Sermons by Reverend Don Beaudreault
What's Right, What's Wrong With The World?
Rev. Don Beaudreault
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
October 2, 2005
OPENING WORDS: "The Optimism of Uncertainty" (from The Impossible Will Take a Little While, edited by Paul Rogat Loeb)
Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society.
We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.
Howard Zinn
MEDITATION: Pieces of Eight
We think of our emotions as being either positive or negative. But there is another important way in which emotions divide: they are also simple or complex...
Love, for example, is difficult to sustain.because it is a complex (emotion). Hate is easy to maintain for a lifetime, because it is a simple one.
... love requires... other elements in order to play its proper role; it needs understanding, patience, tact, the willingness to be hurt or disappointed from time to time...
Hate is a supremely simple emotion...
... and doesn't call on us to expand or change our views. In fact, it tends to remove doubt, and gives us a sense of decision and a feeling of righteous well-being.
... Hate seems to remove the need for reasoning.../p>
There is so little love in the world compared with the amount of hate.because it is harder to combine and coordinate a complex emotion in a creative act than to live blindly by blaming and attacking some "enemy" for our dissatisfactions and disappointments. It takes a dedicated genius years to build a great cathedral; any desperado can bomb it to obliteration in a second...
Sydney Harris
SERMON: "What's Right, What's Wrong with the World?"
Of all the deities, the ancient Roman goddess Fortuna (the original "Wheel of Fortune" spinner) is my favorite because sometimes she can be a real cut-up! And quite helpful - if she wants to be!
Take the other day, for instance. Looking for books to bolster this morning's thesis, I noticed two relevant ones next to each other. Illustrating what is right with the world was: Love Is An Awesome Thing. Speaking boldly for what is wrong with the world was: The Human Race Stinks: Perspectives of an Iconoclast.
The first book was written and given to me by a late member of this congregation, our beloved Dick Oxley. The second book was penned byWallace R. Wirths.
(Maybe Dick Oxley, not Fortuna, put the books where I discovered them!)
At any rate, trying to decide what is right and what is wrong with the world has been a fascinating exercise, and a totally untenable one, given the breadth of the subject.
Still, it has been a process similar to one illustrated by the following historical illustration:
When Joseph Priestly, that great Unitarian preacher and scientist turned to Benjamin Franklin (a quasi Unitarian) for some personal advice, Franklin explained to him his own method in making a decision:
He would arrange two columns on a piece of paper in which to write the pros and cons of a question as they occurred to him over several days. The process should take at least that long so that no salient points would be overlooked. Then Franklin would compare the strength of the various points, running lines through those which seemed to cancel each other out. The column with the most remaining considerations he judged to be the most weighty. On the basis of this "moral or prudential algebra," he would make his decision. (The Enlightenment in America, Ernest Cassara, p. 48)
And that is pretty much what I have done in composing this sermon. I wish I could do that about life!
So, all week long I have been jotting down things on bits of paper here and there and everywhere - whenever I come up with yet another plus or minus.
You should try it some time. Maybe not for a whole week - but maybe just for a sit-down meditation. Turn off the distractions for a moment and turn inward. Hear what your "self" is attempting to say to your "self": What's right with the world? What's wrong with it?
Sad to say, that when it comes to which column in my list had the most "bullet points," the "What's Wrong" side of the ledger won out.
I am certainly not alone in my appraisal of the workings of the world!
Consider these sound bites from history:
Mankind is the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crowd upon the surface of the earth.
Jonathan SwiftReligion is a universal obsession neurosis.
Sigmund FreudWhy does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it.
Albert EinsteinAnd somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout; But there is no joy in Mudville Mighty Casey has struck out.
Ernest Lawrence Thayer
I quoted Sydney Harris to you during our meditation reading. He only confirms what I have concluded about the world we human beings experience: that there is more hate in the world than love.
But this does not necessarily make those quoted nor I merely negativists wallowing in a slough of despond.
Rather, I believe that I, for one, am attempting to be a harbinger of the good because I certainly want the world to get better, and by talking about some of the negatives today, I hope that I am also suggesting some possibilities for bettering the plus side.
I do believe that we should be realists with hope about the world, not hiding from the hard things by playing the quintessential Pollyanna, believing that all is right with the world; nor combating the soft things by playing the classical Scrooge, stressing all that is wrong with the world. Rather, we should be real - with eyes wide open to what is wrong and how it might become right; and with hearts wide open in celebrating what is right with the world.
This attitude to stay negative when negative presents itself seems to me to be the #1 psychological malady of the world today. We ask: "Where is hope? Where is the Promised Land? "
Frankly, pabulum theology/philosophy/politics/science just does not feed the hungry soul for many of us. That is so because it is a complex, conflictive, and combative world we live in - more so than it has ever been in human history; at the same time this very situation presents unbounded opportunities to make what is wrong with the world right.
Sadly, such pabulum seems to be the main course for more and more in our country and others.
And on the other side of the spectrum there is the smorgasbord of bitterness, which makes advocates for justice (but not always in a hopeful way); some people become non-stop complainers; still others, turn into prisoners within their own little realms of distractions.
And, there are those who really do not care - or if they do, they ignore trying to answer the question of what is right or wrong and how anyone might turn the wrong into a right!
Gertrude Stein is in this camp of the benumbed when she shoots from her verbal, albeit terse hip with:
There ain't no answer.
There ain't going to be any answer.
There never has been an answer.
That's the answer.
Well, I ain't no Gertrude Stein, so here is my thinking on what I believe is wrong with the world (in regard to human intent, not nature's course of action). I give this to you with the intent of saying: "Let's fix these things, not just mumble and grumble about them - or ignore them!" The list, admittedly partial, includes:
Pollution of our air, land, and sea.
War/Terrorism.
Overpopulation.
Economic disparity.
Hunger.
Human rights violations.
Child mortality.
Poor maternal health.
Lack of education.
HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
Gender inequality.
Hatred based on our differences.
Now, what are some of the causes of these things that are wrong with the world? Certainly, the forces of nature have caused some of them, but it is human intention or, said in another way, lack of human attention that has exacerbated the human condition. Indeed, humans turn to the shadow side time and again, thus causing the list of horrors I have just read. Indeed, there is an incredible amount of wrongness about the world. Such causative, shadowy aspects of our human condition include:
Greed.
Lack of an ethical, spiritual, philosophical, inclusive imperative.
Egotistical thinking.
Fear of losing control, thereby a constant desire for power.
Desire for immediate satisfaction.
Pride.
Mono-dimensional thinking based on group affiliation.
Belief in national superiority, rather than world cooperation.
Inability to see the commonalities in all human beings.
Refusal to see the truth provided by science.
Laziness, preferring hedonism to service on behalf of others.
Preference for hiding from the troubles of the world, hoping they will go away.
So then, what can we do? Certainly, there are practical things we can accomplish: we can give our time, talent, and money to help others; we can get active politically. But to do these things we really need to want to do them - and many if not most people on the planet do not - or cannot - or will not - or don't know how. So, simplistically, it really comes down to changing our perspectives on the world: on how we think, feel, and act. Call this change of perspective what you will: spiritual, ethical, philosophical, romantic, pragmatic, political. But know, that at its core, we are seeking our heart's message: that which speaks of love and connection with the various life forces and ecological aspects of the planet we call home.
First, in gaining perspective so that we can work to create a better world, we must FOCUS. Some would call it meditation or getting to the heart of the matter, to the core of our being.
Speaking of the essential quality of spending time in meditation, the 12th century Benedictine monk, Bernard of Clairvaux, gives this helpful advice:
(it) replaces confusion with order, checks the inclination to lose oneself in uncertainty, gathers together that which is dispersed, penetrates into that which is hidden, discovers what is true and distinguishes it from that which merely appears as such.
Second, finding our center allows us to be HUMBLE. Realizing that there are opposing forces in the world - that which is wrong and that which is right - we are reminded of Socrates who tells us:
Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.
Indeed, this new perspective on the troubles and the joys of the world next requires us to be OPEN to new possibilities. That East-West philosopher Krishnamurti tells us as much:
To understand what IS requires a state of mind in which there is no identification or condemnation, which means a mind that is alert and yet passive. We are in that state when we really desire to understand something; when the intensity of interest is there, that state of mind comes into being. When one is interested in understanding what is, the actual state of the mind, one does not need to force, discipline, or control it; on the contrary, there is passive alertness, watchfulness. This state of awareness comes when there is interest, the intention to understand.
To FOCUS, to be HUMBLE, and to be OPEN will create a new perspective that will energize us into action. But we must ACT if what is wrong might be made right.
But how hard it is to act, given all these global wrongs! We think: we can't make a difference. And so we don't do anything, or stop what we are doing because we are so worn out. That is when we must consider the importance of every act we undertake - no matter how little or great; whether or not others ever know of our acts of kindness.
Otherwise, if we do nothing, the world is doomed. Consider this story of hope in the face of despair.
Joanna Macy writes of visiting a group of monks in Tibet. The monks were reconstructing their ancient monastery, which had been reduced to rubble by the Chinese. Her heart fell at the magnitude of the task and its almost foolhardy nature. When the monks were asked about Chinese policies and the likelihood of another period of repression, Macy saw that such calculations were conjecture to the monks. Since you cannot see into the future, you simply proceed to put one stone on top of another, and another on top of that. If the stones get knocked down, you begin again, because if you don't, nothing will get built. (The Impossible Will Take a Little While, edited by Paul Rogat Loeb, "Staying the Course," by Mary-Wynne Ashford, p.329)
Ultimately, for me, the effort to change the world in hopes of making it better is a spiritual discipline, moment-by-moment, stone by stone. It goes beyond any nationalistic pride, particularized religion, and/or egomaniacal mandate of any head of state, and creates a sense of our shared humanity. As Jeremy Yunt puts it:
. The point all religions attempt to make is that we are not isolated, separate individuals, for we all share in a common destiny.
. there is a conscious recognition that one person's efforts can matter not only to (one's self), but to the world as a whole - to the living and to the unborn. (These) religious acts are based on a belief that in becoming a moral person one is actualizing the very best, most essential part of. human nature. the moral act is not practiced for hopes of gaining a reward; being moral is the reward itself.
For the sake of this beautiful world, it's time we reinterpret and redefine the very nature of religion. Its time we rediscover its potential for promoting real well-being for all people and for our planet.
(DemocraticUnderground.com - "In Heaven As It Is On Earth? George W. Bush's Troubling Theocracy" by Jeremy Yunt)
And so, may we make this Earth a more beautiful place for one and all, all the while holding in our hearts the beautiful words of Edward Everett Hale:
I am only one
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
CLOSING WORDS: "My heart is moved by all I cannot save."
My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed.I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.