Like Kaaren, I'm going to ask you to consider your rocks, but first I think many of us need to talk about water. It is ironic how the waters that have recently covered up so much have at the same time uncovered even more. I was struck by one social commentator this week who said the only way to understand Hurricane Katrina's true significance is to understand it as both a natural disaster and a political epiphany, laying bare difficult truths from which our culture has been in flight. In other words, Katrina is not simply a challenge for us; it is also a mirror.
The truth of this became especially clear to me a few days ago, as I listened to President Bush's press secretary Scott McClellan respond to press corps questions about how the government planned to cover the enormous cost of cleaning up after Katrina. McClellan's quick, slightly dismissive answer was,. "We've got to remember, this is no more than a one-time expense, and our giant economy is more than capable of handling that."
Hear that again: "This is no more than a one-time expense." For me, this takes us to the heart of what Katrina has uncovered about us as a culture. When it comes to the poor, to those on the margins without the means of escape, we as a culture can't see beyond the need for a one-time hand-out. Forget on-going support. Forget fundamental change. Forget rethinking the social, racial and class structures that keep us divided into a country of those who can escape flooded cities and those who can't. Even forget addressing the way public safety nets have been systematically disassembled. Yes, forget it all. The only thing we seem capable of acknowledging as a culture, the only thing we seem to want to see and hear, I'm afraid, is the call for a time-limited moment of sacrifice, a time-limited moment of loving our neighbor as our self.
Don't get me wrong. There is something noble and reassuring about the outpouring of help we've seen over the last week: people generously donating money, opening their homes and even leaving their families for weeks to help clean up New Orleans. Without intending to demean any of this, I have to be honest: on another level, these acts of personal and institutional charity leave me more hollow than hopeful. In the spirit of this morning's rock metaphor, I'm glad and proud so many of us are offering our precious stones to others in need, but what I long for is a wave of Americans who rise up and say, "We need to do more than share our extra individual pebbles; we need to rebuild our common rock!" Simply put, the lesson of Katrina for me is that we as a country no longer have a commitment to the common good. We have slowly, steadily and even willingly, I fear, become a "culture of me" rather than a "culture of we."
The day after the flooding I watched a news report about people trapped and trying to get out. The camera entered the two-room apartment of a young black mother in public housing. She held a tiny baby in her arms, a preemie born 3 months early and now kept alive by a complicated system of tubes connected to a machine powered by a generator. The voice-over explained that power throughout the city was down and would remain down for weeks, which was particularly scary for this mother because the generator had limited fuel left. With tears in her eyes, the mother said she had no idea where or how she would find more fuel. She was without money, insurance or a vehicle. The report ended there and switched back to the lead anchors in the news studio. "Oh, what a sad story, Steve," said the white female anchor. "Yes, tragic stuff," said the white male anchor. "But now to a hopeful story," they each said with a quickly-found smile.
The reporter in this second story introduced Mark and Jennifer Holtz of Chicago. Hearing of the coming hurricane, Mark and Jennifer immediately flew down to bring their son, a student in New Orleans, home. But once there, they couldn't get a flight or even a bus back out. So the family used what the reporter called "ingenuity and will." They hailed an airport taxi-not your typical taxi, but one of the new giant black SUV taxis. The camera zoomed in on their smiling faces as the three of them spread out comfortably in the roomy back seat of that SUV taxi-a back seat which looked almost as big as the poor black mother's living room in the previous report. At the end of the story, the reporter explained that the father had just gone to his ATM account and pulled out $3800 in cash to pay for this taxi ride back to Chicago.
Back in the studio, the lead anchors commented. "How heartening," the female anchor said. "Oh yes, Mary. Good to hear a story with a happy ending." "Absolutely Steve. Nice to remember there are bright spots in the midst of all this."
Bright spots?! Some of you may know Bill Maher, the fairly well-known irreverent and angry political comedian. His newest stand-up show is called, "I'm Swiss." He titled his show this, he says, not because he hates his home country, the United States, but because over and over again he is embarrassed and ashamed of it. To watch two national news anchors witness the possible death of a seven month old black baby alongside a white family escaping in a $3800 taxi ride, and to hear those anchors call this a cultural "bright spot," is without a doubt embarrassing and shameful! And I don't say this to be funny, but it should make all of us -to use Bill Maher's phrase-wish we were Swiss.
Like it or not, this image of a smiling family snuggling in an SUV juxtasposed next to an image of a terrified mother isolated with her dying baby is exactly who we have become as a country. Sadly, we are not-as we so often like to pretend--one nation sharing joyfully in the land of plenty; we are a deeply divided nation, made up of one America who can escape disaster when it hits and another America who simply can't. In many ways, we've become a culture, I'm afraid, not just of "I got mine, why can't you get yours," but of "I got mine, I don't really care if you get yours." This is the hard and painful truth that Katrina is trying to tell all those who are willing to listen.
And while it's not the usual playful and upbeat message of Homecoming Sunday, it does, I think, leave us with the more powerful and more important message that we as a religious community deeply matter, that we liberal religious people have a pivotal and deadly serious role to play in our culture right now. We Unitarian Universalists are a spiritual community that places the creation of the common good at the very center of what it means to be religious. We are theists, atheists, humanists, skeptics, and Barnes & Nobleites whose spiritual specifics differ but who all share the common belief that none of us can make it on our own, that we human beings were made for and find our wholeness in the mysterious power of relationship, that we, as the carpenter from Nazareth put it, most fully find ourselves by giving ourselves away for the sake of others. Or to use today's rock metaphor, we are a religious people who believe not in assembling spiritual rock collections for our own personal enrichment, but in using those life-giving stones to build a common foundation for all to share.
Which is exactly, I would argue, what our hurting, divided and broken culture needs right now: religious people willing to help us see that the challenge before this nation is not simply the reconstruction of a city, but the reconstruction of our commitment to the common good.
And so I invite all of us to join together in our second ritual of the morning, to reaffirm our commitment to be that kind of spiritual community.
Our first ritual affirmed the importance of holding tight to our individual stones; our second now affirms the importance of giving them away. It is a ritual of building, a ritual meant to be simple but visually clear, a ritual that enacts our calling to be a community that sees the holy in the creation of the common good.
In a moment, Ed will lead us with music. While he is playing, when you are ready, please come forward and add your stone to our common collection.
Let us begin.
There is beauty in letting go.
There is holiness in serving needs greater than our own.
There is no greater blessing than those sacred moments when the distinction between "I" and "you" suddenly stops making sense.
For this religious community that helps us find home in giving of ourselves,
for the web of connections that wove itself around us from the time we were babes and has never let go,
for common rock of our shared humanity,
we are grateful and ever so blessed.
Amen
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