04.02.08
Posted in Rev. Jason Shelton, Sermons at 6:08 pm
March 30, 2008
The Rev. Jason Shelton
I want to start this morning by very publicly saying that biology is not my thing. My only formal studies of the subject came in my junior year of high school under the tutelage of a less-than-stellar teacher we called “coach.” He was, in fact, the assistant football coach, and I think it’s fair to say that biology was not really his thing, either. Suffice it to say that the Wilson County public school system – which was pretty great as far as music was concerned – didn’t exactly serve me well in this regard.
So I’ve been doing some research on caterpillars over the past few weeks, and I’ve learned some things that “coach” failed to cover back in the day. What has really captured my imagination is the process that takes place inside the cocoon, or chrysalis. I knew that it was called metamorphosis, but until very recently I’d never really given much thought to what actually happened in the process. And given my relative unfamiliarity with the scientific approach, I’m afraid the best I can do is look at it and describe it in spiritual terms:
In order to become a butterfly, a caterpillar must be born again. I know I may have just lost a few of you, so let me explain in some detail. [1.] Inside of a caterpillar there are groups of cells called “imaginal disks.” You can think of them as embryonic stem cells. These cells are present from the beginning of the caterpillar’s life, but they don’t grow much at first. It’s only when the chrysalis is formed that they really take off.
Inside the chrysalis, enzymes are released that literally digest the tissue of the caterpillar’s body – muscles, digestive system, nervous system, even the heart – and the imaginal disks take the biological soup and reform it into new tissues – wings, legs, antennae and a whole new set of organs. Now I haven’t found any scientific writings to back me up here, but it seems to me that one could say that the caterpillar actually dies in that cocoon, and the butterfly that emerges has been born again as something entirely new.
What fascinates me about all of this from a spiritual perspective is the idea that the caterpillar actually integrates the reality and inevitability of death into its experience of being alive. Great spiritual teachers have spoken often of the centrality of this lesson: “it is in dying that we are born to eternal life”; “if you embrace death with your whole heart you will endure forever”; or even – a little spiritual wisdom from the Children’s Choir – “caterpillars crawl unless they go out on a limb.” When we learn to embrace this teaching – whether we call it change, growth, or death – we discover that the lessons of these experiences are not about endings and the grief of loss, but about uncovering new layers of meaning and understanding through the experience of transformation.
The story of the travelers on the road to Emmaus in the gospel of Luke has long been one of my favorites. The two companions are walking along having had their hearts broken, their dreams unfulfilled. “But we had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel,” they said. They had expectations of Jesus as messiah that he didn’t meet, that he couldn’t meet, and they didn’t understand how they could have gotten it all so wrong.
Many of the stories in gospels illustrate this point – that the life and ministry of Jesus was not about what people expected it to be about. In fact, I find it useful to remember that these stories were written down decades after Jesus’ death, when the newly forming Christian communities were discovering their own sense of mission independent of the long-awaited messiah who was to come and liberate Israel from her oppressors. They were finding meaning in living out the teachings of their rabbi – comforting, healing, feeding, clothing, loving those most in need of the compassion that Jesus modeled as the defining characteristic of the kingdom of God.
What the Emmaus story shows us is that when the followers of Jesus allowed themselves to be consumed by their sadness over his failure to meet their expectations, they missed the point. So sure were they in their misguided, projected image of him that they couldn’t even see him when he was standing right next to them.
But what was it that opened their eyes? “They knew him,” Luke says, “in the breaking of the bread.” It was only in the context of community, in the context of a ritual whose meaning was shared and understood, that his teachings finally made sense to them.
For many Christians, the journey to Emmaus is a metaphor for each person’s spiritual journey. In the Methodist tradition there is even a weekend retreat for adults called “Walk to Emmaus” that is designed to deepen spiritual understanding and commitment to living out the teachings of Jesus. As I was trying to figure out how I was going to weave the Emmaus story with all of these butterflies I had one of those spiritual “aha” moments: when I started looking up information about the “Walk to Emmaus” program I found that there is a version retreat that has been designed for youth. It’s called “chrysalis.” Both are intense experiences of sharing in community that make it possible for new life, new understanding, new meaning to emerge from each person’s spiritual growing pains.
But no matter what your spiritual or theological orientation, the purpose of our being together in community is exactly this – to discover and create meaning. This is the fundamental purpose of religion. In the spring issue of the Buddhist review Tricycle, Sociologist Robert Bellah has just published a particularly insightful article called “The R Word: Why militant atheists and fundamentalists both get religion wrong.” His basic premise is that the very popular crop of anti-religion authors on today’s best-seller lists (such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins) are making a flawed argument when they say that religion should be eliminated from human culture and replaced with science. Their beef with fundamentalism is justifiable and perhaps even useful, but in elevating these extremist’s approach to a baseline for the religious experience, Bellah argues that these folks miss the point of religion altogether.
He cites a rising wave of “anti-religious scientific evangelicals” who want to start a new kind of church. One wrote:
“We should let the success of the religious formula guide us. Let’s teach our children from a very young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome – and even comforting – than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know.” [2]
On one level, I completely resonate with this idea. But the reality is that I want to resonate with it – mostly out of anger and disappointment over what passes for “religion” in so many of our communities today – even though the argument doesn’t really hold. Bellah says that although the scientist claims to want to replace religious belief with scientific fact, what she wants to teach her children is not science, but myth – the story of the universe. Science cannot tell us that the universe is rich and beautiful, much less what is glorious or awesome. These are concepts that only work within a framework of meaning. To be sure, “religion” that tries to offer theories to compete with science clearly misses the point of religion altogether, but so to does science cease to be science when it tries to move into the realm of meaning-making.
My Unitarian Universalist framework finds this “story” of the universe appealing because it appeals to a set of values that have been cultivated and lifted up as worthy of both our contemplation and our service to others in the world. Faith in the limitlessness of possibility, the inspirational quality of discovery, and the inherent beauty and goodness of the natural world are hallmarks of our tradition. But that same Unitarian Universalist framework also tells me that there are others who share neither my values nor my spiritual framework for discerning what those values ought to be, and that I cannot dismiss them as being somehow less than me. All I can do is encourage others in their spiritual growth while at the same time committing to and deepening my own.
In some ways it is harder to live out that commitment here. We don’t have any agreed-upon texts or theological constructs that help us make meaning of the world we live in. I have often said that the closest thing we have to a common sacred scripture is our hymnal. In Unitarian Universalist communities, what we sing is often the best indicator of our values and the meaning we derive from our being together. We sing our commitments to theological diversity, to concerns about gender and affectional identity, to our care for the earth and its interdependent systems of being, and to our own spiritual growth. In a way, what we sing ministers to us by helping our communities understand who and what they are. This is, if you will, music’s ministry to us.
In this faith community, music is one of our most powerful “imaginal disks.” It brings about transformation in our lives, and in the lives of those we serve. I know this to be true because I have seen it happen over and over again. How many stories have I heard after a Sunday service about how a hymn or an anthem spoke to a person’s life experience and opened them to new understanding? How many times have we gathered with others for greater service when diverse cultural and theological traditions seemed insurmountable and found that just the right song created a sense of community and common purpose? And how many times have I been moved to share the song in my heart, sure that I was doing it for you and your benefit, and as surely as those disciples missed the point on their journey to Emmaus found that it was me who needed – and was gifted with – transformation?
This afternoon our congregation will have an historic decision to make – one whose outcome is of particular interest to me. After serving this church for the last 10 years as Director of Music, the congregation will vote on calling me as Associate Minister for Music. I don’t want to turn this sermon into a stump speech, or try to convince the undecided voters among you of the relative merits of this call. But I do want to say this: I am changed for having been in relationship with you for the past decade, and I hope that you can say the same. Some of that change has come from moments of transcendence through music that has lifted our spirits and expanded our vision of who and what we might be as people of faith, and some has come from painful experiences of learning to be with one another in the sometimes searingly honest context of community. All of these have been moments of transformation for me, and they have led me to the point where I have no choice but to risk the question that will be put before many of you later today.
As this process has unfolded over the past year and a half, I have likened it to a couple that has been dating for a while. At some point, if the relationship is going to deepen, one of the parties must take a risk. In what we might refer to spiritually as a death to self, the person risks telling the other how they feel – they say “I love you.” And then they wait. I waited two months after first saying those words before my wife Mary returned the sentiments. She was very wise in noting that she had said it before, and that it hadn’t meant much in previous relationships, so she wanted some time to figure what it might mean here and now before she said those words to me. Another little death – and new meaning was discovered. It was worth the wait.
And so here we are. I hope to be called to serve this congregation as a minister because, for me, such a call is a commitment to a deeper relationship that we can’t have without risking a little death of our own. I can’t tell you what will happen when we come out of this chrysalis, but I can tell you that I love you, and I believe with all my heart that you’re worth the risk – in fact, the certainty – of our mutual transformation that this call will bring about.
One last bit of biology in closing – do you know what the Monarch butterfly eats? Only one plant: the Milkweed. The Milkweed gives life to the butterflies that are nourished and sustained by its very existence. And yet, to almost every other creature, it is poisonous. Eat a tenth of your body weight in Milkweed and it will kill you. That’s probably more important information for ants and spiders than it is for us, but you get the point. It is at once the giver of life and bringer of death – as if there were a difference. So today, as the earth continues putting forth new life again and again, this day – and every day – brings with it the risk and the reward of living more deeply with and for each other. Are not our hearts burning within us? It is morning on the Milkweed, and spring, and life, are new once more. Blessed be, and amen.
Footnotes
1. Dr. Lincoln Brower makes sense of all of this at: http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/monarch/ChrysalisDevelopmentLPB.html
2. Quoted in Bellah, Robert, “The R Word.” Tricycle, Spring 2008: p. 54.
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03.30.08
Posted in Rev. Gail Seavey, Sermons at 4:56 pm
Easter Sunday
March 23, 2008
The Rev. Gail Seavey
“The story of Holy Week enables us to hear the passion of Jesus- what he was passionate about.”
- Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan. The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem
On Easter morning last April, we awoke to a killing frost. The dogwoods were already in bloom, and their abundant flowers were killed that morning. The flowers of the glorious tulip magnolia out this window were all wilted and turned to brown. People sat here on that Easter day wondering if the tree would ever bloom again.
After the freeze, the trees continued to struggle from lack of water. The drought went from severe to very severe. Every morning I parked in the lower parking lot looking for signs of life among the devastation. I worried when the young cherry trees newly planted along the lower parking lot failed to bloom. Where they all dying? But then I was given a vision. One morning I notice a purple flower growing on a vine on the plot of ground right next to my favorite parking space. I looked closely. Crowning the large deep purple petals was a corolla of thread-like wispy lighter purple petals. At its center was a ring of large vivid yellow stamens. I went immediately to our flower expert Jane Norris. “What is this gorgeous flower? Did you plant it?”
“No,” said Jane, “It’s a passion fruit flower, a common wild flower here in Tennessee. I didn’t plant it – it’s a volunteer.”
Every day that I came to work that summer I got out of my car and checked out the passion fruit flowers. Jane voluntarily put up a little fence for the vine to grow on and the plant volunteer did the rest. The vine grew vigorously, and many flowers blossomed and wilted over the summer.
I asked several people why they were called passion fruit. One told me to watch for the developing fruit, adding that it was edible. Another told me that it was called passion fruit because the stamens of the flowers looked like the crucifixion. I looked very carefully at the stamens. They did not look woody, they were not shaped like crosses and there were more than three. The stamens were long and rounded, lush and bright. Quite honestly they looked like the purpose for which they evolved, screaming beauty to attract insects to spread their pollen and help them reproduce. The stamens looked a lot more like the joyful, yeah life! kind of passion than the suffering kind of passion associated with Holy Week.
And they did bear fruit; quite a crop was ripening on that little parking lot plot. I didn’t eat any of it though, because those insects didn’t just help the passion fruit reproduce, the fruit was helping the insects reproduce. They were being eaten as fast as they ripened by scores of caterpillars. As early fall arrived, I noticed that the half eaten passion fruits falling off the vines were full of tiny cocoons. It wasn’t long before the vines were covered with little yellow and brown butterflies.
I did not talk you through this whole cycle of transformations because I think the life cycle of the passion fruit and its symbiosis with the caterpillars is a metaphor for Easter. No, I think the passion fruit cycle is quite literally the same as Easter. Those stamens do not look like the suffering of Jesus, or the suffering of anyone who ever died, or the suffering of those who are left behind. But the ecology of those passion flowers are the same ecology of chance, life, wild beauty, joyful passion, symbiosis, pain, death, transformation and new life that Easter shows among the ecology of humanity.
Jesus lived and shared his passion. He had a passion for the Jewish God of love and justice. He showed people that this passion for love and justice was more gorgeous and life affirming than our little daily worries and fears. Borg and Crossan describe this love as com-passion – having passion with another – “and justice is the social form of compassion. To put the same thought in different language, love is the soul of justice, and justice is the body, the flesh, of love.” (p. 215) Jesus showed people that when they lived their life centered on “passion with” that their personal lives and their civic lives would be transformed. Jesus was put on trial for challenging the civic life of his day, was convicted of treason, crucified and died. So were literally thousands of people who challenged the Roman Empire.
We remember this one man because the people who loved him had vision and recognized the gifts they were given. They took their teacher’s example to center their lives on compassion and to keep justice alive by the actions of their bodies. By continuing to act with justice and teaching others to center their lives on love, they proved that it was not Jesus but the tyrants who were treasonous. Jesus’ life lived on in his passion for love and justice. He lives still. A different ecological context than the parking lot, but the same ecological relationships of chance, life, wild beauty, joyful passion, symbiosis, pain, death, transformation and new life.
When I was meditating on the gifts given to me by loved ones who had died, I couldn’t help but think of the Rev. Frederica Leigh. Rev. Leigh died on Good Friday of 1990 from complications due to type 1 diabetes. The year before, I had been her last ministerial intern. Frederica Leigh had a passion. Her passion arose from her pastoral care work where she discovered that many people had been abused sexually by their ministers. Committed to the same principles of love and justice that Jesus taught, she worked tirelessly to set higher ethical guidelines for the clergy. At first she was mocked and reviled for her work. Many of the most articulate and powerful ministers of the day criticized her. But Frederica quietly worked on, healing individuals and bit by bit, a profession and the institutional church. When she died, there was no way to know that her work would ultimately bear fruit.
But Frederica Leigh’s passion did not die with her. I grieved her death and still miss her. But she lives on. I was not the only one who saw her vision and kept her passion alive, volunteering to serve the Ministerial Sisterhood, the UU Minister’s Guideline Committee and the Advisory Committee on Ministerial Sexual Misconduct for the UU Women’s Federation. In the same spirit I have supervised and mentored students and newly fellowshipped ministers for the last 15 years. I have had the privilege to see Frederica Leigh’s com-passion – passion for love and justice - resurrected in the hearts and hands of one young minister after another. It’s a different ecological context than the parking lot or Jerusalem under the Roman Empire, but the same ecological relationships of chance, life, wild beauty, joyful passion, symbiosis, pain, death, transformation and new life.
So today let us sing out in celebration – the passion flower and Jesus and Frederica Leigh and those passionate people you have loved and lost live. They live on transformed into passion fruit and your com-passionate hearts, butterflies and your hands doing the work of justice. They live as long as your bodies give their passions body and flesh. They live and when we too die, we will have the gifts of love and justice, more gorgeous and life affirming than their daily worries and fears, to pass on to those we love.
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03.23.08
Posted in Rev. Gail Seavey, Sermons at 12:01 pm
Palm Sunday
March 16, 2008
The Rev. Gail Seavey
All created things are transitory; those who realize this are freed from suffering.
- Buddha, The Dhammapada 20.277
There are many ways to experience the season of the Spring Equinox which occurs this Thursday, followed by the Spring Full Moon on Friday. Most religions mark the seasonal shift. This Thursday, Jodo Shinshu Buddhists celebrate Spring Ohigon by listening to the teaching of Buddha and meditating, Christians celebrate Maundy Thursday with a re-enactment of the first Lord’s Supper, and Wiccans celebrate Ostara, the return of the Goddess–as-Maiden and the reawakening of the seeds within the earth. Friday, Hindus celebrate Holi by throwing powdered dye on each other, Jews celebrate Purim by enacting the story of Esther, and Christians commemorate the suffering and death of Jesus with Good Friday.
All of these holy days can be experienced as stories and as rituals. Each year, as we experience the holy days from the ever-changing vantages of our lives, we experience the stories and rituals somewhat differently.
Since Unitarian Universalism grew from Christian roots, many UU churches celebrate this week as Holy Week — telling the story of Jesus of Nazareth’s last week on earth through ritual. We tend to see the story of Jesus in context of the time and place of its historical writers. The first mention of the death of Jesus was written by the Apostle Paul in his letters, in which he interpreted that death in a variety of ways. The book of Mark was written about 40 years after the death of Jesus and offers its own well-developed interpretation, the one I hear most often from UU pulpits. This is the story about a very good man who is tortured and executed by the very bad government he challenged. The execution of Jesus indicts the Roman Empire as evil and reminds us to indict the misuse of political power whenever we see it. This story also reminds us that the power of love and justice as taught by Jesus can survive one person’s death. You could imagine this as a smashing eggs story — about people who take a hammer to an egg and smash it to bits.
I have also experienced the Christian Holy Week through UU rituals, including many Maundy Thursday Passover-like last suppers and communions and Tenebrae Services. Tenebrae means “the shadows.” A Tennebrae service tells the story of what happened after the Last Supper. As each part of the story is told in the shadow of dusk — the Shadow of Betrayal, of Desertion, of Unshared Vigil, of Accusation, of Crucifixion, the Shadow of Death — another light is extinguished. The last light is removed as the Shadow of the Tomb is read, ending the service in dark silence.
Over the years, I discovered that the experience of this ritual varies with each person who attends. Some experience it as a smashing eggs story. They have lived through oppressive situations, betrayals, desertions, or have suffered violence in their own lives and they experience the ritual as a way to work through their feelings about being smashed.
At the same time, other people are experiencing the ritual as a broken egg story. They have suffered with a loved one in pain, grieved the death of an intimate, a dream or an outgrown part of themselves. These sufferings are often as natural and inevitable as the seasons passing, but the pain of the resulting broken spirits and hearts needs to be felt and integrated before a sense of greater wisdom and compassion can be born.
This year I have been experiencing the story of Holy Week as a Rite of Initiation. If you ever had the opportunity to study anthropology you know what I mean. Most cultures celebrate rites of passage over the arc of the life span – from birth to death. There are so many changes as a person is born, grows, becomes an adult, declines and dies, that the places marked by ritual are somewhat arbitrary and culture bound. But the arc of the journey itself, from the often painful death of one identity to the birth of a new one is repeated in different cultures with different rituals. Our culture most commonly celebrates rites of passage at birth, graduations from schools, marriage, retirement and death. Victor Turner, who wrote the classic anthropology text The Ritual Process, describes a different round of rituals in Zambia, including boys’ circumcision and girl’s puberty rites, the rites initiation into divining, funerary practices, a traditional women’s cult, and a hunter’s cult. These rituals often include inflicting pain upon the initiate. They look like smashing egg rituals. I believe that they are instead an acknowledgement of the pain that comes with the breaking of eggs. Let me explain.
Childhood is seen by some developmental psychologists as a series of moments from equilibrium – thrown off by growing pains into a moment of disequilibrium and then settling down into a new period of equilibrium. Some of those moments of disequilibrium are literally painful. When my youngest was in sixth grade, he complained every morning of painful aches. His doctor decided that he had growing pains; indeed, he suggested that while sleeping the boy literally grew measurable amounts in one night. It took some painful adjustment for his body to keep up. I remembered when I was the same age; I grew 6 inches in one year. My knees kept going painfully out of joint and I was forbidden vigorous play. My teeth got crooked and I had to get braces. All of a sudden I couldn’t see very well and I had to get glasses. Then my hormones started to make me feel very strange. I was sure I was going to die. But we don’t have puberty rites, do we?
These periods of painful disequilibrium and renewing equilibrium don’t stop with adolescence. Graduations served as an initiation rites into adulthood for my boys, but where was the ritual for me, as I had to give my little boys up into the dangerous world of adulthood. Some Hindu sects practice such a ritual. Instead, I have my own dubious talent for unconsciously creating my own, sometimes painful initiation rites. When Jim and I drove our baby away to college we arrived, to our surprise, a full day early. After a summer of never seeing the busy young man, we had a whole blessed unplanned day, far from distractions, to play together. The next morning, while in a great line of cars slowly pulling up to the dormitory to unload all his gear, I spilled boiling hot tea in my lap. As I tried to quiet the blistering pain by icing my lap without anyone noticing what I was doing it crossed my mind that the last time I felt such pain there was the day this boy had been born 18 years before. I had begun to create a ritual that mirrored his birth.
The next day, he was all settled into his new home and we prepared to drive away. I slammed my finger in the car door. More pain. More ice. Ahh, I thought as Jim drove us away. The umbilical cord is really cut now. Broken egg rituals. Old identity –- mother who protects her little children and gets dinner on the table every night at 6 p.m. — painfully crumbling from the inside out so that some unknown unasked for new identity can be born. These rituals – creative? neurotic? — have not been enough for me. I have welcomed the annual Rites of Spring, when seeds breaking open promise new growth; the rituals of Holy Week, giving me a chance to grieve my latest dying identity with the promise that I will be reborn, again.
What eggs have been breaking for you this year? What identities are crumbling from the inside out? What are you grieving? What signs of new growth are you looking for? Most of the inevitable changes in my year have been good – becoming a grandparent, my youngest son’s college graduation, transitions with staff in the church office and the music director’s role, but even good change is change. For instance, I could not claim a deduction for a child on my income tax for the first time in 32 years! And on the day my son graduated, I noticed how very short my once-tall parents were as they stood proudly next to their grandson. Where is their rite of initiation into what we now call old old age? Where is mine?
I have never gone through a natural change that brought me greater growth, skill, joy, freedom, love, or wisdom without pain. Breaking eggs from the inside out hurts. With each change I have had to let go of the past, sometimes a whole identity, much of it very dear to me, before I could even see what that new growth, skill, joy, freedom, love or wisdom was. In ritual, this is called standing at the threshold, the place of liminality, the transition during which the participant no longer is what they were and not yet what they will be. It is the place of most tender vulnerability, greatest chaos, highest anxiety and most profound humility. It is the place that Holy Week invites us to be.
But it is a place that most of us visit alone, regularly, without fail, as we walk across this arc from birth to death that is our lives. May you remember that you do not stand at the threshold of disequilibrium alone. We are all standing there with you. May this sacred season of spring equinox and Maundy Thursday, the spring full moon and Good Friday remind you that there is, without fail, renewed life on the other side of the threshold.
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03.18.08
Posted in Special Events at 4:41 pm
Dr. Sharon D. Welch
The Palmer Lecture
December 9, 2007
I have some questions for all of you – no show of hands is necessary, but I would like to discuss your responses in the discussion session. How many of you are revolutionaries, or were revolutionaries, or have wanted to be revolutionaries at some time? Also, how many of you, and this may very well be the same people, are wary of revolutionary vanguards and suspicious of utopian aspirations? What does it really mean to be a radical, a radical ecologist, a radical economist, a radical working for racial and sexual justice, for enduring peace? What are the possibilities for a political/spiritual/cultural engagement in our day that has the depth and impact of a movement in our history that I’m sure many of you know quite well, and so appropriately honor through this lecture series, the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-twentieth century?
In an interview conducted in 1980, the French philosopher Michel Foucault gave a poetic invocation of social critique:
“I can’t help but dream about a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it. It would multiply not judgments but signs of existence; it would summon them, drag them from their sleep. Perhaps it would invent them sometimes - all the better. All the better. Criticism that hands down sentences sends me to sleep; I’d like a criticism of scintillating leaps of the imagination. It would not be sovereign or dressed in red. It would bear the lightning of possible storms.”
My friends, Foucault’s dream is our reality. We are in the midst of a third wave of revolutionary politics – one that builds on two prior waves and yet has its own energy, dynamics and challenges.
The first wave of revolutionary politics was the forceful denunciation of manifold forms of social injustice – slavery, the oppression of workers and the secondary status of women – all forms of oppression defended for millennia as divinely ordained or part of the natural order of things.
In Bury the Chains, Adam Hochshild reminds us of the audacity of the abolitionist movement. Within a century, an institution that had endured since the beginning of recorded human history had lost moral and political legitimacy. That the ongoing struggle against ‘natural ‘ hierarchies would neither be easy nor inevitable, was signaled, however, in the resistance of William Wilberforce, one of the leaders of the British abolitionist movement, to economic, political or educational rights for the British working class.
These struggles for social justice have been augmented by a second wave of activism, the work of identity politics, the resolute claim for the complex identities and full humanity of all groups marginalized and exploited by systemic oppression and silenced through cultural imperialism.
While the work for social justice and for the full recognition of and human rights for all peoples goes on, these tasks now occur within a constructive framework. Once we recognize that a situation is unjust, once we grant the imperative of including the voices and experiences of all peoples, how then do we work together to build just and creative institutions?
This constructive work is taking place on many fronts. Tonight I will discuss only two – strategic peacebuilding and the development of community economies. But first, a brief exploration of the shift from necessary reaction and critique to equally vital constructive political engagement.
I was first aware that the task of governing well might be substantially different than that of denouncing and dismantling unjust social systems when I read the obituary of Joe Slovo in the New York Times. Joe Slovo was a longtime member of the African National Congress. In his obituary, he was cited as saying that nothing in his work in revolutionary politics had prepared him for the challenges of being Minister of Housing in the post-apartheid Mandela government. Committed to adequate housing for all, having access to the resources to build such housing, and yet the challenges of equitably and efficiently accomplishing that task was daunting.
Another story that led me to think more critically about the comforting narrative of ‘us against them on the road to certain victory’ lies in the poignant contrast between the Motorcyle Diaries and the Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara. The Motorcycle Diaries, profoundly moving in their heartfelt depiction of unjust suffering. The Bolivian Diaries, profoundly disturbing, written with as much honesty, with as much compassion for the suffering of other human beings, yet here marked by the despair and confusion of a hero of the Cuban revolution, disenchanted by his failures within the Cuban government as Minister of Industries, dispirited by his inability to find a mode of revolutionary action suitable for other countries. Although hunted, and ultimately executed by the CIA and the Bolivian Army, he was also rejected by those he sought as allies, Bolivian communists who had their own view of the best means of radical social transformation in the Bolivian context. Still committed to justice, providing medical care for wounded Bolivian soldiers, yet feeling an outsider, unsure of how to work for justice in different situations, either as a member of government or as a revolutionary.
And finally, on a very modest scale, the lessons learned as director of women’s studies. Seeing how hard it was for a group of well intentioned and politically astute radical feminists to run a degree program did give me pause. Maybe we weren’t quite ready to take over the World Bank and other reins of institutional power.
Three different stories, yet a common thread. To care passionately about justice, to understand thoroughly the contours and dynamics of oppression, does not mean that we know how to cultivate and manage human and natural resources justly, creatively, and in a way that lasts for the future.
Although it is undoubtedly difficult to live justly, to use power truthfully and well, it is not impossible to do so. Let us turn to two such examples of third wave political engagement – strategic peacebuilding and community economies.
J.K. Gibson-Graham (Katherine Gibson, Australian National University in Canberra and Julie Graham, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, writing as a single persona since 1992) describe a new political imaginary. They analyze, nurture and celebrate the reality, opportunities and challenges of community economies. People all over the world are finding ways of shaping their economic lives to recognize the power of interdependence, not a “common being” but a “being in common.” J.K. Gibson Graham describe the “diverse economy”, expressed in such activities as “Employee buyouts in the United States, worker takeovers in the wake of economic crisis in Argentina, the anti-sweatshop movement, shareholder movements that promote ethical investments and police the enforcement of corporate environmental and social responsibly, the living wage movement, discussions of a universal basic income, social entrepreneurship – all part of a community economy that performs economy in new ways.”
Gibson-Graham build on the insights of queer theory and political and feminist theory and organizing, emphasizing that shared questions often lead to different answers. Just as there is no one way to be a feminist, there is no single way to perform economic relations justly. There are, however, salient questions, choices to be made in each situation. Here the economy becomes the product of ethical decision making, different ways of answering the same questions:
- “What is necessary to personal and social survival,” and how are such needs being met?
- “How [is] social surplus generated, marshaled and distributed?”
- What are desirable and sustainable patterns of consumption?
- How is the commons (“the shared base of material, social and spiritual sustenance”) ‘produced, replenished and sustained’?
J.K. Gibson Graham describe economies in which subsistence needs are met through alternative market transactions and the ethical or fair trade of products, producers and consumers agreeing on price levels that sustain the livelihood of the producers. They also highlight the growth of green or socially responsible capitalist firms – businesses concerned with profit, but ‘also concerned with environmentally responsible production, with increasing workers’ ownership of the firm, or distribution of surplus to replenishing and maintaining the social commons.’
In analyzing what is involved in such economic choices, J.K. Gibson Graham make a claim as startling as that of there being no single preferred model of economic justice: it is as difficult for workers and for critics of capitalism to live within community economies as it is for owners, managers and shareholders.
For many critics of unjust economic structures, it is often difficult to move from critique to constructive work. J. K Gibson Graham refer to the ‘familiar mode of being of the anticapitalist subject, with its negative and stymied positioning.’ Have you witnessed or experienced this stance of cultured despair – being fully aware of the magnitude of the problems that face us, but, being equally aware of the lack of commensuration between the depth of the problem and the impact of our efforts for social justice? Such despair sometimes takes the form of even criticizing efforts at social change as foolish, taking a perverse satisfaction in being able to predict one’s own defeat. J.K. Gibson-Graham give an example of the claims that they often hear: “The assertions that capitalism really is the major force in contemporary life, that it…….has no outside and thus any so-called alternatives are actually part of the neoliberal, patriarchal, corporate capitalist global order. ..” and ask a series of probing questions: “What was this all-knowingness about the world? Where did this disparaging sense of certainty come from, the view that anything new would not work?”
Although we can see the importance of challenging the necessity and inevitability of unjust social structures, it is difficult for many of us, activists and leftist intellectuals alike, to forgo the satisfaction of theoretical comprehensiveness and certainty, even when what we are certain about is the impossibility of fundamental social change!
J.K. Gibson-Graham explicitly acknowledge the multiple ways we are invested, literally and metaphorically, in existing economic structures. The inability to imagine an alternative form of markets, of economic relations, is also shared by many workers. They cite the example of the Argentinean workers who participated in the ‘recreation of Argentinean manufacturing.’ “When unemployed workers in Argentina took over abandoned factories after the economic crisis of 2001, the obstacle they encountered was not the state or capital – which were, after all, in disarray – but their own subjectivities. They were workers, not managers or sales reps or entrepreneurs, and as one of them said, ‘If they had come to us with 50 pesos and told us to show up for work tomorrow, we would have done just that.’ . .This “struggle against themselves” is explicitly acknowledged as one of the principle tenets of the workers collective, the ‘cultivation of new forms of sociability, visions of happiness, and economic capacities.”
In order to create community economies, J.K. Gibson-Graham describe a beginning point that is as daunting in practice as it is simple in theory: “start where you are and build on what you have.” Why is this simple task so difficult? We often begin from communities marked by deep despair and hopelessness. J.K. Gibson-Graham describe the understandable deep resistance to work for social change among those most marginalized and exploited, a resistance grounded in the trauma of years of rejection, failure, and exclusion. They describe the endemic hopelessness of laid off workers and unemployed youth in the Latrobe Valley of Australia. With the loss of an industrial base, a high percentage of the population is unemployed. Many older workers, laid off after years of relatively well paid employment, feel themselves the victims of an all powerful system: “Look what they have done. What are they going to do about it? What’s the use? No one is going to be bothered [with community enterprises.] People will want to be paid.” Among young people, who have never been employed and have no prospects of meaningful work, J.K. Gibson-Graham find despair and a sense of worthlessness: “What can I do? I can’t do anything. People look at me cause I’m a dole bludger – a bum.” They did, however, find sources of hope in another group, single mothers, working together to support their children and each other. For others, caught in the trauma of rejection and failure , the breakthrough to new economic enterprises did not come from either the denunciations of unjust economic structures, nor through ringing declarations of the moral imperative of new economic forms. The break through came through different forms of acting together – work projects clearing abandoned lots for a community garden and workshop, and collective trips to a conference on cooperatives and to a community garden in inner city Melbourne. J.K. Gibson-Graham claim that for all of us, workers, owners and managers, new forms of subjectivity, sociality and economic interdependence are “best shaped by practical curiosity as opposed to moral certainty about alternatives to capitalism.”
Now, let us turn to another example of third wave political activism.
When I was first a peace activist, the choices facing us were clear: the limited violence of just war or the renunciation of violence in any form. Now, however, our options are greater and our choices more complex. Since the early 1990’s, the world of peace activism and peace studies has been transformed by a focus on the vast areas of concern shared by proponents of nonviolence and by supporters of just war. The debate between advocates of just war and advocates of pacifism is being transformed and augmented by a third way: joint efforts to prevent war, stop genocide and repair the damage caused by armed conflict. . Activists and scholars such as Glenn Stassen and Lisa Schirch are asking a new set of questions: If war is the last resort, what is the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth response to aggression, domination and exploitation? And, if war is not the answer, what is the answer what is the answer to structural violence and terrorism? How can armed conflicts be prevented? How can the deep wounds of war-ravaged societies be healed?
In between the last resort of just war and the principled renunciation of violence in all its forms lies a vast expanse of constructive and preventive work. Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, describes a global paradigm shift, a move from a culture of reaction to a culture of prevention. People throughout the world are working in numerous ways, large and small, to implement nonviolent alternatives to war. There are for example, three promising developments at the United Nations: the ratification of the International Criminal Court; the implementation of a post-conflict Peace-building Commission, and planning for an emergency peace service.
We live in a time of three constructive approaches to peace: peacemaking – bringing hostile parties to agreement; peacebuilding – the creation of long term structures for redressing injustice and resolving ongoing conflict ; and peacekeeping - early intervention to stop genocide and prevent large scale war. Many of us know well the work of peacebuilding – addressing the root causes of armed conflict, economic exploitation and political marginalization. We also are becoming more aware of what is involved in the complex work of peacemaking – negotiating equitable and sustainable peace agreements, ones that include attention to the pressing need for postconflict restoration and reconciliation. Not as many people, however, are aware of the current developments in peacekeeping.
While peacekeeping forces have been formed on a case by case basis, this ad hoc response to genocide and armed conflict is increasingly seen as unsatisfactory, as is now the case, tragically and unnecessarily in Darfur. As Kofi Annan states, “the United Nations is the only fire prevention agency that has to establish a fire department after the fire has broken out.” There are, therefore, ongoing efforts to establish standing nonviolent conflict resolution centers and permanent peacekeeping forces both at the United Nations and within regional cooperation and security organizations. For example, organizing efforts, like those that led to the creation of the International Criminal Court, have begun for the creation of a standing United Nations Emergency Peace Service. Such a service would be constituted by up to 15,000 volunteers, medical personnel, lawyers, judges, engineers, construction personnel and trained peacekeepers, and would be capable of being deployed within 48 hours in a crisis situation.
The mandate of peacekeeping forces, while certainly important, is nonetheless limited. Peacekeeping forces do not have the objective of defeating an enemy but have, rather, the complex task of clearing the space where negotiations can either resume or begin. Such interventions are more like community policing than military campaigns, requiring careful coordination with civil society, and restoring a societies’ internal sense of order.
These three tasks – peacemaking, peacebuilding and peacekeeping – all comprise the vital constructive work of strategic peacebuilding. Despite the promise of strategic peacebuilding as an alternative to military intervention, it, too, has constitutive risks and dangers. While the sole reliance on military force is undoubtedly destructive and counterproductive, strategic peacebuilding may also have unintended negative consequences. John Paul Lederach, writing from his long experience in peacebuilding, describes the importance of a ‘new mind-set’ for people who come to a conflict ridden society from outside. “[We need to] move beyond a simple prescription of answers and modalities for dealing with conflict that come from outside the setting and focus at least as much attention on discovering and empowering the resources, modalities, and mechanisms for building peace that exist within the context.” In contrast to the prophet who denounces injustice and proclaims a vision of blessing and promise, Lederach states that the challenge for peacebuilders is to “create the space for vision to emerge from within the setting.”
Lisa Schirch points to other risks and dangers of strategic peacebuilding: “Peacebuilding programs do not always contribute to peace.” Not only are there technical challenges in coordinating short-term and long-term efforts, but all of the tasks of intervention are complicated by “Ideological differences, ego-driven efforts to monopolize peacebuilding programs, and competitions for resources.” Catherine Barnes, drawing on her analysis of global peacemaking efforts, affirms Schirch’s critique. She also points to the destructive effects of tensions between the goals of external agencies and the aspirations and expertise of local people and groups. Furthermore, Barnes claims that the work of both ‘insiders and outsiders’ falters when they ‘involve only those predisposed to peace’ and fail to include in some meaningful way ‘those who instigate’ or support violence.
How do we move from identities based on conflicts to ones shaped by new partnerships for justice and flourishing? In his study of identity based conflicts in South Africa, Eastern Europe and Canada, Vern Redekop points to what is essential for healing and reconciliation: ways of framing collective and individual identity that provides a deep sense of the past (incorporating “memory, story and coherence”), and an equally evocative sense of the future (rich with “imagination, stimulation and continuity}.” The problem, however, is that such collective stories are often self-righteous and self-justifying narratives of exclusion, framing the past and the future in terms of “us against them,” either innocent victims bravely resisting a demonic foe, or beneficent victors, the proud bearers of all humanity’s destiny. How do we convey other stories, ones of blessing and abundance, vitality and honest self-critique?
In the these reflections on the challenges of peacebuilding, we find a compelling story: a firm commitment to constructive peacebuilding and the prevention of armed conflict, yet a sober recognition of the limits of peacebuilding and the fallibility of peacebuilders, makers and keepers.
Let’s step back for a moment. What do these two forms of transformative critique have in common? In both we find an enlivening critique of injustice that, to use Foucault’s terms, “multiplies signs of existence.” And, what is equally important – the critique of external forces and structures is matched by the awareness of our own limits, errors, and failures of creativity and connection.
Now, how can our participation in these movements, and others like them, be enhanced if we learn from the lessons of the civil rights movement? Although the lessons are many, one of the striking achievements of the Civil Rights Movement was the way in which it simultaneously appealed to the best of all Americans while exposing the worst. The civil rights movement offered all of us another way of being in common, the promise of the beloved community instead of a country marred by systemic discrimination.
Recall the United States in 1954: African Americans exploited, largely confined to low paying jobs; marginalized in segregated neighborhoods and schools; powerless to vote or attend most professional schools, subject to cultural imperialism – viewed as intellectually and culturally inferior by most white Americans; and finally, subject to brutal, unaccountable violence.
1963. Birmingham, Alabama – the resolute claim that separate but equal was justified, that segregation was a just form of social order, shown to be a lie by the brutal attacks of white police officers on marching children and young people. The sit-in campaigns across the South - the civility of segregation unmasked by the vicious attacks by white people on people integrating buses and lunch counters.
Nonviolent direct action can undoubtedly be an extremely effective means of exposing injustice. There are however, intrinsic dangers in such action. First, a specific form of direct action, powerful in some instances, can become rote and ineffective through overuse. Mass marches often have tremendous impact on those who participate in them, serving the inspiring and unifying function of the church services that regularly preceded the marches of the civil rights movement. They do not, however, often communicate effectively with those who oppose their message
Secondly, as Lisa Schirch reminds us, nonviolent direct action is a form of coercion that cannot build peace alone: nonviolent direct action” escalates conflict and can often temporarily increase antagonism and tensions between people and groups.” While the peace disrupted by direct action is itself faulty and incomplete, nonviolent direct action may further disrupt community bonds. The coercion of direct action needs, therefore, to be followed by works of reconciliation and restoration. Gandhi and Martin Luther King knew this well. Gandhi refused to vilify the British while condemning British rule, holding firmly to nonviolence of thought, word and deed. Martin Luther King also appealed to the sense of justice of white Americans, calling all races to a place in the “beloved community.’38
How can we do for our time what they did with such courage and creativity for theirs? Let us honor the civil rights movement in the aesthetic register of jazz – not by simply repeating their strategies, but by finding ones that call our communities to fuller participation in the beloved community.
In examining the rich history of the civil rights movement, we find several ingredients of creative and evocative social engagement. The first is deep listening to the experiences of those who have been marginalized and exploited, acknowledging the pain of centuries of oppression, an awareness expressed without hesitation or equivocation in the opening lines of M.L. King’s first speech of the Montgomery bus boycott: “There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.” Secondly, a willingness to take risks – to explore multiple strategies despite the turf wars over leadership and organizational prerogatives. The resilience, persistence, and creativity of Ella Baker is exemplary in this regard. Although her leadership was resisted by all the male ministers of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, she persisted in her work, and played a pivotal role in organizing the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and their break through tactics of sit-ins that directly challenged segregation. As noted by Taylor Branch in Parting the Waters, Baker worked with the students, “encouraged their independence, warning them against ceremony, educating them on the foibles of their leaders.” Baker tried to keep NAACP, SCLC and student movement working together without compromising the differences that the students had in tactics and leadership styles.
Thirdly, resilience and creativity in the face of resistance from within and from without. To read Taylor Branch’s monumental history of the civil rights movement is to discover the depth of struggle against the most brutal violence and the most intransigent conflicts over political impact and organizational priorities. Recall the extreme brutality – the unchecked violence – against nonviolent sit-ins. In Nashville, after two weeks of daily nonviolent sit-ins, the peaceful demonstrators were attacked by white teenagers with rocks, fists, and lighted cigarettes. In the midst of the assault, the police arrested the students, not those attacking them! Recall as well the mob attacks against freedom riders – integrating bus service and terminals, the murders of those well known, such as Medgar Evers, and those less well known, Herbert Lee, murdered by one of the county’s most powerful white men, representative E. H. Hurst, after attending voter registration classes and being seen driving people working to register voters.
This racist violence, although endemic to life in the United States since the institution of slavery, was different. As Martin Luther King said, in regard to Birmingham, and the threat of violence at the hand of Bull Connor’s police force: “If it comes, we will surface it for the world to see.” And come it did –snarling dogs, blasting fire hoses against children and young people, and the world saw – the mask of a benign social order of separate but equal irrefutably destroyed by unabashed and unchecked violence.
And, finally, another ingredient, one not so exposed yet constitutive nonetheless, internal struggles – with white allies, painfully exemplified in the agonizing struggles with the Kennedy administration – the frustrating dance of resistance, then support, then resistance over tactics and timing and political expediency and political survival. Internal struggles with the National Baptist Convention, which refused to endorse the civil rights movement, the ongoing tensions between the NAACP and SCLC over tactics and intermediate goals. The creative resilience required to meet these internal challenges is well illustrated in the account given by Taylor Branch of a pivotal conflict between Fred Shuttlesworth and Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders. After a tense week of marches and negotiations, the white businessmen of Birmingham agreed to a series of steps to eliminate segregation. In response to these concessions, and in acknowledgement of the rising violence, the leaders called for a one day moratorium to signal the significant breakthroughs. Shuttlesworth, a local minister and long-term activist, had been hospitalized during these negotiations, the victim of an assault by firefighters. Furious at what he saw as untimely capitulation, he threatened to defy the others and continue to lead demonstrations. After a lengthy private conversation with Martin Luther King, Jr., a relaxed and triumphant Shuttlesworth emerged and announced the truce himself at the previously scheduled press conference, vital unity regained at a most crucial juncture.
How do we hold together these threads of insight and courage, external violence and internal limitations, in our work for social justice? How might we view our tasks if we see the ways in which our internal conflicts and lack of imagination may play a role in our political failures? How do we maintain presence, creativity and openness to our own responsibility and fallibility? Let me first tell you a story that is not helpful.[ I have heard this story as long as I have been an activist, but do not know its source. If you do, please let me know.]
A man comes to a city and is outraged by the injustice he sees. He stands in the center of the town square and demands justice. At first, a large crowd gathers, but each day, dwindles until he stands alone – a solitary voice denouncing the evil that continues unabated. One day a passerby asks him, “Why do you speak in the square each day since you are not changing anyone?” His answer, “At first I spoke to change others, now I speak so that they will not change me.”
Where can we find another story, one that has the honesty to admit that our failures to change others may well be of our own making – not necessarily the lack of insight, courage and compassion in others, but a lack of creativity, skill and empathy in ourselves? 39
In my own area of work for social justice, as we have listened to those who are not persuaded by our astute political analysis and heartfelt cries for justice, we have discovered that there is far more going on than ‘their’ misguided or recalcitrant rejection of our astute and even at times prophetic analyses.
How do we respond to the use of military force by the Bush administration and the inability of the Democrats in Congress to decisively reject such force? Rather than merely denounce these responses, it is important to understand them more deeply. People are responding to danger with the tools that they have. While we may be able to imagine alternative responses – the use of international mediators, an international court, etc – these responses do not have the known status and evident power of military forces. The International Criminal Court, a plausible venue for prosecuting terrorists, has only recently been ratified, and it does not have a solid history or acceptance. It is, in fact, being soundly resisted by the Bush administration. By continuing to rely on military force, people in the United States are responding with the institutions, with the means, that they have, know and trust. Furthermore, for many people in the United States, “real” power, whether human or divine, is expressed in the decisive defeat of enemies, not in mutual transformation, healing and reconciliation.
In the face of grave threats, war, with all of its costs, is still the preferred option, and forms of nonviolent action and conflict resolution and prevention are seen quite baldly as “doing nothing” or as appeasing dangerous enemies. The successes of the Civil Rights movement and Gandhi’s nonviolent campaigns are thought to be unique, dependent on the beneficence of the British and U.S. citizenry, and not indicative of the response to be expected from implacable enemies.
A second challenge to persuasively conveying alternatives to war concerns our own actions and behaviors. Just as many of our conservative colleagues suspect that we underestimate the perfidy and resolve of those perceived as enemies, so they suppose that we overestimate the virtue and competence of peace activists and peace keepers. These fears are not misplaced.
How do we hold together hopes for a world without war with a recognition of the ongoing proclivity, even among peacemakers and peacekeepers, to error, domination and violence? As the sexual abuse of women and girls by UN peacekeepers has demonstrated, the peacekeepers must also be carefully trained and policed!
I speak tonight with those peacemakers who are acknowledging that we really do not know how to bring peace, reconciliation and justice. The solutions that seem so promising in theory prove to be surprisingly complex and ambiguous in actuality. We remain, however, committed to the art of living for peace and justice for all beings even as we admit that we do not know how to bring a measure of peace and justice in a world of dukka, a world of suffering shaped by the three poisons of greed, ill-will and delusion. We are learning how to work for justice in this world, a world in which we can readily see the fixations of other individuals, peoples and nations, a world in which we may, if we are honest and aware, even catch a glimpse of our own constitutive delusions.
Within this third wave of constructive and self-critical political organizing, the fundamental gesture is not so much the prophetic turn and repent as it is the aesthetic imperative: See!
See what surrounds us, shapes us, and sustains us.
See the costs, the contours of pain and suffering, the tragedies caused by fear, isolation and arrogance.
See also the contours of possibility, the resources of insight, courage and good will.
See who we are, in all our moral complexity and culpability.
As we acknowledge our constitutive limits, as we see the manifold possibilities that surround us, let us shape together a politics of honesty and hope, an aesthetic pragmatism that embraces the challenges of the present with virtuosity, wonder and joy.
Sources cited:
Michel Foucault, “The Masked Philosopher,” interview conducted on April 6 -7, 1980 by Christian Delacampagne, reprinted in Michel Foucault, Ethics Subjectivity and Truth, Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume I, edited by Paul Rabinow,( New York: the New Press, 1997).
J.K. Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).
Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988).
Vern Redekop, From Violence to Blessing: How an Understanding of Deep-rooted Conflict Can Open Paths of Reconciliation, (Novalis: 2002).
John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Catherine Barnes, “Weaving the Web: Civil-Society Roles in Working with Conflict and Building Peace,” in Paul van Tongeren, Malin Brenk, Marte Hellema, and Juliette Verhoeven, editors Peace Building Peace II: Successful Stories of Civil Society.
Lisa Schirch, The Little Book of Strategic Peacebuilding, (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2006).
Kofi Annan cited by Sir Brian Urquhart, “Preface,” in A United Nations Emergency Peace Service: To Prevent Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, edited by Robert Johansen,( New York: Global Action to Prevent War, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and World Federalist Movement, 2006)
Glenn Stassen, editor, Just Peacemaking: Ten Practices for Abolishing War. Second Edition. Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press.2004.
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03.15.08
Posted in Rev. Gail Seavey, Sermons at 3:54 pm
March 9, 2008
The Rev. Gail Seavey
When I was studying Unitarian Universalist history, my teacher Conrad Wright went into great detail about the great moments in Unitarian History – at least the ones that happened within a 20-mile radius of Boston. He seemed to be a believer in an earlier Unitarian creed: the fatherhood of God, the manhood of Jesus and the neighborhood of Boston. At the center of his stories were men’s names that became very familiar to me: William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker. There was one name that he always mentioned without further information – a woman’s who seemed to be always standing on the sidelines: Elizabeth Peabody. Who was she? Why was she always there?
Over the years I studied about Elizabeth Peabody when I could, soon discovering that she was hostess to the men’s clubs, published their writings and had two sisters who married important Unitarian men. But it wasn’t until I read a recently published book by Megan Marshall that I began to understand who Elizabeth and her sisters really were and why they were always there. Marshall spent 20 years tracking down everything they wrote: letters, journals, articles, essays and novels, as well as every reference to them written by the people they knew. This included the full circle of Unitarian leaders of their day. Marshal shows that these three sisters, Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia, were not standing on the sidelines at all. Indeed, they each made crucial and important contributions to the theological, educational and sociological reforms of their day. As with all great men and woman, it all began with their mother, Eliza Peabody.
Eliza grew up in a family that had given all they had to support the army during the American Revolution. They lost their material wealth and gained a country. Eliza’s father tried to educate his wife and daughters, but spent much of his time doing marginal work far from home. Her mother let out rooms to get by. There Eliza had to ward one of their boarders whom now we would recognize as a sexual predator. He found more success with her mother and then her sister. Eliza decided that no matter how poor she or her daughters were, they would never be put in a position that they could not protect themselves. Her husband, Nathaniel, never did well financially, so Eliza always boarded girls and young woman and set up schools in her home to feed her growing family of 3 girls and 3 boys. She believed that her own girls’ safety depended upon an education that would allow them to be independent financially.
Elizabeth was the oldest, born in 1804. The family soon moved to Salem, Massachusetts, where the little girl showed an early passion for theology. The city was caught up in the theological controversies of the day. Some churches in Salem were preaching the Calvinist faith of the Puritans; others called young progressive Harvard-trained ministers questioning that faith. The children Elizabeth played with mirrored their parents arguments by having heated arguments amongst themselves – would they go to hell or was God too good to send them there? Was there a trinity or was Jesus a human being? Were people destined to do evil things or did they have the freedom to be good?
Elizabeth’s parents read books to each other at home to formulate their own opinions and she listened to every word. When they read the teachings of Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenbourg, the seven year old joined in on the debate. She tried to talk her mother out of believing in his fantastical vision of heaven and hell, arguing instead for Jesus’ full humanity. A liberal minister was called to their church at that time and he allowed the girl to borrow his books. At the age of 12 she began to teach herself Hebrew in order to read the Old Testament in its original language and find out the truth for herself. She borrowed more books from a library frequented by Salem’s clergy and discovered the work of the British Socinians who argued for the humanity of Christ. Armed with support for her views, she had passionate debates with her relatives, which made her feel overwhelmingly bitter and isolated. Her parents were alarmed and told her that she could not read any theology except for the Bible for the whole summer, but at the end of that time she could ready any books and follow any beliefs she wanted. So that summer she read the New Testament through thirty times, each time to examine it in reference to a different disputed point of doctrine. As she studied she became convinced that Calvinist theology was a corruption of true Christianity.
That fall a neighbor’s friend invited Elizabeth to Boston where she attended William Ellery Channing’s church and got to meet the liberal minister in person. They impressed each other very much, even though he had no idea that this 13-year-old girl had already read most of the books he recommended to his graduate divinity students at Harvard.
When Elizabeth returned to Salem she had the confidence to teach her little sister Sophia about a loving God, the humanity of Jesus and the potential for human goodness. Eventually, her mother and sister Mary agreed with her.
When Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia were 16, 14 and 11, the family moved to Lancaster, a rural town inland. Elizabeth was ready to set up her own school, while the two younger girls would take their baby brothers high chairs, set them in the river and sit there above the water to study Latin. The younger girls loved playing and studying outdoors, adding biology to their passions. They all loved Lancaster for another reason as well. Up until then, they had been educated by their mother’s creative schooling with other girls. In Lancaster, the minister was the Unitarian Dr. Nathaniel Thayer. He had a gift for educating young men, so Harvard sent him their “renegade” boys to prepare for serious study. The girls made several close friendships with these lively students and found that they could meet equally mind to mind with them.
Mary and Elizabeth went on to a series of teaching and governess jobs to support their family. They both built upon their mother’s talent for finding creative ways to teach, including writing their own textbooks. Elizabeth also studied theology with William Ellery Channing. Since she could not do so under the auspices of a divinity student, she wrote out his sermons to be published. On her own she worked on an essay reflecting upon the meaning of the Old Testament, “Spirit of the Hebrew Scriptures.” In it she wrote that every person (explicitly defining men and women as moral equals) is free to cultivate an inward soul by searching for spiritual meaning, or inward revelation. Let me quote Marshall here. “The individual’s quest for meaning was balanced by what she called the ‘social principle’ - a sympathy for others ‘spontaneous in every human being’ and ‘rooted’ in the human heart “It is the consciousness of our nature which gives us moral power, and this alone,” she wrote. The ‘recognition of personal identity’ enables ‘our power of choosing” – the power of choosing for the good of others, she meant. Elizabeth was arguing something quite radical for her time and place: that personal choice and individual freedom were innate, and fully consistent with social responsibility and a ‘Godly’ way of life. Following from the discussion she had with Channing about Coleridge’s term ‘transcendental,’ she called her new philosophy ‘Transcendentalism.” (pg 165) This 21 year old defined a major philosophical movement in 1826, ten years before the all male Transcendental Club was formed.
Elizabeth and Mary both had suitors who asked them to marry them. As governesses, teachers, and as their friends married, they saw that most men and women gave up more than they were willing to when marrying for the most common reason – financial security. Elizabeth discussed their mutual friends marriages with Margaret Fuller. Together they came to some of the conclusions Fuller later wrote about in her groundbreaking analysis of gender politics; Women in the 19th Century. Mary and Elizabeth spent some years living in a Boston Unitarian household as borders. They were among the first generation of single men and women living away from their families and becoming friends with others young singles. There they became close friends with the painter Sarah Clarke, with Ralph Waldo Emerson and with educational reformer and politician Horace Mann. These friendships had as much meaning for the sisters as did dreams of marriage, though, after ten years, Mary’s friendship with Mann led to marriage.
No one expected Sophia to ever marry. She was the family invalid, with long bouts of migraine headaches. She had a talent for drawing, so Elizabeth made sure she had the opportunity to learn from the few good painters in the city, though as a woman she could not attend classes. In 1834 Mary took work in Cuba as a governess, “The worst of all slaveries” so that Sophia could come with her and build her health. Mary was horrified by the plight of the literal slaves there and wrote home about their religion and way of life. She quickly discovered that she risked her job to speak out against the injustices to her employers. Elizabeth asked Sophia to write long letters home. She wrote an extensive journal, complete with beautiful drawings and careful descriptions of the plants and wildlife. As each installment arrived in Boston, Elizabeth passed Sophia’s Cuba journal around among their friends, who were deeply moved by her reflections upon “How beautifully nature educated the soul.” Nature was teaching her, she wrote, that “intuition is the unerring truth”; a moonlit walk could bring a clear “revelation of Unity” made manifest in the natural world. (Pg 275-77) It was years before similar sentiments were written by Thoreau.
During those years, Elizabeth wrote Record of a School, a report on educational reformer Bronson Alcott’s school. They saw this record as “Wordsworth in prose.” Some called it the Transcendentalist Manifesto. Elizabeth saw the school as Transcendentalist philosophy in action. She was working to discover practical ways to embody their beliefs in the innocence of children, the natural ability of people to choose goodness and to directly experience divinity in their own souls - in relationships and in the soul of nature.
The sisters reached their height of influence in the 1840’s when Elizabeth opened a bookstore - library in Boston and the whole family moved in upstairs. Harvard professors ordered their books, the Transcendental Club met there, and eventually she and Margaret Fuller where allowed to join the club. The two women held popular conversations and college level classes for other women. Elizabeth began to publish abolitionist pamphlets, transcendentalist books and their magazine The Dial, as well as early work of her favorite new author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, a friend from in Salem. Nathaniel and Sophia fell in love, dreaming of a marriage of equals between two artists who inspired and supported each other.
In 1842, Sophia Peabody and Nathaniel Hawthorne married. Sophia did her best work before her three children were born. Nathaniel did his best afterwards. But she never returned to her invalid status and outlived her husband.
Mary Peabody married Horace Mann the next year. They both did their best work after their marriage. With a passion for justice they developed public schools and then founded Antioch College, the nation’s first co-educational institution of higher learning. They also had three children. Mary wrote several books after her husband died.
Elizabeth lived longer than either of her sisters. She met her goals to institutionalize Transcendentalism in a practical way by establishing kindergartens in every state of the union.
The Peabody sisters where not on the edge of the Unitarian generation seeking a newness - in theology - in education - and in marriage. They wove webs of connected relationships from the center on out. I am proud to stand upon their shoulders and to call them my religious “Ann sisters”.
Footnote
All quotes are from: The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism by Megan Marshall
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