Our Dominion of the Earth

"Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas."
-- Henry Beston

Meditation: by Rabbi Rami Shapiro (from Earth Prayers, p. 354)

My friends, let us give thanks for Wonder.

Let us give thanks for the Wonder of Life

that infuses all things now and forever.

Blessed is the Source of Life, the Fountain of Being,

the wellspring of goodness, compassion and kindness 

from which we draw to make… justice and peace.

From the creative power of Life we derive food and harvest,

from the bounty of the earth and the yields of the heavens

we are sustained and are able to sustain others.

All Life is holy, sacred,

worthy of respect and dignity.

Let us give thanks for the power of heart

to sense the holy in the midst of the simple.

We eat not simply to satisfy our own appetites,

we eat to sustain ourselves in the task we have been given.

Each of us is unique,

coming into the world with a gift no other can offer: ourselves.

We eat to nourish the vehicle of giving,

We eat to sustain our task of world repair,

Our quest for harmony, peace and justice…

We give thanks to Life.

May we never lose touch with the simple joy and wonder

of sharing a meal.

Reading: from the Jewish and Christian book of Genesis 1:26-28, (King James Version)

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Reading: by Lorraine Anderson from Sisters of the Earth (p. 1) 

Whenever I hear someone boast of having conquered a mountain by climbing it or a wild river by paddling it, I am struck by the foolishness of this attitude. It seems to me a pitiful bravado in the face of a great and powerful mystery, like whistling in the dark to give oneself courage. Worse, it arrogantly pits the ego against the matrix of being, conveying the harmful illusion that one creature can dominate the creation of which it is a part and on which it depends for its very life. How vastly healthier and more functional is the attitude [that…] we are kin with nature, not adversaries or dominators or conquerors, and our kinship is worthy of celebration.

Reading: by Safran Foer from Eating Animals (p. 257) 

What kind of a world would we create if three times a day we activated our compassion and reason as we sat down to eat, if we had the moral imagination and the pragmatic will to change our most fundamental act of consumption? … Compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use, and the regular exercise of choosing kindness over cruelty would change us.

It might sound naïve to suggest that whether you order a chicken patty or a veggie burger is a profoundly important decision. Then again, it certainly would have sounded fantastic if in the 1950s you were told that where you sat in a restaurant or bus could begin to uproot racism. It would have sounded equally fantastic if you were told in the early 1970s, before Cesar Chavez’s workers’ rights campaigns, that refusing to eat grapes could begin to free farm workers from slave-like conditions. It might sound fantastic, but when we bother to look, it’s hard to deny that our day-to-day choices shape the world… Deciding what to eat is the founding act of production and consumption that shapes all others. Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can. One of the greatest opportunities to live our values – or betray them – lies in the food we put on our plates.

Our Dominion of the Earth

A Sermon Delivered on April 21, 2013

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

Now that spring is finally arriving, it is easy to believe in nature’s limitless abundance. It is easy to believe that life, in all its wonderful manifestations, is unstoppable: just look at the tiny leaves emerging from twigs and branches. Look at the blossoms on trees and bushes, bursting out on magnolia and forsythia and countless others. Listen to the birds of the air, filling the morning’s silence with their songs. The birds in my backyard are brightly feathered and melodious reminders of all the creatures of the earth, that are not within ear shot, or within my field of vision: the fish of the sea, the cattle, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. 

The world in spring is like a cornucopia of all things beautiful, all things growing, all things delicious and sweet. Spring makes the natural world seem indestructible… But, of course it can be destroyed. 

Tomorrow is Earth Day. It is a holiday created, so that we might honor and celebrate the natural world, and be inspired to protect it. “The objective is an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all other human beings and all living creatures,” they said on the first Earth Day in 1970. (Senator Gaylord Nelson)

At the time there was no such things as an Environmental Protection Agency. Factories could spout clouds of toxic smoke into the sky, and dump tons of toxic waste into our rivers, and that was perfectly legal. 

Earth Day challenged the harmful illusion that we humans can dominate, exploit, and thoughtlessly destroy the creation of which we are a part and on which we depend. 

* * *

There are countless ways we affect our environment, and countless ways we can help protect it. When we choose to walk or ride a bike, rather than drive a car around town. When we purchase energy efficient light bulbs, or better insulate our homes, or reduce the amount of plastic we use and throw in the trash. When we join in prairie restoration efforts, or support local communities trying to protect their water resources. Each of us in our own way can make a difference.

But perhaps the most universal, and also the most intimate way we affect and are affected by our environment every day, is in the food we eat. We literally consume the earth, air and sunlight and rain, transformed into animal and plant life, every time we sit down for a meal. For most of us that’s three times every day, not counting the snacks we pop into our mouths as we pass through the kitchen or head out the door.

What we eat, is both one of the most immediate and one of most far-reaching ways we experience and interact with the world around us.

* * *

A few years ago, the journalist Michael Pollen wrote a well-received book entitled The Omnivore’s Dilemma. When it was first published in 2006, The New York Times named it one of the ten best books of the year. 

In his book, Pollen links questions about protecting our environment, with the everyday choices we humans make every time we decide what we will eat. Unlike carnivores, who eat only meat, and unlike herbivores, who eat only certain plants, we humans can eat everything. But the fact that, by our very nature, we are able to eat everything doesn’t mean we ought to eat everything. Not everything tastes equally good to us. And not everything is equally healthy.

As Michael Pollan puts it, “When you can eat just about anything nature has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the potential foods on offer are liable to sicken or kill you. This is the omnivore’s dilemma.” (p. 3) 

The fact that we are omnivores is not a trivial aspect of our nature. It is an essential aspect of what it means to be human, both body and soul. Being omnivores designed to perpetually explore new sources of sustenance, we humans have developed prodigious powers of observation and memory, and cultivated a curious and experimental stance toward the world around us. 

Being an omnivore is a blessing and a curse. Unlike, for instance, the koala bear, whose dietary choices are genetically hardwired, and are focused on nothing but the leaves of the eucalyptus tree, and thus who is destined to live and thrive only in those corners of the earth where eucalyptus trees grow in abundance – unlike the koala bear, we humans can inhabit virtually any of the earth’s environments. We find food in even the most improbable places: from the sandy deserts of the Sahara, to the icy wasteland of the Arctic, from the high peaks of the Himalayas, to the pancake flat prairies of the American Midwest. But with the freedom to make different decisions about where we live and what we eat comes the burden of indecision. 

At this point in time in America, we are deeply confused about what is healthy and wholesome, and what is sickening and poisonous. Should we eat a high-protein carnivorous diet as proposed by Dr. Robert Atkins? Should we eat plenty of fat, but hold off on the carbs? Or should we eat veggies and spinach, and preferably everything raw? Should we cut back on cholesterol or simply watch the “bad cholesterol,” and indulge in the “good”? Butter and salt, sugar and cheese, which of these are guilty pleasures that ought to be avoided, and which of them are important parts of a well-balanced diet?

In America today, we are deeply confused about what is right and what is wrong, in terms of what we eat. And this is tied to ethical questions of right and wrong that go far beyond human nutrition.

As Pollan sees it, this country’s food industry figured out how to touch into our existential anxiety surrounding food, and has actually heightened it. “It is very much in the interest of the food industry to exacerbate our anxieties about what to eat, the better to then assuage them with new products.” (p. 5) The average grocery store offers us thousands of different products from which to choose. They are not all good for us. And all the apparent variety rests on a remarkably narrow biological foundation made up of a single crop: corn. 

In recent years, corn has become the number one crop in the U.S.. We are the world’s top corn producers, with more acres devoted to it than any other crop. 60 percent of the corn we grow is used to feed livestock: cattle, pigs, and poultry. Most of the rest is transformed into corn syrup, or corn starch, corn oil, or ethanol. Just about every processed food you can find in a supermarket contains some corn product.

For the sake of profit and efficiency, we now raise crops and animals in vast mono-cultures. Ninety-nine percent of the meat we buy in grocery stores is produced in vast factory farms. As agricultural economist John Ikerd puts it, 

“The biggest single problem with factory farming is that it shows no respect for the sanctity of life — either the life of farm animals or human life. Factory farming treats feedlots as biological assembly lines, where the animals are simply machines that produce meat, milk, or eggs for nameless, faceless consumers, with no respect for the people who work in them or live in the communities where they operate. This lack of respect for life undermines the ethical and moral fabric of society.” 

* * *

The act of eating puts us in touch with all that we share with other animals. It links us intimately to the very elements of the earth. “What is perhaps most troubling, and sad, about industrial eating,” Michael Pollen writes,  “is how thoroughly it obscures all these relationships and connections. To go from the chicken to the Chicken McNugget is to leave this world in a journey of forgetting that hardly could be more costly, not only in terms of the animal’s pain but in our pleasure, too.” (p. 10)

So much of the way today’s food industry is run, not only has a profoundly damaging effect on our environment, in terms of the production of toxic waste, in terms of inhumanity toward animal and farm worker alike. It also has a damaging effect on human society and the human soul, creating within us a toxic anxiety and ignorance.

In the final pages of his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma Michael Pollan describes his attempt to prepare a meal completely from scratch, that is, with all ingredients being things he grew and harvested, or searched for and gathered, or hunted, killed and slaughtered. It was an elaborate and time-consuming undertaking that involved a fair number of misadventures, and ample evidence of his lack of experience and expertise in such things.

But in the end, with the help of some friends, he succeeded. And then he invited these very friends to join him in consuming this painstakingly prepared feast. It included fava bean bread and egg fettuccine, wild mushrooms and braised leg of wild pig, a very local garden salad, and cherries plucked from a neighbor’s tree. 

While perhaps not the most successful meal from a gourmet chef’s point of view, for Pollan it was just right. As he served up the dishes, Pollan had the sense that this meal had become a kind of ritual, “a thanksgiving or a secular seder, for every item on our plates pointed somewhere else, almost sacramentally, telling a little story about nature or community or even the sacred, for mystery was very often the theme. Such storied food can feed us both body and soul, the threads of narrative knitting us together as a group, and knitting the group into the larger fabric of the given world.”

Eating a meal in full consciousness of what it took to make it is worth doing every once and a while, he says, “if only as a way to remind us of the true costs of the things we take for granted… If I had to give this dinner a name, it would have to be the Omnivore’s Thanksgiving.” (p. 410)

* * *

“Deciding what to eat is the founding act of production and consumption that shapes all others. Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can.” (Safran Foer)

So, what can we do? We can buy from companies that treat workers, animals and the environment with respect. We can remember that the average meal in America travels 1,500 miles from the farm to the supermarket, and that much would be gained if we bought food that was grown locally, or if we planted our own garden. We can remember that it takes five pounds of grain to create one pound of meat, and that if Americans ate just 10 percent less meat, we would free up enough grain to feed 60 million people. 

* * *

What kind of a world would we create if three times a day we activated our compassion and reason as we sat down to eat? What if we had the moral imagination and the pragmatic will to change our most fundamental act of consumption? These are the good questions Safran Foer asks.  

He writes, 

“The debacle of the factory farm [and the food industry] is not, I’ve come to feel, just a problem about ignorance – it’s not as activists often say, a problem that arose because “people don’t know the facts.” Clearly that is one cause. …[But] responding to the factory farm calls for a capacity to care that dwells beyond information…” (p. 263)

Our capacity to care is an expression of compassion. And compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use. The regular exercise of choosing kindness over cruelty will change us.

* * *

Long ago our ancestors realized that humans have been granted an exceptional place within all creation. “Dominion” was a poor choice of words, when we translated the Hebrew scriptures into English. What the authors of that story were trying to say, long ago, was: all that God created is good, and our living requires a partnership that will sustain all of that creation. We are called to serve as stewards of the earth, sustaining, not conquering, God's creation. What the Hebrew scriptures actually said, is that humans have remarkable powers among all creatures, not over them.

May we take Earth Day tomorrow – and every day - as an opportunity to reflect on the remarkable powers we have been given among all creatures of the earth.

May we reflect with gratitude on the bounty of the earth’s abundance that sustains us.

And may we remember – every time we sit down to eat – that we are each called to do our part to repair the world.

Amen. 

What's In a Name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
-- Shakespeare

Meditation: by Joy Harjo, a citizen of the Muscogee (or Creek) Nation, an excerpt from her poem “Remember”

Remember the sky that you were born under,

know each of the star's stories.

Remember the moon, know who she is…

Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the

strongest point of time. Remember sundown

and the giving away to night.

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled

to give you form and breath. You are evidence of

her life, and her mother's, and hers.

Remember your father. He is your life also.

Remember the earth whose skin you are:

red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth

brown earth, we are earth.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their

tribes, their families, their histories, too... 

Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.

Remember that you are this universe and that this universe is you.

Remember that all is in motion, is growing, is you.

Remember that language comes from this.

Remember the dance that language is, that life is.

Remember.

Reading: by Hendrik Hertzberg from “Senses of Entitlement” (The New Yorker, April 8, 2013)

Names make news, an old newsroom motto has it. But names also make opinions. What something gets called can have more spin on it than a Mariano Rivera cutter, whether the person doing the calling intends it that way or not. Sometimes the difference between positive and negative is a matter of taste, literally or figuratively…  Sometimes the difference is a product of circumstances, as when yesterday’s beachfront property becomes today’s flood zone. Sometimes it gets all judgmental. After a couple of Martinis one may regard oneself as pleasantly pixillated, but one’s spouse may consider one drunk as a skunk.

In politics, the naming is almost always with malice (or niceness) aforethought. Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, the Occupied Territories, Occupied Palestine: all denote the same geographical reality, but on a sliding (or ascending, take your pick) moral scale. Call it what you will—enhanced interrogation or torture, collateral damage or civilian deaths, pro-life or anti-reproductive rights, global warming or climate change, homosexual marriage or marriage equality, assault rifles or “semi-automatic small-calibre sporting rifles with plastic accessories”—it’s all the same, and…  it’s all, to some degree, propaganda.

Reading: by author and activist Eve Ensler from a piece entitled “The Power and Mystery of Naming Things,” which was read on the radio program “This I Believe”

I believe in the power and mystery of naming things. Language has the capacity to transform our cells, rearrange our learned patterns of behavior, and redirect our thinking. I believe in naming what’s right in front of us because that is often what is most invisible…

I believe one person’s declaration sparks another and then another. Helen Caldicott naming the consequences of an escalating nuclear arms race gave rise to an antinuclear movement. The brave soldier who came forward and named the abuses at Abu Ghraib Prison was responsible for a sweeping investigation.

Naming things, breaking through taboos and denial is the dangerous, terrifying and crucial work. This has to happen in spite of political climates or coercions, in spite of careers being won or lost, in spite of the fear of being criticized, outcast, or disliked. I believe freedom begins with naming things. Humanity is preserved by it. 

Reading: by Patricia Fargnoli a poem entitled “Naming My Daughter” 

In the Uruba tribe of Africa, children are named not only at birth but throughout their lives by their characteristics and the events that befall them.

The one who took hold in the cold night

The one who kicked loudly

The one who slid down quickly in the ice storm

She who came while the doctor was eating dessert

New one held up by heels in the glare

The river between two brothers

Second pot on the stove

Princess of a hundred dolls

Hair like water falling beneath moonlight

Strides into the day

She who runs away with motorcycle club president

Daughter kicked with a boot

Daughter blizzard in the sky

Daughter night-pocket

She who sells sports club memberships

One who loves over and over

She who wants child but lost one.

She who wants marriage but has none

She who never gives up

Diana (Goddess of the Chase)

Doris (for the carrot-top grandmother

she never knew)

Fargnoli (for the father

who drank and left and died)

Peter Pan, Iron Pumper

Tumbleweed who goes months without calling

Daughter who is a pillar of light

Daughter mirror, Daughter stands alone

Daughter boomerang who always comes back

Daughter who flies forward into the day

where I will be nameless.

What’s In a Name?

A Sermon Delivered on April 14, 2013

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

My name is “Axel.” Not the most common American name. It is more common in Germany, which is where I was born. It happens with some regularity that I am addressed as “Alex.” And this serves as a gentle reminder that, somehow, I don’t quite fit this culture’s commonly accepted categories.  

When I was in elementary school, in Pearl River, NY, my name was an easy target for playground bullies. My not-so-friendly friends would circle around and taunt me with a sing-song chant: “Axel forgot his wheels, Axel forgot his wheels,” until I fled, frustrated and hurt.

My parents chose my name when they were a young couple with dreams of living in this country. They thought it worked well in both English and German.

My middle name, is even more unusual. The “H” you see on our church letterhead, between “Axel” and “Gehrmann” stands for “Hilger.” My parents picked the name to remember my father’s older sister, Hildegard, who died a few years before I was born. She was only 38 years old. 

The name “Gehrmann” has been passed down the generations, from father to father. It goes back to the ancient Germanic word “gehr,” which means “spear” or “javelin.” Some ancient ancestor of mine was a spear-carrier.

I didn’t have a say in the name I was given. But it does say something about who I am, and who I have become. 

* * *

Names have power – both the names we are given and the names we give. The names we give to the people around us, the names we give to the issues that affect us, have power. 

In politics, names are a kind of propaganda, Hendrik Hertzberg writes. The words we use to shape public policy, and frame our agendas are powerful. They say something about who we are and what we want. 

When I preach sermons about torture, reproductive rights, or global warming, I try to offer a balanced, non-partisan perspective. But, of course, even the most basic words I use to address the issues say something about my political bias, and my agenda.

Last week our church hosted a local rally for immigration reform. Those involved in the effort support the rights of “undocumented immigrants.” Those who oppose them tend to do so because they are distrustful of “illegal aliens.” It makes a difference how we name the people stuck in the network of our Homeland Security system. “Alien” is a name that serves to distance and dehumanize real people.

It’s a distinction I am vividly aware of, because I am German. I am here legally as a “resident alien,” which sounds like a creature from outer space. At some point this year I may become an “American citizen” – which sounds very different, sounds like a person. I wonder how that new name will affect who I am. 

* * *

The historian Loren Graham writes, 

“A common concept in history is that knowing the name of something or someone gives one power over that thing or person. This concept occurs in many… cultures—in ancient and primitive tribes, as well as in Islamic, Jewish, Egyptian, Vedic, Hindu, and Christian traditions. The …persistence and historical continuity of the linking of naming and power are unmistakable…”

He says, 

“In Genesis we hear in the first verses that "God said 'Let there be Light' and there was light." Think about that statement logically. God named the thing before he created it; the naming seems a necessary first step toward creation. Then, according to Genesis, God gave Man the right to name all the animals and, at the same time, the right of dominion over them.” (from “The Power of Names: Religion and Mathematics”)

* * *

The power of names, and the power of naming, has particular meaning for American Indians. 

Alan Ray is the president of Elmhurst College, in Elmhurst, IL. He is also a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He writes, 

“The people who lived on this continent before and since Europeans came had names for themselves.  Often they called themselves “principal people” …or “first people” in their languages...

Those who became colonizers of these first peoples gave them different names.  Thinking he had found a route to India, Columbus famously called them “Indians.” He distinguished some groups from others… according to whether they were fierce or friendly to his crew. The power to name is the power to assign qualities to things and to people, so in the British and later the American imagination, Indians were either fearsome savages or gentle folks abiding in an Eden-like state of Nature. Neither status is fully human.” (from “Getting to Know You: Native Americans and the Power of Naming,” delivered for Native American Awareness Week at Elmhurst College, 2009)

Alan Ray has experienced firsthand how the stereotypes with which we portray Indians serve to demean and diminish real people. Here in town, one example of destructive stereotyping is found in the form of Chief Illiniwek – the former “symbol” or “mascot” of the university’s athletic department. At half-time shows not long ago, a student dressed up in authentic Indian garb performed a rousing dance, firing up the fans, portraying a caricature of an Indian. Supporters of this tradition said the performance was meant to honor Indians. But real Indians experienced it as just the opposite. 

The American Indian Studies Program at the U of I has opposed the Chief for years. Real Indians say the Chief masquerade demeans them and exacerbates a “climate of intolerance, abuse, and hostility.” (from a statement by the American Indian Studies Program, by Robert Warrior, Director, Sept. 30, 2009) 

Today, a new generation of students is pushing to have the retired Chief reinstated. Sadly, it seems the university and our community are failing to educate them on the history of this issue.

Alan Ray says, 

“Indians are here, we’re real, we do not all look the same or think the same, we have very different tribal histories and very different relationships with the United States and individual states—some groups “recognized,” some not, with very different levels of tribal cultural knowledge, skills and tastes.  Paradoxically, Indian people are real but there are no “real Indians,” no icon of “Indianness,”… The one thing every Indian in America has in common is a shared history of cultural oppression—genocide—that started more than 500 years ago. It is not a pretty history but it is one everyone who lives on this continent should know.”

* * *

In a collection of poems entitled, “The Secret Powers of Naming,” Sara Littlecrow-Russell includes one poignant poem entitled, “Russian Roulette, Indian Style.” This is how it goes:

Russian Roulette

Indian style,

Is the spinning cylinder

Of a 500-year-old gun

With 5 out of 6 chambers loaded.

Each bullet

Has a different name – 

Alcohol

Disease

Poverty

Violence

Assimilation

Survival is finding the name

Of the empty chamber.

Sara Littlecrow-Russell describes her book as a “journey of naming.” She says, “It is a methodical walk around the chambers of a revolver loaded with five colonial bullets. The bullets are alcohol, disease, poverty, violence, and assimilation. This book is named these things, because the sacred act of naming brings power over them. The sixth, empty chamber of the gun is named “survival.” In English, survival is a noun. It is static. It can be owned. Bought. Sold. Traded. In my Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibway, “survival” is a verb. An act of motion. A choice of direction. It cannot be owned, it must be lived.”

Joy Harjo writes, “To give a name, to be named, sets up a relationship, a connection, makes a community of sense that will stand no matter the tests of the unreasonable.”

* * *

Back in the 1970s the American poet Adrienne Rich taught English at City College in Manhattan. She worked with an ethnically and economically diverse student population, which did not have easy access to higher education. It was an eye-opening experience for her, and it deepened her appreciation for the power of language. 

As she saw it, most schools, whether public or parochial, rewarded “conformity, passivity, and correct answers” and penalized “the troublesome question “as trouble-making,” the lively, independent, active child as “disruptive,” curiosity as misbehavior.”

Reflecting on the lives of the students she met, she writes: 

“My daily life as a teacher confronts me with young men and women who have had language and literature used against them, to keep them in their place, to mystify, to bully, to make them feel powerless. Courses in great books or speed-reading are not an answer when it is the meaning of literature itself that is in question…

What has held me, and what I think holds many who teach basic writing, are the hidden veins of possibility running through students who don’t know (and strongly doubt) that this is what they were born for, but who may find it out to their own amazement, students who, grim with self-depreciation and prophesies of their own failure or tight with a fear they cannot express, can be lured to sticking it out to some moment of breakthrough, when they discover that they have ideas that are valuable, even original, and can express those ideas on paper…” (from On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, p. 63, 67)

Adrienne Rich firmly believes that language is power. She says, “To be released into language [is] not simply learning the jargon of an elite, fitting unexceptionably into the status quo, but learning that language can be used as a means of changing reality.”

* * *

There is power and mystery in naming things. “Language has the capacity to transform our cells, rearrange our learned patterns of behavior, and redirect our thinking.” Naming what is right in front of us is sometimes the most difficult, because that is often what is most invisible. 

* * *

Each of us has names. We have been given names. But our naming doesn’t occur just once in a lifetime. Naming is more than an act carried out long ago by our elders and ancestors, an act in which we had little say.

Yes, we are shaped by our history. Yes, we are shaped by our traditions. But we need not be confined by them. The past has brought us to the place we stand today. The future is in our hands. We are free, and freedom begins with naming. Naming is a first step toward creation.

We each use names and give names every day, as we interact with one another and with the world around us. Naming is a sacred act that conveys profound power. 

We all know what it feels like to have language used against us. Haven’t we all had moments in our lives, when we were called names designed to bully us, to make us feel powerless, to keep us in our place? Haven’t we all had moments when we were made to feel alien and excluded? It isn’t a pleasant experience. 

In some ways this kind of naming continues, and in some ways we perpetuate it, in the names we use to speak of others. 

Even though this is a very common experience, putting it into words isn’t easy. Naming what is right in front of us is sometimes the most difficult, because that is often what is most invisible. Naming the invisible can be terrifying, and yet it is crucial that we do so. 

May the names we choose make perfectly clear

That none of us are aliens.

May the names we use make perfectly clear,

That we are all sons and daughters of the same earth, brother and sisters.

And may the life we live give shape to new names,

So that each of us may some day be called

The One Who Dared to Love.

Amen.

How We Are Called

"Every calling is great when greatly pursued."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Meditation:  by the Unitarian Universalist minister Mark Belletini (adapted)

Burning fire!  Do not consume us, as once with that bush of old,

but continue to kindle us, and let the inner voice of our calling to love and duty

be loud in our hearts!

Where there is fear, let us bring [hope].

Where we see eyes filled with terror, may we reach out to embrace and welcome.

Spirit fire of our deepest longing, keep us from arrogance, and superior attitudes…

May we never think ourselves giddy with the flash of fire,

but may we love only its steady heat and constancy.

From the tangles of our daily obsessions and habits,

lift us to loftier thoughts of peace…

Spirit of fire, eternal kinship bring us to a brotherhood and sisterhood

deeper than blood, or politics or religion, kindle in us an unswerving love.

Reading: by Roger Ebert from Life Itself: a Memoir (p. 414-415)

“Kindness” covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute to joy in the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find out.

One of these days I will encounter what Henry James called on his deathbed “the distinguished thing.” I will not be conscious of the moment of passing. In this life I have already been declared dead. It wasn’t so bad. After the first ruptured artery, the doctors thought I was finished. My wife, Chaz, said she sensed that I was still alive and was communicating to her that I wasn’t finished yet. She said our hearts were beating in unison, although my heartbeat couldn’t be discovered. She told the doctors I was alive, they did what doctors do, and here I am, alive.

Do I believe her? Absolutely. I believe her literally – not symbolically, figuratively or spiritually. I believe she was actually aware of my call and that she sensed my heartbeat. I believe she did it in the real, physical world I have described, the one that I share with my wristwatch. I see no reason why such communication could not take place. I’m not talking about telepathy, psychic phenomenon or a miracle. The only miracle is that she was there when it happened, as she was for many long days and nights. I’m talking about her standing there and knowing something. Haven’t many of us experienced that? Come on, haven’t you? What goes on happens at a level not accessible to scientists, theologians, mystics, physicists, philosophers or psychiatrists. It’s a human kind of a thing.

Someday I will no longer call out, and there will be no heartbeat. I will be dead.

Reading: from a press release written by Roger Ebert’s wife, Chaz Ebert, this past Thursday, the day he died.

We were getting ready to go home today for hospice care, when he looked at us, smiled, and passed away. No struggle, no pain, just a quiet, dignified transition.

Reading: by Gregg Levoy from Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life (p. 323)

We want our lives to catch fire and burn blue, not smolder. We want to use ourselves up, leave this life the way we entered it – complete – and die with a yes on our lips and not a no, making that last transition, that final threshold, with some grace, with eyes wide open and not squeezed shut as if for a blow. We don’t want to enter kingdom come kicking and screaming and begging for more time. Following our calls is one way to love our lives, to flood them with light that can shine back out of them, and to make life easier to explain to ourselves when it’s over and we’re wondering “What was that all about?” By following our calls, we just may be able to face death more squarely. Although we may never really be ready for it, we’ll never be readier.

            The fear of death has always seemed to me to be largely the fear that we’re not living the way we want to. I once knew a woman whose husband of twenty-five years died after a very long illness, and shortly afterward she told me something that I didn’t understand at the time but do now. She said that the more she loved him, the easier it became to consider losing him. In my early twenties then, I thought this would make it harder to lose him, not easier. Now, I understand: Loving him more left less for her to regret not having done, not having said.

How We Are Called

A Sermon Delivered on April 7, 2013

By

The Rev. Axel H. Gehrmann

Last week Roger Ebert died. Born right here in Urbana 70 years ago, he lived at 410 East Washington Street, and he grew up to become perhaps the best-known movie reviewer in the country. Back in 1975, Ebert was the first movie critic ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His columns were syndicated in more than 200 newspapers, and since 1999 he hosted “Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival” at the Virginia Theater here in Champaign, now known simply as the annual “Ebertfest.”

In 2002 Ebert was diagnosed with cancer. The surgeries and treatments he underwent took a toll. In 2007 he lost the ability to speak. But still he carried on, writing and reviewing movies, blogging and tweeting, and speaking with the help of a computer. He was still blogging just days before he died.

Raised Roman Catholic, he says, his mother wanted him to be a priest. From an early age he heard her say, the priesthood is “the greatest vocation one could hope for in life.” “There [is] no greater glory for a mother than to ‘give her son to the church.’” But despite his mother’s best efforts, that is not the way life worked out for Roger.

Journalism was his life’s calling. He was exceptionally gifted and hard-working, drawn to writing, practically since he could hold a pencil. As the New York Times put it:

“He was barely old enough to write when he started his journalistic career, publishing The Washington Street News in his basement and delivering copies to a dozen neighborhood houses. He worked at his grade school newspaper, edited his high school paper and by age 15 was earning 75 cents an hour covering high school sports for The News-Gazette.” (“A Critic for the Common Man” by Douglas Martin, The New York Times, April 4, 2013)

This week newspapers and blogs have been filled with tributes to Roger Ebert, celebrating his life and legacy. Reading some of them, I found myself moved and inspired not only by his amazing accomplishments, but also by his spirit of kindness and humility.

* * *

Imagine if all of our lives were guided by a sense of calling, as compelling and unmistakable as Roger Ebert’s chosen vocation. Imagine if we were driven by a sense of purpose and passion, that allowed us to invest ourselves so fully in our chosen field.

Don’t we all want our lives to catch fire and burn blue, not smolder? Don’t we all long to follow our calling, so that we can love our lives to the fullest? I know I do. But in my experience, finding our calling, and following our calling is not easy to do.

* * *

I remember when I was first getting started in ministry. It was 1988, and I was working as a ministerial intern at the UU congregation in Hayward, California. (Mark Belletini, the author of our meditation this morning, was the minister there, and my supervisor.)

That year I had my first encounter with the so-called Ministerial Fellowship Committee. This is the denominational body that decides whether or not candidates for the ministry are actually cut out for the job.

Back in the 1980s, when I saw the committee, an important part of the interview was to clearly convey your conviction, that you are indeed “called to the ministry.”

All my classmates, it seemed, had compelling stories to tell of what had led them into the ministry. Each of them seemed to have an experience of awakening or conversion, like the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, or like Moses, who one day was caught by surprise, by a burning bush that addressed him by name, and told him exactly what he needed to do in order to lead his people out of Egypt.

For some it was a mid-life crisis, for others it was a passion kindled since childhood. For some it was an inspiring encounter with a religious person, for others it was a shift from political activism toward a more spiritual engagement.

At the time, I was 24 years old, the youngest in my class. And I didn’t share the clear sense of calling that seemed common among my peers.

“Are you called to the ministry?” The question itself rubbed me the wrong way. What do you mean “called” to the ministry? How can I feel called, when I don’t believe in an anthropomorphic God, who spends his days considering the career options of men and women on earth, and then clears his throat, and calls out to people, telling them what to do?

And what is ministry, anyway? Ministry, I thought, is something only bona fide ministers do – men and women, who are older, wiser, more patient, and certainly more inspired than I was. Ministers are selfless servants, courageous activists, powerful preachers, eloquent authors and – above all – they are grounded in a unshakable sense of certainty when it comes to matters of faith. That wasn’t me. I was young, with far more questions than answers about the meaning of life. My sense of the sacred was marked by profound ambiguity and ambivalence. Where others seemed to be guided by a sense of certainty, I was an expert in self-doubt.

I remember, the first time I saw the Fellowship Committee, I tried to express my complicated thoughts about the call to ministry, with a sermon that compared the role of minister to that of an actor. A persona, shaped by religious history and tradition, which a person may put on, but which invariably involves a degree doubt and ambiguity.

The sermon didn’t go over well.

* * *

Being “called” to anything is a complicated experience. Gregg Levoy writes,

“Because the notion of call is historically tied up with religion, we tend to think of it as divinely inspired, which induces a good measure of terror. Calls are, in our minds, big, and we feel we have to respond in a big way, which, of course, can be paralyzing. It is therefore important to remember, first, that a call isn’t something that comes from on high as an order, a sort of divine subpoena, irrespective of our own free will and desire. We have a choice…

   Second, few people actually receive big calls, in visions of flaming chariots and burning bushes. Most of the calls we receive and ignore are the proverbial still, small voices that the biblical prophets heard, the daily calls to pay attention to our intuitions, to be authentic, to live by our codes of honor.

   Our lives are measured out in coffee spoons, wrote T.S. Eliot; they are measured out not in the grand sweeps but in the small gestures. The great breakthroughs in our lives generally happen only as a result of the accumulation of innumerable small steps and minor achievements.” (p. 4)

Levoy makes the case that it is a mistake to expect our life calling to reveal itself in a single grand gesture, like a clap of thunder or a flash of lightening. Waiting for that kind of calling, we may find ourselves waiting our whole lives in vain.

Finding our calling, and heeding our calling is much trickier than that. It is a matter of paying close attention to the everyday events of our lives, and how they touch us. We need to pay attention to our dreams and nightmares, our successes and our failures, our hopes and our fears. Any of them can provide clues about our calling. We need to pay attention to hunches and guesses, and to those experiences that make us feel most fully alive.

A call is not a one-time event. It is also not a one-way communication. A call needs a response. And the response is an awakening of some kind. Levoy writes, “A call is only a monologue. A return call, a response, creates a dialogue. Our own unfolding requires that we be in constant dialogue with whatever is calling us.”

“Calls are essentially questions,” he says.

“They aren’t questions you necessarily need to answer outright; they are questions to which you need to respond, expose yourself, and kneel before. You don’t want an answer you can put in a box and set on a shelf. You want a question that will become a chariot to carry you across the breadth of your life, a question that will offer you a lifetime of pondering, that will lead you toward what you need to know for your integrity… These questions will also lead you to others whose lives are propelled by the same questions…” (p. 6)

* * *

When I was 24 years old, it was a mistake to imagine ministry as a vocation I could slip on like a garment, like the ceremonial stoles placed on the shoulders of seminary graduates. Ministry, for me, was not a calling, fully formed, as unmistakable as a blazing fire. It was more like a question, persistently nagging at me. A question that is always asking me if I can look more closely, listen more carefully, live more fully.

The further I pursued the question, over the years, the more I came to realize that ministry is a much broader field than I had imagined. And that ministers come in all shapes and sizes. To minister, is not a matter of mastering a particular set of skills, like preaching or teaching. To minister is to pursue anything you do in a spirit of attentiveness and care.

To minister, the dictionary says, is to serve. When we minister, we are mindful of how our actions affect others. Whatever we do, we do in order to make the world, in some small way, a better place. Ministry is when we do whatever we can, according to our abilities, to make others a little happier.

And, yes, that means making ourselves a little happier, too. Because making ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. It is the first step in making others unhappy.

As far as I am concerned, finding our own unique ministry, finding a way to make a difference, finding a way to feel the deep happiness that comes when acts of kindness are extended – that is what the religious enterprise is all about.

That’s what this church is all about: to provide a place where we can discover and develop our unique ministries. Among friends and fellow seekers, who share a commitment to kindness, and who are ready to roll up their sleeves and lend a hand. This is a place where we can ponder the essential questions of our lives, and where we can safely explore how best to respond.

Our call is a persistent question. Our every answer is a step we take toward the very life of life. Some imagine our call is a question posed by God, or the Universe, or the Ground of Being. I like the way Kahlil Gibran put it: our call is an expression of “life’s longing for itself.”

The call we hear, the call to which we respond, can take many different shapes. It can play out in our choice of career, or how we choose to build a home. It can be a matter of the friendships we make, or how we invest our energies in causes we care about.

Chaz Ebert heard a call in the heartbeat of husband. No one else heard what she heard. And her response made the difference between death and more life.

Our life calling is a dialogue that sometimes is carried out between people.

“How can I begin to tell you about Chaz?” Roger Ebert once wrote.

“She fills my horizon; she is the great fact of my life; she is the love of my life; she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed to be heading.

   “If my cancer had come, and it would have, and Chaz had not been there with me, I can imagine a descent into lonely decrepitude. I was very sick. I might have vegetated in hopelessness. This woman never lost her love, and when it was necessary she forced me to want to live. She was always there believing I could do it, and her love was like a wind pushing me back from the grave.” (The News-Gazette, April 5, 2013)

Sometimes life’s longing for itself, is sensed most clearly in love, given and received.

For me, Roger Ebert’s life is an inspiration, not because he won the Pulitzer Prize, not because he was brilliant and prolific. He is an inspiration because he chose to respond to his life calling with an ever-growing spirit of kindness, and an ever-deeper capacity to love. His life caught fire and burned blue, and did not smolder. And when he left it, he died with a yes on his lips and his eyes wide open. Loving deeply and living fully, he was able to leave peacefully, with no regrets.

May we each have the wisdom to hear our own life’s calling.

May we be mindful of how we might hear it in sorrow and in joy,

in certainty and in doubt, in struggle and in success.

And may we have the courage to respond with a deeper love.

Amen.