Anita Farber-Robertson 1 Thought for Contemplation: It is not more light we need, but more warmth! We die of cold, not of darkness. It is not the night that kills, but the frost. -Miguel de Unamuno Once You Know It the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish in Cambridge January 7, 2007 Boxed by Ann Weems You may not have a crèche that you put out and take down each Christmas season as does Ann Weems. You may not even have grown up with one in your home. And yet you probably have had experiences like hers of the tender-sweet sadness that comes with the suspicion that when we put away the trappings of the season, we will put away their meanings and the deeper claim they have upon us. I didn t own a crèche the first time I read Weems poem. In fact I d never had one. With a Jewish mother and a secular Christian father, the last thing they wanted around the house was a reminder that it was a religious holiday. They wanted the peace. They wanted the justice. They wanted the universal love that the season proclaimed. I did too. But not the baby. We d skip the baby. That was years ago. When I heard Ann Weems piece I didn t need a crèche to understand and be moved. The feelings she named came with the unpacking and packing up of my Christmas decorations, my tree
Anita Farber-Robertson 2 ornaments, my door and mantle ornaments - each infused with memories that speak of the hope that this season something will happen, something new. Each one of those things I pack and unpack has memories, memories not only of events, of times and places and people who shared them, but of dreams, of hopes, of the soul stirring longing that is Christmas, a longing that is deeper than a wish and more compelling than a hope a longing for a day when the world will be at peace, and all the people one a longing for a day when we know that we belong to one another, and cherish that truth. A longing for the peace that not only stops the violence in the world, but calms the unrest that ravages our souls. The peace of which Christmas speaks is too important to pack away in a box. I wonder, do we think of peace like candy, or ice cream sundaes something that is good and fun to have once in awhile, even more fun to share with a friend, but not something you could live on, tolerate all the time? Is that what peace is like an occasional treat? In some ways, some times it is- at least that is the way it is in the history of the world, or at least the part of the world about which we know the most our part of the world. But I don t think our inability to maintain peace in our world or in ourselves is a sign that it is not worth cultivating, or creating. It is in those incredible magic moments of insight, or transforming experience
Anita Farber-Robertson 3 that we realize that peace is not only desirable, it is attainable, at least for moments moments that can be grown and expanded moments that we know about somewhere deep inside of us, and when the experience hits, the epiphany, we cannot go back to being how we were. I am going to tell a funny story and a true story about my friend Gary. Years ago, before the Our Whole Lives, the sexuality curriculum for our Sunday School, we had About Your Sexuality. Gary and I were teacher trainers back in the 1970 s for About Your Sexuality. Needless to say, during the years of our working together, Gary and I told each other lots of stories on ourselves about our developing sexuality and sexual education. I remember one in particular Gary told to me (You didn t think I was going to tell one on myself did you?!). Gary remembered that some older male friend who was initiating him into the dating scene and the mysteries of women explained to him that when you have a girl alone (and this was high school, so girls they were) and are sitting there with her on the sofa watching TV or listening to romantic music, take off one of her shoes. That was it the whole secret in a nutshell. Take off one of her shoes. Usually, this friend explained to Gary, who then explained it to me, the girl will not object to your taking off her
Anita Farber-Robertson 4 shoe. In a bit you take off the other one. Then if you reach to begin taking off something else she is wearing, she has already psychologically acquiesced, given you permission of sorts to undress her, and in order for her to stop you, she has to do more than say no, she actually has to change the rule that you have so cleverly lured her into accepting. Well, that was an epiphany for me! It gave me some insight into tough situations in which I had found myself in high school. And it gave me insights into other things as well. Behaviors are not isolated. They happen in sequence, and accepting the sequence and flowing with it takes less effort than if we were to stop and begin a new behavior. Some of us watched Hotel Rwanda Friday night. It is the story of an incredible man, Paul Rusesabagina, who saved 1268 people during the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda in which nearly one million people perished. He didn t start out that way. He started out as manager of a major European Hotel, by offering a safe haven in the hotel to one and then to another. He broke one rule that the hotel was always to maintain its dignity, was to be for guests, wealthy guests, paying guests, not refugees. And once he had broken it, he could perceive the choice of ethical values to maintain the dignity of the European Hotel, or to maintain the lives of innocent people who would otherwise die. When he reached
Anita Farber-Robertson 5 that clarity, the sequences continued, and he created what became an incredibly civil refugee camp. He started by doing one courageous act, and his ability to perform that act, empowered him to try another and another, until a very ordinary man became a hero of proportions he never could have imagined. When we hear personal stories about human tragedy, oppression, destruction and violence, we often privately ask ourselves, could we have survived if that had happened to us? Would we have had the strength, the fortitude, the resilience of a survivor? Less often do we ask if we could have been perpetrators? Could we have participated in genocide, in torture, in dehumanization? When we do ask that difficult and terrifying question, we ask it in code. We veil it from ourselves as well as from others. We say How could people do that? How could people act like that? often meaning What would it take for me to succumb to such behavior, or What is there to protect me from the risk of becoming a perpetrator? It can be disconcerting to realize that both victims and perpetrators are ordinary people people like us. There is a third question that fills the empty spaces as we ponder what we are witnessing or hearing. What can I do to help? or How am I called to respond? Sometimes it is obvious I was driving one evening last week in the snow and the car in
Anita Farber-Robertson 6 front of me spun out and off the road, onto the median strip. I pulled over, far off the slippery road, and called 911. I spoke to the local police and the state police. But it is not always so easy to know or to do the right thing. When we revisit what happened in Rwanda we uncover all the ways in which the years of European occupation and intervention helped create the situation that exploded in genocide in 1994. And we see how we then abandoned a people in the midst of the tragedy. We are appalled at how the United Nations and the west abdicated responsibility. After the holocaust of the Jews, we heard it said Never again, a commitment to learn from our mistakes. And yet here was another intentional action taken to wipe out an entire people, and we turned our faces. We turned our faces because of the high cost of seeing seeing what was happening and the claim it has on us. Turned our faces because it was overwhelming, and because we had no leadership around which to galvanize a response. Turned our faces collectively as nations and then as individuals because there was no way we could imagine to be of help.. Eva Fogelman published a book in 1994, ironically the same year as the Rwandan genocide. She called it Conscience and Courage, in which she reported the results of her seeking to understand what had motivated, empowered and sustained rescuers
Anita Farber-Robertson 7 of Jews during the Nazi holocaust. She had spent years tracking people down, verifying their stories, and chronicaling the tales of 300 different people who had rescued Jews. She had wondered what made those people able to act in the way that they did- were they weird, extraordinary, misfits, adventurers looking for a charge? What she found were 300 very ordinary people, people who like Paul Rusesabagina found themselves in a situation in which they were witnessing a person in dire need, and they responded with help- whatever help they could muster. She learned some things about these people. They had very little in common not age, nor income, not education or social location. What she saw was that the act of rescue was an expression of the values and beliefs of the innermost core of a person. It is a core nurtured in childhood which came to expression during the Holocaust in the act of rescue. 1 And she discovered that every rescuer had a memory, often a childhood memory, of having witnessed a person in their lives engaging in altruistic behavior. In other words, having seen it done once, at some time by some person, it became something they could think of to do it was within their repertoire of possible responses. Strong core values, and a witnessing of altruistic behavior in another, was enough to empower people to recognize the danger 1 Eva Fogelman, Conscience and Courage, Anchor Book, Doubleday, 1994, p. xviii.
Anita Farber-Robertson 8 their first epiphany, and then to find the capacity within themselves to act the second epiphany. Many of them were astonished that they had taken that risk, after they d done it. It had happened so fast. The decision had to be made. But once it was done, it was like taking that shoe off, the sequence had started, and the rescuer now knew that action was an option. There was no going back. That suggests to me that one of the first things we must do is be sure to educate our children in ways that give them strong moral and ethical centers, strong enough to allow them to experience epiphanies, to see, really see and understand what is going on around them. They need to know that people around the world, despite their differences of faith and customs, share our common humanity- they are a part of our human family, even as we are a part of them. We can do it in ways that are organized and intentional and we do. Today begins the Neighboring Faiths curriculum for our some of our church school. It is a curriculum in which our children learn about the faiths of others, visit and experience those different ways of worshipping, thinking and believing, and try to understand it. We have been teaching that course to our young people in Unitarian Universalist congregations for longer than I can remember. Years ago, when I used to do exit interviews of coming of age youth in our church schools invariably they would name that curriculum as one of the most meaningful
Anita Farber-Robertson 9 and important of their church school years. It had helped them develop a clearer sense of their own identity as Unitarian Universalists, and out of that, they were more able to perceive and receive others who were different. The human family more clearly became their family. The other thing we need to do is be models models of morality and ethical living, models of justice, models of altruism. We need to live our lives knowing that we are part of the larger human family, served or dis-served by what we do or leave undone. We need to dismantle our racism, the ways in which those who are white in this country continue to enjoy privileges simply because of the accident of birth, the color of their skin. We need to be willing to share the wealth, the opportunities, the access to resources that have been the norm for some and the impossible dream for others. We need to develop in ourselves a broader concept of what exactly is in our self interest develop an enlightened self-interest that allows us to realize that the self s greatest safety, greatest satisfaction, most sustainable peace, will be in a world of equity, justice, and mutual respect. The world we must build. It is the world we must be, here and now to the extent that it is possible, for our children and ourselves.
Anita Farber-Robertson 10 Yesterday, according to the ancient story, was the day the wise men understood, when they saw the child, knew that the world was about to change, and that they would never be the same. May it be so with us. We may pack up our Christmas decorations, as did Ann Weems, and we may turn to leave after having delivered our gifts, as did the magi but if we have allowed ourselves to see and hear, there are some things we will never pack up, and some things we will never leave behind our longing for peace and our working for justice. Because once we start, it is like that incredible sequence, and we keep on going, each time able to do one more thing.