessful in life.

As much as I admire Theodore Geisel for his creative and insightful books, where are charitable ideals in Oh! The Places You Will Go?  Where does success in life also require serving the least of god’s children?  Do we implicitly assume such people are lazy, unwise, and lack determination?  Is that what Jesus would assume?

Indeed not.  Jesus tells a story about a poor beggar named Lazarus and a rich man.  Lazarus is in heaven and resting comfortably while the rich man suffers in a type of hell.  The rich man asks to be shown mercy and released from hell but he is told that in life he ignored the suffering of Lazarus who was poor and sick.  Even dogs showed compassion to Lazarus while the rich man did not.  Both men, according to Jesus, are reaping the consequences of their lives.

The implied message of Jesus’ parable is NOT that wealth or success is bad. Greed and indifference to others are wrong.  The Bible is not inconsistent in its values.  Hard work IS a virtue.  Those who choose not to work when they can, should NOT expect hand-outs.  But the higher ethic, the one that beckons us to follow our better angels, is far more nuanced.

Once again, I repeat myself in stating that truth lies somewhere between two extremes – between a liberality of giving to anyone who is poor and the Horatio Alger idea that anyone can succeed if they work hard.   Which is better and more loving for someone in need – a handout or a hand up?

BUT, should we also echo the platitude in Seuss’ book that diligence, hard work and brains automatically insures success?  Do we implicitly assume those who are successful were hard working and those who are not were lazy?

Elizabeth Warren, a current Massachusetts Senate candidate, said a few months ago, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there – good for you. But I want to be clear.  You moved your products to market on roads everybody paid for. You hired workers everybody paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that everybody paid for.” 

That is not just a political statement.  It is also a spiritual one if we think about it.  Each of us who have achieved some success owe debts of gratitude to the many sources that helped us.  To echo a contemporary proverb, it takes a village to succeed in life.  Dr. Seuss’ story contains many insights that can lead to success in life – hard work, initiative, determination.  But we are NOT islands unto ourselves.  Other forces, factors and people also shape our lives and cause us to either succeed or not.

I am a white male raised most of my early life in a well off Cincinnati suburb.  I attended safe and well funded schools.  My parents were successful and attentive to the importance of my education.  I went off to, and graduated from, a top rated private college.  I embarked on my own at twenty-two with many, many advantages.

Just down the hill from where I was raised, in a community called Madisonville, lives a woman my age named Mary who was raised by a single mother.  As an African-American, she came of age in the 1960’s and 1970’s when opportunities for black women were very few.  Mary graduated from high school and has since worked as an aide at day care centers.  She had one daughter whose father abandoned them.  That daughter fell in with the wrong crowd and is now a drug addict.  The daughter had a son whom Mary now raises by herself.  She deeply loves her grandson.  She reads to him, raises him with a stern hand, and works a full-time job to support him.  And yet, Mary has travelled no farther than Indiana during her entire life.  Pleasures in her life are few.  Having enough money – on a minimum wage salary – to pay her rent and buy groceries is extremely difficult.

I have worked to earn my way as an adult.  I studied, I applied myself, I continue to try and earn what I eat.  Even more important, though, I have also been wonderfully blessed and very, very lucky in life.  But Mary, who grew up just a few miles from me and is my same age, has worked far harder.  She has persevered despite many barriers in her life – those she did not cause.  I cannot begin to imagine the struggles she has faced almost from her birth.  Yet, by purely outward appearances, I have succeeded and she has not.  Were Mary to read Oh! The Places You Will Go, she might find it funny – a book of fiction instead of insight.  Where is her 98 and ¾ percent guarantee of success in life because of her hard work and perseverance?   With all due respect to Dr. Seuss, this well-loved book is a joke to people like Mary.

An anonymous commentator once said that for us to expect life to be fair because we are a good person – is like expecting a bull not to charge at someone because he or she is a vegetarian!  But, while LIFE is indeed NOT fair, humanity must fill that gap and help create greater fairness for one another.  Our better angels call each of us who have been blessed in life to assist the Mary’s of our nation and world.

A spiritual addendum to Dr. Seuss’ book Oh! The Places You Will Go should insist that to those whom much is given, much is expected.  For those of us who have been richly blessed, our hearts ought to respond with an outpouring of grace to those in need.  This is the spiritual outworking of gratitude.  It is the spirituality of loving as we have been loved, of giving as we have been given to, of seeking justice for all as we have enjoyed the same.

As much as the American dream and Dr. Seuss’ words may have come true for me and for many of you, they have been a nightmare for many others.  Let us not smugly satisfy ourselves that we were not the recipients of help from others – including our nation and our government.  That is a lie no matter who we are.  Let us not indulge in stereotype and assume all those who struggle also lack ambition or don’t work.  There are indeed sluggards in life.  Such people are not the norm.  The majority of struggling people in our world work hard.  They persist in spite of great obstacles and yet suffer due to bad luck, abuse, disability or injustice.

If this nation is a faith based nation as many assert, then our national spirituality must show evidence of that faith.  As the Biblical book of James says, faith without works – without effort to assist the poor – is no faith at all.  It is dead.  Let it be said of us – as a church, city and as a nation, that our faith is alive!  Our faith in the worth of all humanity is one that offers compassion and fairness to all people.

I wish each of you much peace and much joy.

 

 

 

 

 

Message 94, “The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss: The Lorax”, 5-13-12

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

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

 

Last year I announced that I was not going to specifically celebrate Mother’s or Father’s Day anymore.  They seem like anachronistic events designed more as marketing tools to sell flowers or boost restaurant sales than heartfelt celebrations.  If one truly appreciates his or her mother, than one ought to be expressing that each and every day of the year – much like I do for my mom – I tell her I love her each and every day………..  (Not really, but I like to make myself look good!)

But, in keeping with this month’s theme on the “Gospel According to Dr. Seuss”, I decided to break my own rule and acknowledge today our one true mother – the one true womb from whom we each have come, the one true nurturer and sustainer of all life, our mother earth.  I don’t intend to engage in an environmental rant, however.  Rather, just as Seuss did in his children’s book The Lorax, (show slide One) which is the focus of my message today, I hope we can consider the value of the environment from a spiritual perspective.  Do we pay lip service to its well-being or can we be environmentalists in an honestly balanced way – one that offers respect and protection while still enjoying the benefits of nature?

Theodore Geisel published The Lorax in 1971 – a year when the environment was very much in the news with oil spills staining the California coastline and Cleveland’s Cuyahoga river infamously catching fire.  While Dr. Seuss said he wrote his books mostly for the reading pleasure of children, it is clear that The Lorax has a very pointed message.

The story opens with a young boy visiting a grim and polluted place to meet a reclusive figure whom we never fully see – the Once-ler.  (show slide 2)  The boy asks the Once-ler why the surroundings are so devastated, barren and grey.  The Once-ler says that when he first arrived, the area was a pristine place – a bright and colorful Eden teeming with Brown Bar-ba-loots, Humming-Fish and large tufted Truffula trees. (show slide 3)  The trees were of particular interest to Once-ler since they could be used in the manufacture of his invention – a “Thneed” that is apparently invaluable to any person. (show slide 4)  “A Thneed’s A Fine Something That All People Need!  It’s a shirt. It’s a sock.  It’s a glove.  It’s a hat.  But it has other uses.  Yes, far beyond that!”

The Once-ler then began to mass produce Thneeds – all to meet insatiable consumer demand.  A factory is built, employees are hired and Truffula trees are cut down all in the name of progress and the production of Thneeds.  (show slide 5)  A creature called The Lorax protests this mass deforestation.  “I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues” he tells the Once-ler.  (show slide 6)

But the Once-ler admits that he paid no attention to the nagging Lorax.  In his greed and pursuit of profit, he pushed ahead until, after a while, every Truffula tree had been chopped down.  (show slide 7)  With no more Thneeds to be made, the factory shuts down, employees lose their jobs, the Brown Bar-ba-loots and Humming Fish leave the new wasteland and even the Lorax departs for a better world.  (show slide 8) The Once-ler is left to live in a grey world of his own creation – one with polluted air, no trees, a shuttered factory and, of course, no people or creatures.

Dr. Seuss does not end the story here, though.  He concludes on a hopeful note as the Once-ler bestows on the boy the very last Truffula tree seed.  (slide 9)  “You’re in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds”  the Once-ler tells the boy.  “And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs.  Plant a new Truffula.  Treat it with care.  Give it clean water.  And feed it fresh air.  Grow a forest.   Protect it from axes that hack.  Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back.”

Equal to his many other books, Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax is filled with creative characters, vibrant illustrations and humorous, rhyming verse.  As a children’s book, it tells a compelling story while respecting the active minds of young people.   This is no simple story.  Its characters are complex and imaginative.  The plot is alive and interesting.  While its message is not as subtle or perhaps as funny as that of Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, The Lorax encourages its young readers to think about a great issue of 1971 and even of today.  As an ardent progressive Christian, Geisel was also making a strong spiritual appeal.

That fits well with my intention today to celebrate the earth as our ultimate mother.  As we often say at the Gathering, spirituality is not about offering answers and ironclad doctrine regarding what we should believe.  Rather, spirituality is concerned with asking questions about ourselves and our world.  It is about grounding us in the reality of what is true of human nature and then encouraging us to change for the better – to reform ourselves such that our better angels guide our actions.   If our purpose is to live so that we improve ourselves and the world, then care for our mother earth is a spiritual endeavor.  It is a spiritual task to ask ourselves how we are doing in that regard.

Indeed, we each accept that ALL creation is sacred – all plants, animals and humans – even rocks and soil – are bound together in a divine unity.  We share one creator, one source, one mother and are thus interconnected in a vastly complex system.  The dust of the earth and the trees of a forest will one day be me just as you and I are made of the stuff of ancient plant and animals.  All life is dependent on other life for existence.  While this is not only scientific fact, it is also a spiritual one.

And that is the message of Dr. Seuss in The Lorax.  The book is not, however, an environmental scream at humanity to be better.  Nowhere in the book does it imply or say that a tree should not be cut down.  Nowhere does it suggest that nature should not be used to provide for our needs.  Indeed, the book implies that good can come from nature – useful products and employment for workers who make them.  Dr. Seuss uses the Lorax character to voice an ironically conservative message regarding human nature and the environment – “Sometimes progress progresses too fast.”

What the book suggests IS bad, is human excess – our propensity to want more and more of anything good.  Human greed is the problem.  Not human need.  How do we fulfill our purpose to build heaven on earth with less disease, hunger and poverty – while still ensuring we do no harm to the earth?  That is a spiritual question facing humanity.  Can we increase food production to feed the world, can we find new drugs to cure disease, can we create new technology to make life easier, can we offer meaningful employment to all – can we do all these things and yet preserve our natural world?

The Dalai Lama says that care for our earth is a simple spiritual matter.  It is as simple as taking care of one’s house.  The earth, after all, is our one and only home.  The Book of Ecclesiastes, part of the Jewish and Christian Old Testament, quotes Gods as saying, “Look at My world, how beautiful and perfect is everything that I created.  I created it for you.  Be careful not to ruin and destroy My world.  If you ruin it, there is nobody to restore it after you.”

Acting contrary to God’s appeal, however, humanity is quickly eliminating much of the world’s primeval forests – just as foretold in The Lorax.  These are forests untouched by human development – places where vast numbers of unique species exist and where indigenous human tribes have dwelled for thousands of years.

The Amazon rainforest, the forests of Madagascar, Indonesia and southwest China are all in peril.  Over 150 acres of untouched forest are destroyed each and every minute – the loss of of 216,000 acres a day – all cut down for logging, mining and farming.  At this rate, scientists estimate the world will be devoid of primeval forest within forty years.

And such a loss comes with significant consequence to humanity.  Over three-hundred drugs have been derived solely from rainforests.  These are drugs that treat cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and AIDS.  Muscle relaxants and plant based steroids to treat multiple sclerosis were just recently discovered in the Amazon.  25% of all current drugs on the market have at least one chemical compound found within the Amazon rainforest.  And yet scientists have analyzed only 1% of Amazon plants for their pharmacological potential.  What miracle cures could yet be discovered if the Amazon rainforest is somehow saved?

Human diversity is also being destroyed along with the forests.  Before Europeans first landed in the Americas, experts estimate that over 10 million indigenous people lived within the Amazon basin.  Today, fewer than 200,000 native people live in the forest – and that number is rapidly declining as Amazon tribes are encouraged to develop, clear land, begin farming and thus, supposedly, improve their lives.

A number of years ago, I travelled to the Central American nation of Belize with an outreach team to work at building homes.  We did not travel to the resort and beach towns along the coast of that Carribbean nation – the Belize most tourists see.  We ventured to small inland villages many miles from the coast where people lived in huts made of tree branches and thatched roofs.  Pigs and chickens ran wild, the young children were unclothed, the villages lacked running water and electricity.  People survived through subsistence farming, hunting and foraging.  Initially, I believed such villages were terribly poor and in need of assistance.

With an arrogant western attitude, I assumed that by building cinder block houses with cement floors, the lives of these people would be improved.  Other agencies were helping to dig wells and run electrical lines.  Slowly, some of these villages were being transformed.  Progress was coming.

But was it?  I came to conclude that perhaps what we were doing – supposedly building better homes – was not for the best.  Is a house with a tin roof and cement floor better?  In a tropical climate, are young children richer if they wear clothes and watch TV instead of run and play naked outdoors?  Indeed, I was forced to ask myself that, when comparing native village life and its close to nature existence with my own life of houses, cars and grocery stores, which is richer and which is poorer?  Who is happier and more fulfilled?

While Theodore Geisel was a progressive and he even described his writing as subversive, he was a NOT a wild-eyed radical.  The Lorax was initially banned in many schools and libraries, however.  Even today, it is regarded as controversial.  But just as Geisel encouraged kids to have open minds and free thinking in Green Eggs and Ham, as we discussed last week – he implicitly asks the same in The Lorax about nature.   Industry is not bad by itself nor is the use of wood products derived from trees bad.  Geisel’s books and his profits, after all, were printed on paper made from trees!  We are grossly mistaken if we assume The Lorax promotes a radical environmentalism that forbids any development.

As I have often said in here, answers to difficult questions and issues usually lie somewhere between two extremes – somewhere in the middle.  This is true in politics, religion and life in general.  It is comfortable and easy to stake out an extreme position on any matter.  Truth, however, is far more complex.  With regard to the environment, human beings are simply one species here on earth who are not to abandon the use of nature, but to coexist, protect and sustain it.  The indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest or of any other forest in the world do not live apart from nature.  They are a part of it and they USE it for their very survival.  We must do the same.

What Geisel promotes is greater regulation on excessive greed – a frailty of human nature that no amount of religion or morality has been able to eliminate.  He does not speak against development, factories or jobs – merely that such advantages cannot be focused solely on short-term profit.  Indeed, he echoes an important spiritual theme.  As the Bible says, money is NOT the root of all evil.  We are NOT told we must live in poverty without any money or resources.  Rather, the Bible says that it is the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil.  Such a love of money is what causes misuse of the environment.  In The Lorax, manufacturing Thneeds from the Truffula trees is not evil.  It is the greed of the Once-ler in cutting down ALL of the Truffula trees that is evil.  As ironic as it might seem, Geisel’s appeal to regulate greed is actually an appeal to insure that development and progress might continue.  Spiritually speaking, he is asking humans to save themselves from themselves!

A nuanced and balanced approach to celebrating and protecting mother earth acknowledges her resources and the benefits they provide.  With such a recognition, must come an important effort to protect her long-term well-being.  If we are to reap the benefits of new drugs found in rainforests, we must protect them from being wiped out just as we must protect any part of the environment from unrestrained destruction.

And this is not a matter of simple tree-hugging.  As I said earlier, it is a spiritual concern.  The Bible tells us that God put all creation under the dominion of humanity to use and enjoy its fruits.  A spiritually balanced approach, though, tells us that we must protect and preserve creation for the long term – just as the Dalai Lama says we protect and preserve our homes for our own benefit.

Even more, we protect and preserve our earth mother because she is an intrinsic part of us and we are a part of her.  Just as we are sacred, so is she.  It is holy, right, moral and spiritual to be concerned with preserving the earth since doing so preserves human life.

Towards the end of The Lorax, the Once-ler shows the boy a small pile of rocks, one of which has the word “Unless” inscribed on it.  (slide 10)  “Whatever that meant, well, I just couldn’t guess”, writes Seuss.  “That was long, long ago.  But each day since that day I’ve sat here and worried and worried away.  Through the years, while my buildings have fallen apart, I’ve worried about it with all of my heart.  ‘But now,’ says the Once-ler, ‘Now that you’re here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear.  UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It’s not.”  (slide 11)

On this day of the year when we are asked to celebrate the perfect ideals of motherhood, we can heed the same message toward our mother earth.  Good moms, like my mom, are nurturing, supportive, protective and giving.  In their presence, we feel love and security.  When we walk through a local forest, hike across mountain meadows or gaze upon vast oceans, we experience the same feelings of love and security.  In the bosom of this earth we are fed, housed, healed and entertained.  Such is a sacred gift offered to all humanity and all creation.  For our sake and for the sake of creating heaven on earth, we must honor and protect this mother of all life so that we may continue to benefit from her.  We must restrain human propensity toward greed and misuse.  In that regard, may we wish our true mother a happy mother’s day – one that she might celebrate for many, many years to come.

I wish you all peace and joy…

 

Message 93, “The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss: Cats in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham”, 5-6-12

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

 

 

 

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the things you can think up if only you try!”  So said Dr. Seuss in one of his books – an author who has arguably had more influence on the last three generations of children than any other writer.  The genius of Dr. Seuss – or Theodore Geisel – was that he influenced kids not with facts or bland fables about good and bad, but with seemingly nonsensical rhymes and funny, cartoonish characters.  Many adults of my age and younger owe their ability to read to Dr. Seuss.  As children, he caught our imagination, made us laugh and offered rhyming patterns and words that drilled into our memories the often complicated phonetic spelling necessary for learning how to read.

As important as he was as a beginner books author, Theodore Geisel subtly influenced the thinking of young minds.  Geisel was a progressive – and a progressive Christian – all his life.  After years working for progressive publications, he reached his height of influence during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s when homogeneity and so-called middle class values were dominant in America.  He spoke first to the 1960’s generation – Baby Boom kids who came of age and dominated the discussion in that pivotal decade of civil rights, social security and anti-war protests.

It is not an exaggeration to assert that Dr. Seuss helped shape the 1960’s generation in their activism and thus shape history.  Books like The Butter Battle, Yertle the Turtle, Horton Hears a Who and The Sneetches mirrored the sixties youthful assault on prevailing attitudes about race, class, religion, war and the environment.  Dr. Seuss was one of many who helped set the 1960’s agenda.  American culture, politics and spirituality were dramatically changed as a result.

While the topic of this month’s series is “The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss”, I must be careful not to over-read or over-interpret his many books.  While no author writes a book without any viewpoint or theme, Geisel said that people interpreted his books in different and often incorrect ways.  His primary mission was to write books that young children would want to read – and thus help them learn to read.  He had heard from many teachers that the standard Dick, Jane and Sally early reading books were uninspiring for kids.  And so, in response to an article in Life magazine about the sorry state of reading education in the US, Geisel’s publisher challenged him to write a compelling beginning reader that contained most of the 348 words it was deemed every first grader should know.  Geisel thought the book would take him a week to write.  It took him nine months.  He used 223 of the words on that list and in 1957 published a book that was an instant hit and defined Seuss for the rest of his life – The Cat in the Hat.

In 1960, on a bet from his publisher that he could not write another engaging children’s book using only 50 distinct words, Seuss published his other great work, Green Eggs and Ham.

These two silly and outwardly ridiculous books set the standard for early readers.  I read them.  My daughters read them.  They are read and widely sold today.  Young Eli will one day, no doubt, read them.

As seemingly simple books with funny rhymes, they nevertheless offer serious themes about life – how to have fun, how to be flexible, how to challenge authority and thus grow up.  Seuss was a master at making reading and learning great fun.  But he was equally adept at guiding children to intuitively think about universal spiritual attitudes of respect for ideas, people and cultures that are different from the norm.

Over the last year and a half, I have taken regular yoga classes which have helped me immensely.  I had no idea, when I began, that yoga is a challenging and strenuous form of exercise.  My core strength and joint flexibility have dramatically improved.   Such abilities will only help me as I grow older.

Just as important as physical balance and flexibility, though, is the need to be mentally, emotionally and spiritually flexible.  And Theodore Geisel knew this and encouraged the same in his books – especially his first two works – The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham.

In his first book, The Cat in the Hat, two young children sit forlornly at home alone, looking out on a rainy day with nothing to do.  Suddenly, a strange creature appears at the door – a tall cat who walks upright and wears a red and white striped hat.  He enters the house and proceeds to engage in all sorts of stunts to create fun and activity for the brother and sister.  They are scolded, however, by their pet fish to make the cat go away and to stop making such a mess.  Their absent mother will be angry, the fish tells them.  But the cat proceeds and even brings into the home a large box from which emerge two fun-loving creatures – Thing 1 and Thing 2 – to add more play to the household.  Kites are flown, closets are opened wide and general mayhem ensues.  But the fish does not let up with his nagging and it chides the children to get rid of the fun-loving cat before their mother returns.  Soon, the brother chases down the two Things while the cat swoops in on a large riding vacuum cleaner to clean up the mess.  All is restored, the cat departs, the fish is happy and the mother returns.  The kids then consider whether to tell their mom about everything that has happened.  “What would you do, if your mother asked you?” is the final question Seuss poses.

His imaginative illustrations and his fanciful character of a jaunty cat are mesmerizing.  What kid, indeed what adult, does not enjoy the entertainment of a comic jester who tells us that, “It is fun to have fun, but we have to know how!”  Readers of the book can identify with wanting to engage in play when they are told they shouldn’t.  And readers want to know what happens in this simple, but surprisingly tense, story.  Do the dire warnings of the fish come true or can the kids have innocent fun while their mother is away?

And that is the subtle question posed by Dr. Seuss.  Can we have fun for fun’s sake?  Can we let loose, open up the proverbial Pandora box of pleasure, be a little bit naughty and still be OK?  While the book has been interpreted by some to be a Freudian parable about budding sexuality and the tension we feel whether to indulge or repress, it seems obvious that Theodore Geisel was speaking to the children of  a repressed 1950’s culture to open up, challenge authority just a bit, and have fun!  Indeed, to seven and eight year old beginning readers in 1957 – kids who would be seventeen and eighteen year olds in 1967 – it is easy to see how this book helped encourage the Woodstock generation to let loose, challenge authority and thus change the American ideas about racism and needless war.  The Cat in the Hat was not just an innocent children’s book.  It was quite revolutionary.  Theodore Geisel even claimed that in writing the Cat in the Hat, he was “as subversive as hell!”

As a progressive Christian, though, Geisel was also encouraging a looser set of spiritual beliefs.   It seems clear that the house in the story is a type of Garden of Eden with its mother – or God – absent.  The brother and sister, Adam and Eve types, are left alone with nothing to do.  In walks a cat who – like the Biblical serpent – entices them to have fun.  He even opens up a symbolic Pandora box of play (what some might call sin) and lets loose even more playfulness.  All the while, the narrow minded fish, drawn by Geisel as living in a very small fishbowl, tells the children to stop having fun, it’s not right!  The fish is an unmistakable symbol of the Christian church, or religion in general, and its many rules against supposed sin.  But Geisel does not end his story with calamity and disaster – as what took place in the Garden of Eden.  Instead, the Cat in the Hat is not a sinister Satan but a creature of fun who is able to contain such fun within playful innocence and then cleans up afterward.  Earth and humanity are not destroyed by the symbolic sin.  The God figure or mom in the book even returns and all is still good.  Geisel then asks at the end of the book not that the kids simply tell their mom what happened but he implicitly pleads for an honesty that is free of guilt and shame.  Go ahead and tell God about your fun!  Stop listening to man-made religion.  Having fun is OK!  It’s NOT a sin!!

And we are encouraged – by this gospel according to Dr. Seuss – to approach life in the same manner.  Organized religion can be a source of freedom and solace or a life-long force for psychological harm – one that induces guilt, shame, fear and doubt.  We were created to enjoy the beauty and joys of this earth, to live responsibly within it and help others to also enjoy its fruits.

And just as we are to enjoy life, we are to be flexible and open minded in our outlook.  Cultural and religious standards of so-called morality and decency should be questioned.  The same is true for cultural norms on politics, spirituality and thinking.  Will humanity be known for close minded attitudes or open and free thinking?

Such are the implicit questions posed by Dr. Seuss’ second book Green Eggs and Ham.   A strange character is introduced on the first page and proclaims himself to be, “I am Sam.  Sam I am.”  Sam entices an unnamed Everyman to try a plate of green eggs and ham.  Everyman turns up his nose at the strange food and declares “I do not like them, Sam-I-am.  I do not like green eggs and ham.”  But Sam is relentless in pushing his plate of different edibles – he asks Everyman if he’d eat them in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox, in a car, in a tree, on a train or in a boat.  “You do not like them.  So you say.  Try them! Try them!  And you may.”   But Everyman is just as steadfast in refusing.  Until, that is, when he plunges into the sea and, in a type of baptismal rebirth, finally succumbs.  He tries green eggs and ham and, in a joyful epiphany, declares he likes them and will eat them here or there or anywhere.  “Thank you, thank you Sam-I-am”, he finally says.

What a funny rhyming story we might think.  What a great book to get young minds to learn and read new words.  Once again, though, Geisel had a purpose to his seeming madness.  Sam-I-Am’s name is an obvious play on God’s self description to Moses at the burning bush – “I am who I am”.  Indeed, with his insistent encouragement for Everyman to experience real freedom and unfetter the chains of a narrow mind, Sam is a type of Jesus.  And his relentless encouragement to Everyman to try new things is an appeal for us too.  Green eggs and ham are metaphors for the things each of us reflexively and impulsively reject.  In life, in relationships, in politics, in spirituality, in attitudes towards others who are different races, religions or sexualities, Geisel promotes free thinking, tolerance and flexibility.  Indeed, he assaults any rigid dogma, prejudice or belief.   No way of thinking, no ideology, theology, or lifestyle is so sacred that we should not at least be willing to consider an opposing viewpoint.  Indeed, we’re encouraged to be adventurous and not just conserve the status quo but to be open to different beliefs, strategies and lifestyles.  Do we stay the same and stew in our rigidity or do we move forward with bold new visions for better lives and a better world?

And this encouragement to openness speaks to all of us.  Many in the Gathering are politically progressive.  But are we willing to consider the views of political conservatives?  Are we willing to concede they might be right in some matters?  Are they willing to adopt the same flexibility toward liberals?  And what about our faith?  Do religious fundamentalists offer spiritual views that have any validity?  Can we be open-minded?  Can we empathize with the other who is different or dirty or just not like us?  Can we humble ourselves in any of our beliefs and attitudes such that we acknowledge potential flaws in our thinking?  Can we, instead, seek common ground with others, refuse to assert our own superiority and thus create solutions that everyone can embrace?  To do so, we must – each and everyone of us – be willing to symbolically eat green eggs and ham – the stuff we each say is intolerable.  We must stretch ourselves and be flexible.  Indeed, the Biblical writer of Proverbs said that a person who does not listen to advice, after many words are spoken to him or her, will ultimately come to ruin.

To be a spiritually flexible person and a spiritually flexible church we should be forgiving to those who hurt us, empathetic to those who are different, inclined to live in peace with others, courteous, patient, fair and affirming.  That is who and what we are at the Gathering.  We are defined not by doctrines but by openness to other ideas and other people.  Around every corner, in every individual, from every ideology is a kernel of truth which can enlighten and inform us.  Is the person next to you a bit different in appearance or personality?  Does he or she believe different things from you?  Is he or she gay, atheist, physically or mentally challenged, vegan, African-American, conservative, liberal, omnivore?  And what if they are?  Is that so bad?  No, it is not.  The person next to you is a wondrous child of the Divine…..as you are yourself.

When I spoke a few weeks ago to Vanessa Lefebvre and asked her why she and Boris wanted to dedicate Eli at the Gathering, she told me that she wanted his first public celebration to be at a place that honors ideals of tolerance.  She wants Eli to grow into manhood loved and supported in such a way so that he can decide for himself what values and spiritual beliefs to adopt.  Life is not easy for any of us – and it has not been easy for Vanessa and Boris – but Eli is such a gift, such a beautiful blessing, and Vanessa deeply knows this and she celebrates the hope and joy he gives her.  As parents, both Vanessa and Boris want their son to feel love in his childhood, to feel accepted for who he is, to be embraced within a caring extended family and community, and be a person with expansive dreams and ideas.

Vanessa could not have echoed more succinctly the gospel according to Dr. Seuss.  We need Cat in the Hat and Sam-I-Am figures in our lives – those who challenge us to embrace life, to enjoy it to its fullest, to shed ourselves of guilt, to be open and free in our thinking, to ask questions, to be humble in what we believe, to honor and respect all people, all faiths, all beliefs, all lifestyles ALL the time.  An anonymous person once said, “Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.”  Indeed, let that be said for me and of you – that we are a flexible people who are constantly stretching beyond ourselves…