The Spiritual Imperatives of Our Time - Sermon

Opening Our Eyes to the Spiritual Imperatives of Our Time.

I’ve just spent two months trying to recover my health by soaking up the natural world at the cottage.  What a shock to move from that place of retreat to the pace of the city and a conference of about a thousand people of all ages and types—a Social Forum.

The Social Forum is a wide open process.  Anyone who thinks they have something important to offer schedules a workshop and is given a room.  People go to talk about the issues they think matter.  It’s a very dynamic, creative process.  Then people organize around the themes to create a consensus statement on issues like inequality, democracy, climate change, oppression, and so on.  We try to capture the vision of where we want to go, and build the relationships that will help us to get there.

When you read the program, it is hard not to feel despair.  We have so many pressing problems.  It is clear just from the workshop titles:  Native women – 40 years of struggle;, Resource exploitation and land grab in Afrika, The dismantling of citizenship; Racism; Climate Change; Water --- You get my point.  How do we find the personal strength to open our eyes and look at all these problems?  How do we find the hope that our actions will make a difference?  How do we find the physical strength and stamina to tackle this enormous set of problems?

At the cottage, we have a gaggle of geese that is just huge since the babies have grown up.  ----and we have a beautiful beach – nice and grassy and sandy—the perfect spot for a gaggle of geese on Eagle Lake to go down to rest at night.  A nice large space where they can all be together, yet spread out and relax.  They love it.  But there are so many of them that after a few days the beach is covered in “you know—doo doo--”  and it is no longer sanitary for our children who will come on the week-end. 

So those of us who are here make an effort to keep them off the beach.  It’s quite a battle.  Actually, I prefer to think of it as a strategic campaign.  We chase them off.  As soon as we turn our backs they come back.  We chase them off again.  They come back.  We chase them again, and this time stay and watch until they finally back off and settle some where else—for a while.  Our wins are invariably short-lived.. 

Nobody wants the geese.  Everyone chases them off when they are there.  But then they go away and the geese come back.  After all, it is their territory!  Who owns the beach?  Us who have paid for it?  Or the geese who have been laying their eggs there and raising their young for thousands of years?   PAUSE

Have you ever seen a wild goose chase?  We all know what a wild goose chase means – you expend a lot of effort for no result.  One day we decided to chase them off the beach with the canoe.  We managed to get them half way down the bay, but then they just ducked into the rocks and weeds to eat and wait.  We waited, and they waited.  Finally we gave in and parked our canoe.  Then, when they came back, our neighbour decided to try with his motorboat.  He took 3 or 4 runs right at the geese.  They would divide and regroup.  They would move closer and closer into shore until they knew the big boat couldn’t follow them.  Lee managed to cut away some young gander, just learning to fly, and chased it right across the lake.  Terrified him.  But ultimately we could do nothing with force.  They would just retreat and come back, just as always.  I noticed the group waited patiently for that young gander to reconnect before they moved on.  I came to see that it was a battle of patience, commitment, and determination.  It was a spiritual battle to see who would ultimately occupy the beach.

This is a wonderful metaphor for the challenges we face.  Whether it is our own First Nations, or the Palestinians, or the Roma, or the aboriginal people in South America and Africa who are defending their land, our Western civilization is challenged to answer this question – who owns the land and what are the rights of people who have lived there for thousands of years?  We Unitarians have joined with other faith groups and social activists to become allies of the First Nations.  When we make this choice, we are siding with the geese. 

What does it mean to side with the geese?  In our case, it means something very fundamental. 

The First Nations told us from the first day Europeans set foot on this continent that we had an improper understanding of our relationship to the land.  No one owns the land.  We share it.  Every person and every animal who lives there has the right to what it needs to sustain itself – food, a place to sleep.  Us cottagers have a right to use the beach and to clean up after ourselves.  But it really belongs to the geese.  They have a right to use it, and if we have to clean up after them to make it safe, so be it.  Do it cheerfully and thank the geese for lending you their beach for awhile.  We have to reexamine total ownership and control --over land, over ideas, DNA, seeds -- the air, the water etc. We have to reexamine ownership as a fundamental building block of our society.  We have to change the model to one of sharing, respect for others, and meaningful consultation.

But this raises some very fundamental questions. 

Human civilization has been developing its ability for human beings to join together in larger groups for thousands of years.  We look back at achievements like the Great Wall of China and the Egyptian pyramids and we are amazed at their ability to raise and control armies of workers to do these things by manual effort alone.  Every army in history developed new ways to motivate, coordinate, and control people so they would work together on the task.  Our businesses have been designing and developing many different techniques to manage and control workers, mostly using power over and fear, but occasionally allowing for creativity and internally motivated people.  They have become so good at it they control workers who are producing the equivalent GDP to that of many countries.   The people at the top call the shots and get the benefits, while the people at the bottom do what they are told.

We celebrate the first moves towards democracy in Athens at the time of Plato.  We study the milestones in the development of democracy from the Magna Carta, the French revolution, and the Declaration of Independence.   (I learned, yesterday, that Washington and Jefferson were taught the ideas in that great document by the six nations, whom we call the Mohawk or the Iroquois, who had been practicing democracy for hundreds or even thousands of years.)  In it it states:

 “ ---that human rights are endowed by nature of man’s creation and are inalienable. They don’t derive as a decree from force, nor are they granted by any transitory ruler.  Democracy recognizes the divine right of the ruled, rather than the ruler.  It isn’t a right by virtue of title, wealth, or military superiority, but instead is a profound statement of the essence of man’s nature, defining principles intrinsic to human life itself:  liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

In Canada we have been proud to be part of one of the most democratic countries in the world.  But now, it feels like we are in a time of democratic decline.  Many of our democratic institutions are under attack.  The fall of the Berlin wall and the Arab Spring gave us great hope for democracy in developing countries but it has proved difficult to make it work.  Governments are signing away their sovereignty and their power to make change in free trade agreements.  We can imagine a future where we will be ruled by these autocratic supercorporations. 

We wonder.  Will we continue to grow and develop the democratic processes for people to work together?  Or will we lose our knowledge and skill in this area as the world becomes more and more totalitarian?  This is especially problematic because of the potential for chaos with escalating climate catastrophes, burgeoning population growth and fierce competition for resources like oil and water.

How do we maintain, develop, and grow democratic practices?  How do we build a society where freedom, liberty, equality, and respect for the earth and all life are the core values of human society? 

In his book, Power vs Force, David R. Hawkins talks about the different energy levels involved in solving problems through the use of force or through the use of power.  Force involves the imposition of negative energies, often motivated by greed, fear, anger, or hatred.  Power comes from your own natural positive energies, often motivated by vision, courage, hope, compassion, and love.  The books and documents that generated the most good for society over the long haul came from such positive motivating forces – the Bible, the Dhamapada, the Quran, the US Bill of Rights.  How many centuries have we been inspired by the sermon on the mount or the Buddha’s vision of escape from suffering?  How many people have dreamed of freedom because of this statement from the Bill of Rights?

 “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness “

We gather together at the social forum to defend, and ultimately to embody, this vision and these values, values we fear are under threat.   In the face of wealth, power and the blatant use of force, —how can we influence society in the direction we want:

·      Toward greater equality

·      Toward a sustainable and respectful relationship with the earth

·      Toward meaningful consultation and shared decision-making

I would like to propose that we take some lessons from the geese on how to deal with the blatant use of force:   

·      First, geese just go about their business every day doing what they need to do to live.  They are meeting their basic needs – being themselves.

·      They stay focused on the goal – to spend the night on that particular beach.  They are not easily distracted with other possibilities.

·      They are patient and persistent.  They just keep doing what they want to do.

·      When someone pushes them away, they wait awhile and come back, often grazing for food while they wait on the sidelines.  Might as well replenish your energy.

·      If they are attacked, they retreat – just as far as they have to, no further.  They take evasive action.  They take time to regroup and collect themselves.

·      They are patient, committed, determined and persistent.

·      If necessary, they use a fallback position and live to fight another day.

·      It is ultimately a non-violent battle of wills and effort.

This is why I so much enjoyed reading “What Then Shall We Do” by Alperovitz.  His idea that we don’t have to wait to use our powers to create the society we want appeals to me.  We can develop the seeds for the democratization of wealth by simply exercising our power and meeting our needs.  We can do it by participating in voluntary associations of like-minded others and we can practice democratic decision-making as we do so.  We can build new democratic institutions by forming coops instead of looking for a job with a corporation.  We can push our cities to empower themselves and us.  We can invite others to join us.  To make democracy work we have to be skilled at building consensus among people who don’t always agree.  No society, no matter how totalitarian it appears, is a monolith.  There are always different viewpoints that have to be resolved somehow in order to move forward.  The more we practice, the better we’ll get.

The democratization strategies that Alperovitz presents are the equivalent of being yourself, building your strength, having a clear goal and going for it.  You have to know who you are and what core values you support.  It requires patience, persistence, commitment, and determination.  To make democracy work you have to be committed. 

If attacked, take evasive action and go back to work doing what you do.  Find new ways to do it.  Rebuild your energy during waiting periods, taking the time to take care of your physical and spiritual needs.  What level of energy are you operating from?  Hope or despair?  Love or hate?  Compassion or vengeance?  Take the time you need to lift your spirits. 

If you have to retreat, retreat only as far as necessary.  Hold on to your courage, your commitment, your reason for being who you are.  Operate from as high an energy level as you can sustain.  If you let your courage fail and your hope falter, then you fall into despair, hatred, anger, and potentially violence.  You may get a short term victory with violence, but in the end, you will be defeated.  Low energy levels are not productive.  The Israeli occupation is a good example.  It is entirely negative.  It produces short-term security but no solutions.  It will take a very different kind of energy based on radical empathy and compassion to build a future of peace and justice in the Middle East.

If necessary, take the time to organize or show up for a protest, or put yourself on the line against something you really oppose.  We must resist bad directions.  But remember: keep building the future.  It will take creativity, vision and a lot of persistence to build the institutions that will eventually replace corporate capitalism;  economic structures that will allow us to live in peace and justice with the earth and with each other.  And one day, when we least expect it, the old ways will take a step back, and the new will emerge—because we had the courage to dream and make it real.

So may it be.

All Our Relations

The Spiritual Imperatives of Our Time - Reading

Opening Our Eyes to the Spiritual Imperatives of Our Time -- Reading

James Luther Adams

“The institutional ingredient [for true democracy] is the right of free association – the freedom to form or belong to voluntary associations that can bring about innovation or criticism in the society.  It is a fragile freedom, often under attack because it represents a dynamic force for change.  It brings about differentiation in the community, a separation of powers. “Voluntaryism . . . refers to a principal way in which the individual through association with others gets a piece of the action. It involves an exercise of power through organization.  It is the means by which the individual participates in the process of making social decisions.  This process, particularly when it affects public policy, requires struggle, for in some fashion it generally entails a reshaping and perhaps even a redistribution of power.”

He goes on to point out that voluntary organizations are a messy business.  Paying for a place to meet, developing leadership and being able to motivate your volunteers, and getting access to the media to get your message out are on-going challenges.  Thousands of different voluntary organizations are doing this, hoping to influence the direction of society.  We hope that the government is listening and will represent the public good and the public consensus, because the state possesses the ultimate authority and power to decide.  “In this congeries of associations we see the dispersion of power and group creativity characteristic in principle of a pluralistic democratic society.”p58  (Will someone tell Mr. Harper?)

Jane Mansbridge (president of the American Political Science Assoc. and Harvard Professor) writes: “People are most likely to come to understand their real interests in a small democracy, like a town or a workplace, where members make a conscious effort to choose democratic procedures appropriate to the various issues that arise.”

John Stuart Mill:  “We do not learn to read and write, to ride or swim, by being merely told how to do it, but by doing it, so it is only by practicing popular government on a limited scale, that the people will ever learn how to exercise it on a larger.”

In his book, What Then Must We Do?  Democratizing wealth and building a community sustaining economy from the ground up, Par Alperobitz proposes it is time for us to imagine the alternative to corporate capitalism as a way to organize the economic structure of society.  As the Occupy Movement clearly demonstrated, corporate capitalism is not working for the vast majority of people.  It has not demonstrated the capacity to address the imperatives of our time:  climate change; world poverty; the need for economic institutions that are not required to grow; democracy and peace; Justice and freedom.  But how do we initiate a true transformation of society, and how do we muster the political will to make this change?

P139 “The modern civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the gay rights movement, [the fall of the Berlin wall, the Arab Spring,] even the modern conservative movement . . . all rose to major power without benefit of pundit prediction.  Indeed, the success of all these movements was quite contrary to the conventional wisdom at the time, which held that nothing serious could change.”  Many happened after years of hard struggle by people with vision who may not have seen the changes in their own lives.

Alperovitz’s  says we are in such a time of change now.  The changes are brewing, percolating, emerging.  His vision is for a democratization of wealth. 

He sees us “Slowly building an alternative basis of the economy in local communities and states through democratization strategies.” – Don’t wait.  Let the seeds of the future be sown in the ground of the present.

Across North America a checkerboard of municipal and state possibilities – are already emerging, demonstrating the potential democratization of wealth.  When the traditional strategies of job creation through tax incentives and infrastructure gifts didn’t work, city after city across the United States has begun to invent new strategies: public utilities, land trusts, private public joint ownership, community development corporations, and outright public ownership of retail and commercial enterprises—even public banks.  Meanwhile innovative workers are initiating worker ownership and control through pension plans, cooperatives, and other means, and farmers and consumers are building the local food movement.

This “possibility of a certain longer-term evolutionary institution-building and institution-shifting strategy—[is] not for the faint of heart or for the short-term, instant-gratification folks among us.”  He calls the process of “building institutions, workplaces and cultures concerned with democratizing wealth evolutionary reconstruction.”

Frances Deverell:  While it is too often necessary to stand up and be counted, whether it be against injustice in Palestine or with our own First Nations, or against building our future on an expansion of the tar sands, it is spiritually draining to be constantly on the defensive, standing up to stop what we don’t want.  It is far more empowering to outline the future you most want to see, and to start building it – step by step.

Open Letter to Israeli Leadership

Open Letter to Israeli leadership

I write to you as a supporter of Israel, and someone who hopes fervently that there will always be an Israel that will be a place of refuge where Jews under pressure can come, establish themselves, and live happy and fruitful lives.  With on-going discrimination against Jews around the world such a place of refuge is necessary, and it is logical that it should be in the holy land, where Abraham wandered, David reigned, and Solomon built the first sacred temple.  My fear is that, if you continue your present course of action, you will ultimately destroy the very dream that you cherish.  I believe that your security strategy is fatally flawed.

As outsiders like myself watch, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Israel has forgotten that the Palestinian people are sons of Ishmael, son of Abraham, have also lived there for thousands of years, and have a right to share this land.  It seems as though the current objective is to continue to build settlements until it owns and controls the entire West Bank, and that Israel's preference would be to push the Palestinians who live there out—to places like Gaza, Syria, Jordan, and other places that will take them (such as Canada, where I live.)  Israel has not hesitated to use every possible tactic, from daily humiliation, walls and border controls, abusive policing and imprisonment, and brute force including bulldozing entire villages to achieve these goals.  The bombardment and destruction of Gaza is particularly brutal. 

Claiming that Hamas is responsible for the deaths of children and civilians because it hides terrorists amidst children is a spurious argument.  Over the years Israel has never presented evidence for such claims and I have read first hand witness reports from many people there is no evidence of that.  I do not condone the Hamas missiles any more than I condone the Israeli bombardment.  Violence will not bring peace and Hamas should stop making the situation worse.  But it must be recognized that Palestinians are in a struggle for their ultimate survival -- just like Israel.

Ultimately Israel will have to take responsibility for its deliberate attacks on UN schools, and shelters for civilians.  I would hate to see the day when its leaders are held to account in the international criminal court.  That is not the Israel the world dreamed of as a refuge and a sanctuary.  Citizens of the world call you to stop before it comes to this.

This kind of bombing will never end the Palestinian threat to Israel.  The German holocaust, brutal as it was, was unable to eradicate the world Jewish population or its spirit, its culture, and its identity.  That was certainly its goal.  Canadians have much experience with trying to eradicate a people and a culture.  Our goal was eradication of First Nations culture through assimilation.  We tried to take away the language, culture, and history of our First peoples by reducing their land to small reserves, and by forcibly putting their children in residential schools.  We outlawed their languages and their culture.  But our First peoples resisted and survived our colonial onslaught.  Their rich cultures are in renewal and my hope is that we will find a way to let them inform who we become as Canadians.

Of course, colonialism is not the model for Israel.  Israel’s situation is totally unique.  But the reality is that there were people living in the State of Israel that were pushed out, and this process continues.  Palestinians are desperately fighting for their very survival.  There are Palestinians in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and all over the world who remember their homeland, who remember their culture, and who expect to have the right of return outlined in United Nations treaties.  You will never build peace and security through brute force and totalitarian control.  Your approach produces resistance, anger, righteousness, and ultimately revolution and you are risking spreading these characteristics to Arab countries all around you that are already hotbeds of rebellion.  There must be another path and if Israel wants to survive and thrive in the long term, it must seek another way. 

 A winning solution for Israel must also be a winning solution for Palestinians.  There will be no peace and security if it is not for both parties.  We must not be fooled on either side by tactics of stereotyping people as extremists and terrorists.  In the end we are all human beings and all everyone wants is the chance for our children to grow up, find jobs, support their families, and live in peace.

In their book, Sons of Abraham, Rabbi Marc Schneier and Imam Shamsi Ali outline the great principles and values that Jews and Muslims hold in common through their shared history and scriptures.  There are profound resources available in the holy texts and the oral tradition of both religions for building a shared peace.  Religious leaders on both sides have fomented fear and discontent.  They have a responsibility to take leadership in holding up the resources and spiritual values that will lead to building trust and creating peace.

Both Israelis and Palestinians have a great love of the land from which they both come.  Perhaps it is through the land itself that a route to peace can be found.  If both Israel and Palestine could rise above their differences and commit themselves to working together to protect and manage the land, the water, the air, and the energy resources, perhaps a new quality of bonds could be forged between them.

In her book, Blue Future, Maude Barlow outlines the abuses of water in many Arab countries and in the Gaza strip.  She describes how water has been used as a weapon of war between countries, and how usurpation of water by the rich and powerful at the expense of ordinary people and farmers was a key factor in bringing about the Arab Spring.   Because the people of Gaza have no access to plumbing parts, a bombed out sewage and water infrastructure is leaking all sorts of human and toxic waste into the aquifer shared by Gaza and Israel.  It’s a classic example of the harm you do to others coming back to haunt you. For Maude, “hope is a moral imperative.”  She proposes that instead of making water a source of conflict, we let it “teach us how to live together.”

My hope is for a two state solution, an Israel and a Palestine where each people has what they need in terms of energy, water, land and resources to live and even thrive; a land where security is built on a new relationship between two peoples based on trust and a shared commitment to each other and to the land they have shared for thousands of years.  I personally think this would be easier to make real than the other solution which offers some hope--one secular democratic country with one person one vote.  That would require a great deal more trust than a two state solution.  In either case, a vision of caring for the land for future generations is my suggestion for the bridge to peace.

Rev. Frances Deverell

Unitarian Minister in the Community in Ottawa