In that grand and glorious pile of mail which accumulated in late August when I was mostly out of town for two weeks, only one category exceeded that of catalogues, and that was pleas for money. The causes were worthy ones, at least to somebody. And I represent only a narrow spectrum of causes compared to what gets slid into mailboxes every day across this country. It makes obsolete the cry, "There's nothing to do."
Admittedly, slightly re-phrased, there are times when that is exactly what I think "There's nothing to be done." As in, "Forget it. Down the tubes. Lost cause. We're all doomed."
However, as a basically cheerful sort, those are only brief stretches, most of them occurring while listening to the news. But it was during one of those down moments-street scenes in Iraq, in Afghanistan, a dissertation on the onrushing budget deficit, and similar intimations of disaster, that I remembered a little poem by Louis Untermeyer.
It was in the lower left hand corner of the left page in a book, which book and page are somewhere no longer known to me, and even a trip to the library failed to find said poem. Dumb me. I should have asked my daughter, who found it on the internet. Of course.
The poem was about conditions in the mines, how dark and deep the working environment, and then as I remembered it, the poem ends, "Oh God, if you love us at all, fling us a handful of stars." I remember it sometimes, when I hit one of life's rough spots, and then mutter to no one in particular, "I could use a handful of stars." Or some variation thereof.
The poem actually says, "Oh God if you wish us to love you, fling us a handful of stars. With apologies to Mr. Untermeyer, I like my version better. Oh God, if love us at all.."
That would make an interesting theological discussion, however. Which one is in your philosophical line: God, if you love use at all...or God if you wish us to love you?
It made me think about the star flingers down through the ages. Not just the movers and the shakers who show up in history books recognized as such, Ben Franklin and Copernicus and Dr. Salk, for instance, but those who we only know of, if we do, because they were in pursuit of lost causes and dubbed major losers at the time.
In particular Untermeyer's lines came to me when I read the new biography of Michael Servetus, "Up In Flames." We know Servetus as the first Unitarian, burned at the stake at the insistence of John Calvin, a nasty little man if ever there was one. (There is a brief bio of Servetus on the last page of the September UU World, by the way, since they are going to hold a conference in Geneva this fall to mark the 450 anniversary of his death, October 27, 1553)
And Bill and I did make a reverent journey when we were in Geneva to the monument erected to Servetus, obscurely located in the back of a hospital and more praiseful of the community of Geneva than Servetus. But I, for one, bowed my head at the courage and tenacity of this man who is part of my heritage particularly as a Unitarian Universalist.
Servetus was by any standard a genius, probably one of those kids who sometimes grace our classrooms in modern times and are considered troublemakers, who get C's and D's and cause no end of trouble because they' re bored. Only Servetus , as was the rule in those days, had tutors. By the time he was 13 or so he spoke Spanish, French, Latin, Greek and was studying Hebrew. Recognizing that he had an exceptional mind, his parents sent him off to college to study law where he added Arabic to his linguistic abilities and thus read the Koran.
A professor recognized genius when it showed up at his college, and he became Servetus' mentor. Raised as a Catholic, Servetus now also read the works of one Martin Luther who had less than 2 decades previously posted his 95 protests against the Catholic way of doing business on the Wittenberg Cathedral door, setting the Reformation in motion.
All this was after Gutenberg invented the printing press, unleashing untold troubles on the world from the point of view of those who were controlling the world. The Bible which had hitherto been kept in the hands of a favored few, mostly men of the church, became widely available. Servetus read it in the original Greek and came to believe that the Trinity was a later invention of the church and not supported by scripture. Being Servetus, a devotee of the truth and, very likely of winning the argument, he wrote a book on the errors of the trinity.
That landed him in real trouble, life threatening trouble, as he was branded a heretic. He escaped, went to Paris under an assumed name, and studied medicine under a very modern professor, comparatively speaking. Servetus assisted in anatomical dissection, a practice generally forbidden at the time, but they robbed graves, and worked at night, and one suspects, had at least the tacit approval of school officials.
It was there that Servetus figured out the circulation of the blood in the body. Hitherto it was believed that blood seeped through the heart walls. Servetus inserted a couple of paragraphs accurately describing the role of the heart and the path of the blood through the human body in the next book he wrote, The Restitution of Christianity.
By this time he had been carrying on a heated theological argument via the printed page with John Calvin, who came to see Servetus not only as a dangerous heretic, spreading false views among the populace, but as a threat to his, Calvin's, theological reputation and his political power in Geneva.
Calvin had strict control of the lives of the people of Geneva, sort of Taliban style, 16th century, and we're talking strict here, detailed, and all encompassing. For example: One burgher smiled while attending a baptism: three days in jail. A couple of peasants talked about business matters while coming out of church: prison. A couple of boatman got into a fight, nobody hurt: executed. The most severely punished offenses, however (tougher than garden variety execution, mind you) were those which challenged Calvin's infallibility whether in politics or religion.
There was plenty of chafing over the severity of his rules, however, so that a book claiming Calvin's doctrines faulty was bound to attract attention. It had, however, to be in secret, and the first batch of 500 copies were hidden in hay bales to be sent to Frankfurt. Another batch went to Lyon, and another to a bookseller in Geneva
The preface to the Servetus's book, The Restitution of Christianity, was really a lengthy letter to Calvin refuting his theological position. Which would certainly be classified in the words of one of my old neighbors as "poking a skunk"-- big time poking of the skunk..
Meanwhile Servetus, still under an assumed name, had a thriving medical practice elsewhere, putting all he had learned about the human body into practical application. But he couldn't leave theology alone, and his persistent pushing of his theological views into the public arena eventually brought identification and he was forced to flee several times to re-locate.
Finally, he was headed for Italy, and it is not known why he detoured through Geneva where Calvin caught him and ultimately burned him at the stake.
Actually, the laws of Geneva readily provided that Servetus could have been punished other than by death, probably by banishment, but Calvin was in control and he wanted his rival gone for good. He even ordered him to be burned with green leaves and green wood so it would be slower-- that undoubtedly qualifies as a severe execution. Stuff like that gives Christians a bad name.
Calvin also ordered all the copies of Servetus' books to be burned, and so thorough was this done, that only three copies remain today, one in Edinburgh, one in Vienna, and one in Paris. Interestingly enough, Calvin tore the preface out of his copy and used it during the trial of Servetus which Calvin himself took over when the original prosecutor seemed to be stumbling. It is this copy, with the preface torn out, and with notes of the trial in the margin, that surfaced in Scotland. So Calvin apparently felt himself above his own laws.
Incidentally the three copies survived and surfaced thanks to wealthy book collectors. Let that be a comfort to the bibliophiles among us. Today's extravagant purchase may be a treasure in some future century. (I seize on any excuse for the fact that my house is filling up with books, and may eventually have to post a sign, "Caution: Watch For Falling Books.)
But because of the book burning, Servetus succinct little treatise on the circulation of the blood was lost to the medical world for another 150 years when Harvey is credited with its discovery. How sad. Think how it would have advanced the treatment of illness and injury had doctors learned it in the 16th century instead of the 18th.
What makes it particularly pathetic is that Servetus was not burned for his medical knowledge, but for his theological views, and one wonders what else has been lost to our world because of the stifling of unpopular views.
In the UU World article, there is a quotation written by Rev. Duncan Howlett in October of 1953, the hundredth anniversary of Servetus' death, entitled "A Heretic's Legacy." Howlett says, "His was a very contemporary problem. What does man do when he find himself thinking what the rulers of society regard as "dangerous thoughts?".Michael Servetus, prosperous and respected, was not able to remain silent. He spoke the truth that was in him and paid with his life for doing so. His was the problem for the ages, and so it is ours."
1953? Try 2003.
By the 19th century, at least in the United States, Emerson could say, "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist," could preach transcendentalism from the venerable platform of Harvard Divinity School, and while he may have lost a lot of speaking engagements, at least he wasn't incinerated.
The ultimate cause that Servetus was pursuing was the right of every individual to discover religious truth for themselves. He had read the original scriptural text, he came to his own conclusion, and wrote about it so that others could see the truth he had found. There is no evidence that he was seeking the political authority to impose his views on others.
One can presume it took awhile for all the books to be destroyed, and Servetus' ideas spread throughout Europe despite the efforts of the Catholic church, the Protestants, and Calvin to suppress them, and while the trail may wander and backtrack, we here this morning are his beneficiaries . One of the luminaries of Servetus' time said of his death, "To kill a man is not to kill an idea; it is to kill a man."
As jurist Ben Lindsey described it, "The churches used to win their arguments against atheism, agnosticism, and other burning issues by burning the ismists, which is fine proof that there is a devil but hardly evidence that there is a God."
My premise this morning is not actually a political one, the association which the word "liberal" usually creates, but rather liberal as a way of thinking, or as Walter Lippman put it, "Liberalism has always been associated with a passionate interest in freedom of thought and freedom of speech, in scientific research, in experiment, in the liberty of teaching, in an independent and unbiased press, in the right of men to differ in their opinions and to be different in their conduct."
I rest my case. Well, not without a quotation from that most articulate of Unitarians, Adlai Stevenson: "It is a common heresy and its graves are to be found all over the earth. It is the heresy that you can kill an idea by killing a man, defeat a principle by defeating a person, bury truth by burying its vehicle.
Man may burn his brother at the stake, but he cannot reduce truth to ashes; he may murder his fellow man with a shot in the back, but he does not murder justice; he may slay armies of men, but as it is written, "truth beareth off the victory."
I grieved when Adlai was defeated for the presidency of the United States, not so much out of partisan pain, but because I had so looked forward to four years of his way with words.
But where exactly does flinging a handful of stars come into the discussion? I think as liberalism has evolved in the modern world, it has most often been on the side of relieving human misery. In the case of those dark and dangerous mines, it was the labor union movement which forced the mine owners, finally, to do something about the dangerous working conditions down deep in the earth here in this country.
Or as the now re-discovered poem by Untermeyer puts it:
Caliban in the Coal Mine
By Louis Untermeyer
God, we don't like to complain —
We know that the mine is no lark —
But -- there's the pools from the rain;
But -- there's the cold and the dark.
God, You don't know what it is —
You, in Your well-lighted sky,
Watching the meteors whizz;
Warm, with the sun always by.
God, if You had but the moon
Stuck in Your cap for a lamp,
Even You'd tire of it soon,
Down in the dark and the damp.
Nothing but blackness above,
And nothing that moves but the cars —
God, if You wish for our love,
Fling us a handful of stars!
The list of liberal causes is long, although not, for my point of view, long enough --and always in danger of backtracking. Looking out over Hawk Tree golf course, one of Bismarck's new spectacular courses, the other day, I was reminded of a poem written before child labor laws were enacted in this country, when children worked in factories when they should have been in school or on the playground. The poem goes like this:
"They built the course so near the plant
That almost any day,
The little children hard at work
Could watch the men at play."
So child labor was restricted in the United States eventually, but I would hazard a guess that many of us here this morning are wearing clothing manufactured through child labor elsewhere in the world, the pitiful byproduct of globalization. And I once felt good about getting a pair of Nike shoes on sale for only $29.00!
What was it Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere."
Margaret Sanger was a more modern star slinger. Reading her biography is to realize what a determined woman she had to be since nearly every institution in the country opposed her then radical notion that women should have access to birth control, that families should be able to determine the number of children they wished to raise. She went to jail; she neglected her family; she badgered friend and foe alike; and she never gave up. In fact, political defeat seemed only to give her more resolve.
It is astonishing, and so illogical, to me that the forces which now battle to abolish the right to abortion, are often the same forces who also want to outlaw sex education, and contraceptives, including any research into the subject, indeed any information on the subject. They probably would not have fretted living under John Calvin's regime. Obey and do not question. Do not, in fact, even think.
Conservatism was defined by some wag as someone who wants change, but not yet. In this case it is the worst form of conservatism it is someone who never wants change, or any discussion of change, as if, somehow, it will only make the world worse.
Which reminds me of the occasion long years ago in North Dakota. One of our first women to hold high state office, Berta Baker, was state auditor for many years. Back in the days when margarine was taxed to protect the market for the butter producers, a newly elected state treasurer noting that they were putting two 5 cent stamps on each package, went to Berta and suggested that it cost the state twice as much to use two stamps, and the cost to the office would be cut in half by simply using one 10 cent stamp instead. She refused on the grounds, "We never done it that way before."
There's a whole lot of resistance in this world on those grounds, that it has never been done that way before. And that is precisely why liberals are so important to the progress of civilization, because they are willing to look at doing it some other way, some better way, willing to, what's the new catch phrase, "think outside the box."
Being outside the box, is not always fun. Think Servetus. Galileo. Sanger. We get off lucky, comparatively speaking.
The thread that runs through many of the accounts of people who bucked the establishment, stubbornly maintaining their vision as the better one, the logical one, the scientific one, is their persistence.
As Martin Luther put it, "Here I stand. I can do no other." Sadly, too often in the theological area, having once established a "new" truth, all other is banished. School children in this country are told every Thanksgiving about those sturdy Puritans who braved a strange new world to gain freedom of religion. One hopes they are also told that the Puritans then refused to grant that right to anyone else. Poor Roger Williams had to start his own colony, and there is a simple and lovely statue on the lawn of the Massachusetts state house commemorating a Quaker woman who refused to buckle under and was executed for her obstinacy.
As fundamentalism threatens the peace of the world, liberal religion becomes ever more vital. Amid all the talk of the dangers represented by the Middle East not only to peace, but to the economies of the world, I shuddered to read about the Christian missionaries sanctioned by the Bush administration to go to Iraq to "help" in the recovery process. Bibles in hand, erroneous notions of the Islamic religion pounded into their heads by their church in preparation for their mission, they are almost destined to make matters worse, including endangering the lives of Americans minding their own religious business.
All this was running through my mind, along with the clear recognition that when discussing flinging stars into a dark world with this group of activists, I am preaching to the choir. The question more useful is probably, how do we do it better? Or what is the role of the church, this particular church, in the flinging of stars?
Then I ran across a newsletter article by Rev. Kate Tucker, Associate Minister of First Universalist in Minneapolis--my just reward for cleaning my desk. Her article begins with a quote from T. H. White's, Once And Future King. Merlyn, the Magician is speaking:
"You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins-you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then-to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you."
Rev. Turner then quotes the Quaker religious educator Parker Palmer who says that Merlyn has named the experiences that draw us into spiritual depth: illness, alienation, anxiety, disgrace, injustice. As long as we flail above water, these burdens threaten to drown us. But when we find the courage to dive deep into these experiences, we learn that the oceans of love that surrounds us allow us to sink and breathe as well as to surface and swim."
Palmer disputes one of Merlyn's contentions, however, the presumption that minds are always open to learning. "The mind is a two-edged sword," Palmer says, "sharp enough to cut through the veils of ignorance and prejudice, but sharp enough also to stand guard at the gates of our souls so that no new knowledge can invade and threaten...unless our minds are freed from fear they are perfectly capable of being alienated, tortured, full of distrust and regret."
I think of myself as an Adlai Stevenson liberal-or to put it in another mode, a child of the depression coming of age during World War II-a Leave it to Beaver newlywed. - settled in a politically and religiously conservative community. At odds with the religious assumptions all around me, had I not discovered Unitarianism I might now claim the title of bridge player exceptionale, notable cook of the western plains, past president of the ladies luncheon and cosmetic society.
But once I tumbled onto the Unitarian path, all those became the road not taken. What's the quotation, something about once a mind is stretched, it never goes back to its original shape.
Then, of course, I grew four members of the boomer generation, several with hippie credentials, and smashed into that wall which threatened sometimes even our perception of parenthood--the Viet Nam War. Ultimately I faced the reality of my life: I was not destined for political serenity either personally or publicly.
And while I hesitate to use the word in polite company, I was saved by my church, a safe haven for exploration of ideas and the re-examination of once firmly held convictions in new light.
Now years later I was fascinated recently reading two essays — one entitled Varieties of Patriotic Experience by Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism at Columbia University, and the other by Susie Linfield of New York University, The Treason of the Intellectuals Again. These essays are to be found in a book entitled The Fight Is For Democracy. Both of these authors are of my children's generation, the often maligned boomers.
Todd Gitlin lived a mile north of the World Trade Towers, close enough to feel the second explosion. The destruction of that day, he writes, jammed his mental circuits and he spent the next year trying to get them unjammed. At first he hung a flag on his balcony, but later he took it down, because as he put it, "The folklore of patriotism lends itself to symbolic displays wherein we show one another how patriotic we are without exerting ourselves too strenuously."
The liberal Left, he proposes, disputes American policies, but it criticizes with an insider's voice. "It deplores," he says," the deplorable in a tone that displays the critic's shared membership with the criticized. It acknowledges - and wrestles with the strange dualities of America, the liberty and arrogance twinned, the bullying and tolerance, the myopia and energy, standardization and variety, ignorance and inventiveness, the awful dark heart of darkness and the reforming zeal."
Susie Linfield is concerned that in the guise of multi-culturism we have abandoned the necessity for making judgments, and in accepting everything, cannot make changes. That instead of creating a democratic society that is open to all but that maintains and debates critical values, we have, instead, "a flattened desert of meaningless equivalences."
Change, she says, is our human condition and "To begin again - and yet again is our curse and our gift; the question is not whether we do so, but how."
That's where we function best as religious liberals-by providing an atmosphere, a community, where individuals are free to search, to try on new knowledge, to provide what Rev. Tucker calls "an authentic, caring community of learning."
I don't think you can fling many stars without a firm base, a foundation for what you're throwing and why. That's where we come in, where the liberal way of thinking, of life, plays its indispensable role. Why the world has always needed our kind. Why I am so glad to be here, with you, with a religious community to share.
And after all, you never can tell when another potential star flinger may show up.