A Sermon by Kenneth W. Phifer Delivered at First UU Church Ann Arbor 8/1/04 IN CELEBRATION OF DR. SEUSS "Fox Sox Box Knox Knox in box. Fox in socks. Knox on fox in socks on box. Socks on Knox and Knox in box. Fox in socks on box on Knox Look, sir. Look, sir. Mr. Knox, sir. Let's do tricks with bricks and blocks, sir. Let's do tricks with chicks and clocks, sir. First, I'll make a quick trick brick stack. Then I'll make a quick trick block stack. You can make a quick trick chick stack. You can make a quick trick clock stack. Please, sir. I don't like this trick, sir. My tongue isn't quick or slick, sir. I get all those ticks and clocks, sir. Mixed up with the chicks and tocks, sir. I can't do it, Mr. Fox, sir." Who can, at first? A first reading of FOX IN SOCKS usually ties one's tongue in knots, proving the truth of the words on the inside front cover: "Take It Slowly. This Book Is Dangerous." Dangerous, but such fun! Dr. Seuss is one of the world's most prolific and most popular children's authors, though some of us who have read the books only as adults believe that they are intended for more than just children. Dr. Seuss published 44 books in his lifetime. Every one of them is still in print and collectively they have sold more than 500 million copies. The Seuss website gets more than 100,000 hits a day. Three Oscars were given to films made from his books and there have been two more made in the last several years'about the Grinch and about the Cat in the Hat. There is a theme park called Seuss Landing in Universal Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Florida. Four years ago there was a Broadway musical called "Seussical." James Kemp recently published THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DR. SEUSS. A.O. Scott, in an article in The New York Times a few years ago, said that only Walt Disney was as well-known as Dr. Seuss in the world of children's culture. He described Disney as "an impresario and a empire builder," but wrote of Seuss as "a solitary genius who happens, almost in spite of himself, to be a canny entrepreneur." His legacy, Scott suggests, is found in "his inimitable, immediately identifiable style-the fuzzy-tailed fauna and feathery flora, the four-beat rhymed couplets, the heady mixture of mischief and social conscience." Given his enormous influence, the tremendous pleasure he has brought to so many people for the past 70 years or so, and the rumors that he was a Unitarian Universalist'if not in membership then certainly in spirit'it is appropriate for us to celebrate Dr. Seuss and his work in this his centennial year. Dr. Seuss was born Theodore Seuss (rhymes with rejoice) Geisel on March 2, 1904 in Springfield, Massachusetts of parents whose families immigrated from Germany. He changed the pronunciation of his middle name to Seuss (rhymes with Mother Goose) because that was the way the name is pronounced in English. He first used it with doctor before it as what he called a"nom de mischief"when he was in trouble for violating the rules at Dartmouth, from which he graduated in 1925. He attended Oxford, and then launched into a successful advertising career. His early notebooks show numerous drawings of very curious creatures, a talent he used in his advertising work and later in doing cartoons and his books. In the 1930's he established a national reputation for his ads for an insecticide that used the slogan,"Quick, Henry, the Flit."Some of his work appeared on the cover of magazines like Judge and Life. During the Second World War he made propaganda movies for the Army with Frank Capra. Then he worked as a political cartoonist for the liberal P.M. magazine. One of his cartoons shows a man praying,"'and protect my beddie from the Communist Boogey Man!"Under the bed a masked burglar with a swastika arm-band says,"Ain't that cute! Same prayer the Fuehrer taught me when I was a kid." Once he made a copy of one of his books for the humor columnist Art Buchwald. He crossed out the name Marvin K. Mooney and wrote in Richard Nixon. The book included such lines as"If you wish you may go by lion's tail/ Or stamp yourself and go by mail."The day after Buchwald's column about the book appeared, Richard Nixon went, resigning the presidency and going into retirement. It is his books written for children under the name of Dr. Seuss that have made Ted Geisel famous. His first sale was in 1937. He was on board a ship when, as he recalled it, he heard"the rhythm of the rudimentary refrain" being sung by the ship's engines. He started making notes, notes that eventually resulted in AND TO THINK THAT I SAW IT ON MULBERRY STREET. "...But all that I've noticed Except my own feet Was a horse and a wagon On Mulberry Street... That can't be my story. That's only a start I'll say that a Zebra was pulling the cart! And that is the story that no one can beat, When I say that I saw it on Mulberry Street." But, of course, he did beat it, by adding hosts of other creatures and artifacts to the story, and hosts of other creatures and artifacts and messages and weird words to tens of other books. They are books of immense fun, but every one of them in one way or another is a book of deep moral seriousness. Barbara Bader writes of Seuss that he is like a child himself,"a natural moralizer'it comes to him as unselfconsciously (and unambiguously) as rhyming lines from an engine's beat." Even the books that seem to be only about teaching words to children bear a message. HOP ON POP, for example, and several other Beginner Books were part of a movement to change the way children learned to read: not by memorizing words but by phonics, learning the sounds that letters and groups of letters make. Seuss's publisher believed in phonics and urged him to write a book using the new method that would sell to the schools. THE CAT IN THE HAT was the result. It contains 1702 words, but only 220 different ones. They were chosen by Seuss from three lists given him by his publisher, to which he added 21 words of his own. The success of the book, published in 1957, coincided with Noam Chomsky's groundbreaking work on language and the Sputnik scare. Soon there was money and energy a-plenty to develop this better way to teach our children to read. One observer believes that this one book, THE CAT IN THE HAT, "transformed the nature of primary education and the nature of children's books. It not only stood for the idea that reading ought to be taught by phonics; it also stood for the idea that language skills--and many other subjects--ought to be taught through illustrated storybooks, rather than primers and textbooks." Random House opened a Beginner Books division, and appointed Seuss and Phyllis Cerf to head it. The most popular of these Beginner Books, and Seuss's most successful book, was GREEN EGGS AND HAM. He wrote it on a bet Bennett Cerf, his Random House publisher, made with him that he could not write a book using only 50 words. Not only did he win the bet, but 49 of the 50 words were of only one syllable. A morally serious man, Ted Geisel, writing as Dr. Seuss, portrayed in his books a world that is mysterious, unfair, dangerous, and frightening. We learn something of the mystery of life in THE 500 HATS OF BARTHOLOMEW CUBBINS. This is the tale of a little boy whose hat is desired by the king. When Bartholomew pulls his hat off to give it to the king, another one appears on his head. He removes that hat and the same thing happens--another one appears on his head. This happens 500 times! "And neither Bartholomew Cubbins, nor King Derwin himself, nor anyone else in the Kingdom of Didd could ever explain how the strange thing had happened." Some things in life we cannot understand or explain. Life is mysterious. It is also unfair. Seuss shows us this aspect of our existence in his story of Solla Sollew'which some of you may remember was read in our first service in this sanctuary on January 24, 1999. A nameless youngster, who is having one problem after another and getting very discouraged, hears of the land of Solla Sollew,"On the banks of the beautiful river Wah-Hoo, Where they never have troubles! At least, very few!' He hitches a ride with a chap in a One-Wheeler Wubble cart pulled by a camel. Soon the camel gets sick and the youngster takes his place, pulling cart, Wubble Chap, and camel too."This is rather unfair,"he says, because the adult works with brain and tongue and bosses the lad around just because he is young. Later, this somewhat battered boy is drafted into the army of General Genghis Khan Schmitz, from which he is fortunate to escape with his life. After many perilous adventures, he arrives at the gates of Solla Sollew, only to discover that a Key-Slapping Slippard is slapping away every key put into the one lock on the one door into Solla Sollew,"On the banks of the beautiful river Wah-Hoo, Where they never have troubles! At least, very few!" After all the trouble he had taken to get there, the lad never enters Solla Sollew. Life is unfair, with problems in abundance. Life is often dangerous as well. The Kingdom of Binn, featured in THE KING'S STILTS, is constantly threatened by Nizzards, who will, if not defended against night and day, swoop down and peck away at the roots of the Dike Trees that keep the sea from inundating the kingdom. Eric, the king's faithful page boy, is kidnapped by the wicked Lord Droon and his henchmen. Life can be very dangerous, for kingdoms and for kids. While to some people danger is a stimulant, to most of us it is just plain frightening, especially life-threatening danger such as Dr. Seuss describes in THE BUTTER BATTLE BOOK. This is the story of the Yooks and the Zooks, who eat their bread with the butter side up or the butter side down respectively. They are deeply suspicious of each other precisely because of the weird habits of the folk who eat their bread with the butter on the wrong side. They begin building weapons to protect themselves from their foe., each one more destructive than the one before it. They start with Snick-Berry Switches, move on to Triple-Sling Jiggers, then develop Jigger-Rock Snatchems, and finally invent the ultimate doomsday weapon, the Big-Boy Boomeroo! Both Yooks and Zooks possess and threaten each other with this weapon, each side having a representative stand guard atop the wall that separates them, prepared to drop the small pill that will kill and kill and kill and kill. Seeing this, the grandson of one of these guardians of the true way of buttering bread, cries out,"...Be careful! Oh, gee! Who's going to drop it? Will you...?"Or will he...?"To which his grandpa's answer is only,"We shall see." Very frightening indeed! Life is mysterious, unfair, and dangerous.. Life is full of problems like pollution, discrimination, and being taken advantage of, as the Lorax, the Sneetches, Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose and others reveal to us. Fear is part of life too. In Dr. Seuss's only ghost-tale, WHAT WAS I SCARED OF?, a little boy is terrified by a pair of pants, apparently with no one in them, that pursues him relentlessly. Life, in the world of Dr. Seuss, can be a very dicey business! To which mystery, injustice, and peril Dr. Seuss's response is that of the nameless youngster trying to get to Solla Sollew. After all his woes and his disappointment at not getting into paradise, he did some quick thinking, and decided: "I know I'll have troubles. I'll, maybe, get stung. I'll always have troubles. I'll, maybe, get bit By that Green-Headed Quail On the place where I sit. But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready, you see. Now my troubles are going To have troubles with me!" Indeed, they will, for Dr. Seuss arms his characters with more than a bat. In his many stories, he spells out a complete and very liberal philosophy of life that can help us to cope with Green-Headed Quails, Nizzards, the ravages of age, the schemes of a Grinch, or whatever else may challenge, threaten, or frighten us. First of all, says Dr. Seuss, use imagination. Little Marco did that when he walked the two lonely blocks of Mulberry Street to his home. Rather than think about the cemetery at the end of the street (not mentioned in the book, but Ruth Pinkus shares a hometown with Ted Geisel and informed me of this ), Marco thought about a zebra and a gold and blue chariot. Then he thought about a reindeer, a sled, a blue elephant, a brass band, police escorts, the Mayor, and a magician doing tricks, even a ten foot beard that needs a comb...until there was"no time for more, I'm almost home." Use imagination, says Dr. Seuss, to meet fear and danger. Use imagination to enjoy life's mysteries. Be irreverent! This is Dr. Seuss's second means of dealing with life's troubles. Make up words like Wuff-Whiffer, Midwinter Jicker, and Ham-icka- Schnim-icka-Schnam-icka-Schnopp. Invent diseases like Bus Driver's Blight, Chimney Sweep's Stupor, and Prune Picker's Plight. Or say,"Phooey!" to the way things are always done and go ON BEYND ZEBRA to other letters not in our usual alphabet, like Yuzz and Quan and Wum, Glikk and Zatz and Um. Don't let authority oppress you. Don't let tradition hold you back. Enjoy your GREEN EGGS AND HAM. Feast on your scrambled eggs Super-dee- Dooper-dee-Booper, Special de luxe a-la-Peter T. Hooper. Let irreverence be your sacred cow! Thirdly, have fun! Have fun the way King Bertram in THE KING'S STILTS has fun when the hard day's work is done, the hard work of making sure that the Patrol Cats are well cared for so that they can protect the Dike Trees that hold back the sea. With the help of his page boy, Eric, at the end of the day the king climbs on his stilts and"high in the air, his royal robes streaming," he races through the marble halls of the palace, up and down the garden steps, just having fun, relaxing at the end of his day. How important it is to have fun is revealed when the stilts are stolen by the treacherous Lord Droon, who doesn't like fun at all. The king grows sadder and sadder until he is unable to work. Fun is what makes good work possible. In the end, when Eric helps him to recover his stilts, the two of them work and play together a lot."And when they played they really PLAYED...And when they worked they really WORKED." "Have fun," prescribes Dr. Seuss. As he says through his Cat character,"We can have lots of good fun that is funny." Enjoy life, but--and this is the fourth part of Dr. Seuss's philosophy-- always be faithful to the best that is in you. Be responsible. Be a person of integrity. Be like THE SEVEN LADY GODIVAS, sisters who swore an oath not to be wed, though each was betrothed, until they discovered a new horse-truth, so that the accident of being thrown from his horse that killed their father might not happen to others. Though it took years, decades for some of the sisters, they were faithful to their vow. They did not wed until they had learned that horseshoes are lucky, not to look a gift horse in the mouth, not to lock the barn door after the horse had been stolen, and other truths of equine lore. Be like the Who-Villagers. After the Grinch had stolen all their Christmas presents, food, and decorations, they still gathered to sing, as was their custom. They gathered without all the usual trappings of Christmas because, as the Grinch learns from the experience,"Maybe Christmas...doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!" Of course, it does! Then there is Horton, asked by Mayzie the lazy bird to sit on her egg. Horton, being an elephant, thinks this is silly if not impossible, but finally agrees, saying to the slothful bird, "You want a vacation. So fly off and take it. I'll sit on your egg and try not to break it. I'll stay and be faithful. I mean what I say." He sits on that egg through storms and cold, through the laughter of his fellow animals at his ridiculous posture perched on a tiny egg, and through the threat from hunters to his very life. He is even taken captive, but continues to say, "I meant what I said And I said what I meant.. An elephant's faithful One hundred per cent." When the egg finally hatches, out pops not a lazy Mayzie look-alike, but a lovely elephant-bird. There is no better way to live for everybody's sake, our own and others, than to be faithful to the very best that is in us, to say what we mean and to mean what we say. Yet another vital principle of Dr. Seuss's philosophy is the worth and power of the individual. In the story of HORTON HEARS A WHO, the faithful elephant is bathing one day when he hears a cry for help. He sees no one, only a speck of dust. He decides that someone is on that speck of dust and that he, Horton, must save that someone,"because, after all, a person's a person, no matter how small."So Horton carries the speck of dust away, his animal friends laughing at him with every step. When he is alone he listens and is able to learn that there is a whole community of little persons, called Whos, on that speck of dust. When the speck of dust is stolen from him, he tracks it down, only to have his friends confront him with a threat that they will boil the speck in hot oil to end his delusion. He gasps, "Oh, that you can't do! It's all full of persons! They'll prove it to you." Horton asks the little creatures to holler and scream so that they can be heard. They try, but they are not loud enough, until the mayor of the Who community finds a very small shirker named Jo-Jo who is not making a sound, just bouncing a yo-yo. He drags him out and makes him shout. When Jo-Jo adds his"Yopp"to the other voices, they are heard by the animals and Who-ville is saved. As Horton puts it, "Do you see what I mean'' They've proved they ARE persons, no matter how small. And their whole world was saved by the smallest of all!" Every one counts. Yertle the Turtle illustrates the same theme. Yertle is king of the pond on a far-away island called Sala-ma-Sond. Yertle is ruler of all he can see, but he decides he cannot see far enough. He orders the turtles to gather on his stone and there build him a higher throne. At the bottom of this throne a plain little turtle named Mack feels the strain on his shoulders and back. He asks for relief, but Yertle commands, SILENCE. He reminds little Mack that he is only a turtle at the bottom of the stack. The stack grows higher and higher. Yertle gives the command for it to be built even higher, but down at the bottom, "...that plain little Mack did a plain little thing. He burped! And his burp shook the throne of the king!... And today the great Yertle, that Marvelous He, Is King of the Mud. That is all he can see. And the turtles, of course'all the turtles are free As turtles, and, maybe, all creatures should be." Individuals, no matter how small and insignificant, matter. So does the larger community of life: people and animals and plants, all that is, tied together in a bond of living where what each of us does affects the life of others. The Lorax demonstrates this. This is the tale of the Once-ler, who arrives in a community whose grass is green, whose clouds are clean, where stand beautiful Truffula trees. The Once-ler begins to cut down the trees to make a product he calls a Thneed, which he persuads people they really do need. His family joins him, then others too, to work in the largest Thneed factory in the world. Though warned by the strange little creature called the Lorax that he is hurting the animals, the birds, the fish, the air, and the land, the Once-ler keeps on "biggering" his factories and "biggering" his roads,"biggering" his wagons and "biggering" his loads, so he can sell more Thneeds and "bigger" his money, which everyone needs. Soon, the water is glumpy and smeary, the land without trees is barren and dreary, and the smog in the air makes everyone teary. Gone are the Bar-ba- loots, gone are the Swomee-Swans, gone are the Humming-Fish. When the last Truffula tree is cut down, gone are the workers. Finally the Lorax himself leaves, giving a"very sad, sad backward glance." He flies away from the mess, leaving behind a single word,"UNLESS." We do not live in isolation from one another. We are part of an "interdependent web of all existence." Harm to one is harm to all. Life at its most profound level is community. The last and possibly most important part of Dr. Seuss's liberal religious philosophy is that the choice is always ours. That is what the mighty word UNLESS means. "UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." This is how the little boy who has listened to the tale of the Once-ler is apprised of his responsibility. He is given the last Truffula seed of all and told "Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air. Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back." We have freedom, but the world can only benefit from that freedom if we each understand the responsibility that goes along with it. Like the little boy and the little girl who have just enjoyed the antics of the Cat in the Hat, then see their mother coming home and wonder,"Should we tell her about it? Now, what would you do?", the choice is always up to us as to how we act. We can act faithfully like Horton or lazily like Mayzie. We can act courteously and hospitably like Thidwick or rudely like the guests who take up residence in his antlers. We can be willing to swallow our pride and admit our mistakes like the Grinch, or be unyielding like the North-going Zax and the South-going Zax who would not get out of each other's way and so never got anywhere. We can and we always must choose what kind of person we shall be, what kind of life we shall lead, what kind of world we shall create and maintain. Dr. Seuss tells us that in a mysterious, unfair, dangerous, and frightening world, our world, that we can use our imagination and resist mindless authority, that we can have fun and that we should be faithful to the best that is in us, that we need always to remember the worth and power of every individual, and we must never forget the link we have with the whole community of life. If we do these things, says Dr. Seuss, we shall be able to make wise, decent, and responsible choices that will make us happy and the world safe for all life. That's a pretty wonderful philosophy, isn't it! Copyright 2004, Kenneth W. Phifer, All Rights Reserved