“When Things Don’t Work Out”

Sermon at All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

Sunday, December 5, 2004

The impulse for this sermon is the recent election. With perfect belief I expected a different outcome. I might have had an inkling that the results I hoped for might not be forthcoming when I undertook, because of a sense of loathing and despising, to mellow my thinking and send waves of love and good will to the ultimate winner. I focused on his humanity, his intentions, his being a human being deserving care and respect. It is an exercise for me to send love to a perceived enemy and to remind myself that I just may not know everything. And in any event I have not walked in his shoes or supped with silver spoons or enjoyed the comforts of money and privilege. That may be harder to endure than it looks.

I thought to write about the experience of defeat. Certainly one great model of defeat is those Cromwellian Puritans of the English Civil War in the 1640s who fought for control of the English government. They won a long and difficult civil war. Parliamentary democracy established. In the early days of their triumph they undertook to try the King for high crimes and misdemeanors. In a trial lasting a hundred days they found him guilty and he was executed. They killed their king, Charles I. In less than 20 years his son was restored to the throne and the grand old parliamentary party, and those puritans who had fought for freedom were to live under the threat of losing their liberties, their churches, their properties and their life. They went from victory to defeat.

I took some solace in that because I will enjoy tax cuts and not have to worry about the war in Iraq, the national debt, terrorism, or any of the many other issues confronting our time. I am free to sit under my tree, dandle my grandchildren, travel and enjoy myself. If this be defeat, then let me enjoy it. I can promote whatever causes I wish and do whatever I can to relieve pain and suffering. I can enjoy scoffing at the failures that are inevitable, the blunders and the lies will simply be the cherry on my ice cream sundae of life. Should there be emergencies and alarms I can say, “See, I told you so.”

I think about all the causes I have supported, work for, bled over and promoted that have been defeats.

Since 1948 I have believed that we needed some sort of national health care program. That is not going to happen in my lifetime. It is a good idea, and you can ask the Japanese and the Europeans if they are ready to give up theirs.

I have worked for prison reform for years. I worked for the UUSC program that was opposed to building new prisons all during the 1970s and 1980s, and during that time building prisons became one of the largest federal housing programs ever. We have more people in jail than any other country in the world by number per 100,000. We are by that measure the meanest country in the world. The country with the most criminals, the worst people. And yet the work on new prisons continues.

My life has been touched by drugs. Your life, too, probably. I have no love for drugs, but I do believe it is bad public policy to put so many people in jail for drugs. I am for decriminalizing drugs that are presently criminalized. How many people here today are taking some legal drug that makes you feel better, that helps the pain? Don’t answer. And we are now a drug-suffused society—ads are everywhere for drugs.

I opposed lotteries in Illinois and then upon moving to Indiana I opposed and worked on the religious leaders’ programs against lotteries. This is a battle I have suffered defeat in two states. Lotteries are poor public policy. They have not made public education any better and they have been a tax on the poor as predicted. The costs in terms of family life and bankruptcy because of gambling debt is substantial, hardly a hidden cost.

I opposed casino gambling but without much vigor. The day after the election, November 3, 2004, I went to a casino near Louisville (Caesar’s). It was senior citizens’ day. I lost $43 plus the 20-dollar trip fee. It was one of the saddest sights I have ever seen—mobs of seniors feeding money into machines. All losses silently endured, the tiniest payoff celebrated. The 83-year-old woman who was my seatmate complained she lost $180 from her social security. The man who sat down after her two-hour stint won $900 in five minutes. It was a blow to her. She told me some other Casino had “looser slots.”

I opposed the war in Viet Nam for many long years. I opposed the Iraq War. War is not a sound public policy. It is a policy of last resort and is never to be used pre-emptively.

I have believed that population was a key problem. I was alarmed when there were just one billion people—now there are six, seven, what! nine billion. I was for Zero Population Growth.

Environmental issues have been a concern for 30 plus years. Locally some modest gains have been made, but air and water quality is degraded.

Guns and gun control are a great concern and yet in my lifetime murder rates have just soared… sure they go up and down, but the trends follow population by ages. Young people like to kill others and, given the firepower, they will do it. We guarantee that there will be available guns to kill with. USA is No. 1 in murders. No. 1 in suicides, too.

Well, you get the drift. I have been involved with what most would call liberal causes. Race relations, which has been my dominant social concern, has been a source of victory and celebration but also of defeat. The dream of a just society is not easily achieved. Much more needs to be done.

I should be used to defeat. I should maybe ask the question: Why are you out of sync with your compatriots? Why do you think you know best? Actually the world has in the last 50 years made huge advances in income distribution; lengthening age; increasing wealth, education, and books published and read; few people get locked away without benefit of legal representation; health care is great for those who have it; and if I am depressed I have a whole armentarium of drugs to help me.

So I am led to see that the glass is half full. I am also led to ask the question seriously as to why my own views should prevail. I do believe in democracy. I believe we should have debate, discussions and arguments and then vote. The winners get to run the show.

I am also led to believe that we live in not so much a conservative age as an illiberal age. Liberalism is a philosophy of education and openness that places emphasis on process, discussion, and moral discourse. It is hopeful and places the best interpretation on the behavior of others. It is also ironic and experimental. Facts, intelligence, and deliberation are its hallmarks. It is not much for revealed truth. It does recognize assertions of “I know what is right.” It is not much for body language or coming from the gut. Beating your opponent up to make him agree with you is not the liberal way. Bullying is seen as not good process.

The three Gs—guns, god and gays. These are said to be the bete noire of liberals among the real people of the republic. The illiberal love their guns, they want to hunt. The constitution gives them the right. They wish to defend their home and not rely on a hired police force. They are ready to defend their country form foreign invaders and terrorists. They need their guns to do the job. All sweet reason in the world is wasted in this discussion. Statistics, child deaths, gun murders mean nothing.

God. The illiberal believe in God. They don’t think much about it. God is god. The bumper strip says it all: “God said it. I believe it and that settles it.” Anyone who questions God—well, let them burn in hell. God is functionally a power that gives them what they want. Twenty to fifty million of these Christians await the return of the Christ who will then with a hand wave destroy all non-believers, which includes most of the people in this room. They will get to enjoy the sight of their opponents dying by the billions. So don’t mess with God, you liberal shilly-shallies.

Gays. They say marriage is between one man and one woman. Gays are scary. Don’t mess with marriage. Any discussion about marriage, its history, its purpose, or the true behavior and expectations of real gay people is lost. Actual people get lost in favor of some abstract nonsense derived on the desert of the Middle East thousands of years ago.

On all three of these tough and important issues simplicity is not what is called for. It requires a look at the facts, at actual cases, statistics, and results. It also requires that we look at real people. But the illiberal don’t want to do that.

But, and let me perfectly clear here: The real liberals don’t want to look at their fellow citizens. Why do they believe as they do? We tend to say it is easier. They are easier to lead. They are stupid. They are anti-intellectual. They are rednecks. They are ill educated from the small towns and rural areas of America. It is true in the last political canvass one candidate carried almost every large city in the country.

So things are not working out. Or they are working out badly. So what do you do when you fail? So what do you do when your values are rejected? What do you do when you lose? So what do you do when defeated?

Things don’t really work out in this life. We will all fail. We will face loss of health, we will lose our minds, and we will lose our friends, our parents and our mates. There are no winners under the heavens. The climb up the corporate ladder ends way before the top for most people.

Discouragement.

Right after the election I went on a media fast. I had been over-watching; over- reading in the run up to the election so something like a fast was in order. I had been reading myself stupid. You know, you can do that. I began to call people on the phone rather than e-mail them.

In doing so I found out that my grandchildren had their own problems. One of them was in a play. He was Pip in “Great Expectations.” We went up to LaCrosse to see him in several performances. He made a great triumph. His younger sister went to most of the rehearsals and so knew the play and enjoyed being around the theater.

In the same week they each tried out for a part in a play. Maya wanted to be in “Alice in Wonderland” (not as Alice) and she was not chosen. She got a little shy during the reading. She also tried out to sing a solo in the Lacrosse Girls Chorus (she is their youngest member) and she was not chosen. Ian (the Pip), her brother, tried out for another part and was not chosen. My eight-year granddaughter in Urbana tried out and narrowly missed getting her black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

I thought to my self: “Well you don’t get everything you try out for.”

As a good grandfather I sat down and wrote each of them a specific letter. A letter just for them but the theme was—keep trying, keep going back, try out again, you are not defeated unless you let it defeat you. I also enclosed five dollars to help out with expenses—understanding that they have expenses. I won’t quote those letters but they came from some very deep place in me. Don’t quit. Don’t give up. Don’t be defeated. Learn what you can from this. Move on.

I tried to take my own preachments to heart. I realized, as I thought about this, that this is my one great sermon, the one I have preached a thousand times. We can start over. Nothing is finally and forever finished. Even victory must be won again and again. Even defeat can be overcome. Seamus Heaney wrote this in “The Cure at Troy:”

Human beings suffer

They torture one another.

They hurt and they get hard.

No poem or play or song

Can fully right a wrong

Inflicted and endured.

History says Don’t hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up

And hope and history rhyme.

So, hope for a great sea change

On the far side of revenge.

Believe that a farther shore

Is reachable from here.

Believe in miracles

And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing

The utter self-revealing

Double-take of feeling

If there’s fire on the mountain

Or lightning and storm

And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing

The outcry and the birth-cry

Of new life at its term.

It means once in a lifetime

That justice can rise up

And hope and history rhyme.

We are a race of failures. We love to go around thinking we are winners. But failure is what we are about. But the great failure is just to quit. To give up.

As Marge Piercy says in her poem “To be of use”

“I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

Who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

Who strain in the mud and muck to move things forward,

And do what has to be done, again and again.”

That’s good isn’t it? Let’s hear it again. (Repeat)

We must fight for justice. We must bear witness to peace. We must show our love of justice and the possibilities of life. We must be able to believe in life. To do that we cannot be discouraged. We are not permitted to quit. We must be part of world’s love and not its fear.

We must hew out of the mountain of despair a great stone of hope and never break trust with the bonds of life that bind us to one another.