The Truth Will Set Who Free?

"Freedom has always been an expensive thing. History is fit testimony to the fact that freedom is rarely gained without sacrifice and self-denial."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Opening Words

Let us gather to worship mindful of the words of Margaret Mead, who said,

“Never doubt that a small group of citizens can change the world;

Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Meditation:  by Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), from My Bondage and My Freedom 

If there is no struggle there is no progress.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation,

are [people] who want crops without plowing up the ground.

They want rain without thunder and lightening.

They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one,

or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

It never did and it never will.

Reading: by Michelle Alexander from The New Jim Crow – Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (p. 26) 

The history of racial caste in the United States would [have ended] with the Civil War if the idea of race and racial difference had died when the institution of slavery was put to rest. But during the four centuries in which slavery flourished, the idea of race flourished as well. Indeed, the notion of racial difference – specifically the notion of white supremacy – proved far more durable than the institution that gave birth to it. 

White supremacy, over time, became a religion of sorts. Faith in the idea that people of the African race were bestial, that whites were inherently superior, and that slavery was, in fact, for blacks’ own good, served to alleviate the white conscience and reconcile the tension between slavery and the democratic ideals espoused by whites in the so-called New World. There was no contradiction in the bold claim made by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” if Africans were not really people. Racism operated as a deeply held belief system based on “truths” beyond question or doubt.

Reading: by Kathryn Schulz from Being Wrong – Adventures on the Margins of Error (p. 5) 

Of all the things we are wrong about, [the] idea of error might well top the list. It is our meta-mistake: we are wrong about what it means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. Far from being a moral flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honorable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction, and courage. And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance, wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change. Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world.

Given [the] centrality to our intellectual and emotional development, error shouldn’t be an embarrassment, and cannot be an aberration. On the contrary. As Benjamin Franklin observed… wrongness is a window into normal human nature – into our imaginative minds, our boundless faculties, our extravagant souls. 

Reading: by Martin Luther King, Jr., from Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community, published in 1967, it was King’s fourth and last book.

The hope of the world is still in dedicated minorities. The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been a minority. That creative minority of whites absolutely committed to civil rights can make it clear to the larger society that vacillation and procrastination on the question of racial justice can no longer be tolerated. It will take such a small committed minority to work unrelentingly to win the uncommitted majority. Such a group may well transform America’s greatest dilemma into her most glorious opportunity. 

The Truth Will Set Who Free?

A Sermon Delivered on January 20, 2013

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

Once again, on a Sunday in mid-January, we take time to honor the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – civil rights leader, modern-day prophet, and secular saint. 

This year is particularly auspicious. 2013 is the 150^th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed an order that declared all men and women enslaved in Confederate territories to be forever free. With the stroke of Lincoln’s pen, over three million slaves in the South were free. The catch, of course, was that Lincoln had no power over the southern states. They were at war.

* * *

It is fitting that this year in movie theaters we can watch the new movie “Lincoln,” by Steven Spielberg. Spielberg is one of our most gifted and respected directors. The film has been nominated for more Academy Awards, more Oscars, than any other movie this year. It’s a good movie. I encourage you check it out, if you haven’t already.

It focuses on the few months preceding Lincoln’s death, during which he works feverishly to see the 13^th Amendment pass in the House of Representatives, in January, 1865, which finally provides the Constitutional mandate to outlaw slavery in the entire United States.

The actor Daniel Day Lewis does a great job bringing Abraham Lincoln to life. And the movie does a good job highlighting some of the political complexities of the vote. Initially the majority of the House did not support the 13^th amendment. The Civil War was still raging, and it seemed the South might surrender, with the U.S. congress leaving the institution of slavery intact.

The “Lincoln” movie focuses mainly on the few people surrounding the president in the hallways of the White House, and the chamber of congress, in which heated debates are carried out. It paints a more intimate picture of the man, as he struggles to navigate the treacherous moral territory of political manipulation, slavery, and war, as well as family arguments with his wife and his son.

I bet most viewers left the movie theater, not only pleasantly entertained by a pretty good movie, but also feeling as if they had gained a better understanding of the historical and moral dimensions of racism, and a reassuring sense that we, today, are standing on the right side of history.

And yet, that is not the only way to understand the “Lincoln” movie. Because, actually, the movie does more to perpetuate racist stereotypes, than to dismantle them. This is the point the historian Kate Masur makes. She points out that the vast majority of the movie focuses on the actions of white characters, while African Americans stand at the sidelines, often looking on in silence. “This is not mere nit-picking,” Masur says, the film “helps perpetuate the notion that African Americans have offered little of substance to their own liberation.” And nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, countless blacks were involved in political debate and civic engagement of the period. Frederick Douglass attended Lincoln’s second inauguration. He was one of many powerful black leaders there, but in the movie he is nowhere to be seen. (“In Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln,’ Passive Black Characters,” New York Times, Nov. 12, 2012)

Masur is right. If you watch the movie, and pay attention, you realize that all the people in power and at the center of events are white, while African Americans are all passive, inferior, and deferential. I don’t know what is more unsettling: that Spielberg would be so indifferent to the racist stereotypes he could have so easily challenged, or that most of the white people who have watched the movie were oblivious to its racist subtext.

How can so many people be so wrong?

* * *

Kathryn Schulz once presented a TED talk on the subject of her book Being Wrong. Toward the beginning of her talk, she asked the people in the audience a question that has stuck with me. She asked them: How does it feel to be wrong?

How does it feel to be wrong? A couple of folks sitting in the front row responded: “Dreadful.” A woman simply motioned “thumbs down” and frowned. “Embarrassing,” someone else said.

“Dreadful, thumbs-down, embarrassing,” these are great answers, Schulz said. But they’re answers to a different question. They are answers to the question: How does it feel to realize you are wrong?

Realizing you are wrong can feel like all of that: it can feel dreadful, embarrassing, or devastating, or revelatory. Or it can even be funny. But just being wrong doesn’t feel like anything.

Schulz offers an analogy. She says being wrong, is like that character in the old Looney Tunes cartoon: Wiley Coyote, who is always chasing the Road Runner. In just about every episode there was at least one instance in which, in his passion to catch the Road Runner, chasing him, Wiley Coyote would run over the edge of a cliff. The coyote would be fine, while he was running, or even when he stood still, suspended in midair… up until the moment he looked down. That’s when he fell.

For that stretch, after the coyote goes over the edge of the cliff, but before he realizes it, that’s what it’s like when we are wrong. We are already in trouble, but we feel like we are on solid ground. We are clearly wrong. But it feels like we are right.

* * *

In our efforts to eradicate racism, again and again, we are like that over-eager coyote. We think we are standing on solid moral ground. That’s what it feels like. But we are wrong.

Thomas Jefferson thought he was standing on solid moral ground when he wrote, “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Clearly he felt he was right. But the fact that he owned slaves and fathered children, who grew up as slaves, these facts tell us he was wrong. He just didn’t realize it, yet.

And Abraham Lincoln thought he was standing on solid moral ground when he lobbied for the 13^th Amendment, by hook or by crook, even prolonging the Civil War. That’s the way we would like to remember Lincoln. We would like to think he was a beacon of moral clarity, that he believed in Jefferson’s dream, and made it a reality.

And yet, didn’t Lincoln say in his first inaugural address: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” 

At some point along the way, between his first inauguration and his second inauguration, it seems Lincoln’s mind was changed. At some point, he must have realized he was wrong.

* * *

As historians know, after the Civil War came the Reconstruction. And after the Reconstruction came Jim Crow. Yes, African Americans were freed from slavery, but until well into the 20^th century most black people were still not free. They were not free to live where they chose, to work at decent jobs, to get a quality education. They were not free to vote, to change the laws that oppressed them, they were not even free to eat, travel, shop, or play where they wanted. 

But then came the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. And then came Martin Luther King, Jr., and great strides were made toward freedom. Today we celebrate Dr. King, and we want to believe that thanks to his courageous work, and thanks to his sacrifice, we have overcome racism.  

Look -- an African American man is being inaugurated as president today, for the second time. Surely this means we are standing on solid moral ground today. That’s what it feels like, when we look around.

We are good people. We want to fight the good fight. We want to stand on the right side of history. 

And yet when our children’s children look back to this day, I am not sure that that is what they will see. And if we stop, and look down right now, we ourselves may realize we are in trouble. We may end up feeling dreadful, devastated, embarrassed, “thumbs-down.”

* * *

One area in which we may be in trouble is our criminal justice system.

In her book, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander makes the case that, since this nation’s founding, African Americans, again and again, “have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die, but then are reborn in new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of the time. …There is a certain pattern to this cycle. Following the collapse of each system of control, there has been a period of confusion – transition,” then a new system is created. Today that system is called mass incarceration.

This is the story Michelle Alexander tells: The Civil Rights Movement itself was a period of transition. Then, beginning in the 1960s, for about a decade, the crime rate in this country rose. “Reported street crime quadrupled, and homicide rates nearly doubled.” The causes of the crime wave are complex, but mostly have to do with the demographic bubble of the Baby Boom. There was a spike in the number of young men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four – the age group that tends to be responsible for most crimes. But rather than seeing this as a demographic phenomenon, the rising crime rate was sensationalized in the media, and offered of evidence of the breakdown of lawfulness, morality, and social stability in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. 

Back in 1964, two-thirds of those incarcerated in America were white, and one third black. By the mid-1990s those numbers were reversed. There were two-thirds black and one-third whites. In the course of our so-called “war on drugs,” over a period of thirty years, the U.S. penal population exploded from 300,000 to more than 2 million. And although about 70 percent of drug users are white, nine-in-ten people locked up for a possession offense are people of color. A black youth is fifty times as likely as a white youth to be incarcerated for a first-time drug offense, when all other factors are equal.

The U.S. now has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Higher than Russia, China and Iran. We imprison a larger percentage of our black population now, than South Africa did at the height of apartheid.

Alexander writes, 

“More than 2 million people found themselves behind bars at the turn of the twenty-first century, and millions more were relegated to the margins of mainstream society, banished to a political and social space not unlike Jim Crowe, where discrimination in employment, housing, and access to education was perfectly legal, and where they could be denied the right to vote. The system functioned relatively automatically, and the prevailing system of racial meanings, identities, and ideologies already seemed natural. Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states were black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of communities of color was explained in race-neutral terms, an adaptation to the needs and demands of the current political climate. The New Jim Crow was born.” (p. 58)

Today we have more African-American adults in prison, probation or parole, than there were enslaved in 1850.

* * *

The facts paint a picture that is perfectly clear. There is something wrong with the society in which we live. That is hard for us to believe, because for most of us, most of the time, it doesn’t feel wrong. We feel like we are standing on solid moral ground. But that doesn’t mean we really are. If we stop and look down, we may realize there is no solid ground beneath us.

Kathryn Schulz believes firmly that realizing we are wrong, even though it may feel uncomfortable, is a very good thing. It is the source of empathy, optimism, conviction and courage. The surprise we feel at being wrong, is evidence of our firm belief that we can do better. “That is why error,” she says, “even though it sometimes feels like despair, is actually much closer in spirit to hope.”

Dr. King understood the realities of complexities of racism very well. He was well aware of human fallibility and frailty. But nevertheless, he maintained a spirit of hope.

Above all Dr. King believed in love. The call for freedom, he said, is a call for a “world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation.” This call “is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all [people].”

In his last book he wrote: “Love is the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. The Hindu-Moslem- Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the [words]: Let us love one another, for love is of God… God is love...”

Once we are able to understand and act on this truth – the truth will set us all free.

May we have the courage to open our eyes to the wrongs that surround us.

May we dare to look down and realize, 

the moral ground on which we thought we were standing may be missing.

May we embrace the truth of love,

And do our part to turn our greatest dilemmas 

into our most glorious opportunities. 

Amen.

The Power of Yes and No

"The oldest, shortest words - "yes" and "no" - are those which require the most thought."
-- Pythagoras

Meditation: by Unitarian poet e. e. cummings 

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any--lifted from the no

of all nothing--human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Reading: by Mark Waldman and Andrew Newberg from “The Most Dangerous Word in the World” (Psychology Today, Jul 31 2012)

If I were to put you into an fMRI scanner—a huge donut-shaped magnet that can take a video of the neural changes happening in your brain—and flash the word “NO” for less than one second, you’d see a sudden release of dozens of stress-producing hormones and neurotransmitters. These chemicals immediately interrupt the normal functioning of your brain, impairing logic, reason, language processing, and communication.

In fact, just seeing a list of negative words for a few seconds will make a highly anxious or depressed person feel worse, and the more you ruminate on them, the more you can actually damage key structures that regulate your memory, feelings, and emotions. You’ll disrupt your sleep, your appetite, and your ability to experience long-term happiness and satisfaction.

If you vocalize your negativity, or even slightly frown when you say “no,” more stress chemicals will be released, not only in your brain, but in the listener’s brain as well. The listener will experience increased anxiety and irritability, thus undermining cooperation and trust. In fact, just hanging around negative people will make you more prejudiced toward others!

Any form of negative rumination—for example, worrying about your financial future or health— will stimulate the release of destructive neurochemicals. And the same holds true for children: the more negative thoughts they have, the more likely they are to experience emotional turmoil. But if you teach them to think positively, you can turn their lives around.

Reading: by Oliver Burkeman from “The Power of Negative Thinking” (New York Times, August 4, 2012)

Last month, in San Jose, Calif., 21 people were treated for burns after walking barefoot over hot coals as part of an event called Unleash the Power Within, starring the motivational speaker Tony Robbins. If you’re anything like me, a cynical retort might suggest itself: What, exactly, did they expect would happen? …

Consider the technique of positive visualization… According to research by the psychologist Gabriele Oettingen and her colleagues, visualizing a successful outcome, under certain conditions, can make people less likely to achieve it. She rendered her experimental participants dehydrated, then asked some of them to picture a refreshing glass of water. The water-visualizers experienced a marked decline in energy levels, compared with those participants who engaged in negative or neutral fantasies. Imagining their goal seemed to deprive the water-visualizers of their get-up-and-go…

Or take affirmations, those cheery slogans intended to lift the user’s mood by repeating them: “I am a lovable person!” “My life is filled with joy!” Psychologists at the University of Waterloo concluded that such statements make people with low self-esteem feel worse — not least because telling yourself you’re lovable is liable to provoke the grouchy internal counterargument that, really, you’re not.

Reading: by Kaylin Haught a poem entitled “God Says Yes To Me”

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic

and she said yes

I asked her if it was okay to be short

and she said it sure is

I asked her if I could wear nail polish

or not wear nail polish

and she said honey

she calls me that sometimes

she said you can do just exactly

what you want to

Thanks God I said

And is it even okay if I don't paragraph

my letters

Sweetcakes God said

who knows where she picked that up

what I'm telling you is

Yes Yes Yes

The Power of Yes and No

A Sermon Delivered on January 13, 2013

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

Once upon a time there were two frogs happily hopping around a barn, when they accidentally jumped into a bucket of milk, and couldn’t get out. The sides of the bucket were too steep and slippery. They were trapped.

After swimming in circles for hours, one of the frogs said, “This is hopeless. We should just quit.” The other frog ignored the remark and kept paddling. Finally the first frog gave up and drowned. The second frog kept swimming and swimming and swimming. Until the milk turned to butter. Once he gained solid footing, the frog hopped out of the bucket, and lived happily ever after.

The first frog, the frog that gave up hope and drowned, was a pessimist. The moral of the story is that it is better to be an optimist. Assume a positive attitude and you, too, will live happily ever after.

This is the kind of message Norman Vincent Peale popularized in 1952 when he published his bestseller The Power of Positive Thinking.

Norman Vincent Peale said: 

“You do not need to be defeated by anything, … you can have peace of mind, improved health, and a never-ceasing flow of energy… Your life can be full of joy and satisfaction… If you read this book thoughtfully, carefully absorbing its teachings, and if you… sincerely and persistently practice the principles and formulas set forth herein, you can experience an amazing improvement within yourself. … Your relations with other people will improve. You will become a more popular, esteemed, and will-liked individual. … You will enjoy a delightful new sense of well-being… You will become a person of greater usefulness and will wield an expanded influence… The system outlined [in this book] is a perfected and amazing method of successful living.” (p. vii)

Peale’s book was read by millions of people and translated into over a dozen languages. Clearly his message strikes a chord. And yet, what kind of a chord it strikes may vary from person to person.

For some of us the message of positive psychology conveys a compelling truth – we have the power to shape our destiny, to remain undefeated, and to improve ourselves, no matter what the circumstances of our lives might be. 

For others, this message seems too good to be true. The skeptics among us are more likely to see Norman Vincent Peale’s message as little more than wishful thinking, merely a feel-good formula for the gullible. Positive thinking, for them, is just another incarnation of the snake-oil sold by charlatans, who claim their treatments and therapies will yield miraculous results.

Positive thinking is no more a miracle solution to all life’s problems, than it is a protection against the serious burns suffered by those 21 Californians who thought they could safely walk barefoot over burning coals, thanks to the power of their positive thoughts. 

In a book entitled Bright-Sided – How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, Barbara Ehrenreich makes the case that the American infatuation with a glib cheerfulness, and an obligatory optimism has done more harm than good. Prior to 9/11, we were optimistic about our national security, which allowed the administration to discount reports of immanent danger. Then we launched into the war in Iraq optimistic about the prospects of a quick resolution, and the hope that we would surely find weapons of mass destruction hidden there. In fact we found neither. In the months prior to Hurricane Katrina, we assumed an optimistic attitude, despite the evidence provided by engineers, that the levees wouldn’t hold. But the wary engineers were right, and thousands lost their homes. And the housing bubble that preceded the financial crisis of 2008 was sustained by a spirit of optimism about the wisdom of financial speculation, which, in hindsight, turned out to be anything but wise.

Positive thinking is not the solution to all life’s problems. And yet, there does seem to be something to it.

* * *

Here is another story: Once upon a time there was a scientist who conducted an experiment with the rats in his laboratory. He divided them into two groups. The rats from the first group were placed, one by one, in a big tank of water. The water was mixed with milk, so you couldn’t see beneath the surface. The rats had to swim for a set amount of time. 

The rats in the first group, were the lucky ones, because their tank had a tiny island hidden under the water. Once they located the little island, they could perch on it, and get a break from the exertion of swimming. The rats in the second group were placed in an identical tank, with the same kind of milky water, and left to swim for exactly the same amount of time. The only difference was that their tank didn’t have a tiny island. 

After their swim, the rats from both groups were plucked from the water, wet and weary. Both groups had time to rest and recuperate. And then they were introduced to the real Rat Race of the study.

The researcher, once again, put each of the rats, one after the other, into the milky water. But this time, all the rats swam in a tank that didn’t have an island. This time, none of the rats got a break. This time, all the rats were left to swim for as long as they were able. And then, just when their little noses slipped beneath the surface, just when they were about to drown, they were rescued by the researcher. And the researcher carefully kept track of the length of time each rat was willing and able to swim, before returning it to its cage.

What the study showed is that the rats from the first group, the group that had had an island to rest on in the earlier experiment, these rats swam twice as long as the second group of rats. It was as if the memory of finding the island in the past, and the hope of finding it again, provided these rats with twice the stamina, compared to their less fortunate fellows. It seems the rats that were able to maintain a positive attitude displayed a much higher level of endurance and resilience.

In a book entitled Half Empty, Half Full, on the psychological roots of optimism, the psychiatrist Susan Vaughan takes this experiment as evidence of a profound power associated with positive thinking. It is difficult to overemphasize the importance and positive effects of optimism, she says. “Optimists persevere, with continued activity rather than inertia in the face of adversity. Optimism is also to some extent a self-fulfilling prophesy.” Optimists don’t merely interpret reality, they create their own reality. In a way, optimists believe in illusions. And while these illusions are merely figments of their imagination, they have the power to change the course of our lives.

Thinking about the rats swimming in the tank, Susan Vaughan asks, 

“Since there was no island in the tank in which they took their second swim, isn’t it fair to say that what made the difference as to whether they sank or swam was the illusion of an island, their ability to conjure an inner image of an island to swim for when the going got rough, even if such an island existed only in their imagination.” (p. 3)

As Susan Vaughan sees it, optimism depends on our ability to construct and sustain the “illusion of an island.” For humans this ability is the result of a series of inner psychological processes that can be improved upon with practice, a set of psychological maneuvers through which we shift our perspective and refocus our vision.

She believes our relative degree of optimism is not absolutely determined by either nature or nurture. It is not inescapably shaped by our biology or our life experience. The internal gymnastics are not generally something optimists are just born knowing how to do. It is an active internal process, more like learning how to ride a bike, or learning how to swim.

Susan Vaughan asks, “Given the choice of viewing life through the rose-colored glasses of hope rather than the dark blinders of sadness, anger, and worry, wouldn’t it be far better to assume you’ll find a foothold amid the chaos?” (p. 10)

* * *

It is a fact: life presents us with an endless stream of challenges and opportunities. We are confronted with circumstances we can’t fully grasp. We are hurled into situations we can’t fully control.

Our health and happiness, our friends and family, our work and our wealth – any of these can be snatched away. An unanticipated illness, the loss of a loved one, a job that falls victim to downsizing or an economic slump – any of these can leave us struggling and disoriented.

Any of these can plunge us into a sea of uncertainty, into stormy waters of anger, or into the gray swamps of despair. And we will find ourselves struggling to keep our heads above the water. We don’t know how long the crisis will last. We don’t know how deep the waters run. We don’t know how and where we will regain solid footing. We don’t know when we will be granted a respite. We don’t know when we will be safe.

But we do have a choice. We always have a choice in terms of how we respond to the events life presents us. In the game of life we can’t control the cards fate deals us. But we can choose how we play the hand we have been dealt. 

* * *

Barbara Ehrenreich doesn’t share Susan Vaughan’s enthusiasm for rose-colored glasses. As far as she is concerned, both positive thinking and negative thinking are equally problematic. Whether optimists project their hopefulness in the world, or pessimists project their misery, both are evidence that we cannot separate emotion from perception. Both are evidence that we are often willing to accept illusion for reality.

Ehrenreich says, rather than letting our emotions color our perceptions, we should try to “get out of ourselves and see things “as they are,” or as uncolored as possible by our own feelings and fantasies, to understand that the world is full of danger and opportunity – the chance of great happiness as well as the certainty of death.” (p. 196)

In order to see things as they are, we would do well to consider not only our own perceptions, but the perspectives of others, as well: people whose judgment we trust, who are wise and discerning, young people and old, people with whom we agree and disagree. We would do well to weigh the information we gather carefully and critically. We should be guided by a spirit of curiosity, and wonder, and awe. 

Because we are human, we are limited. We are neither all-powerful, nor all-knowing. Our vision is invariably incomplete. We will always look through some sort of glasses that will cloud our perceptions one way or another. Because we are human, we will sometimes look at the world through rosy glasses, and sometimes through gray glasses, and sometimes through green glasses, or purple glasses… But by simply remembering that we are always wearing some kind of colored glasses, we will be better able to piece together a reliable image of the world that lies beyond them.

There is no need to settle for illusions. Life is real. This day is real. You and I are real.

To live well, we should try to pay attention to the real world. We should pay attention to everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. We should pay attention to life and love, and the gay great happening – limitless – earth. We should let the ears of our ears awake, and the eyes of our eyes open.

We should say “yes yes yes” to everything, real or imagined, everything that leads us to more life and love.

In the days ahead, 

may we be guided by a spirit of curiosity and wonder and awe, 

a spirit of yes, so that we might envision and create a real world of life and love.

Amen.

Something from Nothing

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
-- Socrates

Meditation: by George Gershwin a song entitled “I Got Plenty of Nothing” sung by Harry Belafonte

I got plenty of nothing.

Nothing's plenty for me.

I got no car - got no mule

Got no misery

The folks with plenty of plenty

Got a lock on the door.

Afraid somebody's a gonna rob 'em 

While there out making more - what for?

I got no lock on the door - that's no way to be.

They can steal the rug from the floor - that's OK with me

'Cause the things that I prize - like the stars in the skies - are all free.

I got plenty of nothing.

Nothing's plenty for me.

I got my gal - got my song

Got heaven the whole day long.

Got my gal, got my lord, got my song.

I got plenty of nothing.

Nothing's plenty for me.

I got the sun, got the moon

Got the deep blue sea.

The folks with plenty of plenty

Got to pray all the day.

Seems with plenty you sure got to worry

How to keep the devil away, away.

I ain’t fretting about hell

‘Til the time arrives.

Never worry long as I’m well

Never want to strive to be good, to be bad,

What the hell, I am glad I’m alive

I got plenty of nothing

Nothing's plenty for me

I got my gal, got my song

Got heaven the whole day long

Got my gal, got my lord, got my song,

Got my song, got my song.

Reading: by cosmologist Lawrence Krauss from A Universe from Nothing – Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing (p. 4) 

The discovery that the universe is not static, but rather expanding, has profound philosophical and religious significance, because it suggested that our universe had a beginning. A beginning implies creation, and creation stirs emotions. While it took several decades following the discovery in 1929 of our expanding universe for the notion of a Big Bang to achieve independent empirical confirmation, Pope Pius XII heralded it in 1951 as evidence for Genesis. As he put it: “It would seem that present-day science, with one sweep back across the centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to the august instant of primordial Fiat Lux [Let there be Light], when along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, and the elements split and churned and formed into millions of galaxies. Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, [science] has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the world came forth from the Hands of the Creator. Hence, creation took place. We say: “Therefore, there is a Creator. Therefore, God exists!”

The full story is actually a little more interesting.

Reading: by astrophysicist Alan Lightman from Mr g: A Novel about Creation (p. 3) 

As I remember, I had just woken up from a nap when I decided to create the universe.

Not much was happening at the time. As a matter of fact, time didn’t exist. Nor space. When you looked out into the Void, you were really looking at nothing more than your own thought. And if you tried to picture wind or stars or water, you could not give form or texture to your notions.

Those things did not exist. Smooth, rough, waxy, sharp, prickly, brittle – even qualities such as these lacked meaning. Practically everything slept in an infinite torpor of potentiality. I knew that I could make whatever I wanted. But that was the problem. Unlimited possibilities bring unlimited indecision. When I thought about this particular creation or that, uncertain about how each thing would turn out, I grew anxious and went back to sleep. But at a particular moment, I managed… if not exactly to sweep aside my doubts, at least to take a chance.

Almost immediately, it seemed my aunt Penelope asked me why I would want to do such a thing. Wasn’t I comfortable with the emptiness just as it was? Yes, yes, I said, of course, but… You could mess things up, said my aunt. Leave Him alone, said Uncle Deva. Uncle toddled over and stood beside me in his dear way. Please don’t tell me what to do, retorted my aunt. Then she turned and stared hard at me. Her hair, uncombed and knotted as usual, drooped down to her bulky shoulders. Well? She said, and waited. I never liked it when Aunt Penelope glowered at me. I think I’m going to do it, I finally said. It was the first decision I’d made in eons of unmeasured existence, and it felt good to have decided something. Or rather, to have decided that something had to be done, that a change was in the offing. I had chosen to replace nothingness with something. Something is not nothing. Something could be anything. My imagination reeled. From now on, there would be a future, a present, and a past. A past of nothingness, and the future of something.

Reading:  by feminist theologian Carter Heyward (from Our Passion for Justice)

We touch this strength, our power, who we are in the world, when we are most fully in touch with one another and with the world. There is no doubt in my mind that in so doing we are participants in ongoing incarnation, bringing God to life in the world. For god is nothing other than the eternally creative source of our relational power, our common strength, a god whose movement is to empower, bringing us into our own together, a god whose name in history is love.

Something from Nothing

A Sermon Delivered on January 6, 2013

By 

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

In this week’s New Yorker magazine I stumbled upon the story of a man named Apollo Robbins. Apollo Robbins is a professional picket-pocket. Not a criminal, but an entertainer. Robbins is amazingly adept at removing objects from people’s pockets, rings from fingers, watches from wrists, and even glasses right off your nose. He was in the news a few years ago when during one of his performances he successfully emptied the pockets of several Secret Service Agents who were escorting president Jimmy Carter.

He calls himself a “gentleman thief,” in that he steals things from people’s pockets, without their realizing they’ve been robbed, and then, to the amusement of those looking on, displays the objects taken, before returning them to their rightful owner. Forbes Magazine calls him an “artful manipulator of awareness.”

He is so skilled at his craft that he also serves as a speaker and consultant. He has been hired as consultant by law enforcement to explain the tricks of the pick-pocket trade, so police officers can better catch real thieves. He has been sought out by officials at the Department of Defense, because they were interested in his skills of misdirection. Recently Robbins was also featured on a National Geographic TV show called “Brain Games,” that offers scientific insight into to how easily our brains can be fooled.  

Robbins was born in the town of Plainview, Texas, in 1974. His parents say his birth was a miracle. There were complications during the pregnancy. The doctors warned that his mother would likely die in childbirth, and that he would be crippled and brain damaged. 

But his mother didn’t die. And though Robbins was born with twisted limbs and motor-skill deficits, after years of rehabilitation, leg-braces, and physical therapy, he was finally able to walk and hold a pen. In the years that followed he developed an uncanny physical dexterity. When he was fifteen, he watched a magician at the local country fair. He was fascinated, and soon began to study magic himself.

Apollo Robbins is many things. But above all, he is an amazingly gifted magician.

It is amazing to watch Robbins, and to witness how in the pockets of his unwitting victims objects suddenly appear and disappear. One moment there is something in their pockets, in the next, there is nothing. Coins, wallets, cell-phones and watches suddenly vanish. And just as suddenly re-appear, in unexpected places.

* * *

The greatest magic act, for sure, is the creation of the universe. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… God said, “Let there be light,” And there was light!”

Abracadabra – Let there be light!

Creation “ex nihilo” is the way theologians long imagined this act of divine beginning, creation “out of nothing.” In the beginning there was nothing but God. And God was the First Cause. Creation was a divine act. A miracle, a magic, only possible by the power of God.    

In his book A Universe From Nothing, Lawrence Krauss takes issue with those who believe the universe must have been created by God. As Krauss sees it, today science can prove otherwise. Science has found answers “from staggeringly beautiful experimental observations, as well as from the theories that underlie much of modern physics… [they] all suggest that getting something from nothing is not a problem.”

Just as the pope would like to take the discovery of the Big Bang as scientific proof of God’s existence, Krauss would like to use science to prove the opposite. This argument between certain scientists and religionists has been going on for some time.

Scientists say, the universe is about fifteen billion years old. 

“In the beginning, everything that is now the universe, including all of its space, was concentrated in a singularity, maybe the size of a pinhead, that was unimaginably hot and unimaginably dense. It all let loose during an event called the Big Bang, a misleading term in that there wasn’t really an explosion. What happened was that the compacted space expanded very rapidly, carrying everything else along with it. 

…The expansion continued for another 15 billion years, yielding the present observable universe, [one septillion – a one and 24 zeros] miles in diameter.” (Ursula Goodenough, The Sacred Depths of Nature, p. 4)

While scientifically sound, I confess, I don’t find this explanation much easier to imagine than God deciding to create something out of nothing. 

* * *

It is a fascinating and confounding idea: something from nothing. It is at once a brain-twister and a holy grail. Something from nothing, is like pulling a rabbit from a hat, or  like turning water to wine, or like turning straw to gold.

Something from nothing is a fascinating idea. But it is misleading. The Big Bang is not the story of something from nothing. It is not a story of creation, but rather a story of transformation. It is the transformation of something unimaginably small and dense to something unimaginably large and expansive.

Likewise the story told in the book of Genesis doesn’t describe the creation of something from nothing. There was God, after all. And there was also the earth. “The earth was without shape and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the watery deep, but the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the water.” God began by separating the light from the darkness, transforming what had been, into something new and unprecedented.

Creation seems like the emergence of something out of nothing. But in fact, it is simply the transformation of one combination of elements into another, the transformation of one kind of order into another.

In a commentary on the Buddhist Heart Sutra, which touches on the meaning of emptiness and nothingness, Thich Nhat Hanh asks: “Can you name one thing that was once a nothing? A cloud? Do you think that a cloud can be born out of nothing? Before becoming a cloud, it was water, maybe flowing as a river. It was not nothing…”

Thich Nhat Hanh makes the case that there are no real beginnings in the universe, only continuations. Before we were born, we already existed within our mother’s womb. And before conception we existed partially in each of our parents. We existed in their flesh and blood and breath, sustained by the food they ate, and nourished by sunlight and rain. 

Thus he writes, 

“As I look more deeply, I can see that in a former life I was a cloud. This is not poetry; it is science. Why do I say that in a former life I was a cloud? Because I am still a cloud. Without the cloud I cannot be here. I am the cloud, the river, and the air at this very moment, so I know that in the past I have been a cloud, a river, and the air. And I was a rock. I was the minerals in the water. This is not a question of belief in reincarnation. This is the history of life on earth. We have been gas, sunshine, water, fungi, and plants. We have been single-celled beings.” (The Heart of Understanding, p. 21)

* * *

The philosopher David Albert uses a striking image to describe the emergence of something out of nothing in quantum physics. 

“The fact that particles can pop in and out of existence [in quantum physics]… is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence … as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings – if you look at them aright – amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing.” (The New York Times Book Review, 3/12/12, “On the Origin of Everything)

* * *

Apollo Robbins is a magician. He creates the illusion of something out of nothing. The secret of his success lies in his uncommon ability - through his touch, his movement, and his words - to distract us. For a split second we are looking at his face, as he asks a question, or we follow the movement of his right hand as it reaches into a pocket. And at that split-second we oblivious to what he is doing with his left hand, just beyond our field of vision, while we are focusing on something else. 

Watching him engage with one of his victims, gently nudging them here or there, touching a shoulder, shaking a hand, turning his body to stand next to them, is like watching a dancer. 

Describing his technique, he says, it is not so much a matter of physical movement, but rather of manipulating the “choreography of people’s attention.” “Attention is like water,” he says. “It flows. It’s liquid. You can create channels to divert it.”

At any given moment a person can only pay attention to a certain number of events happening at the same time. Robbins talks about “carving up the attentional pie,” or “surfing attention.”

So for instance, Robbins explains, if he leans his face close to someone, all their attention is on his face, and their pockets, especially the pockets lower on their body are outside their frame of awareness. Or if he wants to move their attention away from their jacket pocket, he might say “You had a wallet in your back pocket – is it still there?” So while they are wondering about their back pocket, their brain short-circuits for a second, and Robbins can slip something out of their front jacket pocket. 

* * *

As we live our lives, at any given moment, we can only pay attention to a limited a number of things. Our home, our health, our work. Our family and friends, our commitments, our community. Our dreams, our desires, our ambitions. Our hopes and our fears. Our strengths and our limitation. 

We live amidst unimagined and unprecedented possibilities. Sometimes it can seem life is playing tricks on us, providing us with experiences we didn’t see coming. Suddenly confronting us with the unexpected. Other times robbing us of some of the things we treasured, things we didn’t realize were precious until they were gone. 

* * *

I have always been touched by Gershwin’s song “I’ve got plenty of nothing.” On one level it is simply a romantic tune within a modern opera. On another level it makes a profound philosophical and theological point. It is the song of a poor man, who is actually rich. A man who owns very little, and yet has everything he needs. What appears to be nothing, is in fact something. The sun, the moon, and the stars in the sky, are plenty.

* * *

Everything we need is right here. It is up to us to pay attention to all there is. It is up to us to put it to good use.

We don’t need magic. We don’t need miracles. We simply need to open our eyes and ears. We need to shift our attention. We need to wise up to the distractions that would mislead us. We need to pay attention to what really matters.

Creation is not an event that happened once 15 billion years ago, like a light switch flicked on by a heavenly hand. Creation is a process of transformation without beginning and without end. Creation is a process of unstoppable change, in which each of us is inextricably involved. We can’t stop the process of being and becoming, any more than we can stop the sun from moving across the sky, or stop time from ticking by. 

This is the way Carter Heyward imagines God: an eternally creative force that exists within us and between us. God is our common strength, a relational power we bring into being in the very living of our lives. We create God whenever we seek to serve a greater good. We create God in our every act of love.

As we begin a new year,

May we continue the work of our lives.

Building upon the stories of yesterday, 

May we create a better tomorrow.

Amen.