Gretchen Robinson:  The Soul of a Nation            Channing Church, Rockland            January 14, 2007

Gretchen Robinson, preached this sermon at Second Parish January 21, 2007

I was born during the darkest days of WWII, at a time when the outcome of that war was uncertain.  My father had enlisted and was about to be sent to fight in France and Germany.  Now what I am about to say next may sound weird:  but I think that even before I was born I knew that terrible things were happening in the world.   It would take years before I learned about the German death machine and how, at the time of my birth, The Holocaust was killing millions of Jews, Gypsies, and Gays.  Somehow I felt this awfulness.  And every day of my life since then, I have felt twinges of this terror and fear--in body, mind, and spirit.   But there's more: Have you ever known or understood things and didn't know how you knew them?   I remember not wanting to be born, a feeling I have had all my life.

This experience left an indelible mark and led to my firm opposition to war, violence, and torture.  War is the defining issue of my life; it's scarred upon my consciousness.  My father, I now realize bore the scars of PTSD from that war.  This affected the lives of all six of the children he and my mother raised in "white bread America" of the 50s.  He supported the family through hard physical work that wore out his body and wore him down.  But he remembered the war years as the best time of his life since he so strongly identified with men.  Oh, he loved us in some distant way, but mostly he was uneasy with anyone other than his hunting and fishing buddies, who like him, had also served in WWII.   My three brothers grew up and went into the military just out of high school.      

One of my favorite folk songs is called "Mother's, Daughters, Wives." It tells of generations of fathers, sons, and husbands going off to war, leaving the children and women with only photographs to kiss at night.  The women accept without question that men go to war and women grieve.  War makes for an endless line of fatherless children and widows.  Somehow we never total up all the long term effects on our nation's wars.  As a teen I was never going to marry, lest I have to send a husband and sons off to war.   

By the time I was 13 years old and able to reason and think for myself, I was reading novels about the Holocaust.  I grew up to be a serious-minded girl, wanting only to study and go to college.  But that was not to be; there was no money for college.  And so I went to nursing school.  After graduating, I worked in a state cancer hospital as head nurse of the operating room.  We did surgeries so drastic that other hospitals referred their worst cancer patients to us.  The Vietnam War was heating up.   By day I supervised four operating rooms and witnessed surgeons cutting cancers out of people.  By night I witnessed TV news with bodies torn and destroyed by the war the 60's generation of soldiers fought.   We know now that a witness to trauma, even second-hand, is likely to be a victim of that trauma.   This begs the question of what happened to our collective psyches when we saw planes flying into the twin towers on 9-11?  My first thought on that day was of the children watching and being traumatized by the not understanding what even adults couldn't comprehend.  How does the violence we see on tv and in movies get integrated into our psyches? And remember the word psyche means 'soul.'

The odd thing is that lately my husband and I have been watching a lot of reruns of M.A.S.H.   It's how we try to keep our sanity and integrity intact in the face of more recent wars.   You see the thing about war is that it demoralizes.   For all the rah-rah and patriotism and jingoism, war is hell.  And so we ask ourselves why, war after war, do we as a nation keep starting new wars and escalating the one's we're in? 

Since becoming ministers, we have the added responsibility of asking these questions alongside the members of the churches we serve.   We seek answers that go deeper than politics.   We return to the resources of this Faith, this amazing Faith.   Like the Quakers and Mennonites and other denominations, UUs have been asking the more profound questions all along: What is the effect of war and violation and violence upon the human spirit?  Yet, all the while behind our daily lives, we can hear the drumbeat of our nation's wars going on in the background: now muted, now deafeningly loud.   Few, however, dare to ask how war impacts the souls of the individuals who fight and those of us at home who wait out yet another war.

In the last century we had two World Wars: WWII, lately called "the Good War," and WWI, the so-called "War to End all Wars."  Many members of our churches fought in WWII.  We honor those who served our nation in the past and those serving now.  But still we question this current war, entered into so rashly.  What is the effect of this war on the national psyche?  What happens to collective Soul of a Nation as we Americans become more disillusioned and more demoralized?  Then there's the threat of an even wider war in the Gulf.

There is no draft like in the 60s and Vietnam.  But there are plenty of tears for those who are maimed and killed.  We Americans subscribe to the great values of justice and the rule of law--or say we do.  What I see now a great bleakness, in the words of Shakespeare, "Now is the winter of our discontent."  Just where is our moral compass?   Has our thirst, our addiction to pump more and more oil out of the desert sands of Iraq become mere expediency?  Do the ends justifying the means?  The US is increasingly militarizing the world's supply of oil.   Our nation, the only remaining superpower, seems bent on taking control the world's supply of oil, never mind the sovereign nations which just happen to sit on top of these oil reserves.  What will arrogance of power do to the soul of our nation?

So Bill and I watch MASH--as a way to give witness, as a sort of vigil, so that we won't forget how awful war is and its terrifying costs.  We relate to the main character, "Hawkeye," a dedicated surgeon who is usually the moral center of the show.  Hawkeye is all too human.  He drinks too much.  He's a womanizer.  But he won't fire a gun.  He's immature one moment and facing life's most serious questions the next.  Hawkeye functions as a witness to all that he sees.  Through his eyes we see the insanity of war.  We identify with his despair, rage, impotence, and the agitated depression that nearly drives him into insanity.  

Hawkeye cannot go home, yet he cannot bear to witness any more killing and death.   He's imprisoned by the war; he's tortured by it.  We Americans, I want to suggest, are in a similar state, imprisoned and tortured by the Iraq War.  We can't quite face the awfulness of it; yet can't put it out of our minds.  It may go on for years; it may expand to a war against Iran.   Some of us feel imprisoned by a sense of helplessness; we feel that nothing we might do will make any difference.  Every TV news program and every story and photograph in the papers, causes us to witness anew to the seemingly endless suffering caused by war. 

MASH was supposedly about the Korean War but everyone then knew it as a not-too- subtle commentary on Vietnam.   In any case, one war is like another, except we get further and further away from our targets.   In one show a handsome young bomber pilot crashes his plane and passes briefly through the hospital with only a scratch.  He brags to Hawkeye, saying "I'm having a good war." "Every day I fly my mission, drop my bombs, and fly back.  I'm in the officer’s mess by 5PM with a martini waiting for me."  Hawkeye asks him, "do you ever see where the bombs fall?" And he says "no."

So Hawkeye invites him into the operating room and shows him a small child undergoing surgery.  "What happened?" the pilot asks.  "He got hit by bomb fragments."  You see the horror grow in the pilot's eyes.  "Will he make it?"  "We don’t know...It's too soon to tell."  The pilot leaves, haunted, guilty…ashamed.   His eyes have been opened.  Now he knows.  He has been made witness to the reality of war.  Though he may wish to do so, he can never erase the images from his eyes, this indelible traumatic event he has witnessed: the unnecessary suffering of a child.

The word 'witness' is an ancient one.  We give witness to our faith by living our faith out in the world and in our hearts.  And Faith includes a moral accounting.  We also are witnesses to violence.  The newest Christian video games have Christian soldiers fighting a war against infidels, killing indiscriminately with their objective being to bring about the Kingdom of God.  It's madness, of course.   So when we try to figure out how to stop and prevent wars, we need to see just how inured many of us are to the role of violence in our lives.  There's the passive war as we saw in post-Katrina in New Orleans, the war on women, and the war on gays and lesbians.  There's also systemic violence when government and corporations systematically drive whole populations into poverty and ill health without a twinge of remorse.  

War, as I said is demoralizing.  For a world fixated on the Middle East it's strange how little we hear about the early native cultures there.  Before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, there was a loose confederation of peoples across a broad area, who lived in peace.   Their moral code rested on a tradition of "desert hospitality."  This was a moral requirement that one was obliged to take in and provide for others: water for the thirsty, food for the hungry, and lodging for the stranger and the lost.   You tended to the needs of others because the next time you might be the ones lost in the desert.  

I want to point out the link between the words 'hospitality' and 'hospital' because they have the same ancient roots.   The mandate to give hospitality to those lost in the desert changed when people began to live in settled communities.  It became the biblical directive to care for the "widow, the orphan, and the stranger."  In more modern centuries, the ideal of hospitality became the impetus to set up hospitals, originally in monasteries and later as freestanding institutions.  Hawkeye and all of those who staffed the MASH hospitals were dedicated to providing hospitality.  Even the North Koreans were given medical care, just as in Israel, it's well known that doctors there strive to give equal medical care, regardless of who they are serving: Israeli or Palestinian. 

It is said that when people are threatened or in danger, we react in predictable ways.   Out of two defense mechanisms, one will kick in: fight or flight.  The present administration describes the war in these stark terms.   Either we stay and fight and thus "achieve victory," no matter the cost, or else we run away.  This black and white thinking says, either we "cut and run" or we're cowards.   An administration that claims to be sincerely Christian never seems to remember what Jesus taught when he told his followers: "love your enemies.  Do good to him that hates you." 

Psychologists have recently begun to point out that there is another instinct beyond the absolutism of "fight or flight." There is another way: a third instinct that comes into play called "tend and befriend."  This is the nurture instinct.   When we face a threat, we come together to connect and make friends with one another and whatever the challenge is we fact it together.

Which brings me to something so natural to our churches that we may not recognize it's worth:  a simple thing such as peace vigil out on a church lawn can be a way to offer hospitality, to befriend the stranger and tend to their spiritual needs.  The world is a desert of war and many seek a refuge.  Many seek sanctuary.   It may also be the first step in revitalizing our spiritual lives and connecting with the values we hold dearest.  Unitarian Universalist and other churches are seeing a potential here teach peace and witness for peace, just by opening our doors and our hearts. 

Recently Channing Church held just such a vigil as part of an effort to "say No to the proposed Surge in troops.  35 people showed up: complete strangers to us and to one another, brought together by the Internet and a deep desire to express a shared yearning for an end to war.  Some had family members in the Gulf.   We welcomed the stranger, we extended warm U.U. hospitality, we befriended and tended to every guest.

But here is something we need to know about people's needs: Joanna Macy is a Buddhist who works to awaken people to ways they can bring change to the world.  Her early work was teaching what she called 'despair' work and helping people find personal empowerment through, in essence, tending and befriending.  Her message is one of the most inspiring voices in today's world.  

In her workshops she has people address what she calls the greatest danger on the planet today: our apathy stops us from taking action.  Now I don't mean apathy as in feeling listless.  I mean the helplessness and even hopelessness we can feel in the face of the enormous problems in the world.   Particularly when we are cut off from others, these feelings can be very painful to bear.  Apathy is a psychological response that gets triggered especially when we feel isolated and alone.  What happens is that we switch into a place of not feeling, of not caring.  But it also deadens of our minds and hearts and spirits. 

Unfortunately, when we are at a loss and don't know where to begin, or when we are scared to stick our necks out, we may do a U-turn and convince ourselves to play it safe.  So we repress our desire for change.  We forget there is safety in numbers.  We tell ourselves: "It's too hard.  I can't think about that.  It's too much." We may also be afraid we'll be overwhelmed by despair if we really look at how bad things are.  Or we're afraid of appearing morbid.  Our culture is always pushing us to be upbeat, to keep smiling.  "Make nice."  Don't make waves. 

There are other feelings that hold us back.  There's a fear of our guilt.  We feel guilty that our country allowed the systematic torture in Abu Ghraib--and the gulag that is Guantanamo.  But guilt can be faced.  We're also afraid we'll cause distress to others and so we silence ourselves.  We tell ourselves, 'don't make waves.'   Or we're afraid we'll be seen as unpatriotic.  And finally we fear being seen as weak and emotional if we reveal the depth of our true feelings. 

But we cannot learn anything new while living in fear.  Fear is a poor teacher.  Fear is a dead end.  The only way through is to face the fear, which causes us to hold back and shut ourselves off from those we need to reach out to. 

I close by saying, that hosting the vigil taught us something important:  how great our longing is to belong.  People will come out, will even withstand a winter night, just to find a way to express themselves and to find like-minded people.   We only need to provide hospitality, and by that I mean openness, warmth, kindness, generosity, a kind ear, and a reassuring welcome that we are all in this together.  There's a great yearning abroad for the kind of the kind of fellowship.   Our closing hymn speaks to the hope that we be: "free from the bonds that bind the mind to narrow thoughts." Let our prayer as we leave this kindred fellowship be to leave behind what has bound us in the past and to "trust the dawning future more." 

Closing Hymn: 145 As Tranquil Streams

Reading from The Bully Who Rules the World: Reading and Thinking about Ethics by Carol Bly.

Joanna Macy's book is Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World.

The leaders of our nation, in my opinion, are increasingly willing to use tactics that support of system of domination, designed and intended to leave ordinary citizens feeling powerless and acting very compliant to its wishes.  At this point the going off to and fighting of wars has become ritualized.   James Hillman author of The Terrible Love of War points out that we don't, in fact, worship a God of Love.  That is what we are told that we believe.  Instead, he says, we worship the god of the earliest parts of the Old Testament, the one we read about in Exodus 15:3.  "The Lord is a man of war." My reading of the life of Jesus is that he gives witness to another way, a way not of syrupy sweet love.  Hillman says, instead, that predominantly we worship Aries, the ancient Greek god of war, done over in new guise.   I don't know about you, but any God I worship is not going to be Aries or the form of the Lord riding off into battle in front of the Hebrews and ensuring their victory.  God isn't on our side.  And the America I owe my allegiance to does not worship Ares but a God of Peace and a Man of Peace.  It is only when we question and join with others, that we can stop this insanity.