I have to share this blog post from my friends at bethelove.net. Who better to school white folks than James Baldwin. And Meck Groot does a brilliant job in  interpreting his words for today.
http://bethelove.net/white-people-loving-themselves/

“The house does not rest upon the ground, but upon a woman.” -- Mexican Proverb

I don't normally post the manuscripts of my sermons; the audio ultimately gets posted to the All Souls website-- and it's more accurate, with all my witty asides-- but I felt it was important for this sermon to reach a broader audience than might think to check the website to listen to a sermon, so, here it is. I apologize for any stream of thought writing or lack of punctuation but hey-- this is how I write a sermon. :) Watch the above video first; it was the "sacred text" for my sermon.

Mother's Day Sermon
May 10, 2015

My social media has been awash

This weekend

With people scorning Mother’s Day.

Anne Lamott,

An author whom I love deeply,

Wrote an essay saying

it’s the holiday she hates the most.

A couple of my esteemed colleagues

Have written blogs

On why they’re not preaching about

Mothers

Today.

And last night,

At a dinner with three of my nieces

And one of their friends

The friend said her husband wanted

To go to church

And she did not

Because it’s Mother’s Day

And she hated how the service

Would be all about mothers.

And I understand these sentiments;

I do.

Mother’s Day

Can seem like a cruel celebration

To those who have not been able

To have a child

Either by adoption or birth

Or to those who have lost a child

Or have lost a mother.

For some struggling with their children

Or with their moms

Where the Leave it to Beaver family mold

Was not available

This day may not be

A favorite holiday.

Even though we will spend 14.7 billion dollars on it

this is the holiday—

(that’s $127 per mom!)

With the biggest card sales

And second only to valentine’s day

For flowers,

Yet still

Hallmark has NOT come up

With cards that fit all families.

How can there be rows upon rows

Of Mother’s Day cards at the store

And there still isn’t one for all?

Where is the card that says

Thanks Mom

for not harming me more than you did?

And what about those

who have chosen not to have children

At all?

Ironically, Margaret Wise Brown

The author of the Runaway Bunny story

Laurie read for the Story for All Ages—

And author of countless beloved children’s books—

Was a lesbian who never had children.

For women who are married today

Who choose not to have children,

They still constantly face a barrage of questions

About why?

With implications of how selfish that is

To want a child-free adult life.

They might get a little tired of Mother’s Day

Platitudes.

Frankly, I think we SHOULD have a day

That honors those who choose to not have children.

We need their energy.

However

Regardless of whether you’re a mom

Or a dad

Or a dad who used to be mom

Or a mom who used to be dad

I think it’s important

That we celebrate Mother’s Day

It’s important to remember

Why we have Mother’s Day.

See, we’ve gotten Mothers Day wrong.

Mothers Day was begun in 1870

after a lot of lobbying

by women

(who, by the way,

didn’t have the right to vote yet

but they still made their political presence

felt).

And it wasn’t created because mothers

felt overwhelmed

with the task of raising children,

running the household

and still finding time to

foment rebellion.

It wasn’t begun as an

economic stimulus program

in hopes that all those flowers

and candy boxes

and presents

would boost retail sales.

It was created by mothers

so tired of having their sons

(at the time)

sent home in boxes

from one war zone or another

that they gathered today

women from every socio-economic status

some women who weren’t mothers at all

and they gathered together to say enough!

We are tired of losing our children to war!

Julia Ward Howe

a Unitarian rabble-rouser

and leader of the movement

to create Mothers Day

wrote in her Mothers Day Proclamation

in 1870:

“As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil

At the summons of war,

Let women now leave all that may be left of home

For a great and earnest day of counsel

.Let them meet first,

as women,

to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other

as to the means

Whereby the great human family

can live in peace...

Each bearing after our own time the sacred impress,

not of Caesar,

But of God –

In the name of womanhood and humanity,

I earnestly ask

That a general congress of women

without limit of nationality,

May be appointed and held at someplace

deemed most convenient

And the earliest period consistent with its objects,

To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,

The amicable settlement of international questions,

The great and general interests of peace.”

So, according to Julia

this was never meant to be a day to honor mothers

it was a day to honor our children.

And to recognize the inherent worth and dignity

Of all mother’s children

And to seek peace.

Perhaps Julia Ward Howe

got the idea for this from

Ann Reeves Jarvis

who instituted

Mother’s Work Day

in her West Virginia town

as a rallying cry to improve sanitation.

Again,

who better than a mother

concerned with the health and safety

of children

to establish this?

After the Civil War ended

Ann Reeves Jarvis

used this day as a means of reconciliation

between the two sides

and it was her daughter

Anna Jarvis who spent nearly 10 years

seeking to have Mother’s Day

officially recognized.

But even in her lifetime

the sentiment had changed.

People sought to soften the holiday

and turn it into what we know it as today.

A time for sending cards and flowers

and letting our moms know

they were appreciated.

By the time Mother’s Day

was officially enacted

it had already lost the meaning

for which Anna Jarvis and her mother

and Julia Ward Howe

sought to have it recognized.

But today

THAT

Is the Mother’s Day

I want us to celebrate.

Today

I want to honor women

And girls

Who have made a difference

I want to say Happy Mother’s Day

To Malala Yousafzi

The young Pakistani woman

who was shot in the head

because she dared to continue

to seek an education

in a Taliban ruled country

that forbids girls to learn.

Not because she is a mother

But because already

In her young life

she understands the importance

of Mother’s Day.

Already

In her young life

She Is changing the world.

Winner of the 2013 Nobel Peace Price,

Then 17 years old,

She said

“Pens and books

are the weapons that defeat terrorism.”

Even though she nearly lost her life

She has never stopped fighting

The ignorance of terrorism

With the wisdom of education.

Another Pakistani woman

And human rights activist

40 year old Sabeen Mahmud

Was not so lucky

On April 24th this year-

Just a couple of weeks ago--

she had just held a meeting

about the”silenced” activists and students

in Baluchistan,

Pakistan’s most neglected and separatist province;

Hundreds of activists and students had been abducted,

probably killed.

And she held a meeting in a café she had created

For just that purpose

In 2006.

For years, progressives in Pakistan

Would meet there

To discuss issues of the day.

And this was no different

Though it was risky.

“There would probably be blowback”,

she told a friend; “I just don’t know what that blowback entails.”

That blow back was being shot to death

I want to wish her a posthumous Mother’s Day

Even though she was not a mother.

And I want to wish A Happy Mother’s Day

To her own mom

Who was with her and was also shot twice.

She is expected to recover.

These women

Won’t be getting a card today

Or breakfast in bed

But they heard Julia Ward Howe’s call

Through the ages

And they answered.

Today I want to call out the names

Of the 234 Nigerian girls

Kidnapped while they studied

For a chemistry exam

April 14, 2014.

Finally rescued

From Boko Haram terrorists

After a year in captivity.

234 girls finally returned to their villages,

214 of whom are pregnant

As a result of rape.

I wish I could hear and learn

Each of their names

I wish I could tell them

They will not

Or at least should not

Be known as the mother

Of the rape baby

The victim of terrorists

That they are wonderful girls

And young women,

That their life has meaning.

I want to learn the names

Of all women

Who have been erased

By whatever patriarchal society

In which they live.

To say you are more

Than somebody’s mother

Or daughter or sister

To say you have a name

Even here in our own nation

I want to say Happy Mother’s Day

To those whose presence

Is being erased by laws;

To the women in Wisconsin

Where there’s a new bill

Wending its way through legislature

That would give in-laws

The right to stop their daughter-in-law

From getting an abortion.

Here in our own state

And in many states

There is a constant push

To render invisible

The rights of women

Seeking to make decisions

About their bodies.

I want to say

Happy Mother’s Day

To the members of group

Moms Demand Action

For Gun Sense in America

-a group that was definitely founded

In the spirit of Julia Ward Howe’s

Mother’s Day proclamation

Founded in the aftermath of the Sandyhook shootings

To say Enough!

A group of which I’m a proud member.

A group who was the target

Of a TV ad

By a Florida Gun instructor,

Who shot six carefully placed bullets

In a target that we then see

Is one of the posters

For Moms Demand Action.

He ends this ad

By turning to the camera

And then saying

“Not a bad grouping.

Happy Mother’s Day.”

I want to say Happy Mother’s Day

To all the activists

Mothers or no

Women and men

Who day by day

Have it in their heart to work for peace.

Rather than declaim Mother’s Day

As a exclusive party for those who change diapers

We need to reclaim Mother’s Day

As a day

Where we meet first,

as women AND men,

to bewail and commemorate the dead.

And then to

solemnly take counsel with each other

as to the means

Whereby the great human family

can live in peace...

Maybe

if we who are mothers

can receive our cards and flowers

with joy and gratitude

and

also determine

to take back the original sense

of Mother’s Day

the desire to end injustice

and if we are joined by

the fathers and uncles and aunts

and brothers and sisters

and lovers

we can create a movement

of justice

we can reclaim Julia Ward Howes’

and Anna Jarvis’ vision.

We can realize it’s not just about

keeping our sons and daughters

safe from the perils of war

or providing clean water for our families

but about making sure our sons and daughters

live full and healthy lives

and that mothers everywhere

have the opportunity

to live long enough

to see their grandchildren

not just in our families

in our country

but globally.

You know,

tragically

Julia Ward Howe felt her voice

was not heard,

but maybe

just maybe

we can show her that it was.

May it be so.

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. [We] experience [ourselves], [our] thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of [our] consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. --Albert Einstein

I woke up this morning thinking of personal responsibility vs. institutional culpability and what it means to act with a depraved heart. The first two thoughts were because a friend of mine and I had argued the finer points of the murder of Michael Brown  by police officer Darren Wilson. She (my friend) insisted that the findings of the Department of Justice exonerated Darren Wilson, saying his claim that he felt threatened was valid. I said that, regardless of the report from the DOJ, Wilson’s claims that he felt threatened were based on the color of Brown’s skin, not any overt action on his part.

Brown allegedly stole some cigarillos from a local store and that was the reason for Wilson’s interest in him. If true, then yes, Brown needed to take personal responsibility for that petty theft; that theft did not warrant his death (an unwarranted plight, my friend also agreed.) Frankly I can’t imagine any young black man acting so menacingly toward a white police officer as Wilson alleged (and whose claim the DOJ upheld.) It makes no sense for a black man in today’s climate to act in a manner that is sure to bring down the hammer of retribution swift and strong, despite the fact that white people can act in threatening manners—and even actually be waving real guns around unlike 12 year old  Tamir Rice  and yet still, somehow the police managed to subdue them just fine without finding it necessary to kill them.

It is important to note that even while exonerating Wilson, the DOJ gave a stunning indictment against the government of Ferguson, including its police department.  In thisWashington Post article  that my friend sent me to bolster her claims, reporter Jonathan Capehart also gives a little ink to the report about the police department. He writes, “The report on the Ferguson police department detailed abuse and blatant trampling of the constitutional rights of people, mostly African Americans, in Ferguson. Years of mistreatment by the police, the courts and the municipal government, including evidence that all three balanced their books on the backs of the people of Ferguson, were laid bare in 102 damning pages. The overwhelming data from DOJ provided background and much-needed context for why a small St. Louis suburb most had never heard of exploded the moment Brown was killed. His death gave voice to many who suffered in silence.”

 So even if I can accept that the DOJ was equally diligent in getting to the facts as best they could in both of these two investigations, Wilson’s claim to have felt threatened cannot be sussed out from the climate of racist perceptions that were daily reinforced by the police department; indeed this shows a relentless and vicious cycle of cops stopping blacks more frequently and denying them their constitutional rights based on their racist beliefs that blacks were more criminally inclined, even when their own records prove otherwise. In other words, even if Darren Wilson says he felt threatened, it doesn’t matter to me, because I don’t trust him and I don’t trust the system that trained him. If he felt threatened, it was because he was raised in a culture and took a job in a police department that gave him the erroneous message that he should feel threatened by a black man.There must be at least an equal amount of institutional accountability in such egregious acts. If Brown's personal responsibility for lifting some cigarillos ended in his death, there must be institutional accountability in the way the system fatally failed this young man that August day.

Even so, as Capehart says, “Yet this does not diminish the importance of the real issues unearthed in Ferguson by Brown’s death. Nor does it discredit what has become the larger “Black Lives Matter.” In fact, the false Ferguson narrative stuck because of concern over a distressing pattern of other police killings of unarmed African American men and boys around the time of Brown’s death. Eric Garner was killed on a Staten Island street on July 17. John Crawford III was killed in a Wal-Mart in Beavercreek, Ohio, on Aug. 5, four days before Brown. Levar Jones survived being shot by a South Carolina state trooper on Sept. 4. Tamir Rice, 12 years old, was killed in a Cleveland park on Nov. 23, the day before the Ferguson grand jury opted not to indict Wilson. Sadly, the list has grown longer.”

And this brings me to my early morning musings of what does an indictment of depraved heart murder mean? This was one of the charges levied against six police officers  in the recent death of 25 year old Freddie Gray who suffered essentially a severed spine while in police custody in Baltimore, MD. In this case, it was unclear why Gray was arrested; first reports of an illegal knife were unfounded; he did have a knife that was legal to carry. Still he was thrown in the “paddy wagon” in hand cuffs and shackled without being secured to the bench with a seat-belt- a safety measure that is mandated by the Baltimore police.

In the midst of hundreds of people protesting -- in Baltimore and across the nation-- the State’s Attorney for Baltimore, Marilyn Mosby, brought charges of murder and manslaughter against six Baltimore police officers--- three black and three white. The most damaging charge was brought against the driver of the van, officer Ceasar Goodson, Jr,; he was charged with Depraved Heart Murder.

According to the statutes of Baltimore: Second-degree depraved heart murder is the killing of another person while acting with an extreme disregard for human life. In order to convict the defendant of second-degree murder, the State must prove:

(1) that the defendant caused the death of (name);

(2) that the defendant's conduct created a very high risk to the life of (name); and

(3) that the defendant, conscious of such risk, acted with extreme disregard of the life-endangering consequences.

According to a New York Times article, this  grave charge takes into account the lack of care shown Gray while he was in custody. "'Following transport from Baker Street, Mr. Gray suffered a severe and critical neck injury as a result of being handcuffed, shackled by his feet and unrestrained inside the B.P.D. wagon,’ she [Mosby] said." It takes a person with a depraved heart to knowingly create a very high risk of life to another—regardless of whether or not that person has committed a crime. Baltimore, too, has made a name for itself as a place where black men interact with the police at their own peril.

It takes a nation of people with depraved hearts to protest the protesters—calling them thugs and criminals and accusing them of destroying their own communities rather than daring to pull away the veil of blissful ignorance that keeps us from trying to understand such rage and anger. As a facebook friend of mine, Elizabeth Cuckrow Thorson put it, "Have you ever been so angry that you punched a wall? Smashed your favorite teapot? Taken a hammer to something just to hear it break? Now multiply that anger by 100 or 1000, because the cause of your anger is that much bigger, more pervasive and life-threatening. Then multiply that anger by the thousands of other people around you whose anger, like yours, has been ignored, dismissed, turned on you, for years and years. You might be burning buildings too." Of course, this public anger towards the protesters (not to mention the appalling conditions the arrested protesters faced at Baltimore Central Booking) also completely ignores the number of times white folks have gone on equally damaging rampages--- following the victory or loss of one of their favorite teams such as this story illustrates and yet no one ever has accused them of being thugs or acting out of the white criminal instinct. Instead, they’re described as fans letting off steam, who got out of control.
As author and social justice activist Tim Wise, wrote in response to the DOJ reports on both Wilson and the city of Ferguson, “So long as most white folks turn a blind eye towards even those cases where the injustice is apparent, even proven (as in the case of the exonerations), it will be hard for folks of color, or for some whites among us who are committed to fighting racism, to view the concerns about Darren Wilson as anything but white racial bonding and smug supremacy. Especially when at least some among us are not only insufficiently upset about such incidents, but even giddily express admiration for police who kill blacks in such cases, as happened at a rally last year in Beavercreek, Ohio (where John Crawford was killed at Walmart).” DOJ reports aside, we cannot separate the "worthy" from the "unworthy" victim of police brutality, we dare not, at the risk of further hardening our own hearts into deeper depravity, think we can sit in our armchairs of white, middle-class privilege and arrogantly decry the violence done by people who are protesting a system that has worked against them from the dawn of our bloody history as a nation. I know too well the tendency of my own heart to slip into a depraved indifference for-- or judgment of --folks who don’t fit into my carefully constructed matrix of what constitutes “decent” humanity. I applaud this first step toward justice in the case of the murder of Freddie Gray. I am grateful that his death will not go unexamined, that his family and friends might have some level of closure with the arrest and trial of the police officers. But the depraved heart charge doesn’t end there. It is a charge we each must examine in our own lives, in our responses to ongoing police brutality, and in our own desire to indifferently pass judgment in the hopes that we can comfort ourselves that nothing like that would ever happen to us. Or, as Tim Wise closes his essay:

In short, to be black in America is to have a highly-sensitive racism detector, not because one is irrational but because one’s life so often depends on it. It is to have little choice but to see the patterns in the incidents that white America would so prefer to see as isolated, no matter how often they occur. It is to have little choice but to consume the red pill (to borrow imagery from The Matrix), so as to see what’s going on behind the curtain of the larger society, even as their white compatriots have the luxury of walking around, firmly and indelibly attached to a blue pill IV drip, the reliance on which renders us equally unable to see what’s happening. And just because every now and then that red pill shows its consumers an image that isn’t quite accurate, doesn’t change the fact that in general it provides insights far deeper than those afforded the rest of us. Rather than bashing black people for seeing the connections and presuming them present, perhaps we would do well to remove the blue pill IV and substitute the red for a while. Maybe then we could begin to see what folks of color see. Perhaps then we could understand their rage. Most of all, perhaps then we could be a little less smug about the exoneration of an officer who, whatever his crime or lack thereof, still took a young man’s life. As a nation, the eyes of our whites are misleading us. Time for some new lenses. 

 You know, I often get called names by people unwilling to surrender their own narrow interpretation of what racism looks like in America-- or unwilling to make room at the table for my opinion. One of the names flung at me in disdain has been that of "bleeding heart liberal." Though, as a Unitarian Universalist I don't think name-calling is a useful tool in discussing differences and serves only to give the name-caller the ability to dismiss everything I say, I will say this: I'd rather be known as someone with a bleeding heart than someone with a depraved heart. Indeed, it is time for all of us to get our eyes –and our hearts—examined, to free ourselves from this prison of separateness and widen our circles of compassion to embrace all. 

compassion, non violence, "just wars", ISIS (light reading for a Saturday)

The above was the subject line of an email I received last Saturday from a church member who has been engaging deeply in our Lenten series on “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.” Each week, we’ve been exploring the steps laid out in theologian and historian Karen Armstrong’s book by the same title. Karen, who has many brilliant books exploring the relationship between religion, culture, and history, was given a TED award which basically gave her the ability to make a wish that the TED organization could help come true. Her wish was to create a Charter of Compassion that would be shared globally and inspire people to live compassionate lives. This book is the result of the TED award and her own research into this  vital need facing our world today; the need to become more compassionate as individuals and as a global community.

And it’s not easy. We have been so conditioned to be cynical, judgmental, and rigid that our default is to get our back up, to not trust, to assume negative meanings for other people’s lives, even if we know nothing about them. Armstrong says in her book  that these steps are meant to be worked exactly like a 12 step recovery; you don’t move on to the next step until you’ve completed, to the best of your ability, the step you’re currently on. A couple of weeks ago, I preached on the trifecta of steps 7-9, which are How Little We Know, How Should We Speak to One Another, and  Concern for Everybody. These are hard steps to take even on a local scale. We are so quick to condemn others who are different from us in our neighborhood.  Heck, in my own life, less than a week after preaching about those three, I found myself completely violating  step 8 by insisting that I knew the right response for a friend of mine to make in a matter that had absolutely nothing to do with me. Only in retrospect did I realize I had missed an opportunity to “lose” an argument rather than be right.

Still, there are those who go before us to model for us a way of inclusion and acceptance for those who are different from ourselves and who model ways to treat one another.

Take this example from when NFL Draft Michael Sam came out as gay. Commentator Dale Hansen says it beautifully when he says, "I don’t understand his world; but I do understand that he is a part of mine."

 

 

 

 

Or this one, handled equally well by the amazing Dale Hansen on the subject of racist actions in high school.

 

 

 

 Or this beautiful  and courageous act of coming out of this young trans boy, following the suicide of a 17 year old trans woman who wasn’t accepted by those close to her.

 

 

These model a way of compassion that completely aligns with Armstrong’s Charter for Compassion and definitely fills in the blanks of these difficult to maneuver steps.

But, my friend who emailed me, and takes this seriously, wanted to go ever deeper. Here’s what he wrote: I’ve been working hard on the 12 steps to compassion. I’m struggling with the whole violence/non violence/ “just war” thing.  I’m looking at a group like ISIS.  They seem to have an ideology that is in part quite violent. Part of me thinks, okay, if we are really trying to be compassionate than we should try to find out what is bothering them and why they are doing what they are doing.  The other part of me sees that it might not matter.  If ISIS is causing lots of suffering, shouldn’t someone try to stop them in some way and it might mean violently?  On the other hand, doesn’t that just breed more violence?  Should we let them self destruct even if that means that they will kill many more?  It makes me wonder about Nazi Germany.  Many people say World War 2 was the “last just war”  Hitler certainly killed many people and creating immeasurable suffering.  Should he have been stopped? It’s like with civil rights. We say, let’s take a stand.  Is there a point when it becomes too late  for non violent stand?  Is some violence okay in short term if you are working on longer term non -violent solutions? 

These are important questions, and questions we must address if we are to  move beyond the “kumbayah” stage of pseudo-compassion and onto the hard and rocky path of real life/real compassion. Pseudo-compassion is a lazy, shallow way of looking at the world that simply says, “I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re okay together!” When in reality we are not all always okay. There are actions that can’t be tolerated, there are violations of human worth and dignity that cannot be swept under the rug of indifference or vacuumed up into the black hole of pluralistic relativism. Sometimes people—who were born with inherent worth and dignity and have that as their core—do vile and unspeakable things to others that violate that same worth and dignity in their victims.

 

What Karen Armstrong says about this in step 8 is that “there are of course times when we are required to be assertive. Even when we have gone through this process and understood the context in which a terrorist conceived his idea, we cannot, if we take the Golden Rule as our criterion, condone the course of action he has chosen. We have, however, broadened our horizons by developing an informed understanding of the possible frustration, humiliation, and despair of his situation and can now empathize with the plight of many of his innocent compatriots and coreligionists, who may feel something similar but have not resorted to criminal vengeance.”

In other words, the Golden Rule calls us to seek to understand, not to condone, and certainly not to stand idly by while violence is wrought by one group on another. I remember well the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11/2001; the heroic crash of United Flight 93 in a field in Pennsylvania and the major sea change that brought to our sense of safety and security as Americans. The overwhelming response to that was  a record number of flags, flag bumper stickers and other jingoistic emblems sold and an impulse to go to war. Very few people took the time to reflect on what might make young Middle Eastern men resort to such an atrocious act of terrorism. When ministers dared to preach on that topic, they were often castigated by their own congregations. Admittedly, many spoke too soon about our own culpability in those acts of terrorism without giving adequate time for the grief and the shock to wash over our collective consciousness and recede enough to allow time for reflection, but even to this day, many want to paint with broad brush strokes the colors of intolerance over a people and religion, to paint “them” the enemy rather than looking at how US foreign policy and involvement in other countries might have contributed to a sense of despair and helplessness for these young men, opening up the door for radical fundamentalists—who act less in the name of Allah than in the name of power—to corrupt their thinking so that we Americans were the enemy- Satan incarnate—and the way to strike back was in great violence. Do you see how we have painted them in the same colors they painted us?

The Golden Rule requires us to put away our paint by numbers and instead to begin to explore the contours of a people and culture and religion in real time, in real life, much like someone who is visually impaired might “see” another through gently exploring the face of the other with fingers; that up close and personal.

However, Armstrong goes on to remind us, “we must still dissociate ourselves from his atrocity. Nor should the ‘principle of charity' make us passive and supine in the face of injustice, cruelty, and discrimination. As we develop our compassionate mind, we should feel an increasing sense of responsibility for the suffering of others and resolve to do everything we can to free them from their pain.”

She goes on to say that when we speak out in defense of our values that we must make sure we understand the context fully and “do not dismiss the values of our opponents as barbaric simply because they seem alien to us. We may find that we have the same values but express them in a radically different way.”

So for me, this means homework because, I confess, the actions of ISIS in brutally killing people and destroying ancient artifacts just seems cray-cray to me. I am tempted to shudder in revulsion and disgust and paint them with those well worn colors we’ve been discussing. I will never condone their actions or invite them to join hands as we sing Kumbayah, but if I’m to seek to understand their actions I must admit that I don’t know anything about them. I must seek to learn more of their history, of the socio-economic, historical, cultural biases that led them to believe this type of behavior is right. I must put away my own paint by number set and seek to feel the contours of their faces, their lives, their struggle. I must admit I don't understand their world, but I do understand that they are a part of mine.

Then, and only then, will I be able to have an informed opinion as to how we deal with them. And even if we must meet violence with violence, at least that can be done knowing we are going to war with humans just like us, shaped by their culture and history,  just as we have done, trying to find their voice in the only way they know how. When we can at least stretch so far as to be reminded of the fact that we are all equally monsters and angels, depending on the perspective, then perhaps we can take greater care in how we treat one another and work for a world in which all would feel seen and heard and in so doing, dare to see and hear the “other,” too. If we can do it, so can ISIS, so can people in our own nation from every political/ideological point of view. We have those, such as Dale Hansen and Tom Sosnik and Michael Sam to show us how to begin, with baby steps. And as we all can testify, once a baby starts to walk, it takes no time at all to learn  how to run. Let's run. 

 

 

 

The Pi of Love

Today I officiated at a wedding at the Blue Skies Inn Bed and Breakfast. I’ve done several weddings there; it’s a beautiful place and the innkeepers, Sally Thurston and Mike
Dutcher are wonderful people and great community allies. But this one was to be a little different. The couple had chosen today specifically because it was Pi Day. Pi Day is celebrated every March 14 to lift up the mathematical symbol. Pi  is  used to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159. But that’s just the starting point. It has been calculated to over one trillion digits beyond its decimal point. Today’s date, beyond the normal celebration of 3.14 is even more special; it’s the centennial Pi date that won’t happen again for another hundred years. Today,  you can live in the pi  moment up to  3.141592653 if you are paying attention. It’s too late for this morning but here in Colorado, there is still an opportunity to pause and savor the once a century moment of 3/14/15 9:26:53 PM.  Even those who are mathematically challenged (i.e. me) have a love affair with Pi; It is so symbolic of life and love.

As an irrational and transcendental number, it will continue infinitely without repetition or pattern. And isn’t that how love circumscribes our lives? We can point to a beginning, but from there on out, it is a mystery that goes on and on, as long as we seek out the next computation of how love informs the diameters—the borders of our lives. Just as in love, the full value of pi can never be known.  So often we try to approach love rationally, insisting that if we just take the decimal out far enough we can make sense of it all, find a rational reason to fall in love, understand the contours of a broken heart  divided into integers of logic, use a tried and true proof or theorem to determine in advance the correct way to proceed in love, with a sure-fire, front-ended guarantee that if you just do this and this, this will be always be true.

But that isn’t how the pi of love works.. It’s irrational, remember? And constantly changing, never repeating itself—not even once! not even after a trillion different variables have been added into the equation. There is no end to how long the pi of love will encircle us, where it will take us, if we only don’t give up on the equation, if we only try not to lose the thread of digits in the cluttered maze of our everyday lives, in the darkened corners of our unexamined hearts.

It’s an equation that I have yet to master. I confess: most of the time, at this point in my life, I feel too faint-hearted to try. It’s terrifying to think of what might happen if I dared to think I could attempt to get past the celebratory date of pi and into the actual seeking it out and letting its transcendental mystery seek to measure the circumference of my heart.

Every time I officiate at a wedding, I look with awe at the couple tying the knot-- young, old, first marriage, second or third, gay, straight, lesbian—and I think how do you know? What gives you the audacity to say “I do” and mean it forever, for infinity?

Photo Credit: Sally Thurston

And I thought the same things looking at this charming couple today, so young and full of love, and full of hope. “As you stand here, today,” I told them, “3.1415-- this is your starting point, too, this creation of a circle of love whose circumference will go on and on, a mystery, irrational, but never repetitious, never dull. May you always find joy in the mystery, meaning in the irrational, and may you be centered in the transcendental nature of this love, this never-ending calculation that will take the fullness of your lives to explore, understanding that even then, your love will never be fully known.”

Before they exchanged their rings, I held them up high, saying, as I almost always do at this point, “The ring is an outward and visible expression of an inward and invisible bond.” But today I also added,  “The circle is such a simple shape, but the pi of it is complex and never-ending. May these simple circles, these rings be a symbol of the complex and never-ending nature of your marriage.”

It was a wonderful ceremony and I found myself, as I often do, verklempt at the irrational nature of love, the infinite amount of ways we can find love and meaning in our lives, the possibilities that await us if we can just keep our heart open to the pi of love and life.

In a 1967 episode of Star Trek, Kirk asks Spock if there are any mathematical problems that just can’t be solved. “Compute to the last digit the value of pi,” Spock replies.

Single or partnered, wherever we find ourselves on this historic pi day, may this be our life long adventure; the impossible task of finding the end of love, daily seeking ways to deepen and enrich our lives with all the many ways love shows up, through all of its irrationality, and may we meet the newness of each experience with gratitude for the mystery which resides in the circle of love.

Of course, I ended the day with my own celebration: Apple pie--- that’s always a sure winner!

 

Photo Credit: Cate Terwilliger