Justice is Aid with Dignity (UUSC Justice Sunday)
Service celebrated at People’s Church UU, in Ludington, Michigan, on 27 March 2011
Rev. Chip Roush
OPENING WORDS
Our 9th annual “new” Fast Day is coming up on Wednesday, April 6th. As one who obviously loves eating, I find fasting every year an interesting practice. Fasting really throws me out of my usual daily rhythms, and wakes me up to appreciate my life in a deeper way. I hope many of you will join us, on April 6.
Of course, observing our Fast Day holiday is a *choice*. According to the United Nations, over 800 million people will go to bed hungry tonight. Frankly, I get a little overwhelmed by such widespread misery. It is all-too-tempting to live in denial; to ignore their distress and distract myself from my own discomfort at living in such relative plenty while others watch their children starving. However, denial does not really solve these issues—as with many things, awareness is central to right living.
Every person in this room knows suffering. We acknowledge that; let us meet each other with compassion. Without diminishing—in any way—our suffering, virtually all of our six billion human cousins are also suffering. Let us acknowledge that, with compassion and courage.
And, in the midst of such colossal suffering, for most of us, the world is still a beautiful place, and life is worth living. Let us open ourselves to both the beauty and the suffering around us, and together create meaning about the state of our world.
So may we be.
STORY FOR ALL AGES
A mouse looked through a crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package; what food might it contain ? He was aghast to discover that it was a mouse trap! Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning, “There is a mouse trap in the house, there is a mouse trap in the house.”
The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Mr. Mouse, I can tell you this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me; I cannot be bothered by it.” The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mouse trap in the house.” “I am so very sorry Mr. Mouse,” sympathized the pig, “but there is nothing I can do about it but pray; be assured that you are in my prayers.” The mouse turned to the cow, who replied, “Good! Frankly, I find your kind to be offensive and unclean. You *should* move elsewhere.” So the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected to face the farmer’s mouse trap alone.
That very night a sound was heard throughout the house, like the sound of a mouse trap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see that it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital.
She returned home with a fever. Now everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient. His wife’s sickness continued so that friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer’s wife did not get well, in fact, she died, and so many people came for her funeral the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide meat for all of them to eat.
Through it all, the mouse sat in his hole and watched. What do you think the mouse did, when he saw all the other animals killed?
{children answer, probably including: Celebrated; Felt sad;
Wondered how he might have helped them}
The mouse took out his little mouse phone & texted all his animal friends in all the nearby farms, and asked them to send it to their friends, so everyone could learn this important lesson: we are all connected in this world, and when somebody has a problem, even if we think it does not affect us, it *can* have consequences for us, so we should try to help
FIRST READING #463 by Adrienne Rich
My heart is moved by all I cannot save: So much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.
SECOND READING “Fault Line” by Robert R. Walsh
Did you ever think there might be a fault line passing underneath your living room: A place in which your life is lived in meeting and in separating, wondering and telling, unaware that just beneath you is the unseen seam of great plates that strain through time?
And that your life, already spilling over the brim, could be invaded, sent off in a new direction, turned aside by forces you were warned about but not prepared for? Shelves could be spilled out, the level floor set at an angle in some seconds’ shaking. You would have to take your losses, do whatever must be done next. When the great plates slip and the earth shivers and the flaw is seen to lie in what you trusted most, look not to more solidity, to weighty slabs of concrete poured or strength of cantilevered beam to save the fractured order. Trust more the tensile strands of love that bend and stretch to hold you in the web of life that’s often torn but always healing. There’s your strength. The shifting plates, the restive earth, your room, your precious life, they all proceed from love, the ground on which we walk together.
INVITATION TO SILENCE
Isn’t it interesting, that, even in an essay that begins with an earthquake, the author returns to “the ground on which we walk together” as a metaphor for the solidity and power of Love. But even love is not solid. It is powerful, yes—it is the strongest, most compelling force in the universe—but it is not necessarily solid. It comes and goes, love waxes and wanes. Depending upon our mood, and the circumstance of the day, we can be mildly perturbed or head-over-heels by the same phrase from the same person’s lips.
I prefer the reading’s middle metaphor: Love is flexible; love appears as the “tensile strands…that bend and stretch to hold you in the web of life that’s often torn but always healing.” The web of life *is* often torn; it is frayed and ragged in many places. In some areas, the web is gashed and rent, almost asunder. Yet it is always healing, always being rewoven by us, by our fellow beings, and, seemingly, by the power of Life itself, always adapting, always evolving, even in the least hospitable conditions.
Let us inhabit a moment of silence…
{silence}
PRAYER
Dear Weaver of our life’s design, god of gravity and goodness, goddess Athena, patron of wisdom, warfare and weaving, Incan Mama Ocllo, [ ock-yo ]…
We call upon these, and all other names by which we humans have called the faint-but-inexhaustible lure toward justice and truth and beauty:
we express our gratitude to be alive, and among these people, today;
we desire that we, and all other living beings, be held in the tender embrace of the web of life that is often torn but always healing. May our torn lives be healed, also; we lift up the joys and concerns shared earlier, and all those which remain in the silent sanctuaries of our hearts and minds;
{prayers of the day}
We desire justice, comfort and support for all those who suffer, wherever they are on this planet we share;
we confess a deep ambivalence—we feel sympathy *and* horror, a desire to help and a fear that we would be overwhelmed; sometimes, we feel guilty that we have comparatively so much while others struggle for so little;
all too often, we deny or ignore the extent of others’ suffering, not from lack of compassion but because acknowledging it threatens our own sense of well-being; we desire to open our awareness in safe and deepening ways; we are grateful for this congregation, helping us to do this;
we are grateful for the good work of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee;
we desire enough food, and shelter, and peace of mind for all beings today;
we pledge ourselves in pursuit of that goal.
Praise for living.
So may we be.
SERMON
How many of you have ever held in your hand a pet mouse, or gerbil or hamster? How many have seen similar rodents at the zoo? How many of you have seen mice at a zoo living in a large loaf of bread?
I first saw such a thing at the St. Louis zoo; and the San Diego zoo has a similar exhibit, now. One day each week, the little creatures get a brand new loaf, with a tiny door already started; and they spend the rest of the week gnawing and tunneling and sleeping in their carbohydrate palace.
The mice eat up their own home, week after week. Anybody see a parallel between the mice and what we humans are doing to our own planet? I do, too. Of course, the mice get a new loaf each week; we have only one earth. However, as unsettling as that is, there is an even scarier scenario involving the living conditions of mice and humans.
In the late 1960’s, ecologist and psychologist John B. Calhoun created a “mouse universe”—a nine-foot-square habitat with four-foot-high walls. Inside the mouse universe were nesting boxes, containers of food, and water dispensers.
Calhoun began with four pair of mice. The mice were quite happy at first, and their population doubled every 55 days. However, they eventually became overcrowded, at which point their social order began to suffer.
After a little more than ten months, the population reached its peak of 620 mice. At that point, the stresses of overpopulation caused many different breakdowns in social structure and normal social behavior. Many of the mice became hyper-aggressive, attacking other mice, often for no apparent reason. Most of the mice stopped breeding, and many of those who did breed did not care for their young appropriately, kicking the babies out of the nest well before they were weaned. Infant cannibalism increased, and acts of sexual aggression occurred frequently. The mice began to die off at a higher rate. By about twenty months, the social order had completely broken down. The population plummeted. Females ceased to reproduce at all; many males withdrew and had nothing to do with any other mice.
Calhoun concluded that when all available space is taken, and all the usual social roles are filled, then competition and stress overwhelms individual animals and collapses the social order, ultimately resulting in the death of the whole population.
Anybody see a parallel between *that* experiment and what is happening in our world? If so, you are not alone. Many scientists and theologians have taken Calhoun’s experiments to heart. It does seem pretty evident that our world is becoming overcrowded, and that traditional social structures are being challenged, if not outright abandoned.
Now, we do not fully understand the phenomenon in mice, much less the intricacies of our human experience, but the cautionary message seems clear: overcrowding and excessive competition can lead to significant, even fatal, social problems.
It reminds me of a bumpersticker I saw once: “where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?”
Now, the good news is that humans are not mice. We may well be subject to some of the same pressures and constraints, but we are also more creative, more self-aware and more altruistic than most mice.
For thousands and thousands of years, ordinary human beings have been oppressed and taken advantage of. As serfs, peons, slaves, peasants, untouchables, outcasts and marginalized workers of all kinds, our human cousins have been sold, marched, starved, abused, overworked and parted from their families. Yet through it all, we have persevered, adapted, fallen in love and even occasionally managed to express kindness and generosity to strangers.
Even in some horrific circumstances, some prisoners console each other by tapping on walls, some people in death camps share scraps of food, and some oppressed laborers sing songs of support and celebration.
As Adrienne Rich wrote, “my heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed [and still] I…cast my lot with those who, age after age, …with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.”
Throughout history, over and over again, when our human societies have faced crisis, we have risen to the occasion. We have reconstituted our world in ways that are slightly more just, slightly more inclusive, with a slightly higher standard of living for most of our fellow citizens.
Look around the room, this morning. Virtually all of us have suffered. Without betraying any confidences, *many* of us are struggling—with health issues, family issues, financial challenges, employment concerns and many other forms of stress. And still, we are here this morning, seeking goodness, trying to make sense of it all, looking to give and receive assistance as we evolve into better human beings and co-create a better society.
We may be confused; we are sorrowful and anxious and angry, and at least a few of us are numb, but we are not mice. We are reaching out, not to attack our fellows, but to help in the universal struggle to survive and co-create a world of peace and justice.
Furthermore, in another un-mouse-like way, we form groups, organizations that increase our power and our reach to better help our fellow beings.
There are many such groups; one of my very favorites is the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, or UUSC. Originally the Unitarian Service Committee, created before the consolidation, it was formed to deliver aid in World War II, and helped many Jews to escape from the Nazis.
Nowadays the UUSC works in many countries around the globe, always partnering with existing groups to help the most marginalized of our human cousins. The UUSC does not just show up and tell the local population how they are going to “help” them; the UUSC works to find partners who are already trusted by the people in the community, partners who understand the customs and needs of their people, partners who have connections to get things accomplished.
The UUSC is an independent organization; it is *not* part of our Unitarian Universalist Association. They have different governance structures and separate budgets. The UUA and the UUSC *do* often work together, but they do so as equals. Paraphrasing Robert R. Walsh, the UUSC and the UUA are distinct strands of love bending and stretching to gather our suffering neighbors into the web of life which is often torn and always healing.
One of the places where the UUSC has been working is the country of Haiti. After the earthquake of January 12th, 2010, hundreds of thousands of Haitians died and over a million were left homeless. Many of those whose homes were destroyed fled to the Central Plateau, to escape the destruction of the city.
Unfortunately, there are now over a thousand informal settlements, with as many as ten thousand people per settlement. After the quake, there were a couple hospitals, almost no schools and few distribution networks for food or clean water or medicine. Now, thanks to the UUSC and others, some progress has been made.
About a month after the earthquake, a UUSC employee, Martha Thompson, went to Haiti. She wrote about doctors in a make-shift hospital who needed beds for the never-ending stream of new patients, but who found it excruciatingly difficult to kick out the existing patients, many of whom had amputated legs.
Thompson also wrote about many families who took in friends and strangers to care for them as best they could. She wrote about a small building which was housing 25 people. Haitian farmers were already having a difficult time raising crops on the dry hillsides; after the quake, there were thousands more mouths to feed.
The Papaye Peasant Movement was already a trusted organization before the quake. In its aftermath, the Papaye Peasant Movement, or MPP, provided food, water, shelter and medical supplies. It also created temporary employment opportunities, to help struggling families earn a living. The MPP started community service projects like finding potable water sources and soil conservation. The original project employed over 1200 people, and was immediately taken up and multiplied by another agency. The MPP “Road to Life” Yard program taught farmers to create small gardens in truck tires—each garden would help to feed a family and provide some extra produce to sell.
The MPP is exactly the kind of partner that the UUSC likes to work with—trusted, competent, and creative. The UUSC has joined the MPP, contributing money and volunteers to assist in its good work.
In Martha Thompson’s story, she recounted the tale told by one displaced man, whom she met at an MPP training center. The man, who had escaped the destruction in Port-au-Prince to come to the Central Plateau, was reminiscing about a friend back in the city: “He went to mechanic school with me,” he said, “We worked together, every day we had lunch together. His wife would cook for us; his older daughter would sometimes wash my overalls if my wife was sick. Their house fell down and my friend’s wife died; they never could get [her] body out of the house. I think about my friend all the time, and when I think about him, I want to cry.” The man paused, with tears in his eyes, then gathered himself to continue, “Now he is living in the street with eight children; he is sleeping on the ground. I cannot stop thinking about him.”
That is the kind of story that workers with the MPP—and the UUSC—hear every day, in Haiti.
In addition to the MPP, the UUSC has partnered with organizations such as the Trauma Resource Institute, Konbit Fanm Saj, and Beyond Borders, among others.
The Trauma Resource Institute teaches aid workers, social workers, community leaders and earthquake survivors themselves about biological responses to trauma, and how to positively manage those responses.
Konbit Fanm Saj works with women street vendors in and around Port-au-Prince, helping them to find the money, training and support to recover their livelihoods.
Beyond Borders built a child-protection network in many of the camps of displaced persons, helping to prevent the trafficking of children into slavery.
Partnering with local organizations like these is one half of the UUSC’s unique approach. The other half is their commitment to helping the most marginalized of our human cousins.
On the UUSC website, the Service Committee writes, “In disasters and wars, people are not all affected in the same way. Their race, gender, class, religion, political beliefs, ethnicity, and immigration status all deeply influence how they will access the aid provided and whether they will be able to rebuild their lives…
International humanitarian law establishes that all people affected by humanitarian crises have an equal right to aid and assistance with dignity. Our experience at the grassroots [level] with the tsunami [in the Indian Ocean], Hurricane Katrina, and the earthquake in Pakistan have taught us that this right is one of the first casualties of a crisis.
Dalits (formerly [known as] untouchables) in India were thrown out of relief camps after the tsunami, just as undocumented workers[who some people refer to as ‘illegal aliens’] were thrown out of shelters in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina.
People who are marginalized within a society before an earthquake hits or a war begins will find themselves even further down the ladder after the crisis. The axis of inequality withstands both natural and man-made emergencies.
The [UUSC’s] Rights in Humanitarian Crises unit works to defend the rights of marginalized groups to relief assistance, participation in reconstruction, and full recovery. …We seek to support those people who continue to struggle against the structural inequalities rooted in their societies and exacerbated by emergencies.
The Rights in Humanitarian Crises unit runs both a short-term emergency program that responds to natural disasters …and a long-term program that focuses on the vulnerable populations in intractable conflicts and complex humanitarian emergencies.
Based on our accumulated experience and our analysis in each context, we work on: Strengthening women’s and girls’ ability to protect themselves from violence…; Ensuring equal access to relief and recovery…, irrespective of race, class, and gender; Extending aid to marginalized people during crises;[and] Supporting vulnerable groups during war.”
The UUSC talks about strengthening women’s and girls’ ability to protect themselves: nowhere is this more relevant than the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Since 2003, a civil war has been fought between two groups with complex sets of racial, religious and class identities. The Sudanese government publicly denies that it is funding one side of the combatants; however, it is widely known that the government *is* using its oil revenues to provide weapons and training. As is usually the case, the poor—especially the women—bear the brunt of the crisis.
On uusc.org, you can read stories about women in Darfur. One such story is that of Amara, a 19-year-old woman living in a camp with 30,000 displaced persons. Amara has been caring for her grandmother and her three younger siblings ever since her parents were killed.
A group called Muslim Aid taught Amara how to make baskets to sell, to earn income to supplement the ration cards her family receives for food distribution. Because the previous week’s food trucks were hijacked, Amara’s family was hungry, so she was eager to finish the large basket she was making, which she hoped to sell for as much as 200 dinars – about one US dollar.
Amara needed some grasses to finish her basket, so she hoped to go with a firewood patrol to pick the grasses. It is dangerous for women to leave the camp by themselves, so some organizations provide male guards. Unfortunately, there were no firewood patrols scheduled that day. Amara could not bear to see her family so hungry, so she and two other women, in similar situations, decided to leave the camp. They hoped there would be safety in numbers.
There was not. While they were foraging, a group of armed men appeared and beat and raped all three women. One woman was severely hurt, but the other two helped her back to the camp.
Amara had heard that the medical clinic had medicines to prevent pregnancy. Carefully, so her family would not find out where she was going, Amara went to the clinic. It was very difficult for Amara to tell her story to the male doctor, but she managed to do it. The doctor gave her the medicine but he also lectured her and told her it was her fault for leaving the camp without male escorts.
I need to say something, here. It is *never* the fault of the person who is raped. Once someone says “no,” then it is no longer lovemaking, it is not even sex. It is rape, and it is not the fault of the person raped. It is the rapist’s fault.
If we go by statistics, several of us in this room—both female and male—have been raped. I want to lift up two truths about rape: it is a horrible thing to experience and we *can* survive it. For some of us, it may take a long time, and lots of help, to heal; others can recover more quickly. Virtually all of us can eventually live as strong, proud, happy people. The same is true for our cousins in Darfur.
The UUSC works with local organizations to provide guards and escorts for the firewood patrols; and it helps to provide medical care and supplies.
The UUSC also helps to address underlying issues. It helped arrange for Imam Mohammad Magid to provide training in Darfur for thirty local Muslim religious leaders, using Islamic texts to help empower women and support women’s equality.
Please support the good work of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. Become a member of UUSC, or just donate to them. If you wish, you can specify in which part of the world you’d like your money spent.
If you do donate, I invite you to do so in a way you notice it. Instead of just sending a check, find a way to deduct that money from your living. Instead of going to Blu Moon some night, go to Taco Bell instead, and explicitly dedicate the money saved to the people you’ve helped. Instead of a new movie, rent one from the library and make your own popcorn. Making a small sacrifice like this helps to make your gift feel more meaningful in your own life. That way, it is a win-win.
So may we be.
BENEDICTION
We talked about some difficult issues today. If any of this has brought up something in your heart, and you want to talk to me, please find me at coffee hour, or call or email me later. You do not have to do this alone.
The web of life is often torn, but always healing. We can be part of that healing.
So may we be.
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