WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?—I GIFTS FROM THE PAST A Sermon by Kenneth W. Phifer Delivered at the First UU Church of Ann Arbor, September 12, 2004 We are three years and one day past 9/11, a day of death, destruction, and disbelief. That day is forever etched in our memories. Each one of us knows exactly where we were and what we were doing on Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001. I was sitting in a staff meeting when Janet’s daughter, newly settled in New York City to begin college, called to tell us of the disaster unfolding a few blocks away from her. It was two days before the shock wore off and the significance of what had happened penetrated my mind and heart. You and I, all of us, are still thinking about that day and what it meant. That is one reason we remember and observe the anniversary of 9/11. This year I began my reflection by reading THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT. It is a horrifying description of a grim day, the prelude to it and the aftermath of it. It has much to teach us. One lesson of this REPORT is that we can have information without knowledge and knowledge without wisdom. We knew that al-Qaeda was planning destructive acts. We even knew the kinds of acts they were planning. But the information was scattered so that it was not understandable, not knowledge. The knowledge we did have was used badly because of politics, vanity, bureaucratic in fighting, laziness, and a lack of imaginative capacity. A second lesson is the remarkable goodness in people, shown through endless acts of kindness, heroism, and sacrifice on 9/11 and afterwards. There were the passengers on Flight 93, the clerks and the executives, the office workers and visitors at the World Trade Center, the soldiers and civilians at the Pentagon, the cops and fire fighters, the people who would not leave their disabled colleagues, the husbands and wives who called home to say “I love you”, and the people who survived and the relatives and friends of those who did not who started Peaceful Tomorrows because they wanted the killing to stop, not continue under the banner of revenge. Are there larger learnings to be gleaned from reflecting on the events surrounding 9/11? Yes, there are. My way of getting at some of these learnings is to do what preachers do, prepare and preach a sermon on them. I am choosing to do so in three parts on three successive weeks: on the past, on the present, and on the future. I begin with history knowing what little popularity it has. “To look back,” Kathleen Norris observes, “is to go against the grain.” It’s positively un- American! But even a passing acquaintance with this year’s presidential campaign should make clear how important history is. Vietnam and what each of the two primary candidates did during that war is front and center in their presentations and in the news. We may approach our past with reverence, like the Japanese Buddhists, or with irony, as modern skeptics do, but not to know and make some effort at understanding that past is dangerous. It prevents us from knowing who we are and how we got that way, what problems linger from the past, what possibilities have been opened up for us. To have a sense of the past is, as historian Herbert Muller taught us, to have “a sense of the basic community beneath all the relativities of culture, the basic continuity beneath all the mutabilities of history.” Post-9/11, we approach the past, or we ought to, with a measured degree of humility. Once upon a time we thought we had life under control. Then the 20th century happened. “Our twentieth century was going to improve on the others,” the poet writes. “It will never prove it now… Too many things have happened that weren’t supposed to happen, and what was supposed to come about has not. Happiness and spring, among other things, were supposed to be getting closer. Fear was expected to leave the mountains and the valleys. Truth was supposed to hit home before a lie. A couple of problems weren’t going To come up anymore: hunger, for example, and war, and so forth. There was going to be respect for helpless people’s helplessness, trust, that kind of stuff. Anyone who planned to enjoy the world is now faced with a hopeless task. Stupidity isn’t funny. Wisdom isn’t gay. Hope isn’t that young girl anymore, et cetera, alas. God was finally going to believe in a person both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different people. ‘How should we live!” someone asked me in a letter. I had meant to ask him the same question…” Wislawa Szymborska Before we imagine utopias of our own, we must remember how often such dreams have turned into nightmares, how often history has been a story of violence and hatred, of stupidity and venality, of destruction and disaster, of death and despair. Yet history records other truths about the human story as well, tales of kindness and joy and hope, in part because of what we have done to bring about these feelings. History is not unlike the achievement of Frank Loesser in his brilliant musical GUYS AND DOLLS. Robert Harris observes that Loesser showed how “the gritty world of Damon Runyon’s New York, a charming but scary place, could be transformed into a wonderful, tuneful, accessible playground, where the ultimate goal, for gamblers and religious alike…was the sanctity of marriage.” Our ancestors dating back hundreds of thousands, even millions of years have shown us how to transform this world into which we have been thrust from a strange and frightening place into a livable and sometimes happy place. They have shown us that the ultimate goal is sanctified relationships, of romance and families, of shared labor, of friendship, of respect and hospitality even for the alien in our land. We have learned to sing and dance to very tuneful and pleasant melodies about how good it is to be with one another here on this fascinating planet! To find these gifts from the past, let us look first at what nature and human history have given to us. There is the earth itself, with which we had nothing to do other than to wake up one day and realize that we are here. It is a planet set in a vast solar system, itself part of a huge galaxy, which in turn is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in a universe enormous beyond our capacity to take it in—and it may be getting larger! When I think of the earth and the universe of which it is a part, I think of power, beauty, and mystery. There is the power of the sun to warm our planet so that it is habitable. There is the power of wind and water that generates electricity. There is the power of human beings and animals and plants to reproduce themselves. The earth is a place of great power. There is great beauty as well. We are about to be swept up in the annual autumn strip-trees, when the leaves go crazy and die in a blaze of glory. Sunrise from the University of Michigan track is a daily wonder and never the same. The first snowfall, the early spring flowers, the lovely songs the birds sing to us, the “purple mountain majesty” at Pike’s Peak of which Katherine Lee Bates wrote, the prairie grass and wildflowers on our front corner all tell of nature’s loveliness. There is so much beauty everywhere on this earth. Mystery too abounds. Why are two people attracted to each other as lovers, as friends, as collaborators? What are the missing links in the evolutionary saga that is itself both grand myth and great puzzle? How did life begin and why? Do animals deserve the same rights as humans, and if so, do all animals merit these rights or just some, and if only some, which ones? Does life exist only on earth? We dwell in the midst of mystery. The great gift of the earth and the universe—brought to us by we know not what Force—is to be respected and appreciated and enjoyed and nurtured and celebrated. Mary Oliver does it well: “Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who make the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips and the nodding morning glories, and into the windows of, even, the miserable and the crotchety— best preacher that ever was, dear star, that just happens to be where you are in the universe to keep us from ever-darkness, to ease us with warm touching, to hold us in the great hands of light— good morning, good morning, good morning. Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.” Yes! Rejoice and celebrate and be grateful. Such happiness can and does lead us into kindness. Nature gives us abundant gifts of power, beauty, and mystery. Humanity has also devised wondrous things to leave to their posterity, to us, and for them we ought also to be grateful. Consider: language, the wheel, social organization, clothes, science, medicines, poetry, the gardens at Giverny, Michelangelo’s David, music, baseball. So much was taken care of before we came on the scene that we now live lives of relative ease. We owe a huge debt to our ancestors. We owe much to Hammurabi and to Confucius, to Hypatia and to Ashoka, to Moses and Jesus and Mohammed, to DaVinci and Franklin, to Galen and Harvey, to Newton and Priestley, to Bohr and Feynman, to hosts of wise and inventive and pragmatic people who devised legal codes and business practices, who looked at the stars and reported what they saw, who explored beyond their homeland and went to the bottom of the seas and the top of the mountains, who mapped the earth and built cities and developed agriculture, who established schools and created governments and thought up the postal system, who gave us a world fit for human habitation We owe so much to the Founding Fathers of this nation who, for all their faults—women in their eyes were unworthy of citizenship and Blacks and Native Americans were only 3/5 of a person to them—nonetheless crafted two remarkable documents used by us effectively for over 200 years and copied by many others around the world. Roger Wilkins, a descendant of slaves, in his insightful little book, JEFFERSON’S PILLOW, shows his respect for these men. Even as he condemns the vicious notions of the Founders that enabled them to keep slaves, he honors them for their “massive contributions” to the cause of human freedom. When Jefferson wrote of certain inalienable rights like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, he planted a seed that would one day flower into the recognition that the words meant what they said: all men and women have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However poorly we may have performed as a nation, our ideals are admired around the world. Something deep inside us cries out for liberty, for ourselves, for every one. It is right to be grateful for the inspiring words of the Founders and many of their successors in delineating the meaning and importance of liberty. Lincoln and Roosevelt, Garrison and Anthony, Debs and King, Dubois and Steinem, and many others have given us hope and the means of realizing that hope. So many rich gifts come to us at our birth and as we mature. There are gifts from nature and gifts from human society. These gifts make our lives more enjoyable and more meaningful. Thanks! Secondly, we have received marvelous gifts from our religious ancestors. Part of that gift lies in the shrouded times of distant history with no dates known to us. It was the gift of recognizing the sacredness of human life, every human life. That gift begins more than 100,000 years ago when our ancestors began to honor their dead rather than just leave the bodies of the deceased to rot. Our bodies do decay, but for a very long time all human societies have taken care to treat the body with respect. Bodies are buried or burned or returned to the waters, sometimes naked and sometimes clothed, sometimes with the artifacts of their lives and sometimes unaccompanied by anything. Rituals are observed, sometimes simple, sometimes quite elaborate, to mark this moment of loss. We are not just things. We are not just passing matter. We are human beings, unique and precious. The ceremonies surrounding our treatment of the dead tell us, the living, that love transcends death. When we die, we will not be forgotten. Each of us works our way into the fiber and fabric of the life of those who know us. Life, especially human life, is an interdependent web. Life continues and so does love. Love is what makes death painful and love is what makes death bearable. The ancients learned this and passed it on to us as a gift. Honoring the dead was the first religious act of our species. The second was closely related to it, the imaginative leap of identifying with other life. Somehow we were able to see that just as this person has died, so too will we die. Somehow from there we were able to develop a sense of compassion. Somehow we learned that love is the most essential quality of human life. As my good friend Father Vernon Ruland has pointed out in his wonderful text of interfaith learning, IMAGINING THE SACRED: SOUNDINGS IN WORLD RELIGIONS, “the common thread in all religious experience is the human imagination.” The finest use of that imagination is the development of empathy. That is why every religion has some version of what we in the West know as the Golden Rule: love they neighbor as thyself. It is true that most of these religions also have some form of the Jewish injunction to love God with all one’s heart and soul and mind. But that is a lesser commandment even if it is known as the Great Commandment. It is lesser because, whatever God may be, that Force will survive with or without our love. Humanity will not make it unless we love each other. We would not have survived the tragedy of 9/11 without the enormous outpouring of love that helped to counter the hatred and cruelty of what those 19 men did. No lesson of history, no gift from the past could be more important than this one. More specifically, we Unitarian Universalists have a remarkable heritage that we do well to remember. UU’s in the 21st century have it easy in many respects. Though many do not understand us and many treat us with contempt, we have rights and privileges of worship and celebration and expression and outreach that earlier generations placed their welfare and their lives on the line to gain for us. We can live our principles of freedom and tolerance and reason because Michael Servetus risked burning at the stake to proclaim the truth of what he read; because Sebastian Castellio risked prison and died there to defend such liberal principles; because for 436 years Transylvanian Unitarians have endured oppression and violence to stand fast in their faith; because Olympia Brown dared to proclaim the right of a woman to minister in our congregations; because Sophia Lyon Fahs insisted on honesty in what we teach our children in religious education; because our Beacon Press risked financial ruin to publish the Pentagon Papers and ensure that Americans knew what government officials were actually saying and doing about the Vietnam War. The examples could be multiplied many times over of our insistence on honesty, on the right of every person to follow her own spiritual path as long as doing so does not trample on the rights of others, on the value of learning from every religious tradition, on the enormous importance of being thoughtful, that is, full of thought as we go on our religious journey and full of kindness as well. We in the year 2004 did not create these ideals. We inherited them. We owe a lot of people a debt we pay best by living these principles and being sure they are passed on to the next generation. There is one more religious debt. That is to the founders and the many people who have kept this congregation going through the years. Thirty- seven men and women signed the charter document in 1865 and were committed enough to the enterprise that within a few years we needed larger space. We have moved five times and twice renovated our space because of our growth. When membership fell off—about 30 people belonged to the congregation in 1946—some very dedicated people held on till times were better and more people became interested. In my 24 plus years as your minister, I have seen so many good people do the work that keeps our congregation strong and growing: serving on the board and other committees, volunteering for special projects, singing in the choir and in the spring show, teaching in our religious education classes, bringing food and helping with the reception after a memorial service, cleaning up the land and fixing up the building, pledging and paying those pledges, supporting me at times when I have been threatened by law enforcement officials, working for peace and justice in hundreds of ways in this town and in other places. We are where we are with this beautiful and wonderfully functional building that is about to become even more beautiful and more functional because of gifts from the past. To those ancient men and women, to the religious teachers who saw the importance of love, to our own UU ancestors, to the wonderful women and men of this congregation, thank you. Thank you! Thirdly, each of us needs to look at our personal lives to see what gifts have come to us as individuals. Because each of us will have a different set of such gifts, this point will be made very briefly. A place to begin is with the family heritage. In my case, that means a heritage of preachers who obviously bequeathed to me the gift of gab! It also means a life in a far more comfortable and safe country than the lands from which my maternal- grandparents were brought as small children. The loving relationship my parents had with each other gave me a secure childhood even in a time of war and social upheaval in the southern states in which I was raised. A second place to look is at those who taught us our lessons, in school or on playing fields, in churches and synagogues, or at community centers. Unaware that it was happening, I received lessons in how to read and read fast and with comprehension, lessons in sportsmanship that stressed how you play more than whether you win or lose, lessons in mutual caring when need arises, lessons in the importance of ideas, lessons in non-violence from a father and various other teachers who lived gently but strongly and left vivid impressions in me of the way I would like to live my life. Each of us will have special people and special circumstances that have graced our lives. So many gifts come to us from our personal history for which it is right that we say, thank you. We did not invent ourselves. We are part of a long line of life in its human form. We have received priceless gifts from nature and human history, from our religious heritage, and from our personal ancestry and upbringing. On the occasion of the third anniversary of 9/11, we might well drown ourselves in sadness. To remember that day--and who could forget it?--is to remember cruelty and suffering and terrible loss. Since that day, there has been more hatred and violence and death. It would be easy to despair. One way to hold on to hope is to remember the goodness and courage that was shown on that day and in the time since then. Another way to find hope is to reflect on what we have learned. Today the focus has been on the gifts from the past that have come to us unbidden. By understanding our history, we can appreciate better the tasks that confront us today. We shall turn our attention to those tasks next Sunday. In the meantime, I commend to each one of you an examination of the gifts from the past that have enhanced and supported your life. Doing so is a way of seeing that life is not just grim and scary, it is also full of wonder and full of hope. The Guys and Dolls of human history say it’s a sure thing! BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT: FINAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES, AUTHORIZED EDITION, W.W.NORTON AND COMPANY, 2004. 2. Herbert Muller, THE USES OF THE PAST: PROFILES OF FORMER SOCIETIES, A Mentor Book, 1952. 3. Roger Wilkins, JEFFERSON’S PILLOW: THE FOUNDING FATEHRS AND THE DILEMMA OF BLACK PATRIOTISM, Beacon Press, 2001. Copyright 2003, Kenneth W. Phifer, All Rights Reserved. 12