UCH Lay-led Summer Series (July 24, 2016 - Dorothy Brown) Good morning I m glad to be with you I want to talk about. A burning bush. A burning bush! I ve waited and waited for a burning bush Sometimes I think I still look for that burning bush. As he did for Moses, I want God to come and tell me what to do. To transform me. However, most of the time I find that life changes-- transformation transfiguration these things don t come to me all at once in a burning bush I m not the kind of person who changes with the events of one day. My changes seem to be less dramatic, more incremental, almost like fireflies gathered in instead of that elusive burning bush.. Sometimes it seems I get a concept, then lose it, understand it, forget it it s a long, uncertain process before something is ingrained enough in me to change my life. So instead of dealing with one day that changed my life, I will deal with 3 changes, changes that happened at different times. I want to talk about times I ve changed as I gathered greater understanding, grasped concepts that had not been a strong, conscious, active part of me before. I will use as illustration 3 of the 7 Unitarian principles and show how they moved FROM ideas to glowing coals within me. For the newcomers in ur midst, the Unitarian Church is not grounded in doctrine or creed, but in life-guiding principles. Because I am a poet, I will use 3 poems to make my clearest demonstration of what I ve learned. The first principle: The inherent worth and dignity of every person. Who worked harder for this than Harriet Tubman. Before such strength, I bow. She is holier than any of my childhood saints. Before her, whatever I am, whatever tiny difference I make as a person is as nothing. One day I tried to pull her strength into myself. I stood before her statue the one Oliver LaGrone sculpted that is in the narthex of the church. I put my hands on her statue. The coldness of the statue sent shivers through me, shivers of inadequacy and inferiority. It was as 1
if she scorned any meager effort of mine. It set an alarm off in me, like the alarms that sound in museums if you touch the art. I wrote this poem: The Bust of Harriet Tubman I fear to touch the black bronze. Guards might converge If I run my fingers over the wide cheekbones, if I cradle the turbaned head cold in my dry palms, if I press my fingertips against the dark eyes, still wary, still scornful, still capable of setting off alarms. I stood there for a long time. Breathing, meditating. Then the magic happened. I had cradled her head long enough that the cold had turned to warmth. I realized she wasn t scornful. She was focused. She was setting off a different kind of alarm. She was speaking to us to step forward with whatever bravery we could muster to continue her work, her work for the worth and dignity of every human being. The second principle : Justice, equity and compassion in human relations In an article in the New York Times on June 19, Nicholas Kristof writes about what has happened since welfare reform. That reform was signed into law in 1996 by Bill Clinton, and 2
was intended to stop abuse. The program that was set up to help instead, of welfare, called Temporary assistance for needy families, has pretty much collapsed. Kristoff cites research that finds that because of welfare reform roughly three million American children live in households with incomes of less than $2 per person per day. That s one American child in 25. They would be counted as extremely poor if they lived in Africa, and they are our neighbors in the most powerful country in the world. OK, we re horrified by this statistic. $2/day is 3rd world stuff. We know there are situations where people cannot get employment, most of these kids are in households where working is not an option. WE know also that even if one can get work, it often does not pay for the expenses it entails. Justice, equity, compassion in human relations for the families trying to get by this isn t justice, this is devastation. How does this thought move from an idea to a flame within? We all hear of kids that act up in school, that create chaos, that just don t seem to want to learn. My daughter had such kids in her classroom this year. If you re teaching such children, you are frustrated, discouraged, dispirited. But what happens if you realize that the child is one of those in crushing poverty. The poem I ll be sharing comes from the story of one of these children. This story changed the way I think. I wrote the poem from the child s point of view. Left Out The teacher, she asks me, What did you have for supper last night? Not McDonalds, I hope. I slammed my fist into the desk. None of your friggin business! I wasn t gonna tell the teacher we were out of peanut butter, out of beans, out of bread, out of cereal, out of pop tarts, 3
out of soup, out of money. My mother was out working somewhere. I walked to my aunt s. I took Marcus with me. He was crying. He was snotty. We stood at Aunt Jo s door knocking. Knocking. Finally she let us in. She gave us bread and soft butter. She washed dishes, her back turned to us. We ate and ate., then Marcus and me, we went out. We don t want to see the injustice, but children like this see nothing else. What I need to do, what we all have to do, is truly recognize what is happening in our own country, our own city, our own schools. Somehow the knowledge that the need is so great should move us from our stance of comfort. We might even ask, What would Harriet Tubman do? I would like to make a leap now from the 1st 2 principles that deal with justice and compassion to the 7th principle, for me, the umbrella principle. I have intensely internalized The 7th principle : Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. I live on the Conodoguinet Creek I see every day the way the creek reflects the weather, the way it runs shallow in the summer, overflows its banks in rainy times, holds treasures of shell life, fish, turtles, crawdads. I have canoed long stretches, seeing how the bird life increases in wilder areas, seeing how the animal life abounds along the banks of the flood plain. I have also pulled tires and bottles from its depths. I have stopped neighbors from dumping branches and grass in as though the creek were a trash container. I have railed against fertilizing and weed killing near its banks. In short, the creek is my sister, my child, my mother. The creek may be as close as I come to a burning bush. Leap again. Every one of you is connected to my back yard. No matter where I see a body of water I know it is connected to my back yard. The awakening to the ubiquity of the centrality of this vision came to me one day in the rain. That is the 4
subject of the last poem I ll share with you. I d like you to immerse yourself in the images as I read. Let them pour over your skin. The Web I didn t find myself exactly stuck in the web one rainy morning, I simply noticed that when I moved, the strand I touched vibrated. I could lift my hand, my foot, move from place to place, but every time I did, I caused an oscillation. I felt a tremor. I saw, then, that you were on another filament. I could hear you, I could feel you move. That rainy day, a veil lifted from my eyes, a packing loosened from my ears. I saw along the strands a neighbor, then another, an old enemy a stranger. Then in a great awakening, I felt the whole web ripple. I stopped saying It cannot be with the quivering 5
of a bumble bee seeking nectar from the tiny red-ball flowers of the cotoneaster bush. I saw up high a Cooper s hawk eyeing a nuthatch further down, then a small-mouthed bass in the creek. You will say it cannot be, but I will witness: the web holds the Susquehanna River, the Patagonian winds. Not a grain of salt escapes. Not a single child is left out. 3 poems, 3 Unitarian principles. Rev. Mike spoke a few weeks ago about deeds, not creeds. I pray that my beliefs, my feelings may be manifest in my life. May we all have a goal of finding a way for these principles to burn in our lives, like burning bushes on the mountain. May it be so. 6