How to Succeed at Forgiveness Without Really Trying

I must begin by asking your forgiveness. There's my title: "How to Succeed at Forgiveness Without Really Trying." Yet I must confess that I have no intention of explaining how to succeed at forgiveness without trying. The truth, in fact, is that -- except for small offenses for which casually tossed-off forgiveness suffices -- you have to try. Forgiveness takes work. It's a repair of relationship, and it requires the work of both parties: intentional, deliberate, and often hard. Forgiveness is a grace, and you know the saying about grace: it’s free, but it ain’t cheap. To “succeed” at forgiveness takes intentional commitment to a process.

On those small matters, as I noted, there are times when forgiveness is a casual matter – as easy as saying, “I forgive you.” I hear there is a Unitarian Universalist church out west somewhere, in a downtown area where parking is at a premium. A lot of people not coming to the church would park in the church parking lot. The church put up a sign:

CHURCH
PARKING
ONLY.
VIOLATORS
WILL BE
FORGIVEN.

Then there's this approach  . . .

The congregation didn’t really mind people parking there through the week – and I’ve always thought that was a clever way to advertise the forgiving nature of the church.

So, yes, sometimes it’s OK to treat forgiveness in that way – for little things like forgiving me for my title. Other times the road to forgiveness is harrowing, soul wrenching -- about the hardest thing a person can do. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.

The 1982 film Gandhi covers the violent rioting in which Muslim and Hindu mobs are forming -- attacking and killing each other all over India. At one point Gandhi makes plans to meet with Jinnah, a Muslim leader, to try to bring peace. One of Gandhi’s followers, a Hindu, cries out to Gandhi out of deep distrust of the Muslims, “don’t do it."

Gandhi says: “What do you want me not to do? Not to meet with Mr. Jinnah? I am a Muslim, and a Hindu, and a Christian, and a Jew, and so are all of you. When you wave those flags and shout, you send fear into the hearts of your brothers. That is not the India I want! Stop it! For God's sake stop it!”

But it doesn’t stop. Gandhi goes on a hunger strike – refusing to eat until the violence stops. And the fighting stops. In the film, we see Gandhi weak and in bed from fasting. Leaders of the fighting factions come in, throw down their swords and promise they will fight no more. One man then pushes through and flings bread on Gandhi.

“Eat!” he says. “I'm going to Hell! But not with your death on my soul.”

Gandhi says, “Only God decides who goes to hell.”

“I killed a child! I smashed his head against a wall.”

“Why?”

“They killed my son. My boy. The Muslims killed my son!”

“I know a way out of Hell. Find a child, a child whose mother and father have been killed – a little boy about this high -- and raise him as your own. Only be sure that he is a Muslim and that you raise him as one.”

The man is astounded. He’s just been asked to do the hardest thing he could be asked to do. Forgiveness is more typically about restoring relations with a particular person, perhaps a specific group. In this case, the man seeks to restore right relations with his world. And to do that will require turning upside down the hate and division and the loyalties that have come to define his life. As all of this sinks in, the man’s stunned expression seems to turn from disbelief to wonder. That’s a subtle thing, the shift from incredulity to wonder. It’s the shift of glimpsing a way out, when you thought there was no way out of the hell of your life. The man turns to go. Stops. Turns back to Gandhi. Gets on his knees and bows to the ground.

The man has, we hope, committed to a very long process. A dozen years, at least, of raising a child – and adjusting to raising that child in a faith that, for now, he hates. For this man, his path to forgiveness will be long, and gradually unfolding.

This is not at all like:
“Sorry I’m late, please forgive me.”
“I forgive you. Let’s get started.”

In fact, it may make sense to say that in a case like this, moving toward forgiveness will be the rest of his life. Always headed there, never there. The way that folks in Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous – the recovery community – have a saying: Always recovering, never recovered. There's a lot of wisdom in that for all of us. And as you engage in your spiritual practice and wrestle with your own demons and distractions, having reached the point at which you can no longer deny them, you might put it: Always becoming enlightened, never enlightened.

I can speak to you as a man who did find a child – about this high – of a different religion, different culture, different language. Yency Contreras was 17 when LoraKim and I met him while offering worship services at his detention facility in El Paso. (The recent documentary film, "Which Way Home" chronicles a story startlingly similar to Yency's trip to the US in 2004.) Our relationship, seven years so far, has been many things. We were not called upon, as the man with Gandhi, to actively raise him in a different faith – he had already been mostly raised in a different faith. We have, though, had to grow accepting of the Pentecostal faith he has maintained on his own. One of the things going on in all this – not especially on the surface – has been a sense of a process of partial atonement. We, with our pale skins and middle class US lifestyles, our undeserved privilege, depending as it does upon a constant flow of resources from the rest of the world, and upon global systems that encourage a number of countries, including those of Central America, to adopt policies that effectively impoverish the people and denude the land.

Having Yency has been richly rewarding. By no means a total atonement, but a step on a path. We are always atoning, never atoned – never through with the work of repairing.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are our themes of the month for September. We are honoring the Jewish tradition of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, which is late this year – from sundown on October 7 until sundown on October 8. So we’re preparing for it well in advance.Yom Kippur is the 10th Day of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, which begins September 28 this year. It’s a new year for us, as well, in many ways – about this time of year: school started back, labor day, last week our ingathering ceremony, this week the first Sunday of our kids Religious Education program – new year.

In the Jewish tradition, you have a period of celebrating the new year, and while it is still fresh – 10 days in – turning attention to atonement: forgiveness and reconciliation.It’s a really good idea. And for Jews this period, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, is the high holy days. That’s another good lesson: weaving back together the torn fabric of relationship is the most sacred, holy, divine enterprise we can possibly undertake.

In Jewish teaching, there’s no atonement without sincere effort to make what amends as can be made. The Talmud says,

“The Day of Atonement absolves from sins against God, but not from sins against a fellow person unless the pardon of the offended person be secured.”

At the level of interpersonal relationship, there’s no atonement without forgiveness.

Forgiving is fore-giving: giving what was before. To forgive is to give back the relationship as it was before. When the offense is slight, we can just say “I forgive you” and it’s done. When the fabric of relationship is ripped through, it will take more than that.

I said that forgiveness was a grace -- that is, an unearned blessing. Ultimately, yes, it is unearned. Yet we also have to work on it. We have to earn our way up to the point from which grace takes over. In other words, do the work, but don’t think the work alone is sufficient. It's necessary, not sufficient. If repair to human relationship comes, it comes as unearned grace. Do the work, and see if the miracle happens, the miracle of human reconnection in love. Just saying the words, “forgive me” and the answer, “I do forgive you,” is a start. Only a start.

One woman said to her partner, “Why do you keep talking about my past mistakes? I thought you had forgiven and forgotten.”
Her partner said, “I have forgiven and forgotten. But I want to make sure you don’t forget that I have forgiven and forgotten.”
That’s a couple that only began the process.

The whole forgiveness thing can have its pitfalls. There are ways that forgiveness goes wrong. First, as in the this case, we might think it is done when it has only begun.

Second, forgiveness goes wrong when the forgiver comes off as superior. I say, “I forgive you,” and that can cast me as the magnanimous one, all superior. Rather than return the parties to equality, it maintains a reversed inequality. That can happen when we don’t seek a more extended reconciliation process.

Third, forgiveness goes wrong when it is expected or demanded. Recognizing the virtue of forgiveness, we can come to expect or demand that others – or ourselves – forgive.
“You should forgive him.”
“You really ought to forgive her.”
This sense that it’s easy conspires with the awareness that it is noble when it does happen.

Let me be concrete about this. Some minister or priest somewhere in North America will, today, tell a battered woman that she should forgive her husband and take him back, no matter how much he beats her, because marriage is forever and good Christians forgive. Here's a situation where an intentional and extended process is required if the relationship is to be repaired at all. Yet a certain concept of "forgiveness" -- as if it were easy and instantaneous -- short-circuits the process that is needed.

Gandhi could not have simply said to the man, “You’re forgiven,” or “Ask God to forgive you.”
When the tear is substantial, it will take a lot of sewing to repair it – it doesn’t happen just from saying the words. Even if they are heartfelt words. Tears and emotions of the moment all too quickly pass without commitment to the long-term work.

Fourth, things have gone wrong when we give up on the possibility of forgiveness at all. This is the flip side of expecting or demanding it or treating it as if it were an easy and momentary thing to do – a simple act of a moment that sets things right again. Once we see that forgiveness isn't simple and instantaneous, we might go the other direction and give up on it entirely. Don't demand it or expect it -- but please don't give up on forgiveness either.

The author Dwight Lee Wolter, was at a book-signing event for his book, Forgiving Our Parents. One person “merely glanced at the title, glared at Dwight and asked, ‘Why the hell should I?’” (Buerhens 6). That’s a person who has given up on forgiveness.

In such cases, the work will be hard, and no one can say “you should” – no one can say the work will be worth it. The grace of forgiveness – the grace of being able to forgive, and the grace of coming to be forgiven – can, if not short-circuited, have a power to raise new life from a kind of death – can “break through the normal calculus of morality that calls for evenhandedness and balance.” (Lewis Smedes, religious psychologist)

We can’t make the grace come. We can take some steps to invite that grace: steps for both the injured and the injurer. For the one who has been harmed, Rebecca Parker writes that the first step is to tell the truth about our pain. We have to be able to say that we’ve been hurt and how. Even articulating that hurt may be arduous. It’s often difficult to speak one’s pain frankly.One barrier is an inner belief in our invincibility. A person may deny her or his own suffering because to hurt is to have an unacceptable weakness. And acknowledging this hurt means recognizing that we can be hurt again. Or we may fear that acknowledging a hurt will make it worse.

An Offender Reconciliation Program in Wisconsin “brings the victim of a crime together with the perpetrator of the crime, in front of a trained mediator,” if the victim desires such a meeting, and the perpetrator is willing. One woman met with the drunk driver who had killed her husband.
He said, ‘I’m sorry.’
And she said, “‘I’m sorry,’ won’t cut it. I lost the love of my life. My other half. I suffered depression. I had to deal with being a single parent with three kids.” (Larsen 3-4)

Sometimes we aren’t ready to get, don’t want to get, don’t need to get, to forgiveness. Just the first step of speaking her pain – without expecting that she accept his apology: “it became possible for her to get on with her life” (Larsen 4)

At the next step, explains Rebecca Parker, we do face a choice. Having named our pain, grieve it. If we don’t grieve, we are much more likely to pass on the very same injury to others. She writes:

“The capacity to grieve unlocks the psycho-magic of passing the pain on to someone else. Grief allows the pain to pass through one with its full power. The ability to mourn is the foundation of the capacity to forgive, and it is strengthened by those operations of grace which mediate comfort and consolation to us.”

The final step, then, is letting it go. You can’t make yourself let it go, and you certainly can’t make anyone else let something go, but you can deliberately open yourself to inviting the release to come. Letting go releases the violator from the obligation you would place upon them to suffer for their violation, or be punished for their sin.

This is not a release from accountability. Forgiveness involves "calling another to accountability, but relinquishing the desire for retribution” (Parker 16). When I say accountability, I’m not meaning taking the consequences. I mean accounting for ourselves to one another – a relation in which we accept the task of trying to make our selves make sense to another human being – who has seen our past behavior as making no sense.

The injurer, for her or his part, also has steps that can help open the iron gate through which forgiveness may enter. Here, too, truth-telling must be the first step. Tell the truth about the violation. Acknowledge responsibility. Accept the call to accountability.

Step two is justice-making. This is about restorative justice, not retributive justice. “One cannot always repair the damage one does,” writes Rebecca Parker, “but one can commit oneself to create healing or transformation somewhere, somehow” (Parker 21).

Conflict can strengthen a relationship, or strain it. Conflict can get to the point where it is hard to say what the conflict is about – what exactly is the issue – because the energy of the conflict is oriented toward other people rather than the issue. You talk to the people involved, and you find you’re having a hard time getting a handle on the issue, but it’s real easy to tell the sides – “those people” this and “those people” that – then you’ve got a high level of conflict. When we feel in our hearts, “those people won” or “we showed those people” then we’re in deep need of a process of forgiveness.

We all need each other. Nurture your spirit, help heal our world -- that's the Unitarian Universalist slogan. We need right relation with each other. As Reinhold Niebuhr said:

“Nothing we do, however virtuous can be accomplished alone.
Therefore we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own.
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”

The miracle of Reconciliation can happen, and our flourishing, the blooming of our beloved community springs from the ground of that reconciliation. It makes sense, then, that the day of atonement and reconciliation, is not only the holiest day of the year, the most solemn day of the year, but also the most joyful day.

Begin Again In Love (9-11, forgiveness, and peace)

Can we begin again? In love? With the arrival of the tenth anniversary of the events of 2001 September 11, I want to ask whether we can begin again. Of course, in one sense we can never really begin again: it is impossible to change the past. In another sense we are always, unavoidably, beginning anew. So we begin again today just like we begin again every day. It's a particularly good time, however, to reflect on those events of ten years ago and to see if maybe there's a way to make the new beginning of this day a beginning that faces our fears and turns toward love. Somewhere in between the impossible and the inevitable is the potential.

About 3,000 people were killed in the collapse of the twin towers in 2001. 3,000. Here are some other numbers for the last decade:

• Almost 20,000: killed from our fighting in Afghanistan, counting US troops, coalition troops, contractors, Afghan troops, and Afghan civilians.
• Over 4,500: US soldiers and civilian support personnel who have died in our Iraq war.
• Over 100,000: Iraqi civilians killed in Iraq by military or paramilitary action.
• About 5,000: people killed in one city, Juarez, Mexico, in a drug cartel war.
• Over 200,000: people killed in the 2004 tsunami that struck Sumatra, Indonesia and other places along the Indian Ocean.
• Over 300,000: people killed in the Haiti earthquake of 2010.
• About 150 million: children dead from starvation over the last ten years, deaths that could have been prevented at a cost about equal to 10 stealth bombers or what the world spends on its militaries in two days.

Most of that is distant and impersonal. The events of 2001 September 11, however, touched many of us much more personally. We have friends or family who were in New York on that day – who were due to have been in the Twin Towers a day or two later, or who were nearby on that day and barely escaped with their lives.

The tenth anniversary of Pearl Harbor got very little attention. In that case, I think we felt like we knew how to respond, and by ten years out, we had responded. We had dispatched the threat and had turned our attention to cranking out the baby boom. With the September 11 attacks, however, we have been in a state of continuous doubt about how to respond: Have we done enough? Too much? Are we safe yet? In the one case we swelled the armed forces and the factories supporting the war effort. In the other case, we ruefully put shampoo and toothpaste in a separate baggie every time we fly somewhere. In the one case, we rolled up our sleeves. In the other, we take off our shoes…going through security. It’s a very different feel -- bare arms vs. bare feet.

Begin again in love? That would be nice. We began the first time, ten years ago, in fear. And the fear has been much more damaging than the airplanes were. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, it made us think, "oh, well, that’s nothing." Suppose he had said, the only thing we have to fear is that our brains will be seized by a force beyond our control that will cause us to behave irrationally and dangerously? Of course, that’s what FDR was saying.

In the one year after those airplane attacks, Americans were more afraid to get on airplanes. It took about 18 months for air travel levels to return to their pre-9-11 levels. During that time, we drove places more. We have ways of estimating total national automobile miles traveled, and analysis reveals that the ratio of automobile fatalities per million miles driven remained constant. But because there was more driving, there were more auto fatalities. A couple years after 9-11, driving was back down to where it had been, just as flying was back up. An additional 1600 people died in auto fatalities just from the increase in driving in the one year after 9-11. Those were people we can say were killed by fear.

Osama bin Laden single-handedly triggered fear reactions that have been estimated to have cost the US over a trillion dollars in the last ten years. Our costs and losses in Afghanistan make some sense. My sympathies lie with those who seek nonviolent alternatives to war in every case, but I acknowledge that most analysts and most US citizens agree that military intervention in Afghanistan was appropriate – just as fighting Japan after Pearl harbor made sense. But we never had any business in Iraq. And our internal private and public security apparatus has run up costs that could have provided free college for everyone, repaired the nation’s infrastructure, ensured universal health care, and green-fitted our industries to reduce CO2 emissions.

We allowed those attacks to undermine our way of life. The US responded, in our blind fear, by rolling back the freedoms and the civil liberties that I would say were the things about our country that made it worth defending. We responded by undermining our way of life. It’s popular to say that’s just what the attackers were after, but I have to say I really don't think they had passage of the Patriot Act as a specific objective.

"Our way of life" is a mixture of many habits and attitudes. Let me mention two, one very good and one very bad. First, our way of life is liberty and equality. The first amendment rights of free speech, press, assembly, worship; our system of checks and balances that prevent power from being concentrated in any one place; the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, and other protections against discrimination -- these are the shining gems of our way of life. Second, our way of life is consumption, privilege, and usurpation. The US has one-twentieth of the world's population, yet consumes one-fourth of the world-wide energy use -- and we behave toward the rest of the world as though we are entitled to this vastly unequal share, and will throw whatever weight around we need to to make sure we keep it. This is the festering blemish of our way of life.

The part of our way of life that the terrorists of 9-11 ten years ago would have liked to undermine is the part that has for most of a century treated their homelands as our own personal supply pump for the oil that fuels our consumerist way of life. Instead, what they undermined was the much more precious civil liberties part of our way of life. They undermined our tolerance – which has, historically, been problematic, but had seemed to be slowly improving. Too many of our neighbors have behaved abominably toward Moslems among us: mosques and schools burned and defaced, or banned, Muslim cab drivers and storekeepers attacked and threatened, Korans burned – not the way we wanted to put Gainesville on the map – Muslims denied equal protections, profiled and harassed.

Can we start again, please? Can we begin again in love?

Unitarian Universalists have usually not been among the worst offenders, but neither have we done all that we could to insist on liberty, and decent treatment for all. We, too, have been among the fearful: sometimes rigid and inaccessible, sometimes striking out in anger without just cause, inattentive to others needs, and allowing ourselves to be set apart and alone, for losing sight of our essential unity. Let self-forgiveness begin, and be the basis for forgiving others. Let forgiveness be the basis for beginning again in love.

We will begin again in love precisely insofar as we can bring peace to our hearts. Bring peace to our hearts. And I know that peace is not a matter of an intellectual conviction.

One of our members told me a story recently about back in the day, she lived in a commune. Hippie notions of peace and love were in the air. This particular commune had made an explicit commitment to peace and nonviolence in all things. They were deeply chagrined at the Vietnam War, and advocated energetically for peace in foreign relations as well as peace in our individual personal relations. Then one day, one of the members of the commune – I will invent a name for her – Katie – was the target of an attempted purse snatching. The purse snatching did not succeed. As the man pulled on the purse strap, Katie flew into a rage, kicking, screaming, and yelling obscenities and insults. Later, Katie was amazed at herself. There was nothing but a couple dollars in that purse. He could’ve had it. “If he came back now, I’d hand it to him. Here I think I’m all about peace and nonviolence, but I was all over that guy, in a way that was anything but nonviolent.”

Peace in our heads – ideas about living peacefully, a philosophy of pacificism and nonviolence – is not the same thing as peace in our hearts, in our bones, in our deep habits of being. Peace as a cognitive concept, and an intellectual commitment, can, however, be a start. From that start, Katie might be motivated to undertake the deep training of reactivity, rather than merely the shallow training of cognitive thinking. For me, the cognitive was a start. For I, too, have those ideas, hold a philosophy of nonviolence, and that has been true for me since middle school. I did, after all, grow up Unitarian Universalist, shaped by our Religious education and worship services. But I still got irritable. I snapped at people. I was defensive. I was snarky. I mean, a lot snarkier than any of you have seen. Once, in my twenties, I flew at the woman who was then my wife, and tackled her. Peace defined my ideas, my philosophy. Reactivity defined my life.

I still speak with an angry impatience sometimes, but now, it’s almost always at my computer, not at people. Even so, I have further work to do. And I do it. Three or four times a year, I go on a retreat of 5 to 7 days to practice the cultivation of peace in heart and bones and the habits of the amygdala and the limbic system – the emotional channels that short-circuit my better self. From those experiences – from putting the time in, being still and silent and watching the thoughts and feelings that arise, I have been gradually teaching not only my thoughts but my reactive nature that there is nothing that separates us.

Illusions of separation continually arise – they always will – yet we can grow more adept at seeing through them. It is a brain training that takes time. I can tell you how to serve a tennis ball exactly like Venus Williams, and, I can’t but maybe Ruth could, describe how to play a Bach cantata. But only hours and hours in can train you to be able to do it. I can tell you that you and I are one, but only with training can that be more than a moment’s passing thought. My training allows me to speak to you from experience about what it takes to build peace in our hearts, not just in our heads, what it takes to recognize that we are not separate.

I tend not to talk about it much, because talking about this training that I’ve had, if you haven’t had it, seems to throw up a separation – and the whole learning is about grasping that there is no separation. One spiritual teacher was asked by a brand new student: "What really is the difference between you and me?" And the teacher said: "There is no difference -- only, I know that." Yet this, too, is dangerous to say. The difference between people who know there’s no difference and people who don’t know there’s no difference is still a difference. That notion of difference, too, must be wiped away. So it’s hard to talk about at all.

In silence, watching my thoughts arise, and setting them aside one by one – sometimes sooner, and sometimes later after allowing them to carry me away for a while – I see through them. I see that my thoughts are not me, as they love to pretend they are. They are collections of reactive impulses stapled to a calculating machine. There is a true me, which is the same as you. Seeing that guy, hanging out with him for awhile, equips me to come and tell you some things that you, too, know – but which it is so easy to forget in midst of the hustle and bustle – and in the midst of fears. Fear has been such a prevalent mood in the country for the last ten years.

It equips me to coach you in the ways of peace – in accordance with the peace-making statement that this congregation adopted last January, in accordance with our stated slogan that this place be a place to nurture your spirit, and help heal our world – starting with ourselves. It’s from that experience that I offer you little pointers like: it’s not the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part. You are not a part of the interdependent web of existence. You are the whole thing. All of it is right there, manifested as you.

Thich Nhat Hanh has been through many more hours and years of that training than I, and he expresses well what he has seen in the stillness and silence. I, too, have plunged deeply into the truth of these words about nonseparation, which I offer to you on the this anniversary of the September 11 attacks. This is the truth that we need, if we are to find peace and begin again in the capacity for love that peace makes possible.

"Rest in Peace," by Thich Nhat Hahn

I am a World Trade Center tower, standing tall in the clear blue sky,
feeling a violent blow in my side, and I am a towering inferno of pain and suffering imploding upon myself and collapsing to the ground.
May I rest in peace.
I am a terrified passenger on a hijacked airplane not knowing where we are going or that I am riding on fuel tanks that will be instruments of death, and I am a worker arriving at my office not knowing that in just a moment my future will be obliterated.
May I rest in peace.
I am a pigeon in the plaza between the two towers eating crumbs from¶someone's breakfast when fire rains down on me from the skies, and I am a bed of flowers admired daily by thousands of tourists now buried under five stories of rubble.
May I rest in peace.
I am a firefighter sent into dark corridors of smoke and debris on a mission of mercy only to have it collapse around me, and I am a rescue worker risking my life to save lives who is very aware that I may not make it out alive.
May I rest in peace.
I am a family member who has just learned that someone I love has died, and I am a pastor who must comfort someone who has suffered a heartbreaking loss.
May I know peace.
I am a loyal American who feels violated and vows to stand behind any military action it takes to wipe terrorists off the face of the earth, and I am a loyal American who feels violated and worries that people who look and sound like me are all going to be blamed for this tragedy.
May I know peace.
I am a boy in New Jersey waiting for a father who will never come home, and I am a boy in a faraway country rejoicing in the streets of my village because someone has hurt the hated Americans.
May I know peace.
I am a general talking into the microphone/s about how we must stop the terrorist cowards who have perpetrated this heinous crime, and I am an intelligence officer trying to discern how such a thing could have happened on American soil, and I am a city official trying to find¶ways to alleviate the suffering of my people.
May I know peace.
I am a terrorist whose hatred for America knows no limit and I am willing to die to prove it, and I am a terrorist sympathizer standing with all the enemies of American capitalism and imperialism, and I am a master strategist for a terrorist group who planned this abomination. My heart is not yet capable of openness, tolerance, and loving.
May I know peace.
I am a citizen of the world glued to my television set, fighting back my¶rage and despair at these horrible events, and I am a person of faith struggling to forgive the unforgivable, praying for the consolation of those who have lost loved ones, calling upon the merciful beneficence of God/Yahweh/Allah/Spirit/Higher Power.
May I know peace.
I am a child of God who believes that we are all children of God and we are all part of each other.
May we all know peace.

May we all know peace.
Amen.

Compassion and the Faith Instinct

A Natural History of Compassion

The news is good. Compassion emerged from the faith instinct, and it has been evolving, growing, and spreading. We are getting better able to be caring toward strangers -- not just our own families and tribes. That's good news indeed!

It's just that progress is very . . . very . . . slow.

We'll begin with some suggestive anthropological findings about early humans, and then look at how compassion and hospitality develop in literary, including Biblical, history.

The Inhospitable Early Humans: The Roots of Religion in the Needs of War

When our ancestors were hunter-gathers, as hominids have been for the vast majority of their history, war was small-scale and frequent. Bands of males attacked other bands of males – as chimpanzees do today. Nicholas Wade writes:

Chimpanzees in fact occupy territories that are patrolled and defended by bands of males. Through raids and ambushes, they try to pick off the males of a neighboring group one by one until they are able to annex the group’s territory and females. (Wade 48)

Among early humans,

About 75 percent [of pre-state societies] went to war at least once every 2 years . . . whereas the modern nation state goes to war about once a generation.

Enslavement was not practiced, and prisoners were not taken:

Captured warriors were killed on the spot. Anthropologist Lawrence Keeley estimates that a typical tribal society lost about 0.5 of its population in combat each year, far more than the toll suffered by most modern states. (Wade 49)

Another study estimates that 13-15 percent of all deaths among foragers were due to warfare. Compare that to

the percentage of deaths due to warfare in the United States and Europe during the twentieth century, the epoch of two world wars: less than 1 percent of male deaths. (Samuel Bowles cited by Wade 72)

Why do we do this? Why have humans and pre-humans been fighting and killing each other for millions of years?

It seems to be what social animals do. A group that is able to work together enhances the spread of its genes by working together to conquer neighbors. Ants, for example,

are territorial and will fight pitched battles at their borders with neighboring groups.

Human groups face a constant tension: commitment and sacrifice may be good for the group, but bad for individuals. A situation in which every one else was courageous and took risks to protect the group, while I could stay back, avoid the risks of fighting while reaping the benefits of keeping rival groups at bay, would be ideal for my genes. But if everyone follows that strategy, the group will be undefended -- and short-lived. So human groups put a lot of energy into keeping freeloading low and group commitment high: we monitor, condemn, and punish those who don’t do their part. Survival depended on it.

Small groups used gossip to keep people in line, but once a group gets past about 150 people, there are too many for gossip to keep up with. We needed another strategy.

Rituals and shared music, dancing and drumming, helped our ancestors rev up certain neuropeptides and hormones and neural pathways of group connectedness. We felt much more connected to the group. Public ritual and ceremony also allowed monitoring who wasn’t participating -- and therefore who wasn’t so reliably connected to the group.

Moreover, our sociable brains, highly attuned to other people – who to approve and disapprove of, and who is approving and disapproving of us – are primed to see the same thing in the natural world: that the sky and earth, too, are monitoring us with approval and disapproval. We used shared story-telling to reinforce the sense of person-like monitors, judges – and sometimes guides – in earth, sky, sun, moon, rivers, mountains, animals.

Religion, which comes from the latin, religare, meaning to bind together, really does bind us together – in the sharing of rituals, ceremonies, music, dance, and sacred stories. Religion exists in every human culture because it is so good as a functional adaptation to bind our group together so we can compete successfully against other groups.

Religion Transcends Its Origins

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Religion started getting out of control. Not that it was ever exactly in anybody’s control. I mean, the faith instinct started spreading beyond its purpose. Slowly, slowly, the connection we had to our tribe also connected us to people outside our tribe, even to our enemies. For several millennia, there were only isolated outbreaks of compassion for the stranger. In a recognition of shared pain our circuitry of connection is sometimes sparked – if we let it be.

Homer’s Iliad, for instance, tells how the Trojan Hector killed the Greek, Patroclus, Achilles’ dearest friend. Achilles, mad with rage, finds a way to isolate Hector in battle, kills him, mutilates the body, refuses to give it to the family for burial, which means Hector’s soul will never know rest. What happened next, Karen Armstrong, in a lecture I heard her give at General Assembly last month, described this way:

But then one night Hector's father, old King Priam of Troy, comes into enemy territory into the Greek camp in disguise, and he makes his way to Achilles' tent, and he takes off his disguise and everybody, of course, is shocked. The old, old man comes forward and pulls at Achilles feet to plead for the body of his son. He embraces Achilles' knees and he weeps.
At this point, Homer calls Achilles manslaughtering Achilles. Achilles has killed not only Hector, but many other of Priam's sons. Achilles looks at the old man and he thinks of his own father and he, too, begins to weep. The two men weep together out of their private pain, but creating a bond, that bond between people. Priam weeps for all of his sons. Achilles weeps, Homer says, now for his father, now for Petroclus. Then the weeping stops, and Achilles goes for Hector's body. He carries it and lays it very gently and tenderly in the arms of the old man, afraid that this will be too much for the old man to bear. The two men look at each other and each recognizes the other as divine. It's when we can go beyond the hatred, the enmity that knocks us into so much grief and pain and violence, it's then that we become god like. That is the end of the religious quest.

(See the video and transcript of Karen Armstrong's Ware Lecture: click here)

Tomorrow they will be trying to kill each other again. For a moment, the recognition of shared pain creates compassion – literally with-feeling – com = "with," passion = "feeling." In feeling with each other, they have a moment of that experience of connection, the kind of connection we were made for, the kind in which we become god-like because everything that the word God was ever supposed to mean – all the depth of sincerest devotion and the awe of infinite mystery and love – is right there.

In Homer, we find this moment of recognition of shared pain. In Genesis there's a story of hospitality that seems to come less from a particular great pain, and merely from the recognition that compassion to strangers is called for. It is, in fact, the way that we encounter the holy.

Hospitality: The Call to Compassion Outside Ourselves, Our Family, Our Tribe

Genesis, chapter 18:

The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant.”

Now Abraham doesn’t recognize who these visitors are. Abraham's use of “my lord,” is a general term of respect. His running out to meet them and bowing down are the same generous hospitality he might show any human visitor. Abraham continues:

"Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refesh yourselves, and after that you may pass on – since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.”

It was a patriarchal culture, so when Abraham decides to have guests, Sarah has to get to work – though Abraham is busy, too:

And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” Abraham ran to the heard, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

(For Rev. Kaaren Anderson's General Assembly Worship sermon which inspired me to delve into this Abraham story, click here.)

In ancient times, a stranger often represented a threat. Yet Abraham rushes out to show kindness. He sets out his best offering. What he finds out, is that he is serving God. Abraham's act of practical compassion leads to a holy encounter.

There.

That’s it.

As I read that story, it’s not that reaching out to needs greater than our own causes a magical being to reward us for it – though I understand why a group might describe it that way. It certainly feels magical. Reaching out and connecting is the holy encounter. We touch the divine when we contact in compassion the other, the stranger. Whoever it is, that’s God.

A man I know who has worked for three years to help the homeless here in Gainesville spoke to me one day of how in the preceding couple months, something switched in him. He was not a man who thought about or believed God – words like holy, sacred, divine, transcendent were not in his vocabulary.Yet all of a sudden, as he was downtown distributing toiletries and socks, he began to have a new sensation. He didn’t know what word to use for it except “holy or something.” In the homeless men and women he saw shining beings, whose light made him shining too.

Connecting in compassion is the holy encounter, and the Biblical story of Abraham's hospitality teaches us that.

Abraham and Isaac: Other means Other

Now, if you are thinking about Abraham, you might also be remembering another Abraham story. You might be thinking that old Abraham doesn’t seem very compassionate a few years later as he prepares to sacrifice his son Isaac.

What do you make of that episode? If a man today said that God told him to kill his son, and he was preparing to do it, we’d call protective services, no question. Yet the story tells us that there is a meaning and a joy in a connection that isn’t just about you and your interests and your family.

The call of the divine is the call to hospitality outside the usual circle of loyalty, compassion to the stranger, a connection that stretches us. That’s where we encounter the holy. The point was made in the story about Abraham meeting God by being hospitable to three strangers. Then the point is driven home by the story of the binding of Isaac. The Isaac story is saying: if you think that just taking care of your own is where it’s at, you’ve missed it. Other means really other. Abraham’s willingness to cut off his own line, his greatest interest, represents in parable the dethroning of himself from the center of the world – a giving himself over to something bigger than himself – a connectedness beyond his own (his family's, his tribe's) interests.

Modern listeners can't help but think about Isaac's interests. But remember that for the peoples of the Ancient Near East, children had no interests of their own -- they were solely a part of their father's interests. Thus, the crucial part of the story is Abraham's willingness to give up himself. Isaac represents Abraham's last chance at the sort of immortality that progeny provide, for Ishmael had been sent away. Abraham stands ready to die without any "living on" in a son. He is ready to die utterly. For it is not Self that life is for; it is Other, represented here by God, the Holy Wholly Other.

Every religion still has tribal forms – forms that celebrate “us” through demonizing “them.” And all the major world religions also have universal forms -- forms that recognize that “us” means all beings. To this day, we see all around us the playing out of this tension between tribal religion and universal religion.

I am inspired by the lesson of hospitality in the Abraham story. I am also inspired by what we now know of how the story itself originated. We now turn to the story of the story: the conditions under which the Abrahamic legend was created.

Exile Begat Abraham

The setting of the Abraham stories (Genesis 11 to 25) is somewhere around the 18th century BCE. Those stories were created, according to a growing consensus of scholars, in the 6th century BCE, during the period of exile known as the Babylonian Captivity. The Babylonians conquered Judah, and the Israelites were enslaved and taken far away to Babylon. The 70-year period of Babylonian exile, until Babylon in turn fell to Persia and some, at least, of the Hebrews returned to their land, was a period of deep reflection on the meaning of who they were and why their God had abandoned them.

During the exile, the stories about King David that are in the Biblical books of Samuel and Kings were compiled, incorporating earlier fragments. Some kind of David probably really existed and lived around 1000 BCE. Some scholars think the story in Samuel and Kings is roughly historically accurate. Extensive archaeological excavations, however, show that the City of David -- the original urban core of Jerusalem where the Bible says David and Solomon ruled -- was not a significant population center in the 10th century BCE. Parts of Samuel characterize David as a charismatic leader of a band of outlaws who captured Jerusalem and made it their capital. Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman argue that this is the oldest, most reliable part of Samuel, and the rest of the David story is without historical basis.

Baruch Halpern argues that David was a vassal of Achish, the king of the Philistine city-state, Gath, and David never ruled an independent kingdom. For Steven McKenzie, David came from wealthy family and was an ambitious and ruthless tyrant who murdered his opponents, including his own sons. Bandit leader, vassal, or wealthy tyrannical murderer -- whichever he really was, most of the Biblical account of David appears to be the creation of an exiled people's deep yearning for a story of past glory.

In the process of constructing that story, a detailed ancestry for David was concocted, going back to Abraham eight or nine centuries before David. While David was, it seems, a real person, albeit not much like the Biblical depiction, Abraham was entirely made up. The creation and telling of these stories gave hope to the Hebrew people in a time of despair and suffering and defeat. The stories told them of a past time of glory and also called them to hospitality rather than to bitterness.

The glory and the hope represented by David needed a foundation -- so fragments of other mythic tales were woven together and expanded into a story of exodus and Moses and covenant, set four hundred years before David. The exodus story established a context that showed that David didn't just happen. David was the long-coming fruition of Moses' covenant four centuries earlier. But Moses didn't just happen either. The promise on Mt. Sinai was itself the long-coming fruition of the foundation laid by Abraham in a narrative arc set another 4 or 5 centuries before Moses. And that foundation was hospitality.

The stories of Abraham, Moses, and David reassured the Israelites that they had a history. Their history, fictional or not, was their basis for hope for a better time to come -- for it told them God had promised to make the descendants of Abraham a great nation. It told them that the path of the fulfillment of that promise was a winding one that had taken them into captivity before, in Egypt. They had emerged from past captivity into a time of freedom and prosperity, and so could again. Without that story, composed in oppression and exile, the Israelites are one more Ancient Near East tribe – along with the Jebusites, Ammonites, Aramites, Midianites, Moabites, Edomites, Huttites, Etceterites. But with that story, the Hebrews coalesced around it into the religion recognizable as Judaism.

Some of the writings of the Babylonian captivity do express deep bitterness, anger, violent hatred of the Babylonian captors. Here, for instance, is Psalm 137:

By the rivers of Babylon -- there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our harps.
For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"

How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.

Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem's fall, how they said, "Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!"
O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

The first two of three verses have a plaintive beauty that has made the Psalm a popular one for setting to music -- but the musical versions leave out the deeply vicious ending. If the bitterness of their oppression didn't make the bitterness of their hearts understandable, I would be tempted to call the Psalm unredeemable. In the midst of that bitterness, understandable or not, some of the Hebrew story-tellers had the wisdom and the courage to perceive another way: a way of hospitality rather than bitter and violent anger.

Giving vent to pain does not heal the wound; it only expresses the pain. So these story-tellers brought forth from the imaginations of their better selves another sort of story, a salve for smoldering hatred -- a story that called the people not to pay back violence and death, but to pay forward compassion -- a story not of pain that makes more pain, but a story of hospitality that engenders healing and wholeness. That's the story the Israelites in their captivity put into the foundation of the narrative that defines the Jewish people, hence the Christians and Moslems, hence us.

The Abrahamic tradition has not had any easy go of it. Jews, Christians, and Moslems, are still fighting – though modern warfare kills a smaller percent of us than early human warfare did. Religion’s ancient use for war runs deep and is not easily replaced by its new use for peace across tribal lines.

Sometimes people do harmful things in the name of religion – harm their children, harm themselves, blow things up, go to war. That’s because religion hasn’t finished outgrowing and transcending its original tribal function. But it’s getting there.

The Israelite story-tellers, in the midst of their captivity, homelessness, and pain, found a way to remember others’ pain, too. Somehow they found a way to make stories to move their hearts from pain toward compassion, to care for the stranger. What they illustrated in story, they codified in principle, for Deuteronomy was also substantially created in Babylonian captivity:

You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deut 10:19)

Swords Into Plowshares

Our early ancestors needed a way to draw out of each other the last full measure of devotion on behalf of the tribe. They needed something that would provide:

• a sense of powerful entities watching and judging, and
• a sense of overflowing love, a joy in the life shared with tribe-mates. 

Religion got wired into us because the tribes that couldn’t do that were overwhelmed by those who did have that deep connection.

Failure of the capacity for spiritual connection meant death. Today, it means that still – only now, the “tribe” at stake is the planet. In any species, genes won't survive if they don't incline individuals to care adequately for their young. Social apes like us, had also to build in an intense care for our group. We had to even be willing sometimes to set aside our interest in our selves and our own offspring for the sake of something bigger. The groups that did that survived.

The stories that emerged in the Babylonian captivity have not ended the violence that oppresses our planet. Those stories do show us what is possible. The violence can be ended.

Our spiritual hardware is built into us. It's what we have and what we are. It was made as a sword. It's up to us to beat that sword into a plowshare, cultivate fields of care, and sew the nourishing knowledge that we are one. It is up to us to find the ways to connect, to cultivate compassion for enemies, to train ourselves in nonviolence, to recognize that violence is any thought, word, or deed that treats a being like an object or diminishes a being’s sense of value or security.

Thus we stand in the Abrahamic tradition of hope and possibility, stand with the radical vision of some captive Israelite story-tellers.

What they dreamed be ours to do.
Hope their hopes and seal them true.

- - - - - - - - -

Revised version of sermon preached at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville, 2011 July 17. For list of all blog posts derived from sermons, click here for Sermon Index.
Audio Podcast of the original sermon: click here.

poem: prayer to the rabbit god

the night is dark and this I know:
the rabbit god herself made the foxes.

she put bunnies all over
gave them a green planet to eat
made them love to hump
like rabbits
and love their babies.
bunnies make bunnies faster than plants grow, she noticed.
so the rabbit god made foxes.

predation is kinder than starvation, she said.
and foxes will give my lovelies
sharp ears
beautiful speed
a touch of cleverness.
let them be grateful for the red fur death
and the fear that makes them bright alert.

thus the rabbit god became the fox god too.
bodies are made of nutrients,
there being no other way to make them,
how could there not be carnivores?

dear god of hunter and of hunted
I, too, a body of walking food, pray
to be eaten rather than starve
to love
the beauty of this fear.

Reverence for Life: Toward Beloved Multispecies Community

The Unitarian Universalist Animal Ministry (UUAM) has developed the Reverence for Life program to assist UUs interested in exploring human relationships to other animals. (For info, click here.) Rev. LoraKim Joyner, a UU community minister and my spouse, heads up that program. Herewith, some reflections (see also my "On Being Animal," click here).

Reverence for Life

Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life. (The Earth Charter, 2002)

The Earth Charter’s use of “reverence for life” reflects its indebtedness to Albert Schweitzer (1875 –1965), the doctor, theologian, humanitarian, and Unitarian. Schweitzer did not invent the concept: it is a central teaching of Jainism and Buddhism, which Schweitzer studied. Schweitzer did, however, adopt the phrase, reverence for life, as the summation of his life and work, substantially develop the idea within the Western tradition, and bring it widely to the attention of Europeans and Americans.

In The Philosophy of Civilization (1923), Schweitzer set forth his most detailed and philosophical exploration of reverence for life. His premise:

I am life which wills to live, in the midst of life which wills to live.

From this premise, Schweitzer arrived at his ethical stance.

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

Helping life and avoiding harm benefits other beings and brings wholeness to our spirits:

Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.

Today an increasing number of people are heeding the call to reverence for life. It is a call to open our hearts to, commit our talents and resources to, and dedicate our lives to compassion to all living things – for the sake of the planet, for the sake of all beings, and for the sake of finding peace. Compassion is called for in each of the ways that humans use and relate to nonhuman animals. This list, neither exhaustive nor exclusive, includes the main areas of animal concern:

· Wildlife threatened by loss of habitat: Habitat destruction, pollution, and climate change have accelerated species extinction rates.
· Wildlife poached or hunted for profit: Trade in elephant ivory, rhinoceros horns, birds, reptiles, fish, though often illegal, continues.
· Animals humans breed for food: Industrial meat production subjects billions of cows, pigs, and chickens to painful conditions.
· Animals humans companion: There is abuse and abandonment of dogs, cats, and birds and other animals kept as companions.
· Animals humans use in research: Painful experiments, procedures, and housing conditions are inflicted on millions of laboratory mice, rats, rabbits and numerous other species every year.
· Animals whose fur or skin humans wear: The fur industry inflicts pain and death.
· Animals used in sports and entertainment: Horse racing and equine-using sports, dog racing, dog- and cock-fighting, animals in circuses and various animal shows, recreational hunting and fishing, are all issues.

The Liberal Faith Context: Challenge, Resource, Possibility

Challenge. For a number of years now, LoraKim and I have witnessed the confusion and misunderstandings in liberal congregations when animal issues arise. We have seen repeatedly how individuals and congregations struggle with questions about our relationship with nonhuman animals. We have been at congregational potluck dinners that have evoked anger, irritation, sadness, and disappointment among participants. We have seen members seethe and sometimes resign from the congregation because their hopes for more humane potluck dishes went unrequited. Others have seethed and sometimes resigned when they felt their preferences for food that included animal body parts was not respected. We have seen the puzzled looks when we say “multispecies community.” (One congregation member wondered whether dogs would be running board meetings. She then added, “Probably not such a bad idea.” But, of course, having a dog chair a meeting amounts to not having a meeting. And we will need to continue having meetings -- discussing, sharing wisdom, and planning actions -- to do the work before us.)

From witnessing these tensions and disconnects through the years of our respective ministries, it has for some time now seemed to us that animal concerns are the most significant area of need for spiritual, emotional, and intellectual growth in liberal religion. It’s an area of needed growth in mainstream and conservative religion as well, to be sure, yet here we address the liberal religion we know best.

If our liberal religious movement were to turn its attention and commitment to reverence for life in all its forms, it would not be because we have ended the oppression, suffering, injustice, and violence humans inflict on each other. Indeed, the world of human-human relations seems as far from global peace and justice as ever. Nor can we say with any certainty that caring about species other than our own empirically correlates with caring about human conditions other than our own. Studies are inconclusive, and some suggest that people can compartmentalize their compassion: attitudes about the appropriate regard for the beings in the various categories through which humans relate to other animals (as companions, as food, for research, as wildlife, etc.) do not always correlate with attitudes about social justice, human rights, or peace movements. Rather, if people of liberal faith commit to revere life, it will be because of an inner urging toward wholeness. We will have heard an internal whispering that reverence for any life is incomplete without reverence for all life, and that our own fullest flourishing lies in a life of uncompartmentalized compassion.

Resource. Unitarian Universalists and others of liberal faith who seek to respond wholeheartedly and effectively to the call for reverence for life have a context of empowering meaning in our liberal religious tradition. Our worship practice and experience, our way of being together in free and covenantal faith community, give us solid footing from which to move forward to meet Schweitzer’s challenge to bring fuller and wider justice and peace to our world. Liberal religion for centuries has centered on a set of related values: freedom, acceptance, fairness. Unitarians and Universalists have expressed those core values with various words through the epochs of our history: the earlier words and understandings paved the way for the language and understanding now current among us. Of particular value for understanding and caring about animal concerns, there is the enduring legacy of the 19th-century Unitarian Transcendentalists who limned the sacred depths of nature, and many of whose words, included still in our current hymnal, continue to inspire.

Since the mid-1980s, we have had the Seven Principles in our association’s by-laws:

“We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association covenant to affirm and promote . . . inherent worth and dignity . . . justice, equity, and compassion . . . respect for the interdependent web of existence. . .”

The practice of liberal faith community creates a steady deepening of the meanings of these values in our lives, and has lead us to live into them more fully. Our living tradition, in other words, has through the centuries gradually clarified what we may call “faith skills.” As we have sought to live the meaning of our values, we have developed among us resources of skill in articulating and practicing those values. Those skills will help us now move forward to find new ways for our principles to guide us to more compassionate and effective action, and more profound and loving reverence for life.

Moreover, we have applied and sharpened our faith skills in social action through the centuries. Unitarians and Universalists, joined by liberal Quakers, Mennonites, other Protestants, Jews, and sometimes Catholics have faced many challenges in our overlapping histories. People of liberal faith were together at the forefront of the movements for universal education, abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, improvement of worker conditions, birth control availability, desegregation, civil rights, women’s equality, ending the Viet Nam war, reproductive rights, acceptance of GLBT folk, and recognition of same-sex marriage. Each of those challenges called on us to change ourselves and change our world. Each of them was a step in our growing reverence for life, articulated in word, manifested in deed, and rewarded in deepened joy of connection and widened circle of community.

Finally, the liberal religious tradition of openness to new revelation and discovery has made us comfortable drawing from new work in the academy. Unhindered by suspicion of threat from new research, our worship, theology, and discussions, reference academic findings with a natural ease. This comfort will serve us well as we look to incorporate into our faith lives the substantial academic contributions in the last two decades. Works of philosophy, religion, social science, literature, and ethics departments offer new ways of thinking about nonhuman animals. Studies in biology, ecology, and physiology have shed new light on animal well-being and the science of human-nonhuman bonding.

Possibility. The academy alone, however, will not produce large numbers of humans motivated to act from care for the flourishing of all animals. There is a role for faith institutions to play in this world transformation, and liberal religion has not yet seized that role. Until we explicitly hold all beings to have inherent worth and dignity, we are only “light green.” In Dark Green Religion, Bron Taylor calls for a sensible religion, which includes the tenet that every being has inherent worth and a sacred spark, and which:

“is rationally defensible as well as socially powerful enough to save us from our least-sensible selves." (Bron Taylor)

We believe that millions now yearn for such a religion, fostering communities of life where every species and every individual belongs.

The Unitarian Universalist delegates at the 2011 General Assembly in Charlotte, North Carolina, took an important step toward a mission of reverence for life when they approved a Statement of Conscience titled “Ethical Eating: Food and Environmental Justice.” The Statement addresses environmental and worker justice issues in the food industry and includes also these passages about our relation with nonhuman animals:

Aware of our interdependence, we acknowledge that eating ethically requires us to be mindful of the miracle of life we share with all beings. . .
The mass production of food . . . has resulted in . . . mistreatment of animals and workers. . . .
We acknowledge that aggressive action needs to be taken to . . . end the inhumane treatment of animals. . . .
Unitarian Universalists aspire to radical hospitality and developing the beloved community. Therefore, we affirm that the natural world exists not for the sole benefit of one nation, one race, one gender, one religion, or even one species, but for all. Working in the defense of mutual interests, Unitarian Universalists acknowledge and accept the challenge of enlarging our circle of moral concern to include all living creatures. . . .
Concerns about the Humane Treatment of Animals include intensive confinement and abuse in CAFOs [Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations], and inhumane conditions during production, transport, and slaughter. . . .
We aspire to buy, raise, and consume food for ourselves and our families that . . . minimizes the pain and suffering of animals. . . .
We advocate for the benefit of animals, plants, food workers, the environment and humanity by . . . pressing food sellers to require that their suppliers certify the humane treatment of animals; . . .
With gratitude and reverence for all life, we savor food mindful of all that has contributed to it. We commit ourselves to a more equitable sharing of the earth's bounty. (To read the full text of the Statement, click here.)

In recognizing that ethics is not limited to human-human relations, this Statement of Conscience is a milestone in liberal religion’s ethical development and on the path toward the peace which, as Dr. Schweitzer told us, humanity will not find “until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things.”

Multispecies Community: Relations of Care . . . and Uncertainty

The path of peace, of reverence for life – and, indeed, the path of joy and fulfillment – leads, we believe, to multispecies community, – a term which remains unfamiliar to many. A grant to UUAM (the Unitarian Universalist Animal Ministry) is supporting development of a book to be titled, Reverence for Life: Toward Beloved Multispecies Community. Yet the grant almost did not happen because some on the grant panel found “multispecies community” baffling and bizarre. Perhaps you did too when you saw the title. If so, I hope you'll read the book when it comes out, and that by the time you're done, “multispecies community” will seem to you not only obvious and implicit, but also the urgent need of our time, our faith, and our planet.

The concept of right relation which liberal religious congregations have been seeking to understand and apply can help us in imaging a more whole relation to nonhuman life around us. The ways to be in right relation with the blue jays outside your church, with the cat and dog companions of your church members, with the South American jaguars affected by your church’s coffee-buying policies, with the cows whose flesh might or might not be destined for a dish at your next church potluck, are all different – and all of those relations matter, to us and to them.

In one important sense, multispecies community is unavoidable. It is and always has been a fact of life. There is no way for humans, or any species, not to be in relationship and interaction with many (or most, or all) other species. We are inescapably part of the interdependent web of existence, as the Unitarian Universalist seventh principle recognizes. In another sense, true community, built upon right relation, is the unrealized possibility before us. Reverence for life calls for us to be increasingly conscious of, increasingly intentional about, and increasingly compassionate in, the ways we participate in multispecies community. Through such reverence, our multispecies community becomes beloved multispecies community.

Right relation with animals, human or otherwise, requires our careful attention to the signals. Extinction rates and drastically diminished populations of wildlife speak quite clearly that something is not working for those animals. Extinctions may be “natural” in the sense that the shifting ecologies of the planet over the last 2 billion years of life have brought about the extinctions of most of the species that have ever been. However, where human activity is the cause, or where extinction and endangerment rates are way above “natural” levels and we have the power to lower them, then reverence for life calls us to action to preserve life.

Other signals are more subtle. Is a given animal displaying a troublesome lethargy, or is it just being a healthy sloth? What are the physiological and behavioral markers of well-being in each of the estimated 10 million species on earth, or even of the 62,000 currently known vertebrate species? Certainly, there is much more to learn. At the same time, we already know a lot about the physiology of vertebrate pain, how to identify normal and high levels of stress in birds and mammals, and what behaviors are neurotic in various species. We can’t all become veterinarians or zoologists, but we do make rough assessments of the health of animals in our lives, and we can educate ourselves to be better attuned to the signs of well-being in domesticated companions, animal raised for food, and in wildlife around us. We can learn actions that engender better health and flourishing of the animals in our world. Fundamentally, right relation is a relation of care.

Against the forces of complacency and relativism stands beauty: the splendor of every being and this earth we inhabit together. This beauty calls us toward greater understanding, compassion, and awareness of interdependence, calls us to constantly re-imagine how to be the change we wish to be in the world, for our sakes, and for our neighbor's sake. And who is our neighbor, those whom Jesus urged us to love as ourselves? If, as we believe, our neighbors are all living beings, then our human lot is cast with the underdog -- and underchicken, undercow, and down-under marsupials.

Yet there is no one right way to think about and care for nonhuman animals. We are all involved in a messy interdependent web of existence in which we are, willy-nilly, prey and predator, and eater and eaten. Each of us makes tragic choices that result in harm to others. LoraKim and I struggle with this. We ate meat for much of our lives, for instance – and still do, occasionally, eat dairy products. The goal is not purity. Rather, the goal is to engage in life to the fullest by being aware of the lives around us. This means that we do no rest upon what we have accomplished, but seek ever to grow, to change, and often as a result, to have our heart’s break open so the world can fall in and fill it up.

Take courage, friends. The way is often hard, the path is never clear, and the stakes are very high. Take courage. For deep down, there is another truth: You are not alone. (Wayne Arnason)

The way is indeed not clear. Who most needs our care and attention right now? Is it the wildlife losing habit, or being poached or hunted? Is it the factory farm conditions of cows, pigs, and chickens? Is it abused or abandoned dogs and cats? And what is the best way to manifest our compassion? How does faith in the inherent worth and dignity of all beings grow and deepen? How can we better apprehend the mutual dependence of our well-being and the well-being of other beings? How can we act with greater compassion – and greater power? Life is so much more complex than any one stance or argument can convey. Fortunately, we aren’t alone. We have each other to turn to: to other humans on the path of reverence for life, and to such guidance as we can glean from the animals themselves.

Beyond the Veil: Women and Islam

Guest post by Renee Zenaida, member, UU Fellowship of Gainesville
Sermon preached 2011 July 24

As much as I love the big stories, it’s the little ones I count on to explain things. Although, there are always more stories, more stories needed to fill in new gaps. Still, I felt well-prepared to weigh in when Islam was a suddenly the topic in Gainesville. I’d read Huston Smith, of course, but I had even known Muslims.

Years ago now, I married a lapsed Muslim from Lebanon. It was a marriage not made in heaven -— a lapsed, somewhat angry Muslim and a lapsed, somewhat angry Catholic. Rather than an interfaith marriage, it was more of a counterfaith union.

So when people, non-Muslims, try to tell me some deep dark secret about Islam, I smile because I have heard it all before. Any negative thing about being a Muslim that could be said, I heard from someone raised in the faith.


It’s just that it didn’t wash. Little stories. I never met my mother-in-law, except through stories. She was a devout Muslim, Hanoum. She came from a very traditional family. Her father had two wives and each gave him six children: one woman had six boys and Hanoum’s mother, she had six girls.


Hanoum was a bit of a fashion fan and was able to copy patterns of Chanel designs in Vogue magazine and then sew runway-quality copies. She taught at a little school in Beirut when her boys were small. In the school, she covered out of respect. She did not otherwise.


One day she ran into the principal at the market, the principal admonished her for not being covered in public. Hanoum went in the following day and quit.


Little stories. I got to know a number of students from the Middle East, many of them Muslims. It was pretty amazing how some of them accepted me, and some didn’t, just like everyone else.


It was my Western friends who took on a unified front. Even the most liberal of friends whined, “well, you know…” It was inevitable. I was going to end up forced to wear a veil and/or, if we had any children, “well, you know…” Everyone asked me if I’d read Not Without My Daughter. I was perplexed, anxious about the singular character of this, well, bigotry.


At the heart of it was fear of the unknown. Historians have yet to weave the contributions of the Muslim world into our books of Unitarian and Universalist history -— but I think I have a new project for Ken Burns.


But locally as well, the Muslim American community hasn’t drawn a lot of attention to itself, even the community’s charity work seems to go relatively unnoticed except by those on the receiving end. Until the subject came up, everyone was just getting along fine.


The custom that many have us have adopted, of not discussing religion or politics in social settings leaves the question of one’s faith, unasked and unanswered. Unless you’re a woman, a hijabi -— a woman who chooses to cover, to wear the hijab. Then everyone knows.


Back in the late eighties, the media was just getting started framing the Islamic World. But already the PR tide was turning; but I wanted to look at what my friends were telling me from more than one viewpoint. I thought about their concerns for a long time. I wanted to have an answer to give them. I only came up with a question.

They tell their daughters they are too beautiful. We tell our daughters they are not beautiful enough.

If I had a daughter, which should I prefer she believe?


Even now, the information we do get, often the only information we get, is directed by the very narrow lens of the media, or worse, Hollywood. And people living out their everyday lives in harmony, well that just doesn’t “make a story.”


Still, the three great Abrahamic religions do all seem to have a problem with women. Yes, ladies, we’re a problem. Women are thrust into an either-or frame. Good or bad. Temptress or Goddess. Saint or Sinner. I think we might be able to trace it back to the Greek love of dichotomy, but surely the writers and thinkers who’ve followed through on the big stories never really got to know a woman. When have you ever known a woman who was either-or?


We all do it. We fit everything, everyone we meet into frames, grouping like with like, to get as quick a picture of the situation as possible. That’s biology. We need to assess new situations, determine if there’s any danger, and act accordingly. There isn’t time to look at things from every angle, at least not at first.


Either “Muslim Artist” or “who”? I had expectations. [When I first went to see Ameena Khan's art,] I was expecting it to be a lot more serious.


The opposite of vilifying someone for his or her beliefs, opposite but equally devastating, is romanticizing someone for his or her beliefs. I expected a Muslim artist; I met a Muslim, a wife, a daughter, a wonderful mother, an incredible artist, an environmental engineer, a friend -— and the kind of selfless compassion that is all too rare I this world.


Compassion. If you’re looking for something that is held in common among Muslims, among any group really, experience the culture. Every community builds a culture up out of itself. So if you want to understand something -— a country, a religion -— get to know the people. Immerse yourself in the culture, and oh…eat the food…better…experience the meals. (Always a great antidote to the 11 o’clock news.)


The culture I encounter among the Muslims I know and have known is one of benevolent compassion. There’s a sense of community and shared plight.


When you talk about the United States, you can argue from here to next Thursday about the intentions of the Founding Fathers. United States culture is overwhelmingly Christian. When most of us were growing up, we never gave it a second thought when a City Hall had a nativity set on its lawn. It just was. We may not agree with reintroducing the Ten Commandments into civic settings -— but most if not all of us know them, base our morals on them. There’s a national flavor to US culture -— a not-so-subtle worship of the individual.


Yes, ours is a culture that will protest school uniforms with the fervor other cultures reserve for McDonald’s trying to move in. It may seem trite, but it’s serious business. That’s how deeply ingrained the reliance on the individual is in American society: no one is going to tell us what to wear.


Of course, we end up mostly wearing the same thing as our peers. To wear anything different is to “stand out.” People who dress outside the norm are often treated as just that -— outsiders. I imagine there is similar peer pressure in countries and regions that are predominately Muslim. Resisting would be difficult—in a place where covering is the law, impossible.


But imagine wearing hijab here. Or in any Western country? Instead of disappearing into a sea of veils or an ocean of hairstyles, you stand right out. And it’s not like wearing Orange and Blue in Gainesville, you’re not on the home team.


When news of an Arab spring began to filter in, I was excited. Having let go some of my romantic notions about what being a devoted Muslim looks like, I headed off to a protest on the corner of University and 13th. There were quite a few women there. I was the only one not wearing a headscarf.


Oh my goodness. I held my sign, chanted along (we were awful at the chants, we’re doing much better with our chants for peace this morning), but I stood out.


Now, there’s something about being a Unitarian Universalist, I’m not sure why, but you end up carrying a lot of protest signs. I’ve been in the crowd before; but this time at least a dozen people pointed out that they’d seen me for less than a second on the news. I stood out.


Still, I was feeling pretty good about having been there, at least tangentially, cheering on world-changing events, when I went to gather my things. As I was waving goodbye, an elder, a woman, walked near me. She dropped a flag. I picked it up and took it to her. I was expecting an accent. Egyptian perhaps? It was an Egyptian flag. No. The lovely lady turned to me, and, in since the cradle Southern, said “Thank you, Sweetie.”


No matter how far I stretched my frame, it wouldn’t hold a representative grouping of Muslim women. So why not really test the boundaries. I put a note out on Facebook, asking Muslim friends to comment on “the veil,” and to share with their friends.


People sent me articles, videos, and best of all, personal notes. All spoke of hijab as an expression of faith, but each had a unique way of expressing her faith and her relationship to covering.


I sometimes get the impression that in that romanticizing way, some think women wearing hijab are somehow unaware of its implications. Somehow these dear innocents haven’t caught up to us yet.


With the information I’ve received so far, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Muslim communities worldwide are discussing the role of women, the role of hijab -— from lovely songs extolling the virtues of hijabi to a comedian shouting about what is and what is not hijab to internationally published profiles of women who have chosen to not cover, sometimes after many years of wearing the hijab. There are blogs and websites discussing all the possible frames a Muslim woman can fit into. The range is staggering.


Islamic scholars debate whether the instructions on modesty were for all women or only for the Prophet’s wives; argue over how much covering is required. There are radical women and moderate women and conservative women…and men…all interacting from within and from outside the system. Islam is not the monolith some perceive it to be: it’s a vibrant, living faith. Change, if it comes, will come from within the faith.


One of the most touching letters I received was from a woman named Angham. She started covering when she was 21; and it was a hard decision…but she’s forty now…and she has grown into and with her commitment to her faith.


What was more difficult for Angham was moving to the United Kingdom. People stared. She even felt pity. She had been a lecturer in English literature at an Iraqi university, she was in the UK to pursue a higher degree.


She wrote:

“To be honest, when I came to study in the UK last year I was uncomfortable with the way some people were looking at me and I fully understand how most people in the West look at the veil… I don't blame them as long as they are highly attracted to what certain newspapers tell them… I even sometimes feel that they pity me for this!!!! I think it is our job. I mean the veiled Muslim women's job is to try to change the way the West perceives this, not necessarily by words but by deeds… I think when every body around me realizes that this cover is not preventing me from thinking, studying, participating in life in general and breathing like the rest of them and when I show them that the veil wont prevent me from building bridges with them and make friends and behave normally they will eventually change the way they look at it… It is the veiled women's Job and mission…”

Maybe we could meet Angham and her sisters, those wearing the hijab and those not, half way. To embrace religious diversity, to live the words of Francis David -— that we need not think alike to love alike -- we need, perhaps, to turn our attention to discrimination against women who choose to express their faith by wearing the hijab—countries where certain styles of covering are banned, sporting events turned political, attitudes that judge a woman as lacking because she chooses to cover her hair.


Unless we look beyond the frames, beyond the veil, and see each woman individually, we won’t recognize real oppression when we see it.


Oppression. Non-Muslim friends gave me input about Women and Islam too. A number of people asked me if I’d read Infidel. It was the only lens through which they’d gotten a closer look at women and Islam.


Harrowing. But remember, I was raised Catholic. People who live in glass cathedrals… And as a Catholic, I have heard some pretty harrowing tales about losing one’s religion.


One of Karen Armstrong’s first books, Through a Narrow Gate, about joining and leaving a convent, was unsuccessful on many levels. In 2004, Armstrong wrote in her reprise of the journey, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness, that it had been too soon -— she had not even begun the process of spiritual healing.


That she chose a path of spiritual healing is admirable, and fortunate for many of us. Armstrong is an extremely popular author and advocate for interfaith communication and…compassion… her topic at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly a few weeks ago.


Are there Muslim women who are oppressed? Yes. But there are non-Muslim women who are oppressed as well. Are Muslim women victims of domestic violence? Yes. But no more so than any other religious group. It’s not either-or. It’s us.

“They tell their daughters they are too beautiful, we tell our daughters they are not beautiful enough.”

It’s not either-or. Either a young woman held back from following her dreams, or a teenager saving up for plastic surgery.


It’s not either-or. It’s us. It’s a woman thing. Women have made amazing strides the world over, but when you look at the numbers, women still get paid less, are harassed more, are educated less. Women are the targets of war efforts, and the pawns in political repartee. They are victims of cruelty and ignorance.


When a group of women in Saudi Arabia rev up their engines to get the right to drive. When groups of women brave bullets to march through the streets of Homs, Syria. Whenever and wherever a woman stands up for her rights, would we refuse to stand alongside because a woman chooses to frame her face and cover her hair?


There’s a dimension to the hijab that is difficult for some of us to get our heads and hearts around—it is an expression of faith.


One dear friend just said it wasn’t her way of expressing her faith, but she is no less faithful. I have gained such respect for Muslim women, those who do not cover despite peer pressure to do so, and those who do despite public pressure.


I’m sure it doesn’t happen every day, at least not after a woman has been wearing the hijab for awhile. In the beginning, it can be consuming… like any life passage. But later, when she has endured days where she just couldn’t get it pinned right, hours outside wishing she could brush the hair and veil up off her neck and let a cool breeze in, stares of curiosity and derision, after that and more… she catches sight of herself in the mirror and knows it is an offering, the good and the bad, the pride and the struggle.


What is our hijab? What reminds us of our connection to something greater than ourselves, to all that is greater than ourselves. Maybe we begin with an embrace, embracing our sisters and brothers, and walking to a place of learning and healing.