Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“Songbirds or Raptors”
Rev. Rod Debs
April 17, 2005
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, RSV)
I don’t think there’s a person in our country who doesn’t know that, contrary to this passage in Ecclesiastes, the Ten Commandments says: “Thou shalt not kill.” It’s written in the halls of congress. But the relativistic words of Ecclesiastes better reflect our Christian culture: “For everything there is a season, . . . a time to kill . . . a time to hate; . . . a time for war. . . .”
Despite our actions, we preach the Ten Commandments because relativism seems a poor guide. There is no Biblical text to say when to kill and when to heal. The fifth commandment categorically prohibits killing at any time for any purpose. Americans preach it. Some go to court to post it in public places. We just don’t practice it.
Friday, I finally got around to pulling up the weeds in my garden. Russ loaned me his rototiller, but first I needed to pull up all the wild vines and St. Augustine grass that had crept into the space. As the passage in Ecclesiastes said, there’s a time to pluck up. I got down on my hands and knees and pulled hand-fulls of weeds, tossing them aside to die. As far as there being a time to kill, I’ve been known to put down rabbits too for one relativistic purpose or another: injury, illness or for eating—although few are willing to share the meal with me.
In the movies I’ve heard it said, some people just need killing, and most Americans I know could name a few. Moral relativism reflects American values better than the fifth commandment, if you are honest about it. For my money, I don’t want either statement inscribed on our school or courtroom walls.
I found a wonderful site on the internet that tells about raptors. Meat-eating birds don’t have teeth, but they have strong beaks to tear the flesh of their prey. You can see the hooked beak on this bald eagle, a raptor that doesn’t wait like vultures do for animals to die and then feed on their carcasses. These raptors kill small mammals such as mice and rabbits, fish, snakes, and even other birds.
Their eyes are so big that they cannot move them. A raptor has to turn its entire head to look around. But their eyesight is at least two or three times better than ours. Some can see a grasshopper from across a football field! Golden eagles can spot a rabbit from over a mile away. And owls have such great night vision they can hunt in the dark. Excellent killing machines.
We humans, however, have a choice when or if to kill—the right time. We can extend our killing capacity with powerful weapons and airplane delivery, satellite imaging and night vision goggles. We can also create flutes and cellos, symphonies and concertos, amplification and digital recordings. We have the capacity of becoming songbirds or raptors. We do both.
The founders of our nation so believed in the right of every individual’s conscience, not just their own, that they created a democratic form of self-government in the U.S., adding further protections of the right of individual conscience in the First Ammendment, guarantees of free press, speech, religion, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.
Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Benjamin Rush, these famous Unitarians and a Universalist were ahead of their time. Unlike them, many Americans of their revival era believed that humans are depraved and need external salvation.
Today, historians say our nation is in another great revival era. I think they’re right. This is an era of revival of faith in external authority, human and divine, and of profound faithlessness in the individual’s right and capacity of conscience. Faith in the individual’s conscience expressed by our nation’s Unitarian and Universalist founders is still being challenged.
Conservatives seem to have faith in external authorities. Liberals seem to have faith in our own individual conscience but, far too often, no faith in the other fella’s. There are few who have faith in others’ conscience as in their own. The faithful few are doves in a world of hawks. They are mourning doves, songbirds among raptors.
Imagine what it would be like if people really believed in the conscience of others. Take Quakers as an example. Traditional Quakers don’t have the educated clergy preaching the Bible—or preaching wisdom traditions as we UU clergy do. Quakers sit in silence, not only to hear the inner light within themselves, but also to be present with one another so that they might be open to hearing of the divine spark within one another. Quakers do not preach; they listen.
I grew up believing that there are a million wrong answers to every question, and only one right answer. A member of the American Academy of Science said to me once that scientific truth lasts only until the next scientific journal is published and a more polished truth emerges. This is to say that science is humble, and our best scientific conclusion is abandoned for a better one, day after day, year after year. But “humble” is not what it seems most of the time. More often, the scientific mind is like a raptor scouring the horizon for a weak theory to kill and devour.
We Unitarian Universalists include a great number of highly educated folks, with an even greater wealth of diverse experience. To our shame we have often been argumentative, convinced that if only other people could understand my superior view, they would discover the higher truth of the matter. We have, jokingly, been heard to say, when someone leaves UUism for another church, they raise the average intelligence of both congregations.
We sometimes have greater faith in education and in our elite academic prowess than in the capacity and right of conscience of every individual. We are tempted to behave as intellectual raptors, killing any weaker viewpoints that cross our paths. Our religion becomes salvation by academic degree, by bibliography and footnote. In matters of spirituality, as with any other field—well, we’re like Tommy Smothers describing his brother Dickie: We stomp in where angels fear to tippy-toe!
In recent years, we’ve gotten better. As the academic world’s linear modernism has been tempered by recognition that truth is relative to the context, we have come to more pluralistic, post-modern, and yes, relativistic understandings of truth. We have given up the arrogant view that it is possible to come up with the single, final truth forever and ever amen. We have become more humble, offering our best analytic perspectives, but always keeping an ear open for new insights.
I love the poem by the Unitarian e.e. cummings:
“may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old
“may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s Sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young
“and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile”
I love those first two stanzas—and the third speaks of love and smiles.
Surely, we Unitarian Universalists strive constantly not to be sheep, mindlessly following divine or human authorities. But we must beware lest we act like wolves or raptors, predators killing and devouring others’ sacred sentiments.
My prayer is that we be like Noah of the Bible story. May we build a UU ark of safety and protection and fill it with greater and greater diversity. May we see beyond the criticisms to the spark of insight present within one another’s most error-ridden understanding. May we celebrate and protect each animal’s genius, experience, wisdom and unique perspective.
May we enjoy each different voice as many songbirds’ melodies. So when we open the hatch, may we not discover that predators and buzzards are the only ones left in our ark.