We Gather Together, But Where Are We?

Good morning!

 

My topic today is: We Gather Together, But Where are We?

 

Of course, I’m sure each of you has your own idea about this.  I look forward to listening to and profiting from your views during the talkback.

 

Let me start by saying that in the social realm I believe we are way out in front.  As we have always been: in the abolitionist movement, women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, and so forth.  We can readily recall many examples, some more recent than others.  For instance, typically, the first civil rights workers killed in Selma, Alabama in 1965 were UU’s: the  Rev. James J. Reeb and Viola Liuzzo--both killed by white racists. 

 

You name it, UU’s are always there in the forefront for freedom and human dignity and human rights.  This continues. Recently the UU President, Rev. Sinkford, was in Washington in an anti-torture protest march. UU’s were also heavily engaged in Katrina aid as outlined in detail in the latest UU World Magazine.   Other faiths were involved in many of these endeavors as well, but not only are we out in front, but exponentially more imbedded than our numbers would suggest.  At less than a million worldwide, we are few—as opposed to a billion Muslims and over two billion mainline Christians. For those who are interested in mathematical comparisons, we are outnumbered 3000 to one.

 

In asking where we are, however, in addition to that demographic, what I have in mind is: exactly where do our UU principles such as reason help position us in the broader social context of modern society, particularly with respect to what I believe are gigantic and mounting tides of: spirituality, superstition and political correctness that are sweeping over the land? Are we swimming with our heads held high, floating like jetsam, or are we being drowned out or even sinking?

 

My plan today is to give a couple of examples to illustrate what I view as an alarming dilemma relating to each of those concepts--spirituality, superstition, and political correctness (PC)--and try to come to grips with where we are in relation to them and how—vis-à-vis these concepts--we may be similar to or different from other religions and society at large.

 

This done, I hope to share with you certain conclusions about what it all means to us and to our future growth or decline.  Then, I shall conclude with an attempt to give you a one sentence synopsis of where I think we are. 

 

Clearly, we believe in using our reason, not just for mathematics, but in evaluating social and moral issues as well.  But how willing are we to do so publicly, and when we do, how is it received?  Are other considerations getting in the way?  Political correctness, say?  Or myths and superstitions, or even spirituality?  In certain instances I believe that may well be the case.

 

I will cover political correctness (PC) first. To lay the ground work and offer a backdrop, I would like to begin by relating a brief summary of a children’s fairy tale: The “Emperor’s New Clothes”[1] by Hans Christian Andersen, originally published in 1837.

 

I’m sure you all know the story: The Emperor was parading his new clothes, and everybody was saying how nice his clothes were until a small child hollers out, “But he hasn’t anything on!” The Emperor hears this, but continues his naked march to the end of the parade with his retinue trailing behind him holding up his invisible train. 

 

Taking a slightly different tack from the fable, let’s imagine that you and I arrive in this kingdom and observe the parade before the child speaks. We see that everyone is happy, peacefu,l well-fed and having a great time watching their smiling Emperor parade by.

 

We see the naked King, and we hear the people making joyous praises of his new clothes.  Our reason tells us that he is naked and they are all deluded or something.

 

Now, what is the politically correct thing to do?  The child who spoke up was chastised by his father, and if we shout out like the thoughtless child that the king is naked, everybody will be disillusioned and perhaps become sad. That would not be nice.  Also, we muse, this could have something to do with their religion, and we believe in tolerance[2], so we remain silent.  After all, what harm does their delusion do? But, suppose they ask us our opinion of the Emperor’s new clothes.  Then the exercise ceases to be academic; our intellectual integrity is at stake.  Do we follow our reason and call things as we see them, or do we compromise for other considerations?  Our response will show where we are in the sense I am trying to examine.

 

I use this far-fetched example to illustrate simply that today there seem to be other considerations that are keeping us from using our reason and acting on it as we interact with other religions and society at large. Kindly let me explore a few aspects of these phenomena and how I believe they are stifling reasoned discourse and spreading ignorance as well as needless discord and, ultimately, perhaps even violence.

 

I referred earlier to a tidal wave of political correctness.  As I’m sure you are well aware, examples are everywhere, and I have been taking notes on it for a number of years, but I will limit myself to just two from recent history. The first starts in 1993 at Wellesley College.  Dr. Yosef A.A. ben-Jochannan was invited to give Wellesley’s Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial lecture.  Touted as a distinguished Egyptologist, it turns out that he was in no sense an Egyptologist, but rather an extreme Afro-centrist. He explained to the students that Socrates and Cleopatra were of African descent, and that Greek philosophy had actually been stolen from Africa, that, in fact, Aristotle had robbed the library of Alexandria so his ideas are all products of African culture. He also said that true Jews are really Africans like himself.

 

During the question period, Dr. Mary Lefkowitz, a classics professor at Wellesley, asked the speaker what evidence he had that Aristotle had stolen his philosophy from the Library at Alexandria, when that Library had only been built after Aristotle’s death.  Dr. ben-Jochannan was unable to answer the question, and finished by saying only that he resented the tone of the inquiry. 

 

The immediate result of this exchange among the audience was not, thank you Dr. Lefkowitz for bringing out the truth and keeping us from being hoodwinked, but rather that she was immediately branded a racist who had been brainwashed by white historians.  Other Wellesley professors in the audience knew that Lefkowitz was correct, but—like the grownups before the naked Emperor in the fable--they all remained silent.  To make the point clear to the general public, Dr. Lefkowitz  wrote a book called, Not Out of Africa, (1997) which in a calm, scholarly and reasoned fashion disproves categorically all the contentions of this and other Afro-centrists. She not only proves them wrong but shows in cogent arguments how this distortion of history is very harmful in many ways to African-Americans and all students.[3]  Alas, many of these falsehoods are still being taught by so-called scholars.  One might well ask: are there any more “children” who will speak out?

 

Let me cite just one more example that I’m sure you have heard of.  On January 15, 1999, David Howard, the white director of a Washington D.C. municipal agency told his staff that in light of budget cutbacks, he would have to be “niggardly” with funds.  An uproar followed that resulted in Howard’s resignation, which was accepted by Mayor Anthony Williams on the grounds that Howard had shown poor judgment.

 

When I say there was an uproar, I am not exaggerating.  Dozens of TV shows and hundreds of articles of every stripe waded in to this worldwide debate. The pros and cons of this word, when where how and by whom it has been used and should be used were debated ad infinitum.   I Googled this 1999 event in September of this year, and there are more than 15,000 links.  Needless to say I did not read them all, but I read more than a hundred. From this event and many others like it that occur every day, my conclusion is that political correctness has run amok.   I remember that Hanna Arendt more than thirty years ago wrote that political correctness was really a kind of vigilanteism.  At the time I thought she was exaggerating: I no longer think so.

 

Just think: Mr. Howard had made this remark in a conference with just two other city employees, both of whom were black.  They took umbrage at his use of the word niggardly. He explained that it meant stingy, and he apologized to them for having inadvertently offended them. One man accepted the “apology” and said forget it. The other, left the meeting and apparently began spreading the rumor that Mr. Howard was using the N-word. The screaming crescendo for his removal reached its peak in two weeks and he was compelled to resign[4].  Kindly note there was no due process here; he was guilty as charged, period.  The Mayor did not look into it; he simply acquiesced to the tidal wave of  PC. That is the essence of vigilanteism.  That is how it how PC works.  It’s all very frightening.

 

Amid this mayhem there were a few voices of sanity and reason, one particularly impressed me:

This whole episode speaks loudly to where we are on issues of race. Even  imagined slights are catapulted to the front burner. It seems to me the mayor has been niggardly in his judgment on this issue. You hate to think you have to censor your language to meet other people's lack of understanding.'' http://www.thewinds.org/1999/02/niggardly.html

 

Now to my point:  Rhetorically, let me ask you, what do you think of that statement?  Are you uncomfortable with it? It seems to me very reasonable and pointed, but, finally does it make a difference whether the speaker is black or white?   If you are of one race or another, should that fact alone limit your right to offer reasoned arguments about a given topic? In fact,  why must rational discourse about usage of Standard English be subjected to any racial input or censorship—especially by the ignorant?  In any case, the quote is from Julian Bond, who was chairman of the NAACP when he made it[5].

 

Someone was offended; therefore the so-called offending party is guilty.  Case closed.  Reasonableness came back, partway, so that Mr. Howard got rehired—to a different department, at his request. However, if Nathaniel Hawthorne were alive to recount this tale, doubtless he would have Mr. Howard wearing an big letter R on his chest to show that he was forever tainted as a racist by the vigilanteism known as political correctness[6].

 

Well, what’s all that got to do with Unitarian-Universalists?  My answer is in the form of a question for us to ponder: Because of injustice, UU principles impelled some of us to go get killed in Selma, but what do our principles say we should have done with respect to the injustice being done to Mr. Howard in Washington and what should we do with respect to the thousands of other such incidents occurring every year?  Clearly we should not deliberately offend someone’s sensibilities, but when someone thinks we have, we should have a chance to rectify the situation in a calm and rational atmosphere, not in front of a virtual lynch mob.

 

I should point out that mainstream media is no help on this issue.  They are apparently running scared. They presume there are always “two sides,” and they give both equal play.   I believe that if the Flat-Earth Society managed to have a hundred thousand  people demonstrate in Washington and rioting or trouble developed, the press would very likely present the story and say at the end: “Their opponents believe the world is round; . . . Moving now to today’s weather. . .”.  Again, like the grownups in the Fable, they will not point out the obvious, even when it’s patently absurd.  This spineless drivel is considered “fair and balanced” reporting.

 

As John Stuart Mill states: “Social restraint can be worse than statutory restraint.”  I suppose what he meant was that when the politico/social pressure to conform is strong enough, we don’t need official censorship; we censor ourselves.

 

I shall finish this section with a quote from Jacques Barzun’s latest book, From Dawn to Decadence (2000, p 109). 

 

In the United States at the present time the workings of “political correctness” in universities and the speech police that punishes persons and corporations for words on certain topics quaintly called “sensitive” are manifestations of the permanent spirit of inquisition.

 

I could be wrong, but I don’t feel we’re out in front on this one[7].

 

Moving now to even deeper waters of this tidal inundation, namely, spirituality, I am reminded of another book by Jacques Barzun, Classic, Romantic and Modern.  This is a literary history, and like his most famous book, Teacher in America, was a best seller.  He says that in doing his research for the book, he found in print over 101 definitions of “Romantic.”   Well, for the last twenty years I have been keeping tabs on definitions of spirituality.  So far I’ve gotten fifty-six. Now, relax, I’m not going to recite them.  They come from various sources including this and other pulpits, a UU pamphlet on it that I have with me, UU World and mainstream media and books on the subject. The phenomenon is growing exponentially and is getting lots of press (E.g. see the September 5, 2005 Newsweek for a huge article on it).  One book begins by saying it is difficult to define; another that it is impossible. 

 

Here are a few samples; spirituality is:

 

listening to Mozart; walking in the woods; watching a sunset; going home; connectivity; completion; humanity’s song; the awakening within; catching your breath; deep feeling of simplicity and fulfillment; correspondences; wholeness; openheartedness; hospitality; specific way of living some particular aspect of the Gospel; the impulse to seek communion with the Divine;  an inner sense of something greater than oneself, etc[8].

 

You get the idea; it is a special feeling, (or feelings) that you can define any way you want and relate to any activity or experience you want.  Needless to say, none of these so-called definitions are found in the dictionary.   Dictionaries are apparently passé, primitive or too doctrinaire for those in the know. Completely forgotten is the fact that dictionaries help us understand what other people are saying.

 

Of course, those “definitions” and dozens more are from people who are sincerely moved to care about their own inner being, their relationship with life, humanity, the earth and the universe.  Their interests are varied, sometimes contradictory, but they are for the most part heartfelt and not monetary.

 

Others, such as the Institute for Management Excellence, a large consulting firm, has a program called Spirituality in the Workplace using seven principles: Creativity, Communication, Respect, Vision, Partnership, Energy and Flexibility.  These concepts are in turn all defined in detail in their literature. My favorite is Creativity:

 

“Creativity includes the use of color, laughter and freedom to enhance productivity.  Creativity is fun.  When people enjoy what they do, they work much harder.  That’s the power of spirituality.”[9]

 

So, you see that allowing a word to be used so loosely or broadly opens the door to all kinds of abuses.[10]

 

Now, I submit to you that every single one of these “definitions” of certain activities or experiences can be defined using other, more precise language.  Listening to Mozart, for instance, is an aesthetic experience which is shared universally by anybody with artistic sentiment.  Calling it spirituality only obfuscates its universality.  If I am right, why are so many different kinds of people riding on this band wagon and singing the word spirituality?

 

Well, I don’t know.  On the other hand, Rabbi Irwin Katsof, in his book Powerful Prayers, (1999), co-authored with Larry King, and informs us, “We are hard-wired for spirituality”.  I’ve seen him interviewed several times, and—forgive me—I kept hoping for the little child from the “Emperor’s New Clothes” to ask: but how do you know?  What evidence in our synapses or elsewhere can we see making those connections?  Then I searched for some neurologist who might venture an opinion about our wiring, but given our current clime of PC, they probably all decided to keep spending their time saving peoples lives rather than comment on this unprovable assertion and risk being picketed—maybe by three billion people. 

 

I kept thinking that René Descartes had postulated that the soul was located in the pineal gland, but I believe that has been disproved.

 

On a more serious plane, I do recall, however, that William James, who knew quite a bit about psychology, and who is still being read by some very smart people in the field, says that using the word spirituality leads inexorably to the soul, which leads to immortality which leads to eternity. In short, it seems to me that it is indeed for many people a code word for the soul and for a divine dimension to our world. 

 

One psychiatrist, associated for many years with Johns Hopkins, ventured a deeper assessment than the good Rabbi:

 

Before the development of consciousness our needs for food, warmth and cuddling were met mysteriously.  The feelings associated with these early events persist.  The mind finds it difficult to deal with abstract concepts, so that when something, either helpful or harmful occurs, we try to conjure up beings to whom we can assign responsibility for these happenings. Our rational selves try to rein in our imaginings, but the remembrances of early satisfactions combined with the allure of concrete images sets up a conflict in our thinking.  Spirituality is one attempt to solve this dilemma.

 

The good Doctor continues:

 

The concept of Spirituality includes or is related to the feeling of awe, beauty and longing.  Awe arises in the presence of something greater than ourselves, powerful and often threatening. The old feeling emerges in the need to propitiate the power behind the awesome event. The aversion toward abstractions leads us to personify the power and set up rituals for addressing it[11].

 

This strikes me as a much more cogent analysis that is a lot more plausible and convincing than facile statements like “We are hard-wired for spirituality.”

 

Whatever the origins of these numerous and disparate feelings, when we choose the term spirituality to describe them, we are lumping ourselves in with a very large group whose core beliefs we may not share. They’re possibly thinking of angels and harps, fallen angels and demons, Judgment Day, damnation or eternal bliss. In short, spirituality has so many possible meanings now that it communicates nothing precise.  To me, it’s as if we were told that every object in this room was a thingamajig.  You pick the one you like; examine its qualities and work up a nice description of it...  Then, tomorrow, someone asks each of us separately to describe our thingamajig to a stranger. We would each describe our favorite, and the descriptions would vary drastically from one to the other, but since we all referred to our object as a thingamajig, the stranger would soon conclude either that a thingamajig meant almost anything imaginable or that we were all deranged. Clearly communication would break down. Some philosopher might come forth and suggest that we return to our room and try to give a different name to each object. Wow! What a nice, reasonable idea.

 

[Of course, we had better be whispering since the PC word police might be listening and interpret the word thingamajig as a racial slur.  This is particularly true should we mention that we decided to exclude the juice, which we keep in the kitchen, because we might read in the paper the next day that we excluded Jews and kept them in the kitchen...  Such an article would certainly put a chink in our armor of tolerance—oh, sorry, my Oriental friends, I slipped up again. We would of course apologize and admit that we should have known better, so we don’t expect to get off Scott free—oh, sorry Alan, and you other Scots.  We promise not to do it again, but the word police ask how they can be sure we will keep our word.  We respond that UU’s never renege on a promise….Oh! sorry.  Well, you get the point. In any case, PC and spirituality are related in many ways, but most obviously in that future politicians will have to include it among the litany of concepts that they dasent criticize or question if they want to get elected.

 

To conclude this section on spirituality, kindly let me make a very important point: no one can reasonably deny that human nature has a dimension that is not physical or corporeal. Blaise Pascal said it very well, for all of us: “Le coeur ha ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas (The heart has its reasons that reason does not know.)” If fact, I believe that the most important things in our lives, the things we will die for, are usually not physical, cannot be seen or touched, and they create passions that reason cannot explain: freedom, patriotism, honor, love, to mention a few.  The capacity for these and other feelings lie deep within us and are an essential part of our nature, they make us human and different from the beasts.

 

But to make the leap that all such concepts are part of something called spirituality, I believe, lacks intellectual rigor and can have ill effects. For instance, if someone wants to get elected in today’s clime, they can win a lot of ground by simply saying they are a deeply spiritual person. Conveniently, for the politician, each person in the audience understands what is meant positively but in his/her own way.  Yet, there is no little child saying, “What exactly do you mean, and how is that going to make our lives better if you get elected?  So, it seems to me that when we use this word, caution is in order. We might want to consider saying about it what Saint Augustine said about grace:

 

“What is Grace? I know until you ask me.  When you ask me I do not know.”

 

It strikes me that just as in the case for PC, there might be a legitimate basis behind spirituality, but it is running amok[12].

 

If we persist in using it, we may feel we are communicating with the outside world, but that is an illusion that may well end up causing us to lose our identity in this engulfing, amorphous tide.  Where we will be then? I wish I knew.

 

Moving now the final section, superstition;  I would like to begin with a quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

 

Sure, He that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and godlike reason

To fust in us unused. [Shakespeare, Hamlet] 4.4:39

 

As you will recall, fust means grow moldy.  So Hamlet is saying that God did not give us the power of reason that it should go unused.  I’m not sure I use mine enough, especially when it comes to sacred superstitions I encounter every time I turn around. 

 

I define superstition, forgive me, as in Webster’s: to wit: a belief or notion not based on reason or knowledge.  That is, a belief in something that is unprovable and untestable. 

 

Let’s take for example the superstition, or mythology, if you prefer, of Zeus. Now one of his feats was turning into a white bull.  He absconded with and subsequently raped Europa.  This event is celebrated in many famous paintings; some called the Rape of Europa, the latest done in 1868 by Gustave Moreau is called discreetly, “Europa and the bull”.  Now, Zeus was so in love with Europa, that after he had had three children by her, he memorialized his love by creating the Constellation, Taurus, right there in the night sky for all to see.

 

Now, alas, in spite of all this ancient and overwhelming evidence of its veracity, no one believes this superstition/myth today.  But, suppose a billion people did?  What’s a good UU to do?  Probably, I don’t really know, I would do what I do in the face of the many other superstition/myths around: I would be tolerant, figuring, as in the fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes: what harm can it do?

 

Well, I’ve been wondering about this for a long time. One such superstition is belief in angels.  As a child I was very open to this belief, as I went to a grammar school called Saint Raphael’s, who was an archangel actually.  I also enjoyed, and still enjoy I might add, movies like It’s a Wonderful Life, and so forth.  But then the angel craze set in: movies, books and TV shows galore exploiting and making lots of money from this belief.  I had long since decided that there was no rational proof of angels, so I stopped believing it them, but said nothing. I put them more or less in the same category as the Easter Bunny.

 

Then one day back in 1993 something happened down in Fort Lauderdale that really set me thinking that these superstitions are not so harmless after all.  The local papers reported a very sad tragedy.  A six-year-old girl named Jackie Johnson committed suicide by standing in front of a train because she wanted to become an angel and be with her mother in heaven. 

 

I place this tragedy at the doorstep of those who teach those superstitions. The irony is that if there really are angels and heaven, her action was perfectly logical.  Just like the early Christians in Rome, as Gibbon attests over and over, they wanted death as martyrs, they begged for it.  She had that kind of faith.  Yet, in all the commentary that went on for days, nobody ever even raised the question of responsibility.  The superstition is sacrosanct, beyond discussion. Exonerated. 

 

Of course, if that child had killed herself because some crazed drug addict had told her it was a way to the greatest high in the world, he would have been strung up on the nearest light pole.  In that case reason would have prevailed, and the person responsible would have paid the price.

 

Outlandish superstitions are responsible for the deaths of  people every day, and alas, no little child comes forth to point out the obvious. Before I move to where you know I am going, just to undersocre the point that these effects do not just happen to children who have not yet reached, what is sometime called the “age of reason,”  let me mention a case in 1995 just two years after Jackie Johnson.  Right here in Florida, a man named Steven McRae parked his car with the exhaust coming in so that he and his two teen-age sons could join their dead mother in heaven.  They died, he lived and was sentenced to life in prison.  He was punished yes, but did anyone dare question or point out the absurdity and irrationality of his wanting to actualize his mythology on his innocent children? Of course not[13].

 

Now, let’s suppose that on the front seat of his car instead of his Bible the father had a copy of some other book, say The Sorrows of Young Werther. Does anybody think the press would have ignored this?  Do you think you would find any book by Goethe in Florida libraries today?  The “Family Values” crowd would have been out in waves to protect our children from that “abominable book.” As for the book that really caused the tragedy: mum’s the word.

 

Now, am I in any way suggesting that our belief in reason would require that we advocate banning of any book?  Absolutely not.  What I am suggesting is that maybe our belief in reason might make us a little less acquiescent when others are banning books or tying to make us acquiesce in accepting rational absurdities.  I don’t think very many of us are doing that yet.

 

For example, in 1957 some family values people in California succeeded in getting “Little Red Riding Hood” banned because she was carrying a bottle of wine in her picnic basket.  Apparently because of nascent PC, nobody really protested this action.  Now, what I think might have served the cause of fairness, would have been for someone to come forth in the tradition of the child in the Emperor’s New Clothes and perhaps concoct a little fable for the book banners. It might go like this:

 

Child to the banners: “Say, I think that associating children and wine is a bad idea.  I know of another book you might want to ban as well. In it, a young girl plies her father with wine to where he doesn’t know what’s going on, then has sex with him. The next day she suggests her older sister do the same.  They both end up pregnant.”

 

Banners: “Well, where can we find a copy of that book?”

 

“That’s easy,” says the child, “There’s a copy in the dresser of every motel and hotel room next to the phone book.”

 

Of course we know that that sacred book will never be banned.  The banners would bring in experts to explain that Lot’s daughters thought they were the last people on earth, and they wanted to preserve their “father’s seed,” etc.  In other words, they would want due process and a chance to present reasoned arguments.  Maybe,  (long live Socrates!) they might then be amenable to some arguments about the absurdity of leaping from a picture of a bottle of wine in a  picnic basket to the debauching of children.  Even if the book still got banned, at least we would have the pleasure of knowing we have not let our reason fust.  As Tom Paine says,  “The most formidable weapon against errors of any kind is reason.”

 

Today, the fundamentalists are standing up and shouting superstitions more and more, and I wish we were doing more to calm the waters.

 

Recently for instance, Billy Graham’s son, Rev. Franklin Graham, declared that Katrina was punishment for the homosexuality and other sins of New Orleans. Now, I knew he was wrong, because the week before several rabbis in Israel had explained that Katrina was God’s vengeance for the fact that President Bush had supported the recent uprooting of the Israeli settlers.

 

Now, I’m not here to bash Franklin Graham or anybody, but in defense of reason I wish somebody would respond to his superstitious nonsense, or at least ask why such unprovable, untestable assertions get so much press time.  I don’t think we are out in front on any of this.  Robert Ingersol, where are you?[14]

 

I gave these examples, that are mostly innocuous compared to the really big superstitions and myths, that I’m sure you have in mind: those that are found in sacrosanct books, that are actually causing people to kill and be killed every day.  I wanted to start small asking some questions and save the biggies for another day.

 

Returning to UU’s: Around 1820, Thomas Jefferson said that he thought that Unitarians would become the dominant religion in America in twenty years--no doubt because of their love or reason, rejection of superstition and of  untestable and unproven allegations be they theological or social. Maybe he thought that our love of logic and reason would appeal to people. Since then,  world population has increased six times; we are about the same. So I ask:  Are we maintaining our ideals; are we making it known that we reject these superstitions; do we respond to the increasing onslaughts and affronts to reason and logic calmly but publicly and consistently?  Apart from our social action efforts, does anybody even know we’re here?  As you know, when someone does show up, they frequently say: I’ve been a UU all my life, but didn’t know it.  So our message is positive.  We just need to get it out.

 

In case someone thinks I’m talking about advertising, before concluding, with your kind indulgence I would like to end this part with a question: Is there anybody in America who doesn’t know that Tom Cruse is a Scientologist?

 

William Faulkner, in his novel, The Sound and the Fury¸ at one point writes a very interesting, sixteen-hundred-word sentence.  Inspired by that feat, I thought I would try to write my view of where I think we are in just one sentence.  Relax, I’m just a struggling essayist, so mine is much shorter.

 

[Here…We Are.]

 

HERE, in this hallowed place, not as it were, on some haughty mountain or desolate or isolated plateau arbitrarily defined by accidents of circumstance or geography, but, rather as a ship serving as a welcoming beacon that forms a freely chosen refuge of reason and tolerance, delicately and precariously anchored against the remorseless rush of time to a solid bedrock of love, which perpetually nourishes us through its seemingly warm, powerful life-giving force, that imbues and renews our spirit as it beckons us to meet and be together--reassured in the knowledge that we are not alone as we nurture and develop our own humanity and hone our ideals--while, outside, outside, the Philistines howl their dogmas to  the wind and beat their drums of discord in their zealous righteousness, in part because they are puzzled and frightened by our liberal traditions and ideals, including humanist, Enlightenment, and even more ancient ideals which transcend the frenzied, chaotic political or pious passions of the moment, and speak to the enduring values that distinguish us from the savage beasts, and yet, enable us to understand, reach out to, and love, even them, WE ARE.

 

 Thank you.

 

Presented to the NCUU, Nov. 27, 2005

                                                                                                                                --Joe Wetzel

 

 

 

[12] Long ago, Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899) had an interesting opinion in his “Essay on Spirituality” (1891): “If there is an abused word in our language, it is spirituality. . . .    It has been repeated over and over for several hundred years by pious pretenders and snivelers as though it belonged exclusively to them.”  If things have changed since his day, I believe it is for the worse.