Sermons 2024-25

It Was Always about the Kindness

Rev. Douglas Taylor

December 8, 2024

Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/ySn_S_5Qjuk

I don’t know if any of you have responded to the current political troubles and social anxiety by hunting out bits of uplifting news. That’s one of my techniques. I have been digging up feel-good news stories and anecdotes of humanity at its hopeful-est. It helps me digest the rest of the news. Earlier this week on social media someone from Iceland posted their concern for a baby swan frozen on the ice and dying. People started chiming in, worrying until … naturalist Kerstin Langerberger replied to the post, saying: “I am on my way with the necessary equipment.”

It turns out ‘necessary equipment” for this situation meant: a friend, some thermoses of warm water, and a surfboard in case the ice failed. Langerberger went out on the ice, found the baby swan, thawed and freed it. The bird recovered quickly and flew off. A happy ending.

I love that ‘a friend’ was included in the list of ‘necessary equipment.’ It makes me wonder about the experience of the friend who accompanied the naturalist. “You are going to do what? And you want my help? What exactly do you need me to do?” Sometimes what’s needed is some expertise, some particular skill. Sometimes what’s needed is a companion to ride alongside. We help each other in a variety of ways. We make the world a better place. Some days we save a baby swan.

I remember a conversation with someone back when we were both in our 20’s. We were on staff at a youth camp and were helping one of the high-needs youth process some social interactions that had not gone well earlier in the day. Later, this other young adult and I were talking, and he reflected to me a challenge he was wrestling with. He had expressed before that he was a survivalist, could live off the land, loved hiking and all that. But this outdoors athleticism was all framed for him in his deep belief in what he saw as Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest. “The problem,” he confessed, “is how the kid we just helped would not survive without a lot of support – and that’s not how survival-of-the-fittest works.”

But what if my friend had it wrong? Darwin’s idea of natural selection and ‘survival of the fittest’ is often – I have more recently discovered – misunderstood. At its base, the concept is simply saying that to pass on your genetic material to the next generation, you need to survive. To survive, you need to fit the demands of the world you live in. Darwin was not saying only the strong are fit or only the intelligent are fit. He was saying only the fit survive. So what does it mean to be ‘fit?’

In some ways this reminds me of theological arguments about what, exactly, is the ‘image of god’ in humanity. Is it our physical form? Our intelligence? Our goodness? Our capacity to love? I recently bumped into the idea that perhaps the image of God we carry is not found in our individuality, but in our collective. What if the image of God is experienced in community? Because that’s certainly the answer to Darwin’s concept of survival of the fittest. He was not talking about individuals surviving. He was talking about species.

The key to our human survival as a species is found in how we support each other in communities. Other creatures have other traits, sharks and finches evolve to fit differently in the world. So did we. What defines ‘fit’ is different for different species. But somehow, we humans have taken the phrase to mean – only the strong survive. In the introduction to their 2021 book, Survival of the Friendliest, Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods write this:

“The idea of “survival of the fittest” as it exists in the popular imagination can make for a terrible survival strategy. Research shows that being the biggest, strongest, and meanest animal can set you up for a lifetime of stress. Social stress saps your body’s energy budget, leaving a weakened immune system and fewer offspring. Aggression is also costly because fighting increases the chance that you will be hurt or even killed. This kind of fitness can lead to alpha status, but it can also make your life “nasty, brutish, and short.” Friendliness, roughly defined as some kind of intentional or unintentional cooperation, or positive behavior toward others, is so common in nature because it is so powerful. In people, it can be as simple as approaching someone and wanting to socially interact or as complicated as reading someone else’s mind in order to cooperatively accomplish a mutual goal.” (p xvii)

So we join together to support each other. We save the baby swan from freezing on the ice. We help a kid struggling with disadvantages. We don’t just leave people to suffer and die. That’s not how our species evolved. The ‘fittest’ among us are not the strongest or the smartest or the ones who create the best tools. Instead, natural selection has amplified those who are kind and help build the community.

There is an anecdote about Margaret Mead that illustrates my point here. The story is found in Dr. Ira Byock’s book about palliative care and may be apocryphal but even if it is not something she really said, it is in keeping with the sentiment of Margaret Mead’s style.

“A student once asked anthropologist Margaret Mead, “What is the earliest sign of civilization?” The student expected her to say a clay pot, a grinding stone, or maybe a weapon.
Margaret Mead thought for a moment, then she said, “A healed femur.”
A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. A healed femur shows that someone cared for the injured person, did their hunting and gathering, stayed with them, and offered physical protection and human companionship until the injury could mend.
Mead explained that where the law of the jungle—the survival of the fittest—rules, no healed femurs are found. The first sign of civilization is compassion, seen in a healed femur.”            (Ira Byock, 2012, The Best Care Possible)

I would counter that ‘healed femurs’ is humanity’s version of survival of the fittest. Mead, in this story, names compassion. I’ve been talking about kindness. In the book I quoted from earlier, Survival of the Friendliest, they propose that friendliness is a key trait that opened our evolving species to surviving when others like Neanderthals went extinct. By evolutionary perspective or by religious sentiment, we are talking about how it is not brute strength or clever resourcefulness that is our greatest trait as humanity. How we support each other is what makes us human.  

Unfortunately, here is the spot where it all gets muddy. Friendliness, or kindness or compassion, is a trait that has been naturally selected to make us a strong species. And there is a shadow side in this evolutionary theory. Despite the benefits of kindness, there remains ample evidence that our species is not always kind. We still have violence and territorialism and gangs. We still have war and pogroms and death marches and genocide. And according to the research in the book, it is linked to the key trait of friendliness.

“We have a tremendous potential for compassion [the authors write] and we evolved uniquely to show friendliness to intragroup strangers. But our cruelty to one another is connected to this kindness. The same part of our brain that tamed our nature and facilitated cooperative communication sowed the seed for the worst in us.” (p121)

The shadow of kindness is cruelty, and the record shows we have ample capacity for both. The social scientists have studied cruelty with experiments around prejudice, conformity, and compliance with authority (p132) to try to explain how the holocaust could occur. But the big reveal I found in this book about friendliness is the impact of dehumanization.

In proclaiming that kindness is the mark of our fitness for natural selection, it is a statement about how we interact with others. But which ‘others’ are we talking about? We are supportive and friendly with those who are in our group.

In evolution, this played out as Homo sapiens shared the world with Denisovans and Neanderthals and possibly Homo erectus. It was important for us to distinguish the ‘other’ so our species could survive and thrive. Our friendliness and kindness extended to Homo sapiens only. Fast forward a few hundred thousand years and we still have this part of our brain fully functioning to protect us from ‘the other’ while we support and care for ‘our own kind.’

It plays out in the way we dehumanize some groups of people so it is easier for us to harm them and kill them, or more likely to simply stay home and ignore the atrocities become it is happening to those we do not think of as human. Religiously, we are challenged to expand our concept of who belongs and who is excluded. I would argue that Jesus’ central parable – the Good Samaritan – is a direct challenge against our predisposition toward dehumanizing some people.

And there is a lot of dehumanizing rhetoric in our political and social situation today. The impact of these ideas is not academic. There are people with power now who are playing up the cruelty side of our best quality as humanity. I caution us against the urge to dehumanize them in return.

The solution is to expand who we mean when we say we until it includes all humanity, all the world as kin. The word ‘Kind’ has its etymological roots in the word ‘Kin.’ I say it is crucial for us to resist that evolutionary urge to dehumanize the ‘other’ and to instead expand our sense of who belongs. Kindness, I believe, is the key distinction of our humanity; and it is also the solution to the cruelty living the shadow of our best quality as humanity.

Over the coming weeks, as we move through both Christmas and then the inauguration, listen for the messages about kindness, cruelty, belonging, and dehumanization. Listen and choose the path that brings out our humanity. Listen, and choose life.

In a world without end,

May it be so

To Show and Affirming Flame

Rev. Douglas Taylor

11-10-24

sermon video: https://youtu.be/TotbAzq7Nh8

This week has been fraught with emotions and reactions and dawning realizations from this past Tuesday’s election. Many among us are lamenting. Many people are angry and frightened by what is presenting as a march toward fascism in our country.

In my description for today’s service I stated that W.H. Auden wrote a poem entitled “September 1, 1939.” I mention it because the last line of that poem is the title for this sermon: “To show an affirming flame.” The title of the poem, “September 1, 1939,” refers to the beginning of World War II. The poem itself is a denouncement of fascism and a call toward solidarity.

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Auden goes on to decry the madness and cruelty of the era leading to Adolf Hitler’s ascendency to power, the lies and apathy that allowed evil to gain control. Some literary critics have suggested this is Auden’s best poem, indeed called it the best poem of the 20^th century. It is laced with references to the history of Democracy as a concept and the steady erosion we suffer again and again. It calls us to both rise with our individual responsibility and stay firm in our communal solidarity. The second-to-final stanza reads:

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

“We must love one another or die,” he wrote. True then, and true still today. “All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie.” This past election season will perhaps be best remembered for all the incredible lies.

Democracy is embedded with certain values. And there is a certain amount of overlap between those values and our Unitarian Universalist religious values. Chief among them liberty, freedom, and justice. A democracy assumes an informed citizenry, so there is an implied value of education and critical thinking. Equality and forbearance – or at least tolerance – round out the necessary values for democracy to thrive. I am hard pressed to find examples of these values in our incoming president-elect Donald Trump or in the policies and promises he has made. Instead I see crass vulgarity, posturing and bullying, deceit and lies, and divisiveness. Divisiveness is a common tool for authoritarian politics, not for democracies.

I saw a list of the early warning signs of fascism as displayed at a Holocaust Museum. I posted it on social media if you are looking for it. The list of warning signs induced: “Powerful and continuing nationalism; Disdain for human rights; Identification of enemies as a unifying cause; Supremacy of the military; Rampant sexism; Controlled mass media; Obsession with national security; Religion and government intertwined; Corporate power protected; Labor power suppressed; Disdain for intellectuals and the arts; Obsession with crime and punishment; Rampant cronyism and corruption.”

And to be clear, some of what is likely to happen over the next four years is basic policy changes that happen every time there is a change in the political party. It is stuff that I will argue against, plans that will go against my values, actions that I find objectionable but ultimately match what previous administrations have done. But then there will be things that tear apart the structures of our democracy in favor of constructing a fascist oligarchy.

There is still harm committed in the first set of policies and actions. A tragic example is Ronald Reagan’s refusal to recognize AIDS which led to a great deal of death and suffering. In making the distinction between basic party changes and fascist plans, I don’t want to minimize the harm that results from the former. I am merely lifting up the truth that as long as our democracy remains intact, there is recourse.

In her 2018 book Fascism, A Warning, Madeleine Albright had written, a Fascist “is someone who claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have.”

We’ve already seen four years of a Donald Trump presidency; we don’t need to guess at what a second term might contain. The rights of queer and trans people are under threat. Immigrants and people of color are at risk. Women’s access to reproductive health care is under attack. Trump will quite likely pull all support from Ukraine and NATO, allowing Putin free reign for Russian military expansion. I can’t imagine he will do much to support the Palestinians either. He will certainly pull us out of the Paris Accords again, so our efforts to respond to the climate crisis will be stalled. And he has promised again to destroy the Affordable Care Act – an unattained goal he had last time he was in office. And his whole campaign was centered around an untenable promise of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. 

Honestly, I don’t think fascism in the United States will show up as Concentration Camps in the near future. We already have a robust prison system that will serve the same purpose. Where else would we get the labor to cover the work of undocumented immigrants once we’ve deported them. If we bother deporting them when we could just pump them into the prison system. Stock prices for private prisons jumped this past week.

But in all of that, I am well convinced that the signature play of the Trump re-election campaign has been the rampant use of misinformation, disinformation, and lies. People talk about how fascists go after the journalists, but I believe the current MAGA political right-wing has circumvented the need to silence journalists by blasting media with lies and sensational nonsense so no signal can make it through the noise.

Everyone is so numb to the lies, countless stories are emerging of people saying they voted for him but they don’t believe he will really dismantle the Affordable Care Act because they need it, or deport all the immigrants because they’re married to one, or make abortions illegal at the federal level because their mistress’s still need that access. There is a subset of the people who voted for him who know he is a liar and don’t believe him.

And I hear progressives saying “Believe him, he’s telling you the harm he is planning to cause. Believe him.” But there are so many lies. Which ones matter? Which ones should I trust. All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie. In Auden’s poem, the lie was about believing a dictator was better equipped to make decisions for you. In Auden’s poem, the lie was that an individual exists alone and would not experience the consequences of a semi-distant evil about to land on someone else. In Auden’s poem, the lie was all those people who went along with the Nazis because they thought the economic policy sounded better.

There are guardrails still in place protecting our democracy today. If we are tempting fascism, it will not drop upon us overnight. We can still pay attention; we can still resist. Part of the work is to continue to do what we’ve been doing – building relationships with people and communities doing good work in the world around us. We can keep working to support change for unhoused people in Broome County. We can keep working to feed people with Beloved Community. We can keep educating ourselves on racism and White Supremacy. We can keep supporting Planned Parenthood and other local abortion providers. We can keep advocating for queer youth and creating spaces for trans and queer people to be welcome and to be safe. And my list goes on. We are already doing a lot of what we need to be doing together, locally where it matters most, and beyond.

The final stanza of Auden’s September 1, 1939 poem says this:

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

We are not yet defenseless as he saw Europe and America to be at that moment in time. We may not be far off, but we are not defenseless yet. The harm people are worried about is real and so our response must be equally real.

I am called to take the side of the poor, the marginalized, the vulnerable and disempowered, and all those treated with injustice and cruelty. We are called to get in the way of systemic injustice, to stand up against tyranny, to agitate the establishment for change so that all people can heal from the wounds of our days and we can all experience more peace.

Our work remains: to build solidarity, to uphold justice, to shine our light, and love bravely in a world too full of desperate loneliness and alienation. 

I’ll close with a James Baldwin quote I was reminded of earlier this week. In his novel If Beale Street Could Talk, Baldwin wrote: “…love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don’t panic now.”

In a world without end

May it be so

All I Know So Far

Rev. Douglas Taylor

10-27-2024

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/n1zNy_MKmpI

Several years back I started collecting a playlist of positive songs that were written as advice from a parent to a child. When I was a teenager, Rod Stewart did a cover of “Forever Young.” This song was all over MTV during my senior year in high school; and later when I was a new minister, someone used it during a private Child Dedication ceremony. I think that’s what cemented it for me. I had played “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin and “Father and Son” by Cat Stevens, but they were less examples of what I longed for and more cautionary tales. This old Bob Dylan song offered a message I wanted to embody as I entered adulthood.

Then, in the ‘90’s, as a young father, the radio was playing “You Gotta Be” by Des’ree.

You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser

I love this song.

Listen as your day unfolds
Challenge what the future holds
Try and keep your head up to the sky

This was peak wisdom for me as a young parent. I loved it. This is what I wanted to instill in my children. I particularly resonated with the message that you gotta persist – you have to keep at it. You don’t have to be perfect, but you do have to be bold.

Over the years I added more songs to my playlist. 93 Million Miles by Jason Mraz; Growing Up by Macklemore, I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack, and Dear Winter by AJR; I’m sure you have your own playlist, your own songs that carry wisdom down through the generations.

All I Know So Far is the most recent addition to my playlist. It is a song written by Pink just a few years ago (2021). Pink says the song was envisioned as an advice-filled love letter to her daughter. The lyrics talk about finding strength in the face of adversity and fear.

And when the storm’s out, you run in the rain
Put your sword down, dive right into the pain
Stay unfiltered and loud, you’ll be proud of that skin full of scars
That’s all I know so far

It is a call to be open to the hard parts of life, to be vulnerable. That’s all I know so far. Pick reveals some hard-won wisdom in this song. If you have some time, listen to the full song by Pink. It’s worth it.

This morning, my focus is to offer something akin to these songs on my playlist – a sermon highlighting my message; not to my children but to the world. They say every preacher has only one sermon they keep repeating and reframing and revising over and over. Which makes me wonder: what is my one sermon?

I toyed with the idea of asking all of you to answer for me; to set aside some time for any of you to share what you see my one message to be. What is the overarching message you’ve heard from this pulpit over these past 20-plus years? But then I figured that was a tricky question to put you all on the spot with. And honestly, if I’m doing my job right, your answers would be more about you and what you’ve needed to hear than they would be about me and what I’ve been trying to say.

I’ll give you a preview – a small hint of what is to come. It’s going to be about love. And I don’t mean the soft, commercialized stuff we are sold in ads. I mean the transformative power of love. I mean it the way James Balwin was talking about when he said:

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love—whether we call it friendship or family or romance— is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. … In our best moments, we are that person for another.

                                    (From Nothing Personal)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I only meant to give you a hint, a small clue for what I think I’ve been saying from this pulpit these past 20 years. Because let’s be honest – I don’t only preach about love.

I feel like I have a fairly wide range of sermons week by week. I preach on social issues and theological questions, UU history and various holiday themes. I preach about grief and anti-racism, forgiveness and covenants.

On Sundays, I share my own collection of influences such as the various Bible stories and key passages from the Tao Te Ching, and a myriad of poems and song lyrics. I share with you my fascination with Process Theology, Annie Dillard’s poetic naturalism, and Winnie the Pooh’s simple way. I have an eclectic taste. 

Consider the recent few sermons from September and October so far. I preached about political divisiveness one Sunday, war and peace the next, followed by a climate revival and then a homily on forgiveness, before rounding it all out with a collaboration Sunday message about the ethical harvesting of sweetgrass as it applies to your own living.

What is the common thread through all of these different topics, nestled in each of those sermons? Maybe it is something about how to be human together. Or, as I’ve already hinted, maybe it’s all about loving and being loved.

Let’s sit with that first idea for a few minutes; maybe every sermon I preach is something about ‘how to be human together.’

I have not done a comprehensive review, but a recent perusal of my sermon catalogue revealed to me three prominent themes that I keep circling back to – each of which does feed into the idea that every sermon might be about ‘how to be human together;’ or more broadly about love.

The first theme I hear myself bringing up a lot is brokenness. The Ingathering Sunday story about Celia and the Sweet Sweet Water in which she almost made it home with the saving water but she tripped and broke the glass.

I talked about how we are all broken, we all have broken places in our lives and in our hearts. And how many times have I quoted that Leonard Cohen song in which he claims there is a crack in everything, that’s where the light gets in. Our brokenness hurts, but it also opens us. And our brokenness is a path into empathy as we see the brokenness in others.

From this root idea I talk a lot about vulnerability and courage, trust and compassion. From this root idea of brokenness I challenge ideas such as perfection and shame and Original Sin and the illusion of self-sufficiency. In short – I talk about love. I talk about ‘how to be human together.’

A second theme I hear myself bring up a lot is resilience. If we are broken, it is because we fail and we fall and get hurt. It happens. And after we fall, after we break – we rise. Helen Keller is remembered for saying; “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” Yes, there is trouble in the world, and so we will rise to meet it.

From this root idea I often speak about the resiliency of nature after disasters and devastation. Healing and resilience are natural qualities – it is what nature does with even the slightest bit of life remaining. And from there I talk about how we are part of nature and we, too, are resilient. And from there I talk about how we can create communities of resilience. In short – I talk about love. I talk about ‘how to be human together.’

A third theme I hear myself bring up a lot after brokenness and resiliency is something about community. I learning I’ve more recently come to articulate is that healing doesn’t happen in isolation, real healing is a communal experience. I often frame this as something this congregation can be – a healing community.

From this root idea I talk about the theological concept of Beloved Community, about liberation theology and liberative justice. From this root idea I talk about covenant and the bonds that set us free, that hold us accountable, and compel us to grow. In short – I talk about love. I talk about ‘how to be human together.’

So that is how I see myself able to have such a variety of topics and themes on any given Sunday but the one sermon I am preaching over and over is about how to be human together – about loving and being loved.

There is a book by Prentis Hemphill called What It Takes To Heal. A colleague put out a call over the summer saying she wanted to read this book and to have a group of colleagues who would read it with her and process it with her. It’s a good book. Near the end of the book, Hemphill talks about a transformative experience they had centered around love.

Kasha was my friend for many years before anything romantic happened. It wasn’t until the passing of my grandmother, not too long after her grandfather had died, that we fell in love. It surprised us both, that our grief opened up the door for love.

On a visit to see her in Hawai’i, she built an altar for my grandmother and her grandfather. They sat next to each other up there, framed and smiling, encircled in leis. She sat just below, and asked me to tell her stories about my grandmother. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of this invitation. Did I deserve to be loved like this?

I shared and she listened with a steady presence. She gave me room to feel, and instead of being repelled by my vulnerability, she moved closer. The tears poured and she didn’t rush to wipe them, just put a hand on my back, asked another question, or let the silence wash over us.

[Later]… At the airport as I was leaving, I said to her, “I wish a love like this for everybody. Imagine what it could do.” (p194-5)

Imagine what that could do. James Baldwin wrote:

“Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.”

            ― James Baldwin, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone  

Imagine what it could do if everyone could experience the love Prentis Hemphill received at that ancestor ritual in Hawai’i. Imagine being loved yourself. Imagine others being loved – maybe even people you can stand, people you hate. What if someone loved them? Imagine what that could do.

Listen as your day unfolds
Challenge what the future holds
Try and keep your head up to the sky
Lovers, they may cause you tears
Go ahead, release your fears
Stand up and be counted
Don’t be ashamed to cry

It’s okay to be a little broken, indeed it will help to be broken open. Your humanity will grow as you are open to the light that shines through the brokenness of others around you. Don’t be ashamed, go ahead and release your fears. We have each other to help heal each other. This is how we are human together.

All I know, all I know, love will save the day

In a world without end,

May it be so.

—

Listening for the Healing Shift

Douglas Taylor

10-6-24

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/j4xqvhi_vhE

It has been a long-standing practice for me to bring a sermon on the topic of forgiveness during the Jewish high holy days each year. My internship supervisor modeled this practice for me saying, ‘they always need it.’ Some years I focus on a piece of Jewish lore around the holidays, other years I outline the steps for making or accepting an authentic apology. I’ve preached on forgiveness from Buddhist and Christian perspectives, I’ve reflected on scientific studies on the how forgiveness effects our health. I’ve grappled with large scale forgiveness practices such as the Truth and Reconciliation process. And this year is not the first year I have devoted a multi-generational service on Forgiveness.

Today, I bring not a full sermon, more of a thought to consider as you go through your week – a thought I hope will resonate for you if you are 4 or 24 or 84 years old.

What most of us want is healing.

But we get sidetracked on our way to that. Most of us, to some degree on other, have experiences of brokenness, of mistakes that we’ve made and injuries we’ve suffered. Certainly, we want to repair what is broken, but a part of us also wants to end up being right. We want to fix what has gone wrong, but a part of us also wants to be the hero in the end, to be vindicated, to be justified in our actions – whether we need to forgive or be forgiven, we want to also end up being right.

If we can set that aside and reach back to remember, the true yearning we have is for healing. I was reminded recently that the Hebrew word for peace, “shalom,” conveys not only peace but more accurately wholeness, completeness, and wellbeing.

I will tell you another story.

This one is about Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, as told by famous storyteller Doug Lipman. It is called, “Defending His Property.”

…

One day, an innkeeper came to Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev. “Rabbi,” he said. “Is a man permitted to defend his property?”

The rabbi said, “Of course. What needs defending?”

“My inn,” said the man. “So you’ll give me your blessing?”

“That depends. Who are you defending it against?”

“Rabbi, the local peasant boys break into my kitchen at night, to steal the food that I keep for my customers.”

“I see,” said Rabbi Levi Yitzchak. “And how do you plan to defend yourself from them?”

“Rabbi, I’ve been at my wit’s end. I’ve yelled at them when I saw them running off with my food. I even bought a guard dog. But they fed it! When I got up in the morning, the dog was eating the stolen meat they gave it. So I got rid of the useless dog. But now, I have no choice. I’m off to the city to buy a rifle. Please give me your blessing on my journey!”

The rabbi stroked his beard, thoughtfully. “The loss to you is serious. These boys seem determined to steal. But how will the rifle protect your property?”

“I’ll fire it into the air; they’ll hear it. And if I see one of them on my property, I’ll point it at him. Nothing else will work with these ruffians, Rabbi. They only understand force!”

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak looked down for a moment. Then he spoke. “I can’t bless this journey. Do you think that peasant boys can’t get rifles, too—even more easily than Jews can? I’m afraid you’re only encouraging them to become even more clever and violent.”

The innkeeper’s face grew red. “Then I’ll go—without your blessing! A man has to defend his property!” He slammed the door behind him as he left.

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak watched the man climb onto his wagon, pick up the reins, and begin to drive off. Suddenly, the rabbi ran out into the street and yelled, “Wait! I’ve changed my mind!”

The man stopped his horse, dismounted from the wagon, tied his horse to a tree, and returned to the rabbi.

The rabbi said, “I MAY give you my blessing—will you submit to a brief test?”

“What kind of a test?”

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak raised his arm and slapped the man on the face.

The man was incensed. “Why did you do that, Rabbi? You don’t have to hit me!”

The rabbi beamed. “Ah! In that case, I owe you an apology.”

The innkeeper rubbed his cheek.

Gently, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak put his hand on the man’s chest. “You see, for a moment, I thought that YOU only understand force. But I was mistaken. You—the one who understands that violence isn’t always necessary when talking is possible, who would never point a gun at a child —you, I give my blessing to.”

The man put his hand over Rabbi Levi Yitzchak’s hand, which still touched his chest. His face softened. “Thank you, Rabbi. I think I might have been a little mistaken, myself.”

The man got on his wagon, and turned it around toward home.

Later that evening, when the moonless night provided a perfect cover for thieves and mischief-makers, the innkeeper heard a noise outside his inn.

Opening the door, he saw someone standing twenty paces from the inn, with a cloth sack at his side. “A thief,” he thought. He strode toward the intruder. As he got closer, he saw that the thief was facing away from him. “Who are you,” he said. “Get out of here!”

The figure turned to face him. The man gasped. “Rabbi! What are you doing here?”

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak said, “A man has to defend his property! So I came to help you, by standing guard.” He lifted the sack, and showed the innkeeper the bread and cheese inside. “When the boys come, perhaps I can feed them and talk to them, the way they tamed your dog.”

Speechless, the innkeeper just looked at the rabbi.

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak put his arm on the man’s shoulder. “But while I was standing here, I noticed what a beautiful night it is. Don’t you think?”

For a long time, the two stood there, looking at the vast night sky.

 
“Defending His Property.” Lipman, Doug. © 2002. https://www.learningtogive.org/resources/defending-his-property

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In the end, the innkeeper learns some important lessons that we also can learn. I thought up three.

First, that violence is called up too readily, not as a last resort, that other methods are possible when we consider not merely the right and wrong of a situation but the wholeness and healing we yearn to experience. Do not limit yourself to seeking your own satisfaction or even your own healing. Instead of only asking – what do I want to resolve this situation, ask – what do all those involved want to resolve this situation. Consider the full view if possible. Healing is not an individual activity – it is done in community. We need each other to all grow more whole.

Second, you can always call your local clergy person for counsel – your rabbi, your pastor, your sangha leader perhaps, … me. I can’t promise to stand outside your backdoor with a loaf of bread and some cheese to befriend your local hooligans. But I also can’t promise to slap you on the face when I think you are being foolish. I’m no Rabbi Levi Yitzchak! But I can listen and help uncover a possible path toward healing.

And finally, the third great lesson I found in this story: when we make space for healing, we also can discover an opening for other experiences such as beauty and joy, peace and friendship. Remembering that Shalom is about wholeness as much as it is about peace – wholeness is found in the healing, in the beauty and joy and friendship.    

In a world without end,

May it be so.

Prevailing Green

Rev. Douglas Taylor

9-29-24

Friday night (Sept 27) Hurricane Helene made landfall. It was a category 4 storm and by Saturday morning, reports revealed it left a path of destruction through ten states, causing millions of residents and businesses to lose power, and leaving over 50 people dead so far.

NOAA hurricane scientist Jeff Masters has said Helene’s landfall “gives the U.S. a record eight Cat 4 or 5 Atlantic hurricane landfalls in the past eight years. (2017-2024), seven of them being continental U. S. landfalls. That’s as many Cat 4 or 5 landfalls as occurred in the prior 57 years.” (As read in Heather Cox Richardson)

This is not going to go away. Record-breaking hurricane events have become part of our regular experience of the climate crisis we are in. Do we have that in our awareness living here in upstate New York? I know the people down in Florida and Georgia have had to grapple with this a they consider the messages they are receiving from their political leaders. But do we hear it up here? We have regular record-breaking natural disasters now.

Have you ever ridden the teacups at a carnival? I remember one time when our oldest Brin was maybe 3 years old there was a rinky-dink carnival set up in the parking lot of a run-down mall. They had very little business at that hour and we climbed into the teacup ride.

Brin were so excited. The operator smiled at us and started the ride. If you know the ride, you know the whole thing starts slow and builds up in speed, and as the whole ride circles around, each teacup can also spin. So we’re spinning away and I look at my child’s grinning face and ask, “Do you want to go faster?” They nod excitedly.

I no longer remember exactly how it worked, if I leaned forward or leaned back to get it spinning faster, but all the sudden we started whipping around. And the blood drained out of my child’s face. The operator of the ride noticed and quickly shut down the ride. Nice guy. I bought Brin some ice cream to help them perk back up. I double checked online recently to see if my memory of this ride was correct and found the line: “Under modern H&S guidelines children’s rides should not spin faster than eight times per minute.”

My point in telling you this story is that like the mechanical tea cup ride, we can manipulate the situation to spin faster if we want to. In the past century or so, the human species has made great strides in eradicating some major diseases, dramatically extended the average lifespan, and created an abundance of luxury available at our fingertips – or at least at the fingertips of some.

Our distribution of the abundance we have extracted from the earth is still problematic but the amount is indisputable. We have pushed the carrying capacity well beyond the limit because we have manipulated the situation to spin faster. We are spinning our tea cup beyond the guidelines for such rides, spinning faster than is recommended. We can reign it in. We can adjust our use of this ride we are on to better match the outcome we need.

Back in 2006, Al Gore’s film Inconvenient Truth came out. I bought a copy the DVD and we showed it here in our sanctuary. A few years later, our congregation was on its way to becoming a Green Sanctuary. We were buying reusable bags, changing out our lightbulbs, and boycotting bottled water. Eventually we got solar panels and air source heating and cooling units in the building, working to reduce our carbon footprint. And our renovation was grounded in a commitment to environmental awareness. We’ve been working on this for a while.

And we are far from the only ones. Did you hear in that list of positive stories we had for our reading https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/06/energy-transition-positive-climate-change/, that clean, renewable energy will likely become the world’s largest source of power by 2025? Did you hear the part about the vast offshore windfarm at full capacity, and the countries functioning fully under renewable energy, and the commitments to hold companies accountable for destruction of the environment? There are measurable actions happening that have noticeable impacts on the environment. The last line of our reading notices that we are headed in the right direction. And it ends with the question: are we traveling fast enough?

I would argue that question is irrelevant. That question is loaded to take us into a fruitless conversation of hand-wringing and apprehension that will undermine the work we have underway to build a better way forward. That question leads us into saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, tempts us into either denial or despair.

But the better answer is the one I often pull up when talking about climate change. Johanna Macy’s ‘three responses.’ Some stay in denial, refusing to acknowledge to looming disruption. Some succumb to despair, seeing no hope in the looming disruption. I refuse to either ignore the situation or despair of our chances. And Macy proposes the third way, the way of the Great Turning, the choice to hold hope. Not denial or despair; decision. Make the decision to keep seeking a new way, to remain hopeful, to keep working toward the better world. In Darwin’s theory of evolution, when we wrote about the ‘fittest’ surviving, he was referring to those that can accurately perceive their changing environment and adapt to it.

I remain hopeful that we will harness the creative resilience that has marked our species throughout time. Resiliency is the response nature offers after environmental trauma. We do well to lean into the fact that we are part of nature and our species can also be resilient. Creativity is the key. New solutions are always unfolding. In many ways, the biggest trick is to adjust our perspective enough to reimagine a new era together. The spirit is always moving among us as we respond.

And bell hooks reminds us “Rarely if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.” We are meant to respond to life as a collective. We don’t need to find a super hero. We need to collectively become the answer we need. That list of positive things happening for the environment did not have a single person saving anything. It was all about the community doing the work together.

And here I want to emphasize, ‘the work’ may not be what you think it is. Because the trauma is spread around and the impacts show up in many ways. There is an intersectionality to the crisis and there must be an intersectionality in our response. All our efforts weave back into each other. Nearly every justice effort needs climate justice to be included. And climate justice needs every other justice effort included to be effective.

If you are passionate about fair housing or food scarcity, about racism or immigration, about voting rights or universal healthcare – there is a climate component directly or indirectly tangled up in the issues.

Locally, we can get involved in voter registration and voter turnout. We can work with groups creating better access to food and fair housing. We can take part in efforts to better empower marginalize people and vulnerable populations – locally, right now.

Because for us to see improvement toward environmental resiliency, we need to also see improvement in these other areas. The issues are connected and the traumas are overlapping. So the call this morning is not to drop everything and start campaigning for the environment. It is to notice and honor all the work we are doing and the ways it intersects with the work others are doing.

We are in this together, supporting disaster relief for the south and responding to food scarcity in Binghamton’s first ward. We are in this together, staffing the phone banks for voter registration for Pennsylvanians and donating blood at our next blood drive on Tuesday. We are in this together, lobbying congress to take up green energy bills and supporting local programs for at-risk queer youth.

There is so much we can do to support our earth and each other. As my colleague Rev. Julián Jamaica Soto writes, “All of us need all of us to make it.” As we respond to the call for Climate Justice, as we respond to another devastating hurricane, as we hear the question – are we doing enough … We are the answer, together. We are the answer, together.

In a world without end

May it be so.

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