Courageous love will transform the world. That’s what we
believe as Unitarian Universalists. We believe that the thing, the only thing
that will bring real and lasting change to our world is the compassionate
hearts of brave women and men. As we heard in our reading earlier, to have
peace between the nations, we must cultivate peace in our relationships, peace
in our families, and peace in our own
hearts.
It’s not a small endeavor. That’s the “courageous” part of
what we believe. Courageous love will transform the world. And that
transformation begins within.
How many of you are familiar
with the name Utah Phillips? I was sure our senior rabble-rousers would know
who he was. Phillips was a major activist and folk singer. He died in 2008. I
want to tell you one of the stories he tells about becoming so convicted about
his stance on non-violence.
He says that one time he was on the road as a folk singer
and took his teenage son along with him. During one of the long drives, his son
asked, “How did you get like that.” I love this question from a teenager to a
parent. “How did you get like that?” In
the case of Utah Phillips, the question was a little more obvious. He was
asking, how did you get so invested in a counter cultural identity.
So Phillips thought for a few hours and realized that it
started, he started to “be like that” when he was serving in the Korean war. He
remembers serving there next to the Imjin River. He knew that 75,000 Chinese
were on the other side of that river and they didn’t want him there. Most of
the Koreans didn’t want him there, and he wasn’t so sure he should be there
himself. There next to the river, the clothes began to literally rot off of his
body, and every exotic mold you could think of was growing on him or in his
clothes. His army boots had holes in them from the rot.
He noticed that the Chinese soldiers would often swim and
bathe in that river that they were stationed by. He wanted nothing more than to
clean up in the river, to get the feel of rot and death off of him. But the American
troops were restricted from going in. He didn’t know why that was, until a
young Korean man who knew enough English could explain it.
You see in Korean culture, when a young couple gets married,
the move in with their elders. But now with the war in Korea, with the waste
and devastation, there is nothing growing and no food to eat. So, after when
the first baby is born into one of these families, the eldest goes with a
blanket and a jug of water to sit on the banks of the river and wait to
die. They role down into the river and get
carried out to the sea. He said “We don’t want you swimming in it because our
elders are flouting out to sea.”
Phillips says, that’s when it began to crumble and he began
to run away. He wasn’t just running away from the war, he was “running away
from the blueprint for self destruction he had been handed as a man.”
He also ran away from the war to hide in Seoul, at a place
called the Korea House. There, Korean citizens would take in GIs to teach them
about the real Korean culture. While he was hiding out with them, he went one
rainy stormy night to a concert at the Korean Student’s Association. There was
a giant auditorium with big holes in the roof where it had been hit with mortar
shells. And the light on the stage were powered by car batteries. The performer
that night was the great Black operatic soprano, Marian Anderson. She had been
touring in Japan and came over to Korea to sing. As Phillips watcher her sing
“Oh Freedom” and “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” through the rain, he
remembered having encountered her years before as a child.
In Salt Lake City, his father had owned a small theater.
They brought Marian Anderson to town to sing in 1948. Phillips was with his
father as the picked her up at the train station and took her to the best hotel
in town. Because she was black, she was rejected from staying at that hotel. As
a child he watched her humiliation and his father’s humiliation.
He remembered this childhood experience as he watched the
same woman singing in a bombed out auditorium for the Korean Student
Association. And he says, “Right then I realized that it was all wrong, that it
ALL had to change and that change had to start with me.”
Have you had a moment like
that, when you knew deep down that the world needs to change? I think many of
us in this room have had moments of realizing that our lives are intertwined
with a system of political, economic and racial violence. Utah Phillips tells
the story of when that truth opened up to him and how he had to respond. He
knew then that it ALL had to change and that the change had to start from the
inside.
Phillips knew, and I think we all know, that violence
spreads like a virus. It’s not an isolated act, word, or feeling. It’s a
something that by its very nature is contagious.
In seminary I learned a great deal about the violence of
colonialism. Between the 1500s and 1900s, great European countries, and later
the United States, built their economies by overtaking less powerful nations
around the world. It’s the story of wealth and empire. The piece of that story
that doesn’t get told is that that violence and oppression comes home to roost.
The academic term for it is isomorphic oppression. It basically means that, in
the process of dominating another society, the dominator changes itself,
becomes more controlling and narrow in focus. Of course it imposes that control
abroad, as it subjugates another nation. But it also imposes those same values
of dominance and control at home. The quick and easy example that comes to mind
is Victorian England. As the country amassed great wealth by exploiting native
peoples around the globe, at home it put children to work in factories, and
fiercely controlled its women while poverty and prostitution rose to unthinkable
heights.
When a country inflicts violence abroad, it will increase
the oppression and control that exist within it’s own boarders. The examples of
this are endless. We know that violence, like love, is infectious. It lives and
dies through relationships between countries and people. And one piece of
violence, unless it is stopped, will result in other pieces of violence
somewhere else.
We know about the web of violence. But somehow, we manage to
not see ourselves as a part of it. It’s those people doing this that and the
other that makes those other people perpetrate more violence. There are several
versions of the blaming game. The classic example that comes to my mind is the
idea that the violent video games that teenagers sometime play are what have
caused the increase in school shootings over the past couple of decades. This
simple equation is stated as if the companies making these games didn’t make
tremendous profit, or as if the teenagers buying them weren’t watching these
exact same types of violence on the nightly news.
And as we play the blame game with violence, I also hear
that there is too much violence in the media. Both entertainment and news media
are replete with graphic images and stories of death. But, media is a consumer
industry; it is a business. Newspapers will print the stories that will make
their readers buy their papers, and television programs will show the kind of
stories that increase their ratings. Neither the entertainment industry nor the
news industry creates violence. Rather they offer up language and images that
their customers are hungry for.
If we take violence seriously, it becomes clear that the
nature of it is not a simple action that some people take, or a simple cause
and affect scenario. It is in fact a whole interconnected web of cause and effect.
It is the whole social environment that WE live and breathe in. Like Utah Phillips
came to realize, it ALL has to change, and that change has to start with the
self.
We may not be able to dictate which video games thirteen
year olds play, or how many images of dead bodies show up on the news. But we
can control the words that come out of our mouth, and eventually, with enough
practice we can begin to control our internal orientation toward violence or
compassion.
The key to that concept is,
“with practice.” Addressing the violence that pervades our daily lives is a
tremendous, life-long endeavor. Utah Phillips likens it to ridding yourself of
booze. To start the project, you have to stop blaming other people, sit in a
circle with some others who are committed like you, and say, “I have a problem.
I am addicted to violence.” And then, slowly, day-by-day, we can begin to be
aware of how violence exists in our daily lives.
I’m sure you have heard of having a basket-ball practice, or
a choir practice. Some artists call their working time a practice, and yoga
folks call their collected yoga work outs, their practice. Just like training
our physical bodies or our artistic abilities, we can also practice a peaceful
orientation in the world. At first practice means doing something that is
challenging and new. But eventually through repetition and mindfulness, those
things that were once new and challenging become habit. And that is part of the
religious journey. It’s actually the part of the religious journey that counts,
cultivating habits and a lifestyle that embrace compassion rather than
violence.
It sounds very abstract, this practicing for peace. But
there are some very specific practices worth mentioning. Actually there are a huge
number of them, but I’ll describe a few.
The first practice is more about what we let into our
consciousness than what we put out into the world. As I was getting at earlier
with the media, our lives are steeped in images of physical violence. From the
films we see to the news media we watch, even the stories in the newspaper are
filled with stories of aggression. And American humor often revolves around
making fun of another person. My suggestion isn’t to attempt to unplug from all
of that, not yet. Rather simply try to be aware of how much violence you are
presented with in your daily life. Be aware that hearing and seeing it affects
you. And hold onto an awareness that there are other stories and other ways of
being in the world. Practice being aware of what you are exposed to.
Another great practice to cultivate a quiet heart is simple
meditation. I know that word sounds very heavy, but it doesn’t need to.
Meditation really just means taking a moment to intentionally focus your mind. The
type of meditation that I practice is about clearing your mind. The goal of
this meditation is to slow down your busy brain, to let it come to a quiet
stillness. It’s harder than it sounds actually. But once your mind is quiet,
you can become more aware of the thoughts and feelings in a deeper way. You can
become aware when and if your reaction to something is negative or
compassionate. You can become aware of what situations make you feel
aggressive. And through this awareness you can better regulate the way your
emotionally respond to your environment. And you begin to control the choice of
responding with compassion or with aggression.
I know a handful of our members find the Buddhist meditation
practice called Metta to be helpful. It also is a practice to steer our hearts
toward compassion. We did a version of
it in our sung meditation just a minute ago. You start by feeling your own
experiences of suffering in the world. Knowing they are unpleasant, you feel
compassion for yourself. Then reaching out, you see the suffering of those you
love. Knowing that their suffering is unpleasant and not a choice, you feel
compassion for them. Then more broadly, reaching out with your heart, perhaps
to strangers, or to people you particularly have problems with. Recognizing
that they too have suffering in their lives, you offer compassion, knowing that
no one chooses to suffer. It’s a tremendously helpful spiritual discipline in
life.
Like I said, there are a great many different practices you
can take on, to tune your heart and mind away from violence and toward
compassion. But practice only works if you do it. I’m not talking about
thinking about the theory behind it, or reading about it. There is enough
reading on non-violence to make you blind. But theory doesn’t get you anywhere
if you don’t practice.
I started and I want to end with our Unitarian Universalist
conviction that courageous love will transform the world. Mind you, courage is
not, not being afraid. Courage is doing your best to confront a challenge.
Courage is doing what needs to be done, even if it means letting go of some of
your power, letting go of assumption and fears that you have depended on for
security. Courage is opening yourself to the possibility of change. As we courageously
endeavor to change our own hears, may we take on the great task of changing the
world that is so in need of our love.
Amen.
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