The Thing With Feathers

I have always seen education as a way out, a step up, a golden key of hope that could take me anywhere I wanted to go. When I graduated from high school fifteen years ago, I was elated. Adolescence had been a difficult time for me - a time filled with ups and downs and a fierce struggle with depression. But when graduation rolled around, I knew that my hard work had paid off and I was on my way up and out. My grandparents gave me a check for $500, and without any hesitation, I headed straight to Sears to buy myself a set of matching luggage. You see, I had been accepted to Smith College and the world was opening up in front of me.

So off I went to Sears. I bought American Tourister luggage, navy blue with red piping. One large suitcase, one carry-on bag, and one garment bag. Now, I had never seen a garment bag before, and I had no idea what all of the little pockets and zippers and snaps were for, and I didn't have any clothes to put in it, but I bought one anyway. I was going somewhere. Who knew what I might need, what kind of person I might become. I may not have had many clothes to fill up that luggage, but my bags were packed full of possibility, and full of hope.

My high school diploma opened the door to college, and I trusted that college would open the door to a better life. I lived in America, after all, and that meant I was assured certain unalienable rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I was on my way.

Along this way I came across a book titled, A Hope in the Unseen, and I - even in my very different circumstances - connected with its main character immediately. The book tells the story of Cedric Jennings, a young man who struggled against the odds, struggled against the violence and the constant threat of homelessness, struggled against the woeful inadequacy of his Washington, D.C., high school and gained access to an education at Brown University. While Cedric, I believe, had a much tougher road to run than I did - both he and I saw education as the way out. His mother, like my parents, fed him the basic tenets of the American Dream like manna in the desert. Education and hard work are the way up and out. Apply yourself and you can do anything. Education is the great social equalizer. Once you get that degree it won't matter where you come from.

Despite almost constant discouragement from his peers and his teachers, Cedric kept his eyes on the prize -- a college education at an elite Ivy League University. His ideals, embodied in his actions, carried him far, farther than anyone else believed possible, and even amidst the intricacies of a social, cultural, and academic world that Cedric had never before encountered - he eventually found his feet - and found success - as he made the long journey from one side of America to the other - graduating not only from Brown University but from Harvard as well with a master's degree in education in 2002.

Throughout this gauntlet of dangers and challenges, though, through all of these difficulties, something powerful was driving Cedric. Something more powerful than his intellect, more powerful than history, more powerful even than a community torn between helping him and holding him back. Something else was clearly driving Cedric, and that something, I believe, was hope. A hope in the unseen, the belief that things could and would be different for him - regardless of the facts, regardless of present circumstances, regardless of the discouragement he felt all around him.

The American Dream - the dream that drew both Cedric and I forward - the dream that life can be different if only we work hard and apply ourselves. This dream is a powerful force. For generations it has brought immigrants to our shores and it has inspired parents as they provide for their children. But today, I think many of you would agree with me that the American dream is just that for many Americans - a dream. For so many people struggling with poverty or depression, struggling with drug addiction or racism or generations of disappointment behind them - for so many people the American experience is more of a nightmare than it is a dream - and sadly, for the majority of us - the dream that we have shared for so long - the dream that our children will have a better life than we did - is slipping away during this challenging time.

Several weeks ago I came across an article in the newspaper describing a recent poll. For well over a hundred years, here in America, the majority of us have shared in the belief - in the faith, really - that if we work hard, that if we do the right thing, our children's lives will be better than our own. Our children, we have believed, the next generation of Americans, will have greater access to opportunity, greater economic stability, greater happiness, even, than we have known. This belief that our children's lives will be better than our own has translated into reality for many - but recently, here in America, that belief has begun to disappear - and at the most recent polling, the majority of those responding stated, No, they do not expect their children's lives to be better than their own.

These people responding to the poll - they have taken a good long look at the state of our economy - at the state of our earth - they have seen the violence around the world and here in our own neighborhoods, they have seen the troubles in their own hearts and souls, and they have said, no, this is not going well and no, these problems will not be solved in our lifetime. The old belief in the infinite progress of humankind - the old trust of the phrase onward and upward forever and ever that our Unitarian ancestors coined - the once solid faith we shared that as our knowledge of the world and its workings increased - so would the comfort and sustenance of all humankind - these beliefs lie shattered now for many of us - and for the majority of Americans, it seems.

The situation we face here in our country and here in our world is difficult to see. And it calls for the facts, yes, the hard facts about the state of our nation and of our earth, the state of our families and of our hearts - but I've had a hard look at these facts, friends, at the state we are in, and I'll tell you that if the facts were all I had to rely on I'm not sure if I'd be able to get out of bed in the morning. The facts are not good, it is true, the facts are frightening indeed, but the facts, I believe, are not always all that they are cracked up to be. The facts are informative, yes, and they can be helpful when making decisions and assessments and calculating odds - but ultimately, I would argue, the facts - and especially the often depressing facts about our nation and our world - they are not enough to live by, and they are certainly not enough to build a spiritual life upon.

Now I know that this can be challenging for us as Unitarian Universalists - and it is challenging for me as well - we are, I am, after all, people who pride ourselves on the use of reason and the test of the individual conscience when it comes to matters of the spirit, so this notion that the facts, that knowledge of the world and of ourselves will ultimately lead the way up and out comes naturally to us. And it is a notion I like very much. I did, after all, rely on my education as a way up and out of circumstances that were destroying me. But what I did not know then, as I stood at the threshold of my college career, of my new life as I saw it - what I did not know then was that my education on its own would not be enough to save me - I would have to rely on something more.

When Cedric Jennings arrived there at Brown University, he discovered first hand a difficult truth - the truth that his high school diploma and his admission to college would not guarantee him acceptance or success in the radically different world he had longed to enter for his entire life - discovered the truth that some of his biggest supporters would turn away from him as he lived into his success - he discovered the truth that he would be alone in making the escape from his home and his neighborhood - and when Cedric discovered these hard truths as he stood at the threshold of his new life - he did not turn pack his bags and go home, he did not turn and walk away from his dream, rather, the bird of hope perched in his soul and continued to sing - and he made his way forward, despite the odds - knowing but not relying upon the facts, trusting instead in the one sure thing he knew - his faith - his hope in the unseen.

In David McCullogugh's biography of our former president, John Adams, there is a passage by Adams' beloved daughter, Nabby. In it, she writes at the age of 22 to a friend, "Do you know what the very hardest thing is? The very hardest thing is to hold on to your faith when you discover the truth."[1] The very hardest thing to do is to hold on to your faith when you discover the truth. There at Brown University, there on the threshold of a new life, Cedric certainly came face to face with the truth, with the facts - just as we all do when we open the paper each morning. But Cedric surely knew, just as one of our own Unitarian Universalist ministers, The Reverend Edward Frost, knows, that "Faith is not fact or truth... To have faith is to have a vision of the future, a vision that may fly in the face of truths, of facts. To have such faith determines how we live in the present."[2] To have such faith - to have a faith that is a vision of the future that may fly in the face of the facts - it is, Rev. Frost proclaims, the very hardest thing to do. But do it we must - because it is only this faith, this vision of the future that flies in the face of the facts, that can sustain us while we struggle with the truths that, "without a faith to live by, would hollow us out and beat us down."[3]

For hope defies the facts - it is the argument that refutes death, the poet writes, the genius that invents the future, the singular gift we cannot destroy in ourselves, she tells us. Hope flies unsolicited on the wings of green angels that sail from the tops of maples, it explodes in the starry heads of dandelions turned sages - it shakes the sleep from its eyes and drops from mushroom gills - inflating the lungs of the child that has just been born. Hope the poet tells us, is the force of life - it is all we know of God, it is the spirit that defies all odds and lives in each one of us as we lean into its sway rather than succumbing to the facts.

For hope challenges the facts, and hope, I believe, is the one and only thing that can draw us forward - out of grueling poverty and addiction, out of old patterns and family history, out of despair and out even from apathy and self-centeredness - hope of a different future - the belief in the possible despite the facts - that hope, I believe, is something that has the power to change us as we cannot change ourselves, that hope, I believe, is something to live by, that hope is something worthy of building a spiritual life upon.

And hope, as I know it, is built of a hundred small steps. Hope is a belief not just in some imaginary future, but hope, rather, is a verb, hope is a lived experience that grows in us as we urge ourselves forward, as we lean into one another, as we get up out of bed again and again, as we take the actions, large and small that remind us that we and this world have value and have meaning. Hope is the feeling that we count and that what we do matters.

Hope, quite simply, is about taking action - whether it is in our own personal lives or on a local or national scale - the very act of doing something, anything, can engender hope. As Roberta Lynch, a Chicago labor organizer observes - "It's about action. You feel that things can happen, the possibility, the hope. You feel ordinary people can do extraordinary things. Something comes along unexpectedly, something no one could have predicted."[4]

When we dare to hope, when we dare to believe that we have value, that we count and that what we do matters, when we dare to believe that the ordinary can become extraordinary -it is then when something unexpected comes along - it is then when the bank is broken and the odds are beat - it is then when something powerful - something no one could have predicted will have happened.

This is what I know of hope. I know that the impossible can become possible. I know that just as we can cause one another awful pain, so too can we offer one another tremendous hope. I know that when the light goes out in myself, that I can turn to you for help. I know that hope carries with it, naturally and unavoidably, the possibility of disappointment. And I know, that much as I long to protect myself from that pain of disappointment, that nothing worthwhile will come of my life if I choose to live in fear. I trust that despite the disappointments, despite the broken heart that will surely come over and over in my life, I trust that hope, like love, is always worth the pain.

For I know from my own experience, that it was only hope that could carry Cedric Jennings forward out of a world of poverty and injustice and into a life of possibility, it was only hope that could carry me forward out of the depths of my own depression and into a life of meaning - and it is only hope that I see carrying so many of you forward in difficult times as well.

This is what I know of hope, and as I walk with many of you, I am learning, still, as you teach me the true place of hope in a life of faith, in a life of the spirit.

As we live in this world of hard facts. As we live in a world where a reasonable person might agree that the next generation of Americans faces a more difficult future than we have known, as we live in this world, we must, I believe, master the art of alchemy - learning to turn our despair into hope - as we rely on more than just the facts, as we turn as well into a sense of possibility that can move us forward, into a sense of possibility that is never fully satisfied - into that song of the bird perched in our soul singing in the darkness, proclaiming a vision of the future that flies in the face of the facts, proclaiming the possibility of a better world - of the beloved community here on earth.

It's not about one giant leap, friends, this building of the beloved community here on earth. It is about one and two and twenty and a thousand small steps - small steps we take alone and together as we strengthen that muscle of hope in our hearts, as we reclaim our sense of value and of possibility in this world, as we proclaim a vision of the future that puts bread in our children's mouths. It can happen, it does happen, it will happen, if we stand by one another, if we encourage one another, if we let hope and faith, despite all the facts, sing in our souls and guide our feet.

May it be so, and Amen.

Jen Crow, Associate Minister
August 13, 2006

1. Rev. Edward Frost, "The Very Hardest Thing," A Sermon preached at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, March 2005. Collected in In Time of Need: Sermons and Essays from the Meadville Lombard Theological School Community, 27.
2. Ibid., 30.
3. Ibid., 33.
4. Studs Terkel, Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times. (The New Press: New York, 2003), xvii.