Sermon

INTRODUCTION: As my parents aged, my sisters and I worried about where they would like to be buried, when that time came. We were all three reluctant to discuss it with them, but when I did broach it I could almost see a sigh of relief pass over their face.

So we made arrangements to go to a cemetery on the outskirts of Oklahoma City, and with input from the staff, we found the sites suggested. Dad began walking around, as I followed along.

The property line of the cemetery was right next to a wheat field. It was late Springtime and the wheat was ripe and golden. The Oklahoma wind was causing the waves of grain to sway back and forth. Dad, who was raised on a farm in Central Texas, stood staring, entranced it seemed by a scene he had seen so many times before in his four-score plus years.

Then we headed back to the gravesites. Dad was still looking around intently. Then he stood on the site itself, looked around and said, “It has good drainage.”

In the years since Dad and Mother died, I’ve gone back to that gravesite a few times to pay my respects. Each time, I was so pleased that the wheat field was still there. Sometimes I would walk over, bend down to look at the wheat, and pull a few stalks, then look closely at the gorgeous heads of wheat, and place them on Dad and Mom’s grave.

There is something about flowers and plants and trees and grasses that resonate with our own sense of life and identity. It’s an amazing feat to wonder how life made its transitions from one species to another, and then how each of the species evolved ever more complicated. But is evolution finished?

I read an address given last year by a peace activist. He said that we humans have four powers that can enable us to take an evolutionary bounce into the future – if we but use them.

First, he said, is the power of perception – how we choose to see our planet. Every time I see a spider web, it makes me think of what Amanda told me about her father. Anytime he found a spider in the house, he would carefully transfer it to a piece of paper and then take it outside and reposition it. He respected not only the place spiders have in the ecosystem, but also their right to live here too.

If you look at the moon though, it’s dead. But if you see pictures of the Earth from space, you can tell the difference between the two. Earth is a living, dynamic planet. And the more we realize that, the more inclined we will be, to enable others to have their place and to engage them in the aliveness of not only our planet but also our Universe.

To get an evolutionary bounce, our perception of not only our planet, but also of what our actions are doing to the well being of every other species is critical.

The second evolutionary bounce comes when we exercise our power of choice. I don’t know about you, but I was so impressed with young Derrick Vigne last week, and his concern about the turtles and our excessive use of plastic bags at the grocery store and the death it’s causing for turtles. This week, he made sure I knew that Connecticut has passed a state law outlawing plastic bags.

And he and his mother have made arrangements with one of the health food storeowners to acquire some of the little carry-in-your-purse-pocket-or-on-your-belt bags, which they will be presenting to us to buy in a few Sundays. And on Tuesday, Derrick reiterated that he wanted us to be sure to take our old plastic bags to the store to reuse, rather than to get a bunch of new ones.

Now I’m fully aware that you and I may feel helpless at times in facing many global issues. But the truth is that it’s individuals, families and local communities who have the power to determine our futures. It’s expressed in the choice of how we eat, the clothes we wear, and the work that we do. It’s when we here, and they over there, and down there, and up there, join together to form a tidal wave of opinion and choices about how we live our lives on Planet Earth.

The third power in enabling our evolutionary bounce is the power of communication.

The tragedy of American foreign power today is that as theologian Dr. Gary Dorrien describes, America doesn’t believe that the lessons of history apply to us. We somehow think that we are superior in goodness and power…that we are a redeemer nation going abroad never to conquer, but only to liberate.

Hence, when we get in a quagmire such as we are in now in Iraq, that fictional self-image of ourselves drives us to refuse to acknowledge the necessity of pulling out, even when we are losing lives and inflicting enormous losses on the inhabitants of the nation we are supposedly helping. That refusal to see means that when we do eventually have to leave, the aftermath will be so much worse, as Britain learned in India, France in Algeria, and the U.S. in Vietnam.

As Dr. Dorrien states so persuasively, “We had a precious moment after 9/11. Not since the end of World War II was there such a possibility to move toward a community of nations.” But instead of continuing to pursue Al Qaeda and rebuilding Afghanistan, we forced, not forged, a coalition – remember: “you are either for us or against us” – resulting in a course that has ignited a firestorm of anti-Americanism around the world.

The message that you and I need to be communicating is that we have the responsibility of pushing for exit planning rather than the nonsense of “prevailing,” or “victory,” or “winning the war.”

Finally, the power that will really give our planet an evolutionary bounce is a four-letter word: the power of love. English is handicapped in that it has only one word for love, whereas languages like Greek have at least three. But the kind of love that our planet and we need most is very simple: the ability to put ourselves in the place of others. When we do, we realize that the inhabitants of Earth are all in the same boat.

Let’s think of love and putting ourselves in the place of others in relation to something very much in the news now: immigration. How many of you have traveled to another country and had to pass through customs either going or coming? How many of you had an up to date passport when you did that?

Simple, wasn’t it? Now imagine for a moment on this big ship Earth that we are on, NS because we are the richest nation in the world, we have the very top deck, with the best that money can buy. There are even customs offices guarding and limiting entry to America, to the top deck. Since this is a planet-sized ship, all the other nations are on decks below us, down to the very bottom deck where maybe Haiti or the Sudan or one of the poorest of the poor countries of the world are located.

But up here on the top deck, with our passport, we can go down to any deck. Plus, we speak English, and everybody on the decks below is supposed to speak English too, right. I mean how ungrateful could they be, not to?

And when we get ready, we can turn around and go back up…to the good old U.S. of A. Right?

But what happens when down in the bottom hold…the very bottom deck, where there is no food and there is no decent water…children don’t get to go to school and there’s no health care? What if the story is circulating down below, that up in America, on the top deck, there is an abundance of food for everyone. In fact, they hear that America has so much food, that they struggle with being fat, rather than starving skinny. There’s healthcare for the sick at the hospitals, and kids can go to school free. Imagine.

For those on the lower decks to get to America – where there’s food, healthcare, and education – all they have to do is go through customs. Except those from the bottom deck don’t have a passport…they don’t speak English…they don’t read or write.

But if you are hungry and your children are sick and you can’t afford to pay for education, do we really believe for one moment that those on the lower decks won’t do everything possible to get to America?

I promise you: The issue is not how to stop them: It’s like suicide bombers…there’s really no defense against a man who is starving and desperate. He will try anything necessary.

Rather, the first issue is how to help them before they get here, such as a foreign policy focused on our nearest neighbors in Latin America, rather than starting a war in the Middle East.

It’s also a matter of how to help them when they get here. That means intentionally creating alternatives to emergency rooms, which are the most expensive healthcare of all. It means realizing that they desperately want their children to speak English and to get an education. And it also means recognizing that being here in this nation without documents is not the same kind of “illegal” as criminal acts like robbery and assault; it’s civil, rather than criminal.

And then we need to be fair…be caring…be compassionate, and realize they also want to go back to their home countries. We can help them to go back home, but not by punishing them by refusing to let them back in. They want to see their families. They want to help with food and clothing, as well as medical bills. Realize, they are patriotic, too. They are proud of their homeland.

So how does all of this apply to us? Let’s go back to our big boat analogy: Believe me, it is absolutely foolhardy to believe that the upper deck can become a fortress. We can build walls and even put the U.S. Army on the borders – all of which are policies we are now pursuing. One reason it won’t work is because on this side of the border we need cheap, willing labor, to support our life style on the top deck. We couldn’t exist into next week without cheap, abundant, immigrant labor.

But also think of this: My daughter called me this week as she was driving from Amarillo, Texas to Oklahoma City. She said that filling up the gas tank on her Cadillac Escalde SUV cost $93. But what if she had been driving a hybrid and filled up with pure ethanol like the government is pushing? This is revealing: It would require more than 450 pounds of corn to provide 25 gallons of ethanol fuel – that’s enough to feed one hungry person for an entire year! In fact, the use of corn for ethanol is already increasing not only the cost of corn, but also more farmers are planting corn to benefit from the price increases. That also means they’re planting less wheat, soybean, rice and sugar beets, which according to the law of supply and demand, those prices will go up as well. Mexico gets 80% of its corn imports from the U.S. in which corn prices have gone from $2.80 to $4.20 a bushel. Consequently, last year, the cost of tortilla flour in Mexico doubled. According to the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, every time there is just a one percent increase in the price of major food staples, the calories consumed by the world’s poorest drop by one-half of one percent.

So one point to make is that every time we point a finger at the rest of the world…at the immigrants…at the undocumented workers…three fingers are pointing back at us. It’s a “We” problem, not only a matter of “they.”

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day, runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

Before my shoulder deteriorated, I used to conclude my daily walk or run with calisthenics, including pushups just before my cool down. While serving as interim minister at the Unitarian Universalist church in East Lansing, Michigan, I had a special route that always ended up with my pushups taking place over a specific crack in the sidewalk. In the Summer and Fall, there were these blades of grass that had pushed up through the crack. Then in the Winter, the grass died and there was nothing.

But as Spring approached, one morning I leaned over and began my pushup routine. The ice had melted and the snow was gone, and when I looked closely, there it was: A tiny blade of grass was coming through the crack. All up and down the sidewalk and in lawns and other cracks in the concrete, the same thing was happening.

And in that same wonderful way, life gets passed on, by the flowers, the grass, the plants, and by us. Life passes on and new joy is realized each time.

[1] Given May 27, 2007, at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, Ft. Myers, Florida, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1901 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.