Any Port in a Storm

September 3, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming we’re all dropping anchor now as we settle into our church berths. We are all creatures of habit and most of us have found the spot to tie up to during the service. We are afraid of change in a world where the only constant is change. So we make habit our cloak of familiarity.

We put on the habit of coming to church and sitting where we sit. The God of your choice forbid that someone else should be sitting in your pew in exactly your place. Who do these people think they are!” We can be forgiven our propensity to resist the inevitable, and yet, we need to know that there is constancy in this covenant to which we belong.

We have in essence all agreed to disagree and there lies the rub. Not willing to give up our quirky beliefs, we’re hesitant to ask others exactly what they believe. It’s not that we don’t want them to believe what they believe it’s more that we fear that their belief support system may be more user friendly than ours. Then, what would we do? We might have to change. We might have to compromise.

In these stormy times we find ourselves in a congregation that allows us to be ourselves, but to truly be ourselves we must reveal who we are. This is a risk. We may reveal who we are and then be sorry we hadn’t kept quiet. For we all know that great maxim, it is better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought stupid, then to open one’s mouth and erase all doubts.

Today, it is my prayer, and my hope that anchored here in this congregation, floating comfortably in our own little berths, we might open up and reveal to the battleship next to us that we are possibly nothing but a sampan, or a pleasure vessel. First it would behoove us to look beyond the exteriors of those drifting near us, and in a moment of fellowship ask permission to come aboard. We may find that the fierceness we see in others is but a projection of our own fears and insecurities.

And now let us take a moment to get into gratitude about First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin. Yes, there are things about this church that are not perfect, there are people here who annoy us, there are situations that we find untenable, and why can’t the church see that if things were only run the way we’d like them things would be perfect. In spite of all that we are here – now, and now – here we have this fellowship – this ship of fools – and letting down our guard and turning off our security systems let us relax into appreciation. Shaking off the images that our dislike of change has cemented into our heads, let us see anew this wondrous place.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

We were never meant to survive

“Il n’ya pas de soleil sans ombre, et il faut connaitre la nuit.”

There is no sun without shadow and it is necessary to know the night.

A. Camus

It is hard to say if this sermon had any effect on our townsfolk. M. Othon, the magistrate, assured Dr. Rieux that he had found the preacher’s arguments “absolutely irrefutable.” But not everybody took so unqualified a view. To some the sermon simply brought home the fact that they had been sentenced, for an unknown crime, to an indeterminate period of punishment. And while a good many people adapted themselves to confinement and carried on their humdrum lives as before, there were others who rebelled and whose one idea now was to break loose from the prison-house.

–from The Plague

Stream of consciousness here – I’m thinking about what it’s like being a harbormaster and the port being 1st UU. A harbor master is there to show the way – the way to their berths. No two ships are alike. We come from different places, we know different things, and we carry different cargos. Our ports of origin are sometimes kept secret. Some of us sail under false colors. Others have received direct hits amidships, and wear our battle scars proudly.

I’m thinking of Camus and The Plague – the novel. It was an allegory for living under the heel of Nazi oppression. How will we fare under the oppression ahead – how are we fairing now?

The night that we must know has come about because the sun that rose in the Enlightenment began to set after the defeat of the Axis Powers. To defeat Hitler we must become like him. This truth first uttered by the Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton, is coming home to roost in our lifetime. What will we do? Can enough of us escape this time, to a land where corporatism – another word for fascism – will not reach out and tap us on the shoulder? Will there really be a national identity card,” Show me your papers!” just when nations are consciously fading into the background.

There are those who believe that the world banks have been ruling for nearly a hundred years. Buckminster Fuller talked about this in Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth – he said the Great Pirates ruled, that they had always ruled. As men and women fall to battlefield deaths, the rich – on both sides – watch the stock reports, and count their money.

Albert Camus was part of the resistance in France during the Second World War. He lived in Paris and wrote for the Underground newspaper, COMBAT. On the night of the liberation of Paris, Camus was there among the whistling bullets overhead, and the intoxication of a city that for four years squirmed under Nazi occupation. In a short essay entitled “The Night of Truth,” Camus writes, “nothing is given men, and the little they can conquer is paid for with unjust deaths. But man’s greatness lies elsewhere. It lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition.”

Now, this from Camus’ essay – The Myth of Sisyphus:

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth.

Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. As for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it, and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands.

At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.

It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.

If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd.

But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy arises in man’s heart: this is the rock’s victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged.

At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Albert Camus

It’s one thing to imagine Sisyphus happy, but it is imperative to ask one important question.

What does justice look like from inside fascism? How can a person stay and be just within an unjust system? The answer lies in the harbor and ports that we can find berth in, places that allow us to tie up, refuel and prepare to set sail again. These worship services are our Sisyphean moments, time to contemplate our fates, time to amble out in the morning air, and look beyond the trees to the hills and the beauty of this earth.

My father had thirteen months of a Sisyphean adventure when he was guest of the German government. They put my father behind bars because he had flown over their cities and ports in a Boeing model 17 – a B-17- and dropped bombs on them.

At the end of that Prisoner of War adventure the Russians showed up at Stalage Luft 1, Barth, Germany. The guards had left the night before fearing the Great Russian Bear. My father ran along side a Russian tank shouting, “Trinkvaser, Trinkvaser,” Water, Water! The Russian tank commander was smiling broadly when he handed my father, a bottle of clear liquid, that he upturned and drank nearly half way down before realizing he was chug-a-lugging straight Vodka! In Paris he and a friend from the camp had partied, till my Dad, thinking he was the Lone Ranger, jumped a horse used to pull a Taxi and rode it off into the night.

That was the last thing my father remembered before he awakened in a four-poster bed in the middle of a brightly lit room. The sun was streaming down through the skylight, and he was lying on clean sheets. Would wonders never cease? Then the door across the room opened. There stood a beautiful French woman. She was naked and carrying two glasses of orange juice. Do you have any idea how long it had been since he’d seen orange juice?!

In the movie, Good Will Hunting, the character of the psychiatrist, played by Robin Williams, is assailed by Matt Damon’s character, who pointing at a painting of a small craft headed into harbor, says, “Any Port in a Storm,” Is that why you married your wife, doc, was she just a safe place to park your vessel, while the scary world went by?” Robin Williams’ character gets angry, and we think that there’s probably some truth to this accusation, but who really cares? Who among us has not detoured into relationship, and been fine with that?

We’ve all been to other churches, other places of worship where it wasn’t okay to doubt, or fear, or have an opinion different from the senior pastor, but that’s not what we’re about, and more pointedly, that’s why we’re here because we can and do have different opinions. We fled the slave mentality of the dominant culture and echo the Camusian line, “Liberty alone draws men from their isolation; but slavery dominates a crowd of solitude.”

(A. Camus, Create Dangerously, Resistance, Rebellion & Death)

In studies done on tortured populations, it has been shown that those who get tortured don’t talk about their torture. There’s a reason for that. Those who torture tell their victims, if you talk, we’ll torture you again! Torture is negative communion, negative community. When fascism and dictatorship take over, the idea is to push a wedge between all of us, make all seem suspect to all. Homeland Security has a number that you can call to report suspicious behavior! Is anyone listening to this?!

I recently saw a film – a documentary entitled, From Freedom to Fascism. After the film I was sure of one thing. I was going to look mostly in Canada when it came time for doing my national search for a permanent position within UU Ministry. I didn’t want to end up like Bonhoeffer, lynched in the last minutes of a fascist regime, to satisfy no one but the hangman himself.

When Martin Luther broke from the Catholic Church, he did more than say that we were justified by faith alone. He said that it was necessary to fill all positions in government, and to realize that to disobey civil authority is the same as disobeying God. With this logic he recommends waging war and doing the killing dispassionately as if you were the instrument of God, to be the hangman if one is needed, because it is God that’s doing the hanging.

In a 20th Century rebuttal to Luther, Karl Barth said that it was this subservience to authority that made it impossible for the German people to rise up against Hitler.

I don’t like feeling trapped. I don’t think any living thing likes feeling trapped.

Back when I was writing a play about a slaughterhouse I called the Dallas Packing Company and was invited on a tour of their largest plant along the Trinity River.

Lines of cows waited to be let into a chute where a large man held a pneumatic gun. That gun forced a ten-inch nail into the brains of the awaiting cows. There was room for two cows in the chute. Both cows were oblivious to what was going on until the first one was felled. It was the reaction of the second cow that interests me. The second cow knew immediately that legs do not voluntarily collapse beneath cows. Oh how that second cow struggled to keep the pneumatic gun from its forehead!

When they do come for us, and I am assuming that they will. They will come for us to have national identity cards, they will come for us to mark our money and destroy the liberty of cash, they will come for us to implant chips into our bodies that will track us wherever we go. And if we go where they tell us we should not go, they will come for us a final time.

It’s interesting to remember that it was the artists that the Nazi’s took away first. They had discovered an amazing fact. Left to nothing but the artist’s life – the artist fulfills the position of the one in society who holds up for us all the banner that reads, “Live free or die.” Every great work of art lifts up for our admiration the human spirit that will not, cannot be dominated. Why do you suppose those with money and power think that they can keep this spirit under taps? Great art has always spoken for spirit and great art always will. If we think we’re safe in a place like Austin, we’re crazy. This is one of the first places they will shake down. Art is dangerous to tyranny – why do you think it is so poorly subsidized by this government?

But still I say this is a time to rejoice. Yes, rejoice. For those of us who are creative, and that’s what UU’s are – creative! For those of us who are creative, doubt authority and trust our own gut feelings, these will be unforgettable times. We will literally be torn from our daydreams, awakened in the light of day, we will be faced with a choice, become a public enemy of the dominant culture, or assume the fetal position.

During the Civil War many soldiers retreated by walking backwards. Yes, turning and running would have expedited their exit, but being shot in the back has a ring to it that can be read in two ways – betrayer, or betrayed.

I will search all over this country when it comes time for my national search. I will take the job that seems right no matter what side of the Canadian border it lies on. I will protest national identity cards, I will protest the death of the fluidity of cash, I will not, repeat not, allow myself to be injected with a homing devise like some rat in a maze.

There’s a pictorial story that circulated recently on the Internet. It concerns a baby hippopotamus and a hundred year old tortoise. I know, it sounds like an Aesop’s fable, but when the tsunami hit the Kenyan coast it washed this year old baby hippo and its mother out to sea. The continuing waves following the tsunami brought the baby hippo back to the land. The mother hippo was lost. When the baby hippo was washed ashore it landed on this hundred-year-old tortoise.

Well, you can imagine what happened. The baby hippo imprinted on the tortoise, as far as the baby hippo was concerned the tsunami washed its mother out as a hippo and washed it back in as a hundred year old tortoise. Now, think about it. This is a baby mammal and an adult reptile. Something given live birth a year ago as opposed to something that one hundred years ago, in 1906, was hatched from an egg. I think I will do as the Chinese suggest and let these pictures do the next few thousand words.

“This is a real story that shows that our differences don’t matter much when we need the comfort of another. We could all learn a lesson from these two creatures of God. Look beyond the differences and find a way to walk the path together.”

Finally, I have this caveat women leaving battered women’s shelters and returning to their husbands are not practicing “any port in a storm.” Rather they are sailing back into the storm. For a conscious person a port must be a place of relative safety. We are anchored here in this church and it is a safe port. When the clouds have cleared and the sun of freedom shines once again, we will gather here to rejoice that we kept the faith and weathered the storm together.