Finding Peace at Rick s Café Sunday, December 3, 2017 Seventy five years ago last Sunday, the movie Casablanca opened. November 26, 1942. It was the middle of the 2 nd World War, though the United States had been officially at war for just under 12 months, since the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7 th of the previous year. Coincidentally, the British and U.S. forces had begun their invasion of North Africa, including Morocco, earlier in the month and taken the city and naval port of the real Casablanca from the control of Germany and Vichy France on November 10. But in the movie, the Germans are in control of this city where refugees from all over Europe, desperate to escape the Nazis, have gathered, hoping for passage to safe nations. Under the cover of the more usual gambling going on at the city s gambling houses and bars, money, freedom, honor, and life itself are wagered to get the visas they need to get out. And Rick, the American proprietor of Rick s Café, is trying to stay detached from all the dramas going on around him. He intends not to do anything to help those in trouble or to antagonize those in power. Early in the movie he announces his philosophy twice within 5 minutes when asked about helping people wanted by the authorities. I stick my neck out for nobody, he says each time. Rick, we learn, came to Europe to fight in the Spanish Civil War against the forces of General Franco and the rise of Fascism, but after losing that battle and the woman he loved -, he has become cynical about the effect any one person can have to make the world better. He has ended up in Casablanca, determined to take care of himself and only himself regardless of who is in power. But the film chronicles the softening of that hard philosophy. It begins when Victor Lazlo, a leader of the Czech Resistance, who is trying to escape to America to publicize their cause, comes into the café with his wife Ilsa, who as you probably remember, turns out to be Rick s great love who three years before hadn t turned up at the Paris train station where they had planned to flee the city together just ahead of the Nazis invasion. When Rick learns that she loved him then and still loves him but felt she had to choose the commitment she had already made to her marriage over leaving the city with him, he begins to open again to the possibility of human goodness. He helps a young Romanian couple win at roulette the money they need to escape Morocco. He sticks his neck out just a little when he tells the café band to play La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, to help the refugees and French citizens drown out the Nazi officers and sympathizers who are singing their patriotic song in the Café. And finally he shows that he understands Ilsa s earlier sacrifice of their personal happiness for the greater good, by doing the same thing.
He gives up the letters of safe passage which he had hoped to use to escape at last with Ilsa, and he gives up once and for all the possibility of a life with Ilsa, telling her to stay with Lazlo and to use the letters to escape with him. Lazlo needs her support to continue doing his work to help the Czech people. Their marriage has a scope for good which he doesn t see his and Ilsa s love having. But there the movie shows him wrong. I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, he says, but, having assured Ilsa and Lazlo s safety by shooting the Nazi officer attempting to stop them, he and Captain Renault, the French Vichy officer, leave Casablanca to join the French Resistance. His love for Ilsa has inspired him to choose the greater good and drawn Renault into the circle and power of that love as well. The movie is now a classic, but like most classics, it wasn t obvious from the beginning that it would be so loved and regarded. The screenplay arrived at Warner Brothers Studio on the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, having been rejected by other studios and carrying the uninspiring title Everybody Comes to Rick s. But the Warner s executives, who didn t shy away from politically liberal statements as other studios did, saw in the screenplay a story of ideals they felt needed to be expressed in their time. Rick s movement from isolationist selfpreservation to throwing himself into the cause of liberation for the oppressed dramatized the shift the people of the United States needed to make. And they also needed to learn to accept and appreciate the refugees who were coming to their country as Rick learned to see their stories and safety as important. Many of the actors in the movie actually were refugees from Nazi Germany and Fascism even the actors playing the German officers were refugees. The studio was proud of the variety of nations represented even while others complained that Hollywood was becoming un-american because of their influx there. The New York Times praised the movie as a rich, suave, exciting, and moving tale and ended the review: In short, we will say that "Casablanca" is one of the year's most exciting and trenchant films. It certainly won't make Vichy happy but that's just another point for it. And people still find it inspiring: Senator Elizabeth Warren, for instance, always celebrates New Year s Eve with champagne and Casablanca. The film is a creative triumph, she wrote. Much like America made stronger because it s woven together by people who are not a single race or a single religion, stronger because we choose to come together to build a new country. Each time I watch it, Casablanca gives me hope.
So in a week when we ve had North Korean missile tests bring the threat of war closer to our shores than it s been since those days of World War II, the President retweeting videos purporting to show Muslim violence, the passing of the Republican tax bill with its topsy turvy values, and the firing for sexual harassment of Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor, two men who came into our homes on weekday mornings and Saturday evenings, what hope for peace does Casablanca offer us today? First it tells us that peace doesn t come to us individually or by keeping ourselves safe. Rick didn t have peace when his concern was only for himself. Peace and joy came for him when he stopped focusing on what he had lost and what he might hold onto. As long as he was approaching life governed by his fears of loss, he had no peace or joy. They came only when he let go of his fear and his anger and enlarged his focus to care for others, the woman he loved but also her husband, other refugees, and beyond them the people of France. Rick moves from I stick my neck out for nobody to the famous closing line as he walks off to join the Free French with Inspector Renault: Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. He has lost everything but found himself. He sounds happy at last. There is a beautiful passage from the writings of the ancient prophet known as Isaiah often read at this time of year: Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 40: 1, 3-5) Notice that this message of peace is not for an individual it comes to the community and requires work from them they need to prepare the way by making a safe and smooth road for the people to travel. Peace comes for all, through the efforts of all. This passage seems an especially ironic commentary on the new tax plan which will do the opposite of leveling the hills and valleys but will raise up the peaks and lower the valleys even more. Or think about the message of Sophia Fah s prose poem. Each night a child is born is a holy night a time for singing, a time for wondering, a time for worshipping. Each and every child, not just my children or your children or children in Scituate or wherever you might naturally draw your boundaries each child is as worthy of care as every other child. Each child has gifts which might bring greater love and healing to the world. What would it mean for us to live by
that message? What would the world look like if we lived like we truly believed each child is holy? What would we no longer allow to stand? What would we do to change the disparities which exist just in our own Commonwealth? Because we don t I don t live out that value as I could. Do you? As Unitarian Universalists we proclaim the inherent worth and dignity of every person, that each and every person is a child of Love and deserves to be raised with loving care. But though we say we believe each child, each adult, is equal, we are part of systems which don t treat each person as equally worthy and deserving of that care. We are to use the word of the year complicit. Like Rick, we often imprison ourselves in isolationist self-protection. It s hard to risk the ways we benefit or sometimes even to acknowledge the ways we benefit. But peace will not come for any of us until we start laying the groundwork, to play with Isaiah s image, for peace to come for all of us. Peace takes courage and commitment. Peace requires throwing off the constraints of fear the fear of losing what we have, the fear of never having enough ourselves, and trusting that there is enough - enough love, enough food, enough wealth, enough life for everyone. We must make sacrifices, as Rick did, if we hope for peace and joy. We think of sacrifice as something bad you give up something precious to you, but at its root, to sacrifice means to make sacred, to make holy. You don t lose what you sacrifice. Instead, you stop grasping at it. You offer whatever it is your love, your money, your life, to wherever it will serve most. Really to sacrifice something means to free yourself from the fear of losing it. One of the letters attributed to the apostle Paul famously says that the love of money is the root of all evil, but I think it s fear which is the root of all evil. The fear of losing the money, the fear of losing the love, the fear of losing whatever it is you think you have. Look at the ideals flaming in our Advent candles the opposite of peace isn t just war it s fear it s fear which causes us to go to war. And the opposite of hope openness and trust to what will be is fear. And the opposite of love isn t hate it s the fear which leads to hate. And the opposite of joy is fear again. Fear holds each of us and all of us from the abundant life. So what can we do to overcome the fear? That s what we re here to help each other to do. Perhaps we could do that more intentionally through small group ministries which offer more opportunities for reflection and conversation. Perhaps our sharing of joys and sorrows could include sharing the times we acted beyond our fears as well as the times we let them box us in. Perhaps conversations at coffee hour could begin with How are you living? rather than How are you doing?
For our call is to become evangelists which means someone who shares good news evangelists of our good news of the inherent worth and dignity of each and every person, the good news that each of us is an equally beloved child of the universe; the good news that each of us breathes the breath of God and deserves to breathe fully and freely. The message of the angels always begins, Fear not. That message comes to us at this time of year. How shall we carry it throughout the year on our lips and in our lives? That will be the beginning for all people of a beautiful friendship. - Pamela M. Barz