Leader’s Message – “Human Rights for All: An Ethical Culture Imperative” – January 2010

At the last meeting of the National Leaders Council in October, our colleagues in the Social Justice Caucus, a small group dedicated to facilitating movement-wide activism, presented us with several proposals, among which we selected LGBTQ (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Questioning) rights for primary attention this year. This does not mean that we will ignore other issues. Indeed, the NLC Statement on Afghanistan is printed in this newsletter and, in preparation for 2011 activism, we have committed ourselves to study issues of Economic Justice during 2010. In our respective societies, we will continue to work fervently for other social justice issues, but will devote ourselves as a body to this important human rights issue.

At the end of the year, the New York State Legislature dealt LGBT rights a heavy blow when it voted down the marriage equality bill after years of nonstop work and advocacy from so many LGBT New Yorkers and their straight allies.

We should all pause and take a moment to allow ourselves to process the range of emotions we’re feeling about the vote. And yes, I expect one of those emotions you’re feeling is anger, because it’s certainly one I’m feeling right now. Losing a vote on civil rights is devastating; knowing that the majority of State Senators still believe that it’s acceptable to treat millions of New Yorkers as “less-than” or second-class citizens is morally repugnant. But according to the NYS Pride Agenda, of which NYSEC is a member (and I participate in its clergy group, Pride in the Pulpit), there were also some positive aspects to highlight:

• We were able to do what practically no one else was able to do with a post-coup State Senate—get a debate and vote on a bill. Hard work and determination brought the bill to the floor without a predetermined final outcome. This is virtually unprecedented in the State Senate and many critics thought it would be impossible in such a tumultuous year. Getting an up-or-down vote was always going to be absolutely essential to the strategy because it was necessary to know where each of the 62 state senators stood on marriage equality.
• When the vast majority of African-American and Latino State Senators voted in support of marriage equality, a blow was dealt to the shameful idea that communities of color somehow stand in the way of equality for same-sex couples. In fact, some of the most eloquent arguments during the Senate debate came from African-American and Latino legislators. These men and women articulated exactly why they believe that this is an important civil rights movement and that there is no excuse to continue discriminating against LGBT families when it comes to protections that the State of New York provides to its people.
• During the two-and-a-half-hour debate, when we heard incredibly moving arguments from Senators in support of marriage equality, we heard only one argument from a Senator who opposes our right to marry. The other 37 Senators who voted “no” were silent during the entire debate, and the only time we heard anything from them was when they were forced to say the word “no” during the voice vote roll call.
• The “no” votes were silent because every single argument that they could use had been taken away. Early on in this campaign the most common myths that opponents of marriage equality throw out when they argue were dispelled. With these arguments neutralized, opponents of marriage equality had nothing to say and could only vote “no” for nothing more than political reasons.

Now there is a clear roadmap to follow and work to be done. Join the entire Ethical Movement in the struggle for human rights for all.

　

Leader’s Message – “God Talk” – September 2009

One day Fox News called the Society.

“Hello. We’re looking for an atheist for our show on ‘God Talk.’”

“Can we send you a nontheist?”

“What’s that?”

On Friday, August 7, thanks to our Communications Director Julie Blutstein, I appeared on the Fox News webcam program “The Strategy Room” with religion reporter Lauren Green, author Eric Metaxas, comedian Scott Blakeman, and Fox News radio host Todd Starnes. A webcam program, for the uninitiated (which included me), is live news programming for the web, streaming content online in the format of traditional cable news channels.  “The Strategy Room” appears five days a week from 9 AM to 5 PM.  On Fridays from 10 to 11 AM, Ms. Green hosts a segment called “God Talk.”

Before leaving the office on Thursday, I scanned my bookshelves for inspiration and support.  Whom should I read to prepare?  I chose John Lovejoy Elliott, my favorite  Ethical Culture Leader.  “Friendship is a gift of the gods, a give and take,” he wrote, “but if you accomplish anything with your enemies, it is a tremendous piece of work in itself. If you overcome your aversion, that means a great deal.”  I was making an assumption – and not necessarily a fair and balanced one.  With the exception of Scott Blakeman, who brought his comedy show StandUp For Peace, blending his Jewish humor with Palestinian-American comedian Dean Obeidallah’s, to the Society last January, I didn’t know the other panelists.  Why think of them as enemies just because of my aversion to Fox News?

Thanks to the Internet, I was able to research the backgrounds of the people I would be meeting.  In addition to serving as a religion correspondent for Fox News Channel, Lauren Green is well known as a concert pianist.  In 2004, she released her debut CD, “Classic Beauty.” Ms. Green is also a member of Redeemer Church, the congregation that rents our auditorium on Sunday mornings. 

Eric Mextasas, who attends Calvary/St. George’s Episcopal Church, has written award-winning children’s books.  His books for adults include Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (but were afraid to ask).  He is currently working on a biography of theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Todd Starnes is an evangelical Christian and lifelong Southern Baptist who holds conservative political views.  His book, They Popped My Hood And Found Gravy On the Dipstick, relates his experience of having open heart surgery in his 30’s, losing both of his parents, losing 150 lbs, and finally running in the 2007 New York City Marathon.

I looked forward to spending an hour talking with these people. Lauren threw out some  recent news items for discussion – the health care debate, the shootings in the health club in Pittsburgh, the fatal accident on the Taconic Parkway.  We never explicitly addressed “god talk” in the way I thought we would.  I was prepared to quote Elliott: “I have known good people who believed in God. I have known good people who didn’t believe in God. But I have never known good people who didn’t believe in people.”  I didn’t need to; somehow that sentiment was already understood.  We talked about the need for caring communities, that it is not healthy for people to feel lonely and isolated, and how we need to listen to one another better and engage in respectful dialogue.

What a wonderful experience! Now Lauren would like to film a humanist wedding or, as she puts it, “a ceremony that doesn’t include God in it.” One of my couples is interested.  It could be a unique teachable moment – for all of us.

Leader’s Message – Ah, summer. . . – July 2009

Once upon a time, when ours was an agricultural society, winter was the season of reflection. The hard work and celebration of harvest were over: Food was stored for people and animals alike; the wood was piled high for the stove; and everyone rested. Of course, there were always chores to do, stray animals to find, and blizzards to endure. But winter was welcomed for the opportunity to settle in and renew family connections, read books, and tell stories.

 Today we live in a technological society. The forty-hour work week is a thing of the past now that we are all electronically connected. The ring of the telephone was intrusive enough; now we have Blackberry devices that twitter.  We no longer live with the natural rhythms of the seasons; instead, we create artificial environments and schedule every day’s activities.  Even vacations, though escapes to other places, are programmed to deliver maximum pleasure.

 When do we allow ourselves time to reflect upon our lives?  How can we find meaning and purpose in our lives if we do not listen to ourselves, learn from our experiences,  share what we have learned with others, and listen to them?  We need to stop and take a deep breath, feel that breath in our bodies, and draw inspiration from the simple fact of breathing.  Then we need to settle in and renew our connection with ourselves. 

 Summer offers me some respite, and it started in June at the American Ethical Union Assembly in St. Louis.  Yes, there were meetings many and long, but there were also conversations with colleagues and members that inspired me.  I had an opportunity to reflect upon the nature of Ethical Humanism and why it still offers my life such meaning.

 As we struggled at the National Leaders Council meeting to articulate a clear identity and definition of Humanism as a philosophy, a way of life, and a religion to offer our members, I thought about my own spiritual journey.  I was brought to the religion of Roman Catholicism by my family: Gram taught me to recite prayers; Mom and Dad took me to church with them; my sister and I saved our allowance to give to the missions in Africa.  I loved growing up in St. Anne’s community and cherish what I learned there.  As a young adult, I explored the literature and practices of other religions, drawn as many people of my generation were, to exotic Eastern philosophies.  When I married and had  my own family, Glenn and I found Ethical Culture, and the Brooklyn Society became our spiritual home.

 Now my children our grown and on their own, and I stay. Humanism is my religion, and Ethical Culture is my denomination.  It’s not just about the belief – “a naturalistic philosophy that rejects supernaturalism and relies primarily upon reason and science, democracy and human compassion,” as Corliss Lamont put it – but about the practice of engaging with others and the world.  That is where I find religious meaning. 

 Religion should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.  It should provide a transformative experience.  I can settle in with like-minded people and create a comfort zone for us where we are never challenged to think or feel differently.  I can also choose to test the limits of what I belief by engaging with people and groups who form other circles, challenging myself, as well as them, to find common ground.  That’s what founder Felix Adler encouraged us to do.  That’s what my uncle, Father Thomas O’Keefe, encouraged me to do, too, whether it was supporting my journeys to other countries or to other books in the library. 

 Bringing out the best in others and in ourselves means looking for the unique gifts every human being possesses and connecting with their goodness, no matter what their beliefs. I am changed when I listen deeply to others. My life is transformed when I engage in human relationships. I want that challenge and change in my life. It gives my life meaning.

 Take some time this summer to reflect. You just might find religion.

Leader’s Message – Equality and Justice for ALL – June 2009

“When two people love each other,” I remember my father saying, “It’s a miracle.”  We were watching my then two-year old daughter playing in my parents’ backyard.  I wondered aloud whether it had disturbed him that Glenn and I had lived together for a number of years before marrying.  “Not really,” he said, although I doubted him.  “At least you’re married now,” he added with a smile.

 It is indeed a miracle when two people love each other enough to make a commitment to each other’s happiness: sharing life’s joys and sorrows, building a family and a future together.  I witness that miracle almost every time I interview a wedding couple.  I see it in the way they look at each other, hear it when they laugh together, feel it when they tell me their stories.  Why would some people imagine that such love is limited to heterosexual couples?  Why would they deny marriage to same-sex couples whose depth of commitment is every bit as real – and as miraculous – as theirs?

 I spent Tuesday, April 28, in Albany with Empire State Pride Agenda, and thousands of supporters, lobbying for the right of other couples, like Glenn and me except in gender, to make the choice that we had made: to legally marry. 

 Beside the 1,138 rights and responsibilities bestowed upon married couples by the federal government, there are another 1,324 rights and responsibilities that come from New York State, including medical decision-making authority, inheritance rights, immunity from having to testify against a spouse in court, and not having to pay taxes on spousal health insurance benefits. Many of these protections, e.g., a Workers Compensation death benefit for a surviving spouse, can be achieved only through marriage or some other governmental recognition of a family.  Neither civil union nor domestic partnership secure the federal rights and responsibilities that come with marriage, such as Social security survivor benefits and immigration rights.

In the afternoon, I participated in an Interfaith Service at the Albany Convention Center with clergy and lay people from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist traditions.  It was a celebratory occasion, full of hope and companionship.  Pride in the Pulpit, comprised of hundreds of faith congregations throughout the state, advocates for the rights of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) New Yorkers and confronts religious-based bigotry.  I recited the words of Ethical Culture Leader John Lovejoy Elliott: “The love of the human heart is the most real and the most beautiful of all the realities we know. . . Whatever the length of time may be, to have known something of this is to have experienced the supreme privilege of being human.”

 Being human: That’s what is at stake here.  We experience ourselves as fully human in relationship with others; giving and receiving love, building homes and communities that nurture our potential for goodness.  We need to protect all couples who make a profound commitment to make a home for each other in their hearts and who contribute to the strength and vitality of their communities.  It is our ethical obligation.

Leader’s Message – “The Freedom to Doubt and the Right to Believe” – May 2009

“This freedom to doubt is an important matter in the sciences and, I believe, in other fields. It was born of a struggle. . . I feel a responsibility to proclaim the value of this freedom and to teach that doubt is not to be feared, but that it is to be welcomed as the possibility of a new potential for human beings.” Richard Feynman, physicist

“I just don’t know what to believe any more.”                                           Gentleman caller from Alabama

* * * *

Ethical Culture does not lay claim to certainty – moral or spiritual – as more traditional Western religions do. We live in the question, learning from our experiences and relationships how to lead good lives. I remember a young man from the Brooklyn Society who was ready to graduate from Sunday school. His parents were Jewish, and he had been invited to several lavish bar and bat mitzvah parties. One day he asked them if he could attend Hebrew School to prepare for a bar mitzvah and, although they were surprised, they agreed. A month or so later, Jon returned. He said it was because of the questions. In Hebrew School, teachers asked questions for which there were certain answers, and he was expected to recite them. To him, this was a rote exercise without meaning. “In Ethical Culture,” he said, “everyone asks questions, and we discuss what we think and feel about them. We all learn together and figure things out.”

Not everyone is comfortable with that kind of moral teaching. Commandments, after all, are to be obeyed, not questioned or discussed. Divine revelation must be trusted, not doubted. There are serious consequences when traditions and rules are not followed. Yet to doubt their efficacy, to wonder whether they are relevant thousands of years later, is necessary if we are to confront and solve the problems of today.

Ethical Culture founder Felix Adler wrote, “We should teach our children nothing which they shall ever need to unlearn; we should strive to transmit to them the best possessions, the truest thought, the noblest sentiments of the age in which we live.” By modeling ethical behavior, by permitting the possibility that we cannot be certain about everything, and by engaging them in a rigorous conversation about what it means to be good, we “leave the door open to the unknown,” as Richard Feynman put it, and give our children the capacity to live with doubt and, with “abject honesty,” to understand the situations they confront and decide how to act morally.

One day a gentleman from a small town in Alabama called the Leaders’ office. He was married with two young children and attended the local Baptist church. He enjoyed “surfing the ‘net” and had discovered Ethical Culture and Humanism online. Now he had doubts about his religion and didn’t know what to believe. He was concerned that it was a sin to doubt, that he was putting his soul and the souls of his children in jeopardy. There was no one he could talk to about this. So he and I had a long conversation. Although not his pastor, I became his pastoral counselor, creating the place for him to honestly tell himself what he was thinking and feeling. I couldn’t give him answers, but I could acknowledge and honor the existential struggle he was experiencing. Fathers must be certain about things; church-going Baptists must toe the creedal line. But he was questioning and wondering: a door to the unknown had opened for him, and he was afraid to go through it.

I asked him about the god he believed in and whether he could believe that that god would hold him safely and lovingly while he doubted. After all, Jesus still loved his disciple Thomas when he accepted his invitation to touch his wounds. I asked what goodness meant to him and if he thought he was a good person. He wasn’t sure if it was good to question belief.

We ended with a discussion about books we had each read and exchanged the names of favorite authors. I haven’t heard from him again. I wish him well and hope he finds a way to live with doubt and to believe in goodness.

“Act the Good, and you will believe in it.” – Felix Adler, Life and Destiny 

Leader’s Message – “It’s Just Not Funny!” – April 2009

“Cops don’t check my bank account when they pull me over and make me spread-eagle against the car.  These miseducated brothers, like that sociologist at the University of Chicago, talking about ‘the declining significance of race.’  Now, what country is he living in?”

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. to Barack Obama in Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

 

“They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

Caption to a political cartoon by Sean Delonas depicting two police officers standing over the body of a bullet-ridden chimpanzee, NY Post, 2/18/09

 

* * * * *

I value our right to free speech.  I also value my right to choose what I read, and I choose not to read the NY Post.  Their coverage of the Son of Sam murders decades ago was so exploitative that I wrote to the editor letting him know that I would never waste another cent on his publication.  So I missed the initial furor over its controversial cartoon.  When I finally saw it, it struck me as simply inane: Why conflate the killing of a rampaging chimpanzee in Connecticut with the economy?  But that’s because I’m white.

 

In the small upstate NY town where I grew up, a “mixed marriage” was between a Protestant and a Catholic.  There were no Jews, no Blacks, no “aliens” for miles around.  Arriving at the Rochester airport one summer for a visit, my young son, who grew up in Brooklyn, looked around and asked, “Mommy, where are all the other people?” 

 

The land south of Lake Ontario was fertile and the climate ideal for orchards, so at harvest time migrants, mostly African-Americans, would move into humble shacks to pick the fruit.  One boy named Terry, whose parents worked on a farm in town, joined my third grade class.  We loved everything about him – his skin, his hair, his laughter when we played together in the playground.  We were sad when his family moved back down south.  We didn’t understand why he had to leave.

 

Alice was my next African-American friend.  She was my roommate freshman year of college, a year older, from the city, and very wise about the world.  One night I came home late from the library, and she asked who had walked with me.  When I told her I was alone, she gave me a lecture about women being assaulted on campus and the need to protect ourselves.  “You really are a hick, aren’t you?” she sighed.  Being black was hard enough; being a black woman was harder still.

 

Before we met him, all our son told us about his best friend in kindergarten was that he wore glasses.  Adam is African-American, and he and Andrew are still best friends.  Sometimes, when they were teenagers hanging out in Manhattan, a group of young black men would razz Adam about being with a white boy, but they just laughed about it.  What wasn’t funny was the time Adam was stopped at his front door by two police officers who demanded he provide proof that he lived there.  He didn’t have any; he had just taken a walk in his neighborhood.  It wasn’t until a white person from his building appeared to vouch for him that he was allowed to enter his own home – without an apology from the cops.

 

My friend Angela, who was my son’s coming-of-age mentor at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, says she is always aware of her color.  When she enters a room filled with people, she immediately takes its racial temperature.  Will she be at ease or on guard? 

 

It is a luxury that white people obliviously enjoy - to walk down the street, to drive a car, and to enter a room without wondering whether they will be stopped, interrogated or insulted.  Since the election, articles in magazines and journals have posited a “post-racial America,” but the reality is closer to the NY Post cartoon.  At its most benign, it suggests that the stimulus bill was so bad that monkeys could have written it.  At its most provocative, it compares the president to a rabid chimp. At its most dangerous, it invites assassination.

 

Chairman of the NY Post Rupert Murdoch claimed ultimate responsibility for the cartoon, writing, “I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. . . I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.”  He still maintains that the intention was not racist and regrets that “it was interpreted by many as such.”  Murdoch sounds like the bully that Terry and our friends used to chase around the school playground: “I’m sorry you’re such wimps that you got hurt by my joke.”

 

This is not a matter of much-maligned “political correctness,” but one of empathy – and a profound lack of imagination.  How does it feel to walk in another person’s shoes?  It really doesn’t take much to feel another’s pain and fear; all it takes is being human.

 

Leader’s Message – “Hail to the Nonbelievers!” – March 2009

“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.  We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.”

President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009

 

“Believe or disbelieve as ye list – we shall at all times respect every honest conviction. But be one with us where there is nothing to divide – in action. Diversity in the creed, unanimity in the deed! This is that practical religion from which none dissents.”

Dr. Felix Adler, Ethical Culture Founding Address, May 15, 1876

 

No, he didn’t.  Yes, he did!  President Barack Obama included us: He opened his arms wide on Inauguration Day and acknowledged us as fellow Americans.  Shall we tell him that we are believers?  That we believe in humanity, in the capacity of people for goodness, in a sacred web of human relationships?  Through some incredible process of nature, we are here: a conscious, reflective, meaning-making species with a reverence for life and all its possibilities. We are hard-wired to look for patterns and purpose in a random universe.  For some people that impulse finds expression in belief in a supernatural deity; for others, it is directed toward finding a better way of living within a diverse community.

 

I believe that Obama knows that.  He understands the subtlety and nuance of belief.  His mother, after all, was a humanist, and his grandfather encouraged him to attend a Unitarian church so he would “get five religions in one.”  But he also understands that too many Americans are not tolerant of differences. They judge others according to their belief in God – not in the God of many faces and no face or the God of many names and no name, but in their particular brand.  Several states still have provisions in their constitutions that forbid “nonbelievers” from holding public office.  For example, in Maryland there is “no religious test . . .  required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God.”   I want to know which God this is.

 

According to the Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, most Americans have a non-dogmatic approach to faith, an openness to a range of religious viewpoints reflecting the great diversity of religious affiliation in this country.  Six in ten adults believe in a “Personal God” with whom they can have a relationship, but one in four – including half of Jews and Hindus – perceive God as an “impersonal force.”  And while almost 70% of Americans say they are certain of God’s existence (whatever form it takes), more than 22% are far less certain.  The survey also found that 16.1 % of Americans are unaffiliated with any religion.  That’s a significant number.

 

So Obama, unlike past presidents, perhaps as far back as the Deists and humanists among our founding fathers, sees everyone and reaches out to everyone.  Like Felix Adler, he respects every honest conviction and seeks common ground with those who would work with him to create a better world for all.  We Ethical Culturists may not worship a supreme bring, but we do engage in what Felix Adler called “worthship,” an act of choosing to attribute worth to every person, of eliciting the distinctive excellence in others, thereby eliciting our own unique qualities.  It is through worthship that we create communities of caring and loving people.

 

After hearing President Obama’s welcoming words, I visited the White House web site and sent him a congratulatory email.  My postscript read: “How about for your next inauguration, inviting a humanist to give the benediction?”  Hail to the Chief!

 

Sources:

President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address at http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/inaugural-address/

 

U.S. Religious Landscape Survey conducted by Pew Forum at http://religions.pewforum.org/comparisons

Leader’s Message – “An Enduring Friendship: Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony” – February 2009

In the center of a lovely park square in Rochester, New York is a striking bronze statue, a tribute to the friendship of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, whose bodies are interred in nearby Mount Hope Cemetery. It is called “Let’s Have Tea,” and that’s just what the friends are doing: sitting together, on a scale slightly larger than life-size, face-to-face in sturdy Victorian chairs, with a table between them set with a teapot, two cups, and two books. “They’re not talking about any particular issue,” says the sculptor Pepsy Kettavong, “but they both are anxious to hear what each is thinking. You’re not quite sure who’s talking or who’s listening, so you have that balance.”

The statue represents the early days of their friendship, when they were not yet old, nor famous, when they could find time to talk over the causes that drew them together: abolition and women’s suffrage. Douglass and Anthony met in 1845 while he was on a speaking tour. In 1847, attracted by Anthony’s active women’s movement, Douglass and his wife, Anna, moved their family to Rochester, where the famous former slave became a prominent publisher and abolitionist spokesman. Their home became one of the stops on the Underground Railroad. In 1848 Frederick Douglass attended the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls and wrote about it in his paper, The North Star:

“All that distinguishes man as an intelligent and account able being, is equally true of woman; and if that government is only just which governs by the free consent of the governed, there can be no reason in the world for denying to woman the exercise of the elective franchise, or a hand in making and administering the laws of the land.”

Anthony, later recalling that he was the only man who came to their convention and stood up with them, said, “From that day until the day of his death Frederick Douglass was an honorary member of the National Women’s Suffrage Association. In all our conventions, he was the honored guest who sat on our platform and spoke in our gatherings.” In fact, Douglass died on February 20, 1895, only hours after sitting next to Anthony on the platform at a meeting held in Washington, D.C., where he had been greeted with resounding applause and responded with a gentle bow.

But their lifelong friendship was not always an easy one. It encountered a serious challenge after the Civil War when they disagreed over suffrage. Under the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, Negroes and women had the same civil and protected status, but lacked the ballot. Anthony proposed universal suffrage and vowed to fight the idea of the Negro male being given suffrage before women received the same: “Men, their rights, and nothing more; Women, their rights, and nothing less.” The Fifteen Amendment guaranteed all citizens the right to vote, regardless of race, but did not include voting rights for women. Douglass tried to persuade his friend to support its ratification: “When women because they are women are dragged from their homes and hung upon lampposts, . . . then they will have the urgency to obtain the ballot.” Asked if that was not also true about Black women, he responded, “Yes, but not because she is a woman but because she is black.” The amendment was ratified in 1870. Anthony, although arrested for voting in 1872, died before she could do so legally.

The sculptor, whose studio is on the park square, likes to see children climb into the laps of the two friends. In 1980, at the age of eight, he escaped with his family from Communist-led Laos in a canoe. After two years in a Thai refugee camp, they found sanctuary in Rochester. “Our idea was to utilize history to get people involved,” says Kettavong. “It’s a social statement. A black man and a white woman are drinking tea together. A Laotian makes their sculpture. It could be a metaphor for American democracy.”

To learn more about Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, and their enduring friendship, join me for Sunday Platform on February 1 and March 1.

Leader’s Message – “Living the Life We Choose” – January 2009

“For me, with certain rapturous exceptions, literature is the moral life.”

Cynthia Ozick, from her essay “Innovation and Redemption: What Literature Means”

 

“She’s promiscuous. She’s in five book groups.”

(One book group member to another in the caption to a New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner)

 

I’m down to one book group now: a group of mothers who met many years ago while waiting for our children to pour out of P.S. 321 in Brooklyn. Our favorite books were novels but, finding less time to read, we gravitated to short story collections and regaled each other with memories of our favorite books. We decided early on not to meet in our homes, preferring instead neighborhood restaurants with big round tables, good acoustics, and cuisine that our children hated. Fathers with our young children in tow would sometimes walk by and wave to us through the windows.

 

With three librarians in the group, we are never at a loss for books to choose. We can tell our history by the list of books we have read and discussed over the years. What we share is not just a love of literature but also a belief that literature is important, that it is, as Cynthia Ozick wrote, “the moral life.” Writers and their characters make choices: some ethical, others decidedly not, and many that are ambiguous. These are the stories that we carry around with us, mulling them over, wondering what we would do in similar situations, hoping we would make the right choices.

 

When I studied pastoral counseling, I became familiar with Irvin Yalom’s work. He is a psychiatrist who found, as he grew up in the inner city of Washington, DC, a refuge in fiction, “a source of inspiration and wisdom.” His first writings were scientific contributions to professional journals, followed by textbooks on group therapy and existential psychology. After his students told him that his books, full of therapy vignettes,  read like novels, Yalom wrote When Nietzsche Wept, a book that he calls a “teaching” novel, joining history and fiction to imagine the beginning of psychoanalysis by bringing the doctor Josef Breuer and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche together in Vienna to create the “talking cure.”

 

What I have been carrying around with me since reading this book is Nietzsche’s fictional challenge to Breuer (They never actually met, though they had mutual friends.): “eternal recurrence.” He asks, “Have you consummated your life?” In other words, has Breuer lived his life or been lived by it? Has he chosen it or did it choose him? Has he loved his life or regretted it? Nietzsche gives him a thought experiment that he introduced in his book Human, All Too Human:

 

“Josef, try to clear your mind. . . What if some demon were to say to you that this life — as you now life it, and have lived it in the past — you will have to live once more, and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and everything unutterably small or great in your life will return to you, all in the same succession and sequence — even this wind and those trees and that slippery shale, even the graveyard and the dread, even this gentle moment and you and I, arm in arm, murmuring these words?. . . Listen to me, my friend, listen to my words — this is the most important thing I will ever say to you: let this thought take possession of you, and I promise it will change you forever!

. . . Do you hate this idea? Or do you love it?. . . Live in such a way that you love the idea!”

 

What a powerful challenge! Breuer is stunned. He hates his life and the choices he has made, a life that he feels has been thrust upon him, full of responsibilities and choices made for him.  I won’t spoil the story for you by revealing how he works this all out.  I will, however, pose the same questions: Are you living the life you have chosen? Have you found meaning in your relationships and your life’s work? Would you willingly live this life again? If not, take the time to reflect upon your choices. Winter is a good time for that. When the cold wind and snow keep us inside, instead of turning on the television and surfing for a movie, instead of distracting ourselves, let us turn inward and find the meaning that is waiting to be illuminated.

 

 

Leader’s Message – “Reconcilable Differences?” – December 2008

“Let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. . . Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. . . While the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.”

from President-Elect Barak Obama’s victory speech

 

“I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.”

from Senator John McCain’s concession speech

 

* * *

The above quotations are heartening indeed.  For too long we have been bitterly divided as a nation, polarized into separate camps of blue and red politics, questioning one another’s morality and sanity, unable to understand positions so opposed to our own.  Can we ever find our way back to one another?  Is healing possible?

 

We have always been a land of diversity and conflict, but we have also upheld high ideals and committed ourselves to democracy, favoring the majority position while honoring the minority’s.  Republican strategist Ken Mehlman calls the current political environment “hyper-partisanship,” a state resulting in a paralyzing inability to confront difficult problems facing the nation, problems like the “three E’s” of economy, energy and environment. We desperately need bipartisanship now; without it, it’s like trying to cut a piece of paper with one scissor blade.

 

What brought us to this impasse — a country split in half by the elections of 2000 and 2004?  There are many opinions.  Some are political: Revised congressional rules made it easier for party leadership to corral their members; interest groups sprang up on the extreme right and left; media outlets took partisan positions and covered the overly long campaigns 24/7, emphasizing sound bites of negativity.

 

Some opinions are psychological: Jonathan Haidt specializes in the new field of moral psychology, researching the evolution of morality and emotion, and how they vary across cultures. His study of the intuitive foundations of political ideology has led him to search for ways to overcome what he calls “the moralism of the American culture wars.”

 

How can we get along in a morally and politically diverse society? Here is what Haidt suggests:

1) Recognize that all sides in the debate are morally motivated: “Only when moral motives are acknowledged can intelligent discourse begin.”

2) Try to frame appeals in language that may trigger new intuitions on the other side, e.g., concerted effort to show that gay marriage is about order and stability.

His hope is that a fuller understanding of one another will lead to greater tolerance and respect.

 

To help realize this hope, Haidt created a website called “Civil Politics” at http://www.civilpolitics.org, a collaborative effort launched at a bipartisan interdisciplinary workshop on “moralistic politics” held at Princeton University on May 19, 2007.  The goal is to promote politics in which opponents are not demonized, and cooperation is not seen as moral failing; where power and ideas are intensely debated, but opponents are respected as fellow citizens, sincere in their beliefs.  The first step in finding common ground is recognizing that the other person is acting from moral rather than venal reasons.

 

Does this sound familiar to you? It sure sounds like Ethical Culture to me. Our faith is in the natural goodness of all human beings, a goodness that can be called upon when we confront ethical challenges.  We choose to attribute worth to others and ourselves, to experience that worth in our relationships, especially when we disagree with someone. Often a newcomer to our Society will say, “I’m looking for a community of like-minded people.”  I understand that desire; we want to be with people who think as we do, who take the same political and social positions we do.  It feels comforting and safe.  Yet our ethical challenge has always been to embrace a diversity of ideas, to welcome different ways of thinking and feeling, in the spirit of deepening our moral relationships. 

 

Remember that old call to action: “Afflict the comforted and comfort the afflicted.”  It is time that we stepped out of our comfort zone, as euphoric as we now feel about this election, and seek to understand those who have opposed us and our ideals.  We as a nation have been afflicted by partisanship for too long.  Now we must embark, with Obama and McCain, on the long road toward repairing the divisions and healing the wounds of the last eight years.

 

“I was thinking the other day that I had gotten very vital things from people I hated. Friendship is a gift of the gods, a give and take; but if you accomplish anything with your enemies, it is a tremendous piece of work in itself. If you overcome your aversion, that means a great deal.”

John Lovejoy Elliott, Ethical Culture Leader (1868-1942)

 

 

Suggested readings:

Robert Coles, Lives of Moral Leadership, NY: Random House, 2001.

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2006.

Jonathan Haidt, “What Makes People Vote Republican?” on Edge Foundation website – http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html

Donald W. Shriver, Jr., An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995.