This is, as is obviously stated in the title, a sermon I
have written to myself, not to you, gentle reader. It might perhaps surprise
you to learn that I have written such sermons in the past, and even delivered
them in public. Our lives are built on words, a fragile filigree of words on
words on words, and I am offering these words to myself as an affirmation of
something.
You are in no way obliged to read what I have to say, but
putting it out there to you is an act of prayer.
In the days following our recent election, I have felt as if
every value I had ever embraced as a building block for a better future for
all, everything I had stood for, was revealed to be a house of cards, collapsed
in a heap. The sense of disgust and shame, in the wake of all the “to the
victor come the spoils” behavior I have seen and heard about in recent days is
indeed demoralizing. The finger pointing, the blame, the reprisals, ignorance, fear
and it’s obvious reactions. The ugliness of it all is disheartening, and it has
quite literally sickened me. I do not know where I belong anymore.
I have been paralyzed.
Today, I went to church. I did not know if I would be able
to sing, but I knew I could pray, even pray silently, for myself, and all of
us.
The organ rolled off the opening play-through of the first
hymn, which perhaps could only have been this hymn, on this Sunday: “In Christ
there is no East or West.” I opened my mouth to start the first verse, as I’ve
already stated, not knowing if any sound, at all, would come out.
But something did come out. A huge voice came out from
within me, bigger, I think, than I had ever heard my voice in my own ear. My
voice filled the large interior of the church, and was louder anything
amplified. It was as if the architecture of the place had trained itself on me.
A few heads turned my way, so it was not my imagination. What did this mean?
And all week long, I have been wondering, what do I mean—what
does my life mean?
I am white, and some of my people came to this country on
the Mayflower. They were looking for freedom to believe and be in a way that
seemed right to them. Some of my people came to this country later from France,
looking for the same thing. Some of my people hail from south of the border, in
that very place a great number of people want to build a fence to keep out. And
some of my people were indigenous to the Americas. But you could not know any
of that by looking at me.
I have read, one of my mother’s greatest gifts to me, who
had some sort of learning disability before they really talked about and knew
what some of those were. She spent hours after school, unlocking the puzzle of
words. And that key has been in my possession, and I have passed it on to a new
generation. I have never stopped reading, because our lives are built on words,
we are a fragile filigree of words on words. The only way to understand the
world is to explore the forest of words. I have done that as well as I could.
School has never stopped for me, but has been continuously in session, year
after year.
I participated in my first act of civil disobedience
probably at the age of 6, marching in protest of the Vietnam War. This was the first
of many. In 1970, my family participated in the very first Earth Day Expo, and
a year later, my mother kept my sister and I from school, instead taking us on
the bus to the San Francisco waterfront, so that we could help with the effort
to clear up a devastating oil spill and save the lives of birds. In 1981, I
joined the HCI/Brady Campaign. These are but a few of the beads on the mala of
my soul, a few instances of the “activist” side of my life, started as a child.
Nearly being snatched by a predator on the way home from
kindergarten was a lightning bolt experience that forced me to be an aware
individual at a tender age. And, oh, there was so much of which to be aware—and
wary. The 1960s were a blood bath of trial and tribulation, some of which I was
able to see up close, if not observe on the evening news. That people had to
fight to do what was right was a mystery to me. I could see people fighting to
feed children and take care of elders, because the government wasn’t doing it.
I also saw people fighting just to fight, destroying just to destroy. I had
been taught the difference between right and wrong; I learned on my own the
difference between fighting for a just cause and “fighting” only for the sake
of being destructive.
I feel fortunate to have grown up in a place where there are
so many people whose backgrounds are different than mine. All the colors, all
the sounds and music, all the smells of the food we can share together at the
same table! I also feel fortunate to be bringing up my children here, where
they can experience this.
But this world is changing, is it not? Of the many and
varied jobs I’ve had over the years, one that I treasure is working for a
political sociologist. His simple philosophy became a mantra for me, because it
was a perfect summary for what I had learned at home, in my community, in
church, in meditation, in the world I had explored through books, a perfect
summation of all that I believe to be essential truth that must be lived.
NO DOUBLE STANDARDS.
The greatest danger in our world today is the notion that we
cannot have enough for ourselves if we share what we have with someone else. The
government has been vilified, and now taken over by those who have vilified it.
But it is not that our form of government is bad, but there is a cancer in the
system that must be surgically altered. This cancer is capitalism. All the
money in politics comes from an entitled and largely unregulated capitalism
that has been anointed “human”, and our politicians are actors in a play being
written by captains of industry who worship the “human” called capitalism.
Modern people talk about sustainability, and I say this goes
to the heart of the matter. Capitalism is unsustainable if it doesn’t
sustain all people. And yet, the garden of consumers is being culled,
daily. The rents go up, and housing becomes more and more difficult to obtain
and keep. The homeless encampments grow, daily.
The ideals of the 60s stated that we could eradicate hunger
and illiteracy and dawn to a new day.
That day never dawned.
What happened?
I’ll tell you, oh my soul: Identity politics happened.
In the 60s, Black leaders joined with organized labor in a
broad coalition, but assassins’ bullets ended one phase of the dream. 70s the
women of the Equal Rights Amendment joined with the Farm Workers and equal pay
for equal work was at stake, but the ones trying to break the glass ceiling couldn’t
be bothered about workers’ need for water in the fields, and that killed off
another phase of the dream. There is more to the story, here, and I am painting
in broad strokes.
So we are a fragmented jungle of causes, none of which
stands together. Our identities are what it is about, but listen to me, oh, my
soul. We are all people! In the words of the immortal authoress, Maya Angelou, “We
are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”
Instead of embracing our brothers and sisters, instead of
pulling everyone up, instead of opening our hands and working together to
fulfill our mutual dreams, we have fallen off the train into all these little
ghettos and silos. All our energy and resources of all kinds are dissipated in
the striving to uphold far too many identities. Laws that should be applied
equally to all, when they are applied, it is inequitable. “To each according to
need” has been turned into a slur, hurled by those who have no needs, but only a
desire to build unsustainable power through possession of everything. Divided
into our identities, we have been objectified—and we in turn objectify!—into
all kinds of different “others.” These “others” are all, now, under threat of
being marginalized. I say this, oh, my soul, because I fall into some of these
objectified groupings, too, yes, indeed, I do. It looks like I'll never be able to retire.
The greatest problem in our world today is that the naked
truth is clothed in lies, and no one, nobody, vets the clothiers or the cloth
or the thread that makes the warp and woof!
Because here’s the thing: You take away the illusory
clothing, and we are people, all of us
are people. That is our identity,
first and foremost. As Americans, we are all American People, and we must stand
up for each other, and support the least of our own and all those of our own
who are in need, for they all are our
own. Anything less is a disservice to individual self-respect, not to mention an
assault on the world we each live in. This is what our Constitution is meant to
uphold, and what we, as citizens, are meant to uphold, as our civic duty.
No Double Standards, this is social justice.
My life as an American must be meant to uphold our
Constitution by demanding an end to double standards and by working toward a
society that sustains everyone, in whatever way I can. As a Christian who has studied many believe systems and philosophies, I believe in something that has been called "radical inclusion"; quite simply, it means everyone is included.
What did it mean, that on a day when I thought I had no
voice, I was transmitting hymns as if I was being amplified?
This was a signal to me that my voice, in this matter, is
meant to be heard.
