Sermons
Failure to Quit: Rallying your Conscience
Rev. Robin L. Zucker
UU Church of Reading (MA)
March 2, 2003
On February 15th of this year, a Unitarian Universalist from Haverhill,
MA named Kristen joined thousands of others in New York City (and
millions around the world) for a peaceful demonstration against
possible U.S. military actions against Iraq. She explains her participation
this way: “ In my soul,” she writes, “ I feel
that the actions of this administration are wrong. I also feel there
is nothing I can do to stop the impending horror. When my alarm
clock rang at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning, I told myself that no
one would notice if I didn’t go, that one person of thousands
would not be missed. But then I realized this was not about others
– it was more about my feeling of helplessness. I needed to
do something, and there was one small action left to me, one small
thing I could do to express my disagreement. So I left my warm cozy
bed to do that one thing – show up.”
Woody Allen once said that 80% of life is simply “showing
up.” Ministry is mostly about “showing up.” And
rallying your conscience, especially in this time of crisis, is
most definitely about “showing up.” And showing up and
showing up, and showing up again, whether its on the town common,
at the U.N. conference table, on the Washington Mall, on an internet
activism site, or in the voting booth.
We live here in America, not in Warsaw. It is 2003, not 1943.
Yet, I worry that we Americans live increasingly in what poet Jane
Flanders calls “a house built by fear.” A house in which
we’re encouraged to stock up on duct tape and plastic, and
keep to our warm, cozy beds because our leaders tell us we’re
in danger, but that they aren’t listening to us; that they
know better, and that patriotism is synonymous with obedience. No
wonder a colleague of mine suggests that “Iraq” is just
another way to spell “Vietnam.”
Howard Zinn, a progressive thinker, a renowned University history
professor and a veteran of numerous nonviolent protests, including
a recent one on Boston Common, agrees. We need to show up! Years
ago, Zinn was arrested at one protest and charged with “Failure
to Quit.” He wore this charge like a badge of honor and later
wrote a book by the same name. In it, he offered these words (and
notice how fresh they sound in light of our current situation):
"Civil disobedience is not our problem,” writes Zinn.
“Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers
of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders
of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been
killed because of this obedience.”
“Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world
in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and
cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails
are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are
running and robbing the country. That's our problem."
As I mentioned earlier, a major cause of our obedience is fear.
We want our leaders to make thoughtful, diplomatic decisions and
to protect us. We want safety and security and prosperity. Especially
since September 11, we can’t pretend that living in America
grants us some magical shield against senseless acts of violence.
Tom Ridge bombards us with color-coded alerts. President Bush tosses
around platitudes about “evildoers.” We are understandably
afraid and anxious. Here’s the key question that remains:
“How do we act, how will we act, even though we are afraid?
Will we “fail to quit”? Or will we keep to our cozy
beds?
As always, I acknowledge that we UUs don’t necessarily speak
with one unified voice on matters of politics or civil disobedience.
And yet, our religious tradition promotes the worth and dignity
of all, it affirms global cooperation, it prefers peace over war
and dialogue over destruction, and it holds out hope for salvation
and beloved community in the here-and-now. It’s a bit of an
oxymoron to be a hawkish UU.
Since the merger in 1961, the UUA Commission for Social Witness
has drafted numerous resolutions for peace and disarmament. Year
after year, delegates at our General Assembly reaffirm our collective
zeal for peaceful solutions. On February 11, the Board of Directors
of the UU-UN office released a statement of conscience supporting
Security Council Resolution 1441 and opposing a pre-emptive strike
against Iraq.
Our current UUA President Bill Sinkford has joined hundred of UUs
around the country in peace vigil. He has penned a pastoral letter
opposing Bush’s proposed aggression, and has signed on to
an interfaith letter, making our UU presence felt, by asking for
careful consideration of military action and cooperation with the
UN.
Sinkford speaks directly to all of us UUs when he writes: “What
can you do? I hope you will discuss these matters with your family
and your fellow congregants. I hope you will call or visit your
elected representatives at the national level, to discuss your questions
with them and share your concerns. And I hope you will pray and
reflect on what we all can do in the face of this conflict. Our
role is not merely to advocate for a position – although many
of us might wish to do so – but rather, to ask the difficult
questions around the proposed conflict with Iraq and try, as best
we can, to “contribute to a richer imagination that can lead
to peace.”
I like the way the Rev. Sinkford phrases that – “contributing
to a richer imagination that can lead to peace.” Or, in other
words, to consider what lay between murder and appeasement. To examine
very closely Bush’s outdated paradigm of domination, arrogance
and violence that thrives on fear and revenge. To ask ourselves
and others whether the Iraqi situation is mostly a boost for the
military industrial complex, a power play for oil, a deadly payback
for Daddy, or a diversion from other important national matters
like education, employment, health care, and the environment.
Commentators keep pointing to these gargantuan pink elephants on
the table and more and more of us are taking notice. Zinn himself
muses about the thousands of possibilities that exist between war
and retreat. He asks: “Is human ingenuity so defunct, is our
intelligence so lacking that we cannot devise ways of dealing with
tyranny and injustice without killing huge numbers of people?”
Zeroing in specifically on US history, Zinn doesn’t pull
any punches. He reminds us that the record of America’s naked
aggression in the world is so shocking, so abysmal, that anyone
with any sense of history could not possibly accept the argument
that we are preparing to attack Iraq because we’re morally
outraged by their aggression or their invasion of another country!”
“Never mind,” writes Zinn, “that Iraq is a fifth
rate military power. [Yes, Saddam is evil, but] please, don’t
tell me that he might build a nuclear bomb in five years of so.
Nobody knows. However, we do know that the US has 10,000 nuclear
weapons. I believe that qualifies as “weapons of mass destruction”
on a frightening level.”
If Zinn were here, I reckon he’d confirm that rallying your
conscience, failing to quit, and speaking out for peace are never
easy. Yet, there are many individual, small acts of faith that allow
us to witness to our UU principles and exercise the virtue held
in highest esteem by the early Unitarians – the conscience.
I urge you each to find a way to witness that suits you –
big or small, within your daily life, or in the public sphere. Attend
rallies and demonstrations, contact legislators, check out websites
like MoveOn.org. Stay informed. Don’t duck under the covers.
Our own Henry David Thoreau wrote extensively about civil disobedience
and spent time in jail for refusing to pay his poll tax. He reminds
us that civil disobedience (or what he sometimes called “practical
agitation”) is not passive. Its immediate end is to clog the
machinery of the State. It is counter-friction. This is not to say
that Thoreau repudiated government, but that he would serve it only
when its ends were truly moral. A student of Emerson’s self-reliance,
Thoreau wrote that “if you wish to serve the State with your
conscience, you must eventually rely on the vitality and force of
a single living man…yourself!”
No doubt, showing up and bearing witness can make us uncomfortable.
We feel exposed and vulnerable to derision from those who disagree
with us. In some cases, we may even put ourselves in harm’s
way and risk arrest or injury, like Zinn and so many others. A willingness
to risk these things used to be called “idealism.” Maybe
it still is. I think of it more as sheer survival of the planet
at this point. What do you think? Daylight is burning, friends;
the train has left the station. Can we remain neutral on that moving
train and decline to be idealistic when peace hangs in the balance?
If you answer, “Yes,” to that query, please ask yourself
why you think its best to keep to your warm, cozy bed.
I’m reminded of Pete Seeger, whose anti-war classic “Where
have all the flowers gone?” we sang earlier. Seeger stood
faithfully for peace through the Vietnam conflict. He showed up
at countless rallies and led people in protest songs. He was arrested,
injured, for a time he was blacklisted and labeled un-American.
But he kept on singing and inspired generations of peace workers
and idealists of all stripes. His words ring so chillingly true
for us today – “When will they ever learn? When will
they ever learn?”
Seeger was a conscientious and courageous dissenter. As we’ve
witnessed, though. especially since 9/11, one of the cherished civil
liberties that tends to go out the window at a time of national
crisis is dissent, even in the form of nonviolent civil disobedience
or harmonious protest anthems. I preached about that almost a year
ago. Yet, people seem to be getting bolder and speaking out more
and more, as the Iraqi crisis escalates. Right on! Sometimes they
shout and sing, and at others times, they raise their voices in
a kind of mute-witness that speaks volumes. My colleague Lynn Strauss
relates one scene in which 6,000 life –sized papier mache
statues with open mouths and raised palms served at one demonstration
as mute witnesses to the truth of oppression by the powerful.
Strauss writes: “Imagine if all of our public squares and
urban plazas were filled with mute-witnesses, silent witnesses to
the violence of our economic system...to the knee-jerk, law and
order call for pre-emptive military strike. There are many who have
been afraid of speaking out, but our legislators are beginning to
receive faxes and emails, people are finding their voices. Still,
many are cynical and don’t believe they can make a difference.
Imagine if all those who oppose Bush’s policies, all who challenge
his lack of faith in the democratic process, stood in public spaces
around the country, simply stood as mute witnesses.”
Sadly, war always provides us with a haunting chorus of mute witnesses.
In the poetic words we recited earlier by Archibald MacLeish: “The
young dead soldiers do not speak. Nevertheless, they are heard in
the still houses; who has not heard them? They say, We were young.
Remember us. We did what we could but until it is finished, it is
not done. They say, Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace
and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say, it is you who must
say this. We leave you our deaths. Give them meaning.”
Zinn reminds us, without flinching, that the Iraqi soldiers whom
we crushed with bulldozers toward the end of the Gulf War in 1991,
were mowed down in what was callously called a “Turkey Shoot”
as they were retreating in defeat. Who were these young dead soldiers?
They weren’t Saddam Hussein. They were just young, impressionable
men who had been conscripted. Gone to graveyards every one. What
is the meaning of their deaths? And how can the US really claim
some higher moral ground after behavior like that?
In his autobiography, the Russian writer Yevtushenko remembers
a procession of 20,000 German war prisoners being marched through
the streets of Moscow when he was eleven years old. Reminiscent
of the eyewitness accounts from demonstrators in NYC several weeks
ago, the writer describes the pavement swarming with onlookers,
and the street cordoned off by the police. The crowd was mostly
women, hands roughened by hard work and lips untouched by lipstick.
Every one of them must have had a father or a husband or a son killed
by the Germans. The women were clenching their fists as the German
generals marched by smelling of cologne.
Listen to Yevtushenko tell the rest of the story:
“All at once something happened to them. Then they saw the
German soldiers, the enlisted ones, thin, unshaven, wearing dirty,
bloodstained bandages, hobbling on crutches or leaning on the shoulders
of a comrade. The soldiers walked with their heads down. The street
became dead silent. The only sound was the shuffling of boots and
the thumping of crutches.”
“Then I saw an elderly woman in broken down boots push herself
forward and touch a policeman’s shoulder saying, “Let
us through.” There must have been something about her that
made him step aside. She went up to the column of men, took from
inside her coat something wrapped in a colored handkerchief and
unfolded it. It was a crust of black bread. She pushed it awkwardly
into the pocket of a soldier, so exhausted that he was tottering
on his feet. And now suddenly from every side, women were running
towards the soldiers, pushing into their hands bread, cigarettes,
whatever they had.”
“The soldiers were no longer enemies. They were people.”
Some truths about war never change. In a war, you objectify the
enemy and kill the people who are the victims of the tyrant you
claim to be fighting against. You conveniently forget that they
eat bread, just like you do. You sacrifice your own beloved. And
wars are always against children; in this case, a projected 100,000
Iraqi children. If we really believe in our principles, especially
the interconnected web of all existence, we will see ourselves reflected
in the eyes of the boy with his hands raised over his head, in the
shiny rifle butt of the soldier. We will see as sister the woman
with the lowered gaze and as brother the stranger with the camera.
We will know ourselves as the police on horseback pressing back
the crowds, as the hunched soldiers in tattered boots, and as the
women thrusting forth crusts of black bread.
We will fail to quit, speak out, and demand a globalization of
peace and human rights, despite our leaders arrogant refusal to
listen. We will help to tear down the house built by fear and erect
a monument instead to nonviolent resolutions. Surely, with all of
our collective energy, intelligence, and good will, America can
create national unity and cultivate a sense of national purpose
without going to war. God help us if we can’t.
As UUA President Bill Sinkford reminds us, “We will not all
stand in the same place on this issue. But we can all stand in the
same faith. Above all, that is my hope. In these troubling days
and all those that lie ahead, my deepest prayer is that we stand
in this faith [together].”
Daylight is burning.
Amen.
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