To prompt discussion on January 20, 2013...

...on Unitarian Universalism fifth principle:
We covenant to affirm and promote: The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large. 

I’d like to take a moment to settle into this weekend. It’s quite the weekend for celebrations—the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the second inauguration of President Barack Obama.

For the inauguration luncheon this year, 15 chefs will be scurrying around to produce three courses representing the agricultural bounty of the entire country. Okay, I admit it. When I tour the White House, the room I most want to see is the kitchen… . I’m willing to chop vegetables for the tour—shoot—I’ll wash dishes.

Things have really changed in that kitchen. Martha Washington, who brought the first slaves into the president’s kitchen, likely trained the slave Hercules herself—and he excelled. He ended up with eight assistants, and worked the system so he could dress like a dandy, and enjoy some of the better things in life. However, when Washington was planning to leave Philadelphia for Mount Vernon, Hercules escaped. Although I’m sure he packed his favorite chef’s knife, his story ends there.

Not so the president’s kitchen.

The story of Hercules, and the stories of other slaves who served in the government in particular, remind me how much we tend to simplify slavery—to see one side, one vignette—but it’s so much more complex. Christianity Itself was stretched and molded to accommodate slavery. Our Founding Fathers accepted that entire races of people were incomplete.

Right of conscience and the democratic process brought us from Hercules to Obama and will, I pray, take us beyond.

But, what takes us from discomfort over something being not quite right to I’m willing to run away, to be beaten, jailed, and even die to stop this?

We simplify as well the moment of that enlightenment. Surely to develop that level of commitment takes time…nurturing… .

I think of a passage in a book I read years ago—Letters from an American Farmer by Crèvecoeur. I offer a caveat here. I read this book with about 15 other people, and of them, grad students and favorite and lauded PhD professor, I was the only one who thought it was a satire—if not satire, then allegory.

They all uniformly hated the author of the letters and took him to task for every puny, boneheaded thing he said that he did. Still, whether it was a scathing indictment of Early America written by a cad or a scathing satirical indictment of Early America written by a crafty wordsmith—it was scathing enough that he was asked to leave the country, and not return.

In the passage, Farmer Crèvecoeur is off to dine with a planter, and being no fool, chooses to walk a shaded path. Coming to a clearing he finds a caged human beset by birds. On reflex, he shoots…and the birds fly off…a short distance. I won’t read you the passage. It is gruesome, and you’d probably end up hating him too.

In the cage is a slave, near death. Crèvecoeur laments that he doesn’t have another ball for his musket, else he would put the poor man out of his misery.

Of course, what is he doing walking a shaded path in 18^th America with only one ball for his musket? I guess they weren’t a well-regulated militia even then.

The man is begging for water, and unable to end his misery, Crèvecoeur actively debates giving him water and prolonging the misery—he does it because it’s the only way he can make himself feel better. Then he heads along to dine, with the planter whose slave it was—and where he is assured that the execution was on the up and up with the law.

I know. How could he not do something? How could he break bread with the man who had caused it? I could intellectualize the argument; he’d be risking his own life—but I wanted a hero, I wanted to believe I would have acted differently.

One of the things I miss the most, and the least, about living in the country is country roads. On days when you’re not in a hurry, the weather is fine, and there are many more horses and cows than cars…nice.  Then on a morning just like that, I noticed something in the road up ahead. It was a beautiful rattlesnake—5 or 6 feet—but someone had driven over it, one tire, and although it was plastered to the pavement the width of a tire track, the first 4 feet continued trying to move forward. I hoped it was dead, and this was reflex, but I didn’t know. There was only one right thing to do.

I drove up a ways, turned around, and drove a lot farther in the opposite direction than I needed to before I turned back around and aimed for the snake. I couldn’t do it. I tried twice before I saw a car coming up behind me and I continued on my way.

Forgive me, but damned cages.

They’re everywhere. Within 15 minutes of turning on my computer, I was invited to watch a TED talk on human trafficking, compelled to action by a Syrian facebook page, and notified that a woman inadvertently left a couple of guns and some ammunition in her first grader’s backpack.

But who needs to look that far? 

I live in Porter’s Community. For those of you who do not know, Porter’s is a very old, Black Gainesville neighborhood with a checkered history that is on the brink of gentrification. When I first moved in I used to go outside in the evening, let down the tailgate of my pickup truck parked in the drive, and sit and chat to my neighbor Angie…and whoever happened to walk by. I was determined to meet people and really experience the neighborhood. And…I did. I don’t sit out on my tailgate anymore.

But even with just a window to the outside open, I can hear the cages clanging.

Young men, who have no jobs and no prospects, congregate in groups of six or eight through the day, wherever someone has been able to score some beer, and turn shiny black SUVs, with 2 dollars in the tank, into four-door, faux leather upholstered radios. Listen and you can hear the frustration building—whether the talk is about a woman, football, boxing, or the dogs they are trying to raise for profit—harsh words rise into the afternoon quiet, a challenge cracks like a whip, and then a laugh breaks, a crude joke, a bruising tease—but things calm back to women, or football, or boxing, or dogs.

The other evening, the trick didn’t work. I had to weave through 20 police vehicles just to get on my block. Everyone was outside. A young woman had been stabbed, on my block, right in front of the community center, and the perpetrator walked right on out of the neighborhood. No one stopped him or let one of the many officers know that—hey, that’s him. Everyone, including the police, just stood around and watched.

Damned cages. They’re everywhere.

It’s overwhelming, but let’s enjoy a moment together. It’s late tomorrow night, maybe even early Tuesday morning, and President Barack Obama nips down to the kitchen for a healthy snack (of course)—and you just have to imagine old Hercules, smiling, and dishing up a big piece of Martha Washington’s own Great Cake.

For a long moment, imagine you’ve knocked one of those cages down and bent back all of the bars—what would the moment look like, and who would be smiling?