THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. A sermon preached by Galen Guengerich All Souls Unitarian Church, New York City October 27, 2013

Transcription

1 THE REST OF YOUR LIFE A sermon preached by Galen Guengerich All Souls Unitarian Church, New York City October 27, 2013 In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the contemporary Polish poet Adam Zagajewski tried to capture both the unspeakable horror of what had been done and the indestructible beauty of what remained. He wrote: Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June's long days, and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You've seen the refugees heading nowhere, you've heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth's scars. Praise the mutilated world and the grey feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns. The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were not the first time our world was mutilated, nor the last. Sometimes our world is mutilated by nature s indifference to our preference for human life over other forms of existence and other forces of nature mutilated by tumors and typhoons, by viruses and volcanoes, by heart attacks and hurricanes. And other times our world is maimed by human wickedness mutilated by terrorists and rapists, by dictators and demagogues, by genocidal rulers and homicidal robbers. The scars abound everywhere. How do we maintain optimism and hope in the face of such wanton devastation? ~ 1 ~

2 On Tuesday, we will mark the first anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, which produced record storm surges here in New York, killed 117 people in the US, and turned out to be the second-costliest storm in US history. Walter Russell Mead, author of the book God and Gold, reminds us that Sandy wasn t the coming of something abnormal in a perfectly reasonable world. Rather, he says, Sandy was a reminder of what the world really is like. Human beings want to build lives that exclude what we can t control but we can t. Mead goes on to observe that all of us are at risk: The day is coming for all of us, he says, when a storm enters our happy, busy lives and throws them into utter disarray. The job on which everything depends can disappear. That relationship that holds everything together can fall apart. The doctor can call and say the test results are not good. All of these things can happen to anybody; something like this will happen to us all. Somewhere in the future, each of us has an inescapable appointment with irresistible force. For each one of us, the waters will someday rise, the winds spin out of control, the roof will come off the house and the power will go out for good. Nor can we seem to escape the horrific mutilation cause by human wickedness. The poet witnesses the abandoned homesteads of exiles; Syria and its five million internally displaced persons and two million refugees come to mind. The poet witnesses refugees headed nowhere; the 366 men, women and children who drowned on October 3 when their boat from Libya sank less than a kilometer from the Italian island of Lampedusa come to mind. The poet witnesses executioners singing joyfully; the five million dead over the past fifteen years in Congo come to mind. Both at home and abroad, both in our personal lives and in our collective experience, the mutilations of this world are diverse and devastating. Whether incurred by human hand or by nature s force, the world you and I inhabit for the rest of our lives will be a mutilated one. Even so, the poet gently prods us: Try to praise the mutilated world. The word praise comes from the same Latin root as the word price. To praise something, in the original meaning of the word, is to give it value. Even though the world has been mutilated, the poet suggests, we shouldn t toss it away as worthless or abandon it as rubbish. We should value it despite the maiming despite what has been cut off or cut out or cut down. No matter how damaged, whatever has been mutilated remains an essential part of our experience. When we describe God as our experience of being connected to everything connected to all that is present in our world, as well as all that is past and all that is possible we affirm that no experience is ever lost or eternally abandoned. We have a word for the totality of the physical world; the word is universe. We also have a word for the unification of all the experiences in the universe; the word is God. This experience of God accounts for our sense that experiences matter. They don t matter just to us; they matter, period. Even though no one may remember those who suffer or even know about them in the first place, their experiences will never be ~ 2 ~

3 abandoned. Just as atoms are never lost in physical reactions, so no human experience however tragic is ever finally lost. In this way, even a mutilated world bears intrinsic value. The pain and suffering of people throughout the world make up part of the world we live in: it s our world. In a deep and existential sense, it s part of who we are. To value the mutilated world is to value our own experience and our own place in this world. It is also to value the people who have experienced devastating violence and loss. They too have value. The poet realizes, however, that mutilation runs deep throughout the world, and sometimes we find it hard to praise anything so indifferently swept away by a storm or savagely maimed by human wickedness. Nonetheless, the poet urges us to make an effort: Try to praise the mutilated world. We do this by looking upon the world in its innocence, a word that originally meant unharmed and whole. By valuing the beauty that still abounds, we remind ourselves of the better world we seek. Remember the wild strawberries, the drops of wine, and the dew, the poet encourages. Remember the moments when we were together. Remember the concert where the music flared. Remember the gentle light: The gentle light that strays, and vanishes, and returns. Remembering these, we celebrate the beauty that still abounds, and we praise the good we seek to expand. Many of you remember Marietta Moskin, a longtime and vital member of this congregation who died two years ago. An editor and writer by profession, she wrote seventeen books for children and young adults, one of which was a prize-winning novel based on her own life as a young girl in Hitler s concentration camps. The book is titled I Am Rosemarie. The story about buying shoes near the end of the book celebrates the return of innocence and forgiveness. After being freed from the camps by the Allies, Rosemarie and her mother, along with a family friend named Kay, did something they hadn t done in years: they bought shoes. They found a shop, selected several pairs, and handed over payment using a bill denominated in marks, the German currency. But the bill they handed to the shopkeeper was worth one million marks a bill that had been used during the war when inflation was running rampant. The shopkeeper blanched: in the post-war economy, his entire shop was worth only a fraction of that amount. When the local French commander ordered the shopkeeper honor the note, the shopkeeper insisted on giving them the shoes at no cost. Otherwise, the only way he could have made change was to give them his shop. Rosemarie s mother turned to her friend Kay and remarked that she was beginning to feel sorry for the shopkeeper. Kay looked at her scornfully. I m surprised at you, she said. Getting all soft and tenderhearted. You after all you ve been through. Don t you hate the bastards? I do! ~ 3 ~

4 Hate? my mother said softly. I don t really want to hate. It s such a futile emotion. It tears you all up inside and for what? Do you think any of them will care if we hate them? They ll just laugh at us. Hating hurts no one but yourself! My mother was right, I thought. It takes too much effort to hate. It is too painful. I don t want to be angry and bitter and all cold and hard inside. The day is too nice, and the sun is shining and I am walking with lovely new shoes. I am free at last! Try to praise the mutilated world. At our best, we approach our lives like Rosemarie, with a deep awareness of all that is past, but also with a keen sense of all that is possible. One of the best examples of living with an openness to the future occurs in Voltaire s 1758 novel Candide, which bears the subtitle Optimism. The book recounts the adventures and misfortunes of young Candide and his tutor Pangloss. Endowed at the start with everything necessary for a happy and successful life, Candide suffers the opposite: every conceivable misfortune, tragedy, and form of abuse. Voltaire s primary focus is the specter of torture and cruelty that develops when religious fanaticism unites with state power, which unfortunately makes Candide both timely and timeless. It s true that Voltaire makes light of the horrors, but only to make the tale readable. If the story weren t funny, it would be too abhorrent to bear. At the very end of his tale, Voltaire suggests how we can, as he puts it in his most famous phrase, crush the horror. He says, simply, We need to work our fields, or as it is often translated, make our gardens grow. According to Voltaire, adding value to a mutilated world is like growing a crop. We need to work our fields. We don t need to work other people s fields, or fields in different or better locations, but our fields. And we don t need to ponder our fields, or exclaim how weedy they are, or how poor the soil is, or compare them to the best possible fields or the worst. We need to work our fields. The root meaning of the Latin word optimism is ops, which means power. Optimism comes from the power we have to do the work that is ours to do. Sixty-five years ago this past Thursday, in the wake of the mutilations of two world wars, the leading nations of the world joined together to found the United Nations. Two months later, their delegates passed a resolution known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Urged on by the indefatigable Eleanor Roosevelt, they insisted: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of goodwill. Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of person. No one should be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. And so on. ~ 4 ~

5 It s a magnificent proclamation. For thousands of years, pillage, rape, and slavery were the worldwide standard. Sixty-five years ago, the UN delegates set a different worldwide standard. Optimism has never had more articulate voices than theirs, nor more courageous champions than those who today defend these rights. Try to praise the mutilated world, the poet says. To this vale of sorrows, add value. To this garden of delights, add value. The Talmud, as the oral tradition of rabbinic Judaism is known, urges us: Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. Today, even as we remember whatever mutilation is past, we praise whatever progress is possible. We uphold the first fruits of civilization: truth, freedom, dignity, justice, and peace. And we commit ourselves to working our fields, now and always, for the rest of our lives. ~ 5 ~