A SONG OF HOPE
Yom Kippur, September 11 & the Sadness of Our Lives

A Sermon by James Ishmael Ford
15 September 2002

This is the season of Rosh Hashanah, the observation of a spiritual New Year. Specifically it is a time to look into our own hearts and to reflect on our lives. Responding to the newsletter announcement of this sermon, our long-time member Susan Avishai, who is living for the time being in Virginia, wrote a note reminding me how really important this time is.

Specifically, she pointed out how important is the observation of Yom Kippur, which takes place at the end of the Rosh Hashanah season and which turns on acts of seeking and extending forgiveness. She finds that asking for forgiveness is at the heart of it all. Within the Jewish tradition this time of reflection and seeking of forgiveness is how one finds coherence and place in the world.

Susan shared how powerful she believes this might be for us as Unitarian Universalists. "(B)ecause," she writes. All this "implies that there is so much more to human dynamics than one person's act. It is about relationship. (As in) the I-Thou duality of Buber's writing."

So, keeping that in mind, what might be the most important question we can reflect about today? Today, a year and four days after an unspeakable act of terror. Well, I think it appropriate to focus on violence, inflicted upon us from outside and welling up from within our own hearts. I believe we should consider what violence and also what nonviolence might mean--both for us in our individual lives and among us as citizens of nations, as citizens of an inextricable intertwined world.

Last week Bob Zeeb gave me copies of two essays published in the winter 2002 issue of "Yes!" The first was a reflection by Walter Wink. The other was by Wendell Berry. Both were about violence. These papers led me on a journey of sorts where I found myself considering what violence is in our lives, in my life, and how best we, and I, might face it.

As a start they led me to several other essays. The first was titled "Pacifist Claptrap." It was published as an editorial in the "Washington Post" and written by Michael Kelly. Kelly is a journalist and columnist, who has covered wars and politics with considerable courage. I find him a conservative with solid intellectual credentials. He currently works as editor-in-chief of the "National Journal" and simultaneously as editor of the "Atlantic Monthly."

Kelly’s essay is a broadside against the principles of pacifism. His argument is straightforward. I quote it. "Organized terrorist groups have attacked America. These groups wish the Americans not to fight. The American pacifists wish the Americans to not fight. If the Americans do not fight, the terrorists will attack America again. And now we know such attacks can kill many thousands of Americans. The American pacifists therefore, are on the side of future mass murders of Americans. They are objectively pro-terrorist." He concludes his essay with the statement "That is the pacifists’ position and it is evil."

This is strong stuff. And we hear it in the heat of our times, where at this moment our president is calling on us to join in a war to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein. Kelly’s essay is a direct attack on the moral principles of those who hesitate or actually oppose this war in the name of some higher good.

Kelly tells us this higher good, he calls it a higher morality, is at best situational (a mildly ironic conclusion from the camp that usually excludes such options). He argues that refusing to join in the build up for war could only be relevant in a case where one is living in, say, Nazi Germany.

But still I find it needful to ask, is this higher good so narrowly applicable as Kelly presents it? What, after all, is the higher good that calls many of us to pacifism or to that slightly different possibility of engaging the violence of our lives, the way of nonviolence?

In his reflection on Kelly’s essay, Walter Wink, Biblical scholar and founder of the Jesus Seminar, suggests that life is not an either or of violence or victimization. Writing as a Christian, he says that Jesus isn’t "telling us not to resist evil, but only not to resist it violently." He calls us to a third way beyond violence or non-resistance, to an active, or perhaps even, as he says, a "militant nonviolence."

I found another reaction to Kelly with a similar perspective. James Matlack the current director of the Washington Office of the American Friends Service Committee also challenges Kelly’s understanding of pacifism as nonresistance. Matlock says, at least of himself "this pacifist refuses to back anyone’s killing. My approach is not ‘Peace at any price’ but ‘Love at all costs.’"

Love. Matlack suggests how "in this time of affliction many have found solace and strength in patriotic affirmations—displays of the American flag, singing the familiar anthems." As does he. Saying how, "I find special relevance in the verse of "America the Beautiful" that concludes "Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law."

I think it fair to say that the law to which both Matlack and Wink calls us is the law of love. Now, I think it might be useful to look at what this might mean from beyond Christian circles. So, Wendell Berry. Berry has sometimes been described as a poet-farmer. He is also a sometime professor of English.

And he is a radical. That is his reflections often go straight to the root of the matter. For instance his famous essay "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer" speaks to his fierce and uncompromising engagement with the world. In this he reminds me of my old friend and sometime mentor, the Unitarian Universalist minister Dan O’Neal.

Dan’s policy for taking up any new technology was to first reflect on its relative utility and the costs in its use to the environment and to the community at large. So sometimes he would take up a new technology. Unlike Berry, he did purchase a computer.

But with this deep reflection he also resisted cell phones and palm pilots. Something most everyone here knows I’ve not been able to do. Truthfully Dan O’Neal and Wendell Berry are not always easy to hear. Their message is often deeply counter-cultural. What they say is sometimes so critical of who we in our broadly liberal community are, pointing out our shortcomings, our hypocrisies, it is easy to turn away, to not listen. But, in the spirit of this season, I suggest we should.

Berry tells us that "In our century of almost universal violence of humans against fellow humans, and against our natural and cultural commonwealth, hypocrisy has been inescapable because our opposition to violence has been selective or merely fashionable."

His point in this regard is simple, if not easy to accept. Berry tells us "acts of violence committed (for) ‘justice’ or in affirmation of ‘rights’ or in defense of ‘peace’ do not end violence." Rather, he tells us with all the power of an ancient Hebrew prophet, of any acts of violence done in the name of any good, that they are in the last analysis simply more violence. Violence prepares and justifies violence’s continuation, and nothing more.

So today, a year and four days after an unspeakable act of violence, and in the context of tomorrow’s war and certainly the once and future reality of rumors of war, let’s consider what this assertion about the nature of violence only breeding more violence might mean. Let’s look hard and let no one, not even ourselves, off the hook.

First I want to hold up the strongest of arguments I find for taking up arms in the face of violence, in the face of, if you will evil. Berry points out what he calls the "mathematics or an accounting of war. Thus by its suffering in the Civil War, the North is said to have ‘paid for’ the emancipation of the slaves and the preservation of the Union. Thus we may speak of our liberty as having been ‘bought’ by the bloodshed of patriots."

Berry himself pauses in the face of this, and says. "I am fully aware of the truth in such statements. I know that I am one of many who have benefited from the painful sacrifices made by other people, and I would not like to be ungrateful. Moreover, I am a patriot myself and I know that the time may come for any of us when we must make extreme sacrifices for the sake of liberty—a fact confirmed by the fates of (Mahatma) Gandhi and (Dr. Martin Luther) King."

Here I find the call to nonviolence caught up in the spirit of love, of love for our country, of love for our neighbor, of love as the fundamental principle of our humanity. If, as I say over and over again, all of existence really is one family, if we really are wrapped up together so tightly as our popular Unitarian Universalist symbol of an interdependent web suggests, then what?

What are the choices of love in such a world? On the one hand violence breeds violence. On the other hand our very liberties have been purchase with violence. One never knows what will be the consequences of our choices. What, then, do we do? I suggest we need to look deep within our hearts, to see the movement of our deepest knowing, and to act from that place, and only from that place.

Berry suggests what we might find, certainly what I’ve found in that deepest looking. "(B)y now all of us must at least have suspected that our right to live, to be free, and to be at peace is not guaranteed by any act of violence." This is the harsh reality I find. I am grateful to those who have sacrificed, and even those who have taken up arms for me and for those I love. And, I feel deep within me, I need to respond by embracing nonviolence, as my gift to them. I embrace the way of nonviolence. As weak and foolish and unclear as I am, I seek the path of healing, of reconciliation, and of hope.

This I think is Berry’s point. He tells us that peace, authentic peace "can be guaranteed only by our willingness that all other persons should live, be free, and be at peace—and our willingness to use or give our own lives to make that possible." Here I think we have a working definition of love. It is about relationship. But also, here is a demanding and fierce love. Here is a love that is willing to die, if need be. Certainly this love is not passive, not in any way at all.

So, can we do this? Can we all embrace such a way? I don’t think so, at least not completely, not without constant reflection and a constant possibility of a change of heart. I know how weak I am, even in the face of principles I am certain are true. I want a better world, but I still act in ways that make that better world less likely.

And so in the spirit of this season, in the shadow of those many many deaths a year and four days ago, for what I have done and have refrained from doing in the name of love I seek forgiveness. For my acts of violence, I seek forgiveness. For my omissions that have led to violence, I seek forgiveness. In this holy season, for my thoughts of violence I seek forgiveness.

So, this is Sunday, this is a church and not a policy institute. I am, on this holy day, asking each of you to reflect, only to reflect. What is it that you find in your own life that needs forgiveness? And, I ask a little more. Where is your life in the cycle of violence? And, I ask, what will be your choices this year?

So, what comes of all this? Well, as I said we never know what outcomes might be. But, I do feel within my bones and marrow a certain hope. And in the mystery of how things occasionally come together, I find I can draw this all together through something Linda Rhinearson sent to Noreen Kimball, as you know two deeply respected members of our Society. Linda had found a quote from Newton Teixeira, who had been a prominent leader of this congregation in the seventies and I believe in the eighties.

Newton wrote, "I believe in the freedom to believe, not in freedom from belief. I believe that choice is fundamental to the human spirit. I believe in the development and evolution of life against almost impossible odds. I believe in a life force that has created an evolutionary drive toward more and more complex beings despite the powers of those natural laws that create chaos.

"I believe that revelation is a continuing, never-ending process. I believe in the empowerment of kindness over against the force of cruelty. I believe that humankind has a natural need for the ties of love, love for each other and love for the Almighty. I believe that over the broad sweep of time, despite tragedy and heartache, things will be better."

And, you know, in the face of the possibility of love, that mysterious force that allows us to act in ways more nobly than we sometimes feel we are capable, I feel something of Newton’s optimism. It is about relationship. I reflect on our lives together, and the magical force of our ability to choose--to act in new ways, to live better lives, and I too, share in this abiding hope.

And I hope you do, as well.

Amen.