-- Aristotle
Reading: by Robert Fulghum from All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, from a piece entitled “Term Limits” (p 152-155)
“Notice: Your citizenship has expired.”
What? Yes! Term limits for citizens. Why not? This term-limits thing is still a good idea. If it is true that elected officials get corrupted if they stay in office too long, maybe it’s the same for us who hold the political office of citizen. Let’s at least set tough standards for all incumbents, citizens included.
Suppose that every twelve years our terms expired. Before we could requalify as citizens, our records in office would be judged. Remember, most of us got something for nothing the first time just by showing up here at birth. Now we have to qualify…
I say: Tough standards for all elected and non-elected officials of government.
Suppose that every twelve years we lose our perks and privileges of office. We reapply, submit our record as citizens, get examined, tested, and checked out for competency, and pay our fees. If we pass, we get a citizen’s license, stamped with big red letters saying: “USE IT OR LOSE IT.”
If we flunk, we’ll be given mercy and sent back for retraining in history, law, and civic responsibility. We’ll be allowed two more chances to pass muster.
However. Recall our latest standards: Three strikes, and you’re out.
Reading: by Teresa Palomo Acosta from a poem entitled “Crossing ‘a piece of earth’”
At the border the gatekeepers sit with loaded guns.
Just this side of it I look at the brand newest official government map
For directions to a US/Mexico round trip.
Though I know that the map cannot measure precisely
The lay of the land.
Now changed by the brand newest migra laws.
They have altered our conscious excursions to each side
And our ownership or land/rights.
At the border
Where the guards with guns are stationed
I begin to reconsider
The rules I have relied upon
To cross the borders
That divide earth from earth
On the same terrain.
How can I redefine one slice of the land
Turned into a flat treadmill
Of personal causes that stretch over its bridges:
Day labor, drug dealer, simple family outings/
Trading one form of persecution for another?
Reading: from an article entitled “Citizenship” that appeared in the children’s magazine “Scholastic News” last month (from Scholastic News: My Weekly Reader, Sep 2013)
How to be a good citizen:
We are good citizens, don’t you agree?
We care for our whole community.
Sometimes we lose at the games we share.
We still have fun. We play fair.
There’s one way to act that is always correct.
Treat other people with lots of respect.
To be a good citizen, keep this in mind:
Whatever you do, always be kind.
The Making of a Citizen
A Sermon Delivered on October 20, 2013
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
So tell me. How many voting members are in the U.S. House of Representatives? (435) Tell me, who are four authors of the Federalist Papers? (… You know, those 85 essays published in New York newspapers in 1787 and 1788, when New York State was deciding whether or not to support the U.S. Constitution.) They are, of course, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Publius.
And, of course, you know the five things for which Benjamin Franklin is famous: he was a U.S. diplomat, the oldest member of the Constitutional Convention, the first Postmaster General of the United States, the author of “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” and the one who started the first free libraries. (As trivia item six, I should mention that we count him as one of our Unitarian forebears.)
These are some of the questions immigrants need to answer, if they want to become U.S. citizens. One hundred potential questions are listed in this handy booklet, “Learn about the United States,” published by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. This is what you will be tested on at your naturalization interview. Though to be fair, I should tell you, you only need to know one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, and only one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for.
And some questions are easier than others. For instance, “What is the capital of the United States?” and “What’s the name of the ocean off the East Coast?” I imagine few us of would have trouble with those.
I know these things, because on a beautiful Wednesday morning this summer I drove up to Chicago, to the offices of the Department of Homeland Security, and took my civics test. I am happy to say I passed. And any day now I should be receiving a notice telling me where and when I can join an Oath Ceremony, at which point – if all goes well – I will become a bone fide American citizen.
At the interview in Chicago, I promised that I was not and had never been a member of a communist, Nazi, or terrorist organization. I promised that I would defend this country’s constitution and laws against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I promised that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, and bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law. (Though in Germany, when I was eighteen, I applied for CO status.)
As you may know, I was born in Germany. And up to this point in my life I have been a German citizen. After my oath ceremony I will have dual citizenship in both countries.
I look forward to that moment, because my status as resident alien here has felt increasingly awkward in recent years, partially because the climate for non-citizens has become increasingly strained, especially after 9/11. Immigration policies have become more restrictive and enforcement more aggressive.
I also look forward to being a citizen here, because for years I have felt as if I were living a lie. Because I am fair-skinned and speak fluent English, I have been able to pass as a native, even though I am actually an alien. Other immigrants are less fortunate.
* * *
October is Immigration Justice Month. A local group called the “CU Immigration Forum” and its Faith Allies have been offering educational and inspirational events throughout the month designed to raise our awareness on issues surrounding immigration and the immigrant experience. For instance, next Sunday, October 27, there will be an Immigration Justice Fair at University Place Christian Church, at the corner of Springfield and Wright, followed by an interfaith worship service at 2:00 p.m..
Our members Pat Nolan and Claire Szoke have been actively involved. Last Monday evening we hosted a film screening and discussion here. The film was a documentary about a massive raid conducted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency in Postville, Iowa in 2008. The Postville Raid is considered the largest and most brutal immigration raid in U.S. history.
And on Thursday evening, October 31, we will be hosting an interactive presentation entitled “Our View From the Border.” Two desert aid workers will be offering firsthand accounts of trends in migration and their efforts to help. The speakers are from a group called “No More Deaths,” which was founded by the UU Church in Tucson, Arizona.
Across the country and for several years now, Unitarian Universalists have joined together to challenge unjust immigration policies and practices. At our General Assembly in Louisville, Kentucky last June, delegates from UU congregations across the country adopted a Statement of Conscience, taking a position on “Immigration as a Moral Issue.”
In the statement, we acknowledge that all nations have a right and obligation to enact immigration laws for the well-being of their citizens. Some of our laws are moral and humane, and contribute to the public good. Unfortunately, there are others that “use race, class, religion, ethnicity, ability, or sexual orientation to dictate who belongs and who does not.” “Our challenge as religious people is to distinguish the moral from the immoral, supporting the former and opposing the latter.”
* * *
The realities of life for millions of documented and undocumented immigrants in this country are hair-raising. Families are torn apart, others live in constant fear of deportation. Some parents don’t dare take their children to school, for fear they might be arrested. Others are victims of violence, but are afraid to call the police. Desperate men and women die in the deserts on the Mexican-American border, thousands are imprisoned for months in for-profit detention centers and are denied basic civil and human rights.
Millions of hard-working men and women are treated as less than human, often living in a kind of legal limbo, stuck somewhere in an immigration system that is deeply flawed. And they are victims of a political and social climate that incorrectly labels them as “illegals,” or “criminals,” or “terrorists.”
A moral immigration system would provide a clear path to legal residency and citizenship. It would provide work visas that ensure worker protection, and access to medical care and education. It would provide due process under the law and alternatives to detention. It would provide safety and support.
* * *
Immigration, emigration, migration – the movement of people between countries and continents is a timeless human phenomenon. Whether in search of economic advantage, whether to flee religious or political persecution, whether forced by famine or warfare – humans have always been on the move.
America is known as a nation of immigrants. But actually the entire family of humanity is made up of immigrants and descendants of immigrants.
It is no coincidence that the world’s great religious traditions all include passages that ask us to tend to the needs of the foreigner, the traveler, the stranger. The Hebrew scriptures say you should love the foreigner, because “you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.” (Lev. 19-33-34). In the Christian scriptures, when Jesus is asked, “Who is my neighbor?” he responds by telling the story of the Good Samaritan – a foreigner, traveling in a foreign land, who helps a man who had been badly beaten. And the Qur’an says, we should do “good to …those in need, neighbors who are near, neighbors who are strangers, the companion by your side, the wayfarer that you meet” (4:36).
We are all citizens of some country. But more basically than that, and more often than not, we are all foreigners. There are over 190 nations in the world – 193 member states of the United Nations. According to that count, most of us are citizens in one country, and foreigners in 192. And even dual citizens are still strangers in 191 nations.
* * *
The theologian Paul Tillich points out that one of the oldest stories of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions is the story of Abraham. God says to Abraham, “Go from your home… to the land that I will show you.” Abraham is asked to leave his native soil, the community of his family, the faith of his fathers, his people and state, for the sake of a promise he does not understand. The God who asks obedience of him,” Tillich writes, “is the God of an alien country, a God not bound to the local soil... who means to bless all the races of the earth.”
This God says: “[You] must ever leave [your] own country and enter into a land that will be shown to [you]. [You] must trust a promise that is utterly transcendent.”
Leaving our native land and entering an alien country is not only an integral part of our human history and religious past, it is not only a matter of moving across geographic and national boundaries. It is also a universal aspect of human experience, accessible to each of us. As Tillich puts it:
“The path into an alien country may also signify something wholly personal and inward: parting from accepted lines of belief and thought; pushing beyond the limits of the obvious; radical questioning that opens up the new and uncharted… It [may be a] temporal, not geographical, emigration. The alien land lies in the future, the country “beyond the present.” And when we speak of this alien country we also point to our recognition that even what is nearest and most familiar to us contains elements of strangeness…” (On the Boundary: An Autobiographical Sketch, p. 92)
When we are home, we live within the boundaries of what seems safe, secure, and familiar. The religious life asks us to move out of our comfort zone. It asks us to heed the voice that arises from deep within our hearts, the voice that beckons us to live more fully, more courageously, more compassionately.
The religious life asks us to leave our native land behind, and dare to search for a promised land. A land of milk and honey. A land of abundance, where justice flows down like water, and peace like an ever-flowing stream.
Sometimes the obstacles we have to overcome seem insurmountable. The boundaries designed to keep us safe and secure become borders that divide us, guarded by gatekeepers with loaded guns. Borders that divide earth from earth, person from person. Borders that divide us into separate groups: citizens and strangers. And the only choice we seem to have is whether we want to trade one kind of persecution for another.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can do better.
* * *
It was Socrates, who – two and a half thousands of years ago – said, “I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.” I don’t know whether he was the first to imagine what it might mean to be, not a citizen of a particular nation, city or state, but a citizen of the world. He certainly wasn’t the last.
Five hundred years ago, Francis Bacon wrote, “the parts and signs of goodness are many.” If we are gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows that we are citizens of the world. It shows that our “heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.”
* * *
I think that Robert Fulghum is onto something, when he suggests we re-apply for citizenship, again and again. That we re-submit our records, get examined, tested and checked out for competency. Being a good citizen is not a matter of passing a one-time test. It is about being good, every day. And when we discover we are falling short of our ideals, we take a breath, maybe we say “sorry,” and try to make amends. And we resolve to do better.
This is not rocket science. Even child knows what it means to be good:
There’s one way to act that is always correct.
Treat other people with lots of respect.
To be a good citizen, keep this in mind:
Whatever you do, always be kind.
All people are citizens and deserve our respect. And every one of us is a stranger, searching for a promised land. God, Yahweh, Allah, the Spirit of Life and Love – calls us to envision a better world. We are called to move beyond boundaries that might divide us, join hand to hand, and together do whatever we can to make our vision a reality.
So be it. Amen.
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