Sermons
Monuments to Freedom
Rev. Suzelle Lynch, Kitsap Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, July
14, 2002
This reading was shared during the memorial service for KUUF member
Bob Hudnall last week. It was one of his favorites.
Reading
God's Measure by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
God measures souls by their capacity
For entertaining his best Angel, Love.
Who loveth most is nearest kin to God,
Who is all Love, or Nothing.
He who sits
And looks out on the palpitating world,
And feels his heart swell within it, he is near
His great Creator's standard, though he dwells
Outside the pale of churches, and knows not
A feast-day from a fast-day, or a line
Of Scripture even. What God wants of us
Is that outreaching bigness that ignores
All littleness of aims, or loves, or creeds,
And clasps all Earth and Heaven in its embrace.
Sermon
Freedom. That's what I wish I had been thinking about on the night
of the Fourth of July as I sat in my front yard watching the showers
and flowers of colored sparks bursting and blooming over the Sinclair
Inlet. That's what I probably should have kept my mind on as I listened
to the alcohol-amplified voices of my next-door neighbors colorfully
saluting every colorful explosion. Freedom. It's what makes ours a great
nation, right?
Freedom. As Young and Grace and I were returning from attending the
Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Quebec, we waited in sweltering
silence as security officers at the Toronto airport x-rayed and re-x-rayed
Grace's diaper bag, and then pulled out every wadded-up item in search
of what had looked like a pair of scissors to the camera's eye. We were
miserable, and it was embarrassing to be searched when we knew the bag
was devoid of pointy or metal objects. Yet even as we felt our freedoms
infringed upon, we found ourselves grateful that they took such care.
On the Fourth of July, the professional fireworks we saw seemed much
lower-key than usual. Fears about possible terrorist actions, we speculated;
or perhaps a lower celebration budget due to the economic downturn.
But the fireworks being set off all around us by our greater Bremerton
neighbors seemed much higher-key than usual. In the post-September 11th
world, a more urgent need to celebrate this holiday of freedom was being
realized in awesome pyrotechnics only blocks away in all directions.
In less than two months the wheel of the year will turn to the one-year
anniversary of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon - and the aborted third attack that left a plane crashed into
a Pennsylvania field. Clearly, on that anniversary, some memorial, some
ceremony, will be necessary. During the sabbatical, as I wrestled with
my own artistic process and products, I watched on television the news
reports of the ceremonies commemorating the closing of the World Trade
Center site on May 30.
The lone surviving column, a tortured-looking structure 30 feet high,
was removed from the site and carried in procession past an honor guard.
This marked the end of the recovery effort. That something had been
left standing all that time seemed a miracle. To remove it was necessary,
I'm sure, but felt unkind. The void that was left did not feel peaceful,
but full of ghosts.
What was needed, I wondered then as I wonder now, to help us heal,
to help put those ghosts to rest? Ghosts not only of those who died
and whose remains never were recovered, but also the angry ghosts of
our belief that someone in our government had advance knowledge and
could have, should have stopped the terrorists. Ghosts of our American
invulnerability. Ghosts of our pride. Ghosts of our naiveté.
So many ghosts.
There was much talk about including the column in some kind of memorial
to be placed at the site - but what kind of monument would do? And who
would create it -- an artist, an architect, a committee? Would the Trade
Center be rebuilt or not? Who would decide - the city, the state, the
families of those who died, all the local citizens, all American citizens,
or perhaps the leaseholder of the property?
It's an ongoing process over there in New York. And within our hearts
as well. The September 11th tragedy touched us all - none of us will
forget where we were when we heard about the crashes, or the heavy burden
of fear and grief that lasted for so long afterwards. The weight that
is with us still in many ways, clumping up under the skin of everyday
life, waiting to emerge at the airport security checkpoint or as we
wait for a ferryboat.
Three September 11th memorials have already appeared. On July 4th,
a giant American flag decorated with quilted squares was unveiled in
Union Square park in New York. The organizers of this "September
11th Quilt Project," are collecting 7000 individually decorated
12 inch squares to be sewn into the flag. Anyone can contribute, and
they've received 3,000 squares so far.
The United States Postal Service presented its memorial on the same
day - the "Heroes of 2001 Stamp." It features the famous photograph
(taken by Thomas Franklin) of three firefighters raising the U.S. flag
at Ground Zero. The stamp sells for 45 cents, eight cents of which will
go to the September 11th Victims' Fund. It works just like the breast
cancer stamp that was issued a few years ago.
And another quilt project is in the making. It's called "An American
Quilt," and it aims to memorialize each of the 3,056 people who
died in the September 11th tragedy with a 3 by 6 foot panel - much like
the AIDS Quilt. Four hundred panels are in process, and the first 60
were displayed in New York's Central Park yesterday.
When we are grieving, when we feel lost, art can help us. Viewing art
or making something creative or artful reaches down into us to pull
forth something honest, something real, something healing. I know this
in my bones - it's what I spent a good deal of my sabbatical doing.
And it isn't just visual arts that can heal us: poetry, stories, songs,
music, dance - these, too, can call forth that honest, creative spirit
of hope when it seems all hope is lost. Art can help us believe in life's
goodness and possibilities even when all evidence seems to deny them.
It can help us have faith.
At the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly, I heard one of my colleagues,
the Rev. Shana Goodwin, say these things in a sermon. "Art,"
she said, always has the capacity to change you… to open you to
something within you…." She said, "There has been much
conversation these past nine months about what type of monument, what
work of art to put at ground zero. In the face of such enormous loss
and tremendous grief, what can be created that might offer opportunities
for healing, which might reflect some essential and enduring human reality?
…"
I went to the service where Shana Goodwin was preaching still reeling
from the news of our beloved Bob Hudnall's death, contemplating coming
back to you from sabbatical to shape his memorial service. Remembering
the service we held for another beloved and longtime member of our congregation
Arlee Osborne, just a week before the sabbatical began. Shana Goodwin's
words reminded me that I had a way to cradle myself even with the deep
sadness of these losses, the echoes of other more personal losses, and
the backbeat of the September 11th tragedy, which I had pushed into
unconsciousness.
Her sermon also made me appreciate our Memorial Garden. On Thursday,
when all of our office spaces were occupied and the sanctuary was busy
with rummage sale preparations, I went out to the garden with one of
our members to talk about his life. We remembered Bob together in that
beautiful place, and I could feel the garden connecting us deeply to
the most essential and enduring of human realities - that we are of
the earth, so beautiful and so changeful, and to the Earth's good embrace
we all will return one day.
I don't know that they will build as a monument in New York. I've read
proposals for everything from a library to twisted twin towers with
flashing neon signs bearing the names of world trade capitals, to a
simple, stark, cemetery like Arlington Memorial in DC. Some seem more
relevant, more healing, than others.
Some say the entire 16-acre site should be devoted to a memorial, and
others say the best memorial is to rebuild the Trade Center and get
on with the life of commerce - that to make it all a monument would
be to cooperate with the terrorists' desire to slash up our capitalist
paradise and make us change who we are. It's reported that Maya Lin,
the artist who designed the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC is
talking with those who are responsible for creating the World Trade
Center memorial.
This is no surprise - Maya Lin's work has been sought by many who want
to evoke strong human responses. Lin says her work represents a "simple
desire to make people aware of their surroundings." Perhaps that
awareness is the power we need most in this post-apocalyptic time.
For what is it that we would memorialize at the World Trade Center
site? Is it World Trade, and the freedom to buy and sell globally no
matter the cost in human lives and dignity? Are we memorializing the
lives of those heroes who struggled to save the innocents who were attacked?
The lives of all who died there? Do we somehow memorialize the loss
of our own innocence, our own arrogance? No doubt the memorial would
call to consciousness all of these things and more, perhaps something
different to each person who would go there to remember.
My own thoughts about the memorial are probably too radical and strange
to speak aloud, but I will say them to you anyway.
If the decision were mine to make, I would give the land back to the
descendants of the Algonquin-speaking peoples who unwittingly sold it
to a Dutchman from the West India Company in the mid-1600s. They never
intended that they would be barred from using the land, for in their
worldview, land was not owned, it was honored and shared.
I would give the land to these peoples along with funding to restore
it, and the support of volunteers to aid in the work of restoration.
It would be a gift of empowerment with no strings attached, no expectations
that the land not be turned to commercial use or sold outright. No expectations
that it become a memorial site of any kind. Given the commercial value
of the land alone, this would be an outrageous gift, an inspiration,
a work of art in its own right.
Why do I envision such a memorial? Because in the void and destruction
created by a hatred we are far from innocent in provoking, we have a
powerful opportunity to go back to the beginning, to make a tragedy
into a work of restorative justice, to see through eyes unjaded and
unshaded by the violence in which our American culture is rooted. The
word apocalypse, at its root, means to uncover; the ground laid bare,
the nakedness and vulnerability we felt as Americans when our self-image
was pierced - these give us an opportunity to begin again. And if the
descendants of the Manhattah and Algonquin peoples did not want the
land, I'd plant a forest there.
Of course this will never happen. There's too much money involved,
to say nothing of the kind of anger and hatred towards the Native American
peoples it might arouse. And we certainly don't need that.
But it doesn't matter that my memorial idea won't happen. What does
matter is that I could say it to you, here, and not fear the consequences.
That's freedom. Freedom to undertake an unfettered-but-responsible
search for truth and meaning, to paraphrase one of the Unitarian Universalist
Association's principles. Freedom to speak the truth as I see it. Freedoms
that I might easily take for granted, freedoms that do not exist in
all our world's nations, or religions.
You see, I think the World Trade Center memorial needs to be a monument
to freedom. To all the freedoms we enjoy as United States citizens.
It needs to be a monument constructed not from granite or marble or
tortured steel, but a monument constructed in each of us from our choices
and our conscious awareness of our selves and our lives.
Bob Hudnall's life was one such monument to freedom, I believe. I say
this because over and over again people here have said to me, "You
know, Bob was the very first person I met when I came to KUUF. He helped
me feel at home here." Bob used his freedom to transcend the littleness
of aims or loves or creeds, of how somebody looked or talked or acted,
and with an outreaching bigness, as Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote, he offered
a hand of authentic welcome. He helped people connect with a religious
community that might possibly transform their lives the way his was
transformed.
On public TV sometime last week, Young and I saw the story of a British
woman named Elizabeth Knight, who in her own way also has made of her
life a monument to freedom. She had purchased a book in an antique store
and found in it the story of Chief Long Wolf, a Sioux warrior who had
died in 1892 while performing with "Buffalo Bill" Cody's Wild
West show in London. The book included a description of Long Wolf's
life and his burial and described the "neglected grave in a lone
corner of a crowded London cemetery."
"Being lost and alone … in an unkempt grave somewhere in
… London…, he shouldn't be here," Knight said. "This
is what really struck a chord in me." The injustice of it spurred
her to search persistently until she found Long Wolf's descendants in
South Dakota and help them take his body home.
UU minister Bill Schulz, who serves as executive director of Amnesty
International tells the story of Luisa. She was a woman who "had
dropped out of school at age eight and never been outside her village,
but when the security forces came to her house and demanded that she
give them the names of all the villagers who were critical of the government,
she supplied them a list of twenty names, all the same - her own."
(found in "Thematic Preaching," by Jane Rzepka and Ken
Sawyer, p. 125)
When I think of what these three people have done, by their choices,
by the power of their conscious awareness, I'm reminded that it doesn't
take education, wealth, or influence, necessarily, to make of our lives
a monument to freedom, but it does take consciousness, and courage.
I felt this in my own, small way on Wednesday, when I attended a luncheon
workshop on diversity issues offered by the West Sound Human Resources
Association. We viewed a video that pointed out the struggles any person
who is different from the majority experiences in the workplace - struggles
I've had my share of as a woman and when I was a young person - and
struggles I have learned how to see in our culture and in the settings
where I am one of the majority group. Then we broke into groups to talk
about who the minority and majority groups were in various settings
- like the table we where we were seated, the larger group present at
the luncheon, and the people we work with.
After a few moments of discussion I noticed that nobody in my small
group was bringing up issues of sexual orientation. And so I brought
that aspect of diversity to the table. One of my group members shot
it down immediately, saying that we couldn't mention it in our report
to the larger group because "we couldn't tell by looking at people
if they were gay or not." I brought it up again a few minutes later,
saying that even if we couldn't tell visually, it was probably very
likely that there would be at least one lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender
person in any group we'd find ourselves in, and that their experiences
needed to be honored, even if the individuals themselves did not come
out to the group. Silence from my group.
I felt like I was breaking some kind of taboo, but I also knew that
I would not be keeping my covenant with myself and my sense of how we
all are loved by the greater Spirit of Life if I stayed silent. My freedom
was best used by taking the risk to keep the conversation alive.
I know that many of you are doing these things, too. Breaking the silence.
Refusing to be complicit with violence. Organizing for support, organizing
for change. Looking at the people in your life with an eye for their
goodness instead of their flaws.
If every person who felt touched by the September 11th tragedy decided
to make their lives a monument to freedom, what kind of world would
we live in? What sort of monument to freedom might your life become?
Would you stand up for the values of our shared faith? The inherent
worth and dignity of all people, a free and responsible search for meaning;
justice, equity and compassion in all that we do; democracy as a spiritual
practice; the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice
for all; respect for the earth. Would you share with others the ways
of being in the world that heal you? Would you extend the hand of fellowship
to a stranger?
The monuments to freedom we make of our lives may or may not be flashy.
They may not send up fireworks or build imposing structures of steel
and stone, or give a king's ransom in the cause of radical hope. But
all monuments are needed, be they large or small. All of our creativity
is needed. And all of our conscious awareness is needed, minute by precious
minute, person by precious person.
May we find the courage to stand for our values. May we find the energy
to work for change. May we remember and revitalize our faith. May we
love one another, and know that we are loved.
The world needs us.
So be it, blessed be, and amen.
