• Home
• Visitor Center
  • Frequent Questions
  • Contact the Church
• Sunday Morning
  • Upcoming Services
  • Recent Sermons
  • Announcements
  • Newsletter archive
• Our Church
  • Directions
  • Giving
  • Art Gallery
  • Board Reports
  • Church Documents
  • Brief History
  • Architecture
• Music
  • Music Program
  • Our Choir
  • Guest Soloists
  • Sunday Concerts
• Our People
  • Minister and Staff
  • Our Congregation
  • Board of Trustees
  • Photo Gallery
  • UUCS Columnists
• Social Justice
• Activities
  • Committees
  • Chalice Groups
• Learning
  • Religious Education
  • Freethinkers
  • Lifespan Education

Sermons by Reverend Don Beaudreault

CELEBRATING WOMEN (Mother's Day)
Rev. Don Beaudreault
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
May 8, 2005

OPENING WORDS: "I brought children into this lousy, mixed-up world because."

I brought children into this lousy, mixed-up world because when you love someone and they love you back, the world doesn't look that lousy or seem that mixed-up.

Erma Bombeck

MEDITATION READING: "Comes the Dawn"

After awhile you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And love doesn't mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open,
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And learn to build all your roads
On today because tomorrow's ground
Is too uncertain for plans, and futures have
A way of falling down in mid-flight.
After awhile you learn that even sunshine
Burns if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden and decorate
Your own soul, instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure,
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth.
And you learn and learn.
With every new day you learn.

Anonymous

SERMON: "Celebrating Women"

I would like to begin this sermon by reading selections from the women in our congregation who answered my request for any woman or girl in our church to send me their response to the question: "What does it mean to be female in today's society?"

As I told them individually, I will not share their names nor indicate how many women responded. And to obfuscate things a bit more, I will move from one statement to the next in order to create a tapestry of responses.

What does it mean to be a female in today's society? In this country, it means greater freedom than ever before. It means more choices than we were ever able to make in the past. It means realizing, contrary to what most older women were taught, that we are whole in ourselves and having another person in our lives, while very wonderful, is not what makes us who we are. It means living life to the fullest as a human being. We must continue the fight so that these same privileges become available to women around the world.

I see most men are not from Mars. Nor are most women from Venus. I see my sons as both "mother" and "father" to their offspring. Perhaps we now all come from Pluto.

. Many women in China and Italy, and some other countries, are choosing not to have children. Their leaders and industrialists and military are wringing their hands. With population falling, how will their economy fare? Will they lose their power in world affairs? What good news! If more women in more countries choose to have fewer children or no children, the world's population will decline. Could it be that nature could come into balance again on Planet Earth? Will women ultimately change the world?

While it's true that women have "come a long way" in our society, it's still true that we make 70 cents to a man's dollar for identical work...I still observe that women in our society who put on an act for men get accepted and admired, while women who are "authentic" find it difficult to connect. Women such as Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice have made careers for themselves by adopting male hierarchical values; so just getting women elected and appointed to office isn't the answer.

I don't think that the women's movement, in which I have played an active part, has made that much of a difference, because under Capitalism, the values of Competition and exploitation are omnipresent. Money is the supreme value, so men, who have more of it, are still in charge. Not until we have a truly egalitarian society will women's lot really improve.

Being a mother today is more difficult, I feel, than it ever was - since not only is the work of educating the next generation a tremendous task, but it's thankless and doesn't count for much in a dollar-oriented society. For this reason, many women have abandoned their traditional role and are allowing the media and the streets to educate their children. This is why the cards, the flowers, the gifts, don't mean much to me on Mother's Day. What does my heart good is when my daughter-in-law says, "Thank you for the man I love. You raised a real "mensch."

What does it mean to be female in today's society?

From the perspective of a 38-year-old stay-at-home mom:

In my 20's, I enjoyed a promising legal practice, travel and lengthy vacations with my husband, reading, writing, long-distance running and playing classical music on the piano. In my 30s, I gladly chose to become a stay-at-home mother. I do little else, and I am exhausted. I do my best every day to raise my 3 young children to be the beautiful human beings they deserve to become and there is no time left for career or personal passions beyond the possibility of a shower before noon (although never without 3 waist-high people joining me and gleefully covering the walls with shaving cream).

Before I became a mother, I never noticed a roadblock to achieving any of my dreams, thanks to the generations of women and men before me who fought for my generation's right to equality. But motherhood today is complicated by a society that often necessitates two-income households, extended families that live across the country, constant stimulation and too many choices; and schools and households ravaged by divorce, drugs, bullies and violence.

Mothers today are challenged to raise our children in this more complicated world, and as women who are mothers, we struggle to accept that although we now have the right to "have it all," we cannot have it all at the same time. I feel a sense of freedom and relief in the moments that hold that acceptance.

Truly, I want to thank these women who shared their personal responses to the question and have, in the process, helped all of us more fully understand the intricacies of life itself.

Many topics were mentioned and in the time left, I would like to discuss some of them and others a bit more.

Consider that topic of overpopulation. On this Mother's Day, let us celebrate our mothers; and let us celebrate females throughout the world. But let us also be aware that according to the World Health Organization (WHO) more than one woman dies every minute of every day - 585,000 a year due to preventable complications of pregnancy, childbirth or unsafe abortion.

Consider the topic of violence against females. This is a greater cause of death and disability among women aged 15 to 44 than either cancer, malaria or automobile accidents. And I know that women who finally are able to leave their abusive male partners will only do so after an average of 8 attempts. For some of them - tragically - they do not live long enough to flee such hell-on-earth.

Consider the form of violence practiced in various places in the world called Female genital mutilation (FGM) - the traditional procedures that involve cutting away parts of the female external genitalia, causing excruciating pain, shock and bleeding, that can lead to death. The estimated number of women and girls who have undergone some form of FGM is over 130 million.

Consider the economic disparity. In the United States it is around 70 -75 cents earned by a female for every dollar earned by a man. Think about this in regard to other industrialized nations: the hourly earnings of women as a percentage of those of men is 84% in Sweden, 73% in France and Spain and just over 64% in the UK. Now, women managers have it even worse compared with men. In the UK they receive two-thirds the pay of male counterparts. Even in Sweden, which is nearest to equality, it is only 80%. Women and men in lower-paid non-manual jobs - clerks, shop assistants, etc - are closest to being equal.

Consider the fact that the Equal Rights Amendment in this country has yet to be passed. Thirty-five states out of the needed thirty-eight have ratified it. Our state of Florida is one of those 15 who have not ratified it. Now, despite the diatribe spoken and written by those who would oppose the amendment, realize what the ERA says:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Truly, girls and women are discriminated against in so many ways, simply because they are female: jobs, education, housing, Social Security benefits, taxes, pensions, athletic competition - the list is long. And it would include their race and their sexual orientation.

Consider those two factors. Let me tell you of a story that my partner Jim and I heard this past Friday night. It was a story told to a few thousand other people, too, who attended the show that the Korean-American, gay activist comedian, Margaret Chou, gave to us.

Now Margaret is quite a social commentator. In a word: "outspoken." So when she appeared at a recent gathering of a certain political party and began to say what was on her mind, she was literally booed. The intent was to boo her off the stage, but Margaret, a fierce fighter for equal rights - including for equal time - refused to leave the stage even when they turned off her mike. Finally, it was only when music was played to drown out her shouting, did she leave.

But, unlike most people in our country today - or perhaps ever in our nation's history - Margaret felt that since she had a right in this free society to speak her mind, she would actually do so!

The huge number of hate e-mails she received from those who attended that event and from their compatriots who did not, were outspoken, too - but were comments filled with the kind of prejudicial language that I would blush to say from this pulpit.

A frequent sentiment expressed by these hate-mongers was that Margaret should go back to her own country - as one unkind person said: "Go back to Mongolia!" Not that there is something horrible about Mongolia, it's just that .as Ms. Chou told us - looking quite aghast in doing so - she had no country to go back to (certainly it was not Mongolia) - nor was it Korea - since she was born in the United States, albeit of Korean-born parents.

What she did do in response to all these less-than-Christian e-mails (some of whom included the emails of others as well as phone numbers) was to send them out to her own friends - and to various supportive organizations that trumpet the cause of equal rights for all.

And so an e-mail crusade was waged, with some of the hatemongers begging for mercy after receiving scores of e-mails and telephone calls from Margaret's friends and supporters.

My friends, today, as we celebrate females - let us do so knowing that we all have so much more work to do in this world before we can truly celebrate female equality in this country or around the world.

Let us not shirk the task. Let us not be afraid to recognize that there are those who would oppose us. Let us, in love, call that opposition for what it is: prejudice.

Some of you might not think that such a battle - or such activist endeavor for any social concern is a spiritual or religious undertaking. I do not understand why you feel that, or why you would criticize those of us who uphold the historic fight waged by the brave and outspoken women and men for so many just and noble causes; including those individuals in the early days of the suffragist movement.

Without them, and without those of you who have taken up the gauntlet in support of female equality in this country and/or elsewhere, all of us - whatever our gender, whatever part of the rich human diversity that is manifested in the world - would be even less advanced in our humanity than we are at present.

Let me close with these words by that Unitarian Universalist, Susan B. Anthony:

The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it.

And this one:

Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.

Happy Mother's Day to you all!

CLOSING WORDS: "And the men better let 'em."

Now if Eve, the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down, all alone, then these women ought to be able to turn the world right side up again. And now they're askin' to do it, and the men better let 'em!

Sojourner Truth