Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Unitarian Universalism

  • A Patriotic Faith

    The sermon below was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, California, at the 10:30 a.m. service. The sermon text below is a reading text; the actual sermon contained improvisation and extemporaneous remarks. Sermon copyright (c) 2011 Daniel Harper.

    Happy Independence Day weekend! Aren’t you glad that Independence Day is on a Monday this year, so we get a three day weekend? It’s a three day weekend, and all of us came to church anyway! But then, I like having that peaceful moment in the Sunday morning service at least once a week.

    Because tomorrow is Independence Day, I would like to reflect with you on the relationship between patriotism and liberal religion.

    When it comes to Independence Day, you probably know that quite a few of the people who were deeply involved in the Revolutionary War belonged to Unitarian or Universalist churches. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, belonged to a Universalist church. John and Abigail Adams belonged to a Unitarian church, and John was first vice-president and second president of the new country. John Murray, minister of the Universalist church in Gloucester, Massachusetts, served as a military chaplain, and so did Dr. Samuel West, minister of the church in Dartmouth, Massachusetts that later became Unitarian. We Unitarians and Universalists were deeply involved in the struggle for American independence. And for some of them, liberal religion and political independence were definitely connected. Dr. Samuel West, in one prominent example, preached sermons in which he justified the Revolution from a liberal religious point of view.

    And the connection between patriotism and liberal religion continued up through the middle of the twentieth century. Many Unitarian and Universalist churches used to display framed honor rolls of all the people who saw active service in the Second World War. Up until 1993, we had “American, the Beautiful” in our hymnal; I remember singing it in Sunday services when I was a boy. Even today, a good number of our Unitarian Universalist congregations display American flags in their main meeting space, often alongside the United Nations flag; for we have always been concerned with international community, as well as with our own nation.

    Yet these days we increasingly shy away from any mention of patriotism in our congregations. Too often these days, patriotism is reduced to an overly simplistic conception based on an unquestioning acceptance of political slogans. But as religious liberals, we can never be unquestioning, and our liberal religious conception of patriotism is a complex affair; it cannot be reduced to a political sound bite. With this in mind, I’d like to tell you three stories of three different notions of liberal religious patriotism.

     

    First let me tell you about Robert Gould Shaw. He was born in Boston in 1837 to a wealthy family. His parents were Francis George Shaw and Sarah Sturgis; they had inherited money from Francis’s father, and Francis was involved in business and philanthropy. The family moved to West Roxbury, near the famous Brook Farm community, when little Robert was five, and then to Staten Island, where the family helped found the Unitarian church, when Robert was in his teens. The Shaws were abolitionists, and they may have been active in the Underground Railroad, helping escaping slaves to flee to the northern states.

    Given the wealth and influence of Shaw’s family, he surely could have avoided military service during the Civil War. But he chose to enlist. On April 19, 1861, Shaw joined the private Seventh New York Volunteer Militia. when that short-lived unit disbanded, he then was commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the Second Massachusetts Volunteers (Infantry), on May 28, 1861. He became First Lieutenant on July 8, 1861, and Captain, August 10, 1862. While with the Second Massachusetts, he took part in several battles, including the battle of Antietam. In late 1862, he was offered the chance to command a regiment made up entirely of free African Americans from the north. He became Colonel of Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry on April 17, 1863.

    A small volume titled “Memoirs of the War of ’61,” published in 1920 by George H. Ellis, who was the printer for Unitarian tracts and books, tells the story of Shaw’s military service through excerpts from his letters, and I will read those excerpts relating to the 54th Regiment, for they show his courage, and his growing realization that the men under his command were indeed his equals; for even though he was an abolitionist, like most white people of his day, he thought African Americans his inferiors:

    [Upon accepting command of the 54th Regiment, February 5th, 1862. Shaw wrote:] “There is great prejudice against it — at any rate I shan’t be frightened out of it by unpopularity.” March 25: “The intelligence of the men is a great surprise to me.” March 30: “The mustering officer who was here to-day is a Virginian, and he always thought it was a great joke to make soldiers of [blacks] but he tells me now that he has never mustered in so fine a set of men, though about 20,000 have passed through his hands since September. The skeptics need only to come out here to be converted.” Morris Island, July 18: “We are in General Strong’s brigade. We came up here last night in a very heavy rain. Fort Wagner is being heavily bombarded. We are not far from it. We hear nothing but praise for the Fifty-fourth on all hands.”

    Shaw was offered the post of greatest danger and greatest honor in the assault on Fort Wagner, and accepted immediately. Here is a contemporary account of what happened, written from South Carolina on July 22 someone attached to General Strong:

    “The troops looked worn and weary; had been without tents during the pelting rains of the two previous nights. When they came within six hundred yards of Fort Wagner they formed in line of battle, the Colonel heading the first and the Major the second battalion. With the Sixth Connecticut and Ninth Maine and others they remained half an hour. Then the order for ‘charge’ was given. The regiment marched at quick, then at double-quick time. When about one hundred yards from the Fort the rebel musketry opened with such terrible fire that for an instant the first battalion hesitated; but only for an instant, for Colonel Shaw, springing to the front and waving his sword, shouted, ‘Forward, Fifty-fourth!’ and with another cheer and shout they rushed through the ditch and gained the parapet on the right. Colonel Shaw was one of the first to scale the walls. He stood erect to urge forward his men, and while shouting for them to press on was shot dead and fell into the fort.”

    Thinking to humiliate Shaw and his family, the Confederate Army, shocked that a white man would serve with African Americans, buried Shaw in a common grave with his soldiers. But his parents were pleased by this, and wrote: “We can imagine no holier place than that in which he lies, among his brave and devoted followers, nor wish for him better company — what a body-guard he has!” (1)

    The story of Robert Gould Shaw is a classic story of patriotism. He gave his life in service of his country; more to the point, he gave his life while serving the highest ideals of his country, the ideals of freedom and equality for all persons. And in this case, the ideals of his country, and the ideals of his Unitarian faith, were clearly aligned. It is a classic story of patriotism, yet even so, Shaw’s patriotism questioned a dominant notion of his day, that African Americans could not serve with distinction in the military. So you see, this is a story of how a religious liberal pushed the boundaries of patriotism.

     

    Now I’d like to tell you about a different kind of patriotism. This is the story of Rev. William E. Short of Palo Alto.

    The first Unitarian church in Palo Alto was formally organized in 1906, and lasted through until 1934. In 1916, the congregation called Rev. William E. Short, recently graduated from divinity school, to serve as their minister. Short was a pacifist, and it is said that he found a good deal of quiet support for his pacifism among kindred souls in the Palo Alto church of that time.

    Short resigned as minister of the Palo Alto church in 1917, and became the Chairman of the Northern California branch of the People’s Council. The People’s Council was a nationwide pacifist organization that opposed the military draft. This was in the days when it was almost impossible to conscientiously object to military service on religious grounds, and I am inclined to understand Short’s service with the People’s Council as a kind of patriotic act: he was upholding the fundamental religious principle of religious tolerance on which the United States was founded. As a matter of incidental interest, the chair of the national organization was Scott Nearing, later known as the co-author of the back-to-the-land book Living the Good Life; William Short served on the national executive committee with Nearing.

    By late 1917, the United States had entered the war, and Major General Ralph Van Deman of the Army decided something had to be done about the People’s Council in general, and more specifically something had to be done about William Short’s activities. The People’s Council headquarters in San Francisco were raided twice — no search warrant was issued — and when that failed to turn up anything, Van Deman decided to bring William Short under military jurisdiction for draft evasion. Van Deman and the military lawyers successfully argued that once he was no longer serving a local church, Short was no longer a minister, and therefore was no longer exempt from the draft. He was taken into military custody in September 1918, interrogated, imprisoned, and eventually released, after the war was over, in early 1919. (2)

    The story of Rev. William E. Short is not what you’d call a classic story of patriotism. He actively the military establishment, and did so at great personal cost. Yet his was a form of liberal religious patriotism. He was holding his country accountable to its highest ideals. He challenged involuntary military service based on his understanding of the ideals of his Unitarian faith.

    His was not a blind unquestioning patriotism, he certainly pushed the boundaries of his day and age; nevertheless, Short was indeed a patriot. He did what he thought was best for his country. Many people disagreed with him; the American Unitarian Association itself disagreed with him. Yet that is the uncomfortable thing about patriotism: there is never a perfect consensus about what constitutes a patriotic act. Not everyone thought that Robert Gould Shaw did the right thing be commanding an all-black regiment. There has never been, and never will be, a perfectly clear definition of patriotism with which all Americans agree.

     

    The third story I have to tell you is short and simple. There have always been Unitarian Universalists serving in the military, but over the past decade or so, we’ve seen a number of Unitarian Universalists choose to serve their country by becoming military chaplains. When I was in seminary a decade ago, military recruiters were actively pursuing Unitarian Universalist seminarians; I was told that the military loved Unitarian Universalist chaplains because we knew how to minister to a wide variety of beliefs, and we don’t proselytize. And now there are several Unitarian Universalist military chaplains who are not only performing the usual duties of a chaplain, but also quietly, and by their very presence, challenging the norm of evangelical Christianity that has come to dominate the U.S. military establishment in recent years.

    That’s the story. Now I’m going to engage in some theological reflection with you. Recently, I met and have been corresponding with Rev. Seanan Holland. He is a Major in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, currently based in southern California, and preparing with his unit to be shipped to combat duty. In one email message, he outlined a Unitarian Universalist theological grounding of military service, and he has given me permission to read it to you:

    “In striving to come to a coherent universalist theology that captures both our hopes for a peaceful world and the reality that at the moment it is not, I see war as an organic reorganization within the web of life. It is a reorganization mediated by humans mostly through our shortcomings/dysfunctions. What this means to those of us who participate in war is that we are witnesses to the sorest of humanity’s dysfunctions — war. Warriors possess a knowledge of an aspect of humanity that most do not want to carry and hopefully won’t ever have to. However the nature of war is such that those of us who have pledged to protect our country don’t always get to choose which conflict to be in and we have very limited power as activists while we are in the military. Those who have more power as activists (many UUs) typically (and understandably) do not possess an intimate knowledge of warfare. This is a sketch of my theological grounding that warriors and non-warriors really have to work together on redeeming conflict — hopefully before it happens.”

    I’d like to read you that last phrase once again: “warriors and non-warriors really have to work together on redeeming conflict — hopefully before it happens.” If we follow this suggestion, we will be drawing on one of the great strengths of our liberal religious tradition. We know there are no simple answers to anything. We know that we have to continually question our assumptions. We know that no one person ever has complete access to universal truth. We also know that conflict is inevitable in human affairs, and that we must find ways to resolve or manage conflict as quickly as possible, before it leads to open warfare.

    For us religious liberals, patriotism is not a simple matter; like the rest of life, it is complicated, and we’ll never all agree on one single interpretation of it. Yet we know we share certain liberal religious ideals that relate directly to patriotism: the dream of a peaceful world where no person is exploited or subjugated; the dream of life in balance; the dream of a more harmonious existence for all humanity. As religious liberals, our patriotism will be colored by these liberal religious ideals. And so on this Independence Day weekend, may we dedicate ourselves once again to an earth made fair, and all her people free.

     

    Notes:

    (1) Quoted in Seeking the One Great Remedy: Francis George Shaw and Nineteenth-century Reform, by Lorien Foote (2003: Ohio University Press). Other information about Robert Gould Shaw from Memoirs of the war of ’61 (1920; the online biography of Shaw at the UU Historical Society Web site; and other online and printed sources.

    (2) Information about Short from: Roy Talbert, Negative Intelligence: The Army and the American Left, 1917-1941, (Univ. of Mississippi Press, 2008), p. 75-77. And: Ex parte Short. District Court, N. D. California, First Division. September 5, 1918. No. 16417. The Federal Reporter, Volume 253, 1919, p. 839.

    (3) Personal communication from Rev. Seanan Holland, Major, U.S. Marine Corps, 29 June 2011.

  • Another kind of good neighbor

    The sermon below was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, California, at the 9:30 and 11:00 a.m. services. The sermon text below is a reading text; the actual sermon contained improvisation and extemporaneous remarks. Sermon copyright (c) 2010 Daniel Harper.

    The following brief story was allegedly told by the wandering rabbi and political radical, Jesus of Nazareth:

    “There was a man going from Jerusalem down to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him up, and went off, leaving him for dead. Now by coincidence a priest was going down that road; when he caught sight of him, he went out of his way to avoid him. In the same way, when a Levite came to the place, he took one look at him and crossed the road to avoid him. But this Samaritan who was traveling that was came to where he was and was moved by pity at the sight of him. He went up to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring olive oil and wine on them. He hoisted him up onto his own animal, brought him to an inn, and looked after him. The next day he took out two silver coins, which he gave to the innkeeper, and said, “Look after him, and on my way back I’ll reimburse you for any extra expense you have had. Which of these three, in your opinion, acted like a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” [Luke 10.30-36, Scholars Version translation.]

    I read you that story by way of introducing you to Dana Greeley, who in May, 1961 — fifty years ago this coming May — became the first president of the newly formed Unitarian Universalist Association. I knew Dana Greeley — not well, but I knew him — because in 1970, he became the minister in my home congregation in Concord, Massachusetts. And Dana Greeley was, to my way of thinking, an example of a good neighbor, a Good Samaritan. I mean this not in the popular sense, in which a Good Samaritan is a smarmy conventional do-gooder who makes the rest of us look bad. Dana Greeley was not smarmy, and he was a Unitarian Universalist, which means he was not conventional. So I had better explain to you what I mean when I say that Dana Greeley was an unconventional, but not smarmy, Good Samaritan.

     

    To begin with, Dana Greeley was an internationalist. He understood that everyone in the world was his neighbor. And he worked hard to make connections around the world.

    And when I say around the world, I mean it; I grew up thinking it was normal for ministers to travel all around the world. He was in New Delhi, India, in 1982 for the New Delhi Peace March. He was in Hiroshima for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb. In 1962, he visited Albert Schweitzer at his hospital in Gabon in Africa. He was an invited observer at the Second Vatican Council, and sat within thirty feet of Pope John when the council was convened. He met with President John F. Kennedy at the White House, and with United Nations secretary U Thant at U.N. headquarters. Nor did he only travel overseas: he was one of the ministers who walked arm in arm with Martin Luther King on the streets of Selma, Alabama, in 1965 during the struggle for civil rights in America. William Schulz, who later became president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, and then the president of Amnesty International, said, “What Dana did for Unitarian Universalism was to convince us that we were worthy of being taken seriously as a world-class faith.” [The Premise and the Promise, Warren Ross (Boston: Skinner House), 2001, p. 31.]

    Why did he do all this traveling? In a sermon delivered in October, 1972, Greeley said, “World brotherhood and world government are the realities that must more and more be recognized.” [Forward through the Ages, Concord, Mass: First Parish, 1986.] “Brotherhood” is a word we don’t use much any more; today we might say all human beings are relatives, but the truth behind the phrase remains the same. Greeley was an internationalist because he really believed that all human beings are siblings, in the best possible sense. He not only believed this, he lived it out in his life. He was a naturally gregarious person who could talk with anyone, and so it was the most natural thing for him to know people all around the world and to build friendships and relationships that over time would naturally lead towards closer ties between human beings. Dana Greeley was the kind of Good Samaritan who understood the whole world to be his neighbor.

     

    While he understood the whole world to be his neighborhood, Dana Greeley also made the effort to create good neighborhoods in his immediate vicinity. Another way to say this is to say that he was a good institutionalist.

    That word “institutionalist” is not widely used in our contemporary society, so let me define it for you. A good institutionalist is someone who is adept at building up and maintaining strong human institutions. A good institutionalist may be the kind of person who is good at serving on committees and boards, and who is good at filling elected offices. A good institutionalist may also be someone who works behind the scenes in informal ways to strengthen our various institutions.

    People who are good institutionalists are essential to a healthy democracy. Of course democracies need committed citizens who participate directly in government. But democracies also depend upon citizens who participate in voluntary associations, that is, those associations outside of government and business in which we are free to mingle with other citizens. The democratic right to free association is crucial for democracies because it is in voluntary associations — groups like the League of Women Voters and citizen’s groups and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto — where democracy really takes hold. It is in voluntary associations that most of us learn and practice the skills of democracy: public speaking; public listening; leadership and followership; learning to lose gracefully and learning to win gracefully; setting and reaching goals (goals, not profits); discussing big issues with other people and learning to trust in the democratic process to get us ever closer to an ideal world.

    Dana Greeley once wrote, “I have always like people and have put a sizable measure of confidence in people” [25 Beacon Street, Boston: Skinner House, 1973, p. 69]. I watched Dana Greeley act as a good institutionalist in my home congregation when he was minister there. He strengthened the democratic structures in that congregation by engaging as many people as possible in the decision-making process. When I was a member of the high school youth group of that congregation, I remember that he made sure to invite youth members to planning retreats; to his way of thinking, people should learn the skills of democracy at a young age. He went further than that: he engaged both his opponents and his supporters in the decision-making process. He always had confidence in the people around him, and they tended to live up to the confidence he placed in them.

    Having confidence in people happens to be a fine way to build democratic institutions. When you understand everyone to be your neighbor, and when you treat your neighbor the way you’d like to be treated, not only do your neighbors tend to treat you the way you’d like to be treated, and not only is everyone happier, but you also tend to get things done. In the sixteen years Dana Greeley was minister at my home congregation, the Sunday morning attendance more than quadrupled.

     

    More narrowly, Greeley also knew his neighbors to be the people who come together each Sunday morning in Unitarian Universalist congregations. He once said, “My mother jollied me always, and challenged me, by reminding me that I was born on a Sunday morning at eleven o’clock…. I admit that eleven o’clock on Sunday is the time of the week I like best.” [25 Beacon Street, p. 22] He said this, I believe, not for selfish reasons, not because he happened to like that time of week, but because he knew how many other people value that time of the week.

    Consider for a moment all the reasons we have for coming to Unitarian Universalist services on a Sunday morning. I remember John (not his real name) who was a meat-cutter at a supermarket, and who liked to go to his Unitarian Universalist church because the sermon gave him something to think about all week long while he was working; and, he said, that made him a better person. Mariana told me that if she missed the worship service on Sunday morning, she felt off balance all the rest of the week; Unitarian Universalist just made her feel good. Steve, who grew up Jewish, said he decided to join a Unitarian Universalist congregation because Sunday morning services helped him map out a moral course in his job as the owner of a large construction company. Then there was Irene, who often missed the service on Sunday morning because she was out in the social hall chatting with her cronies; but Sunday mornings was the center of her community, and she wouldn’t miss it for the world.

    And without going into specifics, there are the people who come here carrying a burden of grief, or illness, or despair, or many other burdens; you can come here, and have a measure of peace for just a moment while you are held in the love of this religious community. That kind of thing happens all the time in this very room, at this very time on Sunday morning; I have seen it, and I have talked to people who have experienced it. Someone who really needs it can come in here and receive a measure of comfort, maybe even a measure of healing from the love that is in this room.

    We come here on Sunday mornings, and each one of us, simply by showing up, is acting as a good neighbor. Just by showing up, we are part of a human community that provides comfort and peace and maybe healing to others. Just by showing up, your presence here supports those of us who come here to map out a moral course for the week; your presence supports those who come here to find some balance in their lives; your presence makes you a part of an intellectual community. And of course your presence here is of great importance to all those who are your friends, and who maybe come here to talk with you.

    Dana Greeley was on to something when he considered Sunday mornings spent in with a congregation to be the best time of the week. This is a community of good neighbors, a community that offers peace, maybe healing, intellectual stimulation, time to map out a moral course for oneself.

     

    I began this sermon with the well-known story of the Good Samaritan. At the end of that story, the wandering rabbi and political radical Jesus of Nazareth asks his audience a question designed to get them thinking about what it means to be a good neighbor. There are many answers to that question, which is why we still tell this story some two thousand years after it was allegedly first told. A good neighbor might be someone who sees the whole world as their neighborhood. A good neighbor might be someone who builds strong democratic institutions. A good neighbor might be someone who shows up here, week after week, just to be a part of this human community.

    This coming May we will be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Unitarian Universalist Association. As we look ahead to that celebration, I would submit to you that Dana Greeley represents, in these ways, some of the best aspects of who we are as Unitarian Universalists. We are good neighbors: good world citizens, good neighbors in this congregation, good neighbors who have confidence in humanity.

  • Children’s Religious Education Sunday

    The homily below was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, California, at the 9:30 and 11:00 worship services. As usual, the text below is a reading text; the actual homily contained improvisation and extemporaneous remarks. Homily copyright (c) 2010 Daniel Harper.

    Reading

    “Putting in the Seed”

    You come to fetch me from my work tonight
    When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see
    If I can leave off burying the white
    Soft petals from the apple tree.
    (Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
    Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea)
    And go along with you ere you lose sight
    Of what you came for and become like me,
    Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
    How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
    On through the watching for that early birth
    When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
    The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
    Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

    From Mountain Interval, 1914, by Robert Frost.

    Story

    The story was “Starry Time” from The Moral Intelligence of Children, Robert Coles, pp. 13-15. Due to copyright restrictions, it is not included here.

    Homily — “The Children of This Church” — Dan

    I’ll start by telling you a story. When Theodore Parker, the great Unitarian minister, was a little boy, not yet four years old, his father took him out somewhere on the family farm; then his father sent him home again. As little Theodore walked home, he passed a small pool of water, and there was a turtle sunning itself in the water. Little Theodore had a stick in his hand, and he raised it up to strike the turtle — but suddenly he heard a voice saying, “It is wrong.” Theodore went home, and told his mother what had happened. He asked her what was the voice he had heard, and she told him that some people call it your conscience, and some people call it the voice of God. Either way, the most important thing to do is to listen hard to that voice, for, she said, that voice will always tell you the correct thing to do; but if you neglect that voice, it will gradually fade away, leaving you with no guidance at all.

    I told this story to some children this fall, and afterwards they wanted to talk about it. One child tentatively wondered aloud what “conscience” meant, but at almost the same time a girl asked about God. I said what I though Theodore Parker meant by God, and then she asked if we Unitarian Universalists believe in God. I said I did not believe God was supposed to be a man with long white hair and a beard sitting on a cloud; but if we meant something else by “God,” then some of us do believe in God. This answer obviously did not satisfy this girl; she wanted an answer! “How many of us believe in God?” I said. “Raise your hands if you do.” Less than half of us raised our hands. “How many of us don’t believe in God?” I said. Fewer of us raised our hands. “And now, how many people aren’t sure?” I said: still fewer, about of third of us.

    The girl who asked the question still wasn’t entirely happy with my answer. “There’s another way to answer this question if you’re a kid,” I said. “You can ask your parents whether or not they believe in God, and then you can say, ‘I’m going to believe what you believe for now, and when I get old enough, I’ll make up my own mind.” This satisfied her, for the moment.

    I remembered that someone had started to ask what “conscience” meant. Amy, our parish minister, was visiting class that day, so I asked Amy to define conscience for us, which she did. One boy had his own definition: Conscience is just plain old common sense. I said that many people think that conscience seems to come from inside, while for some people the voice of God would come from outside you; but for some of us, conscience also comes from outside, because conscience comes from other people. This made sense to the children. One child mentioned that we are influenced by what other people think of us, another child said we learn how to act from other people.

    This kind of conversation is fairly common in this church, at least in my experience. The children in our church are quite thoughtful about moral issues, not just once in a while, but often. They may not always act on their values; of course, adults have the same problem. But they think and reflect, they wonder about things they’re not sure of, and they are willing to accept ambiguity.

    One Sunday, I listened as Melissa van Arsdel told a Sunday school class the story of Queen Esther from the Bible, which is the story that underlies the Jewish holiday of Purim. It’s a long story, so I can’t retell it now — look it up on the Web if you’re curious.

    Melissa told the story very well, and the children listened attentively. At the end of the story, Melissa asked the children what they thought of the story. One girl said she thought there might be a lesson to the story, and Melissa asked her what she thought that lesson might be. She gave her idea: that we should be nice to people. Other children said what they thought: that Haman got what he deserved, that you have to be careful whom you trust, and so on. Then one girl spoke up passionately, but not very articulately, saying the story meant we should stick up for our ideals. Melissa said the story could indeed mean all these things; in fact, it does mean all these things.

    Then another girl asked if the story were true. When it comes to Bible stories, that’s the question we all ask, isn’t it? Some of the older children, two boys in particular, were quite certain it wasn’t a true story. The girl who had spoken so passionately earlier said decisively that it was a myth. The discussion grew a little chaotic, but the children understood that while this wasn’t factual history the way we know it today, nevertheless it contained truth — or as some of the children put it, there was a “lesson,” or a moral, in it. Even though we live in a world of binary oppositions, a world of black-and-white choices, our children can and do grasp subtleties of truth and meaning; they are willing to live with ambiguity, and to talk about the most difficult issues you can imagine, if we give them the space to do so. And looking back at my teaching notes from this past year, I see that I have had conversations with children on topics like death, and suicide, and how it’s scary to grow up, and what do you do when others betray you. Never once did we come to a final answer in any of these conversations.

    Life, death, betrayal, growing older — I’m still struggling with these questions myself! — obviously I don’t have final answers to pass along to our kids. Instead of final answers, let me speak in metaphors. What I say might be truth, or a myth, or a fairy tale, or it might have a lesson in it.

    All we can do — all any of us adults can do — is invite children to plant seeds with us. When we’re done putting in the seeds, we can stay there in the garden and watch as the seedlings shoulder their way up, shedding earth crumbs, always growing up towards the light. And if we stay in the garden long enough, the warm night will come, and the moon will rise, and one by one the stars will begin to shine above us, until the whole sky is a blaze of glory; and we will know that we are a part of it all.