Honorable Mention Winner (one of two) 2003 Richard Borden Sermon Award

"Nothing is Black and White"

The Rev. Katie Lee Crane
First Parish of Sudbury, Massachusetts

I was going to talk about racial issues today.

I was, that is, until someone reminded me that today is the 21st anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

I was going to talk about how race is a social construction.

I was, that is, until I thought of today's anniversary in the context of the recent shootings at two local women's health centers.

I was going to make the point that skin color is never truly black or truly white and neither are the issues or the choices.

I was, that is, until I met a woman who works where the shootings took place and I stared at the horror of that event through the eyes of one who might have been harmed or even killed.

I was reluctant to change my topic.

I was afraid. Afraid, because it could have been me. It could have been me aborted. It could have been me having to choose what to do about an unplanned and untimely pregnancy. It could have been me, unable to have a child of my own, aching to love the child another woman aborted. It could have been me shot down as an escort or a receptionist at a so-called abortion clinic. And, as much as I don't want to think about it, it could have been me who pulled the trigger.

I was afraid because I know the people in this story. They are my mother, my sisters, my roommates and friends. They are you and your lover, your grandmothers, daughters and aunts. They are our neighbors, our classmates, our colleagues. I was afraid because I knew there would be people here today who have used the services of one of these clinics. I knew there would be people here who find abortion an unacceptable choice under any circumstances and others who argue vehemently for the right to make that choice.

I was afraid, but I had to speak out.

Still, I didn't know what to say. Is this a sermon about abortion? About violence? About women's issues? About oppression? About freedom of speech?

No. It's about how nothing is black and white - about how every significant issue, every agonizing choice is complex. There's never an all or nothing, on/off, yes/no answer. Sometimes, in fact, there's no answer at all. In this morning's reading, Verlyn Klinkenborg suggests using the clinic parking lot as metaphor. (Verlyn Klinkenborg, "Violent Certainties," Harpers, January 1995.) "My job," he says, "is to make it possible for you to enter the parking lot, not to tell you what to do when you get there."

So what is the parking lot? Is it the arena where issues are debated, where tough choices are discussed? Is it the forum where people who hold different points of view can voice opinions and demonstrate peacefully? Where discussion and debate can be civil and nonviolent? That's what I think it should be, given the perspective from my side of the fence.

But for those on the other side of the fence, the parking lot has become a battleground where they feel compelled to harass, intimidate and, occasionally, use physical violence. Like me, they feel they have to speak out.

How do these people - the extreme fringe of the anti-abortion movement - differ from occasional anti-abortion protesters? Or, from people who oppose abortion but do not protest? Or, for that matter, from the patients and the providers themselves?

What makes them different from you and me?

Klinkenborg remembers what he calls the "same grim purpose in the faces of anti-war protesters," some of whom might have thrown themselves in front of cars, climbed onto cars, shackled themselves beneath cars and super-glued their hands together - all popular tactics among today's anti-abortion demonstrators. Instead, the 1970 anti-war protesters of his Berkeley days found it more persuasive to throw rocks at cops and overturn cars owned by the Atomic Energy Commission and the US Air Force.

Just different tactics, though. Same grim purpose.

What he concludes is that the extremists have "a ferocious, alienating certainty." There is a look, he says, that the human face assumes when the mind stops considering variables - a look of zealotry. Then, the only questions to be answered are tactical ones.

Some see this zealotry as seductive. It creates a sense of community, a common bond, a sense of being a persecuted minority. Even one clinic employee admitted it would be easier to have your questions answered for you, to have everything explained, and to have a source of authority that would settle everything.

But nothing is black and white.

It's easy to feel compassion for the families of James Barrett and John Britton, the escort and physician ambushed in the parking lot and killed in Pensacola, Florida in 1994. Barrett was a member of the Pensacola UU church. He was one of dozens of UUs who serve as clinic escorts around the country.

Tears come freely when I think of Leanne Nichols and Shannon Lawney, and of Antonio Hernandez or Jane Sauer - all victims of the recent shootings. Leanne was about to be married. Jane grew up in the Bedford (MA) UU church. Shannon's funeral filled the Arlington Street Church, where the UU minister, the Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie, likened their deaths to the 1963 deaths of the four Black girls murdered as they attended Sunday school in Birmingham, Alabama.

Yes, it's easy to feel grief for the victims of these crimes. It's quite another matter to feel anything but rage and outrage at Paul Hill and John Salvi, the men accused of murdering them.

Yet our Unitarian Universalist principles state that "we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person." They do not read: we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person except Paul Hill or John Salvi.

Nothing is black and white. Not the color of our skin. Not the issues. Not the choices. Not the reasons.

The Boston Globe paints 22-year-old Salvi as a troubled and lonely man with erratic and unpredictable behavior. They suggest he had an overbearing mother and an indifferent father - a big, burly, tough guy of a father who disapproved of his son's decision to become a hairdresser because "it's a woman's kind of thing." They report that the three had a "tumultuous and bitter relationship."

Another report characterizes these same parents as a faithful Catholic family, not particularly active on the issue of abortion. His mother was a church choir director; "John Boy," as they called Salvi in his youth, was an altar boy until he was 13. Maybe not a perfect mother and father, but the best they knew how to be - now totally baffled by their son's actions.

Nothing is black and white.

The Governor is quoted as saying: "[Salvi] is nothing other than a terrorist.." An Episcopal priest accuses the religious right of creating a climate that makes shootings like these inevitable because of "their violent rhetoric and [habit of] demonizing the opposition."

Both make valid and important points. But we who are outraged must be cautious that we do not respond with violent rhetoric of our own. We must not demonize the opposition. However heinous his crime, however disturbed and dangerous he is, Salvi is also a man, a human being, a son, a classmate, a neighbor..

We affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

Klinkenborg is right. Abortion is the pretext. We could just as easily be talking today about the death penalty. Or about gay rights. Or racial justice. Nuclear power plans. School prayer. Domestic violence.

Nothing is black and white.

This is really about how we voice our opinions in the parking lot - and how we keep that parking lot open for everybody who chooses to express an opinion civilly and nonviolently. It's about how we live our convictions. How we remember that no one has the answer; how we challenge ourselves to listen to other points of view; and how we never, never forget to consider the variables.

Nothing is black and white.

What, then, do we do? You and me. This congregation? How do we respond? In one article, the author suggested that the worst enemy is not the extremists but the unknowing complacency of the American public. One woman is quoted as saying: "Americans don't want to think about [abortion."] And to fight for its existence means to have to think about it, to get involved with it, to know it exists and how it operates. The majority of people, she says, "just want to know it's there if they need it."

Thinking about that quote, I can substitute a lot of different words for abortion. Most Americans don't want to think about racism. Or about ageism, or sexism, or heterosexism, or about the way these "isms" play out in the parking lot everyday.

I know what she's saying. My response to changing my sermon topic reflects some of the "unknowing complacency" she was criticizing. I had other things on my mind. It felt too overwhelming. It seemed like nothing I could do would make a difference.

I felt paralyzed - stuck -trying to find a middle ground between complacency and zealotry. I felt caught between my fear of having no answers and the seduction of that "ferocious certainty" where no answers are necessary.

That's why I like the parking lot metaphor. My job - at least one of my jobs - is to make it possible for people who want to debate issues civilly and nonviolently to have access to the parking lot, not to tell them what to do when they get there.

That's something I do feel passionate about, something I will act to defend. I want to stop the violence. I want to stop the intimidation and harassment. I don't want to stop the discussion and debate. I want to challenge my complacency and I want to be vigilant about not demonizing those who hold opinions dramatically different from my own.

When I feel paralyzed, when I feel that my small effort is hopeless in the face of so much need, I am reminded of the words of Dorothy Day that opened today's service: "no one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless; there is too much work to do." She says simply: "We must take one step at a time."

When I feel stuck, I am encouraged the Marge Piercy poem, "The Low Road," that we read together. Alone, there's not a lot I can do. But two people or three, or a dozen can make a difference. "It goes on one at a time," she reminds us, "it starts when you care to act.when you say we and each day you mean one more."

Speaking out against the Vietnam war in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. said: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." It was these words that finally moved him to, in his words, "break the betrayal of my own silences and speak from the burnings of my own heart."

I plead with you today to break your own silences and speak from the burnings of your hearts. I urge you to fight for open access to that parking lot, asking you to do whatever you can to preserve an open forum for discussing the issues. It doesn't matter which issues. They're all important. Act on the issues that mean something to you. Do what you can do. Write letters. Lick stamps. Join groups. Volunteer for projects. Create support groups. Raise money. Educate others. Demonstrate peacefully. And, if you pray, pray fervently. It all makes a difference.

It starts when you care to act - one at a time - when you do it again after they say no, when you say We and each day you mean one more.

Just remember this when you act: Nothing is black and white.

Borden Award

Unitarian Universalist Association
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