Perspectives
 Engagement
With the World
A Personal Perspective of Faith in Action
William F. Schulz
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My religious consciousness was shaped by many things: warm childhood
memories of church, the inspiring presence of a minister, and a
fascination with why things happened. But always a part of that
awareness was a sense of life's inequities. Religion and justice
seemed borne on each other's wings. What makes them such soulmates
to me?
Every single one of us knows what it is like to bleed. Every one
of us has experienced pain. If that were not a fact of human existence,
we might not notice the suffering of the world. Because it is, we
do.
I was four or five years old when I first learned about other people's
suffering. My parents had taken me on a tour of General Robert E.
Lee's mansion outside Washington, DC. Within that grand ante-bellum
house, I saw high ceilings and glittering crystal. When the tour
was over and we emerged onto the grounds, my mother took my hand.
"Now I want you to see another kind of house," she said, and led
me to the slave huts, which were damp, run down, and frightening.
"Did people actually live in these?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," she said. "Oh, yes."
Every single one of us knows what it is like to bleed. In one respect
pain is a gift because it cultivates our imagination. Without it,
we would be far less likely to rail at deprivation or shrink from
cruelty. Of course not everyone derives sympathy from suffering.
But the religious imagination contends that in the heart of every
stranger lurks a reflection of our own.
The Unitarian Universalism that I champion fosters just such
imagination.
Part of the reason for needing this imagination is because we
cannot get away from the world. Unitarian Universalism is a faith
utterly encumbered by existence. We do not think of metaphysical
escapes from the world and reality.
Our religious tradition has always been that way. Christian, theist,
mystic, humanist—it doesn't matter. Go all the way back to
the Counter Reformation, to the earliest anti-Trinitarian debate,
and you find a faith that calls for engagement with the world, not
retreat.
This doesn't mean that Unitarian Universalists do not value the
spiritual arts and disciplines. Worship, introspection, meditation,
solitude, and dozens more have their honored place. It only means
that whatever our religious practice, eventually our faith needs
to bring us face to face with radiance, misery, glory, and pain—face
to face with the hard facts of daily life.
The Unitarian Universalism that I practice requires such engagement.
And it requires engagement exactly because the world is so astonishingly
full of grace. I can't help but be thrilled by the blessings that
surround me whenever I take the time to hear and see. How can any
of us doubt the magnificence of a world that contains luscious pears
and endless seas and jazz by Duke Ellington and paintings by Georgia
O'Keefe?
But to savor that magnificence, we need to be free of mind-numbing
pain. We need resources to buy the pear, we need time to visit the
sea. We do not need to be under threat of our lives; we just need
access to Ellington and knowledge of O'Keefe. "The rich and the
poor," someone has said, "are not equally free to [choose whether
to] sleep under the bridges of Paris." Or as basketball player Moses
Malone so aptly put it, "If you don't got the ball, you sure can't
shoot it."
The world presents itself as full of blessings, rich with opportunity.
"Grace" is the word we use to describe these unsolicited favors.
Grace does not come for the asking, but it can be thwarted. Religion's
job is both to signal the gifts and to help everyone have a part
in the unwrapping.
The Unitarian Universalism that I cherish seeks to save the
world because it is so precious.
But what are the true odds of succeeding at sav-ing the world?
For every victory of justice, we can cite a dozen instances of its
defeat. Do our actions in the face of wrong and tragedy truly make
a difference?
"I spent seventeen months in the prison queues of Leningrad," wrote
Soviet poet Anna Akhmatova. "One day somebody recognized me. A woman
with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me came out of
the numbness and whispered in my ear: 'Can you describe this?' she
asked. I said, 'I can.' Then something resembling a smile slipped
over what once had been her face."
The woman had smiled because even the prison queues of Leningrad
could not erase her conviction that the future was not settled,
or her assumption that the right word at the right time, the right
witness in the right place, might redeem even the most vicious perfidy.
My religion has taught me that the meaning of history is still
in the making, that tomorrow is not set, that there is no such thing
as fate. "The future lasts a long time," said the distinguished
neo-Marxist French philosopher Louis Althusser, but each day of
it can be shaped. "If one could be punished for anything at all
or nothing," said sociology professor Nechama Tec, "then one might
as well do something worthwhile."
It is of course in the last analysis a matter of faith. It cannot
be proven that history is not predetermined. But I take only amusement
from the reaction of a Presbyterian woman, a firm believer in predestination,
who, upon falling down a flight of stairs, picked herself up and
remarked, "Well, thank God that's over!"
The Unitarian Universalism that I honor takes it on faith that
we can affect the tenor of the day.
I have been supremely fortunate in my life: loving parents, a
good education, more than enough to eat. I have not been the victim
of racism or sexism; so far I have two well-functioning arms and
legs. But on some level I know what it is like to suffer and I want
the world to be a less cruel place.
My commitment to social justice, like so much else, has something
to do with death. We all know that the angel of death perches on
the shoulder of everyone. The angel's hour will come, and when it
comes naturally, through unpreventable disease or age, we may leave
at peace. But when it comes prematurely, through poverty or terror
or stupidity, that is unacceptable. I mean that quite literally:
I may not be able to stop it, but I can never be at peace.
My commitment to social justice derives from this: that we might
keep the angel of death waiting just long enough that the children
of life have the time to finish their dance.
| The Reverend Dr. William F. Schulz,
president of the Unitarian Universalist Association from 1985
to 1993, is executive director of Amnesty International USA.
For Further Reading
We recommend the following books, some
of which are available from the UUA
Bookstore, 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108-2800,
1-800-215-9076, email: bookstore@uua.org.
Or check with your local library or bookstore.
How Can I Help? Stories and Reflections
on Service by Ram Dass and Paul Gorman. New York: Knopf,
1991.
In the Tiger's Mouth: An Empowerment
Guide for Social Action by Katrina Shields. Philadelphia:
New Society, 1993.
Shared Values For a Troubled World:
Conversations With Men and Women of Conscience by Rushworth
M. Kidder. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994.
Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of
Moral Commitment by William Damon and Anne Colby. New
York: Free Press, 1992.
The Spirit of Community: The Reinvention
of American Society by Amitai Etzioni. New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1993.
Talking Peace: A Vision for the Next
Generation by Jimmy Carter. New York: Dutton, 1993.
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