First Unitarian Society
September 16, 2001
Words of Gathering:
We gather at this hour, week by week, as an ordinary thing,
To create and strengthen and celebrate a community of faith --
Dedicated to values of compassion, reason, and responsibility,
Summoned by a shared vision of a world of peace and love,
dignity and equality, freedom and justice.
This has been no ordinary week, and we do not come together in the ordinary way.
Instead of eager and confident in our quest for the truth and goodness of life,
We come stricken and confused, grieving and bewildered, outraged and heartsick,
Seeking less the adventure of truth than the comfort of community;
The reassurance that the familiar faces still surround us, that some order remains,
And above all, that the values we believed in before these unimaginable events
are still real, and still matter.
Perhaps we come even for the first time,
wondering if there is a word we have missed hearing until now,
A word that might have hope to offer, in an hour darkened by the ashes of ruins,
and the wreck of lives.
Is arbitrary cruelty indeed the final word? Have evil and death the upper hand?
No, dearly beloved, it is not so -- not unless we choose to have it so.
The arc of the moral universe is long, said Thoreau, -- unbearably long, sometimes --
But it bends toward justice.
Those things we have always found to be lastingly real and powerful are real and powerful still,
And continue to nurture the human spirit, even in this terrible time.
Love. Beauty. The community of memory and promise. The work of justice. The trust of children.
Music. Flowers. Light. The heritage of freedom. The inner stillness.
Humanity's ancient dream of peace.
In that recollection, in that hope, in that timid assurance, we kindle this chalice,
And seek the illumination, wisdom, and strength of our being together.
Reading:
Song IX W.H. Auden, adapted
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffins, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message They Are Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white throats of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
They were our North, our South, our East and West,
Our working week and our Sunday rest;
Our noon, our midnight, our talk, our song;
We thought that love was safe for ever; we were wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can come to any good.
Reflections:
There comes a point when it is not possible to take in any more information. Despite our gluttony for facts and pictures and data, for analysis and interpretation and perspectives, there comes a point when the mind knows more than the heart can hold or absorb. It has been well said that our thinking functions at the rate of electrical connections, whereas our feelings are composed of chemical reactions, a slower proposition. If we are to survive this collective ordeal, it is important -- it is necessary -- that we give ourselves the time to sit still and let our feelings happen. It is important, and necessary, that we give up trying to understand and make sense of what is to some extent incomprehensible; that we cease trying to control what was not ours to decide. Within each of us, and amongst us here, there is an endurance, beneath the anger and the bafflement and the tears, an endurance as old as suffering, that knows how to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, one step at a time.
These next few moments are dedicated to that stillness and that fortitude; to the tears that need to flow, and the ache that needs to be met, and the endurance that lies underneath it all. Music is the universal language of the human spirit; pure feeling given form. It is also a testimony to our capacity for aspiration and for beauty. When we must face the terrible question, Am I a the same kind of being as those who could inflict such wanton horror and suffering as these attacks? We may still take comfort in the assurance that we are also members of the human race that can create such sublime harmony and beauty as this music. The poet John Hall Wheelock puts it this way:
Reading:
Song VII John Hall Wheelock
Life burns in us like fire,
And song goes up in flame;
The body returns in ashes
To the ashes whence it came.
Out of things it rises,
And laughs, and loves, and sings;
Slowly it subsides again
Into the char of things.
Yet a voice soars above it --
Love is great and strong;
The best of us forever
Escapes, in love and song.
A Little Word David Bumbaugh
War is such a little word.
It slips so easily from the tongue.
But once spoken
It is difficult to recall.
It makes its clamorous way around the world
Bringing unanticipated and undreamed
Consequences.
War is a word that belongs
To the world of melodrama—
The world of obvious villains
And gallant heroes—
The world of unmistakable evil
And untarnished virtue—
A world where tit-for-tat,
Eye-for-eye and tooth for tooth,
Furious response to violent affront
Suffices to return the world
To pre-Adamic purity.
Unfortunately,
We do not live in the world of melodrama.
We live in a world of tragedy—
Of tangled motives,
Of murky consequences—
A world in which good intentions
Mask self-serving, self-righteous choices,
Create that which we most hope to avoid—
A world in which our hubris delivers us
Into the hands of Nemesis.
Pray for the wisdom
To temper our melodramatic fury
With the deeper wisdom
And the honest grief
Of the tragic vision.
Not for a Nation Edna St. Vincent Millay
Not for a nation:
Not the dividing, the estranging, thing
For;
Nor, in a world so small, the insulation
Of dream from dream -- where dreams are links in the chain
Of a common hope; that man may yet regain
His dignity on earth, -- where before all
Eyes; small eyes of elephant and shart; still
Eyes of lizard grey in the sub-tropic noon,
Blowing his throat our into a scarlet, edged-with-cream incredible balloon
Suddenly, and suddenly dancing, hoisting and lowering his body on his short legs on the hot stone
window-sill;
And the eyes of the upturned, grooved and dusty, rounded, dull cut-worm
Staring upward at the spade, --
These, all these, and more, from the corner of they see man infirm,
Tottering like a tree about to fall, --
Who yet had such high dreams -- who not for this was made (or so he said) -- nor did design to die at all.
Not for a nation,
Not the dividing, the estranging thing
For;
Nor, on a world so small, the insulation
Of dream from dream,
In what might be today, has we been better welders, a new chain for pulling down old buildings,
uprooting the wrong trees; these
Not for;
Not for my country right or wrong;
Not for the drum or the bugle; not for the song
Which pipes me away from my home against my will along with the other children
To where I would not go
And makes me say what I promised never to say, and do the thing I am through with --
Into the Piper's Hill;
Not for the flag
Of any land because myself was born there
Will I give up my life.
But I will love that land where man is free,
And that will I defend.
"To the end?" you ask, "To the end?" -- Naturally, to the end.
What is it to the world, or to me,
That I beneath an elm, not beneath a tamarisk-tree
First filled my lungs, and clenched my tiny hands already spurred and nailed
Against the world, and wailed
In anger and frustration that all my tricks had failed and I been torn
Out of the cave where I was hiding, to suffer in the world as I have done and still do --
Never again -- oh, no, no more on earth -- ever again to find abiding-place.
Birth -- awful birth...
Whatever the country whatever the color and race.
The color and the traits of each,
The shaping of his speech, --
These can the elm, given a long time, alter; these,
Too, the tamarisk,
But if he starve, but if he freeze --
Early, in his own tongue, he knows;
And though with arms or bows or a dipped thorn
Blown through a tube, he fights -- the brisk
Rattle of shot he is not slow to tell
From the sound of ripe seed bursting from a poddy shell;
And he whom, all his life, life has abused
Yet knows if he be justly or unjustly used.
I know these elms, this beautiful doorway; here
I am at home, if anywhere.
A natural fondness, an affection which need never be said,
Rises from the wooden sidewalks warm as the smell of new-baked bread
From a neighbor's kitchen. It is dusk. The sun goes down.
Sparsely strung along the street the thrify lights appear.
It is pleasant. It is good.
I am very well-known here; here I am understood.
I can walk along the street, or turn into a path unlighted, without fear
Of poisonous snakes, or of any face in town.
Tall elms, my roots go down
As deep as yours into this soil, yes, quite as deep.
And I hear the rocking of my cradle. And I must not sleep.
Not for a nation; not for a little town,
Where, when the sun goes down, you may sit without fear
On the front porch, just out of reach of the arc-light, rocking,
With supper ready, wearing a pale new dress, and your baby near
In its crib, and your husband due to be home by the next trolley that you hear bumping into Elm Street -
no;
But for a dream that was dreamt an elm-tree's life ago --
And longer, yes, much longer, and what I mean you know.
For the dream, for the plan, for the freedom of man as it was meant
To be;
Not for the structure set up so hastily, by rule of thumb
And over-night, bound to become
Loose, lop-sided, out of plumb.
But for the dream, for the plan, for the freedom of man as it was meant
To be
By men with more vision, more wisdom, more purpose, more brains
Than we,
(Possibly, possibly)
Men with more courage, men more unselfish, more intent
Than we, upon their dreams, upon their dream of Freedom, --
Freedom not alone
For oneself, but for all, wherever the word is known,
In whatever tongue, or the longing in whatever spirit --
Men with more honor. (That remains
To be seen! That we shall see!)
Possibly. Possibly.
And if still these truths be held to be
Self-evident.
Reflections:
For me, one of the ironies that makes these attacks so horrifying is the way in which they have used the strength and the resources of our own culture against us -- and the potential that still exists for this act to continue to do just that. Rather than the military equipment of an enemy nation, our own commercial airliners were turned into deadly missiles, with their continent-spanning tanks of jet fuel as bomb payloads. The very triumph of engineering that enabled the towers of the World Trade Center to stand as landmarks on the New York skyline made them inescapably death traps. By the same token, if we now succumb to the hysteria of anger, fear, and vengeance, then terrorism will have stolen our own popular opinion to make our country ever more hated, reviled and distrusted in the world community. If we turn against our Arab and Islamic fellow citizens here in the United States, it will have used our own prejudice to create a debt of reparations that our own grandchildren will have to pay. We cannot undo what these wicked ones have already done, but we do not need to give them these further posthumous satisfactions.
And not only in the material world have our strengths been twisted to evil use. So many of the values that we trust, that have been and still are the foundations of our way of life, have been perverted to serve destruction and to create suffering; where shall we now place our confidence? We set great store, you and I and this community especially, by the values of intelligence and reason. Yet if one thing is clear above all others, it is that these attacks were planned with careful intelligence and orchestrated with exquisite reasoning. We celebrate courage, and commitment, and it is true that there is a sense in which these acts were devious and cowardly. Yet it would appear that those who carried them out were people of such conviction that they would go knowingly to their deaths to achieve this horrible end; they must have believed themselves brave. Just as we now suppose that we know who was ultimately responsible for this evil, and want those people held accountable, so they blamed our nation, our government, our culture, for the suffering they experienced, and sought revenge, and thought themselves righteous.
It is wisely said that we should choose our enemies carefully, for in the struggle against them, we become like them. How can we, as we attempt to cope, to understand, to respond appropriately to this incalculable suffering -- how can we try NOT to become that which we struggle against? For if we do; if we descend into the vortex of hatred and endlessly reciprocated destruction and suffering, then indeed have the forces of evil triumphed, and something more than the proud towers been laid low, and something more than the precious lives of our brothers and sisters and friends been lost.
I think we keep ourselves from this second tragedy by striving to remember what these cruel destroyers forgot; by staying true to the disciplines of light. I think we remain true to the best of who we are by remembering five things; five things that will make it impossible for us to do what they did, to become their mirror images. The first of these things, the disciplines of light, is connection; as human beings, we are connected to each other, each and every one. The typist at the Pentagon, the stockbroker on the 98th floor, the mother in Kabul, the shepherd in the desert hills of Afghanistan; every single one is our brother or sister; our kin; our responsibility. There is no suffering that doesn't matter, no life that doesn't count. You don't make people into objects, dispensable in the service of a cause, no matter how righteous that cause. This, the terrorists ignored; this is the first discipline of light.
The second is freedom; that every person has a right to their opinions, their work, their happiness, their choices, their life -- as our first principle has it, their inherent worth and dignity. It is a grave matter to deprive anyone of these things, for serious cause arising from their own behavior; it is not to be arbitrary, it is not to be because of what they look like, or what their name sounds like, or how they dress, or where they come from, or where they live in the world. As Thomas Jefferson once said, those who do not respect the freedom of others, cannot long retain freedom themselves. The terrorists forgot that freedom is the second discipline of light.
The human society that makes our lives meaningful and gives us wisdom and comfort and happiness is utterly dependent upon trust; trust is the third discipline of light. We cannot live with any graciousness or ease in a world where we have to suppose that at any moment, anyone around us may do any ghastly destructive thing. In order to be the kind of people who can achieve the greatness of which the human spirit is capable, we must rely on each other for fundamental fairness, civility, and kindness; we must be such people as can be relied upon. We know that our children need the experience of basic trust in order to thrive; of course, we need it ourselves. To honor the trust that others place in us, and to give them our trust in turn, is what the terrorist chose to forget; it is one of the indispensable disciplines of light.
The love of mercy is the fourth discipline of light. Even when connection fails, when freedom and trust are vanquished, we are called upon to love mercy, to take pity on suffering, to use our powers to heal wounds and to mend brokenness. To love mercy is to want the good of others, whether or not it benefits ourselves, merely because the good of others makes the world a more gracious place. No one who loves mercy can inflict senseless harm; those who brought death and destruction on Tuesday had lost the love of mercy, which is a discipline of light.
Finally, the disciplines of light include an ongoing commitment to the possibility of peace. Peace, not just as the final outcome when the battles have been so destructive that there is no one left to fight, as a by-product of victory or defeat, but peace as a goal in itself, as the fruit of justice, as a way of being in the world. The possibility of peace requires above all a commitment to acknowledge our own impulses toward destruction, revenge, bigotry, the lust for power and control; to acknowledge that all this is within us and not to let it determine our actions. The discipline of the possibility of peace means that even righteous indignation takes second place to a reasoned consideration of what promotes the good of world as a whole; that the pursuit of justice is deliberate and constructive; that we resist temporary, selfish satisfactions in favor of doing what is calm and generous, and what promotes healing instead of creating suffering. What these suicidal terrorists did contained no healing, only the creation of great and lasting suffering; it held no seed of peace, no hope for the possibility of peace. So long as we are willing to live by and act by our faith in the possibility of authentic peace in the world, and only so long, we cannot become as they were, or do what they did.
If you are willing, in the days and weeks and months and even years that are to come in the wake of this overwhelming deed and unimaginable suffering, to pledge to yourself to observe the disciplines of light, then I invite you, as we end our time together once more with music, to come forward, and light a candle. But consider well. What I am inviting is not merely an expression of sorrow -- though it is that, too -- but it is also a pledge. It will mark you, and shape your options, as definitively as wedding vows or any oath marks you. The disciplines of light are easy, when the light is everywhere; at careless noon, when it seems that nothing could ever be dark again. To love mercy is easy, when there is no costly loss to account. To keep connection is easy, with those whose differences from ourselves are neither profound nor challenging. Trust comes readily to the privileged who have never been betrayed. The freedom whose opposite is slavery is easy to choose; the freedom whose opposite is safety and control is less alluring. To pledge oneself to peace in the abstract requires only sentiment; to pledge oneself to peace as an alternative to present anger and righteous vengeance is to choose that value over some of the most powerful impulses of our evolutionary heritage -- rage and fear.
I believe that there is a measured force that may be the tool of justice in the hands of thoughtful power, and I believe that the disciplines of light do not stand opposed to the quest for justice. But I know that real justice is not the child of anger or despair, and that power which acts in haste or arrogance is not thoughtful power. I believe that it is the disciplines of light that make us human, that move us forward, inch by painful inch, out of the chaos of suspicion, fear, and violence, toward the community of kinship and the highest hopes of the human spirit. I believe that no matter who else forgets them, I am forever summoned to remember my connection to my fellow beings, to be vigilant for my own and others' freedom, to give substance to the trust upon which we construct the meaning of our shared world. From the lips of every teacher who ever gave wisdom to the world, I am instructed to love mercy, to seek the good of all people, and to believe at every hour, even this hour, in the possibility of peace. In unfathomable sadness, in the knowledge that my world and I are forever changed, and in the firm resolve to be true, now more than ever, to those disciplines of light that have informed my life thus far, I kindle this flame. If it is to burn alone, so be it; may it cast its light boldly into the gathering darkness. If you will set your pledge beside mine, then let the light be multiplied, a hundred fold, a thousand fold, until it reach the farthest corner of this beleaguered earth, and guide our spirits through this valley of the shadow of death, to a new found day.