QUEEQUEG THE CANNIBAL

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1 THEY SHOULD HAVE CALLED IT INTERDEPENDENCE DAY Unitarian Universalist Church of St Petersburg July 5, 2015 Rev. Jack Donovan SCRIPTURES (see below) From The Meaning of Human Existence, by Edward O. Wilson From The Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin from The Declaration of Independence of the 13 united States of America, (1776) All Whose Boast, by James Russell Lowell You Will Have No Poor Among You from Deuteronomy 15:4-11 TIME FOR ALL AGES QUEEQUEG THE CANNIBAL Who knows who Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne were? Well, they were great writers and story-tellers, whose religion was Unitarianism, like us. Once, Herman was unsatisfied with a book he was writing about a whale that rammed and sank a ship. And as I heard the story, on a long walk to discuss his problem, Nathaniel advised him to go big and go deep. So Herman did, and he wrote on of the world s great stories Moby Dick. Who knows the story of Moby Dick? Well, here s the short version. There was a whaling ship with a captain named Ahab. And Ahab s leg had been bitten off by a great white whale whom everyone called Moby Dick. And Ahab wanted to kill Moby Dick in revenge for his leg. There were two men who signed up to help hunt whales on Captain Ahab s ship a young American named Ishmael and an experienced whale harpooner named Queequeg who was a South Sea islander. It was known that on Queequeg s home island the people were cannibals during war, they ate the enemies they killed. But Ishmael saw that Queegueg had a great and kind soul and they became best friends. Just before their voyage began, they were aboard another ship and some of the people were ridiculing Queequeg because he looked so strange long hair, sharpened teeth, tattoos all over. One young man was being especially mean when suddenly the wind shifted and the boom of the mast swung and the mean young man was swept overboard into the pounding sea. Everyone froze in horror. He was a goner. But quick as a flash Queequeg dove into the sea after him and against all odds he found the unconscious man and pulled him back to the ship where he revived. 1

2 Everybody was thrilled and they praised and thanked Queequeg but Queequeg just sat back down in quiet as if nothing had happened, with a little smile on his face that Ishmael thought seemed to say, It s a mutual, joint-stock world in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians. A mutual joint-stock world -- what does that mean? A mutual joint-stock world in all meridians what does in all meridians mean? We cannibals must help these Christians what does that mean? Yes, no matter how you live, the first rule of life is to help those in trouble, even if they have treated you badly. SERMON Last week, Alisun and I took a three day/three night vacation to the Smokey Mountains in northern Georgia. It was a long drive to get there, but it was nice. And the long drive allowed me to think through a question about how we start our meditation group each Tuesday morning. I realized I need to go back to the traditional instruction of starting one s meditation by setting one s intention asking yourself, what is my practice to achieve? What kind of spirit, what kind of feeling about living one s life do you want to prevail overall in your consciousness and sub-consciousness -- what prevailing state of mind do you want? There are lots of choices: the state of being free, truthful, observant, peaceful, inquisitive, energetic, mindful, patient, compassionate, brave, strong, independent, gracious. But the basic instruction is to choose your intended state of mind for your life and then sit a while in quiet, dismissing other attractions and distractions that might arise and letting your intention establish itself within you. It s like taking a trip which involves lots of asking, Are we there yet. That has been the national question recently are we in the state of being for which we aspire with some seeing our Union becoming a little more perfect and others seeing it becoming less so and some seeing both trends and worrying which will prevail. 2

3 On our second day in Georgia, we were heading somewhere on the mountain roads when we passed an isolated little rock and mineral store. Geodes! I exclaimed and we pulled in to have a look. I love the story about Louisa May Alcott as a girl strolling from her house over to Walden Pond to visit Henry David Thoreau and asking him where he got his graciousness with all kinds of people. He pulled out a geode and said, People tend to see others like the outside of this geode rough, ugly and worthless. But I look for their hidden center sparkling with light and beauty, and I see what is worthy. And with that he turned over his little geode to reveal the wonderful crystals that were inside. Inside the ramshackle store it was like a geode itself, like the Seven Dwarfs diamond mine, sparkling with all kinds of stones and gems and jewels and also some fine glass work. The only clerk was a plump young woman with dyed red hair and black polished fingernails, a Georgia mountain twang, and a pitbull on a leash that went with her everywhere in the store. But she spoke with surprising knowledge and sensitivity about the geology of rocks and crystals and gems; about the changing local glass industry that was being bought out by the Chinese and the closing down a workplace and a tradition; about missing her former boyfriend who folks said she was lucky to be rid of and who, yes, was sometimes mean and was probably bi-polar, but who had so many good and nice qualities; about her dad who she thought had probably just been so busy with the business that he neglected to explain that the crystals with labels from Chile actually were imported through Chile from volcanic areas in Honduras (which I could see her visualizing). She showed us all around, inside and outside. And then suddenly she was talking painfully about the calls to take down the Confederate flag. I wish they d all just leave us alone. States rights, freedom. It s our history. It s our people. It s not hurting anyone. I said nothing. Here we were at the end of our world that was the center of hers. I could have mentioned James Russell Lowell s poem, All whose boast it is that we come of forebears brave and free which I had on my mind as we approached Independence Day. It seemed enough to just not acknowledge her lonely thought. But her sudden statement of pain seemed so close to the seeming arrogance of the dissenting Supreme Court justices who preferred the States to vote on their people s rights rather than ensure that our country stood by its covenant 3

4 that all should have equal opportunity to employ all of humankind s unalienable rights. When a Supreme Court justice writes, Who do we think we are, he is really pointing a finger at the majority who voted to protect the rights of the minority and saying, Who do you think you are? Does he not agree that the Declaration is a promise of equality of rights under the law across the nation and that this is our intention so we might all be safe to seek happiness? Does he not hear Lincoln s addition to the American covenant, saying that from our beginning we have been dedicated in law to the liberating proposition that all are created equal in their human rights? I don t know about you and of course this is a complicated cultural and societal matter but on this Independence Day weekend, this seems to me a strange and estranged court, indeed, and an estranged nation that will not see that the Declaration of Independence was declared to ensure a recognition and honoring of the interdependence of our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred, honored, and unalienable rights. Was it not graciousness toward one another that was our original national intent and covenant perhaps never perfectible, but our national purpose if only because it is what allows a nation to prosper and know peace? Some Americans think of themselves as social Darwinists. They say (and incorrectly interpret Darwin as saying) it is best for the nation to let only the strong survive. They will tell you, As the good Lord himself said when he accepted all that woman s expensive ointment, The poor you will always have with you, but I m only here for the moment. But what an abuse of scripture. Jesus was recognized as having the status of a rabbi, a teacher of the law and the prophets. When he quoted a line from scripture, his disciples knew he referred to the meaning of the whole text and the whole text, as we heard from Deuteronomy this morning, says that since some will always be falling into need, you must never stop living with an open heart and open hand to raise them back to worth and dignity, as UUs are likely to put it. All are created equal in worth and we must work together to make sure each one gets to fulfill that worth with dignity. That s what Jesus was reminding his followers by choosing that quote for then, as the scripture says, there will be no poor among you. For some reason, as I reflected on Independence Day, my mind went to the famous people who carried on the early vision for our Union many were Unitarians in America and England, from Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley to 4

5 Herman Melville writing in an age of ending slavery and of building democracy. With her book Frankenstein and her increasingly valued later writings, Mary Shelley argued the deep psychological and spiritual case for embuing compassion and cooperation in whatever we create. And Melville in Moby Dick, showed what happens when one dictatorial ego is allowed to lead the ship of state in pursuit of its obsession. Without the reins of democracy, the ship and its community are destroyed. Deuteronomy 15 is a forerunner of the Declaration of Independence. It is an ethos from a closely observed reality over generations of people living together in a difficult world. It s lessons have been documented and confirmed in our era through careful measured observation by Charles Darwin and a great cloud of scientific witnesses. As contemporary socio-biologist E.O. Wilson summarizes the data-driven research findings, the virtue of selfishness may win the individual-against-individual struggle for survival in the very short run. But in the longer run, the virtue of altruism always wins the struggle for survival and prosperity for society and its individuals. The gene pools of those who do not learn to communicate and cooperate gradually disappear. Our challenge is to expand the circle of the group within which we cooperate and care. That seems to be our choice on this Independence Day. And as Darwin emphasized in the closing pages of The Descent of Man, Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of our nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced either directly or indirectly much more through the efforts of habit, by our reasoning powers, by instruction, by religion, etc., than through natural selection. So, that is a view on this Independence Day weekend of an intention for us who gather in city halls and community churches to form a more perfect Union, to fulfill through interdependence the potentials for happiness of all earthkind. Happy Interdependence Day, and Amen. READINGS The Meaning of Human Existence, by Edward O. Wilson 5

6 Are we human beings built to pledge our lives to a group, even to the risk of death, or the opposite, built to place ourselves and our families above all else? Within biology itself, the key to the mystery is the force that lifted pre-human social behavior to the human level by which hereditary social behavior improves the competitive ability not just of individuals within groups, but among groups as a whole. A group of uncooperative, poorly communicating individuals will lose to its better organized competitors. (As) Charles Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species and in The Descent of Man, the genes of the losers will decline across generations The Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of our nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced either directly or indirectly much more through the efforts of habit, by our reasoning powers, by instruction, by religion, etc., than through natural selection. From The Declaration of Independence of the thirteen united States of America, 1776 We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal, that all are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, and that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. Stanzas On Freedom by James Russell Lowell (UU Hymnal #150) All whose boast it is that we come of forebears brave and free, if there breathe on earth a slave, are ye truly free and brave? If we do not feel the chain, when it works another s pain, 6

7 are we not base slaves indeed, slaves unworthy to be freed? Is true Freedom but to break fetters for our own dear sake, and, with leathern hearts, forget we owe humankind a debt? No! true freedom is to share all the chains that others wear, and, with heart and hand, to be earnest to make others free! They are slaves who fear to speak for the fallen and the weak; they are slaves who will not choose hatred, scoffing, and abuse, rather than in silence shrink from the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be in the right with two or three. You Will Have No Poor Among You, Deuteronomy 15: The poor you will not have among you, because Yehovah your God is sure to bless you in the land 5 if only you will obey your God by diligently observing this commandment that I command you today: 7 If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land, do not be hard hearted or tight fisted toward your needy neighbor. 8 You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. 9 Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought. 10 Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account Yehovah your God will bless you 7

8 in all your work and in all that you undertake. 11 And since some poor you will always have with you, I therefore command you, Open your hand to your poor and needy neighbor in the land. 8