Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“Winning/Losing: Could Be Bad,
Could Be Good, Don’t Know Yet”
Rev. Rod Debs
November 7, 2004

STORY FOR ALL AGES: If you know the story this morning, I want you to help me tell it. The story is about an old farmer who owned a horse.

One day the farmer’s horse ran away. All his neighbors said, “This is terrible. Plowing fields, pulling wagons and other farm work is just too hard for you even with the help of your wife and son. Too bad!” The old farmer said, “Could be bad, could be good, don’t know yet.”

Then one morning his horse came back and with her she brought a beautiful black stallion. The neighbors were so happy. They said, “How wonderful for you. Your horse ran away but now she has returned and brought you a second horse. You are so lucky!” The old farmer said, “Could be good, could be bad, don’t know yet.”

The very next morning, the farmer’s son got up early to train the young stallion and he fell off the horse and broke his leg. All the neighbors said, “How terrible! Your horse runs away only to return with a stallion so wild that your son breaks his leg trying to ride him. Now you and your wife will have to work the farm without your son’s help! That’s so bad!” The old farmer said, “Could be bad, could be good, don’t know yet.”

That weekend, the government started a war with another country, and the generals went from town to town taking young men to be soldiers to fight in the war. The neighbors said, “How wonderful for you. All our sons had to go to war, but because your son has a broken leg, he does not have to leave home and kill, maybe even die in the war. You are so very lucky.” The old farmer said, “Could be good, could be bad, don’t know yet.” And so their life went on.

READING (by David Batstone)

“No matter who wins. Politics do not happen (only) once every four years. Politicians like to see which way the wind blows. So, as Jim Wallis is so fond of saying, let’s change the wind.”

“Pray for common ground with your political opponents, then walk on that fertile soil. Too many important political issues in America today are polarized, and the inevitable result is paralysis. The opposite of love is not hate, but fear. We fear sliding down a slope from the height of our own self-right-ness. We fear our adversary. We fear losing control. And we cease to love.”

Message: In 1891, Benjamin Harrison spoke before the United States Senate and House and described voting in this way. He said: “A trust, momentous in its influence upon our people and upon the world, is for a brief time committed to us,… the free and equal influence of the people in the choice of public officers and in the control of public affairs.”

The 2004 General Election is over. Voting, “the free and equal influence of the people” has ended for another two years. Many Unitarian Universalists across the country including some of you have worked very hard to register new voters and to get-out-the-vote. I think most would agree with President Lyndon Johnson that “Voting is the first duty of democracy.” (speech, 8-11-64)

History records the suffragist struggle for women’s right to vote and the voting enfranchisement of African Americans as great victories for democracy. In the 1980’s our government celebrated the creation of democracies in Nicaragua and El Salvador by pointing to national elections despite Death Squad “disappearances” of political opponents, despite the bombing of alternative presses, and murder of American nuns and even the daytime public assassination of Archbishop Romero for criticizing the military oppression. Now again we point to national elections in Afghanistan and scheduled voting in Iraq as the defining characteristic of democracy.

As I watched the election results Tuesday night, I had that terrible feeling of helplessness. Now that my vote was cast, I felt there was nothing more I could do. I wondered about so many of you who worked so very hard for months. You don’t just shut down all your passion and commitment till the next voting opportunity. It just doesn’t seem right that citizenship in a democracy is nothing more than a ballot, once every two years. I never realized it before, but representative democracy gives the impression that your civic duty as a citizen is limited to a voting. Depending on whether your candidates win or lose, you feel triumphant or helpless as if there is nothing more to do. Representative democracy involves delegating the powers of government to winning candidates, and so we often abdicate all responsibility for government to them until the next national election.

It struck me that citizenship is more than voting. Imagine if all the energy we have exercised educating ourselves on the issues in recent months, talking with friends and writing newspaper letters to the editor (30 letters on the back bulletin board)—what if our citizenship activities actually increased rather than abruptly ending for the next two years? Citizenship can be so much more than voting.

Let me offer contrasting views of citizenship, different religious perspectives of what it means to be fully human: We can either view ourselves as persons-in-community or as individuals-in-markets.

Persons-in-community would measure success in terms of the sustainable community of mutual participation, each contributing to the well-being of others. Individuals-in-markets measure success in terms of growth and domination of market share, accumulating and consuming as much goods and services as possible. (John B. Cobb, Jr. Sustaining the Common Good, 1994)

In the political arena, individuals-in-markets seek global economic and military preeminence----`preeminence’ being a softer-sounding word than the hard term `domination.’ You’ve probably heard the name Paul Wolfowitz, the second in command at the Pentagon, officially the Deputy Defense Secretary. In 1992, as under Secretary of Defense for Policy, he wrote an internal policy brief for then President Bush that advocated preemption rather than containment and unilateral action for United States interests. President George H. W. Bush rejected the document as too extreme.

Then in September, 2000, the Project for a New American Century released their document entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” It used Paul Wolfowitz’s draft as “a blueprint for maintaining United States preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.” The document reads: “At present the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.” The so-called “neo-conservatives” of the Project for a New American Century including Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, National Security Council Director of Middle East Affairs Elliott Abrams, Wolfowitz and others now create the United States foreign policy of preserving and extending U.S. global “preeminence.” This policy makes perfect sense to many Americans as evidenced by the reelection of the Bush administration.

In contrast to the growth view of individuals-in-markets, theologian John Cobb describes the perspective of “persons-in-community” (Sustaining the Common Good) as more concerned with healthy and sustainable community than with growth and domination of market. I see a similar focus on “persons-in-community” in the U.S. Catholic Bishops 1986 pastoral letter entitled, “Economic Justice for All.” Specifically, the concept of “contributive justice” (Jubilee justice) works to empower the disadvantaged to contribute to society.

Although Christian literalists interpret the Christian gospel as a blood sacrifice in redemption for human sins, many Unitarian Universalists and main-stream Christians read the life and teachings of Jesus and of the early Christian communities as a gospel of kindness and generosity especially toward the poor and outcast: “Insofar as you have done it unto the least of these…, you have done it unto me.” Again, the view of the U.S. Catholic bishops, of many mainstream Christians and you can see it in Green environmentalists as well, is the focus on sustainable well-being of persons-in-the-global-community.

The 2004 election was brutal. It felt like a battle for electoral market. How do you bring a message of wholeness for persons-in-community when the dominant practice is of conquest and preeminence? Edwin Markham wrote:

“He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win;
We drew a circle that took him in.”

Fine sentiments, but how do you do it? The world is a bloody competitive marketplace of abusive rhetoric and disinformation. How do you have a mutual relationship with those who would demonize and exclude others from participation? Booker T. Washington, the African American Educator during the era of Jim Crowe exclusion wrote: “I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.” St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) wrote: “We must love them both—those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject. For both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in the finding of it.”

When it comes down to the emotions of relating to those who, as the Bible says “strike us on the cheek,” one does not simply “turn the other cheek” without some process of spiritual reflection and insight. I’m no Booker T. Washington or St. Thomas. But I am aware that my perspective and beliefs are the product of ideas and experiences that have made up my world. If I had the life circumstances of others, likely I would have something of their perspectives. There is no justification for rage at the views of others if indeed “there but for the twist of fate go I.”

Jean Bethke Elshtain writes: “Openness to foreignness and differences form a mood that embraces less purity, hence sees less danger in others; that can practice `live and let live’—that is where these reflections lead.”

Well, I find a limit to what I can stomach. I do not find myself able to actually seek out offensive rhetoric and hateful sophistry of many who oppose wholistic views of persons-in-community. My mother used to say: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” I do not have to go out looking for what is offensive and spiritually challenging. My daily life gives me enough opportunities to be open to foreignness and differences, growth opportunities to look beyond the “danger” I see, plenty of opportunity for the spiritual growth by seeking to understand the source and dynamics taking place.

A wise colleague once explained to me that we grow during crises---perhaps only during crises. When we are comfortable, he explained, there is no energy for challenging our current views, no energy for changing what seems familiar to us. It is when we face crises that our energy emerges---first as energy to fight or flight---but also energy that might lead to the hard work of self-reflection, openness to new perspectives, and the growth of exploring possible change.

The eight-year-old Nikka might have a point when she said: “If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate.” Start with a loved one whose perspective is deeply offensive. “Seek first to understand, before being understood” (Study Circles guideline).

Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Everyone wants to be settled. But it is only insofar as they are not settled that there is any hope for them.” We too need to be riled up so that we learn to practice citizenship between those November votes every two years. We need to be unsettled. We need to set aside some of our private absorption in the market of accumulating goods and entertainments. I know that I do. Citizenship means activity working to make our global community more whole.

The danger of winning or losing an election is that we absorb ourselves in triumphant feelings that it’s all over now, we won! Or we absorb ourselves in depressed feelings that there’s nothing we can do now, we lost! Both preclude our further active citizenship for the sake of a better world. There’s a joke I can’t remember, except for the punch line. I have trouble telling jokes sometimes. But the ending seems relevant to this election season: “There must be a pony in here somewhere.”

Do you remember the classic story, “To Kill a Mockingbird”? Harper Lee says to his child: “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”

In email exchange this week, one of you wrote me: “We have to look in the mirror and say that we tried, and that we’re going to keep trying. We are going to maintain our belief in the democratic process, however disillusioned we may be at this point, and we’re going to keep on trucking. … We will NOT tuck our tails beneath us; we will be `losers’ who persevere….” (Melanie Harper)

Robert F. Kennedy said: “Each time we stand up for an ideal or act to improve the lots of others, or strike out against injustice, we send forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest of walls of oppression and resistance.”

How will we do it? I want to close this morning with a prayer, a story and a song. First, a prayer by Caesar Chavez:

“Show me the suffering of the most miserable, so I will know my people’s plight.
Free me to pray for others, for you are present in every person.
Grant me courage to serve others, for in service is true life.
Give me honesty and patience, so that I can work with other workers.
Bring forth song and celebration, so that the Spirit will be alive among us.
Let the Spirit flourish and grow, so that we will never tire of the struggle.
Let us remember those who have died for justice, for they have given us life.
Help us love even those who hate us, so we can change the world.”

The story: “A friend’s son was in the first grade of school, and his teacher asked the class, `What is the color of apples?’ Most of the children answered `red.’ A few said `green.’ Kevin, my friend’s son, raised his hand and said `white.’ The teacher tried to explain that apples could be red, green or sometimes golden, but never white. Kevin was quite insistent and finally said, `Look inside.’” The storyteller, Joseph Goldstein writes, “Perception without mindfulness keeps us on the surface of things, and we often miss other levels of reality.” (Insight Meditation)

The song:
“The eency weency spider began to weave a web.
Up, down, in and out, she cast her silky thread.
Out from the center, round and round she spun,
Till the eency weency spider connected everyone.”