Is Hope Enough?

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© Rev. Kathleen Ellis,

 Minister of Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church

 January 4, 2009

 First UU Church of Austin

 4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

 www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

Readings

Excerpt adapted from Disturbing the Peace

by Vaclav Havel, translated by Paul Wilson

The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul; it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. Hope is… the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Hope

by Emily Dickenson

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune – without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

Origami Emotion

by Elizabeth Barrette

Hope is

folding paper cranes

even when your hands get cramped

and your eyes tired,

working past blisters and

paper cuts,

simply because something in you

insists on

opening its wings.

Prayer

O Spirit, fill our lives this morning.

Let love enter our hearts as we think of our beloved family members, trusted friends, and mentors. We know that some of our loved ones have been wounded or fallen ill. We pray for their health and wholeness. We are filled with compassion even for strangers: the homeless, hungry, and hopeless. Let this compassion serve to open our hearts even more.

May we feel the full range of emotions – the inspirational beauty of nature; the surprising joy of unexpected generosity; even the depth of sorrow that washes over us as members of the human race.

Let us extend our compassion to the people of the world, thinking especially of the Israelis and the Palestinians who have not yet found their way to peace; thinking of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and our own citizens who labor to achieve stability; thinking of the people of Darfur to whom our youth decorated and sent a large tent to house a classroom; thinking of people across our own land of plenty who lack basic necessities.

We are blessed to have one another. We are astonished to witness an historic inauguration in this new year. We are filled with hope that we, together, can do the work that needs to be done – here and throughout the world. Let us enter the Silence…

SERMON: Is Hope Enough? What Else, Then?

“Playing for Change” is a video circulating on YouTube and, of course, on its own website, playingforchange.com. It was the brainchild of Mark Johnson, who lives in Santa Monica. He got the idea ten years ago in a New York subway where he saw a huge crowd that surrounded two Buddhist monks in robes who were singing in a language probably no one understood. Yet two hundred people stood there listening, missing their trains, and even tearing up. Instead of rushing to work as isolated individuals, they were held in a rare sense of community. Mark could see with his own eyes what he already knew: Music brings people together. Music touches something within us that goes beyond words.

Mark Johnson said, “I traveled around the world and discovered that music opens the door to a place where we can come together as a human race. It is my belief that we can celebrate our differences and still connect our hearts. One Love.”

His first video is in production now. It took three years of traveling in four continents to record over one hundred musicians and edit the results into a unified product. You’ll see a choir in South Africa backing up a New Orleans guitarist and a Russian cellist, with a saxaphone riff from Italy. In an interview, Bill Moyers asked him if people ever told him he was being naive. Mark said, “Well, naive is thinking we have any other choice… Let’s make a difference together.”

When Mark was recording musicians in South Africa, he asked what they needed in return. They wanted a place to teach music to young people and give them a chance to perform and learn the technology Mark was using. He started raising money and will soon be selling CDs and videos to support Playing for Change. They built the concrete block Ntonga Music School in Guguletu, South Africa: a place of poverty, HIV and AIDS just outside of Capetown. Guguletu is a place in dire need of assistance, inspiration, and hope for its youth and young adults. The school will be equipped with cameras and recording equipment as well as computers so young people can share their music with the world and receive inspiration in return.

Playing for Change is also working to rebuild and enhance the Tibetan refugee centers in India and Nepal, and to support a writing school in Johannesburg, South Africa. It may be naive, but these musicians and their fans are making a difference in this world of ours.

Such positive change makes me forget the country’s problems for a little while: a long-term recession with a rising level of unemployment, bankruptcies, and foreclosures; two long-term wars that will go on for many months to come; global warming and environmental destruction; spiritual malaise. We can’t just go shopping anymore to resolve all this, and we don’t have the extra money! And though we have elected the presidential candidate who ran on Hope, we can’t expect him to save us by himself.

There has been a great shift from the patriotic fervor after the 9/11 attacks when American flags began flying everywhere. At a border crossing from Canada into the United States there was a billboard of an American flag with the image of shopping bag handles at the top. We were to thwart terrorism through shopping. This year we were horrified after Thanksgiving to learn that a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death in the rush to shop for bargains. Customers continued to shop even after employees tried to close the store out of respect for a hideous event. The guy who died probably made minimum wage as a temporary, seasonal worker. Our wallets feel thin; tips are down for waitstaff; bargains prices just make us wait for even deeper discounts; and some of us have lost jobs, lost our sense of security.

“Do we really need more stuff?” Leonard Pitts asked in a recent column. We’re learning that we probably have enough stuff. It’s time to save our spirits through understanding that there is enough to go around. Enough material goods, enough money, enough food, enough love. It’s time to change the dream and change the world by using hope as inspiration for action.

In exploring the idea of hope, I dipped into Barack Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope ; the words and wisdom of Cornel West’s Hope on a Tightrope ; and Paul Loeb’s collection of essays he entitled The Impossible Will Take a Little While: a citizen’s guide to hope in a time of fear.

I, for one, hope that my faith and values can make a positive difference, yet it seems they often clash with opposing values. Obama writes, “We think of faith as a source of comfort and understanding but find our expressions of faith sowing division; we believe ourselves to be a tolerant people even as racial, religious, and cultural tensions roil the landscape. And instead of resolving these tensions or mediating these conflicts, our politics fans them, exploits them, and drives us further apart” (p. 29).

Later he points out that in the 60s, the status quo was overturned. Along with civil rights for citizens of African descent, other groups came streaming through the gates: “feminists, Latinos, hippies, Panthers, welfare moms, gays,” all of whom wanted a place at the table of democracy (p. 34).

Unitarian Universalists have worked to hold the gates open among the early adopters of this kind of diversity. Along with a diversity of politics came a diversity of spirituality that has strongly influenced society at large: Buddhists show us the benefits of mindfulness; Muslims inspire us by their prayer life; Earth centered religions celebrate the cycles of life; Jews emphasize forgiveness and atonement; Christians teach love of God and love of neighbor; and all of us try to put the best of these into our own lives. Austin Area Interreligious Ministries works to bridge gaps among faith groups. This very congregation is a microcosm of diversity in spirituality.

On the other hand, we are sometimes less willing to appreciate political views that differ from our own. Obama met tolerant evangelicals, spiritual humanists, rich people who want poor people to succeed, and poor people who hold high standards for themselves (p. 63). Obama suggests that liberals should acknowledge that hunters feel about guns the same way that liberals feel about library books; conservatives should recognize that most women feel as protective of reproductive freedom as evangelicals feel about their right to worship (p. 70).

All of us have values that are worthy of respect. Values move us to action. Shared values should shape politics, not the other way around. Standing up for your beliefs is a way to plant seeds of the possible. More difficult, but still possible is to understand other points of view so that multiple sides can be satisfied with a win/win. Getting down to the level of common values makes a huge difference in resolving incompatible opinions or strategies.

I remember working in a shelter for battered women. Our core value – our hope – was that all people deserve to live in safety – physical, emotional, and spiritual. Shelter residents needed skills for assuring safety at home for themselves and their children. They needed parenting skills like effective discipline without hitting. Sometimes the women would go back to their abusers, believing their promises or seeing no other options. Even when that happened, we knew that the women had seen a different way to live and they did have new skills. They knew where to find shelter for themselves and their children. We had planted seeds of hope for a better day. Sometimes they did have to come back for shelter, but they seemed stronger and more self-confident.

We don’t have to be famous like Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa to make a difference. One anonymous protester held a placard opposing nuclear weapons. He stood day after day outside the entrance to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, about 50 miles east of San Francisco. One senior official there told of the impact of passing that solitary individual on a daily basis. That lone protester played a significant role in the official’s eventual decision to resign his job even though the two of them had never met.

Cornel West says it’s the ordinary people just like us who can change the world. Tavis Smiley asked him, “Who you gonna call? Ghost Busters?” They laughed, then Dr. West said,

“You’re going to call on the people, you’re going to call on everyday people, you’re going to call on ordinary people. They must shatter their sleepwalking; they must become awake, they must shake the complacency and the conformity and the cowardice and become maladjusted to injustice, give up being well adjusted to injustice, cut against the grain, and stand tall, organize, mobilize, for public interests and common good. In a democracy if you can’t call on the people, then the people lose the democracy and in the end, the democracy, so fragile, so precious, is lost, and the people find themselves run by tyrants.”

Sonya Vetra Tinsley is an African American singer, songwriter, and activist in Atlanta. She knows there are plenty of reasons to give in to cynicism and defeat. She also sees another group of people who work for change even if they don’t know how things will turn out – people like Martin Luther King, Alice Walker, Howard Zinn. And she says,

“There are times when both teams seem right [the cynics and the change agents]. Both have evidence. We’ll never know who’s really going to prevail. So I just have to decide which team seems happier, which side I’d rather be on. And for me that means choosing on the side of faith. Because on the side of cynicism, even if they’re right, who wants to win that argument anyway. If I’m going to stick with somebody, I’d rather stick with people who have a sense of possibility and hope. I just know that’s the side I want to be on.”

I want to stand on that side, too. Hope grows when we take even a small step, a solitary stand, a community affirmation based on rightness, value, and truth to heal our world or to heal and strengthen a congregation. Though I don’t know all of your names, I know you have dozens of members who are making great efforts to carry out the mission and vision of this great congregation. You have faithful witnesses who invite others to join them but continue to do the work with or without additional help. There is no doubt in my mind that there is plenty of work to go around! Even a thank you once in a while keeps the wheels turning.

I’ll leave you with story that’s been passed down from one minister’s sermon to another. One route was from Art Severance to Bruce Southworth to Anita Farber-Robinson to me. No doubt it has taken on a life of its own in multiple other directions. It’s a story about New College, at Oxford University in England. It is, as far as we know, a true story, told by the late Gregory Bateson, a renowned anthropologist and husband of Margaret Mead.

New College was founded in the late 16th century, when its physical structure was built. The College was designed according to the style of the times with a great dining hall that had huge carved oak beams across the ceiling. Apparently a survey was done of the condition of the property and it was discovered that these great, carved beams were infested with carpenter beetles, so seriously compromised that the building itself was in danger.

The report was transmitted to the College Council whose members were very much dismayed. Where could they ever get oak of that caliber today to replace those great old beams? One of the Junior Fellows took the risk of making a suggestions- there might be some oak growing on the college lands of which there was considerable acreage which had accrued through years of bequests.

The Council called the College Forester in from his work in the country and asked him about the oak. “He pulled off his cap and scratched his head and said, “Well sirs, we were wondering when you’d be asking.”

Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the college was founded, a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the great hall when they became beetle-y in the end. This contingency plan, he told them, has been passed on from Chief Forester to Chief Forester, generation to generation, for over four hundred years.

That’s the end of the story, but not the end of the lesson. To plant even one tree is an act of faith and hope. You as a congregation will be planting trees and seeds of hope for your future. Thanks to previous generations, your roots run deep and your branches reach out across the City of Austin. Some of you will prepare the soil for new trees; others will plant; still others will water. Generations will come after you to enjoy the shade and the fruits of your labors, but there will be still other trees for them to plant. Countless individuals whom you do not yet know are seeking what you have to offer – hope in a hurting world. Let there be more love, hope, peace, and joy among you as you move into this new year.

So plant trees or take a stand or dream a new dream – and turn challenge into opportunity. Tell me, what else should we do other than bring hope to life?

Amen