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?

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?

My father taught me to drive. Now, he wasn’t a patient man, and I had dreaded the lessons. It turned out it was the one thing he taught me where he didn’t lose his patience—neither when I was fifteen and had my learner’s permit nor a few years later when he taught me to drive a stick.

Dad was born in 1914, and the first car he ever saw had a crank. As a young man, he and his fellow police academy students made a rapid exit from Poland at the outset of World War II. He wound up in Falkirk, Scotland, a Sergeant Major in the Allied Forces whose main task was to teach British soldiers to drive.

So, as nervous as I was—he’d seen it all before. Even today, while I’m driving, I remember his tips—how you line up the groove on the driver’s side of the hood with the yellow line to find the sweet spot in your lane, and how driving too slow in traffic is as dangerous as driving too fast.

Yes, other folks have GPS units that talk to them. I hear the echo of Dad’s Polish accent saying “Let him pass, let him pass.”

I’m a good driver, but I can’t say that I enjoy driving. There are times I enjoy it, on long drives when there’s no traffic—then I can get some serious thinking done. But add in other drivers, and my stress level rises as their numbers increase. Driving at night? Forget it. My hands literally cramp up because I am clutching the steering wheel so tightly.

It’s something I need to work on.

It’s just that I feel vulnerable behind the wheel.

When you’re driving, not only are you dependent on what you do—but you’re also completely dependent on other people doing the right thing. Personal driving styles vary based on expectations of other drivers.

Okay. There are some people who don’t seem to even notice that there are other drivers on the road—they are travelling their own personal Autobahn. Let them pass.

Everyone else seems to be somewhere on the road from believing every other driver is going to do the right thing to assuming everyone is, well, out to get me.

I’ve been the passenger, when as we’re getting cut off, the driver refuses to take evasive action because “the other driver just can’t do that.” Then there’s me. I know how distracted I can get, so I just assume that “the other guy” isn’t paying attention—and now that cars have become mobile offices, I’m drinking a lot of Tension Tamer tea.

How like life?  

If you go through life confident that everyone else is going to treat you and yours right, there’s a good chance you’re going to get hurt. Assume that everyone is going to do you wrong, and you won’t be disappointed.

Just like when driving, the only person whose actions and reactions you can control is you.

Personally I’m looking forward to automated travel. They are developing cars that will link together, like a train, that know where you’re going—and get you there. No thinking necessary. Then we’ll be able to text to our hearts’ content.

You can subscribe to philosophies and dogma that do approximately the same thing—you can check your brain and free will at the door. Sounds safe, but it all depends on whose conducting the train—you could wind up in a Jonestown.

As Unitarian Universalists we’ve decided to stay in control, but how to stay on the right road? There are driving tips—the seven principles.

We covenant to affirm and promote:

• The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

But it’s going to happen. You’re going to get cut off, rear ended, sideswiped, and yes, there’ll be some head-on collisions.

You’ll have to choose: road rage, or just let them pass.

This is the time of year when we’re all doing a lot of looking in our rearview mirrors, and it can be overwhelming. 

“In the rear-view mirror suddenly

I saw the bulk of the Beauvais Cathedral;

great things dwell in small ones

for a moment.” [by Adam Zagajewski]

It’s tempting to just step on the gas and drive on.

Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? I don’t know about you, but I’ve tried. After the end of the most devastating relationship of my life, I spent about twenty years trying to believe it never happened. But as Ovid writes: “Suppressed grief suffocates, it rages within the breast, and is forced to multiply its strength.”

I kept getting lost on the same road. I needed to go back, to remember, to learn the lessons—difficult as they were—otherwise there was no way to move forward. It’s something I still need to work on.

And then sometimes I held onto the past so tightly that I couldn’t find my way out of the parking lot.

So as we climb into our 2013 driver’s seats, we need to take a long look in the rearview mirror—it may need some adjusting. And check out those side mirrors as well. Then, with those seven driving tips echoing—drive on.

“We’ll take a cup of kindness yet.”

It’s true we all have blind spots—that’s where love will guide us. [Follow with “Love Will Guide Us by Sally Rogers.]

Justice, Equity and Compassion—A Story

Once there were three sisters named Justice, Equity and Compassion.  Aside from the difficulties they had growing up with the names—Justice, Equity and Compassion—their parents, well, let’s just say they were never nominated for any parent of the year awards. They played favorites, then treated everyone equally; they lost their tempers, then showered the girls with love; they could be very cruel and tremendously kind.

 Each girl grew into the embodiment of her name. Justice closed her eyes and let the scale judge. Equity kept her eyes open and tried to balance the scale. Compassion’s eyes filled with tears, and she swept the scale away. They were at odds a lot.

When they were already young women, their parents had another child, and they had to learn to deal with a little brother—who their parents treated best of all.

One day, when they were walking, he threw rocks at them—wounding each. An Elder asked the girls what should be done.

 Justice puffed herself up and said, “Give us some rocks and we’ll show him what it feels like.”

 Equity sighed and said, “Each of us was only hit once—hitting him with three rocks wouldn’t be fair. Compassion took it the hardest. She should throw one rock.”

 Compassion’s eyes filled with tears when she saw her brother frightened and cringing. Still, she picked up a rock and took aim. She tossed it, but it fell far short.

 Still, the boy never again threw rocks at anyone—and the Elder took notice.

 When Justice, Equity, and Compassion grew to be Elders themselves, they were chosen to be the judges whenever someone transgressed. The sisters lived together, but they worked alone.

 A robber brought before Justice, landed in jail. Brought before Equity, worked to make restitution. Brought before Compassion, danced the happy dance.

 The other Elders were not pleased, and went to see the brother.

 He invited each sister to their parents’ home. The parents were quite old and far from well. Justice, Equity and Compassion were surprised to find themselves together, and demanded to know the reason.

 “It’s like this,” said the brother. “They are about to lose their house. As their family, it’s been left to us to decide what to do.”

 “That’s an easy one,” huffed Justice. “They treated you better than me, were always shouting, and terribly cruel. Some things can’t be forgiven. They’re on their own.”

 Equity sighed, “Sometimes they treated you the best, sometimes they were very loving, and sometimes they were kind. It will be a long time before I can forgive. But couldn’t we all just pitch in and help pay the bills? Compassion suffered the most, let her decide.”

 Compassion looked at her sisters and at her parents, and her eyes filled with tears. To Justice she said, “I understand our side, but I can’t just walk away.” To Equity she said, “I suppose that’s fair, but look at them, they need more than money, they need care.” “For myself,” I’d say, “I forgive you. Come and live with us.” Then she looked at her brother, whose name was Love, and asked “What do you think?”

 Love smiled, “There are no easy answers, but I think it’s time we all worked together.”

————

 To affirm and promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations—another principle that rolls off the tongue. But not only can each of these concepts seem separate from one another, they mean different things to different people at different times and in different situations.

 There are no easy answers. We live our lives and our principles on a day by day, case by case basis. In some situations, turning the other cheek is the right thing to do. Sometimes you need to walk away. And yes, there are times when one needs to stand and fight.

 Then ten years later you can look back and think—Geez, I can’t believe I did that.

 Each of us, and everyone else, is a work in progress. And it’s the work we do that’s important, whether it is working to embody the Golden Rule or to live by our principles, the key is to work through events and relationships with love as the guide.