When We All Got Along

Liturgical Materials for Sunday the 15^th of December, 2002

Mark Belletini, Minister, Minister
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, Ohio

Opening words [Next] [back to top]

We are here
to remember we are only a brief moment in history
and a very small part of the universe,
and that, nonetheless, our every hour is valuable,
our every breath is worthy .
We celebrate this truth in our art form of worship
using music, silence and word
as our offerings of awe and wonder.

And at celebration's end
(together) may our reason and our passion
keep us true to ourselves, true to each other,
and true to those shared visions of what we can together become…

A Story for our Days by Ray Nandyal [Next] [back to top]

Wise Men, Scorpions, Turkeys and Eagles

There was a time when the water cooler used to be the place where co-workers met to discuss the news of the day. These days, at least at my place of work, we meet instead by a pool of network printers.

This was where I ran into a couple of colleagues, let's call them Janice and Khalid, the other day. As soon I greeted them, I realized we three seemed like a setup line for a joke: Janice is Jewish, Khalid a Jordanian Muslim, and I a Unitarian Universalist with a Hindu upbringing. However, there was no humor or levity in the air. We picked up our print jobs and were about to scurry out of there like polite mice, when I saw a picture of a turkey taped to the wall--a leftover decoration from Thanksgiving. Then I heard myself saying, "Happy holidays! Hope you'll have a restful time, and who knows, we may even get peace on earth one of these days."

"We'll never have peace on earth," said Janice.

"She's right," Khalid agreed. "Too many things have happened for people to forget."

"Can I quickly share a story that my older sister used to tell me when I was a child?" I said.

"It goes like this. Once a wise man and his disciples were crossing a stream. The wise man spotted a scorpion in the water about to drown. He bent down, picked it up, and was going to place it on the bank when the scorpion stung him.

In pain, he dropped it back in the water. But he bent down and picked it up again. And again the scorpion stung him. Again he dropped it in the water and was going to bend down to pick it up a third time, when one of his disciples screamed at him. "You're a fool, not a wise man!" he said. "Why would you try to save that scorpion's life

after it bit you twice?" But the wise man smiled, reached for the scorpion, and placed it on the safe, dry ground. The scorpion seemed to have no venom left in it to strike again. The wise man rinsed his hands in water, turned to his disciples, and said, "If the scorpion is so stubborn in its desire to do harm, why can't I be equally stubborn in my desire not to harm???"

I looked at my colleagues. "Don't you think one way we can bring about peace on earth is to be stubborn about being ourselves no matter what the other person does?"

Janice laughed in my face. "I don't think you really mean what you're saying. Things like that sound good in stories, but in real life, if someone hurts you or one of your family members, you will be screaming for revenge."

"She's right again," said Khalid. "You'd make a good writer for Hallmark cards, though."

I was struck by the irony of the situation. A Muslim and a Jew, who probably didn't see eye to eye on too many topics, were both agreeing on one thing: that I was a fool.

I wanted to say that I knew what I was talking about, that I have had my belief system tested by events like the murder of a family member.

Then the picture of the turkey caught my eye again. "I'd like to believe that human beings are eagles that think they are turkeys," I said. "We can fly to the mountain-top if we realize who we are."

"It's the other way round," said Janice. "All human beings are turkeys. Some of the turkeys, like you, have fantasies of flying, but that doesn't make us eagles. I, for one, would like to be practical and not attempt the impossible."

I wondered how practical it was to be part of an endless cycle of revenge. Wouldn't it make more sense to end the cycle in the first place with a refusal to return hate for hate? (Or harm for harm.)

"Even if we are turkeys," I said, "we may still reach the mountaintop by flying a little bit at a time, from one plateau to another."

I must have sounded tired and hopeless. "Look at the bright side," said Janice. " I can see why your wife married you. Some of us women like dreamers and poets, like Dr. Zhivago in that movie."

Khalid placed a hand on my shoulder. "I agree. Keep dreaming. Even if your dreams don't come true, at least they'll make a movie about you."

We left the area with smiles on our faces. World peace was nowhere in sight, but there was a moment of peace in three hearts in a small corner of the world filled with Hewlett Packard printers.

Sequence [Next] [back to top]

Grey skies over my head,
throw yourselves like quilts over my busy life
and remind me to sit down and rest.

Stars of winter, Orion's sash sparkling
across the heavens, remind me by your distance
that, compared to the infinity of the universe,
every single thing I struggle with on earth
is small, parochial and hardly universal in scope.

Great music of the season, glowing with
angel-songs and filigreed with great mysteries,
remind me that my own birth,
like the births of all people in this room,
was no less mysterious
than that ancient and celebrated birth,
no less brimming with wonder,
for all children that come into the world
have lives as precious to them
as Jesus' life was to him.

So now come, Love greater than my longing,
silence greater than fatigue of tongues,
and haul my heart away from the undue frenzy of
the season, and bestow it to rest, proportion and
the haunting dark beauty of winter's long nights.

(silence)

Remembering that I am not in this world alone
with the gray clouds and winter stars and holiday music,
I reach out with my heart to embrace those I love or find hard to love,
all those with whom my life is interwoven in passion, regret, love and peace.

I ask that you join me now in answering those who knock at the door of your heart by welcoming them by name, aloud if you'd like,
or by a silent embrace in the warm candlelit welcome hall inside your imagination.

(naming)

O great mystery of Love, you that unveil yourself
constantly as warm hands and open hearts and tender voices and sweet sounds,
come and reveal your present incarnation in this beautiful music.

First Reading [Next] [back to top] comes from the work of the influential 20th century psychologist, CARL G. JUNG. It's from his book, The Undiscovered Self, completed in 1957.

It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as individuals have an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything they do not know, and do not want to know about themselves, by foisting it off on somebody else.

Nothing has a more divisive and alienating effect upon society than this moral complacency and lack of responsibility, and nothing promotes understanding and reconciliation more than mutual withdrawal of projection.

Second Reading [Next] [back to top] comes from Maria Rosa Menocal's very recent book, The Ornament of the World, which is about the community of Jews, Christians and Muslims in Medieval Spain, or as it was called then, El Andalus.

By the middle of the thirteenth century, translations of Arabic stories into both Latin and the vernaculars had become some of the bestsellers of Europe, and these in turn laid the groundwork for some of the seminal works of early European fiction (like the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales). The tales embody the hope that stories can bring, since, by their very nature, they resist clear-cut interpretations and are likely to reveal the different ways in which truths and realities can be perceived. In its insistence that the point of stories, of literature, is to pose difficult questions rather than to propose easy answers or facile morals, this tradition is a central part of the Andalusian legacy to subsequent European culture.

One of the most distinguished descendants of that tradition…is Boccaccio's Decameron, that masterpiece about the saving power of stories and storytelling in the face of death. This fourteenth-century Italian work's brutal description of the Black Death serves as the prelude for a hundred stories about life itself, many of which speak to the happy complexities of the religious and cultural admixtures of the medieval world. One senses Boccaccio knew that much of the world, with its relish of contradictions, was on the verge of perishing in the plague. Among his stories, none is more iconic than "The Three Rings," in which (the Muslim Sultan) Saladin asks a Jew at his court which of the three religions of the Children of Abraham is the true one. In the tradition of the Andalusian collections, the Jew answers Saladin with a story.

Sermon: When We All Got Along[Next][back to top]

By the robe I am wearing, you can tell that I serve as one of the ministers of this church. But I assure you that this is my calling, not my primal identity. I assure you that this parson is a person too, a person who finds himself doing many things not usually associated with his role or robe…sorting heaps of laundry, mumbling curses in holiday traffic snarls, fretting about cash flow, talking with his sister about the family reunion in July, worrying about his parents' fading energy, going out to the movies with neighbors, writing letters to friends in Germany and Chile who have no idea what Unitarian Universalists might be.

I also read the newspapers, watch the news, and then spend some time grousing about the state of the world. I respond to these realities sometimes as a citizen and sometimes as a minister. As a citizen (or was it as a minister?), I wrote a furious e-letter to Trent Lott this week for his contemptible and, unfortunately, quite typical remark on segregation. And I am working on a note to the President letting him know how frustrated I am, again, as a citizen, that by fiat alone, as if he were King George III, he is blurring the wall between religion and the state in a way that makes me tremble for my beloved nation's future.

But of course as both a citizen and a minister I tremble for other reasons too. I sometimes tremble out of outright fear. As I read about the debated possibilities of an attack on Iraq, I tremble big time, not just for the future of my nation alone, but for the future of the world. Such violence, threatened or enacted has this way of diminishing the edges of my life. It makes the infinite sky overhead all of a sudden seem to close in on me, as if I were locked up in a cramped closet, instead of being free to move across the meadows of an open and welcoming world.

Oh yes, all of these worldly things affect both my life as a citizen and my life as a minister. So, as one or the other, I respond with frustration, signing petitions from the Move Out organization asking the President to let the Inspections team do their work before their report is judged inadequate. Sometimes I sign with my title, my Rev. Dr., just to deliberately link my citizenship to my calling.

After that, I grouse for a while again, I roll my eyes, and I rant, in the presence of those who will put up with my ranting, about a world gone mad.

Ah, but I am more than just frustrated by events. I am burdened with sadness. You see, I do my daily work as a minister with a citizen's broken heart. My heart aches every time I hear about more children killed in a Palestinian village due to an Israeli policy. I weep every time I hear of a suicide bomb going off in a crowded market in Tel Aviv. My heart breaks when I hear about children in Baghdad, or Cuba for that matter, having little to eat because adults in the United States want to bring the parents of these children to their humble-pie knees. I am downcast every time I hear that depressing man, Pat Robertson, ruthlessly defaming the whole religion of Islam with a smirk on his face, almost every single night on his daily television show. And you will find precious little rebuttal from other Christians or other religious groups anywhere. I weep for the future when I read the opinion pages in our newspapers, reeking with ignorance and righteousness and vengeance. I am also sad that I so often feel embarrassed before my European and South American friends who are baffled at the way so many citizens of this nation hide behind their bully God's coat-tails, and then peek out from behind them to stick their tongues out at the rest of the world. It's so sad, sad. I am so sad.

And, besides knowing frustration and sadness, I must also live through these days with horrific knowledge inside me. For I have no reason to doubt the reported cruelties of Mr. Hussein against citizens of his own nation, especially the Kurds, and even members of his own family. Like King Herod of old, in the famous Christmas story, we are hardly dealing with a statesman of nobility and integrity, whether there is a war or not. I am aware of that. I am also aware of the huge duplicities and dishonesties tainting the leadership of every nation, including especially our own, when it comes to actually taking seriously the ancient Christmas hope, "Peace on earth, and good will toward all."

Somehow I, as a man who was a United States citizen before he ever responded to his call to ministry, has to conduct his ministry in the midst of these inner upheavals. I must work, knowing what I know, feeling what I feel, and hope that some small good comes out of what I choose to do, or choose to say, anyway. And I know most importantly that I have to find some sense of hope for myself first, so that I do not walk with lead heavy feet across the beloved pastures of my pastoral calling.

Thus, sometimes I put the disgusted, sad and pained citizen aside, climb into the pulpit with my robe on, and let the minister in me preach sermons like this one:

Now hear me. I preach this, knowing that other citizens of the United States, whom I love and respect, cut the pie in different ways than I do. And by now you know I am not talking about the Pat Robertsons and Trent Lotts here, either, whom I regard as unreformed bigots I cannot either respect or like. I am talking about men and women who have come to differing conclusions about war and peace and diplomacy, from honest struggle and the realities of their own experience. Such differences will never go away, I know, and I think that is grand, frankly. I cannot imagine what possible good could be found in complete uniformity, or what health there can be in universal conformity. I learn from those who are different from me. In fact, as you will see, my sermon this morning is about how working with differences created a peaceful community, whereas working with a vision of conformity destroyed said community.

So thus I need to say that, personally, I am not alarmed that there will always be honest differences between the three Abrahamic religions. Not just culturally, but doctrinally. A Protestant Christian friend of mine will say that the death of Jesus atoned for his sins. A Muslim friend of mine does not believe Jesus even died on the cross at all. He also believes, following the clear teaching in the Qu'ran, that Ishmael was the son of Abraham taken to the top of the mountain as a sacrifice. But my Jewish friends will tell you it was Yitzak, or Isaac, who mounted that awful hill. The images and stories simply do not agree.

These are differences that cannot be surmounted by simply ignoring the texts. And, personally, I share no optimism with certain non-religious types who are patiently waiting for everyone to just come to their senses, throw away all the ancient scriptures, just like that, and claim a uniform secularism. This strikes me a lot like waiting around to take a snapshot of the tooth-fairy. It's just not going to happen.

No, somehow, we have to find someway to learn to live with our differences as they are. And I'm clear, as both a minister and a citizen, we have to do this in justice and with fairness.

There are those who tell me this simply cannot be done. But just as I don't share the optimism of the radical secularists, I don't share the pessimism of the doom and gloom set. I say it was done once, and what was once done can be done again. Once upon a time, I say, we all got along.

The world was hardly much different back then from what it is now. There was violence then too, and threats of violence. Stupidity and arrogance. False pride and stubbornness. Righteousness and deviousness in ample supply everywhere.

But I am telling you that in the midst of that reality, for a few hundred years, the folks of three different religions and cultures figured out how to get along, prosper together, and respect each other.

It was in Spain, which was then called al-Andalus by most everyone, although the Christians called it Hispania sometimes, and the Jews, Sepharad. The city of Cordova was its resplendent center, a gorgeous city of fountains and paved streets. There were hundreds of libraries, where fables and stories were read to the delighted. There was fresh-water plumbing with efficient sewers, and abundant food in the markets. It was the greatest city in Europe at that time, in the 800's and 900's of our era. One of Caliphs who ruled there had broken off relationships with Baghdad and established independence for al-Andalus. And Jews and Christians and Muslims worked together in that land, participating in the same government and businesses while maintaining their ancestral faiths. One of the Muslim Caliph's chief vizier for a generation was a Jewish leader, and later, the government's ambassador to Germany was a Christian bishop. Education for children of all religions…their own… was encouraged.

Of course with all of this working together, it has to be expected that the distinct cultures inter-mixed a bit too. Sections of the Christian Mass were recited in Arabic instead of Latin. Mozarabic music fused Christian, Jewish and Arabic Muslim themes into a new style that many people still find splendidly beautiful, when they can find an arcane CD with a Mozarabic Mass on it. Wealth easily crossed the lines of religion and nationality. Architecture especially flourished, and mosque, synagogue and church brightened the townscape with rhythmic arches and filigreed columns. Sometimes the various congregations even shared the same space.

Through several caliphates, for almost three hundred years, there was peace and prosperity in al-Andalus, in Spain. But you and I know that it did not last forever. This beautiful and forgotten civilization was brought down by venal members of each religion who felt that uniformity was more important than getting along, and that the rightness of one particular form of religion should be binding on all people. Or at the very least, that isolation led to more freedoms. Radical Moroccan Muslims, who strangely and bizarrely enough called themselves the "Unitarians" (no relation!) for their belief in enforced unity, assaulted the government of Cordova for its encouragement of cooperation between religions. A group of Jewish leaders under Judah Halevi, tired of the easy pluralism, got up and left Spain for Palestine and Egypt, where there were sizable Jewish communities that were isolated and untainted with the larger world. And a group of Christian fanatics cursed the name of Muhammed publicly, as a way of showing their contempt for Islam. The local governor was very patient with these upstarts at first, just laughing them off as deranged, not criminals. But when they came by their tens and twenties, he felt he had to uphold the law and had them executed for their deliberate breaking of the law against defaming other religions. Fortunately, the "suicide martyrs," as they were called, did not have the impact their leaders intended, and peace held out for several succeeding generations.

The story Laura Nandyal told this morning is based on one found in the Decameron of Boccaccio. But the Italian author got many of his plots (including, we think, this one), from stories that had come in from al-Andalus, stories in that same stream of Arabic fables and stories we now call the Thousand and One Nights of Sheherazad. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and even many of Shakespeare's plays owe a debt to these stories that filtered up from al-Andalus into the rest of Europe.

This particular story of the rings was told, according to Boccaccio, to the great sultan, Saladin the Great, himself. The story says that he asked a certain Jewish man, named Nathan the Wise, to decide, by reason alone, which religion was the true religion, the Muslim religion of the Quran, the Jewish religion of the Tanakh, or the Christian religion of the Holy Bible. The story of the three rings we told our children this morning clearly says that kindness, truth-telling, non-violence, and love are signs of "the true religion." If you are violent, deceptive and cruel, don't even talk of how truly religious you are…you are only fooling yourself.

I, myself, think this wise and brilliant message makes this story one of the greatest stories of the western world myself. A story good for Muslims, Jews and Christians today as well as yesterday, a story good for Sunni Muslim leaders in Baghdad, Christian Methodist leaders in the White House, and Orthodox Jewish leaders in suburban Jerusalem.

I believe,with all my heart, that the present pattern of behavior in the world, justly described by Carl Jung as the projection of our own lies and insecurities onto the lives of others, have no chance of producing either peace or hope in this world. No chance at all. And as Ray Nandyal's friend made clear in his story, the continuing death of children only secures future generations of resentful martyrs, fighters and leaders who will continue to project their own form of hatred onto the faces of the enemy.

But the bit of medieval history I offered you this morning sounds a song in a different key. It hardly sounds like the much maligned "Dark Ages" to me. It sounds like a slice of paradise. For a few centuries, human beings with real differences learned to respect each other and work together for the common good. It sounds to me that folks in those days were unafraid of entering into covenants of trust, mutual respect, and encouragement with each other. It sounds to me that at least some folks in the "Dark Ages" were far more wise and kind and honest than the leaders of this present, post-Enlightenment age.

So maybe, in this dark season before the Solstice, we can join together to preach not the brilliance of the Enlightenment, but the virtues of a bit of Endarkenment to each nation and religion claiming that it has all the light. Maybe in this season of dark we can admit, like they did in al-Andalus, that, mostly, we're all really still in the dark about Ultimate Things, and that fighting each other about which is the true religion is utterly faithless. And maybe that maligned darkness is not the worst place to be, if peace can be found there.

I will still have to live as both a minister and a citizen all the rest of my days, dealing with the foolishness of nations and religions with broken heart, an outraged brain, and an angry spirit.

But, in the midst of it all, I lift up the remembrance of a time of peace and cooperation, a beautiful time which lifts up my hope and keeps me buoyant, alive and faithful in the midst of it all.

That's my life in these trying days.

What about yours?

Offeratory [Next][back to top]

Not because we must give, but because we can.
Not because we can give, but because we affirm.
Not because we affirm, but because we love.
Not because we love, but because we are grateful
that life is a gift, this moment is a gift, and
every opportunity to love is a gift…

and so we give to be a part of that stream of free and joyful
giving which began 13 billion years ago and
now flows into us.

We give, that even more wonder might be created, and that love might find a sturdy house in which it may begin to do its holy work, and then move beyond these doors into the world.

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Prayer for Humility [back to top]

O Love, whom I call today my heart's own parent, I pray: may my curiosity remain as strong as that
of a child who is still open to the world.

May my learning be wed to fun in this season,
like a child under the tree playing a new game.

May I know that I too am really still a child in this world, and that what I know of both religion and politics is like that of a child before it has learned to speak. Keep me ever hopeful that I can learn
and relearn and unlearn for the rest of my life. Amen.

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