Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Briarcliff, Croton, and Ossining

We Begin Again in Love

Given by James Covington on October 1st, 2006

Against the fundamentalisms of hate, we must create a counter-fundamentalism of love—knowing, without hesitation or equivocation, that this is what we must do to heal the fractured world. –Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

We are in the midst of the Jewish High Holy Days - Rosh Hashanah - the legendary birth of the universe proclaimed by the blowing of the Shofar - and Yom Kippur - the Day of fasting and Atonement. These Days of Awe are a time of spiritual stock-taking. The Islamic community is observing Ramadan, also a time of fasting and contemplation. As far as I know, aside from Catholics celebrating Lent, most Christians do not celebrate such ritualized periods of inner reflection and neither do Unitarian Universalists. This doesn’t mean we are not reflective about the meaning of our days or that we feel it unnecessary to ask for forgiveness. But I have over the years chosen to speak to the theme of the Jewish High Holy days, as I have come to view them as symbolic of the universal need for human reflection, the acknowledgement of our sins, our failures and short-comings, and our propensity even for creating great human misery and destruction. Sin is a hot button for some people, but the word “sin” means “missing the mark”—ethically and morally. By my observation, we humans do miss the mark, often.

The legend has it that on Rosh Hashanah Yahweh, the Great Cosmic Judge contemplates three books, a very slim book in which are inscribed the names of all the completely evil people of the world, who are condemned to a year of trouble and unhappiness. Another book, even slimmer, contains the names of all the people who are completely good. They are granted a year of peace and happiness. But the third is by far the thickest book, in which are inscribed all the rest of us - still struggling with good and evil, meaning and despair. Our destiny is yet in doubt.

While these images are not to be taken literally, they are to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, the word “evil” has become a provocative if not inflammatory one in recent years, beginning with President Bush’s label of “axis of evil”, fostering, in my opinion, a contemptuous international climate. And then, of course, we know what happened when Pope Benedict quoted a 14th-Century Christian emperor who said Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things. The outcome of that comment was Muslim rage and in some instances, unconscionable violence. By the way, I consider the Pope’s invitation for dialogue with the religious leaders of the Muslim community a supreme act of courage and urgency.

And we will not soon forget last week’s drama at the U.N. when the president of Venezuela called Mr. Bush the devil himself. I guess you can say, “What goes around, comes around.” Nevertheless I consider President Hugo Chavez’ comment demeaning of United Nations principles and a sad commentary on the state of world leadership. And then there is Ahmadinajed of Iran, whose comments at the U.N. and about the extinction of Israel and the “myth” of the holocaust remain quite disturbing.

I personally consider the over-play and over-reaction to the word, “evil” as reflective of the anxious state of human existence and the vulnerability we human beings are presently experiencing in the context of violent human aggression. World leaders are merely defensively posturing themselves to make themselves look more powerful and invulnerable. And that’s unfortunate.

Are we witnessing the war of civilizations? I don’t know. Regardless, I believe it is urgent, that all humanity takes a moment to reflect on the course of our lives, to acknowledge the strife we are creating for ourselves, and begin to speak gently with one another about how we can all live together in peace and justice. No easy task! It is easy for me to stand here and proclaim righteously in pious generalities what we need to do to save ourselves. Heaven knows how difficult and complex our lives have become in our modern times.

And yet, we have to start somewhere, don’t we? We have to begin the task of saving civilization somewhere. Maybe we start here. Right now.

The twenty-first century confronts humanity with challenges of a scale and scope that seem to defy solution. There are environmental problems: global warming, the erosion of the biosphere. There is the growing inequality between rich and poor. Half the world lives in poverty. Then there are the political problems; ethnic conflict, genocide, international disorder, an ill-advised war in Iraq that has divided our nation, and global terrorism –all of which undermines the security of every life in one country after another—all of it fueling the spread of religious extremism and barbaric acts of violence against the innocent. The blood-stained face of our world reminds us that good and evil are very real no matter how much we try to reduce them to psychological pathology.

It is overwhelming. This week, when I read on the front page of The New York Times about polar bears drowning in the arctic regions because of glacier melting, I just put the paper aside and wept. I mentioned this to my peer supervision group of psychotherapists a little later and two of them confessed they don’t read the paper or listen to news anymore because it is so distressing.

These problems are so vast, so interconnected and global, that they lie beyond their reach of nation states, even superpowers, even the United Nations, it seems. How then can you and I make a difference? The temptation is to turn inward, not for reflection, but for permanent retreat. And yet the opposite is needed. Power entails our responsibility. The final truth is that we can make a difference, and only we can make a difference.

Religion has been called "our bargain with the universe." Yet all too often in recent years, the face religion has presented to the world has been unlovely: either strident and aggressive, or weak and vague. Yeats’ line come to mind: The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.

But the true task of religion should be to help the rest of us figure out what it is we are doing with our lives and why. Mary Oliver's poetic question hits the mark: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

That is a social/moral, ethical and philosophical, not a psychological, question. Our social/moral responsibility has to do with universal human dignity and human rights. Our ethical responsibility has to do with how we treat one another personally and in the community. On the larger scale, the question is “What is our moral and ethical responsibility to the people of Darfur? What is our moral and ethical responsibility to the people of Palestine? What is their moral and ethical responsibility to the people of Israel? What is our moral and ethical responsibility to the people of Iraq? What is the moral and ethical responsibility of the Iraqi people toward one another? What is the moral and ethical responsibility of Hamas, Hizbollah, al Qaeda and the radical Islamic movement to the lives of those who disagree with them, who are other, who are considered infidels? How and when and where can rational, caring human beings come together to listen to one another and “begin again in love” to repair the perilous rifts we have created?

These are heavy questions! So heavy, I feel stupid asking them! What can one do with these questions? I say this: all the good people of the world need desperately to work together to answer them! Democrats and Republicans! Israelis and Palestinians! Sunnis and Shiites! Iranians and Americans!

Certainly partisan political bickering is not very healing, is it? I am as sick of politics these days as I used to be of organized religion. But it’s not politics that is the problem, and it is not religion. Both politics and religion, in their deepest origins, are structures through which good people work to live peaceful, responsible, meaningful lives. Ironically, it’s human beings in the quest for power that corrupt both religion and politics.

So how do we begin to take responsibility? How do we save ourselves? How do we begin again in love? How do we keep from withdrawing under the weight of so much terror? How is that we can relate to one another in a way that will save us not destroy us? Well, perhaps the standard answer is the right one: we begin in our own backyard.

Let me tell you a story. In 1966 an 11 year old black boy moved with his parents and family to a white neighborhood in Washington. Sitting with his two brothers and two sisters on the front step of the house, he waited to see how they would be greeted. They were not. Passers-by turned to look at them but no one gave them a smile or even a glace of recognition. All the fearful stories he had heard about how white treated blacks seemed to be coming true. Years later, writing about those first days in their new home, he says, “I knew we were not welcome here. I knew we would not be liked here. I knew we would have no friends here. I knew we should not have moved here. . .”

As he was thinking those thoughts, a white woman coming home from work passed by on the other side of the road. She turned to the children and with a broad smile said, Welcome! Disappearing into the house, she emerged minutes later with a tray laden with drinks and cream cheese and jelly sandwiches which she brought over to the children, making them feel at home. That moment—the young man later wrote—changed his life. It gave him a sense of belong where there was none before. It made him realize at a time when race relations in the United States were still fraught, that a black family could feel at home in a white area and that there could be relationships that were color-blind. Over the years, he learned to admire much about the woman across the street, but it was that first spontaneous act of greeting that became, for him, a definite memory. It broke down a wall of separation and turned strangers into friends.

The young man, Stephen Carter, is now a law professor at Yale, and he eventually wrote a book about what he learned that day. He called it Civility. The name of the woman, he tells us, was Sara Kestenbaum , and she died all too young. He adds that she was a religious Jew. “In the Jewish tradition,” he notes, “such civility is call hessed”—the doing of acts of kindness—which is in turn derived from the understanding that human beings everywhere, are precious. Civility, he adds, “itself may be seen as part of hessed; it does indeed require kindnesses toward our fellow citizens, including the ones who are stranger, and even when it is hard.”

He goes on to say: Nothing in contemporary secular conversation calls us to give up anything truly valuable for anybody else.. . Only religions offer a sacred language of sacrifice-selflessness-awe that enables believers to treat their fellow citizens as fellow passengers. Sadly, however, religion has too few serious practitioners, which is why those who are truly moved by it to love their fellow human beings are so special. I learned that truth in 1966 and, to this day, I can close my eyes and feel on my tongue the smooth, slick sweetness of the cream cheese and jelly sandwiches that I gobbled on that summer afternoon when I discovered how a single act of genuine and unassuming civility can change a life for ever.

Indeed. Can we begin again in love?

This is what I think: There is within the human being a natural impulse to reach out, connect and to care for one another. It is the religious impulse. This is the kind of religion Carter refers to. Unfortunately, when human beings gather around a common value or cause or reason, whether it is faith or politics, we then tend to see the other as the enemy and our own way as absolute and true. We all have a deep need for identity in life, driven by the fact that we know we shall all die, and while that need may impel us to seek spiritual meaning and community, it can also cause us to treat the OTHER with enmity.

Does it have to be that way? I think not. The hessed of Judaism and Yom Kippur that I speak of this morning is a demanding universal love, a universal impulse in human beings, that I believe in today’s world we must do all we can to nurture and practice with one another, beginning at home, with one another, with our children, our family, in our schools, our communities. It should be our covenant with one another. Societies are only human and humanizing when they are a community of communities based on faced to face encounters—covenantal relationships.

Yom Kippur brings us back to hessed. Yes, we reflect and admit our failures and incivilities. Yes, we ask forgiveness. Yes, we begin again in love. Can human beings lift up this covenantal relationship for all the world? I say we must!

I find that my own desire for such a response to life is best nurtured here with you in this place in this beloved community of faith. I find that the sacrifice, selflessness and awe that Stephen Carter speaks of, is nurtured best for me in this place. Why is that?

For those of you who may be visiting us today, we believe that religious faith, any religious faith worth its salt, is interested first in how we live our lives with one another in this life, not the next. We try to do that with one another with an openness that is respectful of each others experiences and knowledge. We do believe we have a responsibility to each other and to the gift of creation, that our actions are what are most important, not belief in a dogma or a creed.

Another way of saying this is that we are primarily concerned with how we should live, individually and collectively, so that we might become better people, partners, parents and citizens of the world.

We believe that life is a gift and that our responsibility as human beings is to preserve that gift.

We believe that almost all religions are saying that we are precious people who need to treat everybody else as though they are precious, too.

We believe that truth, justice and compassion are requirements for living.

We believe that love is better than hatred, understanding is better than prejudice, and that if there is ever to be a better world, people of widely differing beliefs will have to help each other build it.

We believe that, down deep, all people of goodwill hold these same beliefs and that every individual should feel encouraged to develop a fulfilling philosophy of life.

As a religious community we are committed to fostering those beliefs and deepening our connections with one another. Religion means “that which binds us together.” In other words religious faith is born out of human need for connection. We attempt to foster that connection through our particular belief system, our values, our compassion and our actions in the world.

And I will add a few personal beliefs of my own, honed from my own experience, knowledge and in relation to all of you in this room:

I believe that each of us is here for a purpose; that discering that purpose takes time and honesty.

I believe that even the smallest good deed can change someone’s life.

I believe that it is not the honours we received that matter, but the honour we give.

I believe that no religion that persecutes others is worthy of respect, nor one that condemns others, entitled to admiration.

I believe that God is love, a force greater than all yet present in each, to which I try to surrender myself everyday.

I believe that each situation is which we find ourselves did not happen by accident; we are here, now, in this place, among these people, in these circumstances, so that we can do the act or say the word that will help heal the fractures of the world. So may it be. So may it be. So may it be. And now, can we begin again in love?