Imaginary Meals

"Spread the table and contention will cease."
-- English Proverb

Meditation: by Howard Thurman from “A Litany of Thanksgiving”

Today, I make my Sacrament of Thanksgiving.

I begin with the simple things of my days:

Fresh air to breathe,

Cool water to drink,

The taste of food,

The protection of houses and clothes,

The comforts of home.

For these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day!

I bring to mind all the warmth of humankind that I have known:

My mother’s arms,

The strength of my father,

The playmates of my childhood,

The wonderful stories brought to me from the lives of many who talked of days gone by when fairies and giants and all kinds of magic held sway:

The tears I have shed, the tears I have seen;

The excitement of laughter and the twinkle in the eye with its reminder that life is good.

For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day!...

Reading: by British historian Godfrey Hodgson from The Great and Godly Adventure - The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving (p.xix)  

The feast [the Pilgrim Father] Edward Winslow described has come to be called the First Thanksgiving, and accounts from serious histories to commercial Web sites date the origins of Thanksgiving to the fall of 1621.  Generations of Americans have been taught that the Thanksgiving meal of today not only celebrates that feast, shared with the Indians, but replicates its menu.  It is clear that neither of these beliefs is true.  There were no turkeys.  Or cranberry sauce or pumpkins pies.  Nor did the Pilgrim Fathers call themselves Pilgrims at the time, and strictly speaking they weren’t Puritan either.  And of course it is stretching a point to call them Americans: certainly they always referred to themselves as Englishmen.

What we are seeing, when we sit down to a Thanksgiving turkey, is a prime example of what historians have come to call “the invention of tradition.”  There is absolutely no harm in that.  Indeed, Thanksgiving is one of the most innocent and happiest of American traditions.  If it is not true, as the Italian proverb says, it is well invented. 

Reading: by Frederick Buechner from Wishful Thinking – A Theological ABC  (p. 51)

Lord’s Supper

It is make-believe. You make believe that the one who breaks bread and blesses the wine is not the plump parson… but Jesus of Nazareth. You make believe that the tasteless wafer and cheap port are his flesh and blood. You make believe that by swallowing them you are swallowing his life into your life and that there is nothing in earth and heaven more important for you to do than this.

It is a game you play because he said to play it. “Do this in remembrance of me.” Do this.

Play that it makes a difference. Play that it makes sense. If it seems a childish thing to do, do it in remembrance that you are a child…

Reading: by Joy Harjo a poem entitled “Perhaps the World Ends Here”

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Imaginary Meals

A Sermon Delivered on November 18, 2012

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

For the past twenty years or so, my Thanksgiving holiday has revolved around a scrumptious meal prepared by my loving wife, and gourmet cook, Elaine. It has involved a visit from relatives – every year Elaine’s mother and her husband visit us, usually driving here from Washington, D.C., where they live. And for the past sixteen-to-eighteen years, it has included our own children.

It is very much a family holiday, full of treasured traditions: cooking a turkey of course, sensitive negotiations about what should go in the stuffing, and what kind of pies are indispensable. The traditional scheduling dilemmas, when we realize the frozen turkey didn’t thaw as quickly as it should have. Or the oven didn’t seem to cook things as thoroughly in the allotted time frame as hoped.

The Thanksgiving meal is a treasured tradition. A spectacle that begins with the purchase of ingredients and the selection of recipes days in advance. And that continues well past Thursday, as the family’s designated dishwasher works his way through piles of dishes stacked high – the good dishes, that don’t go in the dishwashing machine. And leftovers are served up, again and again. Delicious every time.

And yet, every year is somehow different. This year, especially, because the grandparents from Washington won’t be able to make the trip. None of us are getting any younger. This year medical issues make travel impossible. And this year, when I call family in Germany, I will not speak with my grandmother. She died in the spring. This year I am especially grateful for family members and friends still with us.

* * *

There was a time when we imagined our Thanksgiving was a re-enactment of a memorable meal in 1621, which involved the pilgrims in Plymouth colony, and their Native Americans friends and neighbors. We imagined the European settlers were gracious hosts, and the Native Americans honored guests at a banquet that included key ingredients: turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie.

It is a good story: A band of travelers, religious refugees from Old World Europe, are in search of a new home in a New World. They reach the shores this country, but soon realize they are ill-equipped to live in this unfamiliar environment. They barely survive the first harsh winter here. They wouldn’t have made it without the kindness and support of the Natives. And so the next year, after a successful harvest, they put on a lavish feast of Thanksgiving to God, inviting into their midst the unfamiliar but friendly Wampanoag Indians. It is a timeless picture of gratitude, abundance, friendship and harmony.

Does it matter, that the story is made up? Does it matter that there was no turkey and no cranberry sauce on the table that day in 1621? Does it matter that these were inventions of imaginative writers, trying to paint a pleasant picture for an English audience, hoping to entice more of them to come to Plymouth? Does it matter that the relationship between settlers and Natives was in fact strained? And that in the years that followed they were often at war? Does it matter that the descendents of the Pilgrims were the undisputed winners, who finally drove the Indians from their land?

Despite an abundance of historical evidence that paints a much more complicated picture, we want to imagine a meal that celebrated peace and friendship – a new community in which people of differing culture and conviction joined together as one, in gratitude.

* * *

The symbolic power of sharing a meal reaches back much further than 1621. It reaches deeper than the particularities of the American Thanksgiving Day myth.

The Episcopalian bishop John Shelby Spong writes, 

“The sharing of food in human experience is the very basis of all human community. Our language reveals that time and again. The word companion, for example, literally means the sharing of bread with another. In the act of breast-feeding, the life of the newborn infant was not only saved but sustained and enabled to grow. In the ancient world, the death of the mother in childbirth almost always guaranteed the death of the child. Feeding another is the experience in which life, love and being are first shared. So inevitably in our social order the deepest symbol of love has always been located in the act of feeding. That is why eating together is the primary way that relationships grow and are nurtured. It is the means by which love is shared.” (Why Christianity Must Change or Die, p. 194)

Christianity has its own version of a shared meal that symbolizes the creation of a new community. It was the last meal Jesus shared with his disciples, before his death. As the story goes, Jesus invited his friends to join him for this final meal. When they were all seated at the table Jesus calmly predicted his betrayal and execution. He asked his friends to remember him.

In several Christian traditions, this communion is celebrated as a liturgical act and sacrament. Catholics believe that when the priest blesses the wine and the bread, the food is miraculously transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ. Many Protestants, on the other hand, see communion as purely symbolic. There is no consensus among Christians on the meaning of communion. And even the Gospel narratives disagree on what Jesus said and did, and when it happened.

Unitarian Universalists used to celebrate the Christian communion. And, in fact, it was a disagreement about the meaning and merit of the communion celebration that brought an end to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s career as Unitarian minister. 

This is another story. Young Ralph Waldo Emerson followed in his father’s footsteps. His father, William Emerson, served the Boston’s Unitarian First Church. Ralph Waldo was called to serve as minister of Second Church. But in 1831, Emerson the younger got into a fight with members of his parish, because he refused to offer communion. For Emerson, communion was a stale and meaningless religious artifact, an empty ritual that only got in the way of a more authentic, personal experience of the sacred. 

Church leaders implored Emerson to reconsider. They asked if he might be willing to at least offer communion to parishoners, even if he himself abstained. Emerson said no, and resigned from the pulpit. He still considered himself a Unitarian minister, but never served a church, or used the title “Reverend” again. Instead he became a free-lance lecturer and author, and eloquently shared his vision of God. “The Highest dwells within us,” he said. “Within us is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related… When it breaks through our intellect, it is genius… when it flows through our affections, it is love.”

* * *

In the earliest Christian scriptures, the shared meal believers remember and ritually recreate is called the Eucharist. “Eucharist” comes from the Greek, and means “thanksgiving.” Because, according to Paul, in his letter to the congregation in Corinth, that’s what Jesus did first of all: he took the bread into his hands, and he gave thanks.

There is a famous painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, that shows Jesus seated at the center of a long table, with six disciples to his left, and six to his right. Painted in 1495, it surely has played a big part in how many Christians today imagine Jesus. Rather than Middle Eastern, Jesus and his disciples look distinctly European. No surprise that an Italian artist would invent an Italian Jesus.

Historians agree that the first Thanksgiving didn’t actually happen the way our school children learn the story. Historians agree that the last supper was not accurately described in any single Gospel story.

But a deeper and more profound truth is told in both of these Thanksgiving stories: that life a miracle. That we are sustained by powers we can’t our control, and blessed beyond our understanding. The only sensible attitude is gratitude. The most reasonable response is to share freely with others, what we freely receive.

 “The world begins at a kitchen table,” Joy Harjo says. “No matter what, we must eat to live.”

A new world begins, when we sit down together with stranger and friend in gratitude. This is not the reenactment of an ancient event. It is the creation of something completely new. It is an act of imagination, envisioning a new community, a community in which all people partake in earth’s blessings, a community in which we each share freely our gifts of love.

To sit together at a welcome table is an ancient dream. But making this dream a reality, is a creative task yet to be completed. It is an act of imagination and courage we are called to carry out today. 

* * *

To help spark our imagination, I invite you to join in a symbolic meal. I invite you to imagine us all gathered around a table. 

(Bring out cornbread and apple cider. The following is adapted from “A Cider and Cornbread Communion” by Robert Hemstreet, from The Communion Book, edited by Carl Seaburg.)

For thousands of years, men and women all over the earth have gathered on festive occasions to share in the eating of special foods and the drinking of special beverages. Our American Thanksgiving is another one of those combined seasonal and historical holidays designed to celebrate the changing of the seasons and the blessings of the Earth. 

So we celebrate and give thanks today, not with bread and wine, but with fresh apple cider and freshly baked cornbread. Both of these represent the fall harvest season and the stories told around Thanksgiving.

Think about cornbread. Native Americans taught Pilgrims how to grow corn and use it. Without corn, the Pilgrim community would have starved. And in the form of bread, corn could be kept and easily shared. 

As we share this cornbread, let us be mindful of all those whose labor, love, energy, creativity, and suffering go into the growing, distribution, and preparation of our food. 

And let us be mindful also, that this small morsel we eat now may be as much as some people get to eat this whole long day. Let us resolve to take whatever steps we can to end hunger in our neighborhoods and in our world.

(Distribute cornbread, ask folks to wait until all are served.)

As we eat of this small piece of bread, let us think of those things for which we have been thankful this year, and of those with whom we are called to share our bounty and blessings, both materially and spiritually.

* * *

Now let us consider this apple cider. As we prepare to enjoy this fresh sweet cider, let us meditate on the many symbols and meanings it evokes.

First, how good it is for friends to drink together. The sharing of a special beverage is one of humankind’s oldest rituals.

Next, let us think about what we are drinking. For most of us, cider is a seasonal drink; it’s special, an autumn treat. Some of us will probably not taste cider like this until next fall. So try to remember the taste.

Let us remember that the apple comes from a tree, long a symbol of the aspirations of humanity. Its roots search deep in the good earth, while its branches reach for the heavens.

And finally, let us remember that these apples were pressed for us. They are the products not only of the earth, but of all those people who till the soil, tend trees, pick fruit, toil in the vineyards, fields and orchards; people who we almost never see, but without whom we could not live.

(Distribute cider, ask folks to wait until all are served.)

Now, with gratitude for the earth, for life, and for love, let us enjoy. (drink) 

A Guru's God

"Says Nanak, 
The Master is a tree of contentment and forbearance; 
Righteousness its flower, enlightenment the fruit."
-- Adi Granth

Reading: by Stephen Prothero from Religious Literacy – What Every American Needs to Know – and Doesn’t (2007, p. 9)

From the time of the nation’s founding, the success of the American experiment in republican government was rightly understood to rest on an educated citizenry. If suffrage was to be extended first to white males with property and eventually to men and women of all races, then it would be essential for all Americans to understand the issues on which they were voting. How could we act responsibly as citizens if we did not know how to read, if we did not know something about politics and history and science and economics?

Today, when religion is implicated in virtually every issue of national and international import, US citizens need to know something about religion, too... Unfortunately, US citizens today lack this religious literacy.

Reading:  by Jaswinder Bolina from an essay entitled “Writing Like a White Guy – On Language, Race and Poetry”

Recently, I was invited to give a few poetry readings as part of a literary festival taking place in a rural part of the country… The audiences are largely made up of kind, white-haired, white-skinned locals enthusiastic to hear us read from and speak about our work, even when they’ve never heard of most of us. They at least appreciate poetry, a rarity I’m grateful for. During the introductions that preface each event, even the organizers who’ve invited me have difficulty getting my name right, and in one school library, I enunciate it over and over again. I say, “Jas as in the first part of justice; win as in the opposite of defeat; der, which rhymes with err, meaning to be mistaken.” I say, “JasWINder,” lilting the second syllable, and smile as about a dozen audience members mouth each syllable along with me until they feel they have it right. When they do, they grin broadly. After each event, I chat with them one or two at a time, and I do my best to reflect their warmth. They’re complimentary about the work, and though I don’t expect they’re a demographic that’ll especially like my poems—even when you write poems like a white guy, you might not be writing poems everyone will like—the compliments are earnest.

Still, in all this pleasantness, the awkward moment occurs more than once. It’s some variation on a recurring question I get in town after town. The question usually comes up as a matter of small talk while I’m signing a book or shaking someone’s hand. No one delivers it better, with so much beaming warmth and unwitting irony, than the woman who says she enjoyed my poems very much and follows this quickly with an admiring “You’re so Americanized, what nationality are you?” She doesn’t pick up on the oxymoron in her question. She doesn’t hear the hint of tiredness in my reply. “I was born and raised in Chicago, but my parents are from northern India.” Once more, I ought to be offended, but I’m not really. Hers is an expression of curiosity that’s born of genuine interest rather than of sideshow spectacle. I’m the only nonwhite writer at the events I participate in. I’m the only one who gets this question. It makes me bristle, but I understand where it comes from.

Reading: by Kabir, a 15th century Indian mystic poet honored in both Hindu and Muslim traditions

Are you looking for me?  I am in the next seat.

My shoulder is against yours.

You will not find me in stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:

not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables.

When you really look for me, you will see me instantly - 

you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?

[God] is the breath inside the breath.

A Guru’s God

A Sermon Delivered on November 11, 2012

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

Stephen Prothero wrote the book Religious Literacy because he had the clear sense that, even though most Americans consider themselves religious, we are remarkably uninformed about religion. So, for instance, most Americans cannot name the first book of the Bible. Only one-third know that it was Jesus – and not Billy Graham – who delivered the Sermon on the Mount. And ten percent of Americans believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.

As Unitarian Universalists we like to think of ourselves as more educated than most. My guess is we all know perfectly well that the Bible begins with the book of Genesis, that it was Jesus who sermonized on the mount, and that Joan of Arc had nothing to do with floods.

We say we draw inspiration not only from Jewish and Christian teachings, but from all the world’s great religions. That’s why we have these wall-hangings (which depict symbols of the world’s religions) displayed so prominently in our place of worship. But one religious tradition conspicuously absent is Sikhism.

* * *

Sikhs were in the news this summer, following a tragedy at a Sikh temple outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A white-supremacist gunman opened fire there, killing six worshippers and wounding three others, before turning his weapon on himself.

In the days following the tragedy, commentators wondered aloud whether the Sikhs were victims of mistaken identity – that the gunman had intended to kill Muslims. But others made the case that that is surely beside the point. The point is the attack was fueled by racism, ignorance, and hate.

For decades Sikhs have been singled out as targets for discrimination and abuse. The turban worn by many Sikh men makes a convenient target. Ninety-nine percent of people wearing turbans in the United States are Sikhs from India (according to the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, SALDEF). The turban seems to be a lightening rod for surprisingly visceral hostility.

Amardeep Singh, an English professor from Bethlehem, PA, writes, “I am not sure why the reaction can be so visceral — perhaps because wearing a turban is at once so intimately personal and so public? Walking around Philadelphia waving, say, an Iranian flag probably wouldn’t provoke quite the same reaction. A flag is abstract — a turban, as something worn on the body, is much more concrete and it therefore poses a more palpable symbol for angry young men looking for someone to target.” (“Being Sikh in America,” New York Times, 8/1/12)

* * *

According to religious scholars, there are over twenty million Sikhs in the world today. That makes Sikhism the fifth largest religion, right after Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Most of today’s Sikhs live in northern India. But several hundred thousand Sikhs live in the United States. There are more Sikhs in this country than Unitarian Universalists.

The story of the Sikh faith reaches back to 15^th century India, and the life of a man named Guru Nanak. Nanak was born in the small village of Talwandi, located in Punjab, a region in northern India right on today’s border between India and Pakistan.

The name “Punjab” means “five rivers.” The region is made up of several vast, fertile river valleys, and is marked by a long history and a rich cultural heritage. Since ancient times Punjab was shaped by Indian Hindu culture. But over the centuries, a succession of powerful rulers took control of the prosperous land: beginning with Alexander the Great, in the 4^th century BCE, the Greeks, then Persians, Arabs, Turks, Afghans, and finally the British invaded Punjab.

When Nanak was born in 1469, Punjab had been under the control of Muslim rulers for centuries. The village in which he was born lay right in the path traveled by invading armies, warring Hindu kingdoms and clans, as well as Muslim rulers. 

In the 15^th century Hindus and Muslims lived side by side. Conflicts between factions within and between both of these powerful traditions were a defining feature of the world in which Nanak grew up.

* * *

It is interesting to remember that in the same period that Hindus and Muslims were struggling for dominance in Punjab, religious strife was consuming Europe as well. Guru Nanak lived during the same period as the Christian reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin. The Sikh faith developed amidst the tensions between Muslims and Hindus in northern India, just as our Unitarian forebears were developing their own religious identity in the midst of a battle being waged between Catholic and the Reformed Christianity in Europe.

Sikhs promoted religious tolerance, but were at times persecuted by both Muslims and Hindu rulers. Similarly, both Catholics and Reformers declared the first Unitarians heretics. And as Punjab was located between two religious empires, the historical home of Unitarianism in Transylvania was located on the boundary between two empires: Muslim Ottomans to the East and Christian Habsburg to the West.

* * *

Nanak was born into a Hindu family, but the midwife who delivered him was Muslim. Nanak’s father was a Hindu businessman, but he worked for a prosperous Muslim landowner. 

Nanak’s father hoped he would follow in his footsteps and have a prosperous career in business. But from an early age Nanak showed other interests. When he was seven, his teachers were surprised that he was already showing promise as a gifted poet. He was contemplative in nature, but had a penetrating mind. A bright student, he was instructed in Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic. As one of his teachers put it, “He is a blessed one… he grasps instantly what he hears.”

But beyond his quick grasp of language, scholarship and spiritual teachings – he also had a habit of questioning the logic of traditional teachings.

A story is told, that when Nanak was eleven years old, he was encouraged to wear a janeu, a symbolic garment – a sacred thread – worn by Hindu Brahmin, a sign of their privileged caste, but Nanak refused. Instead he challenged the Brahmin priest who was conducting the initiation ceremony, and asked him what difference it makes whether or not he wear a janeu. Shouldn’t people be differentiated based on their actions and merits, rather than whether or not they wear a janeu? Nanak asked. Nanak had friends who were of lower caste, and he had no interest in setting himself apart from them. And he was also critical of the fact that only Brahmin boys, but not girls, were entitled to wear a janeu.

Nanak was known for an analytical mind and a sharp eye for empty rituals and customs. Whereas most of his Hindu and Muslim contemporaries defended their own faith, and criticized the faith of others, Nanak challenged both Hindu and Muslim convention, and lifted up what he considered the heart of both teachings, which were in fact very compatible.

As the Sikh author Patwant Singh puts it, Nanak was “impressed by the basic compassion of Hinduism and the essential brotherhood of Islam which looked upon the faithful as equals in the sight of God, Nanak emphasized the inconsistencies that detracted from these inspired origins and set the two religions on a course of hatred and intolerance.” (The Sikhs, p. 27)

When Nanak was thirty years old, he had a profound spiritual and mystical experience. At that point in his life, Nanak had a daily ritual of bathing in a river before sunrise. One morning while bathing, he suddenly disappeared. He vanished. His friends thought he had drowned. But after three days he returned, inspired by a religious vision. He had been taken up into the presence of God, and been charged by God to become a religious teacher, a guru. He told his friends the essence of his teaching was this: “There is no Hindu. There is no Muslim.” This statement is among the earliest of the sayings, songs, and poems of Nanak recorded by his followers. It was understood as a rejection of all sectarian and religious divisiveness.

Nanak believed the God of Hindu faith and Muslims’ Allah are one and the same. He imagined God similar to the Eternal Truth of Hindus, an ultimate, supreme and formless God beyond human understanding. But God is also similar to the deity imagined by Muslims, who – because of God’s mystery – cannot be portrayed in pictures. And so Nanak rejected the colorful statues and shrines of the Hindu pantheon with Rama, Krishna, Kali, and the thousands of other Hindu gods. Nanak embraced the idea of reincarnation, but rejected caste distinctions. 

In the course of the next several years, Nanak traveled widely all over India, and some say as far Mecca, preaching and teaching. Nanak conveyed his inclusive religious message not only in his words, but also in his choice of clothing. His lower dress, below the waist, was of Hindu style. His upper torso was dressed in Muslim style. After completing his travels, he returned to Punjab where he founded a city of Sikhs. Among Sikhs there were no caste distinctions. They established community kitchens, where people of all walks of life would join together for their meals. They were big believers in community service.

Guru Nanak attracted a large group of followers in his lifetime. Before he died, he passed the leadership of the Sikh movement to one of his disciples, who was then appointed Guru. The leadership of the movement was passed on from Guru to Guru for over a century. There were ten Gurus. Each of them made particular contributions to the growing tradition. They also composed devotional poems and hymns that described the wonders and blessings of the one god. These writings, along with works from other saints and sages were compiled in one book, called the Adi Granth. After the death of the tenth guru, Guru Gobind Singh in 1708 (130 years after the death of Guru Nanak), this sacred book itself was understood as an abiding teacher. It is called the Guru Granth Sahib. 

This sacred book is the central object in Sikh temples and worship. The essence of the Sikh faith is the belief in one God, the True Guru. “One” is the word with which worship is begun, before moving on to read from the sacred book.

As a outward expression of their faith, many Sikh men wear five pieces of symbolic dress: a comb that represents order, a dagger or small sword that indicates a commitment to justice, a steel bracelet that symbolizes the Unity of God, with no beginning and no end, baggy shorts that represent a readiness for action and spiritual freedom, and finally uncut hair, a symbol of vitality, which is kept in place with a turban.

* * *

Throughout their history, Sikhs have struggled to maintain their faith and identity, through centuries of religious and political turmoil and strife. The choice to wear a turban, as an expression of faith, even in the face of religious persecution, political domination, and racial profiling, is a courageous act.

But our heritage, our identity runs much deeper than any piece of clothing. The poet Jaswinder Bolina doesn’t wear a turban. Like his father before him, he cuts his hair short and shaves his beard. Bolina is the name of the family’s town in Punjab. Jaswinder’s father told him, if he wants to get published in America, he should change his name. “They won’t publish you if they see your name. They’ll know you’re not one of them. They’ll know your one of us.” But Jaswinder refuses. He will not hide who he is.

* * *

The Sikh believes in one God, who can be directly experienced in the human soul. As Unitarian Universalists, we affirm the direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and openness to the forces that create and uphold life. This mystery and wonder some of us call God.

We each have our own precious identity, whether we come from the river valleys of Punjab, or the rolling hills of Transylvania, whether come from faraway cities or the prairies of the Midwest.

Whether we worship in churches or Sikh temples, in stupas, Indian shrine rooms, synagogues or cathedrals, Kabir says, we are all searching for the same God. All the while, Kabir says, God is right here. In the next seat. God’s shoulder is right there against yours. If we really look, we will see God instantly.

May we have the wisdom to really look. 

May we see God in both stranger and friend.

With this vision firmly in our mind,

May we have the courage to live our faith,

By building a world of justice and love.

Amen.

Of Winners and Losers

"Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things."
-- T. S. Eliot

Meditation: by Starhawk (Singing the Living Tradition, #524)

Earth mother, star mother,

You who are called by a thousand names,

May all remember we are cells in your body and dance together.

You are the grain and the loaf that sustains us each day,

And as you are patient with our struggles to learn

So shall we be patient with ourselves and each other.

We are radiant light and sacred dark – the balance – 

You are the embrace that heartens

And the freedom beyond fear.

Within you we are born, we grow, live, and die – 

You bring us around the circle to rebirth,

Within us you dance

Forever.

Reading: by Eric Berne from Games People Play (1964, p. 17)

To say that the bulk of social activity consists of playing games does not necessarily mean that it is mostly “fun” or that the parties are not seriously engaged in the relationship. On the one hand, “playing” football and other athletic “games” may not be fun at all, and the players may be intensely grim; and such games share with gambling and other forms of “play” the potentiality for being very serious indeed, sometimes fatal. On the other hand, some authors… include under “play” such serious things as cannibal feasts. Hence calling such tragic behavior as suicide, alcohol and drug addiction, criminality or schizophrenia “playing games” is not irresponsible, facetious or barbaric.

Reading: by David Barash from The Survival Game – How Game Theory Explains the Biology of Cooperation and Competition (p. 3) 

In [some] cases, two individuals – or companies , or countries – find themselves locked in a deeply frustrating dilemma, in which both “players” strive for their own best interest, but, as a result both are worse off. This is not simply theory but, rather, painful and dangerous practice. 

Take, for example, nuclear weapons in Pakistan and India. Each country is tempted by the prospect of gaining a nuclear advantage over the other; at the same time, each would be better off using its limited budget to enhance the welfare of its own impoverished people. But each country is also fearful of being taken advantage of by the other if it lets down its guard and forgoes nuclear weapons. And so, two countries that can ill afford such a dangerous and expensive competition find themselves locked in a nuclear arms race that does neither one any good… and that, moreover, does harm to their own security and that of the rest of the world. Everyone would be better off if these two “players” would only “do the right thing” and stop their nuclear competition, but because each fears being suckered by the other, both see themselves as doomed to keep it up. As we’ll see, arms races of this sort also occur between married couples, parents and children, and so on…

Reading: by Bill Waterson, from a classic “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip, that describes the dynamics of a game called “Calvinball.” The first panel shows the boy Calvin, and his imaginary friend, the tiger Hobbs, playing football.

H: The center snaps the ball to the quarterback.

C: No he doesn’t!

H: He doesn’t?

C: No! Secretly, he is the quarterback for the other team! He keeps the ball!

H: A traitor!

C: Calvin breaks for the goal! Wheeeee! He’s at the 30… the 20… the 10! Nobody can catch him!

H: Nobody wants to! You’re running toward your own goal!

C: Huh?!

H: When I learned you were a spy, I switched goals. This is your goal and mine’s hidden!

C: Hidden?!

H: You’ll never find it in a million years!

C: I don’t need to find it! As traitor to your team crossing my goal counts as crossing your goal!

H: Ah, you might think so…

C: In fact, I know so!

H: But the place I hid my goal is right on top of your goal, so the points will go to me!

C: But the fact is, I’m really a double agent! I’m on your team after all… which means you’ll lose points if I cross your goal! Ha ha!

H: But I’m a traitor too. So I’m really on your team! I want you to cross my goal! The points will go to your team, which is really my team.

C: That would be true… if I were a football player!

H: You mean?

C: I’m actually a badminton player disguised as a double-agent football player!!

H: And I’m secretly a volleyball-croquet-polo player!

(The final panel shows Calvin swatting a volleyball with a badminton racket, while Hobbes is in hot pursuit on a hobby horse, swinging a croquet mallet over his shoulder.)

Calvin says: Sooner or later all our games turn into Calvinball.

Of Winners and Losers

A Sermon Delivered on November 4, 2012

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

On a cold Saturday evening a week ago, I was sitting in the bleachers of the Urbana High School football stadium, huddled under a blanket with my wife, Elaine, watching an amazing game. The Urbana Tigers were in the season playoffs playing the East Peoria Raiders. This was the first time in many years the Urbana team got this far. Once the game started, the Raiders scored the first touch down just a few minutes into the game. Not a good sign.

But amazingly, in the course of the next two and a half hours, Urbana caught up, and then took the lead. And even more amazingly Urbana won the game. This was the first time in our state’s 39-year high school tournament history that Urbana won in the playoffs. In the hundred-year history of the Urbana football program, this is the first time our team has advanced this far.

What a glorious feeling: we won! It was team effort: thanks to the players on the field, and thanks to the enthusiastic support of the fans in the stands, and thanks to our daughter, Sophia, who plays clarinet in the marching band, and thanks to Elaine’s good work as Urbana school board member, and - of course – thanks to my whooping and whistling, we won.

* * *

A friendly competition that lasts a few hours on a Saturday night, and that ends in clear victory, is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately not all games are so simple and straightforward.

We are now in the final stretch of a different kind of competition that has been dragging on for months, which has consumed hundreds of millions of dollars for advertising, countless column inches in our newspapers, and extensive coverage on television – not to mention a flood of campaign commercials. 

Millions of Americans tuned in to watch the presidential candidates engage in three spirited debates. And millions speculated on who had won which debate, and why – and what it would mean for the outcome of the race, which is scheduled to conclude this Tuesday.

Some of us have been closely pursuing every twist and turn in the story, every bump and dip in the polls, every new little pitch delivered by one candidate or the other, every new bit of information that sheds light on the state of our economy, on the latest unemployment numbers, or the latest count of jobs created.

The success of any democracy hinges upon the engagement of a well-informed citizenship. You might think, in this day and age, being well-informed would be an easy task. After all, millions of Americans have access to the internet – the information superhighway – and millions more watch cable TV, listen to radio programs, and read newspapers.

Sadly, that is not the way things seem to be working out. It turns out the amount of information available says only little about its accuracy. There is a big difference between the quantity of information, and the quality of information.

Thankfully there is now occasionally coverage of so called “fact checkers.” These folks take a closer look at some of the claims of the two candidates. Who took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy? Who sold what to the Italians, who plan to build Jeeps in China? How much taxes are people paying who earn more that $250,000 a year? And how much will they pay under proposed tax plans? How much have health insurance premiums really gone up in recent years? How many Americans have been helped by Obamacare, and how many have been hurt?

According to the fact checkers, both political candidates are fudging their figures. Both are bending the truth. Both have uttered some downright lies. Which of these lies are more weighty than others – that is the question. 

The website PolitiFact.com features a Truth-O-Meter, that rates candidate statements in six catagories: “True,” “Mostly True,” “Half True,” “Mostly False,” “False,” and “Pants on Fire!” When I checked yesterday, one candidate had more “Pants on Fire!” ratings than the other. But, of course, not everyone will agree on the objectivity of PolitiFact.com.

Who will win and who will lose? The one thing most commentators seem to agree upon is that this race is too close to call. 

The tragic part of this competition is that in order to win, each side seems to be willing to sacrifice not only the truth, but a wealth of our resources, and both party’s political capital for the sake of strengthening their own position.

The cynical will shrug this off as business as usual: Politicians always play dirty. It goes with the territory. This is simply the way the game is played. 

* * *

Now, thanks to game theory, we have scientific support for the self-defeating dynamics of political campaigns.

It is not unlike the psychology of the nuclear arms race between Pakistan and India, that robs precious resources from the impoverished people of both countries. David Barash calls it the “politician’s dilemma” over whether or not to “go negative.” To “go negative” means you spend more of your time and attention attacking the positions – if not the personality – of your political rival, than making a compelling case for your own positions. Going negative means spending more of your time tearing down the other party, rather than building up your own.

Barash writes:  

“political rivals… often find themselves stuck in an awkward competitive game, in which they typically fear being suckered by their opponent (victimized… by shady, negative campaign tactics), as well as tempted to reap the benefits of attacking successfully and unilaterally. …Like two contestants in a particularly grueling tug-of-war, each side may long to ease up, but fears that the other will take advantage, so both sides end up holding tight, straining mightily… and often getting nowhere. Not uncommonly, [both players come out behind], the only winners in the world of electoral politics being the consultants, the speechwriters, and the media.”

The natural dynamics of games lead both teams to spend an enormous amount of energy, often counterproductively, simply to stay one step ahead of their opponents.

These dynamics are so deeply ingrained and so universal, we can see them played out throughout the natural world. For instance, the male peacock is now forced to grow a set of “outlandish and metabolically expensive tail feathers,” that easily get entangled in the underbrush, and serve no useful, rational purpose beyond looking just a little bit more impressive than the next male peacock. Wouldn’t all peacocks be better off, if they could sit down together, and agree to a more sensible-sized tail?

Even trees are victims of this dynamic, Barash writes. 

“Given that successful reproduction is the biological bottom line, why should redwoods grow so tall? After all, you don’t have to be two hundred feet in height, and bother piling up hundreds of tons of wood, just to make some tiny seeds. But a redwood tree that opted out of the big-and-tall competitive fray would literally whither in the shade produced by other trees that were just a bit less restrained. And so, redwoods are doomed by their own unconscious selfishness to be “irrationally” large, for no particular reason other than the fact that other redwoods are doing the same thing.”

* * *

The natural dynamics that guide our games run deep. Scientists are studying their subtleties, not to turn us all into cynics, but in order to point the way to different ways of playing.

Yes, conflicts of interest are realities in life. But that doesn’t mean all conflicts are necessarily destructive or violent. We have a choice in how we handle conflict. We can manage conflict effectively, creatively and constructively.

In fact, that is exactly what a democracy is designed to do. A democracy, a two-party system, is designed to help us keep each other honest – not to turn us all into liars. It is one way to provide checks and balances, that will, in the end, benefit all of us. It is a political process that was designed so that the business of governing was not left to kings and queens, but could involve all people. “Of the people, by the people, for the people,” is the way Lincoln memorably described it in his Gettysburg address. But as historians know, Lincoln didn’t come up with this idea. He was quoting the Unitarian minister and abolitionist Theodore Parker, who in well-known sermon said, “Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people.”   

When the campaign season reaches a fever pitch, as it does in the last days leading up to an election, and when the country seems to be split right down the middle, evenly divided between democrat and republican, it can seem as if half of our entire citizenship is about to become losers, half of us, excluded from the halls of power. Half of our voices destined to fall on the deaf ears of our political opponents.

But an evenly divided electorate does not necessarily mean half of the country is about to be excluded from the political process. Instead it can be an incentive for both sides of the political debate to find more constructive ways to manage their differences. 

To move from a stance of conflict to one of cooperation means learning to negotiate. Every one of us is a negotiator. Negotiation is a fact of life. This is the point Roger Fisher and William Ury make, in their book Getting to Yes. 

“You discuss a raise with your boss. You try to agree with a stranger on a price for his house… You negotiate with your [partner] about where to go for dinner and with your child about when the lights go out. Negotiation is a basic means of getting what you want from others… Although negotiation takes place every day, it is not easy to do well.” 

The most important aspect of negotiation is to learn to see the world from the perspective of one’s opponent. As Fisher and Ury write, you 

“need to understand empathically the power of their point of view and to feel the emotional force with which they believe it. It is not enough to study them like beetles under a microscope; you need to know what it feels like to be a beetle. To accomplish this task you should be prepared to withhold judgment for a while as you “try on” their views. They may well believe that their views are “right” as strongly as you believe that yours are. You may see the glass as half full of cool water. Your [partner] may see a dirty, half-empty glass about to cause a ring on the mahogany finish.”

* * *

All our lives, we are playing games. The fact that we are playing games does not mean we are necessarily having fun. Games can be grim and grueling. Games can be dead serious, and there can be a lot at stake.

Life invariably involves instances in which our interests conflict with the interests of others. We believe in the wisdom of one course of action, and someone else disagrees. We work toward one vision of the greater good, and others have a different vision and want pursue a different path.

Sometimes our differences turn into a serious conflict, into an unyielding tug of war, into an arms race, or into an argument in which fact quickly yields to fiction. 

We need to pay attention to the games we are playing. Paying attention is the first step in learning to play well. It is the first step in learning to play fair, and to be a good sport.

If we pay attention, we will realize the game we are playing, is not the only game there is. It is one game among many. And people who may seem like our opponents in one game, may actually turn out to be our team-mates in another game. And our respective goals that seemed mutually exclusive from one point of view, may in fact have very much in common, if only we learn to see them from a different angle. 

What if we were all on the same team? Not opponents, but cells within the body of creation. This is not a fiction, it is a fact. We are all children of the earth, members of one human family. Each of us with hopes and dreams. Each of us longing to live more fully and more deeply. All of us bound together in an inescapable network of mutuality. 

In a race there are often winners and losers. This is one of the games we play. It’s a fact. But let us also remember a larger truth: more important than winning or losing, is the fact that we are all in it together. We are all members and participants in the human race. And our survival depends – not on how fiercely we compete against one another – but how fully we cooperate with one another. We are all negotiators.

May we have the wisdom to envision a road that will lead to a better world, not just for us, but for all people. If we have the courage to race down that road, every one of us will be a winner.

Amen.