How Has the World Changed?
Delivered by the Rev. Richard Beal Unitarian Church of Aukland,
New Zealand
November 11, 2001
Opening Words
Two months ago today two hijacked planes were flown into New York
City's World Trade Center. A third plane was flown into a side of the
United States military headquarters, the Pentagon, in Washington DC.
Over 6,000 people died and the economy of not only the US has suffered
but in many respects that of the world's.
These acts were as nothing compared to the Holocaust, compared to the
loss of life in Pol Pot's Cambodia, to the deaths which resulted from
the small pox infected blankets distributed to Native Americans, to
the horrible winnowing of the weak from the strong on the Middle Passage
bringing enslaved Africans to the New World, and next to nothing to
compared to the slaughter when the Crusaders broke first into Constantinople
and later into Jerusalem. Nor should we forget Dresden. Or Hiroshima.
The history of the world is replete with massacres and mass death. So
I was interested in George Bush's statement following the attacks on
the United States that the world had changed and would never again be
the same.
Since then I've wondered how accurate a statement it was and, if it
was, what the implications might be for individuals and cultures around
the globe. This morning I want to share some of that questioning and
some of my resulting thoughts.
Hymn Our World Is One World # 134
SPOKEN and SILENT
PRAYER and MEDITATION
Over fifty years have passed since the signing of the Charter of the
United Nations; the world has changed considerably and we have gained
wider knowledge and often painful experience,
Those bravely idealistic words from the Charter that we read earlier
bring both hope and sadness in attendance to them. Hope because we hear
in them an ages-long yearning for peace and community,
sadness because we have seen so many ages-long examples of humanity's
inhumanity taking place after those words were written and agreed to.
At the end of a second great war, following the first world war that
was to end all wars, we could imagine that the horrors which had taken
place would convince us all that this time it should truly never happen
again. But while no world war save the Cold War has taken place, war
has still followed war. None of these smaller wars has involved the
whole world, but they have affected all of us. Consequently many have
seemingly lost hope for peace. And many now act resigned to the conditions
which make for war that we have been - and which it seems as though
we always will be - unable to change. For where is the Peace Movement?
Where are the Conscientious Objectors? Where are the great protests
against war and the great demonstrations for peace?
Universalists were among the first religions in the world to call for
the end to war - as far back as the 18th century. Though we are not
one of the traditional "Peace Churches" we have raised generations
of individuals opposed to war, many of whom were jailed as conscientious
objectors, many others who served in non-combatant roles, and other
who dedicated themselves to our Service Committees.
Today the things that make for peace are still a part of us. They remain
within us, and within much of humanity, within people who share our
vision and purpose all over the world. The instruments of peace are
in our hearts and hopes, our dreams, our yearnings, and in the billions
of small acts of protest against division and despair we make when we
help care for others as well as ourselves and witness to a just community
in the care with which we offer the little things we do. Be they only
a few foodstuffs for the hungry, or only a few items to make the lot
of the poor and the homeless less bleak, uncomfortable, and depressing.
Perhaps they are only a kind word, an encouraging smile, only un-noticed
little acts of love - but these are acts of protest as well as acts
of faith.
Let us consider all these things and meditate upon our relationship
to them, so that the world we yearn for will eventually become
the world we have helped create.
Silence
So may it be. And blessed be. Amen.
Reading e-mail from the Green Party USA
Armed government agents grabbed Nancy Oden, Green Party USA coordinating
member [on the 1st of November] at Bangor International Airport as she
attempted to board an American Airlines flight to Chicago.
"An official told me that my name had been flagged in the computer,"
a shaken Oden said. "I was targeted because the Green Party USA
opposes the bombing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan."
Oden, a long-time organic farmer and peace activist in northern Maine,
was ordered away from the plane. Military personnel with automatic weapons
surrounded Oden and instructed all airlines to deny her passage on ANY
flight. "I was told the airport was closed to me until further
notice and that my ticket would not be refunded," Oden said.
Oden [was] scheduled to speak in Chicago Friday night on a panel concerning
pesticides as weapons of war. She had helped coordinate the Green Party's
antiwar efforts these past months, and was to report on these to the
Greens national committee. "Not only did they stop me at the airport
but some mysterious party had called the hotel and canceled my reservation,"
Oden said. [The Greens National Committee is meeting in Chicago to hammer
out the details of national campaigns against bio-chemical warfare,
the spraying of toxic pesticides, genetic engineering, and the Party's
involvement in the burgeoning peace movement.] ...
Chicago Green activist Lionel Trepanier concluded "The attack
on the right of association of an opposition political party is chilling.
The harassment of peace activists is reprehensible" [and the e-mail
ended with that statement.]
Hymn Do You Hear? # 112
Sermon
How Has the World Changed?
Delivered by the Rev. Richard Beal
Norman Mailer, the American novelist, wrote a book titled "The
Armies of the Night," about the largest demonstration against the
War in Vietnam. It took place at the Pentagon, from mid-afternoon when
the marchers arrived from Washington proper, across the Potomac, until
6:00 the next morning, when the 600 or so of us who had stayed to the
bitter end felt we had accomplished as much as we could and trudged
back toward the White House. Those of us who had stayed had climbed
the barricades the military had put up, and then, avoiding the National
Guard, scaled the rock walls that separated the huge terrace from the
park-like surround of the building. We hunkered down there, surrounded
by changing shifts of military police, National Guards, and, early in
the morning after the television crews departed, specially flown in
Texas Marshals. We were literally in the shadow of the Pentagon, and
with the flashing lights, the sounds of sirens, the tramping of boots
on the flagstones of the terrace, and the fact that every now and again
someone would be pulled from our group and be dragged into the building,
it was pretty frightening.
But what impressed me the most about that chilly October night was
the fact that even though we were sitting on the doorstep of the mightiest
war machine on earth, and despite the hidden layers of hardened war
rooms and control centers below us - filled with the costliest technology
money could buy - and though the government had all the power it needed
to do to us whatever it thought it could get away with, in the end it
resorted to one of the pettiest actions I have ever seen.
I was sitting on the very edge of the circle of protestors, and the
Marshals had gradually moved forward so that we were tightly hemmed
in and almost literally sitting on the tips of their boots. Periodically
an officer would walk along behind the troops and give a Marshall a
signal to drop back a step and spread his legs, whereupon the officer
would give a vicious kick through the opening, then walk on, and the
line would close again. But that was not what astounded me, for that
was just ordinary brutality. What got to me was that word was quietly
passed down the line and at a bark from an officer every Marshall reached
for their canteen, unscrewed the top, and poured the contents on or
next to us.
For the rest of the night we were colder and more uncomfortable than
we otherwise would have been. Billions of dollars of personnel and equipment
available to them and the possibility of a negotiated settlement with
us, they resorted to this pathetic gesture. I've never forgotten that
gesture. It was a lesson to me in how easily a small group of determined
individuals can throw a well trained, well organized, and massively
funded machine off-track and out of kilter. Margaret Mead expresses
it in our hymn book by saying: "Never doubt that a small group
of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed, it's
the only thing that ever has." It's a lesson many groups in the
Peace Movement have learned again and again. Yet it seems to be one
lesson we need to learn anew when a new threat to peace and stability
confronts us.
I can attest to the general accuracy of Mailer's book because I was
there. I can't be as certain of the e-mail from the Green Party because
I've seen no follow-up to corroborate it. But I know, again from personal
experience, that among the victims of war, in addition to military and
civilian lives, the destruction of properties that include significant
portions of the world's cultural heritage, and the smashing of communities
and the scattering of the people who constituted those communities,
are civil liberties. Every war I've personally witnessed has included
an assault on the freedom from arbitrary invasions of privacy and a
disregard for the conventions of the normal social order. In both the
war in Vietnam and the war against Latin Americans seeking security
in the US, Unitarian Universalist churches in the United States that
refused to abandon their principles were broken into, spied upon, subverted
with government agitators intent on provoking our congregations into
impolitic activities. I don't know if the report from the Green Party
is accurate, but I know it is part of a pattern in which military and
security forces ignore everyday rules and rights to abuse citizens who
are legally exercising their right to dissent.
Those people who maintain that the world has changed since the mind-numbing
attacks on two of the United States most important symbols are certainly
aware of the many other attacks on civilians and the mass deaths which
have taken place throughout our recent history. What has made these
attacks seem different this time? One reason, of course, is that we
saw them take place - over and over again - on our televisions. But
more than simply having been made extraordinarily aware of them, we
are also aware of no longer being as isolated - and thereby protected
- from such things happening to us, to our elders and to our children.
When a great massacre took place when the Crusaders took Jerusalem,
and thousands died, it had little effect in India, China, and little
immediate effect back in Europe.
The distances were too great and the communications too slow and unreliable
for such things to affect people around the globe directly. Today, we
look at the skyscraper-studded skyline of New York and realize how similar,
and how vulnerable, are our own great cities. We are affected and made
to feel vulnerable because the dangers are new to those of us who have
lived safely and securely relative to the great majority of humankind.
Though we could have felt a kinship with the suffering innocents
of the world as we've watched our own or our allies' governments attack
small countries, most of us haven't because it seemed far away or happening
to people who seem quite unlike ourselves. There's been no fear of the
same possibly happening to us.
But suddenly our perception of our own vulnerability changed markedly,
and we've realized that our wealth or stockpiles of technologically
sophisticated weapons are no longer a protection. If they ever were.
We face a new kind of threat when it's the down-trodden peoples of the
world protecting their interests in the only ways they have available
to them. Who are not playing by the Marquess of Queensbury rules in
the kinds of street fights that are increasingly likely to replace the
clash of armies. This is not new, but we are suddenly, and frightfully,
newly aware of it.
As I said when I began these remarks, I very clearly remember the protests
and demonstrations against the War in Vietnam, and the huge growth in
the Peace Movement and its influence that accompanied them. The Peace
Movement had a great deal to do with ending that war, as later it influenced
the decision to not expand the Gulf War further. But the Peace Movement
today, while perhaps beginning to stir in modest numbers, is no more
influential in the war against Afghanistan than it has been in trying
to influence a reasonable and realistic end to the ongoing and unequal
struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But it seems to
me that any of us who want a more peaceful world and a less polarized
and conflicted relationship between ethnic, religious, cultural and
economic groups can only hope to accomplish something if we are in relationship
with others who also want to create a fit world into which to bring
children. For certainly the world has changed in terms of its
greater complexity and the sudden appreciation of the threat posed by
relatively small groups of fanatics or fundamentalists who see few ways
beyond violence to make up for their powerlessness.
We obviously can't allow ourselves to be wantonly attacked and murdered.
We have to do everything we reasonably can to both protect ourselves
and reduce in whatever ways we can the divisions of the world. It's
equally obvious that whatever Margaret Mead says to the contrary we
can't change the world by ourselves. We have to do that in coalition,
and in order to create coalitions we have to become less isolated and
more open to learning about and working with others who are similar
in their desires for a healthier, more stable and more secure world.
If the United Nations has been only a very partial success, repeatedly
blocked from realizing its potential because of the rivalry between,
and the proliferation of, nation states, then perhaps we have to seek
other models than those based on the rights, indeed perhaps the very
existence of, nation states as we now know them.
If the world has changed, and it has both changed markedly and not
changed nearly enough, then we have to be about the business of intentionally
changing ourselves as well as our current economic and political structures.
For it will do little good for the world to be forced into changes by
population and environmental pressures if the people of the world are
not ready for and participants in those changes.
Unitarian, Universalist, and since 1961 Unitarian Universalist churches
have been changing with changing times - while preserving basic ethical
and moral principles - since their beginnings. We are practiced even
if we don't always like making necessary changes. But we have and continue
to do so. Has the world changed? Yes. But as yet insufficiently. The
more challenging question is: how do we respond as individuals and as
members of churches and other kinds of communities?
HYMN Gonna Lay Down My Sword and Shield # 162
CLOSING WORDS
Let us wake each morning into a world of work, family, friends
and hope, prepared to live in the situation we are given as positively
and productively as we are able, but in addition wake intent on helping
make the world we hope for a world more nearly attained.
Go now in Peace, Go now in Peace, May the love of All surround us,
everywhere, everywhere, we may go.
