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Davidson Loehr

Jonobie Ford, Worship Associate

12 June 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Jonobie Ford

People have used the phrase “priesthood of all believers” to represent several different ideas. Martin Luther originally used it to express the idea that the common people were as close to God as the priests were. How is it used today? I went to the true source of knowledge, Google, and found many internet explanations, almost all firmly in one of two camps: Unitarian Universalist sites say there is no chosen class of people to tell us what to believe, but that we can believe whatever we we want. Christian sites disagree on the details, but they do agree on one thing: People can’t just “believe whatever they want”!

I originally heard the phrase “priesthood of all believers” in my exploration of modern Pagan religion, where many use it to mean that anyone can perform the rituals necessary to communicate with their Gods. Even before I ever heard the phrase, the word “priesthood” was a positive one for me. I’ve always thought of priests as a very special sort of people, ones who are confident and wise in their faith, live their faith fully, and spend much of their lives in service to others. The idea of all believers being called to be priests appealed to me, because it meant I was expected to be all of those things — confident and wise in my faith, living it fully, and spending time in service to others. The importance of having a priesthood of all believers isn’t about what we can or can’t believe, but about living our lives with these priestly attributes.

In thinking about incorporating those attributes into my life, I realized that although I am growing more confident in my faith, and I hope at least some of the time I am wise, I am definitely lagging behind in service to others. It’s not that I haven’t given my money to charities that serve others, but that I’ve never given my time. And I think without giving time there are many people’s stories I want to hear and need to hear that I haven’t heard yet.

In my life, I’ve been successful partly because I have such a strong network of friends. When one of us is having problems, we give each other advice and support. Now we’re trying to give that same suppport to others who need it. Several of us recently committed to a year-long volunteer effort through an organization called Family Pathfinders. We are paired with a single mother on public assistance. She is in her early 20s, has two kids, and is without a car. Without a car, even the smallest things like getting the kids to school or daycare can be surprisingly difficult. Our job is to help her and her family become self-sufficient by using our communal knowledge and networks; to give them the advice and support we give each other. This past Thursday, we met them for the first time, and I think all of us are excited and nervous about the coming year.

Even though the phrase is quite old, I wanted to tell you a recent story about my part in the priesthood of all believers. So far I have only a beginning, but I’m looking forward to the year ahead. I’m looking forward to learning new stories, and I’m looking forward to continuing my path among the priesthood.

PRAYER:

We daily pray, and daily fear that for which we daily pray.

We daily pray that we will finally be called by our true name, recognized for our best qualities rather than the other ones. For the world seldom acknowledges us as much more than a little piece in a puzzle we are to serve but not question.

That’s what keeps the majority serving the minority – people who are convinced they are powerless, serving those who have convinced them they alone are right.

It may be demeaning and disempowering, but it is also so common it seems to be the way of the world.

And so we daily pray that something in the wind will call us by our true name – as children of God, the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. And we daily fear that it might happen, and that we will then feel compelled to act as though our highest name were also our highest calling, calling us to action.

Let us welcome the prayer, but not the fear.

Amen.

SERMON: The Priesthood of All Believers

I attended a Sierra Club benefit Wednesday night down in the warehouse district, at Antone’s. Arlo Guthrie was there, looking a whole lot older than I remembered him from 35 years ago, and his daughter was performing with her band. She told a story about Arlo that has stuck with me, as I was focusing on this sermon topic.

Arlo’s one big hit was the recording of “Alice’s Restaurant.” Later, he bought a church in the town where Alice’s Restaurant was. He was sweeping the floor, when a minister from town came in. He asked what Arlo was doing there, and Arlo said “Sweeping the floor.” The minister was upset by the idea that he had bought the church, and said “What kind of a church is this?” Arlo hadn’t been prepared for that question, so he answered “It’s a bring-your-own-God church!”

That sounds kind of irreverent, but the truth is, every person brings their own gods with them, to church and wherever else we go. And that includes the priests. If a million people say they believe in God, you can bet that the more you talk to them, the more you’ll realize that they believe in about a million different gods. Many, of course, aren’t worth serving at all. Yet we serve as Shakespeare said we love: not wisely, but too well.

The idea behind Martin Luther’s notion of the priesthood of all believers was that the responsibility to find gods worth serving is the personal responsibility of each of us. The fact that priests wear fancy costumes doesn’t mean they are any closer to God than we are. Luther also defined our gods as whatever it was that we were serving with our lives, which sounds very modern, very psychological and existential.

So the challenge in this god-hunting business is identifying gods worth serving, and then serving those gods, those ideals and centers of value, rather than something less. And I want to say, with Luther, that people shouldn’t put so much trust in churches to provide them with the right gods. What you get in church are other people’s gods. People tend to assume that – perhaps since priests wear dazzling costumes or at least hold the microphone – the gods they are offering will serve you rather than them. And sometimes this is true. But not always. The history of both religion and politics – which have now been married in an unholy union again – shows that those who control the big words and wear the dazzling costumes or travel with aides and attendants too often use their costumes and entourage to dazzle us so we will serve them.

The Protestant Reformation would probably not have happened when it did, had not the pope at the time, Pope Leo X, been one of the worst popes in history. Two quotations have been associated with him. In a letter to his brother, he wrote, “Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it.” The other quote attributed to him is one I first read in graduate school 25 years ago, where he wrote, “It has served us well, this myth of Christ.”

Pope Leo X still stands as a prime example of a high office filled by a person of low character, using the title and a costume to deceive and bilk the masses. He wanted to raise a lot of money to built St. Peter’s in Rome, so he sold what were called “indulgences” to his masses. This meant that, for a fee, they could buy some pre-forgiveness for their many sins, so their punishment in purgatory might be shorter and less horrendous. So it was like an insurance policy: pay now, fly later.

But it was a good racket, because fear works well with disempowered people, and helps to keep them disempowered. So Pope Leo got more creative, and began selling indulgences for their dead relatives. You don’t want your mother or grandmother being tormented beyond belief in purgatory, do you? Well, even though they’re already dead, for a fee you can save them some suffering; it’s the least you can do for them. Didn’t they love you? How can you let them down now that they’re dead and suffering and need you?

This was the practice of “selling indulgences” that angered Martin Luther, and led to the Protestant Reformation and the splitting of Christianity into over a thousand pieces now. Luther’s primary message was that we are “justified by faith, not by works.” This was a 16th century way of saying that God didn’t make junk, including us, and that schemes like the Pope’s to convince us that he knows who is saved and who is damned are the schemes of a charlatan, which we are called to expose.

So the priesthood of all believers is really one of the boldest ideas in history. It says, Don’t be dazzled by costumes and titles because they carry no religious authority at all. None at all. Many who hold those titles and wear those impressive costumes know this, as Pope Leo X did. And they use the gullibility of the masses to mislead them, to rob them, and assign them a second-class status they don’t deserve.

Such false gods are almost always served by those in costumes, official positions and power. Why? Because if you can control a society’s most powerful symbols, you can control the majority of people in the society. If your side can claim to represent God, America, Truth, Justice and Love, you will win every election – even the fair ones.

Pope Leo X provides a religious example of someone in power abusing and betraying both the people and the high ideals he is charged with serving. But it happens at least as often in politics. And three days ago (June 9, 2005) was the anniversary of one of the most dramatic and inspiring examples of an American citizen exposing a political charlatan.

On June 9, 1954, Army counsel Joseph N. Welch confronted Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy during the Senate-Army Hearings. McCarthy had just shot out a cheap personal attack on a young member of Welch’s law firm, Frederick G. Fisher as a way of getting even with Welch for questioning him. It was more than Welch was willing to abide. In one of the most famous and high moral statements in the history of American politics, Welch said, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” The audience broke into spontaneous applause, and that statement by Welch broke the spell of McCarthyism. Months later, the Senate censured McCarthy. With no chance of demanding a presidential nomination, he sank much deeper into his alcoholism, and died of alcohol-related illnesses three years later, at the age of 49.

I saw that confrontation on live television as a 12-year-old boy, and without understanding the full meaning of the proceedings, I knew that Welch was a heroic figure and McCarthy was an evil man.

Senator McCarthy was one of the most powerful and most vicious men in American politics. He had terrorized the country and intimidated other senators for over three years with his self-serving hunt for Communists. It was self-serving rather than patriotic, because he manipulated facts, people, and the media not to serve America, but to draw attention to himself – and, he hoped, to get a presidential nomination. The god he served was a selfish and brutal god that sanctioned any means necessary for him to pursue his own ends.

Do you see that what Joseph Welch did shows the same kind of individual moral authority that Luther had championed as the priesthood of all believers, over four centuries earlier? In both cases, a figure with position and title had betrayed the high calling of his office, degraded high ideals and turned people into things to be used like pawns. And in both cases, a person without any comparable authority or costume exposed them as frauds and charlatans.

Connecting these two stories with current events is almost too easy, isn’t it? But we must try to see the actual standards being practiced in our world contrasted with the highest standards, so that we can find ourselves in this ongoing drama, and wonder if we are called to do anything.

Last Sunday (5 June 2005), with one media-seeking flourish of his pen, Texas governor Rick Perry took a pen and lured a television crew to the Cavalry Christian Academy in Ft. Worth, where he signed a bill prohibiting gays from marrying, and prohibiting Texas from recognizing the marriage of gays in other states. So in one immensely childish and vicious act, Rick Perry and the Cavalry Christian Academy of Ft. Worth christened the new religion of Texas Christianity.

It is so bigoted, so hateful, and so much the antithesis of everything Jesus taught, that it could be called the cult of the anti-Christ. Not only are gays vilified, but Gov. Perry even suggested that gay soldiers returning from Iraq might want to move to another state. Jesus said “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do also to me.” Rick Perry hopes whatever he can get away with doing to the least of these will advance his political career.

Then the next day, the Pope came out against what he called “trivialization of the human body.” Oddly, he did not mean the sexual abuse of children by his church’s priests, but gay marriage between two adults who love each other.

When we look back in history, we have no trouble recognizing Joseph McCarthy and Pope Leo X as men of low character who betrayed the high calling of their office. Let’s not pretend it’s any harder here. Governor Perry behaved like a cheap and sleazy politician, dragging both Christianity and the highest aspirations of Texans down to the gutter because he hopes those who live in the gutter will bring him personal gain.

And Joseph Ratzinger, now known by the title Pope Benedictus XVI, has shown the quality of his low character all his life – from his days as an eager Hitler Youth to his days as an eager Grand Inquisitor. And last Monday he reduced a religion supposedly centered on Jesus to a level so bigoted and hateful he has disgraced every Christian on earth, and all people who believe in goodness, truth and love. The rigid, brutal and top-down style that is Ratzinger’s soul was the same style of the Grand Inquisitor and the same style as Hitler’s fascism.

Both these small men were traitors to any high calling, using their office to serve personal political ambition and a repressive and vicious form of authoritarian religion designed to subjugate people rather than empower them. Where is today’s incarnation of Joseph Welch, to look them both in the eyes and say, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Where are all the citizens who need to rise up and say those words?

The priesthood of all believers says that the common people without titles or dazzling costumes are as close to God as any governor or Pope. This week, we are considerably closer.

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Davidson Loehr

Don Smith, Worship Associate

22 May 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Don Smith

Money, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is (1) a current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes, and (2) property, wealth, possessions, resources, etc. viewed as convertible into coin or banknotes or having value expressible in terms of these.

That definition describes our natural tendency to think of money in terms of what it will purchase, but I’ve come to think more and more about money in terms of what it costs. For most of us, the money we have was obtained through an exchange of our time, talent, energy, and ideas. I think it’s worthwhile to pause and take account of the exchanges we’re making; to be sure that they are fair exchanges, and that they serve us well.

When I was an architecture student living and studying in a small town in France-and being exposed, for the first time, to a totally different culture than my own-I came to an awareness of how hurried life is in our country. I was surprised to see how leisurely life can be, and how rich an experience an unhurried life can be. I remembered the carefree days of my childhood, and I made a promise to myself that I would never allow having things to take precedence over doing things; that I would not put material possessions above free time, and the enjoyment of life. How well have I done? Not so well, I’m afraid. In the end analysis, I’m very much a product of my cultutre. And my culture is one of consumption. I don’t know when, where, or how our culture became what it is, but I struggle against it daily.

I was raised by loving parents who, like most parents, wanted for my sisters and me a better life than they had had. They told us as much. By this they meant that we should have more, and work less. Having grown up on farms in depression-era America, they spent a good deal of their youth working on the farm and having little in the way of material possessions. My sisters and I were not expected to do a lot beyond the chores that we were assigned for the purpose of teaching us to be responsible. My parents didn’t talk to us about money. They didn’t want us to be burdened, as they had been in their childhood, with concerns about money. It was my grandparents who talked to us about money.

Papa Smith, my paternal grandfather, told me that as long as one spends less than one makes all is well. Like Thoreau, he chose to make do with little, allowing himself plenty of time for fishing, playing dominoes, visiting with family and friends, and reading his Bible. He spent a lot of time reading his Bible. I’d be surprised to learn that he had any money when he died.

Daddy Kennemer, my maternal grandfather, told me that if I watched my pennies my dollars would take care of themselves. He watched his pennies very carefully and had a lot of money in the bank when he died, but he didn’t enjoy life very much.

The best advice I got came from Mother Kennemer, my maternal grandmother, who always said that money is a good servant, but a poor master. You should probably write that one down. Money is a good servant, but a poor master.

For me, the daily challenge is trying to strike a balance between having the money needed to do the things I want to do, and living free from worry about money; from being enslaved by a need for money.

I enjoy my work. I have the extreme good fortune to have found a profession that suits my bifarious nature-that involves both science and art, with each informing the other. I’m thankful to be so lucky. But I would almost always be happier sitting with good friends–discussing ideas, laughing, and getting lost in the flow of time–than meeting the demands of schedules and (sometimes unreasonable) clients. On a beautiful day I’d rather be hiking along Barton Creek or working in the garden, than sitting at a desk. I’d rather practice architecture for fun than for money, and I’d wear proudly the title of dilettante if I could make my vocation and avocation one, and thereby claim every moment of my life as my own.

I don’t have children, but if I did I’d want things to be better for them than they have been for me. Just like my parents, I’d want them to work less and have more. More time to enjoy and appreciate the best things life has to offer. More time to relax with friends and family, to discuss ideas, to read great books, to express themselves through art and artful living, and fully develop their talents. More time to work on the things that build community and make life better for everyone. I’d want to teach them that life is a wonderful journey; a mystery to be experienced to the fullest. And I’d want them to understand that journeys are best when the luggage is light.

PRAYER:

Let us be grateful for all the parents in this room. They have taken on the responsibility for lives in addition to their own. They are the stewards of our collective future, and we are grateful for their work and their sacrifices.

Let us be aware of and grateful for the work and the sacrifices each of us make, as we try to steer our way through life by serving those things most worth serving. And let us have gods worth serving with our lives. Let us have meaningful work toward positive ends, so we can all feel like stewards of our collective future.

Let us work to establish relative relationships with relative ends, but absolute relationships with absolute ends, and let us learn how to tell the difference between the two. The problem with the world is seldom with its people. We are overwhelmingly good people, doing the best we know how to do. Let us remember that. The problem with the world is that far too often, we serve gods not worth serving.

Let us be more aware of the gods we are serving, and let us be sure they are worth serving with the days and years of our lives. Let us attend to the gods we are serving with our lives.

Amen.

SERMON: The Cost of Money

This is a tough topic, because you already know all the things churches are expected to say about the subject. “Love of money is the root of all evil,” “You can either serve God or money but not both,” “Don’t you be worshiping those golden calves!” – that sort of stuff.

Besides, the US economy is so bad in so many ways that many of you are working your tails off to pay the bills and get the things you want for yourselves and your families. And getting assaulted for wanting money when you come to church is too much like piling on. After all, we want to have some nice things, and most nice things cost money. So talking against money is a little like telling a fish it shouldn’t be so attached to water: it’s just too much a part of almost everything we do.

And every time I say money isn’t as important as we make it out to be, somebody tells me that if money’s not important, maybe we don’t need their pledge. And we do want your pledges. I ask and expect you to pledge 5% or more of your pre-tax income to this church or any other church you think is worth supporting. Good churches offering honest religion are about the only place in our society where we routinely question the gods we’re serving – including the god of money – and ask whether it’s worth serving. As many have said, money makes a good servant, but a bad master.

Don has already done a nice job of talking about the ways money intersects with our personal lives, so I’ll go in a different direction, bring you some thoughts about money and share a couple stories.

The stories are two of the best ever written about wanting money too much or letting work take over your life. Both stories are from the Greeks.

The first one is the most famous, and one you all know: the story of King Midas, who couldn’t get enough money. Since he was a king, he didn’t have to earn the money, but he still wished it were easier to convert the world around him into gold. So he made the famous wish that everything he touched would turn to gold. This made it tough to eat anything. But the story’s tragedy came when he touched his beloved daughter, immediately turning her into a golden statue.

Like all good myths, there are a lot of ways to go with the old Midas story. There are a lot of ways to turn people into statues, to take the life out of their lives, by acting as though their only purpose were to make money. Because then if they can’t make money, they’re useless.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I read a report estimating that 18,000 Americans die each year because of inadequate health insurance. They haven’t got the money for the insurance, and if they can’t pay their own way, they’re not worth saving, according to our priorities. Seventy years ago, Hitler’s Nazis coined a horrible name for people like this. They were called “useless eaters.” Useless eaters. You only have a use if you can produce something, and your worth is measured by how much you can earn for others. Only 3,000 people died in the attacks on 9-11, and that has bothered us enough to spend $300 billion a year or so attacking a country that had nothing at all to do with the attacks of 9-11, but whose oil and strategic position we used 9-11 as an excuse to take. And somehow, just mentioning the 3,000 killed on 9-11 still seems to end most objections. Three thousand people is a lot. But the deaths of 18,000 Americans a year due to inadequate health care do not make the front pages. That’s coming dangerously close to treating them like useless eaters, don’t you think?

It may not feel quite like the King Midas story, but it’s closer than you think. Midas’s daughter was no longer seen as warm, loving, worth being around, because she had been converted into the lowest form of currency.

Maybe it sounds backwards to think of money as the lowest form of currency – after all, our national currency is based on the gold standard. But it’s not the currency in which human worth can really be measured. I’ve read that if you collected all the raw materials in our bodies, you’d be lucky to sell the whole pile for five bucks. We’re just not worth much money. So money can’t be the right currency for measuring human worth. Yet when we are valued and our lives are valued primarily by how much money we can make, the chief way in which we’re different from Midas’s daughter is that we’re probably worth a lot less money on the open market than a golden statue.

The Midas story doesn’t dwell too much on the other side of the equation, which is that if you want to value people primarily as people, then you probably won’t make as much money off of them. They may make more money for themselves, but you won’t be able to use them like things.

The story of Midas today isn’t often about individuals. It’s about attitudes of a whole society, like our society. The performance of our economy has been measured by how well the stock market is doing for so long it may seem that’s just how economies are always measured. But they’re not. It’s quite a drastic change from forty years ago. Then, the health of the economy was measured by how well the majority of Americans were doing. The country took pride in the fact that most people in most jobs could earn enough to buy a house and a car, on just one paycheck, and that almost anyone who wanted to go to college could afford to go without mortgaging an arm and a leg. The health of the economy was measured by how well the middle class was doing.

Now it’s measured by how much profit those who own stocks can earn every quarter. And once you do that – think about this – then people are defined in the currency of money. If workers are fired, whether you call it downsizing, rightsizing or firing, the stock prices usually go up. The money that would have gone to pay raises, health insurance and benefits for workers, workers’ pensions, that money that would have bought houses and cars and college educations for them and their children – that money is now funneled instead to other people. Not those who earned it, but those who own the stocks. We’ve lived so long in that world it might seem odd to question it. But you can value people for their humanity or for their earning potential, and when push comes to shove, one of those will shove the other.

Our challenge, and I think it’s a religious challenge, is to learn how to establish relative relationships with relative things, and absolute relationships with absolute things, and to know how to tell the difference. Which should be ranked higher: the profits of a few, or the livelihoods of many? Stock dividends, or health insurance and job security for workers? Earning more money, or having richer and more satisfying relationships?

These are religious questions because you cannot separate money from other areas of life. For example, I have read that the leading cause of divorce in our country is not having enough money, and the frustrations, guilt, blame and arguments that come from that. So one cost of valuing profits above people is that we soon diminish the humanity of most of the people around us, probably including ourselves. And that’s pretty close to a modern version of the King Midas story.

The other Greek story isn’t as well known, but it’s at least as good. It is the story about Hephaestos, whom the Romans called Vulcan. He was one of the Olympian gods – the only god who worked. But he didn’t just work. Work was his life. Work absorbed his passion, his love, his spirit. And in the ironic style of Greek wit, they had Hephaestos married to Aphrodite. Well, that’s not likely to work! She bore him no children, was never faithful to him, was never even seen with him. He had no passion left for relationships – even a relationship with the most passionate of the goddesses.

Hephaestos didn’t work to live, he lived to work. And when we live to work, it’s very hard to make room for another human being in our life. It isn’t quite like turning them to gold, but the old Greek story comes pretty close. It said that Hephaestos created golden servants to wait on him – robots.

What some interpreters have done with this is to say that this is what happens to those around people who just live to work. Without any energy or interest left for personal relationships, their mates and sometimes children are assigned roles much like the roles of golden servants: doing chores, cleaning, cooking, converting life into a series of duties. I suspect we’ve all experienced this at one time or other – or that we’ve done it.

Now this is a hard lesson to go very heavy on today when both the adults in many families must work to pay the bills, and some people have to take more than one job. This can make it feel like we’ve all been turned into robots, but it isn’t fair to throw blame around when people are doing the best they know how to do. The blame isn’t on those trying to make ends meet. The blame is on the economic priorities we as a society have adopted, that has taken so much money away from the majority of Americans that 18,000 of us die each year from inadequate health care, marriages end in divorce over the awful fights brought about by not having enough money, laws are changed and politicians and judges are bought to change the laws so those who control the money (and the politicians and media) can simply take it from those who work for it. It isn’t a healthy economy. It’s a greedy economy rewarding thieves like Kenneth Lay over fourth-grade teachers. But does anyone really want to argue that Ken Lay gave more to our society than an honest fourth-grade teacher?

Where we choose to spend money brings costs that are usually unseen. For example, there is a website you should all check out. It’s http://www.costofwar.com/. And the cost of our war in Iraq runs by as you watch, climbing hundreds and thousands of dollars each second. And you can select a city to see how much of the war’s prorated cost will come out of the incomes of that city’s residents. That’s the cost of money spent on war. In Austin, the war has cost us about half a billion dollars so far. Half a billion dollars spent there that can not be spent anywhere else. Not on education, not on health care, not on art or roads or anything else. Half a billion dollars: nearly $400 for every man, woman and child in greater metropolitan Austin (2000 census put the population at about 1.3 million). The cost of that money is measured in all the other things we can’t do with that money, and won’t be able to do for years to come.

But as a nation we aren’t valuing those things. And the things we value take value away from most of the people in our country and in the world. That isn’t just leftist rhetoric; it’s simple truth. The cost of our economic priorities is paid in devaluing the common humanity of all the common humans around us, including us. I wonder if you haven’t felt some of this in your own lives?

When we exalt profits over people, it means we don’t value people as much as we value profits. And if this doesn’t sound religious, I don’t know what is religious! It is exactly the meaning of the cry from the prophet Amos 2500 years ago that his people were “selling the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes.” How different does our world sound from that? It sounds very, very different than the America I grew up in, forty and fifty years ago.

There is another dimension to the story of Hephaestos and his golden robots that is worth considering. When Hephaestos decided to devote his whole life to work, the other gods rejected his choice. Nobody followed such a silly lead, because they all saw a lot of other options. But a generation later, those in the household of Hephaestos don’t know any other way of life, any other set of choices. So they went about their work robotically, they lived to work rather than working to live, because they didn’t know there was a choice. And that too feels like it has a lot to say to us today, doesn’t it?

For me, this whole subject raises a lot of questions more profound than answers – and more frustrating, too.

Does the money we spend enrich our lives, help us have more fertile experiences, more nuanced appreciation of life, more creative engagement with others, richer relationships where we can truly know and be known? Or does our money buy distractions from human interaction? Do we spend money on distractions to avoid relationships that aren’t very rich because we don’t know how to relate to others richly?

Money can be a good servant, but it’s always a bad master. When you think of the amount of time and energy and passion you spend earning money, do you think it is more like your servant or your master?

This is dangerous territory. We have a word for people who sell themselves for money, and it isn’t a nice word. And when people are simply owned by money – I think of some of the Asian workers who are reportedly chained to their work stations, but also of people here in Austin working two jobs to make ends meet – when people’s lives are nearly defined by the need to work in order to survive, isn’t that a kind of slavery? Is that the cost of valuing profits over people? The enslavement and prostitution of our bodies, our spirits, and far too much of our lives?

I don’t have your answers. I struggle with these issues too, not always successfully. But I can offer you some questions that might be useful.

What’s the cost of the money you’re earning?

What’s the cost of the money you’re spending? What aren’t you spending it on?

Are you working to live, or living to work?

What are you serving with the days and years of your lives? Does it serve the best parts of you?

Or put it this way: If you were to die this month and in your eulogy you were defined by what you have spent the major energies of your life pursuing, would you be proud of having lived that life?

What would you like to do about it?

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© Davidson Loehr 2005

Hillary Hutchinson

May 1, 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Hillary Hutchinson

May 1st is also Labor Day, hence the topic of today’s talks.

Good morning. My name is Hillary Hutchinson, and most of you know that I have been a member of this church since 1987. This is my third Affirmation of Faith. Pretty soon you are all going to know the story of my life, like it or not!

Today’s sermon topic is “The Myth of the American Dream.” This is a scary topic for me, because it hits a little too close to home. I was raised in a family that believed very strongly that if you worked hard, acted responsibly by going to a regular job, and took your vices in moderation, you would eventually get ahead. Promotions would come, raises would come, and retirement would be possible at age 65. No one talked to me about institutional or social barriers. No one told me I would get laid off twice through no fault of my own, once with a three month old baby. No one mentioned how difficult it was going to be to save any money while putting a husband through graduate school and raising two daughters. No one told me that being female and pregnant means a lot of employers are just not going to invest in you. No one told me that, from time to time, I would actually be working two jobs to pay expenses. Finally, no one told me that I would find myself stuck in a series of dead-end jobs just to pay the childcare and the mortgage. (A mortgage, I should add, that I would not have even been possible, except that my husband and I inherited some money in 1985. It’s not like we were able to earn the down payment.)

So, we bought a 900 square foot house with one bathroom and no air conditioning in the barrios of South Austin. Counting Phred the cat who came with the house, there were five us living in this small space within two years. Through it all I came to this church, looking for answers about how to live my life.

Davidson is going to talk to you about the problems with our American myths, but I see myself as one of the lucky ones: We did in fact succeed in living principally on one income. I had a series of jobs with insurance (indeed, I stayed in some horrible jobs because we needed the health insurance benefits). The Eva St. house was a big and terrifying investment, but it did appreciate. If Jon had not died in 1997, we might now be living quite comfortably on two incomes. White, well-educated, employed, and with a solid net worth based on my own income and assets, I have been able to begin pursuing my own dreams. I no longer wonder with Langston Hughes, “What happens to a dream deferred?” I am working toward a PhD in higher education administration because despite everything, I still believe in the value of a meritocracy. I still believe in the power of education. And I want to be in a position where I can help other people access education, and learn to think critically about the current state of human affairs.

Now that I no longer have to ask myself, “Is there enough money for food and shelter until the next payday?” I find my questions are more nuanced. I am more focused on whether I am doing the right thing, (a question Spike Lee left open for interpretation in his movie of the same name). I am more interested, like Martin Buber, in whether I am in “right relationship” with my fellow human beings. I look at my beautiful daughters, and I hope that they like me as well as love me. I hope that I am doing right by them in the choices I make moment to moment. I try to honor that by treating them with respect, listening to their opinions of the world, and laughing with them about the absurdity of some of our human actions. Teenage hormones are horrible and confusing (I remember it only too well!), so some rules for living are needed for guidance. In finding my own spiritual path at this church, I crafted a golden rule to teach my daughters when searching for guidance: “if your action adds love to the world, then its probably right; if your action adds hate to the world, then it is probably wrong.” Being good Unitarian Universalists, Kate and Clare tell me this is just another way of framing Buddhist compassion.

I think there is one other important element to compassion, and that is the capacity to imagine. This is where Davidson’s discussion of great literature comes in. To act compassionately we must first be able to imagine what it feels like to be someone else on the planet. Secondly, we must be able to imagine different outcomes than the ones we may have been taught. Karen Armstrong was just in town as part of the KLRU Distinguished Speakers series, and one of her comments was, “It’s quite possible to practice bad religion just like its possible to practice bad cooking.” So, since I haven’t the time or the skill to write a great novel with morality subtly built into the text, I’ll leave you with instead with this pragmatic ethics test, compliments of the Rotary International business club. It’s a great little shorthand piece to determine the next right thing to do. Ask yourself:

Is it true?

Is it fair?

Does it foster friendship and create goodwill?

Is it beneficial to all concerned?

How you answer these questions will help you to act with integrity at the next moment of choice. And maybe if enough of us practice this kind of faith, we can create a new American dream that truly does not leave anyone behind.

PRAYER:

Let us pray that we live within stories that can make us more whole.Let us have gods worth serving, rather than the flashier idols that use us until we are used up and gone.

Let us measure our lives and our worth in the right kind of currencies – currencies of compassion rather than control, empathy rather than empire, connection rather that separation, relating with people rather than using them for our own ends.

For there is something precious in the world that wants our attention – something sacred. If only we would serve those things most precious and sacred, they would return the favor, and might bless us.

We know those things. We are moved by them and warmed by their glow in the hearts where they live.

We pray that our hearts will be among the hearts in which the tender mercies dwell. We pray that our lives and our relationships might have that glow and that warmth. And we pray that our world may be the ally of these precious but fragile forces, rather than their enemy.

For these things we pray. But not only pray, not only pray.

Amen.

SERMON: American Myths

In one of the shortest sermons ever delivered, and one of the most famous, the Buddha said “All I do is sit by the river, selling river water.”

I think it’s one of the most profound revelations of the secret of nearly all wisdom: that nothing is hidden, that we just need to be reminded of things we already knew, so that perhaps this time we will awaken, and act.

We had two fairly large memorial services here this week. Both of them filled this room. And in both of them, I said something I say at almost every memorial service. I say I wish more people came to memorial services. Because if they did, and if they heard the memories and stories people get up to tell about the person who has died, they would realize that we know exactly what is right and wrong, good and bad. We know exactly how a noble life is to be judged. Not by might, arrogance, wealth or intimidation, but by the kinds of things every religion has always preached: compassion, understanding, peace, love. We don’t really fool people. That’s the river water, and every good preacher makes their living by selling it.

So as we’re going to talk a little about the American myths this morning, I need to say that we can talk about them, but you already know what’s wrong with them, and how life would look if we were living it more wisely. That’s the river water, and all I’m going to do here is bottle some for you to take with you. So let’s begin.

Every society has basic stories that define it, and it isn’t hard to list some of the deepest myths of America. I think there are four basic myths.

First is our fascination with newness. We have been the “New World” since at least 1492, but “newness” is a central part of who we are. To Americans, it has always symbolized an improved version of what came before. They called this the New World, and named their settlements New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New England. When they went west two centuries later, they named a patch of desert New Mexico.

If you read studies of traditional cultures, you find that all of them would regard this idea that “new” means “improved” as completely insane. Most societies look to the wisdom of the ages, the wisdom of their elders, in a way Americans haven’t for a long time. If new means better, than old begins to mean outmoded and irrelevant. And if you don’t think old means irrelevant, ask a dozen people over seventy how they feel our society regards them. We don’t have elders to whom we routinely look for wisdom that surpasses our own.

The second part of the American story is about Success and Capitalism; and in America they are also tied to Salvation, for one of the most fundamental equations of American mythology is the simple formula that “wealth = worth.”

Our myth of success is probably the most important myth in American history. It was given its most powerful expression during the 19th century through the many stories written by Horatio Alger (1832-1898), the chief prophet of our American Success myth. Take just one of his stories, a story called “Struggling Upward or Luke Larkins’ Luck.” You have probably never heard of it. But a century ago, it sold fifty million copies in paperback and was read by millions more. That means that almost all of the adult population of the United States a hundred and thirty years ago bought or read that one little book. And Alger wrote over 134 books. I don’t think you can overstate the influence of a book read by virtually every adult in America, and don’t think we have had any book to match it since then.

Horatio Alger was a Unitarian minister in the 1860s. He was also a pedophile who took street children with him on his travels as sexual toys.

A third part of our American myth is our radical individualism. This is the country of Lone Rangers. The myth of the lone cowboy is one of our most powerful myths. We could talk about this for hours, but this is a point that hardly needs reinforcing in Texas.

The fourth part of our American myth that I want to consider is our imperialism.

From the start, the Pilgrims saw themselves as God’s chosen people, the faithful remnant come to the New Eden to create the New Jerusalem, with a mandate from God to extend the kingdom of Christ, to extend it across the whole new world, to bring civilization to this wilderness. In the 19th century, mythic heroes including Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, Mike Fink, Calamity Jane, even Custer and Buffalo Bill saw themselves as God’s agents appointed to civilize the west. Buffalo Bill believed he stood between civilization and savagery.

Officially, our imperialism goes back at least to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which was quickly and repeatedly interpreted to mean that we could advance our economic interests aggressively in this hemisphere, which we have done ever since.

These parts of our script have been with us for a very long time. But things have not been good for the American Dream for quite awhile, at any of these four levels.

First, our addiction to the new has been frustrated at many points. We no longer have any new frontiers, no wildernesses left to take over or move on to. Forty years ago, the TV series “Star Trek” tried to satisfy our wanderlust by defining “Space” as “the final frontier,” sending our Lone Rangers off in space ships. But the frontier metaphor had already worn thin when we settled California over a century ago. And now the last of the Star Trek programs is being cancelled, and the last installment of the “Star Wars” movies has been finished – another series of cowboys on the space frontier.

Here’s an example of how completely we have adopted an imperialistic attitude toward the rest of the world. Think about this, if you will. Fifteen years ago, we essentially kidnapped the president of another country and brought him to this country to stand trial in a drug deal which had also involved agencies of our own government connected with the Iran-Contra affairs. We arrested him after a coup attempt we supported failed to kill him.

If you Google Noriega’s name, the third entry shows a mug shot of him after we arrested him. The caption underneath reads, “Manuel Noriega, former president of Panama, rescued by American marines for incarceration in the United States.” Now think about this. If Iraqis invaded the United States, kidnapped our president and took him back to put in an Iraqi prison for causing the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqis in the past few years, how would you look at a caption of his mugshot that read, “George W. Bush, former president of the United States, rescued by Iraqi soldiers for incarceration in Iraq”? We have an attitude toward all other nations that we would find arrogant and criminal if they expressed it toward us. As almost anyone from other countries can tell you – even Canadians – this attitude is 100% American.

We have presumed the right to meddle in Middle Eastern oil pricing for eighty years, and assume that our actions must be justified because we want cheap oil. But think about this. Imagine Saudi Arabia or Russia sending troops into Kansas to regulate the price of wheat because they want cheap food. We have invaded half a dozen tiny countries in the past decade, taking armed forces there as though we had a divine right to do so. We have no such divine right. We never have.

Further, our imperialism is embarrassed by the growing awareness that we are not even the best at very many things any more, or anywhere near it. Our education is near the bottom of the industrialized countries. Our infant mortality rate is the highest in the developed world, our illiteracy rates are soaring, our cars are second-rate, we are barely in the running in televisions, stereos, and a dozen other items. Our family structures seem ineffective, and both in politics and in religion we have seen the norm moving steadily away from honesty and toward hypocrisy.

We murder fifty times as many of our fellow citizens as either the Swedes or the British do. We are a superficially religious society, but in 1989 a special edition of LIFE magazine conducted a survey showing that 70% of our citizens believed in an active spirit of evil they called the devil, and only 40% of them believed in a God. I’m betting that’s a far more honest and accurate poll than all the happy-face polls insisting that 90% of Americans “believe in God” (without ever asking people what they mean by the word ‘God’). The national mood increasingly favors not empowered citizens, but obedient ones. Well, this list can and will go on, but you can continue it on your own.

A third level of our American Dream has involved our radical individualism, which has led us into another blind alley, as our Lone Rangers have become mostly lonely rangers. There is an interesting medical syndrome that can serve as a metaphor for our predicament today. It is the syndrome in human babies known as the “failure to thrive” syndrome. It means that babies who are left alone without being picked up, held, and touched by others can die. They cannot live as isolated individuals, and neither can we. Our emphasis on individualism and our accompanying dismissal of the responsibilities we owe the larger society are way out of touch with the reality of human life, and we are paying the price for it. Psychological depression is ten times as common now as it was before WWII, and since the 1960s our dominant psychological problems have been narcissistic personality disorders. We too are failing to thrive, both as individuals and as a society.

In the fourth part of the American myth, our equation of financial success with personal value, of wealth and worth, there is really nothing new at all. The American philosopher William James spoke of Success as our “bitch goddess” a hundred years ago. But even then this was not a new observation. The ancient Hebrews worshipped the golden calf, and were scolded for it by their prophets. The prophet Amos accused his contemporaries of making people secondary to profits: of selling the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes. Jesus was clear in his own teachings that you can either worship God or money, but not both, and that it would be easier to get a rope through the eye of a needle than to get a rich man into heaven.

As individuals, we all know this. It isn’t news. And talking about it is like sitting by the river, selling river water. Most of that selling river water business has been done by our poets, artists and professional storytellers. When you look back into the first few decades of the 20th century, it is surprising just how accurately the failings of the American Dream were named, and in very famous books, all of which also became movies.

When Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in 1949, he focused on the fact that capitalism is about selling both things and people: that to be a successful salesman you must sell not only your product but also yourself. That is what his character Willie Loman did. He sold himself in pursuit of the American Dream, but on a deeper level he had put his faith in the American Dream to give his life meaning, to make him whole-or, in religious jargon, to grant him salvation. It could not do it, and Willy Loman’s suicide was the death of a lost and hopeless soul, abandoned by its god. In the end, at a funeral hardly anybody came to, his eulogy was really summed up in just two phrases: “He was the best-liked,” and “He never knew who he was.” I am reminded of Jesus’s asking what a man gained if he gained the whole world and lost his soul. Poor Willy never even gained the world.

A decade earlier, John Steinbeck wrote his powerful book The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck’s variation on the theme of critiquing the American Dream was different from Arthur Miller’s, but no less devastating: it is a capitalistic dream achievable by only a tiny percentage of people, he said, whose power and greed will impoverish the overwhelming majority of the rest.

This is even more true today than it was in the late 1930s. During the past dozen years, the gap between the rich and the poor has become a chasm, as we have become a two-tiered society in which the richest 10% of our people control well over 90% of our wealth, a proportion more lopsided than at any time in the history of this nation. The salvation offered by the American Dream is increasingly a salvation available only to the priests and priestesses of capitalism, carried on the backs of an immense number of the masses.

At the end of his book, Steinbeck offered his solution in a form so graphic and powerful it may always fill theaters with sobbing, as it did when I saw it. Here are poor and desperate people who were merely used as dupes by those few who controlled the American Dream, who have been driven against the wall with nothing and no one to care for them but each other. And so the final scene has a young mother whose baby was born dead, now offering her milk to a starving man: a man she did not even know, except to know him as another human being in need.

Here is the “milk of human kindness” in its most elemental and heart-wrenching form. Steinbeck is saying that the kind of salvation we most dearly need cannot come from the American Dream or from economic success. It comes only from reaching out to the strangers around us and offering them what we have to share. This is river water. Every religion has sold it.

And a decade before John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald offered an even more fundamental criticism of this American Dream in his book The Great Gatsby, which many have called the greatest American novel of the 20th century. As Steinbeck saw that the salvation held out by the American Dream is an illusion for all but a very few, Fitzgerald saw that even for the very few, it is still an illusion, for it can not save anyone.

Gatsby had it all, and he had nothing of value because he had lost his soul: he had lost his integrity, his authenticity. That is the reward for worshiping false idols, as it has always been. That is the reward for spending a human life in the service of values and ideals that cannot grant life. As Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman ended with a death and a funeral, as Grapes of Wrath ended after the death of both a baby and the dream that the baby had symbolized, so The Great Gatsby ended with a death and a funeral – a funeral to which nobody came.

The novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote a short story called “Two Old Men” about salvation, about wholeness, about where the sacred dimension of life is to be found, about the way in which life is given its most enduring meaning. Tolstoy’s story is not well known, but it is full of river water.

In this story, two old men decide to go on a pilgrimage to worship God at Jerusalem. On the way they meet a poor family near starvation. One of the old men goes on to the Holy Land the next morning, the other stays to do what he can to help the family. Emergency help becomes long-term aid, as he stays with them for months. He helps them plant crops, cooks meals for them, and spends all his money buying them what they need. Finally, months later, the family has recovered and the old man, his money gone, returns home.

The first man, now back from the Holy Land, swears he saw the other man in Jerusalem, surrounded by a halo-like glow and crowds of admirers. The second man, whose money and energy were spent helping the poor family and who never made it to Jerusalem, just changed the subject. The first old man, you could say, visited the Holy Land as a tourist; the second man had become holy. The first sought the sacred as a separate thing, the second reached out to others, gave of himself, and turned the place in which he found himself into holy ground.

This is like the last scene in The Grapes of Wrath: someone reaching out to offer the milk of human kindness to a stranger. Like the two old men in Tolstoy’s story, Steinbeck’s characters found nothing at the end of their journey but people like themselves: alone and in need, with little to share but their humanity. And so they reached out and turned a small spot on this earth into a momentary shrine where kindness overflowed and strangers were nourished. Jesus could not have said it any more clearly, nor could the prophet Amos, nor Mohammad.

This has been the message of the best prophets in all times: that we are the agents of salvation on this earth. And the measure of the gods we serve, the measure of our own spirits, is the measure to which we have overflowed, have reached out to strangers outside of our family, outside of our religion, outside of our race, to share with them the milk of our own human kindness.

This is the river water that is sold by every religion on earth that’s worthy of the name. It isn’t news. You don’t really come here to learn this; you come here to be reminded of it. Perhaps what we come to church for is not the river water. Perhaps, instead, we come to church hoping once more to learn how to be thirsty for it.

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© Davidson Loehr 2005

10 April 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Prayer

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Nelson Mandela, 1994 Inaugural Speech – words taken from Marianne Williamson

HOMILY: Life Shrinks and Expands in Proportion to One’s Courage

A thousand sermons have been written on the sentiment in that saying from Anais Nin, that “Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one’s courage.” And one of our most persistent dreams in life is finding the right kind of courage needed to help our life expand in the right ways. It isn’t easy.

There are a couple Buddhist stories about this. In one, there was once a mouse who went to God to ask for a favor. “What is it?” asked God. “I am only a mouse,” came the answer, and I live in constant fear of cats. Can’t you do something about my fear?”

There was a loud “Poof!,” a puff of smoke, and the mouse was turned into a cat. For awhile, this sufficed, but before long the cat was back to ask another favor of God. “And now what?” asked the Almighty.

“I’m still afraid,” came the answer. “Perhaps I’m still not big enough. Maybe if I were a very large dog . . .”

Again the “Poof!” and the cloud of smoke, and the cat had become something that looked like a cross between an Irish Wolfhound and a Saint Bernard, weighing in at 250 pounds.

In a week, the dog was scratching at God’s door.

“Now what?” said God – who, though he had infinite power, did not have infinite patience.

“I’m still afraid. Perhaps if I were an elephant,” said the dog. “Or a lion. Yes, that’s it, a lion, the king of the jungle! Let’s try that.”

A loud “Poof!” and a cloud of smoke. And when the smoke cleared, there stood, again, a mouse – who, realizing that it was again a mouse, began squealing for God.

“It is no use,” said God, “there is nothing I can do for you, for you have the heart of a mouse, and as long as you have the heart of a mouse, you might as well be a mouse.”

I’ve been thinking about this subject because courage is in right now, as you know. Arnold Schwarzenegger has informed us that men who would rather talk, negotiate and understand than take premature action are “girly men.” By this measure, some of history’s great girly men would include Jesus and the Buddha, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Our invasion of Iraq, whatever else you say about it, involves some kind of courage. We have killed over 100,000 Iraqis, and more than 1,500 of our soldiers have died there so far, plus another 20,000 or so who have been wounded. That is some kind of courage.

But there are different kinds of courage, and not all of them are admirable. It depends on where the courage is coming from, what it is serving.

That word “courage” comes from an old French word for “heart.” You could say that life shrinks and expands in proportion to one’s heart. I would define courage as a heart’s effort to make the world in its image. So if it is a good heart, the courage can serve good ends. And if it is a bad heart, the courage – no less courageous – is likely to serve bad ends. It takes courage, after all, to strap a bomb under your shirt, board a crowded bus and kill yourself along with as many others as you can. But a heart that reduces innocent people to pawns in your own deadly chess game – that’s a bad heart, no matter how courageous.

One of the confusing things today is that some of the worst hearts, some of the voices calling for the worst kind of courage, are coming from the fundamentalist versions of our major religions. Some Israelis say God gave them their land, and reclaiming it is doing God’s will, no matter how many Arabs they kill.

Fundamentalist Muslims give their religion a bad name by urging them to kill Americans in the name of Allah. And in this country, far too many conservative ministers have preached war and justified violence, even if they haven’t gone as far as Jerry Falwell’s saying we should hunt down terrorists and blow them away in the name of the Lord. These are voices pleading for courage. But they are pleading from bad hearts, so the courage serves bad ends. And when you serve a bad heart, life expands in unhealthy, deadly ways, like a cancer.

In your own life, you can think of stands you have taken that served both good places and selfish places, can’t you? And you can remember the effects that taking those stands had – on you and your relationships. But sometimes it’s easier to see these patterns in areas where we can paint with broader strokes. So you can also tell the quality of our heart by looking at the form life is taking in our society.

Last week, I read an article by a local man, an editor at the Austin Chronicle named Michael Ventura. I know Michael; he’s spoken here at least once. I want to read you a little from the picture of America he paints. And remember, we reap what we sow; bad effects come from actions serving a bad heart. So listen to these things – some of which you probably know – and ask what kind of a heart our country seems to be serving, and if it is the kind of heart you want. All of these conditions are the direct result of the priorities we are serving. And our priorities come from the active heart of our society:

The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).

“The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens” (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a “developed” country? Anyway, that’s the company we’re keeping.

Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That’s six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)

“U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower” (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look “developed” to you? Yet it’s the only “developed” country to score lower in childhood poverty.

Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).

The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).

“Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the [past 25 years] (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.

“In a recent survey of the world’s 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European” (The European Dream, p.69).

Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).

One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).

“Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined” (The European Dream, p.28). It’s the only hope many see of ever realizing the American Dream.

Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).

“Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available” (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-01-21/cols_ventura.html

The bold actions that produced these figures took courage, skill, determination and a kind of leadership. But behind the courage, I believe that we have been serving a bad heart. We could add to the sorrow of figures like these by going down a similar list showing the number of killed, wounded and reduced to poverty in the more than one hundred countries where our country has soldiers stationed.

But I would rather tell you the second Buddhist story about courage. It’s one some of you have heard before here, because it is one of my favorites.

A notorious bandit came to the Buddha one day and informed him that he was the most fierce and brave bandit in all the world, and was going to demonstrate it by killing the Buddha. “Ah,” said the Buddha. “If you are that powerful, you can grant me two wishes before I die.”

“All right,” said the bandit, “but be quick. Time is short, and I have many more people to kill.”

The Buddha pointed to a young sapling tree growing nearby, and said “Cut off the smallest branch on that young tree.” The bandit laughed, and with one quick swipe of his sword, it was done and the tiny branch fell to the ground. The Buddha picked it up.

“Now, old fool,” said the bandit, “what is your final wish?”

The Buddha handed the tiny branch to the bandit, pointed to the tree, and said, “Now put it back on.”

Legend has it that the bandit achieved enlightenment in that instant.