Dan Harper | Sermons

  • Question and response sermon

    This service was conducted by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford.

    Readings

    Before the first reading this morning, I should a word or two about what a “Question and Response Sermon” is.

    In our religious tradition, what holds us together is not a creed, but a covenant, a set of voluntary agreements and promises we make to one another. In other words, our religious tradition emphasizes relationship, not belief.

    This state of affairs is confusing to some people — How, they ask, can you have a religion if you don’t believe in anything? One possible response to this question is that we think it’s better to concentrate on the promises that hold us together, rather than abstract beliefs which would more than likely drive us apart. Another possible response to this question is that of course we do believe in things — life and love and the power of truth. And another possible response to this question is that we believe in the power of questions — and when the glue that holds us together is relationships, we are freed to ask difficult and interesting questions; and the responses to those questions often lead us to engage in further questioning together.

    The first reading this morning comes from Henry Thoreau’s book Walden, the opening sentences of the chapter titled “The Pond in Winter.”

    “After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what — how — when — where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight. The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask.”

    So writes Henry Thoreau, telling us either that questions may not be as important as we think, or that a sufficient answer to any question may be had by simply looking reality in the face.

    …

    Before I get to the second reading, let me say another word or two about this Question and Response Sermon. My sermons are usually written in response to something someone in this congregation has said to me. But in a question-and-response sermon, the relationship is a little more direct. You ask questions about religion, and I respond to them right here and now. You will note that I said I will respond to your questions, but I won’t pretend to answer them, for when it comes to religion I haven’t yet found a final answer to anything. If I don’t get to respond to all the questions this morning, I promise that I will provide written responses in the summer newsletters. And I’m sure some of the questions will be so meaty and interesting that I will want to address them more fully in sermon sometime in the next twelve months.

    The second reading this morning is one of the readings I used for last year’s Question and Response sermon, but it was just so good I can’t resist using it again. This is from one of Mark Twain’s speeches, given at a 1909 banquet honoring one of his friends, Mr. H. H. Rogers. I should tell you that at the time of this speech, a half crown would have been worth about sixty cents. Mark Twain said:

    “[Others have said] Mr. Rogers is full of practical wisdom, and he is. It is intimated here that he is a very ingenious man, and he is a very competent financier. Maybe he is now, but it was not always so. I know lots of private things in his life which people don’t know, and I know how he started; and it was not a very good start. I could have done better myself. The first time he crossed the Atlantic he had just made the first little strike in oil, and he was so young he did not like to ask questions. He did not like to appear ignorant…. On board the ship they were betting on the run of the ship, betting a couple of shillings, or half a crown, and they proposed that this youth from the oil regions should bet on the run of the ship. He did not like to ask what a half-crown was, and he didn’t know; but rather than be ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on the run of the ship, and in bed he could not sleep. He wondered if he could afford that outlay in case he lost. He kept wondering over it, and said to himself: ‘A king’s crown must be worth $20,000, so half a crown would cost $10,000.’ He could not afford to bet away $10,000 on the run of the ship, so he went up to the stakeholder and gave him $150 to let him off.”

    Thus Mark Twain proves that we should ask questions….

    The Question and Response Sermon was entirely extemporaneous, and so cannot be reproduced here.

  • Memorial Day

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading this morning is by Dana Greeley, who was my Unitarian Universalist minister when I was in my teens and twenties. Lest you think this is a commentary on the current political situation, I must tell you that this was written thirty-two years ago:

    “War is insanity in this day and age. It is total destructiveness; it is total immorality; it is total waste. The end of war should be our goal today. Negotiation should be our commitment. We ourselves ought to be both wiser and more ethical than our fathers, but we are not….

    “I covet for America not the fear of the nations but a stronger moral leadership, and not the hatred but the respect of humanity. You may disagree with me, of course; but I make a plea, as strongly as I can, both for the strengthening of the United Nations and for the abolition of war.

    “How can we broaden and deepen our own lives? How can we make ourselves more world-oriented, and make the life of our church and our community broader and deeper and more world-oriented? We are the citizens of America! We are America itself, and if we are giving and forgiving and magnanimous and resolute and peaceful, America will be giving and forgiving and magnanimous and resolute and peaceful.

    “If we can overcome anger and violence, America will overcome anger and violence. If we can believe and demonstrate that love is better than hate, America will do away with hatred and with arrogance and fear. If we can be persuaded that right makes might more than might makes right, then America will rely less on its… weapons, and even alter its policies. Do we believe in truth and goodwill and the oneness of humanity more than we believe in falsehood and retaliation and war?…”

    The second reading this morning is a poem by Thomas Hardy titled “The Son’s Portrait.” It should be noted that to an Englishman like Hardy, a “lumber-shop” does not sell wood, a “lumber-shop” sells junk, or more politely, antiques:

    I walked the streets of a market town,
        And came to a lumber-shop,
    Which I had known ere I met the frown
            Of fate and fortune,
        And habit led me to stop.

    In burrowing mid this chattel and that,
        High, low, or edgewise thrown,
    I lit upon something lying flat —
            A fly-specked portrait,
        Framed. ‘Twas my dead son’s own.

    “That photo? . . . A lady — I know not whence —
        Sold it me, Ma’am, one day,
    With more. You can have it for eighteen-pence:
            The picture’s nothing;
        It’s but for the frame you pay.”

    He had given it her in their heyday shine,
        When she wedded him, long her wooer:
    And then he was sent to the front-trench-line,
            And fell there fighting;
        And she took a new bridegroom to her.

    I bought the gift she had held so light,
        And buried it — as ’twere he. —
    Well, well! Such things are trifling, quite,
            But when one’s lonely
        How cruel they can be!

    Sermon

    Tomorrow is Memorial Day; or, to use the original name, Decoration Day. It began as a day to remember the Union soldiers who had died during the Civil War, who had died to end the horrendous institution of slavery. And it is instructive for us today to recall how, exactly, Memorial Day began.

    According to David Blight, a professor of history and black studies at Yale University, Memorial Day was first celebrated in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865. The city of Charleston had been evacuated, and the only non-combatants remaining in the city were African Americans who could not get out. The last months of the Civil War saw Charleston bombarded by Union gunboats; and the Confederate Army had established a prison camp on the site of a race course. Two hundred and fifty-seven Union soldiers died in that prison camp, and their bodies were unceremoniously dumped into a mass grave as the Confederate army retreated.

    In April, 1865, the African Americans remaining in Charleston decided that those dead Union soldiers deserved a proper burial. And so they worked to create a proper gravesite for the Union dead buried in that mass grave. African American carpenters built a good, solid fence around the new grave yard. African American laborers worked to convert the old race course into a restful and beautiful place. At last, they disinterred the bodies of the dead Union soldiers, and placed them respectfully into individual graves.

    By the end of April, the work was done. To officially open the new grave yard, the African American community organized a parade. Some ten thousand people showed up to march in that parade, beginning with African American schoolchildren who were finally being taught in free school, and ordinary adult African American citizens. White Americans were also invited to join the parade; invitations were extended to some nearby Union regiments, and to a number of white abolitionists. All these people gathered in the new graveyard. They listened to preachers. They honored the dead. They sang songs like “America the Beautiful,” and “John Brown’s Body,” and old spirituals. And at last they settled down to picnic lunches, while they watched the Union regiments drilling in what used to be the infield of the old race course.

    That’s how the very first Memorial Day was celebrated. Professor David Blight says, “This was the first Memorial Day. Black Charlestonians had given birth to an American tradition. By their labor, their words, their songs, and their solemn parade of roses and lilacs and marching feet on their former masters’ race course, they had created the Independence Day of the Second American Revolution.” [Commonplace, vol. 1, no. 4, July, 2001; American Antiquarian Society/ Florida State University History Department.]

    I tell you this story by way of introducing the idea that Memorial Day, or Decoration Day, is more than just a long weekend to begin the official summer season, more than just a convenient excuse for a three-day weekend. And I tell you this story by way of demonstrating to you that Memorial Day celebrations should not be ceded to the self-proclaimed patriots who glorify war. Memorial Day is a day to show respect for those who have died in battle; it is a day to show proper respect for graves and gravesites. Memorial Day is not a military holiday; it is a day organized by ordinary citizens. So it is that Memorial Day has become more than a military holiday; it has become a day to remember and to honor all our dead.

    Our society has a tendency to gloss over unpleasant details. We are relentlessly optimistic. It is good to be optimistic, but it is not so good to be relentlessly optimistic to the point where we rewrite history to take out all the unpleasant parts. Our society calls the Second World War the “Good War,” optimistically glossing over the bad bits like all the ordinary citizens who were killed and wounded. Our society mentions the First World War, conveniently forgetting that while it was called “The War To End All Wars,” it was really only the beginning of a century of wars. We think back with a certain fondness to the good old Civil War, passing lightly over the unpleasant fact that while the Civil War ended chattel slavery, it did not end the oppression and exploitation of African Americans. In other words, we have a tendency to conveniently forget unpleasant facts.

    We’re not unlike the unnamed war widow in the poem by Thomas Hardy. She had had a long engagement with a young man; at last they wed;

        “And then he was sent to the front-trench-line,
            And fell there fighting;
        And she took a new bridegroom to her.”

    That war widow found a new husband, which is understandable. Perhaps it wasn’t understandable to the young man’s mother, but we can understand the need to get on with life. But when that war widow sold off her husbands’ photograph, it sounds as if she was trying to forget inconvenient facts. Yes, we can understand the impulse that made her sell the photograph. It can sometimes seem easier to push the dead out of our memories, to get rid of everything that reminds us of them, so that we don’t have to think about anyone who has died. In particular, we don’t want to have to think about anyone who has died in a war. If we have to remember those who died in war, then we might also have to remember that we bear at least some responsibility for all the wars our country wages. It’s easier to just sell off the old photographs, so that we don’t have to remember. And yet, when we hear about the war widow who did just that, in Thomas Hardy’s poem, I don’t feel comfortable with the idea. It sounds a little bit cold-blooded. I would have liked it better if she had tucked the photograph up in the attic, or at least respectfully burned it.

    On the other hand, what are we to make of the narrator of the poem, the woman who is the mother of the young man who died in the front-trench-lines? She buys the portrait of her dead son, and that we can fully understand; I know I would want to rescue it from a junk shop myself. But then to bury the portrait; that seems to place an undue importance on an unimportant thing. I don’t feel comfortable with that idea, either.

    Too often, our celebrations of Memorial Day go to one or the other of these extremes. At one extreme, many people completely ignore the true meaning of Memorial Day. Of course celebration and picnicking ought to be a part of any observance of Memorial Day. Back in May, 1865, the citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, observed the very first Memorial Day with celebration and picnicking. They celebrated the end of war, and more than that they celebrated the freedom of African Americans. They had picnics, too. But they didn’t ignore the deeper meaning of the day; rather, they balanced the celebration and the picnicking with a consciousness of the importance of the holiday.

    At the other extreme, we find a small number of people who use Memorial Day to glorify war, glorify militarism, and gloss over the unpleasant realities of past and present wars. It should be clear that these people pervert the meaning of Memorial Day as much as the people who completely ignore the deeper meaning of the day. Memorial Day isn’t a day to glorify war, it is a day to recognize and honor those persons who died in war; originally, it was a day to honor gravesites, and to remember and honor the individuals who have died.

    I want to propose a middle ground between these two extremes. Memorial Day isn’t just a frivolous holiday, a day to go on vacation and spend money; and Memorial Day isn’t a day to glorify war. It’s a day to honor the dead. We honor those who died in military service, but Memorial Day has grown larger than that. It’s a day to honor the sacrifices of those who fought and worked for the greater good.

    That should not be a controversial proposal to adopt, though it will be a difficult proposal to adopt. We face so much pressure to think of Memorial Day merely as nothing more than the holiday which is the official start of summertime, that it will take some effort to remember to set aside time to honor our dead. All of us here are honoring the true intent of Memorial Day, because by coming here to church we are treating Memorial Day as more than just another three day weekend.

    And I would like to propose that one way we can honor our dead, in this age of increasing intensity in warfare, is to commit ourselves to putting an end to war. In our first reading this morning, Dana Greeley wrote, “War is insanity in this day and age. It is total destructiveness; it is total immorality; it is total waste. The end of war should be our goal today.” Perhaps the best way to honor our dead soldiers is to end warfare altogether.

    For at least a couple of thousand years, people have argued about whether we should expend our efforts trying to end war completely; or whether we should accept that war is inevitable, and that we should instead work to place acceptable limits on war. Followers of Jesus of Nazareth, followers of Gotama Buddha, followers of those religious prophets who proclaim that our highest moral purpose should be love of our fellow human beings — many of these people have maintained that we must put an end to war. But other high-minded people have taken the pragmatic view that we have not yet ended war, we are not likely to end war, and therefore we have to work within those realistic limits.

    The crucial point that Dana Greeley made back in 1975 was that the stakes are now so high that we must end war, not only for moral reasons, but for pragmatic reasons. In the days of the Civil War, you could argue that there was no other option but to go to war; if we wanted to move our country beyond our dependence on slavery, war seemed inevitable. The costs of the Civil War, the bloodiest war our country has ever fought in, the costs were very high indeed. But today, war has become incredibly more costly, incredibly more destructive. The invention of atomic bombs and missiles which can carry those bombs to any point on the globe now mean that one war could conceivably end all or most human life on Earth. Even without atomic weaponry, the wars of the past three decades or so have involved a huge loss of life among non-combatants; the careful limitations on war that the pragmatists had worked so hard to implement are no longer being observed. Technology has also led to the development of additional weapons of mass destruction — the chemical weapons which were used in the First World War, the new biological and radioactive weapons of mass destruction — and these weapons of mass destruction also upset the pragmatists’ careful limitations on war. In today’s world, the costs of war have gotten so high that I believe we can no longer consider war to be an acceptable answer.

    I’m sure some of you will disagree with my views. Further, I’m quite aware that I don’t have the final answer to the problem of warfare. But this I believe:– that as the technology of war has evolved, so we must evolve our moral beings. We are awed by all the high technology our country has been able to use to prosecute the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should be awed far more by our growing ability to negotiate non-military solutions to world conflicts. Rather than expending so much time and money on improving our military technology, the more important task is to continue to improve our moral beings, with the goal of evolving so far that we no longer need to use our military technology.

    Therefore, I believe that a proper observance of Memorial Day would have us going back to the original observance of Memorial Day, back in 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina. Let us recall what about that original observance of Memorial Day we should continue in our own observances.

    The African American originators of Memorial Day had a parade with military regiments — but in that parade, the military regiments were outnumbered by the ordinary citizens. Such a parade represents our ideals of the democracy for which all our wars have been fought. In a democracy, we honor the ordinary citizen above all; just as we honor the rule of law above military might. And such a parade would also represent our religious ideals. In our religious tradition, we honor the inherent worth and dignity of each person more than we honor the mass mind of the military regiment; and we honor the forces of love and respect which bind us together more than we honor military might.

    Those originators of Memorial Day spent time honoring their dead. We should continue to do this today. We can honor those who die in military service, even if we happen to disagree with the principles of the war in which they were killed. And we can honor those people who may have fought for truth and justice using non-violent means, people like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Ghandi. We can honor all our dead on Memorial Day, reflecting on how that which was good in them can live on in us.

    Those originators of Memorial Day spent part of their day listening to preaching and political speeches. I believe that we should continue this part of the original Memorial Day. The art of public speaking, and the art of listening to public speaking, are necessary for democracy. Democracy does not proceed by having one person, or small group of persons, imposing their will on everyone else. Democracy thrives when we can debate, openly and in public and face-to-face, the crucial issues of our day. Democracy thrives when we can listen to others and learn their wants and needs, when we can see them as people just like ourselves. Whereas sitting in front of the television set, conducting opinion polls, and expensive advertisements tear at the fabric of democracy. And from a religious point of view, we consider the art of speaking and of listening to be necessary to the practice of our religion. Our religion does not proceed by having one person, or small group of persons, imposing their will on everyone else. Our religion thrives when we can talk openly and in person about the most important moral and ethical and religious issues. Our religion thrives when we listen to one another and learn to love one another as we love ourselves. In our religious tradition, sermons are the center of our worship services, because we believe so strongly in the power of the word to change us for the better.

    And finally, those originators of Memorial Day, back in 1865, ended with a picnic. We should continue that tradition today. After we honor our dead, we should celebrate life. After we listen to formal speeches and sermons, we should indulge in the joy of casual conversation over a shared meal. That first Memorial Day was a time to honor the dead, but it was also a time to celebrate the return of peace. At last, the citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, no longer lived in fear of war and violence and destruction. They recognized that it was a time of celebration.

    As it was at that first Memorial Day picnic, so may it be today. Even though we remain entangled in a war that is seemingly without end, we work towards ending warfare. We can celebrate democracy, even as we commit ourselves to re-energizing our democratic principles and practices. We can celebrate our hard-won freedoms, even as we commit ourselves to ongoing improvement of our moral beings that will allow us to build an even better world in the years to come.

  • Mom Spirituality

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

    Distribution of flowers

    “We are, in our collective capacities, the imperfect divinity that must make the world over into the kind of abiding place that we know it ought to be.” So it is that on this Mother’s Day, we recognize all those here this morning who identify as women. Very often in our world, it is the mothers, and all women, who have quietly worked to make over the world into the kind of abiding place that we know it ought to be. I don’t mean to denigrate the efforts of those of us who identify ourselves as men — but mothers, and all women, seem to get less credit than is their due. As a small step in correcting that lack of recognition, this morning we give all women a flower, a small, fragile object of beauty in recognition of the work women have done, and are doing, behind the scenes everywhere.

    If you identify as a woman, please raise your hand — and one of the children from the Sunday school will bring a flower to you where you are seated….

    Readings

    The first reading this morning is is a poem by Grace Paley called “On Mother’s Day”:

    I went out walking
    in the old neighborhood

    Look! more trees on the block
    forget-me-nots all around them
    ivy   lantana shining
    and geraniums in the window

    Twenty years ago
    it was believed that the roots of trees
    would insert themselves into gas lines
    then fall   poisoned on houses and children

    or tap the city’s water pipes
    or starved for nitrogen   obstruct the sewers

    In those days in the afternoon I floated
    by ferry to Hoboken or Staten Island
    then pushed the babies in their carriages
    along the river wall   observing Manhattan
    See Manhattan I cried   New York!
    even at sunset it doesn’t shine
    but stands in fire   charcoal to the waist

    But this Sunday afternoon on Mother’s Day
    I walked west   and came to Hudson Street   tri-colored flags
    were flying over old oak furniture for sale
    brass bedsteads   copper pots and vases
    by the pound from India

    Suddenly before my eyes   twenty-two transvestites
    in joyous parade stuffed pillows
    under their lovely gowns
    and entered a restaurant
    under a sign which said   All Pregnant Mothers Free

    I watched them place napkins over their bellies
    and accept coffee and zabaglione

    I am especially open to sadness and hilarity
    since my father died as a child
    one week ago in this his ninetieth year

    …

    The second reading this morning is slightly abridged, very short story by Grace Paley, titled “Politics.”

    “A group of mothers from our neighborhood went downtown to the Board of Estimate Hearing and sang a song. They had contributed the facts and the tunes, but the idea for that kind of political action came from the clever head of a media man floating on the ebbtide of our lower west side culture because of the housing shortage. He was from the far middle plains and loved our well-known tribal organization. He said it was the coming thing. Oh, how he loved our old moldy pot New York.

    “…the first mother stood up… when the clerk called her name. She smiled, said excuse me, jammed past the knees of her neighbors and walked proudly down the aisle of the hearing room. Then she sang, according to some sad melody learned in her mother’s kitchen, the following lament requesting better playground facilities….

        ”  ‘will someone please put a high fence up
        around the children’s playground
        they are playing a game and have only
        one more year of childhood. won’t the city come…
        to keep the bums and
        the tramps out of the yard they are too
        little now to have the old men … feeling their
        knees … can’t the cardinal
        keep all these creeps out’

    “She bowed her head and stepped back modestly to allow the recitative for which all the women rose, wherever in the hearing room they happened to be. They said a lovely statement in chorus:

        ”  ‘The junkies with smiles can be stopped by intelligent reorganization of government functions….’

    “No one on the Board of Estimate, including the mayor, was unimpressed. After the reiteration of the fifth singer, all the officials said so, murmuring ah and oh in a kind of startled arpeggio round lasting maybe three minutes. The comptroller, who was a famous financial nag, said, “Yes yes yes, in this case, yes, a high 16.8 fence can be put up at once, can be expedited, why not…” Then and there, he picked up the phone and called Parks, Traffic and Child Welfare. All were agreeable when they heard his strict voice and temperate language. By noon the next day, the fence was up.

    “Later that night, an hour or so past moonlight, a young Tactical Patrol Force cop snipped a good-sized hole in the fence for two reasons. His first reason was public: The Big Brothers, a baseball team of young priests who absolutely required exercise, always played at night. They needed entrance and egress. His other reason was personal: There were eleven bats locked up in the locker room. These were, to his little group, an esoteric essential. He had, in fact, already gathered them into his arms like stalks of pussywillow and loaded them into a waiting paddy wagon. He had returned for half-a-dozen catcher’s mitts, when a young woman reporter from the Lower West Side Sun noticed him in the locker room.

    “She asked, because she was trained in the disciplines of curiosity followed by intelligent inquiry, what he was doing there. He replied, ‘A police force stripped of its power and shorn by vengeful politicians of the respect due it from the citizenry will arm itself as best is can.’ He had a copy of Camus’s The Rebel in his inside pocket which he showed her for identification purposes….”

    [Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, pp. 137 ff.]

    Sermon

    It’s Mothers Day today. Mothers Day has become a day when children honor their mothers by giving them gifts or taking them out for a meal; and for some of us who don’t have mothers, Mothers Day has become a day to privately mourn the mother we lost or the mother we never had.

    It is worth remembering that Mothers Day began very differently, in the late 19th C., as “Mothers Peace Day.” It was originated by Julia Ward Howe as a day for mothers to advocate for peace. Julia Ward Howe was a well-known poet and hymnodist in her day, and she was also a Unitarian. Let me read you a few excerpts from the original Mothers Peace Day proclamation:

    “Arise, then, women of this day!…

    “Say firmly: ‘We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.’…

    “In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”

    That’s part of what Julia Ward Howe wrote in her Mothers Peace Day proclamation. So you see, at its beginning Mothers Day was not about mothers passively receiving gifts, it was about mothers actively promoting peace so their children wouldn’t get killed in a war. Mothers Day was a day when mothers were encouraged to get political — this in a day when women were not even allowed to vote! It was a kind of early feminist holiday.

    I’m not saying we should go back to that early version of Mothers Day. If you do have a mother, I’m not trying to talk you out of giving your mom a gift or taking her out to dinner, or giving her a card. And if you are a mother, I hope you are pampered by your children. At the same time, let’s take just a moment and think about the old-fashioned Mothers Day, a day when mothers could band together and take action, and make the world a better place for their children.

    In the second reading this morning, the very short story by Grace Paley, we heard a about how a group of mothers who were living in the middle of the city. They grew concerned about the playground where they took their children to play. Junkies were using the playground, sick old men would come around and leer at the children, and bums and tramps would hang out there. Now we all know that junkies, bums, tramps, and the like are human beings too; at the same time we want to keep them away from the children who are trying to play on the playground.

    The mothers talk over this problem among themselves. They all know that there’s no money in the city budget for such projects, and besides since when did the city ever pay attention to a playground, since when did they ever listen to a bunch of mothers? Then a newcomer to their neighborhood, a media man from the midwest, suggests that they could go to a city hearing a *sing* their request for a fence.

    That’s just what they do — they go down to City Hall, to a hearing of the Board of Estimates, and they sing their request:

    will someone please put a high fence up
    around the children’s playground…
    won’t the city come…
    to keep the bums and
    the tramps out of the yard…

    And then my favorite part, the repeated chorus:

    The junkies with smiles can be stopped by intelligent reorganization of government functions.

    The mayor and the comptroller and the other men on the Board of Estimates listen to the song, they say ah and oh, and they immediately authorize a fence around the playground, which is erected the next day.

    The mothers have triumphed politically! Well, they triumph politically, but not for long, because that very night a cop (of all people) comes along and cuts a hole in the fence so he and his buddies can have access to the baseball bats in the playground locker room.

    I had to leave off the very end of the story, where the cop and the reporter wind up having two children together, and a new round of problems begins. There’s a lot of poetic truth in this story, isn’t there? Humanity being what we are, as soon as one problem is solved, new problems arise, generation after generation.

    Mothers, simply by virtue of being mothers, find themselves right in the middle of each new round of problems. Partly this happens because mothers tend to find themselves right in the middle of the human lifespan. Mothers often have equal responsibilities both to children and the younger generations, and to parents and the older generations. Of course there are mothers whose parents died young, and mothers who never knew their parents, and so on; but even then, many mothers have older mentors and older friends who stand in for parents, members of an older generation for whom they feel some responsibility. And there are plenty of women who do not have biological children, but who are mothers nonetheless, because they care for younger siblings, or for young protegees, or for other young people.

    Grace Paley’s poem “On Mother’s Day” sums up what it means to be in the middle of the human lifespan. She writes:

    I am especially open to sadness and hilarity
    since my father died as a child
    one week ago in this his ninetieth year

    Mothers are there when babies are born; mothers are there when elders become increasingly dependent and sink into helplessness and death. Not uncommonly, sadness and the hilarity may come at the same time: a mother might witness a child’s first words or a child’s graduation or a child’s wedding, and in the same day she might witness a parent’s illness or death.

    The poem by Grace Paley tells us that mothers inhabit a world where memories of the past and expectations of the future merge with the sad and hilarious present. It seems to me that forces mothers to be flexible and relentless. Mothers have to be relentless: Try to make the world better for the children, and you’ll succeed in one area only to find that there is work to be done in yet another area. You put a fence up to keep the junkies out of the playground, and along comes a cop and cuts a hole through the fence. Mothers have to be flexible: You realize one day that your children grow up and become more self-sufficient, only to realize the next day that your parents and elders are have become increasingly dependent.

    I’ve been thinking about how we can make our churches into places that better support mothers. And I’ve thought of at least two things that churches could do that might help support the spirituality of mothers, or “mom spirituality.” First of all, a church can support mothers who need time to find beauty. Second, a church can help build community.

    I’ll start by talking about beauty. Beauty is all around us. Problem is, many of us are too busy to take the time to notice it. I don’t know about you, but I work well over forty hours a week, I try to volunteer for some causes that mean something to me, I try to keep up with my spouse and family, so this past week I had a couple of twelve hour days and hardly any time to enjoy the beautiful spring weather. That’s my life, and I’ve got it easy — my partner and I don’t have children. Most of the mothers I know are far busier than I am: job, volunteer work, plus taking care of kids, and in many households doing the majority of the housework. If a woman is that busy, when will she find time to just sit and appreciate the world?

    Ideally, a church should offer a little bit of time each week when a mother can come and sit and just be, just have a moment to appreciate the beauty of the world. It may only be a moment, because some mothers teach Sunday school, and other mothers have substantial volunteer responsibilities here at church. One of our goals for worship services is to try to provide moments of concentrated spirituality for busy people. If you believe in God or the Goddess, it might be a moment at church when you can talk to God or the Goddess without interruption. If you don’t believe in God, it may be a moment of intense feeling or intense concentration. Different people get their concentrated dose of spirituality in different ways — for some people it comes when lighting a candle, for some when offering up a prayer, for some by sitting with an intentional community, for some when listening to music or poetry — so our worship services have a number of different elements to try to accommodate different people.

    Since ours is a religion based on reason, Unitarian Universalist worship services also include some kind of thoughtful reflection, usually spoken words — a reading, a sermon, poetry, a meditation or prayer — to help us focus our reason, our thoughts, on what is ultimately good and true and beautiful. So our worship services aim to provide a concentrated dose of thoughtful reflection each week.

    (Parenthetically, I will add that I get my concentrated dose of thoughtful spirituality by teaching Sunday school — teaching children makes me think about my religious faith, and I find it to be very healing. That’s why I come in to this church on my Sundays off to teach Sunday school — to get my concentrated dose of religion.)

    Grace Paley’s poem about Mothers Day starts off as she is walking through the old neighborhood, thoughtfully appreciating the beauty there — the trees, the flowers. Then she tells about taking her children on the ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island, and looking back at the rough urban beauty of the city as viewed across the Hudson River. See the city! she says to her babies, How beautiful!

    Just as Grace Paley’s poem helps us to see the beauty in the trees and flowers along a street, the urban beauty of a city, the absurd and hilarious beauty of transvestites getting free pastry and coffee on Mothers Day — so our church can support mothers as they search for beauty in their lives. And if you will be giving flowers to your mother today, or taking her out to eat — or if your children bring you flowers, or make you a card, or cook you a meal — the same kind of thing is taking place: these are all ways that we can nurture a mother’s spirituality, by creating a small space where a mom can a moment of time to appreciate beauty.

    This is the transcendent side of mom spirituality. There is also the very practical, down-to-earth side of mom spirituality. On the practical side, one way we can nurture the “mom spirituality” is to build a church that is a healthy community, and that serves as an incubator for the wider spread of community.

    In Grace Paley’s story, the way the mothers got the fence put up around the playground was that they banded together in a small community. The mothers in that story served as support group for each other, and a group that worked together to get something done. If Grace Paley didn’t happen to be a Jewish atheist, the mothers in her story might have met each other at church — actually, if it were a Unitarian Universalist church where the mothers met it wouldn’t matter if Grace Paley happened to be a Jewish atheist, you can actually find a fair number of Jewish atheists in some Unitarian Universalist congregations, but I digress. The real point is that our churches should be places where you can find people for spiritual support, friendship, or political action. Not only that, our churches should be healthy communities themselves so that they both nurture and set a good example for smaller groups and mini-communities within them.

    This represents the pragmatic, relentlessly practical side of “mom spirituality.” Moms need that dose of concentrated beauty; moms also need practical support from a supportive community. So those of you who have accompanied your mom to church; or those of you who are here because your children told you to go to church; or those of you who are here because you’re trying to set a good example for your mom — you’re doing exactly the right thing on Mothers Day, by helping moms stay connected with a good supportive community.

    Mom spirituality needs both the transcendent, and the pragmatic. We should give Moms flowers, but we should also give them the time to attend Julia Ward Howe’s international congress of women to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, and the great and general interests of peace. It’s important to give Moms time to go down to City Hall to get a fence for around the playground, but it’s equally important to let them write a song to sing when they get to City Hall.

    “Mom spirituality” is both transcendent and practical, both radical and beautiful. May our church provide both moments of transcendent beauty, and a pragmatic sense of community. In doing so, we will feed the souls of mothers; we will feed all our souls; we will transform the world for the better.