Broken Hallelujahs: the Creative Character of Surrender

Broken Hallelujahs: the Creative Character of Surrender

Introduction

If you had peeked inside my bedroom any day after school when I was a young teenager you would have seen me playing one of these (hold up Beatles album)…and again after dinner and before bedtime. Music was such a big part of my life as I grew up. I was an only child in a troubled home, and to get away from it I retreated to my room to listen to music. It gave me solace and took me away into a different place. A place that even now, I can remember, because of how I felt when I heard the music playing. I knew more than the lyrics and every chord - I was a Beatlemaniac who knew that George Harrison was into Indian mysticism when he recorded “Within You, Without You”  (although I didn’t have the slightest idea what that mysticism was). I knew that Paul McCartney had written “Martha My Dear” and had named it after his old English sheepdog. And when “Hey Jude” was first played on a radio station – almost certainly WBBQ - in Augusta, I made sure to be in my room to hear it, with the stereo speakers pressed up against my ears as tight as I could hold them.

I also loved Motown, and my cousin Donna and I used to mime and dance to all the Supremes songs, and dance the watusi, the jerk, the mashed potato. At the same time we would sing gospel music in the local Pentecostal and holiness churches as a trio – she sang soprano, I harmonized, and my cousin Harold tearing up the piano like Jerry Lee Lewis – who after all was the evangelist Jimmy Swaggart’s cousin! The sacred and profane never clashed for me, and so today I want to talk about how for many musicians ‘feel the spirit’ as they compose and perform their music. 

The title ‘Broken Hallelujahs’ is taken from the book published in 2011 by Christian Scharen, subtitled ‘Why Popular Music Matters to Those Seeking God’. I feel honored to follow the theme of music that Leon Spencer introduced to us two weeks ago. Over the past year and a half of serving this congregation, there may have been sermons that I felt were necessary to preach; some that I thought the congregation may have felt they wanted to hear; but today this is one sermon that I am excited to preach because I want to challenge all of us to listen with our hearts and not our minds!

History of popular music

In 1958,a Catholic youth center newsletter urged kids to ‘smash the records you possess which present a pagan culture and a pagan way of life.’ (Detweiler,126) More and more white teenagers of that time were listening to black music, blues that came from musicians like John Lee Hooker, Leadbelly and Muddy Waters.

There were plenty of white Christian people in our part of the world who thought that rock and roll was the music of the devil, and there were other people in the music business who made it more palatable when it was sung by white artists like Elvis Presley!

But music is at it most powerful when it has no racial boundaries; According to Brian Ward in his book Just my Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness and Race Relations (U of California 1998), Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a gathering of black DJs in Atlanta in 1967, saying : "In a real sense you have paved the way for social and political change by creating a powerful, cultural bridge between black and white.... You introduced youth to that music and created a language of soul and promoted the dances which now sweep across race, class and nation."

Artists as spiritual seekers

Music contains a multitude of spiritual expressions – many artists inhabiting the black music genres, for instance, grew up singing in gospel choirs. While their church attendance may no longer be as steady, their spiritual roots go deep. (Detweiler 130)

The folk music of Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul, and Mary had lyrics that cried out for justice and peace, and their music was performed passionately.

That passion carried over into the message of love expressed in the Flower Power music of the later 60s, and is still going strong in the music of the decades since then. Many musicians find their music is a powerful way to express their beliefs, convictions and search for meaning.

You may know who the Beastie Boys are, and you may not appreciate their music, so it may surprise you to know that Adam Yauch organized the Tibetan Freedom Concerts to raise support and awareness of the plight of Tibetan Buddhists. As a practicing Buddhist he manages to slip dharmic slogans into Beastie Boy songs about parties, rebellion, and not growing up: “every thought in the mind is a planted seed” (Detweiler). Adam Yauch died from cancer last May at the age of 47.

My husband Wil is a big fan of Bruce Springsteen, who has written songs with the themes of alienation, unemployment and despair found in the white working-class urban experience. His song ‘Born in the USA’ was not the big celebratory anthem that Ronald Reagan tried to say it was – in 1984 it was actually a song that told the story of a Vietnam vet who can’t find the American dream in his hometown. 

What makes Bruce so revered as a singer-songwriter is that he has never forgotten his roots in New Jersey, and that was brought home to him in the fall of 2001. Springsteen told Rolling Stone magazine that he hadn't thought about the possibility of doing an album about the tragedy of 9/11 until a car stopped next to him a few days after the attacks, and the driver (a fan, someone he didn't know) said simply, "We need you now."  

He produced ‘The Rising’ by the next August, and the album’s songs give a patchwork impression of how the attacks affected a variety of people. The title of one song, ‘Empty Sky’, “taps the many emotions triggered by the view of the Manhattan skyline after the Twin Towers fell. Its lyrics describe those who lost relatives and friends on 9/11.” 

I woke up this morning
I could barely breathe


Just an empty impression
In the bed where you used to be


I want a kiss from your lips
I want an eye for an eye


I woke up this morning to the empty sky 

http://classicrock.about.com/od/artistsnz/tp/The-Rising.htm 

Many music artists today are spiritual seekers. Sometimes the music that resonates most with us has conflicted song lyrics that mirror competing beliefs within a musician (Detweiler, 130).

Leonard Cohen is a good example of this; he’s a deep thinker who writes and sings about the human condition of brokenness – he does it so well because he’s been there and can still find value in the experience. One of his lyrics (“Anthem”) says, “there are cracks in everything – that’s how the light gets in”.

Cohen felt pulled much of his life by the “ritual and roots of Judaism” (Scharen). His early success faded and personal relationships failed, and by the end of the 1970s Cohen was suffering from depression when he “re-engaged” with his Jewish roots. He said that he felt silenced in all areas of his life, and the only thing that helped was to write down his prayers “to apply to the source of mercy”. So he wrote a book called Book of Mercy, which contained one prayer for each of his 50 years of life.

His next project was an album called Various Positions. He tells a story about what he was like while working out the lyrics for ‘Hallelujah’; he describes himself as being in his underwear, crawling along the carpet in a shabby hotel room, unable to get a verse just right.

Once he had gone through the agony and triumph of creating his songs, he realized that the fading of his initial popularity actually gave him freedom from the ego’s expectation – but he had a hard time getting the record label to trust his commercial viability. The president of Columbia Records said, “Look Leonard, we know you’re great but we just don’t know if you’re any good” (Scharen). The album was released in the US 6 years after its European release, and has some of his best-known songs including ‘Hallelujah’, which is Hebrew for Praise God. Two cover versions of the song were Top 10 hits, one by a contestant on ‘American Idol’.

The song draws upon a variety of Biblical images and figures – King David, Samson, the Creator, the Book of Exodus. Its message is that ‘we’re able to raise a broken Hallelujah – Praise God! - because of what God has done for us’ and not what we can do ourselves, because there is no perfection in this world. We all have broken hearts and broken lives, but that is no excuse for anyone; on the contrary, we need to stand up and say Hallelujah under those circumstances (Scharen). 

Another Cohen song, ‘If It Be Your Will’, captures this mood and brokenness becomes part of a prayer: “If it be your will that I speak no more, and my voice be still as it was before, I will speak no more, I shall abide until I am spoken for, if it be your will.” (Scharen) The lyrics borrow from the Kol Nidre, which is a prayer recited for the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur: “May it therefore be your will, Lord our God and God of our fathers, to forgive us all our sins, to pardon all our iniquities, to grant us atonement for all our transgressions.” (Scharen) For the documentary about Leonard Cohen, I’m Your Man, the narrative flows through a concert featuring not only Cohen but musicians like Rufus Wainwright, Nick Cave and U2. But a little-known transgender artist named Antony stole the show with his rendition of ‘If It Be Your Will’. [VIDEO]

The music of the Icelandic group Sigur Rós has been called ‘postrock’ and described as ‘the soundtrack of heaven or music from God’. Yet the group members are not professing religious believers; but they use historically religious forms, such as a sung mass performed in a church with Latin words, in songs like ‘Credo’. And in a 2005 interview, they said, “We are not trying to be spiritual or anything. We are making music that moves people. Trying, you know, we want to do that. You know, that people get something out of it. Maybe that is spiritual!”(Scharen) They also invented their own language, which they call ‘Hopelandic’ to convey ideas about life…listeners cannot understand but they interpret beginning with feeling, not thinking. The song you heard if you came in during the prelude is called Ára Bátur (‘Row Boat’), and some of the lyrics are:

“You tried everything. Yes, a thousand times, experienced enough, been through enough, but you it was who let everything into my heart, and you it was who once again, awoke my spirit.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rcvFWFOsIE )

The music of Sigur Rós can create a mood that is ethereal, angelic. And it has been used in movies such as 127 Hours and Vanilla Sky. There is nothing else like it; it has a fragile majesty (to use a phrase Jonsi from Sigur Rós used for the music of Washington Phillps). It soars and if we surrender to it we can be lifted up, we can soar with it. Their fans on Facebook have one site called ‘Sigur Ros is my religion’ with the rationale “because everyone knows that listening to any album of theirs is, in fact, a spiritual experience.” (Scharen) 

Like the language of Hopelandic invented by Sigur Rós, many artists try new things. The imaginative and adventurous nature of exploration, of playing the notes in a way that has never been done before, makes music new. In that way, creativity emerges, because with every new piece, a musician can return to being a beginner. Leonard Cohen once said, “If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often!” “To let go of all preconceptions and fear of failure, that's the key to creativity” (Jonah Lehrer). Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, a veteran performer, says that he strives for that “state of the beginner”: "One needs to constantly remind oneself to play with the abandon of the child who is just learning the cello," Mr. Ma says. "Because why is that kid playing? He is playing for pleasure." (Lehrer)

And when we hear music that pleases us, we want to join in, beat the rhythm, we have an instinctive, emotional reaction to it. It “sets off our imagination and takes us to a different place” – we surrender to it.

C.S. Lewis once said that “we must in some form surrender to a work of art if we are to understand whether it’s any good” (Detweiler) What did he mean by that? I think surrender is when we lay aside all our preconceptions and judgments. We sometimes use the criterion of taste, is it to our taste, is it in good or bad taste. We can be what Christian Scharen calls ‘cultural Puritans’ who have constricted imaginations. Scharen says that God gets terribly small when we use a checklist as a way to make judgments instead of seeking to understand another. When we surrender we let the artist’s point of view take center stage. We surrender what limits us, whether it be our age, class, gender, our likes or prejudices – surrendering makes us vulnerable, in just the way as we give over our hearts to those we love.

And so I come to the last and maybe most challenging example of music and the creative character of surrender: the song ‘Jesus Walks’ by Kanye West. The music video shows us people who are swept up into drug deals, poverty, violence, incarceration – all issues of race and class that plague this country.

Kanye West claims that Jesus walks with all these people. That is the heart of the Gospel, the good news that Jesus preached and lived. [VIDEO]

The sample music behind Kanye’s rap is “Walk with me” from the ARC Gospel Choir, whose members are recovering from addictions. Kanye has the presence of mind to criticize the media, because the powers that be of the music industry welcome songs about guns and sex, but if he sings about God they won’t play his music. “Dangerous topics fraught with tensions and challenges…are where people live” (Scharen)…people who have lost all hope but still want God to show them the way, are all around us. Kanye West was able to step inside their shoes and express their brokenness: this ability to sing for the outcasts of our society could be what the Apostle Paul was writing about in his Letter to the Romans (8:26): “God does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans.” (Scharen)

The author Christian Scharen looks to the Second Book of Corinthians in valuing the spiritual aspect of what these songs are telling us: “God has opened our ears so that we can listen to what God is listening to – bending an ear to the cries of love and loss, sorrow and suffering, and moving in the midst of them to witness and join God’s work of new creation” (2 Cor 5).

This coming week is one when surrender is very much on the minds of Christians. Today is Palm Sunday, marking the triumphant entry of Jesus and his followers into Jerusalem. By the end of Holy Week Good Friday recalls the surrender of Jesus to his fate and the bewilderment of his followers when he is crucified. By this time next Sunday the joy of Easter morning marks a new beginning, new possibilities. Out of the depth of surrender and death comes hope and new life…an age-old motif.

But no matter what your religious perspective, music can help in the work of new creation, when we truly listen and surrender to its fragile majesty, when we create a space for our hearts to respond in love to the world and to the possibilities all around us. Music still makes me feel like that young teenage girl in her room, finding solace in a song that was written not for me, but for and by someone who found powerful expression in surrendering to the creative process. Some of the music we’ve explored today is transcendent in its beauty, some of it is eye-opening and challenging. All of it requires us to surrender to our feelings, something not usually asked of us in our UU worship services! But if we don’t acknowledge the emotion behind the music, how can we possibly hope to understand the “contemporary spiritual search for meaning and purpose” (Scharen)?

May it be so, Blessed Be, AMEN.

Sources:

The Beatles, “Here Comes the Sun” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6tV11acSRk

Cohen, Leonard. “Poem 50” from Book of Mercy (1984).

Detweiler, Craig  and Taylor, Barry.  A Matrix of Meanings (2003).

Lehrer, Jonah. “How To Be Creative.” The Saturday Essay. The Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203370604577265632205015846.html

Scharen, Christian. Broken Hallelujahs: Why Popular Music Matters to Those Seeking God (2011).

Sigur Rós. “Ára Bátur” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rcvFWFOsIE

Springsteen, Bruce. “The Rising” lyrics, http://classicrock.about.com/od/artistsnz/tp/The-Rising.htm 

Ward, Brian. Just my Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness and Race Relations (1998).

West, Kanye. “Jesus Walks” •http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYF7H_fpc-g

Our Welcoming Congregation Journey

Our Welcoming Congregation Journey

February 17 2013

I. Looking back…

 “There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.” -Hindu proverb

What were we like, our previous selves, when we began this journey to become a Welcoming Congregation just one year ago?

I began my sermon, with the title ‘Standing on the Side of Love,’ last February by saying that it had been a good week for marriage equality because of judicial rulings in federal court, and legislation passed in the Washington State legislature. I can say that this year we have even more to be excited about in terms of marriage equality and in the number of states that now allow it, in the steps that have been taken nationally to extend rights of partners in same-sex marriages, and in the climate shift toward equality from the military to the Boy Scouts…we hope!

And I also quoted Linda Stout, Executive Director of a social advocacy group called Spirit in Action:

 This is a time for boldness –not giving up. It is a time of great courage – not letting our fears stop us. If we just work on small changes, though they are fulfilling and valuable, we will not make long term, big changes in the world. We have to bring all the puzzle pieces together – small changes, individual work and big ideas – in order to create a different world. (SSL Campaign literature)

Ten workshops and services later, I can say that as far as this church is concerned, we have put our best efforts into the Welcoming Congregation program as we try to create a different world. And not all of the members of the WC committee are here today – Linda Warren and Julie Evonna are at the Southern UU Leadership Experience this week – but I’d like to extend to the other members our gratitude for giving their time and talent to this year’s work: Naomi, Jennifer, Sandra, Lynne.

During this service the committee members and Principle Singers are going to remind us of some of the music we enjoyed in some of the services of this past year, and first we will have Uncommon Love.

What did we find to talk about at those 10 workshops and services?

We began by examining our expectations about this program, and we invited DeLeon Peacock and Mary Freeman from the UU Fellowship of Coastal Georgia to reassure us about starting it! Their congregation had just been through it and the week after Mary and DeLeon were here, it was designated a WC by the UUA, which of course is our goal as well.

We showed films, such as the documentaries The Celluloid Closet and For the Bible Tells Me So. We had speakers, such as Sandy Hochel, who spoke about the Radical Right, and Maryka from Interweave.

I myself learned a lot from the sermons that I preached, and one of them – How Homophobia Hurts Us All – was the basis for my sermon before the Ministerial Fellowship Committee in December, when I was granted preliminary fellowship as a UU minister.

We put a lot of information in our weekly announcements, resources that everyone could look up to answer question that perhaps they needed answers for but were unwilling to ask in public.

We also had – and continue to have - in this building a great resource for the community begin to offer monthly support meetings – PFLAG, which stands for Parents and friends of Lesbians and Gays. The Aiken chapter was begun here and has given support to families whose children are exploring their sexual identities or have come out. Thanks to Ann Willibrand, Vera DeVito, and Julie Evonna, we have successfully branched off from the initial CSRA PFLAG group and have made a difference already in the short time Aiken PFLAG has been in existence.

And as members of the Aiken UU Church, we have had conversations between ourselves, trying to find ways to acknowledge and challenge our biases, our assumptions, and our ignorance; and we have also had the benefit of tips for people of faith on how to communicate about homophobia.

And so, we have a sense of accomplishment and pride as we look over at the rainbow flag, on which all but today’s final one of our events and activities have been placed.

This rainbow is NOT an illusion, as the song “The Rainbow Connection” says…it is evidence of the commitment of this congregation to exploring the way we can be a more welcoming and diverse presence in the wider Aiken community.

II. and looking forward…

So, going forward, we recognize there is no magic wand we can wave over each person here today to make us all shining examples of complete and total love. However, the WC program has even for skeptics brought home the importance of standing on the side of love individually and in the makeup of this church and in UU congregations across this country. We have seen a lot of progress in the past twelve months…but we cannot slow down or decide that we have turned a page and this is not something we need to consider anymore.

Right after this service, the congregation will meet to vote to support our application to the UUA to become officially recognized as a WC. Once the WC committee finishes compiling all the paperwork and evidence of our program, then we will hope that this designation will come in the next few months.

Yesterday, members of this congregation marched in solidarity with the African-American community in the Black History Parade. Out on the bulletin board you can see the short biographies of two of our Unitarian Universalist civil rights martyrs, the Rev James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo. We have a history of building the beloved community together.

The struggle for equality for our LBGT sisters and brothers is being supported by those who worked for the civil rights movement in the true spirit of the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

In my sermon last February I quoted Benjamin Jealous, NAACP President, who said,

“…let us move forward in unity and with the collective vision and determination to build the America that we dream for all of her children. An America where everyone can get a good job,

And where everyone can obtain a quality education.

An America where everyone has access to health care and communities with clean air and water.

An America in which opportunities are afforded to all.

And most importantly, an America in which no matter a person’s race, creed, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity— she or he can live in a country free of discrimination—where her or his basic human rights and dignity are respected.

…let us all recall the words of the late great Harvey Milk-who said “It takes no compromising to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no survey to remove repressions.”

(http://thetaskforceblog.org/2012/01/27/naacp-president-ben-jealous-opening-keynote-address-at-creating-change/ )

So we can speak out individually and collectively to win the struggle. When we live out our words, including the words of Unitarian Universalists through the centuries who have been standing on the side of love, we can build the Beloved Community. We can speak up with the knowledge that ours is a faith that backs us in our struggle for justice, equality and freedom.

May we be the ones that make it so, Blessed Be, Amen.

Gaye Ortiz 2/17/2013

Preach-In on Global Warming

Preach-In on Global Warming

Aiken Unitarian Universalist Church

February 10 2013

Are you ready to tell your children they were born a generation too late? That there is nothing you can do to fight the destruction of the earth’s climate?





This is the way Javier Sierra begins his article “Were Your Children Born a Generation Too Late?”…and I must admit, it is a startling thought. Only…it is something that has crossed my mind before, and I have even said aloud to my oldest granddaughter, “When you get older, maybe you and your sisters and your cousin should consider not having any children.” She was shocked and asked me why I would say such a thing. And I replied, “because the world is going to be in such bad shape, it would be unfair to subject your children to that.”

And I do believe that, and how can I keep quiet when my grandchildren - as parents - would be subjecting their children to living in a world where global warming has destroyed much of the ecosystem that we happily enjoy now?

Yet, how can I not be aware that I am asking them to forego reproducing, to make that kind of sacrifice? Having children is one of the most beautiful, fulfilling things we as humans can do. It is something I struggle with as I assess the century to come.

To recognize that children born ten or twenty years from now will as adults have a much harder life – and maybe a very much poorer quality of life – may lead some people to make exactly that choice.

And we do – in the West – have that choice, but many people in poorer countries, whose high child mortality rates and whose need for enough willing workers to contribute to a family’s basic living, may not be so lucky.

Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers (New York: Grove Press, 2005), says

“we are the generation fated to live in the most interesting of times, for we are now the weather makers, and the future of biodiversity and civilization hangs on our actions.” (P306)

What a heavy responsibility weighing on our shoulders! It may well be that we humans only have a few years left in which to turn things around, so that our planet will remain habitable for our grandchildren’s children.

Climate change is a pressing matter that is also an ethical, moral, and spiritual issue for each of us to consider today. Because today across this country, ministers are holding a Preach-in for Global Warming, sponsored by Interfaith Power and Light, an organization that provides environmental justice resources to congregations in 40 states. I first became acquainted with this group’s Georgia chapter when Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” was released in 2007, and Interfaith Power and Light sponsored congregational film screenings and discussions. You may recall that Al Gore won a Nobel Peace prize for his work, although his book and subsequent film were criticized by the right-wing, and his statistics and claims of a global warming crisis were condemned.

Diverting the urgent need to act by attacking the messenger – the logical fallacy called ad hominem – has no doubt had an effect on America’s failure to create a coherent and effective environmental policy. And religious leaders – even Richard Cizik, of the National Association of Evangelicals – have been urging the government to act. This morning, I want to ask you to remain hopeful, even in the face of denial and inaction by those who have the power to turn around the crisis that awaits should we do nothing.

I. global warming facts

So, let me give you four basic facts as offered by the Environmental Defense Fund’s website:

1.   There is scientific consensus on the basic facts of global warming. The most respected scientific bodies have stated unequivocally that global warming is occurring, and that people are causing it.

2.   Scientists are certain that the Earth is warming, and has been for 100 years.

3.   Human activity is causing the Earth to get warmer. Only CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions from human activities can explain the observed warming now taking place on Earth.

4.   The effects of warming can be seen today, through disappearing habitat, shrinking arctic sea ice, and extreme weather.

(www.edf.org/climate/global-warming-facts)

II. Storm Nemo

It’s ironic that many ministers in the northeast US who were planning a Preach-In like this one have had to cancel their services because of Storm Nemo this weekend! On Friday night a message went out from Interfaith Power and Light, that their prayers go out to all of those along the path of the storm, many of whom are still recovering from the effects of Superstorm Sandy; this morning we join our prayers to theirs. But it also pointed out that this is a teaching moment for us all:

“Nemo was a massive, possibly historic storm, or to use the Weather Channel’s language ‘epic.’ It dumped more three feet of snow in New England, underscoring the amplification effect of climate change. Forecasts warn of significant, widespread damage throughout the region, parts of which are still coping with the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.”  (http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/article.html)

The email mentioned the “somewhat counter-intuitive nature of the public’s understanding of the relationship between extreme winter weather and global warming”, and asked that we be prepared to explain the links between this storm and global climate change.

So here goes:

“The past few years have been marked by unusually severe extreme weather characteristic of climate change. Global warming puts more energy into storms. Storm surge now rides on sea levels that have risen over the last century due to global warming. This amplifies flooding losses if and when a surge strikes. Storm surge now rides on sea levels that have risen over the last century due to global warming.

Nemo is part of the larger trend. In the last century, we have witnessed a 20 percent increase in the amount of precipitation falling in the heaviest rain and snow events, directly tied to climate disruption. The Northeast has been particularly vulnerable, experiencing a dramatic increase in one-day precipitation extremes during the October to March cold season.

Coastal flooding has also become more common as climate change drives sea levels higher. Off-shore water temperatures are higher than normal right now, adding to the potential for heavy precipitation by feeding Nemo with additional moisture.” (IPL email 2/8/2013)

And that ends the weather segment of the sermon!

III. WCC

A statement from a meeting in Doha of the World Council of Churches (www.oikoumene.org) two months ago starts with this exclamation: “The world cannot wait – climate change is happening!”

It’s worth reading a segment of this statement to get a sense of the urgency felt by this worldwide fellowship of churches, because it brings up another potentially life-threatening effect of climate change:

“As people of faith concerned for our sisters and brothers, we come to Doha extremely worried about food security as the severe shortages in crops face us with the prospect of horrific humanitarian crises that should be avoided. The present situation at world food markets, exemplified by sharp increases in wheat, soybean and corn prices compels leaders to act urgently to be sure that these outstanding high prices do not drive into an appalling scenario, harming tens of millions.”

The statement goes on to acknowledge that there is only a handful of nations who are large producers of staple food commodities – and this past year’s severe drought in two of them, the US and Russia, sent grain prices skyrocketing.

“Time has arrived,” the WCC says, “to promote more sustainable and climate resilient food production to urgently make more food available to sustain the human family especially in the most vulnerable societies, ill prepared to deal with food scarcity. Moreover, diversion of food stock for non-food purposes and financial speculation are unethical and immoral.”

We’ve seen how oil prices and the housing market have been manipulated for financial gain in the recent past – none of us would be surprised to see market speculation and other immoral tactics if food becomes another commodity of great value.

The WCC calls attention in this document to the ‘Principle of Intergenerational Equity’ that declares "the Parties should protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind."

(http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-programmes/justice-diakonia-and-responsibility-for-creation/climate-change-water/statement-to-cop18-un-climate-change-conference-doha.html?print=1_%5C%5C%5C%5C%5C%5C%5C%22%20onfocus%3D%5C%5C%5C%5C%5C%5C%5C%22blurLink%28this%29%3B%2Fprint%3D1_%5C%5C%5C%5C%5C%5C%5C%22%20onfocus%3D%5C%5C%5C%5C%5C%5C%5C%22blurLink%28this%29%3B%2F)

Back to the idea that we hold the future for our children and their children, and “that our generation is probably the very last generation having it in our hands to still limit global warming to less than 2ºC while future generations won’t have this freedom of choice but will have to adapt to climate patterns we have left to them.”

“The World Council of Churches believes that the whole Earth community deserves to benefit from the bounties of creation. Faith communities are addressing climate change because it is a spiritual and ethical issue of justice, equity, solidarity, sufficiency and sustainability.”

V. Rebecca Parker – loving our neighbor

And not only that…it’s an issue of love. In this month associated with love, and a month when we in the Aiken UU church stand on the side of love, we emphasize the love we have for our congregation and our wider community through our acts of justice and equality – Grace Kitchen, the Black History Parade, the Welcoming Congregation service.

Rebecca Parker, in her book Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now (Skinner House, 2006), says that what we are doing here in this church is what the world needs to do – have a ”spiritual and practical revolution that embodies love for neighbor and the world through sustaining structures of care and responsibility” (145).

How can we afford to wait until we face an emergency in dealing with climate change, instead of beginning now to prevent the worst of it? As ‘weather makers,’ to use the words of Tim Flannery, we can turn to each other for the solution. 

The Rev. Roger Bertschausen urges us to consider a ‘spiritual approach to global warming’ and says that maybe “part of the answer to the profound challenge of global warming is community. Maybe we need to figure out how in this world crowded with six billion people we can truly connect with other people. Maybe we need to turn to the people around us and get to know them. Maybe we need to realize we’re in this together.

And not just the people right around us we’ve turned to, but even the people way on the other side of the world. Experiencing connectedness with those around us is only significant if we also understand that the connectedness goes far beyond our small circle. Maybe with a deeper sense of community we’ll realize that we have enough.

We don’t need more cars, more electronic gadgets, more this, more that to be happy—especially when we realize that all too often our “more” is the direct result of other people’s “less.” (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:TXwwxIX7xCwJ:www.fvuuf.org/index2.php?option%3Dcom_docman%26task%3Ddoc_view%26gid%3D26%26Itemid%3D208+global+warming+and+spirituality&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESh5dRnXHYuMsDG8fAiXk393M4K_XqeNqBxINfWMkhWl_JR_Cj3zA27x6MQ0UMKoUitwQlKVMzPxjgkMy-V9D1V3aFf43Ci-8_z8KhRRYkAg9aauoxZr6GuVaNPNN1dTfrzH37mU&sig=AHIEtbTXeE-5yhcPz2TM9Xn412P8zz4bJw )

Rebecca Parker reminds us that reverence is a form of love, and describes it as “a response to life that falls on its knees before the rising sun and bows down before the mountains” (146).

We can start to be reverent by living our first and seventh principles, to affirm and promote the worth and dignity of each person, and the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part. We see those principles written around us in this sanctuary, in our hymnals… and it is too easy to say ‘of course we believe those things’. Living them is a much harder thing to do!

We can begin by lessening our carbon footprints in the ways our children were looking at doing in the Time for All Ages. We can begin by telling the leaders of this city, this state, this country, that we want more, faster action to save our planet.

VI. Spiritual approach to GW

A spiritual approach to global warming, then, takes on urgency, but also meaning, as an act of reverence. This sanctuary for us is one place where we contemplate the reverence that we pay to those things, beliefs, and values we hold dear. But it’s out there where we – with our children and grandchildren - need to make a difference, because, as Mark Belletini’s “Communion Circle” meditation reading makes clear, “everything, for good or ill, is part of the shared whole.”

May we be the ones who make it so, Blessed Be, Amen.

Gaye Ortiz

2/10/2013

The Common Elements of Oppression

The Common Elements of Oppression

Aiken Unitarian Universalist Church

January 27 2013

Groucho Marx once said, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”

Two years ago, in 2011, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations Commission on Appraisal published a report called Belonging: The Meaning of Membership. In it, the authors addressed a real disparity between the ideal of pluralism vs. the reality of UU congregations.

Mark Harris, in his book A Faith for a Few, described the problem: “While our principles affirm that we would welcome someone who is very different from us, many members feel we should recruit among those who match the demographic characteristics of our current membership. New members should fit in or be like us in order for us to grow, and therefore there is little challenge to confront change”(Mark Harris, http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/hsr/A-Faith-For-A-Few.php ). So obviously Groucho never met a UU congregation!

Unitarians of the 1950s and 60s saw the need for diversity, and in theory their faith was open to all, a religion for one world, to quote Kenneth Patton. But Harris observes that “the one world they promoted looked very much like a replication of themselves, and what is most striking in our desire to be diverse today is that our multiracial and multicultural populations are usually the adopted children in our church schools, or the few adults among us who have the same education, income and values that everyone else does. Our yearning for diversity does not touch differences of class.”

Many of us UUs are familiar with the slightly paternalistic assumption that people of different classes, cultural groups and ethnic backgrounds would not be attracted by our rational, liberal faith. The consequence, Harris says, is that “our public expression of a democratic faith open to all, does not find practical application among us, and therefore ‘does not always match the Principles we espouse’.” (http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/hsr/A-Faith-For-A-Few.php )

Are we UUs deceiving ourselves when we say we want to appeal to a variety of people, not just the white professional demographic? More seriously, are we UUs responsible in part for the oppression of any number of marginal peoples in our world today, even as we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of each person?

Are we accountable to them because of our failings as people of faith? UU minister Wayne Arnason once addressed the UUA board on the issue of accountability, calling it a big theological issue. He spoke about a number of world faiths, including Christianity, that reject the idea of being accountable to anyone or anything but God – not secular authorities, only an authority which transcends this world.

He pointed out that Unitarian Universalism “does not require or covenant around a transcendent source of authority’…but “instead, as a covenantal religious community, we locate our accountability in this world, in our community of congregations, and in the values, principles, and traditions they represent.” (James Cone, “Theology’s Great Sin,” in Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley, Nancy Palmer Jones, SoulWork, 16) And so when we acknowledge our failings, we do so by being accountable to each other.

Thus, Arnason recalls, “over and over throughout our history we have seen the struggles that have ensued when we called ourselves to account based on values we said that we held but denied in practice” (16). He is recalling our UU heritage of working for social justice in areas like emancipation and suffrage, while finding that our own faith movement was complicit in those forms of oppression.

Wayne Arnason took part in a landmark UU debate on racism, which was initiated by a 3-day conference in 2001 attended by scholars, educators, ministers, theologians, and activists. The book Soul Work came out of that conference, and its authors tried to explore why there had been such resistance to seeing racism as a profound problem for religion.

Now you may be ready to say, Hold on, I have not been complicit in oppressing people of a different class or ethnicity or gender or sexuality. I don’t need to be involved in this Welcoming Congregation program, because I have no issue with LGBT people coming to our church, or becoming members.

The continuum from hatred to hostility to tolerance to acceptance to love is a broad one, and the point of the Welcoming Congregation program, like the point of that anti-racism conference 11 years ago, is to say, tolerance is not enough; even acceptance is not enough. If we as Unitarian Universalists say that love is the doctrine of this church, then we have to continue to work until that is the reality.

Oppression in the United States is alive and well, and the author Suzanne Pharr has given us a picture of how oppression is systematic and organized so as to keep power in the hands of a dominant few (from Homophobia: a Weapon of Sexism, 1988). The ‘isms’ of oppression that she identifies – sexism, racism, classism, ageism, to name a few – originate in the ‘defined norm’ of our American society.

What is the image of the defined norm? Basically, male, Caucasian, heterosexual, Christian, able-bodied, youthful, wealthy and well-resourced. Pharr is not saying that this is a majority of Americans, only that this is the type of person in our society who has the ability to assert control over others.

Pharr says that the way the defined norms are kept in place is through: the power of institutions, economic power, and the threat of violence from either individuals or institutions.

Just two examples of institutional status quo are the government – the lack of representation from minorities such as women – and the penal system – the excess of representation of minorities in the prison population.

As far as economic power goes, Pharr refers us to the ‘myth of scarcity,’ which pits us against each other because we are scared of losing the few resources we have or have control over – for instance, the poor use too much of our already limited resources. Just think about the myth of scarcity as it operates in the immigration issue: immigrants take our jobs, lower the standards of our schools, destroy our neighborhoods and lower our property value.

And then think about how economic oppression keeps most of us from becoming involved in the democratic process – should we wish to run for office, the cost is prohibitive, except for wealthy citizens.

Pharr claims that, in order to maintain the status quo, the tools of oppression wielded by those in power include the following three tactics:

First, the threat of violence – historically a very effective tool! Remember the decimation of Native Americans in the westward expansion of this country?

Closer to our own contemporary experience of patriarchy and heterosexual dominance, two examples are domestic violence, which statistics show continues to occur to unacceptable levels; and the terrible epidemic of sexual assaults on female members of the US military. And the gay population has had its share of martyrs, from Harvey Milk to Matthew Shepard, whose threat to the dominant norms of sexuality was dealt with through tragic acts of murder.

The second tool of oppression is the use of labels of exclusion, like ‘the Other’ – those who in someway are lacking in comparison to the norm; those who are seen as abnormal, deviant, inferior, and those who are not seen or invisible. ‘A Day without a Mexican’ is a film I show to my class in Intercultural Communication – it was made in 2004 as a satire. What would happen to California if all the Mexicans – who do all the invisible work of building houses, picking crops, caring for children – were to vanish suddenly? The film ends with the collective confession by the Anglo population that they had indeed treated Mexicans as invisible.

And a third tool of oppression is tokenism…those minority members who are ‘on show’ as a refutation of discrimination, and who find themselves in a double bind, as in the 1950s, when blacks in authority positions in government and law enforcement had to face hostility and isolation from both their cultural community and the Caucasian majority in which they worked.

These and other tactics of oppression divide and conquer – they focus on individual achievement, and thus keep groups from effectively organizing.

And so, because we have joined together and exist as an organization within a structural status quo, we cannot help but be affected by our perceptions, assumptions, and expectations of the defined norm - remember that Mark Harris described our desire to be diverse, sitting awkwardly alongside our preference for people who will ‘fit in’ with our membership demographics.

How will we revitalize our commitment to diversity? We need to stop cooperating with the perpetuation of oppression and instead witness to a larger good. We are called by our covenant with each other to live up to the seven principles that we affirm and promote so as to make this a better and more just world. We are challenged to stand on the side of love.

We here at AUUC are on the journey to becoming a Welcoming Congregation. Just being aware of the pervasive nature of structural oppression is another step we can take on that journey. But once we are aware, what do we do? Theologian Rebecca Parker also took part in the anti-racism discussion described in the book SoulWork. She suggests that we express our feelings. Yes, that suggestion may send chills down the intellectualized UU – and we are legion!

But Parker points out that we may become anesthetized and numbed to our feelings about the various oppressions that we are immersed in. The status quo, the social structures in which we live, may cause us to suppress our feelings without really knowing it; Parker calls this the “social construction of heartlessness”. Feelings, Parker says, are as important as thinking about racism and its consequences, sexism and its consequences, classism, ageism and all the other isms.

That is why I close today by asking you to reflect on the two short quotations I’ve used in this service: the first, from the Letter of Paul to the Romans, is written at the top of the Order of Service. It echoes Rebecca Parker’s desire for us to feel: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.”

The second, the meditation from Rumi’s poem “Say Yes Quickly,” recalls the responsibility each of us has, through our bond of covenant, to be faithful to each other:

“If you are here unfaithfully with us,


you’re causing terrible damage.


If you’ve opened your loving to God’s love,


you’re helping people you don’t know


and have never seen.”

May we be the ones who make it so, Blessed be, Amen.

Gaye W. Ortiz

January 2013