“Ironic Points of Light: Peace and Justice”
Sunday,
October 17, 2004
Rev.
Gretchen Woods
CHALICE LIGHTING
We light this chalice,
holder of the flame of our faith.
May it show us the way to peace
through justice.
May it light our way in a darkened
world.
Blessed Be!
OPENING WORDS
This Great Lesson” by Olympia Brown, who wrote of peace in
the 19th century, and may truly speak to us now.
We can never make the world safe
by fighting.
Every nation must learn that the
people of all nations are children of God, and must share the wealth of the
world.
You may say this is
impracticable, far away, can never be accomplished, but it is the work we are
appointed to do.
Sometime,
somehow, somewhere, we must ever teach this great lesson.
READING
from
W. H. Auden
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
SERMON
“Ironic
Points of Light: Peace and Justice”
Shortly after I arrived here, while I was learning the
history of this congregation and its tender points, several people (who shall
remain nameless for this sermon) approached me with concerns that the distress
here during the Vietnam War had made us unlikely to honor our veterans of any
war. This response seemed to me a bit of injustice.
I was also made aware that one veteran (who shall remain
nameless for this sermon) was quietly coming to the Fellowship at 11AM on
November 11 each year, to light a candle and provide silent vigil for those who
lost their lives fighting in our armed services. Over the years, others had
come quietly to join him and appropriately pay their respects. That is a
powerful tribute to the affect the actions of one person may have in a
religious community. Consciousness was being raised; justice served.
But I waded into the fray with my usual, if less than
conscious, enthusiasm, eager to undo injustice. Over the next few years, I
mentioned this situation in several sermons: two on or about Veteran’s Day, two
on or about Memorial Day, and randomly throughout those two years. I also took
to attending the vigil on November 11 at 11AM. It grew, and some of our vets
began speaking at the vigil, mentioning names of those they remembered. Last
year I think there were more than 20 people here for the vigil. Its founder
stayed away. It had gotten too big. I was saddened by that, but felt good that
people’s awareness was changing.
Then, after several years of this effort, I started getting
comments from those who felt I was not giving enough attention to those who had
worked hard for peace. That, too, is injustice. Thus is it ever: none of us can
give enough attention to every human need, BUT, we do need to listen to each
other and become more aware of the places and times in which we are ignoring
injustice, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us. Through this, we begin to
co-create true peace in our midst.
Several great speakers of our times, among them Martin
Luther King, Jr., asserted, “There can be no peace without justice.” Peace and
justice are inextricably linked. Our second Unitarian Universalist Source
states that we are moved by “Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which
challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice,
compassion, and the transforming power of love.” All well and good, but how,
effectively, can we truly do this without alienating one or another of us. Let
us consider the thought of M. Scott Peck, Jay Rothman, and our own UU values to
see if they can inform us, not only about the “what,” but about the “how.”
In his book, A Different Drum: Community Making and Peace,
M. Scott Peck observes that true community can only be effected when we move
beyond the stage of “pseudocommunity” where every one is “nicey, nicey” because
no one will hear or acknowledge real differences within and among the group. In
systems parlance, communities love homeostasis and don’t want change, so they
keep things as surface as possible to avoid any real contact that would cause
us to face that we don’t all think alike or believe the same things about
almost anything. That’s pseudo-peace.
Sooner or later, someone feels strong enough to name
something upon which the group does not really agree. Someone surfaces the
issue that is rubbing some folks, however many or few, the wrong way. Starhawk
calls these folks “snakes,” and this is not a pejorative term. We need our
snakes in healthy community. These are the folks who have the courage to lift
up to the group an issue that needs attention for both community making and
peace. These are the folks who hear and bring up the issues that must be raised
for the health of the community, even though there are clear differences about
the issue.
Peck calls what ensues “chaos,” and notes that healthy
community only comes through
chaos. Now, in chaos, a lot of us get scared that all will go to pieces, and we
will lose everything, because tempers flare. We are conflict averse. But
conflict is a natural part of healthy community. We find out what we, as
individuals, really care about.
We have several options at this point. We can slink back to
pretenses of peaceful community, which really is pseudo-community. We can feed
off the energy of conflict and keep it going, perhaps as infinitum.
(Some of us really like that energy. It makes us feel alive. And some systems
make it their mythos.) Or we can, as Peck suggests, “Listen each other
into silence.” This is not as easy as it seems, but it is essential to moving
into true healthy and peaceful community. In this stage, we each speak our
passionate truth, AND we also each listen to the truths of those who disagree.
Peck asserts, if we truly listen as well as speak, we shall usually find that
our hurts and hopes are not so far apart, and that we can find common ground to
go forward as a group, even if we realize we shall never totally agree. As the
great Unitarian Historian Conrad Wright reminds us, “We do not need to think
alike to walk together.” We will certainly know one another better and have
greater respect for the hurts and hopes that move us through the world. We will
know true community, in all its messy diversity.
Jay Rothman adds to this understanding the realization that
the deepest hurts and hopes usually rise around issues of personal identity. We
can see this in the Middle East, in Rwanda, in the Sudan, in India and
Pakistan, and here in Oregon. And, all too often, human beings lose track of
what unites us, in the recognition that some things divide us.
Rothman asks human beings to really bring out the
differences, rather than pretending they don’t exist, to honor who we are and
how that hurts. Then he asks the groups involved, whether it be teachers and
administrators or Arabs and Jews, to seek their common goals, the things upon
which they can agree, like quality of classroom environment or justice in
distribution of resources. Then they seek ways to move toward the common goals,
making those goals more important than the differences. I don’t think this is
much different from Peck’s approach. In the end, the groups who identify as
different find ways in which they can agree, despite their greater knowledge of
the differences.
Each one of our Unitarian Universalist values: “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; and respect for the interdependent web of all existence
of which we are a part;” each one of these values points the way toward greater
peace and justice in our world. They inform how we respond to each other in
conflict. We are not asked to give away our most dearly held values to
co-create peace. We Are asked to listen to one another, to find common
ground, and to move forward as a religious community, knowing that sometimes
one aspect of our life will hold center stage for a while, but no aspect has
the power to overwhelm all the other real and varied issues that confront us as
human beings. We are asked to co-create those “ironic points of light,” those
moments when justice is served and the possibility of true peace rises.
Sometimes we shall deal with universal health care.
Sometimes we shall deal with hunger through our efforts for the Tunison Food
Bank. Sometimes we shall raise funds for We Care. Always, we need to listen to
one another to hear our truths and to move with them.
In conclusion, I invite each one of us to choose one
issue that is really important to us. Then find your allies within and outside
of this congregation and work for that issue. This certainly worked well when
Louise Ferrell found the Adopt-a-Minefield project and energized the whole town
to raise over $28,000 to clear a minefield in Afghanistan.
I also think each of us needs to find a spiritual practice,
whether it is running, or quilting, or meditating, or Yoga, or reading, or
praying, or journaling, or – well, you get the message. We need to find ways to
fill our spiritual tanks, so we don’t become empty, cranky folks who always
seem to be fighting some demon without ever having any fun. If it isn’t fun, it
probably isn’t worth doing, no matter how important the issue. That’s the
relish piece of the equation.
Finding ways to work for peace and justice lies at the heart
of our spiritual process as a religious community. As Mark Morrison-Reed
reminds us:
The
central task of the religious community is to unveil the bonds that bind each
to all. There is a connectedness, a relationship discovered amid the
particulars of our own lives and the lives of others. Once felt, it inspires us
to act for justice.
It is the church that assures us that we are not struggling
for justice on our own, but as members of a larger community. The religious
community is essential, for alone our vision is too narrow to see all that must
be seen, and our strength too limited to do all that must be done. Together,
our vision widens and our strength is renewed.
Each of us has potential to be an “ironic point of light”
who stands against darkness in our world and brings together the lights of
others to do so as well, with respect, responsibility, and relish for the
process.
So Be It! Blessed Be!