Culture Wars

Culture Wars
Rev. Kathleen Ellis
19 March 2006

I love our Live Oak Coffeehouse! Many a performance has uplifted and inspired me.

During their appearance in February, Small Potatoes, also known as Jacquie Manning and Rich Prezioso, gave an excellent performance, even what I would call a sermon in song and celebration. They offered great music and a wonderful message about furthering understanding among all peoples. They have played for a wide variety of communities—gay people, farmers, fundamentalist Christians, peaceniks, Bush supporters, old hippies, NASCAR racers, new hippies, and on and on. Rich says all kinds of people have treated them with abundant kindness and hospitality.

Recently Small Potatoes had a chance to learn diversity all over again, when they played for a group that was “way more conservative” than Rich and Jacquie believed themselves to be. They were scheduled to stay overnight with one family whom they had met before but didn’t know very well. On the road Rich said, “I don’t think we should stay with the family tonight. We should make up some excuse and go find a motel somewhere.”

But Jacquie reminded him of their tight budget so they took a chance with the host family. To their surprise, they had a wonderful time playing music together late into the night. They had such a good visit they stayed an extra day for the teenage son’s solo in his high school chorus. As they left, the host said, “Thanks for coming and for staying over—we think you’re a good influence on the kids.”

The families have plans to meet again. Rich’s fears had been based on outward appearance and presumed prejudices, but they discovered an inner kindness that went beyond stereotypes.

When Rich is driving around by himself, he sometimes listens to talk radio as an experiment. First he tunes in Rush Limbaugh and listens for a while, then, when he can, he switches over to Air America. Often they sound exactly the same to him. The message is different, of course, but the format and the tone sound alike, especially to anyone who doesn’t speak English.

Some commentators on both sides of the dial are saying that the people they disagree with are crazy, if not evil. That assumption is what upsets Rich because he knows it’s just not true.

If you think polarization is new, listen to chapter 53 of the Tao te Ching, which is believed to have been written by Lao Tsu about 2500 years ago:

The great Way is easy,
yet people prefer the side paths.
Be aware when things are out of balance.
Stay centered within the Tao.

When rich speculators prosper
while farmers lose their land;
when government officials spend money
on weapons instead of cures;
when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible
while the poor have nowhere to turn—
all this is robbery and chaos.
It is not in keeping with the Tao.

[Stephen Mitchell, translator]

We make assumptions based on bumper stickers and we don’t get to talk to each other. One bumper sticker I have on my car says, “The most radical thing you can do is introduce people to one another.” As I mentioned in the parable, a bird needs a left wing and a right wing working in harmony with one another to fly straight.

Have you ever been surprised to discover common values in people who seem entirely different from you on the surface? For example, the difference between human racial types is less than quarter of one percent of all the other traits we share. Yet there is something in us that dwells on differences: religious, cultural, lifestyle and political.

Speaking of politics, there’s the story about a politician in heaven. When he arrived, he was sent to the front of the line at the pearly gates. Several angels rolled out a red carpet for him. Twenty angels with trumpets marched out, ten on a side. Finally St. Peter himself appeared and announced, “The Honorable Senator from Texas, Sam Smith” and the senator was escorted with great fanfare into a banquet hall for a gala celebration.

One of the bystanders leaned over and tapped an angel on the shoulder to ask why the senator was getting so much attention.

And the angel said, “Well, we thought we’d do it up big since this is the first time a politician ever made it to heaven.”

We laugh because we have become a nation of labelers. From politicians and lawyers to slackers, head bangers, rednecks, people of different colors, police, civilians, young, old, Aggies and Okies, labels are shortcuts to painting groups of people with a very broad brush.

There is no doubt that some of us stand poles apart on moral and political issues. E.J. Dionne points out in The Atlantic Monthly (January/February 2006), that at least fifteen percent of us are deeply religious and extremely conservative; a similar percentage are deeply secular and extremely liberal. These groups are convinced that the opposite position is unreasonable.

The rest of us may lean one way or the other but continue to hold a rich mixture of secular, religious, conservative, and liberal views. For example, I know deeply religious people who are liberal, and deeply secular people who are conservative. Treat others with respect because you, too, want and deserve that same kind of respect.

Let go of the desire to be right and you may find common ground. For example, most people agree that education, job training, and a living wage work together to lift people out of poverty and help them contribute to society. Most people agree that health care, prescription drugs, and Social Security help us raise our quality of life.

All of these issues intertwine to affect family and community life. Families are profoundly affected by access to jobs, education, and the time it takes to commute to work. Communities make decisions about development that affect not only the natural environment, but also the integrity of neighborhoods. Both liberal and conservative parents want their children to be safe; both urban and rural communities want security and places of beauty.

To listen to some talk radio (rant radio, if you ask me), there’s the sound of anger even if the content seems full of reason. (“I’m not angry!” one woman shouted.) You can’t believe everything you hear or read—it’s important to check their sources—but take away liberal and conservative labels and try to look for shared values. Find a spiritual perspective from which you can take a God’s eye view of individuals, families, and communities. We are more alike than otherwise.

There’s another story about a rabbi and a soap maker on a walk together. The soap maker wanted to know, “What good is religion? Look at all the trouble and misery of the world! It never stops, even after years—thousands of years—of religious teaching about goodness and truth and peace, after all the prayers and sermons and religious schools. If religion were the answer, why should this be?”

The rabbi was silent for a while. Then he noticed a child playing in the gutter and said, “Look at that child. You make soap to get people clean, but look at the dirt on that kid. What good is soap? With all the soap over all these years, the child is still filthy. If soap were the answer, why should this be?”

“But Rabbi,” the soap maker protested. “Soap cannot do any good unless it is used!”

“Exactly,” replied the rabbi. “Exactly.”

. . . . .

On this weekend of St. Patrick’s Day, we only have to think about the Irish—the fighting in their own country, the fighting to find a place as new immigrants to this country—or the Sunnis and Shiites or the Catholics and Protestants, as examples of the lengths to which we will defend our religious convictions. It’s hard out here for everyone who is trying to get along in the world in which we live.

What a person thinks is private, but what a person says or does speaks volumes about his or her religious values. An example of good works is the array of Spring Break trips to reach out to people in need. Here is a small sampling of destinations this year:

Staffing a soup kitchen with homeless teenagers in Toronto, Ontario
Hurricane relief, from cleanup to clinics
Working with orphans and children in foster care in Reynosa, Mexico
Managing inner city missions in Newark, NJ
Teaching games to deaf children in Jamaica

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee has organized trips for Katrina relief in Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as educational trips to coffee plantations in Guatemala and to Mohawk and Lakota camps to learn about economic and racial justice, and a civil rights tour of historical sites whose history continues to affect us. Austin Area Interreligious Ministries sponsors Hands on Housing, one local effort to spruce up a couple of houses each year—next up, Saturday April 22—another way to celebrate Earth Day! These hands-on projects work to bridge wide gaps among us as we roll up our sleeves and stop dwelling on our differences of opinion.

What we say also makes a difference in finding a middle way. Carrie Stewart pointed me to an interesting website << publicconversations.org >>. Their “Public Conversations Project (PCP) helps people who have fundamental disagreements over divisive issues to develop the mutual understanding and trust essential for strong communities and positive action.” Their mission is to engage in “constructive conversations that reach across differences.”

PCP has actual workshops in several cities if you’re lucky enough to live nearby, but they also have an online forum for specific topics no matter where you live. Two particular pages on the PCP website address abortion and Islam. Regarding abortion, the introductory questions are these:

a. What life experiences may have shaped your current views about abortion?

b. When thinking about abortion, what is the "heart of the matter" for you?

c. Are you aware of mixed feelings, value conflicts, uncertainties, or other dilemmas within your overall perspective on this issue? If so, what are they?

For the Islam forum, these are the introductory questions:

a. Can you share something about your life experience or current situation that could help people understand your views and concerns about the war in Iraq?

b. What are your views, hopes and fears regarding the war? What is the "heart of the matter" for you? If you have experienced areas of confusion, mixed feelings and/or value conflicts, please describe them.

c. Has this war or have concerns related to terrorism strained or challenged relationships that matter to you? If so, how?

These questions confirm my view that we can talk about difficult topics in a way that reduces anxiety by getting at the heart of human values. Before you even answer the questions, you can read what other people have said, and you notice how much we just want to think through the topic and do the right thing. We want to do the right thing without dismissing another person’s point of view or considering anyone evil.

The stories of our lives show more heart than rants on the radio or television. The story I told last month of my experiences in a Katrina-flooded home spoke from my heart. The poetry written by singer/songwriter John Flynn at this month’s coffeehouse teaches us that our good works and our good words can make a difference, if only to one soul. He sings about a dream in which he has a conversation with a young man. Here’s an excerpt from his song “Only One”:

One night in restless sleep I dreamt a young man came to me
and asked what I had done that day to end the misery.
I said, “What difference would it make? What good could I have done? There are too many people.”
He said, “No, there’s only one.”

One hungry child, the one you did not feed;
One lonely soul, the one you did not heed;
One dying heart, the heart that would not bleed;
For all the things the day has left undone,
You can change the world with only one

Now lately I’ve begun to fear the turning of the earth.
With every lap around the solar system since my birth,
I’ve seen my chance to change my life go from slim to none.
“How many days are left?” I asked.
He said, “You need just one.”

One single day lived with all your heart
One single step is enough to start
Wonderful things—stuff that’s off the chart
Could happen on the journey once begun
You can change your world with only one

Live Oak is a small microcosm of diverse opinions within a liberal religious context. Differences among us challenge assumptions we might make about total strangers. From reserving meeting space to rearranging bulletin boards; from keeping the kitchen clean to creating van accessible parking spaces; from conversations about God to silent walks on the labyrinth; let us remember that we are building a church here that will outlast us all. Our children are watching us; newcomers want to know what we’re about; people who are now strangers will enrich the fabric of this community. In the words of Lao Tsu,

See the world as your self; then have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self; then you can care for all things.

[chapter 13, Stephen Mitchell, translator]

Amen