The Workers of Nogales, Sonora

When NAFTA was passed under the Clinton Administration, it was heralded as ending the need for migration.  Instead it increased the desparation of people because the USA government in order to have NAFTA approved, demanded that Article 27, the heart of the Mexican constitution for which the Mexican Revolution was fought over, be eliminated.  Article 27 states that land would be held by the people, it could not be sold, but was to be held in common so there would be land for sustaining the Mexican people with food.  NAFTA also insisted that USA corn and other crops would continue to receive subsidies, keeping the cost of USA corn falsely low.   THis corn would be sold in Mexico at prices that Mexican farmers, the small one and two acre farmers could not even grow it at  forcing them to leave their farms. Because the land could no longer provide them with the means of a modest living.  Where would they go?

Along the borders were the building of Maquilas, the NAFTA induced factories.  Here workers were being hired at an equivalency of $8 a day for an 8 hour day, six days a week.  Our delegation visited the workers of one Maquila, The Legacy Imaging plant, in Nogales, Sonora.  One day this past February 2013,  the workers came to work only to find the doors locked.  THe factory had closed shop and had not told the employees nor had it paid them the required severance pay under Mexican Labor Law–which is 90 days.  THe workers told us this happens quite frequently in Nogales.  They have attempted to contact the employers based in Denver, CO and have received no response.  THey have filed a lawsuit but it is doubtful anything will come of it because Mexican law has little sway over USA corporations.  THe workers therefore have taken to a 24/7 vigil at the plant to ensure the equipment is not taken out of the factory in the hopes they will be given the authority to sell it and divide the money amongst the 134 employees of this plant.  The company has not answered inquiries from the Mexican Lawyers.

A few miles away on top of a hill is the Old Nogales Dump.  Here there are about a dozen families living in make shift hovels of furniture pushed together with tarps and scraps of tin.  These families harvest the dump for aluminum, copper, plastic, and cardboard to sell.  THey scour the site for these tidbits and place them into huge sacks that are weighed and sold by the kilo.  A days earnings might be equivalent to 8 or 9 Dollars  a day.  The same amount of money the factory workers are paid.  The difference is these families are not paying rent for their hovel,  they are not paying utilities.   So which of these workers, the factory workers or dump dwellers, are the poorest of Mexico?

We met with one family at the dump.   A grandmother, her son and daughter -in- law and grandchildren;  all work the dump every day.  She plays an important role.  She is the keeper of herbal remedies for medical needs, she tends the children, and she will cook the food.  She makes tortillas on a small grill outside of her hut.  SHe is quite pleased with her living arrangements. WIth furniture, tires, car bumpers, tarps and blankets; she has created a three room space, a bedroom for three people, a living room that also serves as a bedroom, and an eating area.    She has lived at the dump since she was 15 years of age.  SHe has a grandson who lives away who will be coming to visit them on vacation. She is excited at the possibility of seeing him.

One of the workers at the dump lived in the USA from age 13 until he was deported a few years ago.  He has a wife and two daughters in Iowa.  He worked in construction, in a meat cold storage plant, and in Chinese restaurants as a cook through out the USA and Vancouver, Canada.  For a few years he lived in Albertville, AL and had visited Tuscaloosa, where I currently live.  He misses his wife and daughters.  He does not get to speak to them often and he says his daughters do not speak Spanish.  He hopes to return to the USA to be with his family. He has a better chance of earning and saving the money needed by scouring the dump than by working in a factory.   I listen but do not tell him that crossing this time around will be vastly different than when he was 13 and crossed over at San Diego.  He was fortunate then.  Kindness of strangers took him across and kindness of other strangers then drove him to Los Angeles.  The strangers  today do not seem to be so kind to others.

HB360: Asks Medical Profession to Ignore Science

The state legislature of Alabama has introduced HB 360 which would amend a previous act regarding abortion with new conditions and new terms.  First it adds a phrase to the definition of abortion which is a prelude to the Personhood bill  (SB 205) that is expected to  come up this session.

“Abortion: The use or prescription of any instrument, medicine, drug, or any other substance or device with the intent to kill the unborn child of a woman known to be pregnant or with the intent to prematurely terminate the pregnancy of a woman known to be pregnant.”  (Underlined is new wording in the Act).

This new language sets the stage for a declaration of Personhood to a fertilized ovum by explicitly declaring abortion is murder.  It is intentionally offensive to those who do not share these religious beliefs.

There is a new  requirement in “§26-23A-4 (9) The abortion provider who is to perform or induce the abortion, a certified technician, or another agent of the abortion provider shall make the embryonic or fetal heartbeat of the unborn child audible for the pregnant woman to hear the heartbeat as described in Section 3 of the act adding this amendatory language.    (underlined is new wording in the Act).    How this is done for the woman who is deaf, I do not know,  but it would be the abortion provider who is required to make it so or be subject to fines.

But this is not even the crux of this bill as the most heinous and unscrupulous section of this bill is the following:

“(8) The material shall include the following statements: “Your chances of getting breast cancer are affected by your pregnancy history. If you have carried a pregnancy to term as a young woman, you may be less likely to

get breast cancer in the future. However, you do not get the same protective effect if your pregnancy is ended by an abortion. The risk may be higher if your first pregnancy is aborted.” and ” If you have a family history of breast cancer or clinical findings of breast disease, you should seek medical advice from your physician before deciding whether to remain pregnant or have an abortion. It is always important to tell your doctor about your complete pregnancy history.”     (underlined is new wording in the Act).

This statement is blatantly false.  There is no evidence that abortions  result in greater risk for cancer–it has been proven there is no causative link between the two.   Dr Jen Gunter covers in her blog the scientific research that proves that there is no link between the two.   Here is a quote from her article summarizing the newest study:

A new study confirms this data, that there is no link between abortion and breast cancer. The data come from a study of over 25,000 Danish women from the Diet, Cancer, and Health study. The women completed questionnaires and then were followed for an average of 12 years. This kind of study is probably the best way to look at two common and emotional charged occurrences, like abortion and breast cancer, because there is no recall bias. When something bad happens it is human nature to look back and try to assign causality, but collecting the data prospectively removes this element. The study was also well-powered to detect even a small increase, so another plus.

For Alabama legislators to codify such blatant lies into law is unethical and immoral.  It is placing the women of our state at great risk because  if their physician lies to them about this information, what else is the physician willing to lie about?  I do not expect our legislators to be well versed on every subject but I do expect them to know how to read scientific journals and able to discern between real science and the garbage the religious right calls science.

The religious right calls it science when they believe something to be true and then seek evidence to validate their belief.  That is not science that is magical thinking.   They interview women who have had breast cancer and then ask them if they ever had an abortion.  They do not even consider this fact about spontaneous abortions:

Around half of all fertilized eggs die and are lost (aborted) spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is pregnant. Among women who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is about 15-20%. Most miscarriages occur during the first 7 weeks of pregnancy.

This fact reveals the nonsensical element of their finding alleged causative links.  There are lots of factors that lead a person to develop cancer but abortions (spontaneous or intended) have been ruled as not being one of them. Our legislators need to put their religious beliefs aside and reconsider the impact this legislation will have on a state already tarnished as being uneducated.

Requiring physicians to betray their professional ethics and standards by codifying lies into law is harmful to all of Alabama.  This bill needs to be defeated not only for the reasons that it attacks a woman’s right to choose but mainly because it is simply bad legislation. Period.

Violence in America

Reading: “All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in the world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way the world is made. I didn’t make it that way, but this is the interrelated structure of reality. John Donne caught it a few centuries ago and could cry out, ‘No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main… any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ If we are to realize the American Dream we must cultivate this world perspective. – From The American Dream 6 June 1961

Violence in America

When I was a child in the late 1950’s early 1960’s, I remember having these emergency drills in school.   My town was roughly 90 miles from Manhattan.  If Manhattan was hit by a nuclear bomb, what would we do?  So every so often we would move all of our desks against the inside wall away from the windows and we would all get underneath them.  Poor Peter, in first grade he was too tall to fit under his desk so he had to go into the teacher’s closet.  We did this drill on regular basis knowing full well if Manhattan was indeed a target of a nuclear bomb, we might survive the initial blast but the radiation would kill us within a few days[i].

During this same time period, there were momentous changes happening in America.  The civil rights movement was occurring and from my living room in rural New York State I watched in horror as German shepherds was set to attack black Americans in the south.  I saw on my television churches and synagogues being firebombed through out the country.

And across the oceans I watched Walter Cronkite report the news in Viet Nam and saw again in black and white horror children running in the streets while Napalm flames consumed their bodies. These are the images of my childhood that are seared in my brain of life in America, home of the brave and land of the free.

And so I grew up understanding that America was under a threat. There was the threat of nuclear war the Cuban Missile crisis, the fear of race riots, and the fear of the Domino effect of communism that would cause Southeast Asia to fall.  And the only way to combat these threats was with violence or the threat of violence.

And now within the last few months in the aftermath of some of the most horrid massacres, the number one threat that is perceived is that the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, might be curtailed or worse denied.  The fact that there are people having access to assault weapons that have one purpose and one purpose only was not the fear but that we might have guns pried out of our hands.  Here is where America is drawing the line.

In Northport, AL, this past week, hundreds of people showed up at a meeting with State Legislators demanding that gun legislation already in place be repealed. They were demanding that they have the constitutional right to carry guns where ever they pleased.

Now, there really shouldn’t be any surprise at this reaction from “gun enthusiasts” as the local paper called them. After all, this nation has been at war 216 years of its 237 year existence.  There has not been one full decade where America was not in some armed battle somewhere in the world.   The longest period of peace this nation experienced is for 5 years during the Great Depression.

From our earliest days we have been at battle.  The largest and longest campaign of ethnic cleansing in humanity’s history was here in this nation.  More than half of our existence as a nation has been in the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans.  We don’t like to talk about it in such terms but what the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny policies were about in practice was the systemic elimination of the native peoples. How can this multi-generational genocidal act not shape the American ethos?

Our nation is founded on the justification of violence.   Howard Zinn in his book, A People’s History of the United States writes, “To state the facts, however, and then to bury them in a mass of other information is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: yes, mass murder took place, but it’s not that important—it should weigh very little in our final judgments; it should affect very little what we do in the world.”

Our history books are written from the standpoint that violence committed was a justifiable means to get what we thought we deserved. While we deplore the violence in an elementary school and in a movie theater and what happens daily in the ghettos of America we shrug our shoulders and say, “yes, mass murder took place, but it’s not that important.”—but what is important is my right, my constitutional right to have multiple guns to defend my self from the possibility of a government takeover by socialists.

This is not what makes a society free. This is what makes a society enslaved—to fear—to hatred of the other—to a survival mentality of get-them-before-they-get-us culture.

So how do we change a society where violence is as much a part of living as breathing?  A recent op-ed piece by Faith Leaders for Peace, a San Diego based coalition that I helped form 8 years ago, “issue[d] this moral call for persons to reconsider gun possession and to fully appreciate the spiritual peril that ensues from the decision to kill another human being.”

The spiritual peril was never quite spelled out but I imagine such peril might have been described by Martin Luther King, Jr. He said, “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.[ii]”

My first career was working as a clinical specialist with developmentally disabled adults, many of whom had maladjusted coping behaviors.  So in my day to day work, I would be called in by staff who were having difficulties with client behavior.  They would want me to change the behavior of the client that very often had taken a lifetime to form.  No one has the ability to change another’s behavior.  But I promised to observe the environment in which the person lived or worked. I would try to figure out what happened that would result in the client behaving in such a negative manner.  Then I would suggest the staff member to change their behavior in how they interacted with the client and if they followed my suggestions, low and behold the client responded differently and their behavior changed. We cannot force someone to change their behavior but we can and we must change out own.  This means we need to begin being proactive and not reactive in our own behaviors regarding violence.

It is nearly impossible to legislate the kind of change needed to curb violence in America.  We can make some legislation changes like requiring all gun owners to become licensed in gun safety much like a driver needs to become licensed in car driving.  Or allowing doctors access to know if their patients own guns when they consider them to be a mental health risk and just as doctors can have drivers licenses revoked and keys taken away have gun licenses revoked and removed. This access by doctors is currently against the law in the State of Florida.

But opponents are quick to tell us that if we outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns. It is true legislation will not stop gun violence 100%.  But even if the reduction was as low as 25% of annual gun deaths by legislation, this is still roughly 7,500 lives saved.  Aren’t these lives saved worth legislation to increase gun safety?

Given the conservative hold on the house, such legislation will only occur with major concessions to the gun lobby who fears their business will be adversely affected by it.  Such legislation is a start but it is not the entire answer to creating a nation that seeks to turn its weapons into plowshares.

We have an opportunity as a religious body to change our own behaviors towards violence. We must begin with ourselves. It will do no good to tell our politicians to pass legislation and consider the issue fixed.  It also will do no good to scape goat the mentally ill or criminals for the violence we experience in society.  As long as we point our fingers elsewhere we are all perpetrators of violence.

As I stated violence in American culture has its roots dating back to the 1600’s with the first colony massacring the native peoples and the first boat of Africans to serve as slaves.  Violence in America is not just physical; it is also emotional, psychological, and spiritual.

As a religious community we need to be teaching ourselves how to implement the principles we profess to covenant to uphold.  Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations are not just nice words on the page but a command to teach the skills in how to develop this in our relations, not only with one another but with the world at large.

How do we handle domestic disputes within our families?  We must teach our sons and daughters that violence against women is never appropriate in any form.  Violent speech must be taught to be as inappropriate as violent behavior.  But simply stating it is inappropriate is not good enough.  We must teach our children and our adults how to choose a different way of speaking when in conflict.

There are many curricula out there that teach non-violent communication.  A good non-violent communication curriculum would also teach how to de-escalate a potentially violent scenario.  It does work; I have used this many times when I worked with clients who were volatile.  A recent shooting in a school was kept from getting worse by a teacher who had the skills to talk a student down.  Yes, it is risky, and yes it could have ended with more lives lost.  But non-violent communication is the way to go.  How much better would it have gone if this was already an integrated method to handle conflicts in that school?  Would the student have chosen to use a gun to address his pain?  Or would he have had another skill in his tool bag to use to have addressed the issue.  I would bet on the latter.

In addition to non-violent communication skills we need to ensure that we teach our congregations about the various isms in society that are also rooted in violence.  Racism, Classism, Heterosexism, sexism, ageism, able-ism all have roots in violence.  Not only do they contribute to physical violence, but also emotional and spiritual violence are pervasive in these institutionalized isms in our society.  It is important that our congregations are places where these isms are not enforced and supported.

We need to teach our congregations about micro-aggressions.  “Micro-aggressions are the brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual orientation, and religious slights and insults to the target person or group.[iii]”  This is a relatively new way of looking at the effects of isms in our daily communications with one another and how they accumulate and harm a person’s life experience over time.

As a covenantal faith, we can in the words of Rev. Alice Blair Wesley,“ pledge to walk together in the ways of truth and affection as best we know them now or may learn them in days to come That we and our children may be fulfilled and that we may speak to the world with words and actions of peace and goodwill.”

It is true that our faith is a relatively small percentage of the population of America.  But that should not discourage us from beginning this work.   There is an old adage that states a little yeast leavens the whole dough.  And so it could be for us.  We could be the yeast that leavens the society to change and transform into a nation of peace loving people.  Blessed be.

Violence in America

Rev. Fred L Hammond

Oxford Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

January 27 2013 ©

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[i] http://www.nationalterroralert.com/nuclear/   This is based on the results of a 1 megaton bomb fallout at  a Distance: 90 miles A lethal dose of radiation. Death occurs from two to fourteen days.  Todays .

[ii] –Martin Luther King, Jr., “Loving Your Enemies,” in Strength to Love 

[iii] Derald Wing Sue, Microaggressions in Daily Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation.

What’s it All About?

Opening Words:

From the dawn of human history, humanity has been seeking the answer to life’s most pressing question:  What is it all about?  There have been variations of this question.  Does life have a purpose?  Is there meaning in life?

There appears to be an answer that has dubious origins.  Some say the answer came from the Shakers in the celibate religious communes in New England in the late 19^th century. Others say it was discovered after a brutal battle in the midst of the Second World War in England to cheer the troops.  And still others say the answer refers to the ice cream street vendors selling ice cream in wax paper before the invention of ice cream cones.

The answer to this pressing question is this:  You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out, you put your right foot in and you shake it all about.  You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around, that’s what it’s all about.

Sermon:

Okay so we had some fun with the question by doing the Hokey Pokey.  But we humans are a serious bunch and not so easily given to such frivolity as song and dance.   It has its place, we serious ones might declare and some have even dared to declare that song and dance  was the work of the evil one.  Some of us in the human race when trying to answer this question of what’s it all about received answers that life is very serious and must therefore be lived with a sort of prudence and decorum. 

There is the ancient thought that human life served purposes of the gods who were rivals of each other.  Our part in the scheme of things was some sort of chess match being moved about as pawns.  Greek and Roman mythology is filled with stories of the gods having their rivalry and human life being the means in which their rivalries were to be played out. 

This thought is also found in the Hebrew Scriptures in the story of Job.  In this story, God and Satan are having a conversation.  God is bragging about his faithful servant Job.  Satan responds with ‘but of course he is faithful, look at all you have given him—a fine home, healthy and strong children, riches and comforts beyond compare—take all this away from him and Job will curse God and the day he was born.’  God accepts the challenge and within days Satan has all of Job’s good fortune wiped out. 

‘What’s it all about?’  Job cries out.  His friends all tell him it is because of some grievous sin that he committed.  For his friends life is about seeking the good side of God, of pleasing God;  and those who please God will be rewarded with a comfortable and good life. Therefore his friends insist, Job must repent of his sin and get right with God.  But Job knows of no sin in his life or in the life of his family who have been taken from him.  His friends however, argue that His life is out of his control and his sin is that he piously thought it was his to decide its course.  Job does not accept that answer either.

The premise is that God is wise and the creator in all things.  His friends construct this syllogism:  Suffering comes from God. God is Just. Therefore Job is guilty.  Job constructs this syllogism:  Suffering comes from God. I am innocent. Therefore God is unjust.  According to Stephen Mitchell, a translator of the Book of Job, a third syllogism is not even imaginable:  Suffering comes from God. God is just. Job is innocent. (no therefore.) 

So according to this, what it’s all about is humanity humbly accepting the fate that God has bestowed. Even in the final syllogism that Mitchell suggests, God is still the author and director of life.  God is still in charge and his ways are just and good.  There is yet another syllogism that even Mitchell does not consider.   Suffering does not come from God or Satan. God, and here I will also insert the non-theist Universe, is neither just nor unjust. Job is an innocent bystander in a series of events that he had no control over.  His attempt to make sense of these seemingly unrelated events is a futile exercise. 

Yet we all try to do this, don’t we?  We all try to understand why a sequence of events have occurred, that there must be some fate, some master plan that we are unable to see in the present moment. 

Some religions have taken these random events, both on the personal intimate level and on the national and global level and try to fit them into some sort of schematic.  We want a plan to be there. We want there to be a purpose to answer what is it all about? 

So religions have created these narratives.  One such narrative suggests there is this cosmic spiritual battle occurring in the heavens between good and evil/ between God and Satan.  We are all in this conspiracy of this huge battle being waged whether we want to be in it or not.  Events like tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes and even human made events like terrorist attacks, both domestic and foreign, become part of the battle plan in this cosmic war of good versus evil. God or Satan, depending on perspective, allowed or created these events to punish the sinful or tempt the chosen to fall from grace.

And just like in the movie the Matrix, at any moment, if we are not awake to the truth, our actions could become the actions of Agent Smith to fight against those who are enlightened about the matrix and seek to expose this delusion. There are those behind the scenes of the matrix who are watching and controlling what happens, trying to keep balance between those who are enlightened and those who are still asleep in their delusions.

We see it in the current dualistic political landscape, regardless of which party one subscribes to, the other side is an evil interloper out to destroy all that is good, all that is sacred and Mom and apple pie, too.  What it’s all about is to become one of the chosen, one of the elect that will reap in the rewards. Choose your political party carefully.  Even in politics, there are the elect few who will be saved and the rest is refuse for the fires.  

What if all this seriousness is not what it’s all about?  What if there is no god who is waging a cosmic battle with the forces of evil?  What if there is no magic in the universe that if we speak our intentions and let go into the unfolding process things will merrily go our way?  What if there is no hidden plan for our lives that we must strive to uncover? What then?  Does that mean there is no answer to the question: What is it all about?  Perhaps. 

But then I consider our lives.  I consider those who have lived their lives as if it had purpose, as if they had a reason to be here in this time and place.   I think of people like Phyllis Ward, whose memorial service I officiated this past week.  Here was a person whose life had purpose.  What’s it all about? 

Her life seemed to answer this question with an affirmation—to live life as fully as possible, to love others as fully as possible, and thereby make a difference to improve the lives not only for those in her immediate circle but also those far off. She enjoyed all that life offered her and she sought to live that life as brightly as she could.  

The teacher Jesus said his presence and teachings was so that others could have life and have life abundantly.  Phyllis seemed to be saying the same thing with her life as her presence and teachings made a significant difference in the lives of hundreds of her students.  She inspired others in finding their hearts path. I heard repeated over and over how she inspired her students and friends to follow their dreams and how grateful they were that they did.  

What is it all about?  To love and be loved in return. 

 In the eulogy I gave for Phyllis I quoted Ric Masten’s poem End Line with these words: 

I ask God:  “How much time do I have before I die?” “Enough to make a difference,” God replies.

Phyllis certainly made a difference in this world, she made the world a better place for those who knew her and helped shape towards the positive our collective future.  The only way she could have done this is by jumping her whole self into life. 

Jump with our whole selves into life.  Enjoy the heart and marrow of it.  All that comes our way good, bad, or indifferent is there for the tasting and it can spur the development of love and compassion in our days of living and love and compassion to and from others.

Even in the struggles we face in our lives requires nothing less than our whole selves.  Our friends on the Undocubus [no papers no fear ride to justice] made such a choice to live life with their whole selves. This is living with integrity. They are deciding that they will not just passively accept their destiny as dictated by someone else’s rules but rather engage their destiny with their whole lives–with integrity. They are declaring that their life matters and will make a positive difference to others in their living of it.

Begin slowly if you must with just a hand or a foot but at some point all must jump in with our whole selves in order to reap benefits of living a full and abundant life.

All that silliness of the Hokey Pokey may really be what it’s all about. 

Alabama’s Shame Deepens

Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.

Yesterday, the hearts of state legislator’s decided that immigrants are not human beings worthy of fulfilling their dreams in this country like others but rather a threat to America.  The legislature chose to ignore the increased pressure from religious leaders to turn away from injustice towards justice.

They passed the substitute bill of HB 658 written by Senator Beason which included what is being called a scarlet letter provision where any undocumented resident who is arrested on any charge and appears in court would have their information posted on a public online forum searchable by county and judge.

This was not in Rep. Hammon’s  proposed version of HB 658 which was passed in the house before it went to the Senate. When on the last day of the session the senate version passed and went back to the house, Rep. Hammon in telling the house the changes to the bill failed to mention this drastic addition to his colleagues.  The house did not have time read the bill  before Rep. Hammon explained the justifications for the changes in the bill.  After Rep. Hammon gave his justifications for the changes, there was a call to have the bill read again to enable the representatives to hear again how these justifications related to the bill.  This request was denied by the Speaker.  It is therefore very likely that once again the representatives did not know what they were passing.

Governor Bentley said he would not sign this bill. He has ten days to veto or sign the bill, if he does not it becomes an automatic veto. He has placed immigration back on the agenda for a special session that still needs to address such issues as redistricting and bonds.

He specifically stated he dislikes the scarlet letter provision calling it a public relations problem.    The Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice calls it a “public safety problem” because there can be only one purpose of such a provision: The implicit permission for vigilantes to take matters in  their own hands and cause emotional and physical harm to people living in this state.

During the day yesterday there were cries for non-compliance to this law.  Seven of my friends, part of a group I belong to called Alabama’s Conscience,  were arrested for their attempt to block legislator’s from making this vote.  They prayed and sang songs. They were charged with disorderly conduct.

When hearts have grown so very cold to see no violation of human dignity, no violation of moral ethics in breaking apart families in these laws, then the conscience must step up and intervene. It becomes our moral duty to not comply with this law in the quest to break open the hearts of others to see what this law is doing to all Alabamians in order for justice to prevail.

After the vote, our own hearts literally broke that our own leaders would seek to cause violent harm against another.  And while their actions may not be in the form of physical violence, their actions are committing emotional and spiritual violence, not only to immigrants, documented and undocumented, but also to their very souls.

We pray for the salvation of Alabama and for all of America. We are even more  resolved to continue being Alabama’s Conscience and we will continue doing all that we can  to non-violently show the pain this law is causing all of us. It means we will not comply with this law. We will not allow hatred to proliferate in our state.

How we will be in non-compliance with HB 658 and HB 56. Photo by ACIJ

 

Doctrine of Discovery

Sermon given on May 6 2012 © Rev. Fred L Hammond to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Tuscaloosa.

It seems appropriate that we should be talking about this Doctrine of Discovery in light of this past weeks events because the two are directly related to how we, as people of the United States are conducting our policies towards immigrants here in Alabama and in the nation.

The Doctrine of Discovery also called the Doctrine of Christian Discovery is founded on a series of papal bulls or edicts written between 1452 and 1493.  The first was from Pope Nicholas V in 1452 called the Dum Diversas. It states the following:

” We grant to you (King of Portugal)  full and free power, through the Apostolic authority by this edict, to invade, conquer, fight, subjugate the Saracens (Muslims) and pagans, and other infidels and other enemies of Christ, and wherever established their Kingdoms, Duchies, Royal Palaces, Principalities and other dominions, lands, places, estates, camps and any other possessions, mobile and immobile goods found in all these places and held in whatever name, and held and possessed by the same [...]and to lead their persons in perpetual servitude. [i]

This edict gave sanction for Portugal to invade Africa, take its resources, and begin what was to be called the African Slave Trade.

The second edict Romanus Pontifex  also written by Pope Nicholas V in 1455 followed up on the first papal bull confirming Portugal’s right to dominion over all lands discovered and / or conquered from the Saracens and pagans and it reaffirmed the enslavement of these people.  This edict was written to prevent other Christian nations from colonizing lands that Portugal laid claim.  The third edict Inter caetera written by Pope Alexander VI in 1493 gave the right for explorers and nations to lay claim on lands unknown to Christians. It added a clause requiring the proselytizing of the inhabitants to Christianity.   It also gave permission for Christopher Columbus  in 1493 to lay claim to the lands he set foot on for Spain.

It is this Doctrine of Christian Discovery based on these three papal bulls that became the basis for the United States claim to the Americas. The assumption here was that once the Europeans were no longer the rulers, the authority to subjugate new lands in the Americas fell on the emerging nation.

The US Supreme court in 1823, in Johnson v McIntosh used the doctrine to state that Johnson had no claim to the land he purchased directly from the native peoples because the land already belonged to the US government.  This ruling meant that the indigenous people only had the right of occupancy so long as the US government allowed it and could at anytime revoke the right of occupancy.  This was upheld in the US Supreme Court ruling of 1831; Cherokee Nation v Georgia.  Justice Marshall wrote that “the relationship of the tribes to the United States resembles that of a ‘ward to its guardian’.[ii]“  This resulted in the trail of tears when Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee-Creek, and Seminole were moved to “Indian Territory” known as present day Oklahoma.

We see this doctrine in the footprint of Manifest Destiny, the belief that the United States should expand from coast to coast.  Historian William E. Weeks suggested three themes were in the concept of Manifest Destiny:  1) The virtue of American Institutions; 2) the mission to spread these institutions thereby redeeming and remaking the world in the image of the US; and 3) The Destiny under God to do this work. [iii]

The first of these themes is today heard in the concept of American Exceptionalism, the belief that America has not only a unique role to play but a divine calling in spreading liberty and democracy in the world.  It is American Exceptionalism that feeds the erroneous belief that America is the greatest country ever, that might makes right, and that we have the right to be the police unto the nations and thereby interfere in the internal and external affairs of nations, even to intervene with force the over throw of governments we no longer approve of, regardless of whether they were democratically elected or not.  America in playing out this exceptionalism interfered with the governments in Latin and South America through out the 20^th century and with governments in the Middle East contributing to the current crisis that is ongoing.  All of these policies are grounded in the papal bulls that were written over 550 years ago by Popes of the Roman Catholic Church.

And we recently saw the Doctrine of Discovery in Candidate Newt Gingrich’s vision of a Moon colony that would then become a state of the United States. While many people scoffed at his vision, it is rooted firmly in this Doctrine of Discovery; we plant our flag, we claim it by colonization then it is rightly ours and ours alone to exploit as we choose. And if there really is a man in the moon, then he must be enslaved to the invading forces.

In a sermon recently given by Rev. Matt Alspough[iv], he states, “So we’ve based a significant part of our American political practice on the Doctrine of Discovery, that small act of political expediency enacted by the Catholic Church. We’ve seen that American acceptance of this Doctrine opened Pandora’s Box out of which poured many of our society’s ills: the slavery of Africans as economic practice, our most tragic war over that practice, and the morass of racism that continues to this day. It framed our treatment of indigenous peoples in our country, a history of forced relocation and genocide, imposing on them western religion and practices, sometimes taking their children from them. It has influenced our confusion about immigration, particularly the migration of indigenous peoples in the Americas, many of whom are on the move because United States policies in Latin America have limited economic opportunities for these people.”

This brings us right up to our present day, doesn’t it?  This is the reason why it is important to understand our history, even history that is over 500 years old still has an impact on the decisions, on the values, on the culture we express today. And the people who make these decisions in places of authority might not even have a clue as to what they are reinforcing because to them it seems so natural, so logical, so matter of fact that of course this is the way it must be. Surely the pilgrims and the puritans who came to these shores would have repudiated anything that came from Catholicism had they fully understood the source of their alleged superior dominionist attitude.  Well, perhaps not, since such an attitude benefited them in their forging their way on these shores. But the reason as to why we do something a certain way in this country may not be because we consciously chose to do it that way but rather because some racist, Christian supremacist declared it to be the will of god and it steam rolled across the ages and became part of our cultural DNA.

So here we are 560 years later, still immersed in cultural norms and mores and in laws that seek to place dominion over another people. We still have a belief in this country that we can do whatever we want with the earth, ravage its minerals, its lumber, its water to serve our purposes and to hell to everyone else.

This doctrine influences our water access in the southwest.  We know we absolutely know that the rain that falls in the Rocky Mountains and enters the Colorado River supports life through out the desert on its route to the Gulf of California.  But our laws state that if the water falls on United States then it belongs to United States and so we seek to trap it in the desert with major dams across the Colorado River. We then catch the overflow by other avenues so that we can water the non native grasses and water hungry potato farms and supply water to swimming pools in communities like Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Tucson.

We are not being sensible when it comes to water in the southwest, yet because of this ingrained doctrine of domination over the land and its native peoples we take what we want for our own greedy purposes and privilege. All of these actions are to the detriment of the indigenous peoples and species that live along the border and dependent on the spring runoffs for their survival.   The waters of the Colorado River never make it to the Delta in the Gulf of California causing extinction fears of the rare indigenous species that live in the gulf.

The people who live in Sonora were part of a nomadic tribe that traveled north into Arizona and back south again, a pattern they followed for 10,000 years.  Now the border walls prevent these people from their nomadic customs over land that has been theirs.  The chant that I heard when I was in Arizona for the day of non-compliance was “I didn’t cross the border, the border crossed me.” This is a very real statement.  Two countries, Mexico and the United States, developed borders without regard to the indigenous peoples that lived there.The Doctrine of Discovery was in operation through out the Americas.

As we come to better understand the ancient peoples of this land, we discover that the Aztec’s realm extended far into Georgia.  Many of our immigrants from Latin America today are descendants of the Aztec and Mayan people as well as other indigenous peoples.  So in some ways it could be said that immigrants from Latin America are coming home.

The state of Alabama is playing the Doctrine of Discovery by insisting that it has the right to determine who shall live within our state borders. This is currently constitutional under Johnson v McIntosh but should it be when so many of the immigrants are in fact indigenous people of these lands.  The question really becomes can we continue to tell native peoples where they can and cannot live, when it is the descendants of Europeans who are the non-natives here?

Bruce Knotts, Director of the UUA United Nations Office[v], writes: The Doctrine of Discovery violates human rights on its face.  It states that any Christian discovery of non-Christian people, gives the Christian nation the right to claim the land and enslave the people, which many European nations did all over the world.  The vestiges of these terrible crimes remain with us today.  We have imposed relatively modern borders onto ancient indigenous nations.  These newly established colonial boarders divide indigenous nations.  Families are cut off from each other.  Nowhere is this as bad as it is in our American Southwest, where some families and nations of indigenous people are on one or the other side of the American/Mexican border.  The American government makes no provision for people of one indigenous nation (which may have existed for over a thousand years as a cohesive people) are divided by a border established less than two hundred years ago.  Our immigration authorities make visits and commerce within one indigenous nation divided by the American border nearly impossible to achieve.  The Doctrine of Discovery, purports to give us the right to do what we never should have had the right to do; which is steal the land of others and to enslave the owners of the land we have stolen.  The hard work of restoring justice in this world must begin with a total and complete repudiation of the doctrine of discovery.

We have been asked by our national partners in the fight for true immigration reform to join the Roman Catholic Church in revoking this doctrine.  The Holy See in April 27 of 2010 confirms that the Papal Bull of 1493 Inter Coetera “has been revoked and considers it without any legal or doctrinal value.[vi]” Further the Episcopalians and the Quakers have also passed resolutions repudiating this doctrine.

So while we are in Phoenix for our General Assembly, the UUA has proposed a resolution for us to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery and to urge the Federal government to fully endorse and implement without qualification the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples passed by 144 countries with four votes against. The four votes against this resolution included Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States.  These four countries have large indigenous populations within their borders.

The action of civil disobedience that I performed this past week is brought into even finer focus with the Doctrine of Discovery as the context in which HB 56 and its revision bills are placed.  Tupac Acosta from Arizona speaks frequently about the connection of SB 1070 and the Doctrine of Discovery.  He says, “the purpose of SB1070 was to consolidate the perceptions of some white Americans around the idea of an America that is white in a continent that belongs to them.[vii]“

I would suggest that this is what is happening in Alabama as well.   It is time for us to put an end to our domination culture.  It is time for us to live up to our higher ideals and values of loving our neighbors.  As I recently wrote in a blog in response to Governor Bentley’s comment about the bible stating one must always obey the law, I quoted another verse from the chapter he referred to:  Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. May we strive to always fulfill the law.

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[i] http://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.com/2011/02/dum-diversas-english-translation.html

[ii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Nation_v._Georgia

[iii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny#CITEREFWeeks1996

[iv] Sermon: Doctrine of Discovery - Rev Matt Alspaugh, Unitarian Universalist Church, Youngstown, OH as found at http://www.rd-ad.org/Index.html

[v] Human Rights Violation - Bruce Knotts, Director UUA United Nations Office as found at http://www.rd-ad.org/Index.html

[vi] http://www.partnershipforglobaljustice.com/files/2012AnnualMeetingBackground.pdf

[vii] http://www.trunity.net/UUsConnect/articles/view/170532/?topic=73841

The religious freedom argument against HB 56 that was not made

The Federal judge, Sharon Lovelace Blackburn heard the three suits against HB 56 today.  While I supported the Department of Justice’s and the Civil Rights suits, I was most interested in the Bishop’s suit that HB 56 infringed on First Amendment rights.

I wished I had been able to track down a copy of the actual complaint because if I had I would have offered an amicus brief  presenting another argument than the one offered in court today.  Judge Blackburn was adamant that the three bishop’s;  Methodist, Episcopal, and Catholic  had not made their case.

The attorney said “If the bishops encourage their clergy and congregations to serve immigrants then the bishops would have exposure to be in violation of the law.”  What?  This is not about the bishops.  This is about seeking to fulfill the tenets of faith that teach to welcome the stranger, to serve the poor, to provide resources that enable the immigrant to live here.

The Judge repeated the question, how does this statute prevent the church from practicing its faith. How does it prevent the freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion?  “Saying it does, does not make it so,” Judge Blackburn stated. As I listened to the judge read portions of the bishop’s affidavit, I would agree.

One of the bishops wrote that this law would impinge on his freedom of religion by prohibiting him from offering counsel to an immigrant pregnant woman where by not being able to receive his counsel she might then get an abortion.  I sat there in horror. This was their argument?

Judge Blackburn simply did not see the argument of infringement because the argument was based on doctrinal beliefs and not on services congregations provide based on living their faith. There is nothing in Section 13 that speaks to doctrinal beliefs and therefore does not impinge on freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of assembly the judge stated. The Bishop’s example provided was so far fetched and out of touch with what his congregations are doing that I was stunned at the weakness of this argument.

Let me back track with a story.  In Danbury, CT there developed in the 1990′s a large community of Brazilians.  The question arose as to why Danbury as a destination point?   The answer was simple.  Danbury had a well established and large Portuguese community which provided among other things  a Portuguese radio station, a Portuguese newspaper, Portuguese markets, and Portuguese worshiping communities.  Granted these were in continental dialect  Portuguese and not brazilian dialect Portuguese but the language similarities were close enough that their presence provided the resources to enable the Brazilian community to thrive and integrate easily into American society.

Congregations, regardless of faith tradition,  seeking to live out their faith teachings to welcome the stranger and to provide hospitality to the least of these  are providing the resources to enable immigrants to thrive here in Alabama.  HB 56 section 13 specifically states that harboring, transporting, and encouraging immigrants to reside in Alabama is against the law.  The free practice of our religion to provide these services as taught by our collective faiths is impinged and injured when the offering of these resources to immigrants become illegal under section 13.

What are these resources that enable and  encourage  immigrants to live here?  The provision of English as a Second language courses is a resource that will enable immigrants to live in Alabama.  The provision of meals through soup kitchens, food pantries, meals on wheels enable immigrants to live here.  The provision of church run homeless shelters, the provision of worship services in languages other than English allows/  enables/ empowers immigrants to live here. There are other resources that congregations in living out their faith provide immigrants.

Worship services do more than just feed the spirit they provide a place of community; a place where connections can be made for support.  Immigrants coming to Alabama need to find places where they can meet people who are similar enough to themselves in order to thrive.  Churches and congregations are these places because in part they are following the tenets of the faith to welcome the stranger, to feed the poor, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless.

This law on its face  states that actions that allow places of harbor, that transport immigrants to access vital resources  are actions that encourage immigrants to reside in Alabama and therefore are illegal under Section 13. The lawyer attempted to point out that section 13 does not define the terms harboring, transporting, concealing.  She further stated that Section 27 talks about entering into contracts and therefore  congregations could read this as impinging the delivery of church sacraments such as marriage.  The judge did not buy this argument because there have been no cases where a church was not allowed to perform a marriage ceremony according to its faith. The lawyer was not able to state that it was indeed the intention of the legislature to impinge faith institutions in part, I presume, because the bishops were not at the public hearings to report what was said.

When I spoke at the house public hearing, the chair of the committee sponsoring this bill stated clearly that if a congregation has undocumented immigrants worshiping in the church he would personally insure that in addition to the immigrants being arrested, the clergy would be arrested for harboring them.  The Lawyer could not state that as an answer  when the judge stated, “Everyone is exaggerating, it is not going to go that far.”  The legislator who wrote this bill intended it to go that far, I heard him after I gave my testimony against this law at the public hearing.

The best the lawyer could do was state the provision for  church exemption was removed from the senate version of this bill indicating that churches were not exempt to this law.  The judge simply did not buy this as a strong enough statement of intent.

Our hope for this law to be halted whether in whole or in part rests with the much stronger arguments presented by the U.S. Department of Justice and  the Civil Rights suits.  May it be so.

The Fallacy of Original Goodness

Rev. Marilyn Sewell recently wrote a wonderful summary entitled the Theology of Unitarian Universalism. I would agree with most of what she wrote.  There are two areas that I think need further discussion I begin with addressing the first area.  I will write about the second area in another post.

She mentions briefly the following: “We must begin with the assertion that Unitarian Universalism has always emphasized freedom as a core value. It follows that human beings have a choice. We are not predestined by God before our births, to be saved or unsaved. We are not mired in original sin by the very fact of our birth and therefore have to go through a ceremony called baptism, even as babies, to cleanse ourselves of that sin. We do not have to have someone sacrifice himself by dying on a cross to save us from hell. Yes, human beings have a propensity to do evil, but we also have the propensity to do great good. We have a choice. Unitarian Universalists prefer to think of ourselves as being born into “original blessing,” as theologian Matthew Fox likes to put it.”

And then in her summary of Unitarian Universalist Theology she states the following: “We believe in original goodness, with the understanding that sin is sometimes chosen, often because of pain or ignorance.”

I would argue that this is not a universal theology of Unitarian Universalists and further I would state that this belief in Original Goodness is in fact a falsehood.

Let’s look at the definitions of terms. Original Sin defined in the Catholic Encyclopedia is as follows: “Original sin may be taken to mean: (1) the sin that Adam committed; (2) a consequence of this first sin, the hereditary stain with which we are born on account of our origin or descent from Adam.” Rev. Sewell is using the term Original Sin in the second meaning. Original Sin is this stain that is passed down through the ages by virtue of our birth.

This concept of Original Sin is rejected by most Unitarian Universalists. We would concur with the New Testament writer who wrote that nothing can separate us from the love of God. There is no condition that we are born into that would separate us from Universal love from the moment of our first breath to the breathing of our last.

Original Blessing as theologian Matthew Fox uses the term means that we are born into love. He writes, “We can say blessing preceded creation, too, for blessing was its purpose. Thus there is no doubt that original blessing is the basis of all trust and of all faith. Original blessing underlies all being, all creation, all time, all space, all unfolding and evolving of what is. As Rabbi Heschel puts it, ‘Just to be is a blessing; just to live is holy.’”

He defines blessing as relational. “[O]ne does not bless without investing something of oneself into the receiver of one’s blessing. And one does not receive blessing oblivious of its gracious giver. A blessing spirituality is a relating spirituality.” This concept of Original Blessing is very different from the concept that Rev. Sewell later calls Original Goodness.

Original Goodness implies that something is good in and of itself.  This is not possible.  There is no original goodness or virtue. Theologian James Luther Adams states, “There is no such thing as goodness as such; except in a limited sense, there is no such thing as a good person as such. There is the good husband, the good wife, the good worker, the good employer, the good layperson, the good citizen. The decisive forms of goodness in society are institutional forms.”

The quality of being good does not exist in a vacuum. It does not exist without form. Goodness does not exist in and of itself. What makes a person good is the social construct that it embodies. A good birth means that there were no complications.  The good baby sleeps through the night. The good child is obedient to her parents.  The good husband or good wife helps with the household chores. These are actions that our society has determined to be good.  So to declare that there is an original goodness that humanity is born into is a falsehood. An infant is not born good or evil. An infant simply is.

Whereas, an infant can be born into original blessing because the relationship of blessing is already present in the child’s birth. The relationship of blessing, the covenant of relationship of parent to child is created at the very moment of birth resulting in blessing. But original goodness does not exist.

Rev. Sewell states that “sin is sometimes chosen, often because of pain or ignorance.” Goodness and Evil are actions that are chosen, sometimes deliberately, sometimes by default but chosen nonetheless. So if Rev. Sewell wrote that Unitarian Universalists tend to believe in Original Blessing, recognizing that sin is sometimes chosen often because of pain and ignorance, then I would agree with her statement. However, she uses the term Original Goodness which is not the same as Original Blessing, they are two very different concepts.

Blessings,

Quotations are from the following:

1) The Theology of Unitarian Universalists by Rev. Marilyn Sewell

2) Catholic Encyclopedia

3) Original Blessing by Matthew Fox

4)  Five Smooth Stones of Liberal Religion by James Luther Adams

The Sirens are Sounding: Will we Heed Them?

I am not sure when we as a world community will wake up. Two devastating tornado outbreaks within a month’s time in our nation with the allegedly rare EF5 tornadoes packing winds of over 200 miles per hour seem to be as good as an alarm bell as any I have heard.

Climate change is a reality.  It is not just a made up myth to scare little children before bedtime or to make block buster movies like The Day After Tomorrow.  We are facing massive climate change.  The floods in Pakistan, Australia, and Midwest; the uncontrollable fires currently in Texas, Russia, and Africa, record breaking temperatures, record breaking snowfalls; these are all pointing to dramatic climate change.

Firemap 11 May 2011 — 20 May 2011  Source: http://www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/current/globalfire.htm

I know we all laughed about global warming when we had record low temperatures and snow in the Deep South this passed year.  But with an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes an increase in temperatures and an increased ability for the air to hold more moisture. So it makes sense that precipitation will be more than usual.  And it makes sense that parts of the earth will be scorched of what little moisture is left preparing the land for fire which releases more CO2 into the air—a vicious cycle.

So what will it take for humanity to wake up and take steps to drastically reduce CO2 and other emission gases?

Bolivia took a bold step in that direction when it passed laws that reflected their indigenous people’s values.  This small South American country passed legislation that equated mother earth to have equal rights as humans. These rights include: “the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.”

Bolivia’s Vice-President Alvaro García Linera stated. “It establishes a new relationship between man and nature, the harmony of which must be preserved as a guarantee of its regeneration.”

We need to follow Bolivia’s lead.  Our seventh principle states, “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”  This principle is in harmony with the actions that Bolivia has taken.  We, as Unitarian Universalists can no longer afford to have nicely worded principles that we can simply point to. We need our actions and our behaviors to reflect these principles not only in our daily lives but also in our activism to change our society towards one that is also in harmony with Mother Earth. In short, we need to be radically progressive in embodying our principles if we want a planet that is conducive to sustaining not just life, but human life.  Blessings,

Feelin’ Like a Motherless Child

Sermon offered to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Tuscaloosa on 8 May 2011 (c) by Rev. Fred L Hammond. One and a half weeks after the April 27th devastating tornado that rampaged through Tuscaloosa. 

“Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child” is a spiritual written by slaves in the Deep South.  They are remembering their African homeland that they have lost.  They are remembering their mothers, their families that are far from them either back in Africa or those who have been sold to other plantation owners. It is a somber song but it also carries with it a hope.  Sometimes I feel implies that there are sometimes I don’t feel like a motherless child.  Sometimes means not always but occasionally this is true.

As I look at the devastation that has been wrought on our community and the efforts being undertaken to get through these tough times, I can say sometimes I feel like a motherless child.  I can join in and say sometimes I feel like I am almost gone.

But then I recall a few things.  I recall that when I felt that I had no friend, friends stepped forward.  People stepped forward into that role of friend, of mother, of nurturer, of protector.  All the things that we hoped would be there when the tough times come have been here in this place.

Now is the time for us to hang in together and nurture one another. To hold one another in sacred space, to hold one another in holy space where our hearts and voices are heard and validated as vital to making us whole.  This is a time of listening deeply, not debating “we should do this or that,” not seeking the fixes which are at best patch a worn piece of cloth which will rip again in the first wash cycle.  It is a time of listening.  Listening to our stories and holding them close to our hearts and validating that we have heard them. Truly heard them.

Mothers are great at fostering this in their children.  When a young child is hurt, physically or emotionally or in any other fashion for that matter, a mother will hold that child.  A mother will embrace that child, perhaps rock that child in her arms, perhaps sing to that child softly, and perhaps rub that child’s back.  These are all methods of soothing the child.  These are methods of calming the child to be in that moment and to pause in that moment.

The question of what we should or might do next will arise out of our listening to each other.  The experiences we are living through are offering us a choice as to who we will be in the future.  I know the temptation is to make a quick decision which will get the trauma behind us and as far from us as possible.  But now is not the time to make life altering decisions, now is the time to simply listen, to simply be in the moment we find ourselves in. The decisions we need to make will come when the time is ripe and their birth is ready to occur.

To be clear, I am talking about the intimate decisions of our lives, I am talking about the personal decisions here.  The more collective and larger decisions that need to be made need to be discussed. The city is already beginning to plan out what it needs to do to rebuild the city.  And it is right to do so.  These plans will take a while to develop and implement but even the city is not yet at the debating stage of these plans.  Even they are in the listening stage. They are at the information gathering stage. They have rightfully placed a moratorium on developers in the city to slow that process down so rebuilding can be planned with dignity and with integrity.  We as a congregation might have a role to play in how Tuscaloosa gives birth to the new city that will be built. But even here, we need to be nurturing, listening, and hearing the story of our collective lives being told.

When 9/11 happened, everyone in the nation was affected by the horrors of that event.  The nation was in uproar and whether you agree with what happened next or not, the nation launched an attack against Afghanistan and Iraq. We as a nation were hurting.  One person that I know responded differently.  Sarah Dan Jones, Unitarian Universalist singer/songwriter wrote a song that offered a way for us to be held, to be nurtured, to be embraced perhaps by the holy.  Perhaps if we had taken what we know from our mothers and held each other and listened with our hearts to each other then perhaps the narrative of our nation following that heart wrenching day would have been different.  The song she wrote in response was this:

“When I breathe in, I’ll breathe in peace.  When I breathe out, I’ll breathe out love.”[i]

Join me and allow the song to embrace you, to hold you close.

“When I breathe in, I’ll breathe in peace.  When I breathe out, I’ll breathe out love.”  Sing four times

We are sometimes mothers to one another. Regardless of gender, providing a mothering, nurturing experience when it is needed is something we all can offer.  The movie “The Secret Life of Bees” tells the story of young teen, Lily, who remembers very little about her mother, other than a traumatic incident during a fight between her parents. She carries this pain with her.  Her father is abusive and has told her repeatedly that her mother had left them and on the night of her death had come back only for her things.  The mother was leaving the daughter.   Lily decides to run away from home, and takes the few items of her mother’s with her, including a jar label of a black Madonna with the word honey on it.

The Black Madonna label leads Lily to a house where the honey is produced and she concocts a story that enables her to stay there. The house is owned by three African American sisters, each with their own unique gifts and strengths.  In the parlor is a sculpture of a black Madonna with a fist raised to the air.  August, the eldest sister, tells the story of this wooden sculpture.  It was found by one of her ancestors sold into slavery and once adorned the front of a sailing ship.  It is seen by the women as a symbol of their strength to weather the storms of life.  These three women and some of their friends would gather to pray around this sculpture and then as a parting ritual would place their hand on the chest of the Madonna to symbolize their drawing strength to endure. The women drew strength from each other and became mother for Lily.  In living in the mystery of life’s unfolding path, in sharing in their individual and collective struggles, they were able to offer healing to Lily. They shared a different narrative about Lily’s mother than the one she knew as a young child.

We are able to draw strength from the mothers in our lives.  We can help create a different narrative for those of us who are traumatized by the recent events.   By gathering together and drawing strength from each other we can also begin creating a different narrative for ourselves in the aftermath of this tornado.

“Gathered here in the mystery of the hour.  Gathered here in one strong body.  Gathered here in the struggle and the power.  Spirit, draw near.” [ii]

Spirit for me isn’t some other worldly entity.  I leave the mind open for the possibility of that but when I speak of spirit, it means something else.  For me, spirit is that energy that flows between two or more people.  The energy can express itself as an emotional energy but it might simply be that creative interchange of ideas that creates something new when expressed by one person and heard by another.

There is a strong connection of spirit between a parent and a young child for example.  It is a bond that transforms the other to wholeness.   Those who saw the movie, “The Secret Life of Bees” know that spirit can be a double edged sword as it was between Lily and her father.  But the spirit that I am referring to is a positive spirit, the spirit that is filled with affirmation.  The spirit I am referring to is patient and kind. This spirit does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. This spirit does not delight in harmful actions but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Now those of you who know your Christian scriptures might have recognized that this spirit that I am referring to is love.  It is also the best expression of motherhood.  This spirit is not just reserved to mothers, anyone can exemplify these attributes.

In the wake of the storm when people are most hurting, most feeling like a motherless child, we are called to be mothering to one another.  We are called to extend that spirit of love to one another, just as the slave was able to sing, “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child” and add the conviction that this was sometimes; we too can help those who are feeling like a motherless child to reduce that experience to sometimes.

Blessed be.

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[i]  Story and text of song used with permission of composer, Sarah Dan Jones.

[ii] Hymn number 389 in Singing the Living Tradition hymnal.