Thursday, May 31, 2012
Why Talk about Cannabis?
A friend on Facebook recently questioned why I have a bug up my butt regarding President Obama's position on cannabis. Here is my initial response, which I am saving here for later honing toward a more succinct draft:
Regarding your comment, "Cannabis? really?" I am led to believe that it's not really an issue for you? Our president has also laughed it off several times as a non-issue. That is most marginalizing to a community of people already in danger of becoming lower than second-class citizens.
Regarding your comment, "Cannabis? really?" I am led to believe that it's not really an issue for you? Our president has also laughed it off several times as a non-issue. That is most marginalizing to a community of people already in danger of becoming lower than second-class citizens.
In case you consider cannabis to really not be an issue, consider these three things. First, among the wide diversity of cannabis strains, there is definitely legitimate medicine for many people suffering from MS, Crohn's/IBS, cancer, glaucoma, arthritis and epilepsy. It is arguably (although less so) medicine for some people with chronic pain/inflammation, anxiety, ADHD, Alzheimer's, and a host of other maladies. And everyone knows it has side effects, such as euphoria, paranoia (likely amplified by its illegality), lethargy, and short-term memory issues. Compare those side effects to the cautionary list at the end of your average pharmaceutical commercial, and you may be surprised at what some people consider 'acceptable' side effects. After giving states the green light in 2009, the Obama Administration has recently done a 170-degree turn on its states' rights policies, and has used the IRS, the DOJ and the DEA to force the businesses with the best practices and the best reputations--operating as model members of their communities, and within the state laws--out of business. These are not the thug-operations that are basically no better than drug dealers with a lease on a shanty. They were doing their best to follow state laws, turning people away with incorrect authorization, testing the products for potency and to make sure there are no fungus, mold, or pesticides, and labeling as accurately as possible. They were/are truly trying to serve those who need it medically. As the feds attempt to shove it all back underground, those people are running low on quality options.
The second important consideration is that the drug war is: a race war, a class war, and a culture war, all wrapped up into one. It is not a war on drugs. It is a selective war on people--our own people. A quick look around at the arrest, conviction, and incarceration rates can tell you which categories of people are most affected. People of color, stopped for DWB and a car search that finds a baggie of weed for example, become ensnared in a system that benefits from keeping them ensnared. The prison-industrial complex is alive and well, privatizing profits while taking our tax dollars, requesting the government to help keep their prisons full! For more on that, read Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow." Our nation's young men of color (though probably anybody would do) are worth more to some segments of the investor class behind bars than anywhere else. Meanwhile, in richer, whiter neighborhoods, people have custom-made marijuana-infused cakes and pastries delivered to their parties. If caught, they can pay for a good lawyer and get off scot-free like Rush Limbaugh. That touches on the class and race war elements. Regarding the culture war, it's no coincidence that the war on drugs started in 1970 on Nixon's watch, directed against the countercultural elements who happened to not only like being intoxicated in this fashion, but were also against Vietnam. With the rise of the military-industrial complex, we've seen the militarization of the drug war as well. Not a coincidence. The poor, the people of color, and the people of the counterculture all have common cause here even if they're from different social locations. Meanwhile, those who perpetuate the drug war are interested in marginalizing the voices of all of these people.
The third issue is money. Five hundred leading economists, including Milton Friedman, have stated that it makes clear economic sense to legalize. Money spent incarcerating people for using a substance safer than alcohol and tobacco is wasted money. With federal support, however, drug programs are easy money to collect for local law enforcement looking to bolster their budgets. It's money that goes down the tubes, however. Putting a person needlessly in prison costs >$30k/year. Meanwhile, the person who comes out of a punitive prison system is not likely to be a better person, and with a felony on their record, will no longer be as employable to our economy simply because of that mar on their record, and we have another person either struggling at odd jobs, returning to the drug trade (which perhaps they didn't even do before, but now have scarce options), or living on the dole if they can. Instead of spending that $30k on prisons, it could be spent on educating our youth, or on really rehabilitating and restoring people with real drug problems. Obama has talked a good game on the benefits of treating the drug problem as a public health issue, but the proof is in the pudding. As a portion of budget outlay, police intervention is still the lion's share of the strategy. On the flip-side of the coin, there are arguments that with regulation and taxation, the government could earn a great new revenue stream. I think that while it could certainly bring in some money--enough to counteract the additional public health costs of legalization--it wouldn't be enough to make a dent in the federal debt, or even in the annual deficit: http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/07/commentary/wastler/wastler/ But $10-20 billion isn't chump change either. The real money comes indirectly from productivity gains as we are no longer decimating lives, families, and communities with a drug war that has done far more damage domestically and abroad than the drugs themselves could have done.
Labels: 1st UU principle, 5th UU principle, anti-oppression, changing the prison paradigm, drug war, equal rights, freedom versus freedom, marijuana, racism, USA
Friday, May 18, 2012
Bike to work day
Monday, May 14, 2012
Sermon: Yes, It's Real.
Yes It's Real, Delivered May 6, 2012 for First Unitarian
Church of Pittsburgh, 11 a.m. Service.
TIME FOR ALL AGES:
There’s a little nursery rhyme that I
remember from when I was young. I’m not
sure if people still tell it, so let me know if you’ve heard it.
“What
are little girls made of? Sugar and spice, and everything nice.
And
what are little boys made of? Snips and snails, and puppy dog tails.”
When I was a kid, that left me with a
few questions though: What happened to the puppy dogs? I don’t know!
And why are little boys made out of all sorts of crunchy things? Why didn’t we get any sugar and spice mixed
in? And I imagine there were some girls
thinking, “How come I have to be made of everything nice all the time? Why can’t the boys be made of everything
nice?”
Here’s another version of the story: [‘free
to be’ p.38]
I
think love and care and skin and hair are some better ingredients, because when
you think about it, all kids are kind of made out of the same things. Still, that tells you what you’re made
out of, and I think you might be more than just those things.
How about you kids? What do YOU say you’re
made of?
READING:
Today’s reading is on The Loss of Certainty, by Rev. Dr.
Paul Rasor. It is an excerpt from the
chapter The Postmodern Challenge, in
his book Faith Without Certainty. [pp. 64-65]
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy
that deals with the nature of knowledge.
It asks questions like “How do we know what we know?” and “What counts
as knowing something?” In the modern period, the emphasis was on
finding bedrock foundations for all our knowledge. People looked for ideas that could be
accepted as universal truths, which could provide the foundation on which to
build further knowledge. Descartes’
affirmation of his existence as a thinking being is one kind of epistemological
foundation. The empiricist theory that
all knowledge is based on data received by the senses is another.
In the postmodern world, these foundations
have disappeared. There is no such thing
as certain knowledge or ultimate truth.
Things we once thought gave us firm foundations, such as universal human
reason or common experience, turn out to be bounded by language and culture and
gender. Everything is relativized. What we used to think of as truth is now seen
as interpretation. Because of our
cultural limitations, all our interpretations are only partial. And it’s not just that each of us has only a
partial view of some larger truth. The
metaphors we commonly use, such as looking at the same light through different
windows or going up the same mountain on different paths, are all challenged in
postmodernity. In the postmodern way of
thinking, there is no larger truth. We
are all wandering around on different paths (or lost in the brush) on different
mountains. We each have our own truths
and our own knowledge, according to our circumstances.
This
condition leaves us with more decisions to make but fewer bases for making
them. “As less and less can be taken as
given, so more and more responsibility is placed on the individual to account
for, and act in, the world.” This is a
social problem as much as an individual one.
As David Lyon recognizes, one of the central postmodern dilemmas is how
we can find “authentic post-foundational starting points for social criticism.”
....In
religious terms, we are left potentially without a deep grounding or even a
shared reference point for our prophetic voice.
SERMON:
The year prior to moving to Pittsburgh, I
was a chaplain at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in downtown San
Francisco. While I was there, I had the
privilege and the honor of meeting people of all walks of life, with stories
from all over the map. In that one
hospital, I met people who had rubbed elbows with presidents and dignitaries,
and I met people who put their elbows on a double layer of cardboard on the
sidewalk as they lay down to sleep each night.
Now, I know my values. Our first
principle refers to the inherent worth and dignity in every person. That principle comes to mind when I think
about the indignity of people sleeping in the streets. It came to mind when a man freshly released
from the hospital approached me trying to scrounge up $14 to make a copay to
buy himself some pneumonia medication.
He wanted to wash the windows of my car for $2—the only means of
production he owned a rag, a bucket, and soap and water. And he was working with an active case of
pneumonia!
This
is such a far cry from the fulfillment of any of the principles we hold dear,
it is just surreal. But it's not. It's real.
I
grew up Christian—Lutheran to be specific.
One text I heard several times was from the book of Matthew, chapter 6,
verse 26: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not
sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds
them. Are you not much more valuable
than they?” This was regarding worrying
for your future and well-being, and he seeks to offer comfort saying the Lord
provides for the birds, and he will provide for you as well. But eventually, every one of those birds
Jesus was referring to gets to the end of the line and dies, sometimes sooner,
sometimes later. The thought was deeply
jarring to my theology. God takes care
of you.... until he doesn't.
The most financially poor among us generally receive poor healthcare and dental care, and sometimes get sick with avoidable diseases and tend to die much younger. Good people have very bad things happen to them sometimes--whether it's homeless people getting assaulted while they sleep, the far-too-common murder of transgender people (not that any murder rate would be acceptable), state-paid police officers assaulting people protesting for justice, or people driven to end their life when they lose their ability to support themselves and there is no safety net.
The most financially poor among us generally receive poor healthcare and dental care, and sometimes get sick with avoidable diseases and tend to die much younger. Good people have very bad things happen to them sometimes--whether it's homeless people getting assaulted while they sleep, the far-too-common murder of transgender people (not that any murder rate would be acceptable), state-paid police officers assaulting people protesting for justice, or people driven to end their life when they lose their ability to support themselves and there is no safety net.
Those
are hard facts of life during this epoch of humanity's social evolution. I don't like those facts. And I don't like talking about them. But these facts may be part of the realities
of members in this community. And even
if not a reality for those within these walls, these injustices definitely
happen to those in the community just beyond.
If there's injustice, a loud bubbling discourse is a good way to bring
attention. Those hard facts may be the
“is” of our current situation, but they're not the “ought” of what I want for
anyone's future. To match the values I
hold dear, I hope to usher in some serious change. If God can't be there to take care of us,
can't we work it out so that we can be there for each other? Apparently not as a nation. Not yet.
An undemocratic mass media pushes dialogs on these injustices to the
margins, keeping us up-to-date on the latest distraction stories about Miley
Cyrus, Tiger Woods, the “debt ceiling,” or the next videogame platform. Corporations don't have concern for the poor,
or for anyone's well-being except where it affects the purchase their services
and products. Most politicians don't
have time for the poor, and pay the most heed to those who can help finance
their campaigns. And many politicians
also work for these corporations through revolving doors. The same people who work as leaders at
companies like Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, Enron, Pfizer, Exxon and British
Petroleum are also the people in government who are supposed to be regulating
those companies. It seems surreal, but
it's real.
The
reality being written is that the taxpayers' budget is going toward things that
don't reflect our common values. And the
budget is most definitely a moral issue.
A quick plug: any of you who have the opportunity to come to the UUPLAN
action in Harrisburg tomorrow about the governor's drastic General Assistance
cuts against our state's poorest residents, please let me know if you want to
be part of the carpool. One of the most
surreal budget matters is the hand-in-glove connection between our lawmakers'
refusal to end the drug war, and the support for the drug war offered by
powerful lobbies such as the private corrections corporations, who are offering
to help manage the prison population for the government as long as the
government can guarantee that the prisons be kept 90% full. You heard that right—they want more prisoners,
so they can get a greater profit. And
they are more connected with those who make the laws and appropriate the budget
money than you and I. This is creating a
reality where Pennsylvania is subtracting large sums of money from the budget
for schools and transportation, and increasing the budget for prisons. To those among us who don't believe in
punitive incarceration at all, much less as a replacement for a good education,
this seems surreal. But it's real.
In your personal life, if you've ever received an errant medical bill, or experienced a crediting mistake on your student loans, or had difficulty proving your eligibility for some type of assistance, you know surreality. It may seem there's nobody you can call who can actually fix the situation, and the people on the phone seem entirely uncurious--just pushing papers, and shuffling your issue off to somebody else, or saying “It seems fixed on this end. If you get another bill next month, just give us another call.” Meanwhile, the reality is that this matter is getting dangerously close to going into collections, but it's their mistake. That doesn't seem to matter, however, as your soon-to-be-blemished credit rating report will become the reality.
In your personal life, if you've ever received an errant medical bill, or experienced a crediting mistake on your student loans, or had difficulty proving your eligibility for some type of assistance, you know surreality. It may seem there's nobody you can call who can actually fix the situation, and the people on the phone seem entirely uncurious--just pushing papers, and shuffling your issue off to somebody else, or saying “It seems fixed on this end. If you get another bill next month, just give us another call.” Meanwhile, the reality is that this matter is getting dangerously close to going into collections, but it's their mistake. That doesn't seem to matter, however, as your soon-to-be-blemished credit rating report will become the reality.
I
can't help thinking that I'm not alone in noticing all these incongruities
between that which I witness and what I hear I am witnessing. And I think to myself that “when we get them
out of office, and change the system, we'll be able to fix all this stuff.” Yet that reminds me of a good learning
experience I had while playing high school basketball. Our team would sometimes be down by 15-20
points at the half. And there was always
this expectation that we would play harder in the second half and catch
up. However, it was rare that the other
team didn't just continue to outscore us, and beat us by upwards of 30 points
by the final buzzer. Returning from the
analogy, maybe all these bad laws and bad budget decisions aren't going to be
fixed. What if they continue to get
worse? I'll be honest—I don't know. But that will be real until change
happens. And it will have real effects
on our lives and the lives of those we love.
How did we get to this point? The postmodernism Paul Rasor was talking about has opened the floodgates, for ill and for good. As he says, “Everything is relativized. What we used to think of as truth is now seen as interpretation.” If everybody is allowed their interpretation, then we are also open to allowing fabrications. But if we're honest, not all interpretations are equally valid. And once discovered, whole-cloth fabrications are among the least valid.
There are falsehoods being told to us on a fundamental level. And when we are not skeptical, or we do not see the framework within which those falsehoods occur, we incorporate those lies into our own stories. In the Jewish tradition, the Christian tradition, and the Muslim tradition, there is a proscription to NOT bear false witness, to NOT testify falsely. I see two problems at work here. First, direct fabrications in some forms of advertising and public relations and in government, in which the listener is led to act or decide based on false beliefs.
So if the first issue is wholesale false witness, the second could perhaps be called “absent witness” where that which we ought bear witness to is left unexamined or neglected. In leaving that portion of witness out of our understanding, we allow a little damage into our beliefs—we may have the truth, but not the whole truth. And what's missing from the truth may just be the lion's share of the iceberg. And as the standard for truth fall, there's an invitation to participate.
How did we get to this point? The postmodernism Paul Rasor was talking about has opened the floodgates, for ill and for good. As he says, “Everything is relativized. What we used to think of as truth is now seen as interpretation.” If everybody is allowed their interpretation, then we are also open to allowing fabrications. But if we're honest, not all interpretations are equally valid. And once discovered, whole-cloth fabrications are among the least valid.
There are falsehoods being told to us on a fundamental level. And when we are not skeptical, or we do not see the framework within which those falsehoods occur, we incorporate those lies into our own stories. In the Jewish tradition, the Christian tradition, and the Muslim tradition, there is a proscription to NOT bear false witness, to NOT testify falsely. I see two problems at work here. First, direct fabrications in some forms of advertising and public relations and in government, in which the listener is led to act or decide based on false beliefs.
So if the first issue is wholesale false witness, the second could perhaps be called “absent witness” where that which we ought bear witness to is left unexamined or neglected. In leaving that portion of witness out of our understanding, we allow a little damage into our beliefs—we may have the truth, but not the whole truth. And what's missing from the truth may just be the lion's share of the iceberg. And as the standard for truth fall, there's an invitation to participate.
Blogger Greta Christina speaks to
this on her blog post “Do you care whether the things you believe are true?”:
If we believe things about reality that aren’t true, we’re going to make bad
decisions. If we believe that we failed our English test because our teacher
has it in for us, we’re not going to study harder for our next test. If we
believe that we keep getting stomach-aches because we hate our job, we’re not
going to quit having Doritos and Red Bull for breakfast. If we believe that we
can turn on the TV by hitting it with a rock, we’re going to miss “America’s
Best Dance Crew.” It’s like data processors say: Garbage in, garbage out.
How
does this apply to us here, now, in our lives?
The changes in us begin by and are maintained by working against,
playing against, dancing against those huge lies of bent reality and lies of
omission thrust upon us. We can work,
play, and dance against them by stepping out of a system where falsehoods are
commonplace. We can insist on getting
closer to the truth by developing a broader interpretation. How can we do this? By first recognizing that the personal truth
we understand is based on our personal framework, built up by a lifetime of
experiences, from living within our own social location. Some things that compose our social location
include gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender expression, socioeconomic
status, age, and educational level. Two
people with different social locations may experience the same event, but their
interpretations may diverge widely. I
know that as a male-appearing, white, Scandinavian-descended, heterosexual,
well-educated middle-class person, I am bound to have different expectations
and views on the world than somebody in a different social location.
A
second step toward a broader interpretation is to validate it by listening to
the stories of others. To really hear
their story, so that you may know them with depth. And treat it as their truth, which you may
allow to become a part of your own. This
is a spiritual practice. It requires
practice to understand each other and ourselves in detail.
When I was in college, in my free time, I used to listen to a lot of music. Whether it was Jane's Addiction, Public Enemy, Tracy Chapman, Throwing Muses, or the Clash, I would listen to the music and take it in for the wondrous beauty in the melodies, the rhythms, and the lyrics. However, in hindsight, I didn't take it in as the artist's actual truth about their lived location. It was just beautiful and interesting.
I didn't quite get it as real when the Clash sang:
When I was in college, in my free time, I used to listen to a lot of music. Whether it was Jane's Addiction, Public Enemy, Tracy Chapman, Throwing Muses, or the Clash, I would listen to the music and take it in for the wondrous beauty in the melodies, the rhythms, and the lyrics. However, in hindsight, I didn't take it in as the artist's actual truth about their lived location. It was just beautiful and interesting.
I didn't quite get it as real when the Clash sang:
This is a
public service announcement,
With guitar
Know your rights, all three of them
Number 1: You have the right not to be killed
Murder is a CRIME!
Unless it was done by a
Policeman or aristocrat
And Number 2: You have the right to food money
Providing of course you
Don't mind a little
Investigation, humiliation
And if you cross your fingers
Rehabilitation
With guitar
Know your rights, all three of them
Number 1: You have the right not to be killed
Murder is a CRIME!
Unless it was done by a
Policeman or aristocrat
And Number 2: You have the right to food money
Providing of course you
Don't mind a little
Investigation, humiliation
And if you cross your fingers
Rehabilitation
Number 3:
You have the right to free
Speech as long as you're not
Dumb enough to actually try it.
Speech as long as you're not
Dumb enough to actually try it.
At the time, I just thought this
song was great art, maybe an English thing, or something that happened to
outspoken punks who threw molatov cocktails.
Actually, in hindsight, it seems
they had somehow experienced this. And
now I know that police do murder unarmed people at US train stations (and other
places) and get away with it. And the
poorest among us who apply for food aid and welfare are harassed to the point
of having to pay in advance to take their own drug tests—a policy which
actually lost money for the state of Florida, and is being adopted in other
states. And Occupy Wall Street
protesters who try to simply stand up to speak freely against injustice find
themselves pepper sprayed, beaten and bound.
The Clash were right. And being
witness to these present horrifying injustices wouldn't now seem so surreal if
I could have listened to their words with my heart way back when.
All that I just mentioned though, is
on the political level. What about the
spiritual level? I think that's where
this listening really matters.
[lighting tea-light candles next to pulpit] I will light this first candle to
represent my own internal light. It
symbolizes the “me” as a subject, as a sentient being, capable of understanding
the world I live in by using my own reasoning, and making my own
decisions. Now here is the second
candle, as yet unlit, which represents the “you”, as other than me. Symbolically for me to light the second
candle using the first candle would mean that your light, your awareness,
depends on me somehow to come into being, in which I tell your story. Instead, I will light the second candle
separately, to indicate that you also are a subject, that you also are sentient
and aware, capable of making decisions and telling your own stories. Were it possible, I may have used the same
match to light both of our candles, which has a symbolism of its own regarding
a common origin to our light. But these
matches don't last long enough to do all that while I'm talking, and I'm afraid
I would have burned my fingers.
These two candles represent an
equitable relationship reflected by the Indian phrase “Namaste.” Namaste can be translated as “the divine
spirit within me honors the divine spirit within you.”
Were I to have lit the second candle
from the first, it may have instead symbolized the divine spirit within me
honoring the sparse partial image I imagine you to be. That's not exactly the connection I'm hoping
we find in one another.
Philosopher
Martin Buber explains this as the difference between having an I/it
relationship and an I/thou relationship.
In the I/it relationship we are using or
experiencing an object in our life as an extension of our own. In the I/thou relationship, we move into a
connected immersed existence in a relationship without bounds. Buber tells us that we find our meaning in
living relationships.
This
I/thou spirit, or the Namaste spirit asks of us to check our assumptions about
the others with whom we are in relationship, so we treat them according to
their intrinsic value, not their instrumental value.
I
will be the first to admit (well perhaps second or third to admit, actually)
that sometimes I am guilty of this as well.
People are difficult, some more than others, and it takes so much
time. Time that I don't think I
have. When I was younger, I used to
think I could see you and know you pretty well at a glance. In retrospect, I thought of myself to be like
Sherlock Holmes, or the protagonist from that TV show “Lie to Me.” These fictional characters have such powers
of perception that they can know the truth about a situation without having to
ask anyone verbally. Maybe when I was
younger, I did have these amazing powers.
But at this phase of my life, I know I need to ask questions in order to
affirm, clarify, or dispel what I think I know about others, or I am doing
myself and them a disservice. I may
think I'm saving time, but the person who's being shortchanged and
misunderstood has every right to step up to me, or step away, and, as American
Idol winner Kelly Clarkson sings, “Baby you don't know a thing about me.”
But if I'm not using my time to build relationships.... Honestly, is there a much better thing in the world one could spend their time on?
But if I'm not using my time to build relationships.... Honestly, is there a much better thing in the world one could spend their time on?
Instead
of building our relationships based on the things we imagine may be true for
others, I invite you to ask them for their truths, in order to help clarify
them for you and possibly for them as well.
Or at the very least, just know that you don't know. As this practice of asking deeply becomes a
habit, you may come to notice more clearly when people's selves are
disregarded, or truths are painted over them.
A clear example of this was last week's kerfuffle on Meet the Press between Rachel Maddow and Alex Castellanos, in which he continually interrupted her as she attempted to point out the present pay discrepancy between men and women, until finally she had to interrupt his interruptions to name them as such, and call his language condescending, and clarify that she is presenting irrefutable facts, contrasted with his opinions.
The good side of this postmodernism is that each of us as subjects have truths within. In authentic relationships, instead of disregarding individual truths for a universal truth as a modern view may choose to do, we bring all truths to the surface. As more and more truths come to the surface, it creates a culture. Where modernism would have us all participate in a monoculture, postmodernism provides a larger umbrella of a multi-culture. A multi-culture that makes space for the voices drown out by injustice, and a multi-culture that makes space to celebrate all kinds of love.
A clear example of this was last week's kerfuffle on Meet the Press between Rachel Maddow and Alex Castellanos, in which he continually interrupted her as she attempted to point out the present pay discrepancy between men and women, until finally she had to interrupt his interruptions to name them as such, and call his language condescending, and clarify that she is presenting irrefutable facts, contrasted with his opinions.
The good side of this postmodernism is that each of us as subjects have truths within. In authentic relationships, instead of disregarding individual truths for a universal truth as a modern view may choose to do, we bring all truths to the surface. As more and more truths come to the surface, it creates a culture. Where modernism would have us all participate in a monoculture, postmodernism provides a larger umbrella of a multi-culture. A multi-culture that makes space for the voices drown out by injustice, and a multi-culture that makes space to celebrate all kinds of love.
May it be so. Blessed be, and amen.
PRAYER: As we prepare for a time of
prayer and meditation, I ask that we hold member _____ _____ and his family
in our hearts and prayers, while he is doing the uphill work of recovering from
a stroke at _____ Hospital. Also, I want
lift up our Methodist siblings in the LGBT community. After 40 years of ongoing struggle, many
walked away from their general convention in Tampa with wounded hearts from the
recent vote maintaining a stance against equal rights and inclusion. May their hearts know and feel our support….
Spirit of Mystery, Spirit of Love, I offer
a prayer today for our connections. May
we prepare ourselves energetically to do the work of knowing one another and
our world more deeply. May we not be
satisfied with the stories we’ve been told, or that we’ve told ourselves. May we be curious to discover the depths that
lie within each other, of the people we already believe we know, or of the
stranger--the possible friend--in our midst.
May we be prepared for what we find there, understanding that we are not
responsible for fixing each other’s brokenness, nor even need we be responsible
to celebrate every success. Our true
presence, and our knowing, and the knowledge of being known can be enough.
May our wisdom also guide us to recognize
when we do understand well enough, so
we may conserve our energy, to be ready to put it into action when called upon,
or to reserve it to adequately care for our own selves. In this soft balance, may our connection to
what Emerson called the Oversoul help us know each other as like manifestations
of the divine in the world. Amen.
BENEDICTION:
For the benediction today, I
would like to share an adaptation of some popular lyrics from Chuck D, of the music group Public Enemy. He is a musician,
lecturer, author, vegetarian, and is also known as Carlton Douglas Ridenhour. My hope is that these words will be
understood in terms of a struggle for racial justice. A struggle each of us experience
differently. A struggle none of us can
know fully, but that each of us can come to know more clearly by hearing each
other.
So many of us in limbo
How to get it on, it's quite simple
3 stones… from the sun
We need a piece of this rock
Our goal -- indestructible soul
Answers to this quizzin'
To the Brothers in the street, Schools and the prisons
History shouldn't be a mystery
Our stories – REAL history
Not HIS story
We’re gonna work it one day
Till we all get paid
The right way in full, no bull
Talkin', no walkin'. Drivin', arrivin' in style.
Soon you'll see what I'm talkin' about
'Cause one day
The brothers are gonna work it out
The brothers are gonna work it out
How to get it on, it's quite simple
3 stones… from the sun
We need a piece of this rock
Our goal -- indestructible soul
Answers to this quizzin'
To the Brothers in the street, Schools and the prisons
History shouldn't be a mystery
Our stories – REAL history
Not HIS story
We’re gonna work it one day
Till we all get paid
The right way in full, no bull
Talkin', no walkin'. Drivin', arrivin' in style.
Soon you'll see what I'm talkin' about
'Cause one day
The brothers are gonna work it out
The brothers are gonna work it out
Let us all--brothers, sisters, and
siblings--go forward from this place motivated to work it out. May we prepare to respect each other by
negotiating our understandings, and respect ourselves by expecting authentic
understanding.
It’s a good day to go in peace. Amen.
pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel
Labels: 0th UU principle, 2nd UU principle, 3rd UU principle, lyrics, pastoral connection, religious community, sermons
Sermon: Sustaining Your Inner Superheroine
Sustaining Your Inner Superhero,
delivered to First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh, April 15, 2012.
I'm
glad you're here. I'm glad we're here
together. Thank you.
I
invite you to think back to when you were just starting out in this world. Now that we've got our three year old son
Henry in our life, so often the things he does and says remind me of when I was
that age.
If
you were like me, the rocketship in your hand was a real rocketship, as were
the dinosaurs, the Hotwheels cars, the Tonka trucks and the dolls.
To
my adult mind now, those toys held an astonishing allure, and I see a serious amount of
imaginative play at work in Henry's life as well.
I
recall back when imagination ran full-tilt.
My bicycle was the batcycle. When
I laid down on the top of the sofa with my arms out, I was flying.
Since
then, something’s changed. I got
educated into the world, I became more and more aware of the world, and adult
reality set in.
I
still want to cling to the idea that there are good guys and bad guys,
superheroines and supervillainesses. I
know that’s no longer true. Actually
it’s my understanding that’s changed, not the world. I know that the good-slash-bad binary has
never been true. As Alexandr
Solzhenitsyn tells us in The Gulag Archipelago, “If only it were all so
simple! If only there were evil people
somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to
separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts
through the heart of every human being.”
We
have a tendency to lose track of our superpowers, or our plain old power even,
and just settle in to what we've been assigned, or what's expected of us, and
this is what divides our hearts. But to
really connect with our superpowers doesn't take superhuman effort.
It
takes imagination, and it takes the will to bring that which you
imagine into real being. That's it.
Before
we can sustain our inner superhero, we need first to imagine it, to find
it, to discover it. What is the self
within us that—as our first reading tells us—wants to do the right thing: to
act for justice and peace, and at times, kick serious ass? I believe we each have this potential within
us. We just need a good process to help
our inner superhero come out into the light of our awareness.
First, we need to recall that justice and injustice are not monoliths. If we treat them as such, they are gigantic inseparable abstractions that we can't get any grasp upon. We must find specific justice targets which really match our individual passions. There are plenty of areas in the world that need justice, and when the good people of the world are working as a team, there will be plenty of people to address those areas. Otherwise, to try and take on “injustice” as a category is simply overwhelming. As Howard Thurman says, “Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
First, we need to recall that justice and injustice are not monoliths. If we treat them as such, they are gigantic inseparable abstractions that we can't get any grasp upon. We must find specific justice targets which really match our individual passions. There are plenty of areas in the world that need justice, and when the good people of the world are working as a team, there will be plenty of people to address those areas. Otherwise, to try and take on “injustice” as a category is simply overwhelming. As Howard Thurman says, “Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Last
month, myself and three other members of this congregation attended the
Gamaliel community organizing training.
One of the key learnings for me was that every person has experiences in
their history that guide their vision.
Figuring out those formative experiences can clarify and unlock your
self-interest.
Recognizing
self-interest is a healthy habit. It's
not selfish where you just try to get others to do for you. And it's not selfLESS where you put on a
martyr's altruism and help others fulfill their dreams, and put your own on the
backburner or even take them off the stove.
When you know your self-interest, you've got your foundation under you,
and are one important step closer to being strong for what you believe in. You have the river of truth at your side, and
are ready to say “No, YOU move,” or are ready to interrupt the situation when
you witness an injustice you've prepared yourself to face.
A second element of this discovery process is to be gentle with yourself. You're not magical, and the world does not rest on your shoulders. At least it shouldn't. Wolverine made an important point about superheroes and superheroines—that they're made, not born, and it's their guts that make them super. Here's a little aside: Back when this sermon was hatching almost twenty years ago, I heard some song lyrics by an English band named Black Grape:
A second element of this discovery process is to be gentle with yourself. You're not magical, and the world does not rest on your shoulders. At least it shouldn't. Wolverine made an important point about superheroes and superheroines—that they're made, not born, and it's their guts that make them super. Here's a little aside: Back when this sermon was hatching almost twenty years ago, I heard some song lyrics by an English band named Black Grape:
Don’t talk to me about heroes
Most of these men sing like serfs
Jesus was a black man
No Jesus was Batman
No, no, no,
That was Bruce Wayne.
Most of these men sing like serfs
Jesus was a black man
No Jesus was Batman
No, no, no,
That was Bruce Wayne.
That curveball about Bruce Wayne
kind of cracked me up, and I figured Jesus probably wasn't a black man—I bet he
looked kind of like the people of the Eastern Mediterranean, though the part
that really stuck with me was “Jesus was Batman.”
I
didn't really make my own real meaning of it until after finding Unitarian
Universalism. See, many Christians
understand Jesus as some type of otherworldly being begotten outside of time
and space, more akin to Superman from another planet with powers that none of
us could ever hope to accomplish.
As
a Unitarian, I came to appreciate Jesus as being closer to the style of
Batman--of being one of us, working smarter, doing pushups, and developing
skills. Wonderwoman, while working
tirelessly for justice—originally fighting against the Nazis during world war
two—like Superman, also has superhuman abilities, descended from a mythic
Amazon warrior culture. It's good that
she's on the side of justice, but no amount of pushups is going to help bridge
that gap between where we are and her super-humanity. I could go through the Marvel and DC comic
superhero inventories trying to determine whose powers were innate and whose
were developed, but the inclusion of these three makes my point without going
past my depth and into an area which would only entertain the most hardcore
comics fans here today. The superheroes and superheroines within each of us—which
need not match our birth gender—require our work and intentionality to come
into being. We start with what we
are—what we really are, not what we're told we are (in so many
categories)—and find a way to become more ourselves. We don't have to have superhuman strength or
speed, or be able to turn back time by flying backwards around the Earth until
Lois Lane comes back to life. Our
superpower can be as straightforward as preparing ourselves, then having the
courage to show up and speak our truth when it matters.
Now that we've identified the
superhero within us, we're ready for the third element of this discovery
process. Here, we get to the part about
actually sustaining our inner superhero.
Sustaining is the key, and is what will really serve our momentum. An example from the world of music may shed
some light. Each instrument has its own
style of making notes. A guitar is
strummed and then the strings slowly die down.
A drum or percussive instrument gets hit for a very short sharp
transient note. And a violin or a
synthesizer (or a wine glass) can hold a note steadily for a long time. This ability to draw out a note is called
“sustain.” In the quote at the top of
your order of service, from Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, he notes
that by playing the music loud, his guitar has extra long sustain. That sustain comes from a mild form of
feedback. The oscillations in air
pressure caused by the loud amplifiers are actually strong enough that they're
like wind blowing on the guitar strings, which allows them to keep ringing on
for a long time. Feedback is what we
need to sustain us.
Feedback in community. When we're
loud enough in words or action such that others hear us and some
resonate—though certainly not all will resonate, (and that's okay)—when
some resonate with us, we find a momentum that sustains. Through conversation you may find that your
imagination matches theirs, or your imagination may inspire others, or their
imaginations may inspire your own.
And
good conversation may include agitation and clarification as
well. We tend to shy away or give
complimentary feedback, perhaps so that we'll be liked by the listener, or
because we want them to feel liked. But
that's not genuine. I invite you to be
both kind and clear when reflecting your feedback, whether it be critique or
praise. Critique, not to be confused
with it's negative cousin criticism, spurs people to go deeper and find their
genuine selves. Conversations of this
sort—deep, connected interactions beyond small talk and the events of the
day—are a path to spiritual growth in community. In this congregation's behavioral covenant,
we're seeking to acknowledge each other's value and treat each other
accordingly. To me, this means that we
will level with each other, and do our level best to stay in relationship with
each other. When we know that we can offer
genuine feedback and not fear rejection, that to me indicates that we value
each others' authentic selves.
And
all of this serves to help vivify our imagination, so that we may become more
adept at fostering it into becoming real.
After all, almost everything that comes into existence in the human
world begins as a thought in someone's imagination. From there, if voiced, it turns into a
conversation, and if worthy of action, may even turn into an institution.
[slower]
Now this feedback, this conversation, happens within each of us as
well. From Howard Thurman's advice, we must
seek community within our own spirit, searching in our experiences with the
literal facts of the external world, to bring order out of chaos from this
collective life, and we will be sustained and supported by life. In other words, as our inner sense of
community is in conversation, we become harmonious to our own self.
This
work within ourselves and beyond ourselves in accountable community is crucial
for sustaining a steadfast spirit. I
will close with this question: Against all the messages which may make you feel
separate from your inner superhero, can you imagine yourself developing a
pattern of responding with a steadfast spirit?
Amen.
lyrics: How could anyone ever tell you you were less than whole?
pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel
Labels: 1st UU principle, 3rd UU principle, 4th UU principle, sermons
