Duct tape happens. Thank heaven! I doubt there is one among us who has not been blessed by using duct tape to repair something. After all, one of the bible's stirring verses begins "Blessed are the users of duct tape, for they shall be bound together." Even Shakespeare knew of its potential when he wrote in Henry IV, about "sermons in duct tape, books in running brooks, and good in everything." Our own prophet Robert Fulghum knew of its magical powers when he wrote his famous "All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Duct Tape."
Enough! Let me tell you a truthful word about the power of duct tape. Some have heard it before, but it bears repeating. Two summers ago, dining on the outside deck of a lakeside restaurant, our waitress somehow dropped my credit card through the spaces between the floor boards and onto the ground a foot below - out of reach. To make a long story short, we were in despair until another clever waitress brought out a roll of duct tape, carefully lowered a strip down through the crack, gently let it affix itself to my credit card and deftly pulled it up, enabling me to pay for our meal.
Duct tape is much like religion, which comes from the Latin religare, to bind together, binding together that which is broken - as in the Jewish phrase tikkun olam - to repair the world. We are bound to the cosmos of which we are an inextricable part. We are bound together in a global human family. Duct tape, like religion, has to do with connectedness - a centripetal force - tending to come together, not centrifugal - flying apart.
This conflict of centripetal and centrifugal forces - the tension between the tendency of people to group together for common purposes and the equally strong tendency for people to celebrate their individualism - their self-sufficiency away from the madding crowd - is a central issue in our faith and in the wider culture.
You may have seen the public television special on Frank Lloyd Wright, architect extraordinaire and designer of Unity Temple, the Universalist Church in Oak Park, Illinois, and the Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin. Wright was nothing if not an individualist - a genius - but not a warm and fuzzy guy. Years ago when I read Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead I didn't know the novel's hero was modeled on Frank Lloyd Wright. She spells out her philosophy of objectivism clearly there, and in Atlas Shrugged where she has her protagonist John Galt say, "I swear . . . that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."[1]
In her novel Anthem she elaborates on that rugged individualism: "Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars. I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. . . . I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet. For the word 'We' must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I'."[2]
Admittedly, that seems extreme. Yet, looking at our culture, we see how strongly that individualistic value system has taken hold. A few examples. In professional sports, while teamwork continues to be important, individual stars shine as the brightness of the firmament. Free agency means that teams retain little identity any more as their stars bolt for bigger contracts elsewhere. The Florida Marlins baseball team won the World Series one year but became a cellar-dweller the next after their owner auctioned off its stars to the highest bidder. And look with pity at the woeful Michael-Jordanless Chicago Bulls.
During an Ethics seminar I taught, one participant spoke of her experience as a Xerox employee. We remembered with her the days of "Team Xerox" with its image of a cooperative, collaborative community creating better and better products. Now, she reports, the company has asked her, and presumably other employees, to think of themselves as independent contractors, their value being what they can produce for the company. You are only as good as your last sale, your last project, your last invention. This is individualism run rampant. While I don't know why Xerox has gone into the Wall Street tank, one has to wonder if this "go get 'em" philosophy really works over the long haul.
Or, take the current American attitude toward welfare. While most industrial democracies feel a social obligation to care for the "least of these," politicians scramble to the political pulpit to tell us that everyone should be on their own. Remember when the religious right used to attack mothers who worked outside the home and left their children in child care.
Now it is a fetish of the right that these women must, at all costs, get out there and work - be independent - regardless of familial consequences.
While Bill Clinton Thursday night bragged about halving welfare roles, my Saturday paper reported a 26% local increase in referrals to homeless shelters, part of a nation-wide trend. Naturally, no official, federal, state or county, finds any connections between these disparate reports. This is tough love run amuck.
Lest we think this Ayn Rand individualism is "out there" somewhere in the increasingly cold and impersonal society, let's look closer to home. At the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly here in June of 1998 sociologist of religion Robert Bellah had some trenchant things to say about the ethos of fierce individualism which marks our movement.
He echoed the 19th century Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, whose 1835 book Democracy in America continues to provide insight into things American: "Individualism is a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself . . . . "Individualism at first only dams the spring of public virtues, but in the long run it attacks and destroys all the others too and finally merges in egoism. . . . A vice as old as the world."[3]
Does that accurately describe liberal religion's vaunted individualism? I am rather fiercely independent myself. I knew that before my recent back surgery. Intellectually I realized we are essentially interdependent, but I had not yet internalized that wisdom. It has been a humbling experience - being what has been called a "wounded healer."
Having enjoyed good health all my life, I had to learn what it means to feel really awful. I haven't been too pleased with how I dealt with ill health, despite all the words of comfort I have tried to speak to others so afflicted. It isn't easy. And for those chronically ill it requires a patient courage I am only beginning to understand.
I think it was Socrates who said, "All learning is accompanied by pain." I'm not sure that can be proved, but it is clear to me that pain is an unrelenting and effective teacher. My little bout with ill health has afforded me opportunity to reflect on lessons learned - lessons not really new, but newly and existentially grasped.
Empathy is a central moral value. I believe my capacity for empathy has been deepened, and hopefully will be reflected in my ministry.
There is a power in nature that makes for health. The human body is a miracle with its power for mending.
Good health is cause of gratitude. I have become more thankful for my good health over the years, good fortune I had simply taken for granted.
Finally, there is power in the caring community. People who said prayers, directed good thoughts, sent cards, shoveled my driveway, baked chocolate chip cookies all aided my recovery. Just knowing there are those who care is one of those healing powers of the universe. Being on the other side of caring is a great morale booster. And the chances are that if one cannot accept help, one won't be able to give it.
My recent experience reminds me again of our mutual ministry. I appreciate even more our Caring Community Group, a tireless and compassionate company, its constant need for volunteers and the imperative for all of us to think of ourselves as a part of this caring community. This only serves to underscore our Canvass theme - "Nourishing the Healthy Congregation," an irony not lost upon me.
I realize it is relatively easy to mouth these learnings and to argue that the ethos of rugged individualism is morally and practically inferior to an ethic of mutuality. Whether I have really learned my lesson as a wounded healer remains to be seen.
As counterbalance to this stubborn independence of spirit, there is in the Rabbinical tradition a story about a man on a journey through the desert. Along the way he comes upon another man who has been robbed, beaten, and left without water. The first man has just enough water to make it through the desert by himself. He is thus faced with a deep ethical dilemma: if he keeps all the water for himself, the man who has been beaten and robbed will likely die; if he gives his water to the man, he himself will likely die; and if he shares the water, both will likely die." The teaching affirms sharing the water because we have faith in the future.[4]
We talk much about the caring community of this congregation. How do we strike the balance between our vaunted individualism, in which each person is their own theologian and caretaker, and a sense that we are members of a community?
There is always the question of motivation. Do I reach out my hand and heart and head to another who is hurting mainly to please myself? How much self-interest is there in the altruistic act? A member of our congregation told me about her experience on Star Island, one of our Unitarian Universalist summer conference centers, which lingers happily in her memory. She had her two young daughters with her, but wanted to hear a speaker in the afternoon when there was no child care. A woman on the porch of the main lodge heard of her situation and spontaneously volunteered to take them. She asked the woman, "Why would you do this?" She said only, "Pass it on."
Our motivation may be desire for reward or recognition or it may be that the Unitarian Universalist must be good - for nothing - because living on behalf of the other is intrinsically religious. Even knowing that some self-interest flavors our every act of kindness, it behooves us to be just a little kinder than necessary.
There is the issue of reciprocity. Some of us think that if someone does a kindly deed for us, we must balance the scales by reciprocating with a subsequent good deed toward them. We feel a need to build up chits against our own time of need. This accountant mentality - this need to balance the books - is pervasive. I know, for in my lesser moments I am guilty of just this sentiment. But there are no bank accounts in genuine caring - we do not keep records of so many good deeds given or received - accounts receivable and accounts payable. Ultimately we care not because we are strong and others are weak, but out of our shared weakness. Religion, unlike so much in our lives, is not about keeping score - it is about keeping faith.
Of course, there is the much-ballyhooed matter of "burnout." Caregivers, paid and unpaid, can give so much of themselves that they can be used up and themselves become people with great needs for care. Compassion fatigue always worries us. However, as Harvard University's Robert Coles writes on the "call to service," he quotes one student volunteer who said, "My whole life before I started the work was a long stretch of burnout."[5]
Naturally, none of us really has time to be a caregiver - that's what we pay other people to do, isn't it? The pressures of work have become so great that participation in civic life and the simple act of being a neighbor has been overwhelmed by self-interest. So many of us only have time to get and spend - not to care and serve.
I often hear about the strength of American volunteerism, but my personal observations tell a mixed story. We have such a strong need for volunteers for our church, for the Southeast Ecumenical Ministry, for the many voluntary associations working for social justice. All need more volunteers. I can only say we somehow manage to find time for what is important to us.
All of these obstacles, all of these burdens, all of these reasons, indicate why we at times resonant to the emphatic words of John Galt: "I swear ... that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."[6] In the end I cannot go with John Galt, or Ayn Rand, those purveyors of reality, of enlightened self-interest, of rugged individualism. I see enough of that stubbornness, that callousness, that fierce independence in myself to be worried.
The duct tape imperative always calls us back to our religious faith. Religion - to bind together - whatever its form - consistently and constantly reminds us that to be is to be for others.
I think of the Jewish aphorism, "If one Jew has a problem, the other automatically becomes a rabbi." You don't think of yourself as a rabbi? Well, I don't either. But if we are to create the Beloved Community of Earth and model it right here in our very own caring community, that aphorism has to be realized.
And so if I were the traveler in the desert and came upon a man beaten and robbed, I like to think I would not drink my water supply alone and let him die, not give him the water and die myself, but share the water in hope and confidence there would be other travelers whose mission on this earth is to be a neighbor. I vaguely recall a story much like this one taught by a simple Jewish carpenter many years ago. Given enough time, I am sure I could find the reference.
To be a rabbi to another in trouble is to touch off a chain reaction of kindness. Love made visible begets love. Showing compassion can set in motion a whole chain reaction of events that spread throughout the community. And then we can think less about YOU and ME and more about US. We are members as much as we are individuals. We exist for the sake of one another. We need one another in an expanding network of love. We are each rabbis to the other - the one in need. In the end what will survive of us is not Ayn Rand's "I" but the love we have received and bestowed - it is our relationships that survive.
In the final analysis all of us are wounded healers. Our church is duct tape of the spirit. You know, "Duct tape - it fixes everything but a broken heart." That's our job. Let's all stick together and get on with it.
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