Sermon

INTRODUCTION: In 1789, the first president of these United States, a Deist and Episcopalian, wrote a letter declaring the following:

Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLIC THANKSGIVING and PRAYER”…NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, that we may then all unite in rendering unto God our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country.

But this was only one day in 1789, not an annual event such as now. That dimension was added in 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln, who proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving to be celebrated every year on the last Thursday of November, which is not always the 4^th Thursday. Then, in 1941, after much political maneuvering back and forth, Thanksgiving was set by President Franklin Roosevelt as the fourth Thursday of November.

So on this Thanksgiving Day, 2011, with our nation in two wars, 10,000 miles away, and our economy struggling to regain its balance after a decade of unregulated greed on the part of Wall Street, housing foreclosures still real for so many, unemployment still a reality for millions, and cities across America addressing what to do with what started out as “Occupy Wall Street” protests that have become much more. What is it that we have to be thankful for?

In answer to that, let me turn to a very special book I was given this Fall. While they were in Oregon visiting family, Jackie and John Fontaine, who direct our Joys and Concerns segments of the 1^st service, gifted me with a copy of a book[2] by poet William Stafford, entitled, You Must Revise Your Life. (They assured me I shouldn’t take it personally!) It’s a wonderful read, especially his disclosures and perceptions about writing. But it’s also an incredibly insightful book to life and living. Though it’s not a book about poetry, he also includes poems at the most propitious of moments. In a minute, I want to read one that I feel is especially timely as we enter this Thanksgiving Season, but first I want to set the stage, so to speak.

I’m quite sure everyone here has at several times in their lives looked back and wondered, “What if…?” about some of the mistakes in our lives. What if?

Stafford writes a poem, Ask Me, in which, that seems to be to be the question. So listen as I read his answer to that most enervating of questions of reflection, “What if?” (By the way, enervate means “to deprive of force or strength; to destroy the vigor of; to weaken.”)

Now it will help in hearing the poem, if you are able to concentrate on the imagery he utilizes. So for just a moment, let’s imagine a river…a big frozen river from somewhere in the distant past. Maybe you will want to close your eyes, go back in time, and find a river…iced over. See it? Realize that the river probably has water flowing underneath the ice. And like us, even when we are still, there is so much movement going on that can’t be seen. So with the iced river before us, here’s what Stafford writes, which is scripture for this Thanksgiving Season:

The list of our mistakes can be so long…the names so many…the times so distant, but some of them can feel like only yesterday. Stafford continues,

Don’t only ask me about the mistakes but ask me whether what I have done is me…who I am. Good, bad or indifferent…this life is our life. No matter what has happened to us, by whom, or for what reason. And yet, I have too many times counseled so many people who did not like themselves or their lives. They didn’t like the way they looked, or talked, they especially didn’t like what they had done. Sometimes I almost wanted to bring in the Dallas Cheerleaders and have them do a cheerleading routine:

But it is so hard for some to do that. I’ve mentioned before a motivational speaker’s tapes that my brother-in-law passed on to me. The speaker recommended that for people who were down and depressed, that they go in front of the mirror every morning and say out loud, “I like myself! I like myself! I like myself.” Our lives are unique, one of a kind, broke the mold lives. Stafford continues:

There are unseen forces in our lives and world, of which we are not the least aware. I heard a discussion on NPR this past week about neutrinos and two experiments that seemed to demonstrate their going faster than the speed of light.

Another program spoke of the fact that we’ve presumed that gravity would eventually cause the expansion of the Universe to slow down. Actually, the opposite is occurring and the speed of the expansion is increasing.

Scientists are suggesting that one way of accounting for this is that ¾’s of the Universe is filled with Dark Energy. What’s that? If you don’t understand, don’t be surprised. Scientists too are guessing, intuiting, and hypothesizing. There are so many things we have no inkling of.

Now as we enter this Thanksgiving Season, the question isn’t so much what we’ve done wrong…the mistakes we’ve made…but what we’ve done right. In fact, the strategic assessment program known as Appreciative Inquiry, recommends that for truly transformative results, we should focus on what we’ve done right. They tell the story of a company which had a 94% approval rating in customer surveys. Someone quite innocently decided that they needed to concentrate on pleasing those disapproving 6%. When they did, guess what happened: Their approval ratings plummeted to 85% in only one year. So there’s benefit to looking at what worked…what went right…and not what went wrong.

In life, that means we don’t beat our brains out by concentrating on our mistakes, but on the good things we have going, according to Appreciative Inquiry.

So with that said, let us turn to the news…thankfully it’s good news. President Obama announced that he had spoken by phone to Aung San Suu Kyi ("Awn Sahn Sue Chee), and they both agreed that there was in fact a flicker of light in the new Myanmar government’s policies and practices. That includes releasing political prisoners, removing Mrs. Suu Kyi’s house arrest, and restoring a degree of the freedom of the press. So much so, that the president is sending Secretary of State Hillary Clinton there for talks, the first in more than 50 years. But first a little history for context:

In 1824, the British kingdom was occupying India when a series of conflicts developed with India’s neighbor Myanmar. By 1886, Britain had occupied the entire nation, strategically located between China and India. But in the 20^th Century, two world wars permanently weakened Britain’s imperial state, leading to their pulling out of Burma in 1948, thereby ending the violence of occupation, which military occupation always is, no matter who is doing it. Burma devolved into one of the longest running of civil wars. In 1962, there was a military coup and those who grabbed for power, ruled with an iron hand for decades. In the process, Myanmar became one of the least developed nations in the world. Geographically, it is the 40th largest country in the world and the second largest in Southeast Asia; it is also the 24th most populous country in the world with some 60 million residents. But in health care, the World Health Organization ranks Myanmar 190th among 190 nations.

Against that historical backdrop consider that on August 8, 1988 (8-8-8-8), a mass demonstration of more than one-half million, called for democracy. A young woman named Aung San Suu Kyi (Awn Sahn Sue Chee) appeared on the scene. She was a graduate of the University of Delhi, and of Oxford University, and held a Ph.D. from the University of London. Her father had been the founder of the modern Myanmar in 1948. She gave one of her most famous speeches at the protest entitled, "Freedom From Fear," which begins:

"It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it."

She was soon placed under house arrest by the military junta in power. Incredibly, in the 1990 general election that followed, Aung San Suu Kyi's (Awn Sahn Sue Chee) National League for Democracy party won 59% of the national votes and 81% (392 of 485) of the seats in Parliament. But the junta refused to accept the election results, and Suu Kyi remained under house arrest. For her courage, in 1991, she received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Not only did she remain under house arrest, for 15 of the following years from 1988 until 2010, she was unable to see her husband and children. He died in 1999 at age 53. He had seen her only five times during her house arrest, the last of which was for Christmas in 1995. Nor could she see her children who lived in the United Kingdom. To add to her plight, in 2008, in a cyclone, Suu Kyi lost the roof of her house and lived in virtual darkness after losing electricity in her dilapidated lakeside residence. She used candles at night as she was not provided any generator set. She was only released from house arrest on Nov.13, 2010 with the new civilian government elected. Starting in 2011, her children were able to visit her in Myanmar.

Here’s the point of the story. In an interview with the BBC just last Thursday, the reporter asked her about some of the things I’ve cited – her years of unjust arrest, her health, her home, her separation form her family, her inability to have a voice in her nation. Suu Kyi played down the hardships she has faced over the past two decades. In fact she said, “I find it rather embarrassing when people talk about my sufferings.” She said. “I’m thinking of others who have suffered more. In a situation like ours, people have died, and it seems to me that nobody who is still alive has a right to complain.”

In the new book, Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope, which came out just last Tuesday, Gabrielle Gifford, the congresswoman from Arizona who was shot point blank in the head, tells of her struggle to regain her fluency and ability to speak and articulate. In the 10 months since that horrible experience in the parking lot of a grocery store in Tucson, and with the help of the very best in medical treatment available, along with the loving care of her astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, Representative Giffords had to first have part of her skull removed so as to allow her bullet-injured brain to swell. Next, she had to fight the potential infection brought on by the bullet wound. Then she had to deal with the pure physical loss of functioning caused by a bullet entering the left side of her brain and going straight through.

Later, she had to deal with learning that one of her closest staff members, Gabe Zimmerman, had been killed, as had her friend Judge John Roll, as well as a 9-year-old girl, Christina, seeking a first hand lesson in civics.

In the audio version of her book, Representative Giffords records the last chapter all by herself. To me, they’re handholds, boosters to keep on keeping on.

“Long ways to go. Grateful to survive it. It’s frustrating. Mentally hard. Hard work. I’m trying. Trying so hard to get better.”

On this Thanksgiving 2011, the message is wherever we are, we have much to be thankful for. We join with those like Aung San Suu Kyi (Awn Sahn Sue Chee) and Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford to give us perspective and hope. And in so doing, we offer Thanksgiving for the nation that we used to be, and the one we hope to one day restore. Let us pray that before it’s too late, we will elect politicians able to put it back together again.

[1] Presented on Thanksgiving Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011 at the All Faiths Unitarian Congregation (UUA), located at 2756 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.

[2] You Must Revise Your Life (1986), University of Michigan Press.