WHOSE WORTH AND DIGNITY?

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Rev. Art Lavoie

READING:  Please Call Me By My True Names, Thich Nhat Hanh

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply:

I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch,

to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,

learning to sing in my new nest,

to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,

to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,

in order to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and

death of all that are alive.

Look deeply: I arrive,

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,

And I am the bird, which, when spring comes

arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,

and I am also the grass -snake who, approaching in silence,

feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,

my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,

and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl refugee on a small boat,

who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,

and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,

and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people,

dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.

My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,

So l can hear all my cries and laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can wake up,

and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.

SERMON

David Blumenfeld was shot by a terrorist.  In 1986 David Blumenfeld, an American citizen, was shot while walking the streets of Jerusalem, by a man named Omar Khatib, a Palestinian, said to be a terrorist.

“There is a smell to refugee camps which, once you have inhaled it, you never forget,” writes William Schulz, UU minister and former Executive Director of Amnesty International, “a smell of goat dung and human waste; of sweat and tears and unstaunched menstrual blood; but also a smell of desperation that gives way to sagging shoulders and the decay of the human soul.”             

William Schulz, What Torture’s Taught Me, Berry Street Essay, 2006

We covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.  This is our first Unitarian Universalist Principle.  We believe that each and every person is important.  Each and every one of us has value, and has the right to be treated with respect and dignity.  No matter who we are, and no matter what we have done.

It is easy for us to think of David Blumenfeld, the man shot in Jerusalem, as having worth and dignity.  But what about his assailant, Omar Khatib?  Does it make any difference knowing that Omar was probably nervous and scared, that he didn’t take good aim, that the bullet he fired grazed David’s head and that David fully recovered?

It is easy for us to think that people who live in a refugee camp in Darfur or one of the many other places in the world beset by terror and violence have worth and dignity.  But what about those who rape and pillage and terrorize these people, those who force them to flee their homes, take everything they have, burn their houses and fields, kidnapp their young sons and brutalize them until they become a vicious unfeeling fighting force?

When we read the Unitarian Universalist principles, they probably make us feel good.  But I think we often regard them as just some namby pamby hallmark greeting.  Do we ever really wrestle with what they are telling us, how they are calling us to live our lives? 

If we take this religious faith seriously, being a Unitarian Universalist and following our principles is hard work.  We may not have a set of dogmas, or a creed that everyone is expected to profess.  We may not have a set of commandments or rules that govern our lives.

What we do have are seven principles that we hold up as the ideals we hope to live by.  They provide us with an ethical system that serves as a model for our behavior, a set of standards that govern the way we approach the world.  If we take these principles seriously, they challenge us to the very core of our beings each and every day.

The first principle, the place that we start is the underpinning that anchors the structure of our faith, the bedrock, if you will, on which the others stand.

The Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell writes:

“The first Principle is our foundation.  It speaks of respecting others enough to never objectify and control them in the service of ideology, however precious.  It encourages people to unfold according to their true and authentic nature, to live with integrity according to their own heart’s learning.”  Edward Frost, ed, With Purpose and Principle, pg. 23

She also reminds us that “the first principle is human centered.”  Its focus is on human beings, in the here and now, not on some supernatural or otherworldly pursuit.  The core of our faith is based on our regard for ourselves and for others.   

This is where we begin.  Worth and Dignity

The eminent psychologist, Virginia Satir writes:

“I am convinced that there are no genes to carry the feeling of worth.  It is learned.  And the family is where it is learned. . . . Feeling of worth can only flourish in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible – the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family. . . . Since the feeling of worth has been learned, it can be unlearned, and something new can be learned in its place.  The possibility for this learning lasts from birth to death, so it is never too late. . . . there is always hope that your life can change because you always can learn new things.”

Dignity, on the other hand, is often described as the esteem and regard that we have for one another.  It is our offering to the world, our gift to each other, given with fullness of our own hearts.  With this gift we encourage an other’s self-worth to take root and thrive.

Our first principle has its grounding in the theology of Universalism. 

Universalists were the first to reject the Calvinist theology of predestination, the theology which claimed that God had decided, before each of us was born, whether we would be saved or damned. 

Our Universalist forebears were the first to claim that God, in infinite mercy and love, freely gives salvation to all, freely gives every human being wholeness, happiness and the means to be in right relationship with the world and with each other.

Ours is a theology grounded in a God who loves unconditionally, and who challenges us to do the same.  Let me tell you, when I read or hear about the incidents of torture, terror and abuse that are taking place around the globe; those perpetrators are the last people that I think of as having any worth and dignity.

Many of us have been deeply hurt by people we may despise.  Do these people deserve worth and dignity?

In our reading Thich Nhat Hanh wrote:

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,

my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,

and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl refugee on a small boat,

who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,

and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

In his book, In Our Own Best Interest, Bill Schulz, writes that we must “recognize that within the heart of every stranger lurks a reflection of one’s own.”

                                                            In Our Own Best Interest, William F. Schulz, pg. 33-34

Can we see in ourselves the capacity for both good and evil?  Do we recognize the humanity of both victim and perpetrator, the lover and the liar?  Can we see our own reflection in all of humanity, in all of the people whose stories we encounter, not only the people or the stories that we like?

These are the hard questions that our Unitarian Universalist faith tradition challenges us to contend with.  These are the questions that give the deepest meaning to our first principle.  And, when we wrestle with these questions our faith can come alive. 

The Rev. Frances Manly writes:

“The great web of interrelationships in which we exist does not come into being because we in our individual worth and dignity have chosen to participate in it.  To the contrary, we have individual worth and dignity not because of our separateness, but precisely because we are first part of the whole, a part, in Emerson’s words, of ‘the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which each part and particle is equally related, the eternal One.’”

Rev. Frances Manly, “The Principle Behind the Principles,” Essex Conversations, pg. 163

We see worth and dignity as inherent, as natural, as intrinsic to our being.  But Manly reminds us that it is not our individuality that gives us worth and dignity but our interrelationships, our connection to the whole of the human community and the created order. 

Laura Blumenfeld, the daughter of the man shot in Jerusalem, was so obsessed with what happened to her father that she vowed to find a way to get revenge on Omar Khatib her father’s assailant.

Laura and her husband Baruch spend the year after their marriage living in Israel.  During this time she learns that Omar is still in prison and she seeks out the Khatib family, telling them that she is a reporter, which is true, and that she is writing a book and wants to know their story.  She never tells them that she is the daughter of the man Omar shot.

She starts writing letters that are smuggled to Omar in prison.  She wants to know why he did it, and if he is sorry.  Many of the letters Omar writes her are filled with political rhetoric about the conflict between the Palestinians and Jews. 

He says that what he did was not personal, that it was a necessary outcome of what he calls “the occupation” of Palestinian lands by Israel.

Through these letters she also learns that Omar has many questions about what is going on in the Middle East.  He claims that violence is not a part of his nature.  He says that he doesn’t want to hurt anyone again. 

Laura learns that he is taking correspondence courses in government and political science from a university so that he can have non-violent ways of pursuing his cause.

As she and Omar correspond, as she gets to know the Khatib family, her need for revenge begins to change.  She is almost desperate to know and understand these people who are so different from her.  And she especially wants them to know her.  She wants her father to have a human face, to be real to them, and not be just some Jew that got in the way of the Palestinian quest for liberation. 

She decides to go to court with the Khatib family as they gather for a judicial hearing to determine if Omar can be paroled because of his deteriorating health in the damp, crowded prison.

She insists on addressing the court and faces the three-judge panel to speak in favor of Omar’s release.  To the shock of everyone present she announces that she is the daughter of Omar’s victim.

She then turns to face Omar.  She locks eyes with him.  In a hard and unforgiving voice she says, “And you promised me you would never hurt anyone again.”

                                    Revenge, A Story of Hope, by Laura Blumenfeld, Simon & Schuster, 2002

This is a true story and Laura Blumenfeld’s book is titled, Revenge: a story of hope.

Worth and Dignity.  We proclaim this principle, not because we believe it without any doubts.  We proclaim this principle, because, as people of faith we believe that there is always hope.

We believe that there is always hope for the worst in each of us and in our greatest enemies to be healed and made whole.

Worth and dignity are not what I bestow, they are recognized in the space between us, that place where real community is formed, that space in which the life of the spirit can grow and flourish.

This first principle, this foundation of our faith calls us to value the worth and dignity of every single person above all else. 

Everyone matters, everyone is entitled to the full measure of respect and dignity.  Every life is sacred and we are called to uphold that ideal.

It is a radical notion and it is unconditional.

May It Always Be So