January 2000 Sermons

• 1/2 Sermon -- Eternity: A Mighty Long Time
• 1/9 Sermon -- Silence and Stillness: Quieting the Noise of Life
• 1/16 Sermon -- Guest Sermon
• 1/23 Sermon -- Lay Service
• 1/30 Sermon -- Martin Luther King, Jr: Will the 2000’s Bring the Dream

January 2, 2000 Sermon

(Auction Sermon bought last January by Brian Hanson)

[The readings are not included.]

[Brian - Introduce the idea of the Auction Sermon]

[Brian, pp 1-2]

Matthew Arnold, the British philosopher and poet, wrote about the history of humanity as moving uphill and down, in a wave-like pattern, between peak "golden ages," and low valleys or "troughs." During the lows, little happens of any kind of intellectual or technical merit. One such trough would be the Dark Ages. From the Dark Ages, a roughly five-hundred year period between 500-1000, a slow upward progression began toward the period now called the Enlightenment of the mid-Eighteenth Century. It is this period of the Enlightenment that represents the most recent Golden Age, one we probably are still in, but some might see that we are on the downward slope, if indeed we peoples of the earth will continue this pattern. There is always the possibility that we may not go through the more dramatic hills and valleys that Arnold, among others, have noted. Or, it may be that the peaks and valleys level out a good bit so that we see neither great highs or lows.

What is significant for religion is that the upward move toward the Enlightenment was pressed along in 1450, by Guttenberg’s invention of movable type, thereby permitting literature, particularly the Bible, to be more accessible to a larger number of people. Then, about fifty years later, came the priest Martin Luther and his nailing on the door of the church in Wittenberg his ninety-five theses against errors of the Church, which triggered what we call now the Reformation. The Reformation is the true beginning of our Unitarian half of our UU faith, for as various scholars studied the Bible and wrote books based on their ideas, we see many differing opinions emerged and become available for others to read. The Church had for most of the previous 1500 years successfully squashed ideas that diverged from church teaching, and are still often called heresy.

In the Reformation, people like Luther and John Calvin along with many others began to teach differing theological positions. One such scholar was Michael Servetus, who wrote a declaration against the notion of the Trinity as unbiblical, and essentially promoting a variety of polytheism. In fact, there is no such mention in any of the New Testament books of the Trinity (the theological premise of the Trinity was define by the Council of Nicea in the 4th Century), but rather Servetus found in the texts a clear set of statements that plainly subordinates Jesus to God, made by Jesus. For his efforts, Servetus was burned at the stake.

But Pandora’s box had been opened. Ideas, commerce, governments were all in such a flux, and commerce particularly favored this trend, such that by Shakespeare’s time in the late 16th to the early 17th century, literature, arts in general are clearly noting the changes. Travel, too, is easier as ships become more reliable, faster, and exploration is happening at a fast and ready pace. All this heading toward the Enlightenment, which is the period that gave us pilgrims to the New World, education for many, a growing middle-class with its corresponding commerce, and new ideas blossoming like flowers on the desert after the spring rains.

This is what the last Millennium brought us: the move upward, out of the Dark Ages to the Industrial Age and now to our present Communication Age, with an unprecedented freedom of movement and thought. We can only hope that the years numbered in 2000s will continue that progressive movement, or at least give us a long lasting plateau.

It was James Relly in England, during the 18th Century who organized a "non-conforming" church, as all churches who were not Church of England were called, that denied the theological premise of Hell, and promoted the idea that God would save all people in the course of eternity. There were others, like the Unitarians, who also were thinking about the theological problem of a God who would create a world with evil, and a place like hell in which to punish them. The term for this is "theodicy." How could an all-powerful, all-knowing God allow such sadness and pain to happen? For a growing number of people, this was becoming a more and more unacceptable idea.

Added to the growth of scientific discoveries, no longer thwarted by the church as had happened during Copernicus’ and Galilleo’s time, invention and discovery only challenged further the old ideas about God, faith, and religious institutions. Added to all this is the spreading of knowledge and wider travel. When Joseph Priestly, the scientist who is most famous for have discovered oxygen and carbon dioxide, and a Unitarian minister, was burned out of England, he headed for the greater freedom of the North American colonies.

John Murray, too, about the same time, set sail for the more tolerant new world, bringing his Universalism. He landed at Barnegat Bay on the New Jersey shore, in 1770. We have a UU retreat center there now on the Potter farm where he came ashore, called appropriately Murray Grove.

[Brian, pp10-11]

Murray, while fervent and hard-working, would not be the best nor chief emissary of the Universalist message. He is most famous for his statement of faithful ministry, "give them hope not hell."

Until the great flowering of the Enlightenment, Calvinism had been the main path of the reformed Christianity, and later in England, the other nonconforming churches. The principal doctrine John Calvin taught was predestination based on a preordained election which says that God has from the beginning laid out the path and that God already knows who will be saved, the elect. All others would/will perish in the flames of an eternal hell.

Murray was essentially a Calvinist who rejected hell, but liked the rule-oriented, still negative and fear-based approach to salvation.

Hosea Ballou, who becomes the next shining light of Universalism, unlike Murray, rejected Calvinism. Ballou, who though he had no higher education, had a much better intellect, and therefore greater power of reason that did Murray, so that when the results of his reasoning led him to what might have been uncomfortable places, he was not afraid to follow through with the logical thought process.

[Brian, pp. 18-19]

This period is particularly intense for never before in the western world had there been such freedom to question, ponder, and excoriate. Debate about everything was rife in the land. It was only to be expected that if this independent young country that could defy the divine right of earthly kings, then there soon would be a questioning of other long held beliefs. Traditional Christian theology taught that the way to know God was through divine revelation. The Catholic church had that path directed through the Pope to the priesthood to the people. The main issue of the Reformation did not challenge the divine revelation aspect of theology, the challenge was about the necessity for the priestly intervention. The corruption of the priesthood that Martin Luther had laid bare in his ninety-five theses, led to the Protestants (meaning literally "to protest") major claim which was that direct knowledge of God was possible for anyone. No intermediary priesthood was necessary.

The Protestant churches that grew out of the Reformation became, instead, defined by various doctrines, such as Calvinism and later Methodism, among many others. So it was doctrine that became equally open to question, and was the main venue of questioning for our Unitarian and Universalist forebears.

The Deists, to which many of our Revolutionary forebears had turned, denied the authority of both the papacy and doctrine, stressing instead, what we still uphold in our UU circles today, which is that there is no barrier between us and God or "ultimate reality" as Paul Tillich called it. Indeed there can be no doctrinal barrier between the source of life, we may call by many names or no name at all.

The natural progression of these ideas led to an even further movement from the Unitarian side of our New England churches, which was called Transcendentalism. Encouraged by Emerson, and supported by many of the New England literati such as the Alcott family of Concord, these19th century version of our 1960s hippies, believed all we need to know about God could be found in Nature. This trend was happening in many other denominations as well, with utopian communities cropping up all over the eastern seaboard from the Shakers, Quakers, Unitarians and Universalists. Emerson was the chief light of the trend toward "transcending" the still highly institutional religions of the time. Emerson believed we needed nothing but the religion of Nature (with a capital N), for it was in Nature that we would find God’s greatest and most potent revelation. Even today, Emersonian ideas are still strong with many UUs.

Which brings me back to the Ballou family, who did the most for the early Universalist movement. Besides the theologian Hosea Ballou, was a relative, Adin Ballou who founded the Hopedale utopian community in Massachusetts. These were not cohesive movements, but various capillaries of the general movement toward a more human-centered way of living in the world.

[Brian pp 20-21]

Hosea Ballou spent ten years from1795 to 1805 working on his, Treatise on Atonement, it was the most important early work of Universalist theology. Ballou believed that God was the author of sin, but only so as to teach humanity love. His favorite Bible story was that of Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, but who eventually rose to power and provided an earthly salvation for his family; so good came of that early sin. God was in complete control, according to Ballou, and would eventually bring all of creation back to Him. Universal salvation for Ballou in his "happy determinism" had a "benevolent God in complete control" and therefore humankind "need not fear, but rather should glory in His love."

Ballou also started the weekly Universalist Magazine in 1819, which remains in publication today as the oldest, continuously running religious magazine in the country. The first general convention of Universalist took place in 1794, and continues meeting every October.

Universalism did not experience the deeper schisms that other congregational religions were experiencing during the period that led to the Great Awakenings, yet it was not a completely united group either. One of the aspects of our congregational polity is that we will in our various, independent congregations experience this very normal aspect of difference that will arise is all groups.

[Brian 32-4]

Today we most remember Universalists for their determination and heart-felt belief that faith and good works go hand-in-hand. Much of the social reform in the 19th century was led by Universalists. Further, Universalists along with Unitarians embraced Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, which encouraged them further to believe we were on a progressive course toward ultimate salvation. God was using evolution to put his plan in place that human’s acting with free will could demonstrate their love of God and one another through their actions.

Eternity is a mighty long time. In fact, time has nothing really to do with eternity, or eternal things; for time is a human construction, gleaned it is true from the motion of heavenly bodies, but still a human created device to measure our lives. Eternity is beyond, outside the scope of time. If we believe that God is eternal, then it is only logical to accept that God is not concerned with our notions of BC, AD, C.E., or millenniums that reflect less than a blink in eternity. The Universalists believed, and I believe also, that love is the most perfect, wonderful force in human existence. Love in all its many forms: kindness, consideration, caring, as well as the more passionate forms we have for our children and partners. If God is omnipotent, indeed if God is anything that remotely exercises in human existence, then God is love. This is the only version that makes any sense according the Universalists. And many UUs continue to believe in this larger God of love. Further, this is no barrier to those men and women of goodwill who began to exercise their beliefs in the 1930’s, stimulated no doubt by the Depression, that there is no God outside exercising arbitrarily in human existence.

What remains for me the most beautiful thing about our Unitarian Universalist faith is that we have the courage and the faith to believe that we should be open to the many ways people have come to understand their spiritual lives. Good people do not all believe the same way, nor do people who do profess the same beliefs all behave in good ways.

Because eternity is a mighty long time, it should give us the confidence to believe that whatever the nature of God, or creation, what remains consistent in human life is the need for love and compassion.

Thomas Starr King, the great UU scholar and theologian, who established the Starr King School of Theology at Berkeley, once quipped that the Universalists think God is too good to forever damn all humanity, and the Unitarians think they are too good to be forever damned. We have room for a lot of different ways to be spiritual, to be religious.

Ever since the First and Second Great Awakenings in this country, those evangelical movements to bring people back into the fold, first of Puritanism, second of the later strains of Calvinistic congregationalism, we have experienced a continued branching of the tree of Christianity as various sects developed to answer different claims of human spiritual questing. We can also see this process at work in the Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In a world with greater personal autonomy, this seems to be a very natural process to be expected.

While we hold to our basic UU Principles and Purposes, our churches, fellowships, and societies exhibit some difference of approach to existing as communities of faith. Some look very much like the older Protestant Christian churches, particularly in the northeast, Canada and England. Others look more like their hereditary Episcopal or Church of England congregations, such as Kings Chapel in Boston, many reflect the later more political, Humanist movement of the 1930’s when fellowships were established in great numbers and clergy dismissed altogether, but most look like our own Mill Creek congregation.

As much of the Universalist theology was to be incorporated by other religions over the last 100 years, and the Universalists began losing numbers, it was to be expected that having so much in common with the Unitarians they should agree to a merger that took place after about fifty years of discussion. In 1961, under the leadership of Dana McLean Greeley, then president of the American Unitarian Association, we officially became the Unitarian Universalist Association. All the independent groups that bear the names Unitarian or Universalist or both support the UUA in order that we might all function more effectively. The UUA does not dictate what the congregations will do, rather the congregations through delegates to the General Assembly held every June, vote on what we will do collectively. Which doesn’t mean everyone will. That is the virtue and the bane of congregational polity. On the whole, it works well.

Brian told me that he wanted to know how, on a personal level, that Universalism affected our larger movement, and what it means to us today. As we discussed this I think we both agreed that the primary message of Universalism is about the ultimate importance of love. That love is the aspect of God we see in the world. That the idea of universal salvation, God bringing all creation back to wholeness, continues to thrive in our membership.

My study of religion at the Divinity School at Harvard, and since, leads me to conclude that the ultimate message in the parallel paths of all religions leans toward either a theology of fear or a theology of love. Religions ultimately are directed toward teaching that stresses either fear or love. The religions of fear tend to define a narrow, absolute path to God and ultimate salvation. While the religions of love tend to leave open many possibilities for creation and God’s hand to act.

The difference is exemplified between the ideas of original sin, a condition from which we have to overcome with doctrine, versus sin as human acts of will which we can out of faith either chose or reject.

[Brian p.44]

Universalists, along with all religions, whether they intend to or not, move along in human time. The rallying from time-to-time of fundamentalist groups in all religions tends to be sparked by the inevitable trend of all things toward change. Fundamentalists want to avoid the changes. Universalists helped to move us, particularly in this country, toward a more compassionate and accepting view of humanity.

It is often said that in our UU faith, the Unitarians are the head and the Universalists the heart. Today, perhaps it can be better said that UUs have a faith rooted in head and heart.

We do not have to grasp all of eternity or even the confusions of the new millennium of the current era to believe that letting go of thinking dominated by egocentrism that so often results in evil, or at the very least cuts us off from the greatest experiences of life, brings us to higher ground. Universalism helps us to appreciate others and encourages us to live guided by love.

January 9, 2000 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

January 9, 2000 [Much of this sermon was extemporé]

Silence and Stillness: Quieting the Noise of Life

I want to repeat with you the exercise I gave to the children this morning. First, be noisy, be active: give a mighty shout, shake your arms, stamp your feet, and when I raise my hands, be completely still, completely quiet (for two or more minutes).

We are people who live too much in the middle, neither experiencing, ecstatically, the noise and physical expression of the body, nor the complete peace of stillness and silence. There are actually religions that are based on these states of being. The Shakers and Quakers, and many modern day Pentecostal and Holiness denominations use the physical excitement of movement to express the spiritual excitement of their faith. To the other side are those, usually Eastern, mostly Buddhist, traditions that emphasize meditation, particularly as experienced through silence and/or stillness.

Life is noisy. Life is active, dynamic. Makes sense if we consider that biologically our bodies are filled with movement--hearts beat until the day we die, coursing the blood rapidly through our veins. Certainly, the earth, the moon, the stars all are in constant motion. We are in many ways are probably driven to movement, to busy-ness. To filling all our waking hours with activity. Children, and most adults, experience few purposely still or quiet hours; save those spent in front of the television, but that stillness does not provide quiet, though I suspect part of what encourages so much of the "couch potato" syndrome has to do with an inner need for stillness and quiet that is unfortunately, only partially resolved, and not purposeful to the extent that we can glean much from it for the soul.

I’ve always needed a lot of what I called "private" time. I used to think that meant alone time, but I know now that I can have that same sense of being even with a group, and what I am really craving is quiet. I have gone several times to the Kripalu Institute in Lennox, MA, a yoga-meditation center. There you can have meals in silence, do silent meditation in groups, or silent and solitary walking meditation, etc.

I used to pooh-pooh the value of meditation, especially in my 20s and 30s. I have always been a high-energy person, on the go. Liked the busy-ness of life. But that stealthy dissatisfaction of the middle years began to weigh upon me; perhaps was part of the reason I changed course to study religion. But a sense that I was not in touch with something vital within myself began to pervade my well-being. I discussed this with my husband one day recently, and he put it rather well: "You had spent years putting stuff in, then you wanted a way to get it out."

Accessing the core wisdom we have been storing up is at root of the need for stillness and quiet.

We are often, though, so uncomfortable in the quiet. This is mostly a cultural phenomenon. Native American culture, for example, is much more comfortable with being together in silence.

For Westerners, prayer has been the primary vehicle for stillness and quiet. Prayer as a regular ritual of worship services; going to retreat centers, and in the last quarter of this century meditation and more focus on self-awareness. Prayer in Judeo-Christian traditions has most often been focused on petition and getting in touch with God, and much more recently has begun to lean toward a self-awareness approach.

In the vein of Socrates, to "know thyself", is a major focus of our Unitarian Universalist spirituality, but this can only happen effectively in quietness and stillness.

Elizabeth Lesser, in her book, The New American Spirituality, lists among one of her "Toolbox" exercises, silence as an essential ingredient for abundant living. "Don’t speak for a whole day. Silence is a friend of the soul."

Have you ever not spoken for a whole day? It can be a very powerful experience.

How do you feel in the silences of ordinary conversation? Notice how we often get busy, chatter about anything to fill the void. Most of us do not like such silence. It seems to imply inadequacy or failure in our culture.

Silence is a friend of the soul as Lesser writes precisely because it is only when we quiet the active, calculating, observing of the thinking mind, meaning the brain processes necessary to our daily functioning; only when we quiet that part of the brain, do we give the other parts of the brain a chance to release, let go of some of that "stuff" we have been putting away all our lives.

Silence is generally necessary for learning. Paradoxically, many people, often teens, will create white noise in order to study. Is that because they have never learned to be at peace or comfortable in silence? Often, I suspect, it is to mask the other noises around them.

Stillness, too, is necessary for growing, both mentally/spiritually, and even physically.

I read a couple years ago that most of the body’s growth takes place in the hours of sleep. You can actually measure the growth of a baby from bedtime at night to morning. Only one of the reasons children need plenty of sleep. The average teen male needs about 10-13 hours of sleep, which considering that they often grow a foot or more in the teens is hardly surprising.

Lesser also writes: "To pray is to be "a wide open eye in the dark." When we are in a state of prayfulness we create an atmosphere of openness and wonder. In this way, prayer is the creation of sacred space. Sacred space is not only found in a chapel. It is not only created by high ritual. A scared space can be as ordinary as a living room; it can be created by the simple act of one person sitting quietly on a park bench as the sun sets. Prayer can be experienced in silence with out any words spoken. In fact, silence is a mighty kind of prayer in itself; silence is sacred space."

Nature is far from completely silent, yet compared to most of our lives is amazingly quiet.

From the Japanese poet, Basho: Such stillness--/The cries of the cicadas / Sink into the rocks.

Nature, if not completely silent is at least free from ceaseless chatter of voices either from people around us, or on the radio, or TV, and even the computer nowadays. Which is why so many of us long for the long hikes on mountain trails, or beside the sea. Quiet that while not quiet is not the noise of daily life.

Paul Davies the Australia physicist and philosopher, who writes about science and spiritual concepts, in his book The Mind of God, says about the field of logic and reasoning within quantum physics: "In so-called quantum logic, the rule that something cannot both be and not be such-and-such is dropped. The motivation for this is that in quantum physics the notion "to be" is more subtle than in everyday experience; physical systems can exist in superpositions of alternative states."

To be in the sounds of nature can be the silence we seek. And this varies for us. I do not like to sleep right at the seashore nor by a rushing river. The tide is sometimes, especially on Maine’s rock coast, too much for me. I prefer the gently ripple of a mountain stream.

I have always lived in fairly quiet places. The first time I spent several nights in NYC, I barely slept for all the night noise. And I am currently in a stand-off with Home Waste garbage company that picks up in my cul-de-sac, for they violate the law regularly by beginning before 6:00am. As early as 5:00am. The noise of a truck, especially a large diesel truck backing up with that loud warning beep is not a sound I can bear at 5:00am.

Goethe wrote: "A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world’s torrent." Rather than rush out and throw eggs at the garbage truck which was one early morning thought, I remember we have a legal system, my character is exercised.

Talent can be exercised in the noise and busyness of life, but without the quiet, reflective moments is usually does not come to the greatest fruition.

In the 1700s, when the good folk of Franklin, MA, decided to name their town after, Benjamin Franklin, the leaders sent to the wise old man in Philadelphia, a rather forward letter asking outright for money with which to put a bell in the town hall steeple. Franklin, true to his wise nature responded: " I am very much honored, very glad indeed to send you a sum of money, only don’t buy a bell with it. Buy a public library (a very new concept at the time) because I have always preferred sense to sound."

The word "prayer" can always be read as stillness and silence, a time for creation, a time for re-creation.

Again, from Elizabeth Lesser: "Sacred space [silence, stillness] isn’t always pretty or happy. Sometimes we pray because we are angry and hurt. The sacred space we create feels like the last resort, an act of throwing up our hands and saying, " You take over now, please." Sometimes it feels like a cry of hunger. Rumi says, "Don’t look for water, be thirsty." Prayer is an expression of our thirst for connection, for peace, for compassion. It is our longing for God [for wholeness, for understanding, for the answer to What does this all mean?]

Edmund Sears, that Unitarian minister who wrote "It came upon a Midnight Clear", "The world in solemn stillness lay/ to hear the angels sing. The wisdom of your soul, the angels that would speak to you, come in the stillness, they whisper to you in the quiet. The "still, small voice within" as John Wesley put it.

Stephen Levine wrote, as your heard in this morning’s reading, that quiet can be seductive, we have been warned against the dangers of stillness and quiet in the forms of the Seven Deadly Sins, remember "sloth." American is the land of productivity. We work more than any country in the world. We get less vacation time. We put our children into more activities. We feel that we have to have "made it" by the time we are fifty or we have been lazy and unproductive.

What the stillness and silence will teach is often contrary to that "production" message. We might learn in the silence that we do not really want all the things, or need all the kudos and honors, or really wish for the lifestyle to which we think the powerful have become accustomed.

Further, we may in the silence of the soul begin to question all that we have been taught by our religion, by our families, by our parents. We may also begin to look at ourselves with greater honesty, more clarity. All this can be frightening, disturbing.

We may want different things. We may not, but unless we give ourselves a chance the hear the inner voice of the spirit/soul, we will never know for sure. Unless we allow the spirit the quiet and serenity of stillness, we will never know peace.

January 30, 2000 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

January 30, 2000 SOUPer Bowl Sunday

Martin Luther King, Jr: Will the 2000’s Bring the Dream

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Even if you did not know that my sermon today is about the great leader for social justice, Martin Luther King, Jr., I am certain that everyone would know who spoke those words from his famous Washington, D.C., "I Have a Dream," speech given from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. They are indelible in the heart and soul of anyone with a heart who has heard them.

As we turned the calendar forward to 2000, and in this first month also celebrated the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., I wondered that among all the hopes and wishes forecast for the next century and the next millennium, what might be the future of Martin Luther King’s dream. We have a meager history of a bit over thirty years since he spoke those powerful words, but we have a lot of future ahead in which to consider, even dream, about the conditions of race in the USA.

Every now and then someone will corner me and say something to the effect, "Unitarians don’t have all ideas or answers . . . . " to this, that or the other, about some topic; and, I say to them, "You are absolutely right. We don’t. All we have is the ability to present our various points of view." What we do is to consider the situations and the possibilities, and most importantly try to be open and tolerant, even accepting, of the different points of view that we hear. Yet, often hardest thing in the world is to be first open, then tolerant, and finally accepting.

When in the mid-1960s Martin Luther King, Jr., uttered those now famous words, imagining such a dream was almost impossible for many people of all races in this country. It is a lot to ask, might have been one reaction.

One response I have is to wonder how many people are judged first by the content of their character--of any race or color. How do we here in this room, you and I, judge people? Does color ever come in to our initial reaction? And the answer is far more often than not a resounding "Yes". But does color continue to be a factor after we get to know a person? That is perhaps the more significant point.

From a purely legal standpoint we have moved a long way in making the dream possible. Jim Crow laws, forced segregation, all these things are illegal, yet there remains plenty of what is generally known as "institutional" racism, and what I call "attitudinal" racism. You know that it is much harder for a young black man to get a job than his counterpart of any other race. There is good evidence to support that this is true. Or that a business or company will hire one or two black people, then no more, which is where we get the term "tokenism." It is harder to be black than any other race in this country. And if you don’t think that is true, I challenge you to consider which race you would chose to be other than the one you are. Further, I have African-American colleagues in the UU ministry who continue to be asked questions of their congregations that demonstrate that even we UUs have a long way to go when it comes to judging content over appearance.

We also know about "white flight," as white people leave areas where blacks chose to live in any numbers. There was a program on, I believe, The Learning Channel, two or three or more years back, that looked at a suburban community south of Chicago. An upper range of middle-class white people lived there and mostly commuted into the city to work. This development, a largish one, had been started in the late 1970s, so it was a newer community, with a local elementary and high school that reflected the growth in the town by this particular development. With the upward mobility of the black community in Chicago, many of these professional women and men wanted the quiet and safety of the suburbs for their families, same as the white families, so they began to buy into the development in question. At first there was no discernible concern in the still vastly white development--then things began to change. More and more successful black families followed the lead of their friends and the people in this development began to notice the change. Then the white families began to move out in great numbers, until, by the time of this documentary, only a handful of white families remained. The reporter interviewed many of the families who moved out, and most of them admitted openly that they worried about property values going down, and said the schools had begun to go downhill as well, and so on. A look into the five or ten year record of the property values and the school test records showed that both of these assumptions were false. These assumptions and actions reflect both institutional and attitudinal racism.

But we don’t have to talk just about black-white prejudice. I grew up in rural southwestern Idaho, an area at that time that had virtually no black people. Reputedly a sugar beet farmer in our area had a black wife, but I never saw her. The only time I saw African-American people was when we would make train trips to the south where my mother was from. In Idaho the most obvious form of racism was toward the Native American Indians. There are two very large reservations in northern Idaho, and I always knew that they were somehow considered less than whites, yet there was also a kind of admiration for Indians, so it was a mixed but nevertheless clear message about where whites fit with Native Americans Indians.

My husband grew up here in Delaware, but we both had the same experience about our family's reactions to peoples of color. We never were allowed to use derogatory terms about people of color, but at the same time, we learned in some very subtle ways that it was far better to be white--that race matters.

These are some of the things then that we must counteract if the 2000s are to bring anything that comes close to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of a country, a world, where people are judged by the content of their character and not just by the color of their skin. And I would add, by the religion that they practice, the clothes they wear, the money they make. The later usually works in reverse and we give people more credit for intelligence and caring than they might deserve because they have wealth. Just making millions of dollars does not mean a person knows more about how to handle the complex issues of state, or foreign affairs, or problems of the human condition. There will always be, I believe, some effort to divide the "haves" from the "have nots."

Robert G. Ingersoll wrote: "[People] are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart – the best brain." It will certainly take those with the best hearts and the best brains to help move our country towards a more just society. And that means all of us being open to considering the problems, especially those of race. We need not be reticent, nor can we be if we have any hopes for a better world. But not everyone does have such hope. I would remind us though, that there is a lot more hope now than in 1900. Change is possible, indeed, unstoppable. What the nature of that change will be has everything to do with the attitudes that you and I bring to bear on the all the problems of our land, and most assuredly around the issues of race.

Dick Gregory, a black comedian in his first incarnation, then an activist and diet guru, made a very brave statement about dealing with racial matters. He said: "Just being [Black] doesn’t qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine." The efforts we might hope to make toward a more racially just world take all our combined efforts, for the attitudes we have toward other people transcend any one race. Take away blacks and we will turn the same attitudes toward Hispanics or Asians. Take all other people of color out of the mix and we will turn the same attitudes toward our own race by pitting rich against poor, blue eyes against brown, etc. One of the real challenges of this coming century is that the Hispanics are soon expected to outnumber African-Americans as the largest minority group, and by the end of the century could outnumber whites. We are talking about a matter of the human soul, an urge for dominance we have to transcend.

But we must remember, as Mary Church Terrell said, "No race can speak for another or give utterance to its striving goal." We must first listen to the experience of our black, white, brown, red, and yellow brothers and sisters if we are to understand anything about what their lives are like." For the dream to be a reality we have to listen to all the different groups.

It takes a lot of dreaming to end racial injustice. It took a lot to bring about the 1965 Civil Rights Amendment. It also takes a lot of hope and a lot of commitment. There is an old saying: "Nothing kills hope faster than cynicism." Being open is about moving beyond cynicism. That is our religious goal as UUs. To recognize our cynicism about all kinds of things, and find ways to move beyond them. It is the only way anything gets done.

To keep us smiling, someone once quipped: "Hope is a wonderful thing – one little nibble keeps a man fishing all day."

As to commitment, as James Womack put it: "Commitment unlocks the doors of imagination, allows vision, and gives us the "right stuff" to turn our dreams into reality."

Sometimes we think we’re committed but we aren’t. Which reminds me of this story: The chicken and the pig were discussing the matter through the barnyard fence. The chicken said proudly, "I give eggs every single morning–I’m committed."

"Giving eggs isn’t commitment, it’s participation," countered the pig. "Giving ham is commitment!"

While we don’t have to go as far as the pig, we do have to be committed to trying to make the world a better, fairer place. Sometimes we fail, that is part of the learning process. Just because our earliest efforts did not always work, does not mean we give up, or use those early experiences to rationalize not making other efforts. Part of why those early efforts around racial issues did not succeed had to do with approaching black problems from a white perspective, white people telling black people how to do things, and not listening to the real needs of the black community. We have to work together.

Some of us in this congregation have been part of groups or study circles that include people of color, where we discuss the issues that we find most troubling. It is not an easy process. We can feel on the defensive, afraid, uncertain. Learning can have this affect on us. But the outcome is worth it. We can never be the same after such engagement. We are always going to be changed, and usually for the better.

I keep reminding myself, and I remind you, that we are as UUs a people whose religion is ethics based rather than doctrinally based. Our Principles guide us, and the First Principle says we promote and "honor the worth and dignity of every person." It does not say, we honor the worth and dignity of those we feel like it.

Bill Moyers, a great social commentator for our time said: "Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow. And politics is the bow of idealism." As we move into the primary season for the big election of 2000, I hope we can keep that in mind.

Will the 2000’s bring the dream? I don’t know, but I think it is possible for much of that dream to become reality. I close then with these words of that great leader--not a perfect man, but a great leader nonetheless--Martin Luther King, Jr.:

If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, "There lived a great people – a black people – who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.

My only addition is to say that we are talking not just about Christian love, but human love, for beneath the shallow layers of our skin, we are all just alike. Let us hope and even pray that such love will come to be the guiding force for all humankind.

Send mail to webmaster@uusmc.org with questions or comments about this web site.
Designed by Vega Computing Solutions.
Copyright © 1999-2008 Unitarian Universalist Society of Mill Creek.