PRAYER:

 

     We pray not to something, but from something,

          to which we must give voice;

          not to escape from our life, but to focus it;

          not to relinquish our mind, but to replenish our soul.

     We pray that we may live with honesty:

          that we can accept who we are,

          and admit who we are not;

          that we don’t become so deafened by pride and fear

          that we ignore the still small voices within us,

          that could lead us out of darkness.

     We pray that we can live with trust and openness:

          to those people, those experiences, and those transformations

          that can save us from narrowness and despair.

     And we pray on behalf of these hopes

          with an open heart, an honest soul,

          and a grateful reverence for the life which has been given to us.

     AMEN. 

SERMON: Animal Stories, Part 8: Our Subversive Streak of Hope

     The abiding religious questions are Who am I really? and How should I live? All religions have tried to express profound answers to these two questions that define us in grand, even mythic, terms. We have a Buddha-seed within us that wants to grow. We are children of God, the latest reincarnation of Life’s longing for itself, the sons and daughters of the universe, made of stardust, and so on. In other words, we are fundamentally precious, part of an infinite reality, embraced by symbols like the Buddha, God, Life and the universe. 

     And the way we should live follows from that. Religions teach that we should live in ways that are worthy of our most deep and noble identity.  We should see ourselves as integral parts of all life, and walk in paths of compassion, love for all, gratitude for being here, and all the rest of the lovely poetry long used to welcome us into a larger identity, into the hopefully useful and even necessary story of whatever religious community we have claimed.

     The argument behind this series of sermons on “animal stories” is that in some ways, religions are just too new to offer many deep or accurate pictures of who we really are or how we should live. The gods involved in today’s world religions were only created a few thousand years ago. The deeper story is the story of life itself, the life that produced us along with millions of other species, the life that links us biologically, genetically, and emotionally.

     And we are deeply related to other life. We share traits like our territoriality, desire for dominance and sexual jealousy with snakes, separated from us by 150 million years of evolution. We share the tender care of our young with crocodiles, who were here 200 million years ago — over 125 million years before mammals even evolved. And we show other fundamental traits like empathy, compassion, and a sense of fairness with other species covering over a hundred million years of evolutionary time in the story of life.

     That reverence for life, that gentleness with the vulnerable ones for whom we feel responsible – these things are older than the gods.   We are on an evolutionary continuum with other animals, and they share so many of our most fundamental traits.

     Like us, for example, other animals express joy in play. One author writes of how he once saw a young elk in Rocky Mountain National Park running across a snow field, jumping and twisting, stopping to catch his breath, then repeating the whole exercise with boundless energy. And buffaloes have been known to rush onto ice fields and slide, like children on icy sidewalks, bellowing with the simple fun of it. (Mark Bekoff, The Smile of a Dolphin, p. 114) Others have observed ravens flying to the top of a snowy hill, sliding down it on their bellies, then flying up and doing it again. And penguins have been filmed sliding down snowy hills on their bellies, then waddling up to the top, and standing in line to wait their turn to slide down again. 

     Even rats love to be tickled at the nape of their neck, and become especially fond of hands that tickled them, but not particularly interested in hands that just pet them.  (Mark Bekoff, The Smile of a Dolphin, p. 146) Running, leaping, wrestling, chasing objects or one another or their own tails, animals at play are the very symbols of the unfettered joy of life. (Mark Bekoff, The Smile of a Dolphin, p. 114)

     Those studying animals have said for many years that chimpanzees are our closest relative, and the most like us. When it comes to how they practice politics, that’s true, as I tried to show last week. 

     But recently, scientists who study the behavior of animals including us have said that we are equally closely related to the lesser-known ape the bonobo. And we may be closer than that. It has now been found that a particular piece of DNA that is involved in social affiliation and bonding is present in humans, and is present in bonobos, but it’s absent in the chimpanzee. So we share a particularly important piece of DNA with the bonobo that the chimp doesn’t have, which may indicate the bonobo is more similar to the common ancestor we share with both chimpanzees and bonobos, six to eight million years ago. (Frans de Waal, “The Last Great Ape,” PBS airdate 13 February 2007) 

     While bonobos and chimps look a lot alike to those unfamiliar with them, they are also deeply different. 

     As Frans de Waal, one of the foremost experts on chimps and bonobos, has said, “I do not wish to offend any chimpanzees, but bonobos do have more style.” (Frans de Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates, p. 175)

     In everything they do, they resemble us. A complaining youngster will pout his lips like an unhappy child or stretch out an open hand to beg for food. In the midst of their lovemaking, a female may squeal with pleasure. And at play, bonobos utter coarse laughs when their partners tickle their bellies or armpits. “There is no escape, we are looking at an animal so akin to ourselves that the dividing line is seriously blurred.” (Frans de Waal, Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape, p. 1)

     In some ways, they even seem more advanced. Among bonobos, there’s no deadly warfare, little hunting, no male dominance, and enormous amounts of sex. If the chimpanzee is our demonic face, the bonobo must be our angelic one. Bonobos make love, not war. They’re the hippies of the primate world. (Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape, p. 30) The French call them “Left Bank Chimps.” And some scientists who work with them have been overheard leaving work on Friday saying, “We’re gonna bonobo tonight!”

     While male chimpanzees sometimes inflict serious or even fatal injuries on a female, for a male bonobo to bite a female is just not done.   (Bonobo, p. 41) When the alpha male charges at the alpha female, she usually completely ignores him. (Frans de Waal, Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape, p. 60) This could be unthinkably dangerous or suicidal in chimpanzees. And she is dominant when it comes to food. They even fight differently than chimps. Whereas chimps fight by pulling an opponent close and biting him, bonobos tend to fight with well-placed kicks. Kung fu apes.

     Chimpanzees would not hesitate to tear monkeys apart and eat them. Bonobos have actually been groomed by monkeys, and bonobos don’t consider them prey – though they do sometimes treat them as toys, tossing them. (Frans de Waal, Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape, p. 65)

     Whereas male chimpanzees will sometimes kill the infants of other chimpanzee males and even eat them, there is no recorded infanticide or cannibalism in bonobos. (Frans de Waal, Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape, p. 121)

     If there is such a thing as bonobo politics, it more than likely revolves as much around females as around males. (Frans de Waal, Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape, p. 74)

     Bonobos don’t even kiss like chimps. A new zookeeper, unfamiliar with sexual encounters of the bonobo kind, once accepted a kiss from a bonobo male named Kevin. (Chimpanzees will often give you lip smacks on your face.) Suddenly, he felt Kevin’s tongue in his mouth! The habit of French-kissing is one of the striking differences between the bonobo’s impassioned eroticism and the somewhat boring, functional sex of the chimpanzee. Chimpanzees show few variations in the act, and most of their adult sex is connected with reproduction. Bonobos perform every conceivable variation with both the same and opposite sex, as if following the Kama Sutra. Their sex life is mostly for pleasure and bonding, largely divorced from reproduction. (Frans de Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates, p. 199)

     To oversimplify, chimpanzees and bonobos are like the two wolves I talked about earlier. We have these two wolves inside of us, both fighting to control us. One says, “Fight, Hurt, Take!” The other wolf says, “Help, Care, Love!” Both the tendencies of chimpanzees and bonobos are inside of us, part of our deep evolutionary heritage. They are like the angels of our better and worse natures, or the picture of an angel standing by one ear and a devil standing by the other, each – like the two wolves – trying to control us. And the one that wins is the one we feed, the one we listen to. 

     There are ways in which bonobos embody some of our highest ideals of egalitarianism, peace and an unfettered enjoyment of life’s pleasures better than any human society in history has ever done. One of the traits present in chimpanzees that bonobos have raised to a very high level is social expectations. 

     This business of social expectations is one of our most subversive and hopeful streaks, and you can trace its growth very neatly through rhesus monkeys, chimpanzees, bonobos, and our own species.

     With rhesus monkeys, there is an absolute rigid hierarchy. When there is food, the alpha male feeds first, and no one else eats until he approves. There are almost no social expectations that can subvert the powerful hierarchy — though again, rhesus monkeys are considered the nastiest of all 200 species of primates. In chimpanzees, the alpha male also controls food, but nowhere nearly as well because many others expect a fair share. And in bonobos, the females control the food, and share with everyone – except, sometimes, the alpha males. 

     Scientists measure dominance through access to food, because food is the “currency” of most animals, what matters most. In our species, food has been replaced by money, the symbolic paper we use to store the potential for buying food and other things. 

     Human history shows that we’re like the chimps, and in bad times more like the rhesus monkeys, in the selfishness and ruthlessness with which our alpha people – usually males – control access to money and food.   Unlike the rhesus and chimps who use physical violence, we enslave our most powerless people through measures like tax breaks for the rich, laws preventing relief of debts through bankruptcy, U.S. workers made to compete with 3^rd world workers, corporate lobbyists owning shares in politicians, and so forth. 

     This isn’t evolution; it’s devolution, with a selfishness more like rhesus monkeys than even chimpanzees. Our use of language and mass media have let the strong and clever disempower and control the weak on a far greater scale than in any ape species, as I tried to show a few weeks ago in the story of “My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean.”

     I could go on with this picture, fleshing it out in a dozen directions, but you see the general outlines, and can flesh it out for yourselves. We’re a mixed bag, born with all it takes to become either good or evil, free, enslaving or enslaved. So really, just what can we do?

     First, we need to be realistic. We need to stop mesmerizing ourselves with words like peace and justice, as though we will ever live in a world defined by them. Both human history and animal biology teach us that politics are controlled by the power and alliances that characterize both chimpanzee politics and our own. Words like peace and justice are the anesthetic lullabies sung by politicians the world over to numb us to the way the world is really being run. If real peace is to exist, it must exist along with our ambitions, greed, pride, and our hatreds. (Frans de Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates, p. 22) There won’t be peace until a power structure is established, and it will only last until new alliances can challenge that power structure. Carrying ourselves away with utopian visions of perfect peace and justice can make the “perfect” the enemy of the possible. And the possible states of peace and justice, always imperfect and transient, can happen only through having the skill to form alliances with enough power to subvert whatever alpha structure happens to be in place. 

     And while some people love the vague idea of “speaking truth to power,” it seems clear from the study of both chimpanzee and human politics that those with power simply believe that power can trump truth, as it also trumps fairness and justice. We’re better off speaking our truths to the powerless, in the hope they can make a foundation our of them on which to stand and act. 

     But what can we hope for, in our lives and in our world, and why?

     This list could also be very long, but I’ll limit it to just a few ideas.

     Framing ourselves in an evolutionary context is helpful because we’re now at a stage where our cultural changes happen far too fast for evolution to react to. From here on out, we will have to help complete our evolution from apes to truly wise and humane people through the education of our minds and — especially — our hearts. The real bases of empathy, compassion, justice and peace are primarily emotional, not rational. 

     We can do this as we always have, through educating ourselves through the high ideals we have exalted in the best myths, fairy tales, admonitory stories, religions, or some of the animal stories I’ve shared with you. These teachings are the means by which we complete our evolution. We are such a transitional creature. We’re not a very good ape, and not terribly humane or wise either. If a truly sapient and humane species is to evolve from us, we will have to help it through shaping our education, behavior and culture in ways that honor the best of our animal history and our human aspirations. 

     But can education really reshape who we are and how we behave? Can thinking differently change the brain? It sounds like really foofy New Age hokum. But here’s where animal stories and modern neuroscience may be joining hands to say, Yes: foofy or not, it looks scientifically true.

     Frans de Waal tells of an experiment he did where he put a community of stump-tail monkeys in with a community of rhesus monkeys. 

     Not only are stump-tails a slightly larger species, they are very tough beneath their gentle temperament; the rhesus must have sensed this fact. So, with the rhesus clinging in a fearful huddle to the ceiling of the room, the stump-tails calmly inspected their new environment. After a couple of minutes some rhesus dared to threaten the stump-tails with harsh grunts. If it was a test, they were in for a surprise. Whereas a rhesus would have fought or fled, the stump-tails simply ignored them. They did not even look up. For the rhesus, this was perhaps their first experience with dominant companions who did not react with physical threats or violence. In the course of the experiment the rhesus learned this lesson a thousand times over.  Whereas mild aggression was common, physical violence and injuries were virtually absent; friendly contact and play soon became the dominant activities in this mixed group of monkeys. Not only that; after having lived with stump-tails, the rhesus reconciled more easily. Initially, they made up after fights as seldom as is typical of their species; but gradually they approached the high rate of their tutors, until they reconciled exactly as often as the stump-tails. Even after the stump-tails had been removed and the rhesus were left to interact among themselves, they maintained this newly acquired pacifism. [And they taught it to the next generation of their offspring.] Like chemists altering the properties of a solution, we had infused a group of monkeys of one species with the “social culture” of another. (Frans de Waal, Good-Natured, pp. 179-180)

     Rather than a blind process, primate reconciliation is a learned social skill, sensitive to the social setting, and used as an instrument to preserve precious ties. (Frans de Waal, Good-Natured, p. 181)

     This is a remarkable experiment, using monkey culture to change natural and innate behavior. 

     And another recent series of experiments seem to offer even stronger hope. These were done both with monkeys and monks. Buddhist monks. 

     The Wall Street Journal recently ran an essay by Sharon Begley, condensed from her new book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (2007). Thirty years ago, what she is saying would really have been considered the flakiest of New Age hooey. But now some of the sciences have caught up, and it can be presented as cutting-edge neuroscience.

     The gist of this is that there are some well-controlled scientific experiments to show that learning to think differently changes some structures and active circuits in our brain. 

     First, she cites an experiment with monkeys in 1993. “Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, rigged up a device that tapped monkeys’ fingers 100 minutes a day every day. As this bizarre dance was playing on their fingers, the monkeys heard sounds through headphones. Some of the monkeys were taught: to Ignore the sounds and pay attention to what you feel on your fingers, because when you tell us it changes we’ll reward you with a sip of juice. Other monkeys were taught: Pay attention to the sound, and if you indicate when it changes you’ll get juice.

     “After six weeks, the scientists compared the monkeys’ brains. Usually, when a spot on the skin receives unusual amounts of stimulation, the amount of cortex that processes touch expands. That was what the scientists found in the monkeys that paid attention to the taps: The somatosensory region that processes information from the fingers doubled or tripled. But when the monkeys paid attention to the sounds, there was no such expansion. Instead, the region of their auditory cortex that processes the frequency they heard increased.

     “Through attention, UCSF’s Michael Merzenich and a colleague wrote, ‘We choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work, we choose who we will be the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form on our material selves.’”

     “The discovery that neuroplasticity cannot occur without attention has important implications. If a skill becomes so routine you can do it on autopilot, practicing it will no longer change the brain. And if you take up mental exercises to keep your brain young, they will not be as effective if you become able to do them without paying much attention. (Sharon Begley, Wall Street Journal, Jan 19, 2007: p. B1)

     The experiments with monks were even more interesting. The Dalai Lama, who has been interested in their area for over fifteen years, provided eight Buddhist monks who each had done over 10,000 hours of meditation, and a group of novices who had had just a crash course in meditating. One by one, they went to the laboratory set up at the University of Wisconsin, got their heads wired up to record all the different brain waves they were generating, and they began a form of meditation where they focused on unlimited compassion and loving kindness toward all living beings.

     As they began meditating, the level of gamma waves rose. These are associated with perception, problem-solving and an inclusive kind of consciousness: in a word, compassion. The monks’ gamma waves were much stronger than those of the beginners, as you might expect.

     But the surprise came when they stopped meditating. Among the monks, there was no drop in the gamma waves. Their brains remained attuned to inclusive and compassionate attitudes toward all living things. And the more hours of meditation a monk had had, the stronger and more enduring were the gamma waves.

     Thinking can change the structure and circuitry of the brain. 

     A lot of this is saying what liberals have been saying for a long time: that educating ourselves with high ideals can shape or reshape our character. That’s what the Greeks said 2500 years ago, and their insights founded the whole history of humanities and liberal arts education in Western civilization. What biology adds is that we’re not swimming upstream. These nobler traits of empathy, compassion and justice are also hard-wired in us, and we share them with apes, wolves, dolphins, elephants and a thousand other species. Our nature is or can be fundamentally good, and some of its roots go a hundred million or more years deep.

     That’s what we have always used our best myths, folk tales and religious teachings for. Today, when just over 20% of our society attends any religious services regularly, a growing number of people don’t have the time or interest to get a deep education in the best of the world’s mythology. But without using any myths at all, simply understanding our place in the animal stories that are part of the story of life can educate us to our larger identity and larger responsibility, probably better than any religion ever has. 

     So one real-world answer to what we can do comes from remembering what the liberal style of Western civilization has been saying for 2500 years, since the Greeks first taught that to make noble people we must mold them in the form of our very highest, most inclusive and empathic values — much like the monks have done.

     We find them in religions of deeds, not creeds, behavior, not belief. And the quality of our vision is to be judged by how we treat “the least among us,” as Jesus said. I could end with those words attributed to Jesus, but when he said that, he only meant humans, and that is not a big enough vision any more. We need a bigger connection to a bigger and more inclusive picture of life. 

     So instead I’ll end with the much larger vision of Hinduism’s Mahabharata. The Mahabharata, which may have been composed as early as 2,500 to 3,000 years ago, is about twelve times as long as the bible. It, combined with another book called the Ramayana, contains the stories that are at the core of Hinduism.

     And the final story, the very last words of the giant Mahabharata, is a story about a dog, which seems a fitting end to a sermon series on animal stories. 

     A great emperor, at the end of his reign, has set off on a final trek north, toward the Himalayas. He is accompanied by four people. A small pariah dog attaches himself to the group as well. Slowly, every member of this royal troupe dies along the way. The emperor and the dog continue their journey alone. Eventually they reach the end of their voyage, and are at the gates of heaven. Indra, the King of the Gods, comes to greet the emperor in a golden chariot. He invites him to climb into the chariot and accompany him in regal and godly splendor into heaven.

     The emperor replies: “This dog, O Lord of the Past and the Present, has been a constant and faithful companion to me. He should go with me. My heart is full of compassion for him.”

     The King of Gods says to him: “Immortality equal to mine, O King, prosperity extending over all the earth, renown and all the joys of heaven have you won today. Leave the dog. There is nothing cruel in this.”

     The emperor says: “O God of a thousand eyes, O you of righteous behavior, I have always behaved righteously. It is hard now to perpetrate an act that is unrighteous. I do not wish for wealth for whose sake I must abandon one that is devoted to me.”

     Indra says: “There is no place in heaven for persons with dogs. Besides, the gods take away all the merits of such persons. Think about this, O King of the righteous. Abandon the dog. It is not cruelty.” (205)

     The emperor tells the King of the Gods: “I will in no circumstances abandon this dog now to achieve happiness for myself.”

     The King of the Gods tries to convince him one last time: “If you give up the dog, you will acquire the world of heaven. You have obtained heaven through your very own deeds. You have already abandoned everything else. How can you be so confused as not to give up a mere dog?”

     The emperor still refuses, saying he will not abandon this dog, this mutt, this pariah mongrel who has remained faithful to him.

     At that point, the dog reveals himself to be none other than the God of Righteousness himself, an incarnation of the great god Vishnu. At last, the emperor has passed the final test and is

admitted into the company of the gods. (Jeffrey M. Masson, Dogs Never Lie About Love, p. 206-207) 

     He was admitted into the company of the gods, which means he achieved his own most divine nature, by hearing the voices of the angels of his better nature, brought alive in him by a dog, by feeding the right wolf, by rising to the heights of human nature rather than sinking into its depths. 

     The point of all these animal stories is the same as the point of the best religious myths and folk tales: that we are inherently good enough to become the kind of people and create the kind of world of which we and the people we most admire can be proud. We don’t need anything added to us to do this. We have what we need within us, if we will be open to being transformed by it. 

     Once in awhile, this truth even comes through in Western religion, as in this passage from the book of Deuteronomy:

     “Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, New Revised Standard Version)

     The words are in our hearts as they are in the heart of a gorilla who saves a 3-year-old boy who fell into her enclosure; or a bonobo who saved a bird, a hippo who saved a small antelope or all the other animal stories we’ve heard. The message to love one another, to reach out and make a positive difference in the world around us, is almost infinitely older than the gods. It is a call that comes from the heart of life itself, and from the yearnings of our own hearts.

     We have a call waiting. It’s our move.

This version has been expanded by about 1400 words from the version delivered in the sermon on 18 March 2007, including an extra story or two, and longer more detailed versions of other stories.

PRAYER:

 

Help us to love ourselves, and to love people and causes outside of ourselves, that we may be enlarged to include them.

 

 

SERMON: Animal Stories, Part 7: Chimpanzee Politics

          We are hard-wired to conform, follow others, and defer to authority, even illegal authority, to be emotionally stressed when we don’t follow others. But there is more to us than this. 

          It’s a story about our other closest relatives, bonobos, and about girl power, the role that social expectations play in chimps, bonobos and us, and about some new and exciting findings of neuroscience in studies of animals, including the human animal. Most of all, it’s about those “better angels of our nature,” how we can hear them, and how, together, we can transform our lives, our relationships, and our world. And it’s a story we’ll tell next week, in the final installment of these animal stories. See you in church!

          Four hundred thousand years ago in Germany, our ancestors created wooden spears about six feet long that were clearly used as hunting weapons. The spears were found at a site called Schoningen, among stone tools and animal bones… Just last month, chimpanzees were observed making spears and using them to kill Bush babies for food in the wild. (Barbara J. King, Evolving God, p. 113)

          So in the art of hunting with weapons we made, we have now discovered we have a lot in common with chimpanzees. But without going to the drama of hunting with weapons, we share even more similarities with chimpanzees when it comes to the conduct of our politics.

          Frans de Waal, who has studied chimps for over thirty-five years, wrote a book on this in 1982, which has become a classic in its field. Called Chimpanzee Politics, it’s based on thousands of hours of observations of a chimpanzee colony in the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands, where De Waal first began studying one of our two closest relatives. 

          The philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) described chimpanzee politics over 350 years ago, as “a general inclination of all [mankind], a perpetual and restless desire of Power after Power, that ceases only in Death.” He was actually speaking of human politics, but his words describe male chimpanzee politics perfectly. (Chapter 4 in Hobbes’ 1651 book Leviathan)

          When De Waal wrote his book, he was accused of anthropomorphizing chimpanzees: projecting human motives onto them. But he said it actually worked in reverse. After studying chimpanzee politics, he began to see human politics in a fundamentally different way. That’s what happened to me, too: I’ve come out of this with very different, and much lower, expectations for human politics. 

          Chimpanzee politics is all about getting and keeping power, by the few over the many, and by any means necessary. Alpha males form alliances with influential males and females — or subordinate males form coalitions to overpower the alpha male, and then consolidate their power by forming alliances with influential females. Males seldom maintain the alpha rank for more than four years. Then there’s another round of opportunistic alliances and vicious fighting to crown a new leader — or as we call them, elections.

          The two mottoes of chimpanzee politics are “One good turn deserves another,” and “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” (Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics, p. 202)

          And the male political alliances are not personal, but functional — not with friends, but with those who can, at the moment, be useful. Yesterday’s enemy may be today’s ally, and we may attack today’s friend tomorrow. 

          Adult male chimpanzees live in a hierarchical world with replaceable coalition partners and a single permanent goal: power. Adult females, in contrast, live in a horizontal world of social connections, where power and influence are bestowed by others on the basis of their character, not their physical strength. We know from psychological experiments with human subjects that in Western cultures men and women show similar differences. (Frans de Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates, p. 51)

          Tancredo Neves, the briefly-elected president of Brazil (January 15, 1985), neatly summed up the male attitude in this arena: “I have never made a friend from whom I could not separate and I have never made an enemy that I could not approach.” (Frans de Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates, p. 51) Neves had been a powerful critic of the government, and just a few days after he was elected, he mysteriously died — so maybe his alliances weren’t quite the right ones. 

          If presidential candidates take a sudden interest in women, listen to their problems, and hug their children, there are parallels in chimpanzee males who groom females and play gently with infants, especially during periods of status struggle. (Frans de Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates, p. 49)

          Yet strength is weakness: an alpha presence automatically generates alliances among weaker males to see if they can topple the power structure. Only very shrewd chimpanzees can maintain power in the face of younger and stronger males.

          But to see how chimpanzee politics works, let’s look at a story of three successive political revolutions within a single community of chimps.

It took place in the chimpanzee colony in the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands, and involved four males named Yeroen, Luit, Nikkie and Dandy.

          Yeroen was a shrewd older chimpanzee, and had ruled the group for some years, when a younger and stronger male named Luit challenged him for power, and after humiliating him in two violent fights, dethroned him. I’ll come back to what this loss of power did to Yeroen, which is a revealing story in its own right.   

          But Luit was alpha for only ten weeks. Wily old Yeroen, who Frans de Waal described as the shrewdest politician he’s seen, formed an alliance with a strong young male named Nikkie during those ten weeks. And one night, when the chimps were put into their separate male and female night quarters, Yeroen and Nikkie attacked Luit and killed him. De Waal says he could never again look at old Yeroen without seeing a murderer.

          The following day, they released Nikkie and Yeroen into the group. Immediately a dominant female attacked Nikkie fiercely, chasing him up a tree. She kept him there for ten minutes by screaming and charging each time he tried to come down. She had always been Luit’s main ally among the females, and must have watched the murder from her night cage. (Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics, p. 211-212)

          But a few hours after her solitary outburst, the other chimps gathered around the killers, grooming them and accepting them as the new leaders.   And the very next day, a new triangle emerged. Another young male named Dandy began making overtures to old Yeroen, grooming him and beginning to form an alliance with him against Nikkie. (Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics, p. 212) When Yeroen and the new young male named Dandy finally got enough power to confront Nikkie, he ran out into the water-filled moat and drowned, and another revolution had taken place. Yesterday’s allies are today’s enemies and vice versa, when it suits the pursuit of power. And that process will not end, because it is the plot of chimpanzee politics.

          Not only does the process of gaining political power among chimps sound and feel familiar, but so do the effects of losing power once a male is dethroned. So I want to go back to what losing power did to old Yeroen for the ten weeks he was without power.

          The first time Luit gained the upper hand – marking the end of Yeroen’s ancient regime – he reacted in completely uncharacteristic ways, surprising the scientists who had studied him for several years. Normally a dignified character, Yeroen became unrecognizable. In the midst of a confrontation, he would drop out of a tree like a dead man, writhing on the ground, screaming pitifully, and waiting to be comforted by the rest of the group. He acted much like a juvenile ape being weaned by his mother. And like a juvenile who during tantrums keeps an eye on mom for signs of softening, Yeroen always noted who approached him. If the group around him was big and powerful enough, and especially if it included the alpha female, he would gain instant courage. With his supporters in tow, he would renew the confrontation with his rival. So his tantrums were another example of his shrewd manipulation. The parallels with infantile attachment in our own species were fascinating, reminding us of expressions like “clinging to power” and “being weaned from power.” Knocking a male chimpanzee off his pedestal gets the same reaction as yanking the security blanket away from a baby.

          When even those tactics didn’t work, and Yeroen finally lost his top spot, he would often sit staring into the distance, an empty expression on his face. He was oblivious to the social activity around him and refused food for weeks. They thought he was sick, but the veterinarian found nothing wrong. Yeroen seemed a mere ghost of the impressive big shot he had been.   When power was lost, the lights in him went out.

          This sounds so familiar; it’s worth a couple animal stories from our species. Professor De Waal mentioned two similar cases of the behavior of an alpha male who has lost power. 

          One involved a senior professor, a colleague of De Waal’s on a university faculty, with great prestige and ego. He ran the department, but had failed to notice a budding conspiracy. Some young faculty members disagreed with him on a politically sensitive issue. Quietly, they formed alliances and successfully rallied a vote against him at a faculty meeting. The professor was blissfully unaware of this political coup, partly because up until then nobody had ever had the guts to go head-to-head with him. Support for the alternative proposal had been cultivated behind his back by some of his own protégés. Following the fatal vote, which must have come out of the blue, given his expression of disbelief, all color drained from the professor’s face. Looking ten years older, he had the same empty, ghostlike appearance Yeroen had after he had lost his top spot. For the professor, this was about much more than the issue at hand; it was about who ran the department. In the weeks and months following the meeting, his entire demeanor changed as he strode the corridors. Instead of saying “I am in charge,” his body language now said, “Leave me alone.”

          Another example of the behavior of a fallen alpha male involves someone much more famous. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s book The Final Days describes President Richard Nixon’s breakdown after it became obvious that he would have to resign, “Between sobs, Nixon was plaintive. How had a simple burglary … done all this? … Nixon got down on his knees…. [He] leaned over and struck his fist on the carpet, crying, ‘What have I done? What has happened?’” Henry Kissinger, his secretary of state, reportedly comforted the dethroned leader like a child. He consoled him, literally holding Nixon in his arms, reciting all of his great accomplishments over and over until the president finally calmed down. (Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape, p. 50-51) This is chimpanzee politics, from start to finish. 

          Staying on top is a balancing act between forcefully asserting dominance, keeping supporters happy, and avoiding mass revolt. If this sounds familiar, it’s because human politics works exactly the same. (Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape, p. 43)

          Power is an aphrodisiac, as Henry Kissinger once said, but it is also charismatic, and hypnotic, drawing subordinate males and females compliantly behind the powerful leader. 

          This is a really dark side to both chimpanzee and human politics. When the chimpanzee leader was murdered, there was a brief outrage against the murder. But within hours, the group gathered around the murderers, now the new leaders, and began grooming them. They accepted the violence, got over their anger, and helped the new leaders provide stability. “The king is dead; long live the king.” The two males sought power over fairness or justice. The rest sought stability and peace over fairness or justice. For all of them, fairness and justice weren’t a priority. 

          There are so many instances of this in our own history. It will resonate with some of you in personal relationships, or the silence in families surrounding the sexual abuse of children. But we do it as a society too. Think of the American public’s acceptance of two stolen presidential elections, and the dishonest and illegal invasion of Iraq, and probably soon Iran, with the tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths these illegal actions have caused. This compliant trait of ours is what gives savvy rulers confidence that we can easily be tricked and trained. We support the powerful, no matter how they got their power, if we think they can bring us stability and peace. 

          And so we say, “Don’t make waves, go along to get along” — or in a more stringent Japanese saying, “The nail that sticks out gets hammered.”

          Just this week, for instance, I read an essay by a social critic named Sheila Samples, called “Lost in the Lust of Werewolves.” She reminded me of that chimpanzee female who protested the murders. See how this excerpt from it strikes you:

          “I wonder why so many denizens of this Christian nation seem unable or unwilling to wrap their minds around the reality that Iraqi people are human beings just as they themselves are — not rabid dogs to be hunted down and slaughtered.

          “They don’t want to know what it’s like for families to cower in terror as their doors are kicked in, mothers and daughters raped, fathers and sons dragged off, never to be seen again. They don’t want to know about prisoners being humiliated and tortured, secretly “rendered” to countries for more torture, held captive for endless years without charges, without hope, without life. They don’t want to know about Iraq’s rich culture, its secular society, its formidable institutions of learning. … All of this, along with Iraq’s long-suffering people were made invisible, the better to smash the country as if it were only a den of thieves and murderers.” (Al-Ahram Weekly, 24-30 April 2003) (From “Lost in the Lust of Werewolves by Sheila Samples, www.dissidentvoice.org, March 8, 2007)

          But, as almost always, after a few righteous outbursts, we go along.

          By now, you can probably understand why Newt Gingrich put the book Chimpanzee Politics (1982) on the recommended reading list for freshmen representatives, in 1994. (Frans de Waal, The Ape and the Sushi Master, p. 307)

          If you’ve heard enough about chimpanzees for one day, there is a story about ravens that I’ve wanted to share with you for over two months.

          Ravens are like very big crows, weighing four or five pounds, and seem to be regarded as the smartest of all birds. They are carnivores, and have hunted with wolves for hundreds of thousands of years, as well as with other large predators. 

          They have been the subject of myths throughout human history, sometimes pictured with wolves, and sometimes just exalted by themselves as wise and mystical birds. 

          I read a book called Mind of the Raven, by perhaps the world’s leading authority on them, a professor of ethology from Vermont named Berndt Heinrich. He has studied ravens for decades, and traveled the world to observe these magnificent birds. But even he was surprised by some of the stories he heard about ravens.

          One was a news story about a woman near Boulder, Colorado. She was working out in the woods behind her cabin, when she was annoyed by a raven making so much noise it was irritating, cackling like crazy and diving low over her head. She had never heard a raven make this much noise, and wondered if it was trying to communicate with her. When it passed over her head again then flew up, she looked up. That’s when she saw the cougar about twenty feet away, crouching and ready to pounce. She weighed only about 98 pounds, so was a good target. But she called her 300-lb. husband, who chased the cougar away.

          In the newspaper, she said, “The lion moved his head just a little bit as the raven flew over it. That’s when I saw him. I never would have seen him otherwise. He was going to jump me. That raven saved my life.” The event was described as a miracle in the news. (Berndt Heinrich, Mind of the Raven, p. 193. The event happened September 7, 1997.)

          And up in Alaska, a man who had killed a deer came face to face with a bear who also wanted to claim the meat. Wisely, he backed away, leaving the deer for the bear. He said “Ravens were following me and squealing. I thought they were guiding me and telling me that the bear was still following me.” (Berndt Heinrich, Mind of the Raven, p. 194. Event was reported in the Anchorage Daily News, December 29, 1998.)

          Pretty impressive and heartwarming stories.  But the raven expert said no, that’s not what was really going on. The ravens were making noise to identify the location of prey. The ravens were hunting with the cougar and the bear, and the only thing they were trying to save the humans for was dinner!

          Those two people’s reactions to the raven’s actions, like most of our reactions to the story as we hear it, are telling. We tend to assume that the ravens were there to serve us, never thinking that they may instead be there to serve their fellow hunters, hoping to make a meal of us. We’re not special to ravens; when they’re hungry, we’re just meat. 

          Like chimpanzees, we react to politics this way, too. We assume those in power are going to use the power to serve us, to serve our best interests. We don’t like to think of the fact that they may instead have formed alliances with the influential people who got them in power, and are hunting with them — a hunt in which we are often the victims. When political lobbyists buy politicians in order to get them to remove restrictions on what corporations can do in pursuit of profit, for instance, the bills they pass are given a spin as though they’re somehow for the benefit of the “We the People.” But when the bills they buy also remove bankruptcy protection from workers, remove the ability to sue pharmaceutical companies over faulty vaccines, transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from social services and health care to tax cuts for the rich and huge defense contracts, then we are out in the wilderness with the cougars, the bears, and the ravens, and if we don’t watch out we’ll be dinner. 

          No, it doesn’t always happen that way. Yes, there certainly are people elected to power who try to serve the interests of regular old powerless common folk. But the temptation is there, and is often strong, to support those whose money and influence got them in office in the first place — to honor the reciprocal nature of the political alliances that brought them into power. But if we’re not rich or influential enough to seek out as allies in the hunt for power, we may just be meat. Any hungry raven or power-hungry chimpanzee would understand this immediately.

We pray to the angels of our better nature and the still small voice that can speak to us when we feel safe enough to listen.

 

Help us remember that we are never as alone or as powerless as we think.

Help us remember that we can, if we will, invest ourselves in relationships, institutions and causes that transcend and expand us.

Help us guard our hearts against those relationships and activities that diminish us and weaken our life force.

And help us give our hearts to those relationships and institutions that might, with our help, expand our souls and our worlds.

We know that every day both life and death are set before us. Let us have the faith and courage to choose those involvements that can lead us to ward life, toward life more abundant.

And help us find the will to serve those life-giving involvements with our heart, our mind and our spirit.

We ask that we may see more clearly in these matters, and that we have the will to hold to those relationships that demand, and cherish, the very best in us. Just that, just those.

          Amen.

PRAYER:

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, we come here this morning with smiles on our faces. If you’re not smiling then at least grin, or place your tongue firmly in your cheek. The world is a serious place – we know this! People get blown to bits in it everyday. Children are molested, women are beaten, soldiers die horrible deaths, or they survive with terrible life-altering wounds, lovers are betrayed, dogs are run over, cats are drowned, and the trash is not taken out. And no, we are not equating any of these actions with the others!! We know violence is the foundation of cultures worldwide, but what is the point of dwelling on simply the negative? There is a balance that struck in the body between sodium and potassium and without that balance our electrolytes – made up of positive and negative charges – would be out of whack and we would die.

            So admitting the terrible we pass on today to dwell on other matters. Or maybe we simply wish to nod in the direction of the world’s failings – if the negatives of life can be said to be failings – and look upon the jewels that sparkle on the river as the sun reflects off its surface. Sure, we know they aren’t real jewels, but that doesn’t stop our imaginations from seeing something where it really doesn’t exist and telling a story about it. Tell a child that those sparkling jewels on the river don’t exist, go ahead, explain about the sun’s rays and the reflexive properties of water – the only reaction you’ll get from a child is that look of boredom as they realize you’re trying to kill their imagination. Besides, everything manmade was once something simply imagined.

            Sure imaginings are nothing more than mental notions, creations, or conceptions of a poetic mind, but wasn’t it Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Harvard Divinity School Address who imagined that a time would come when the miracles of the Bible would be replaced by the miracles of green meadows and falling rain, wasn’t it the Plains Indians who imagined that their Ghost Dancing would bring back the buffalo and make the white man disappear, wasn’t the imaginings of Holocaust survivors – making plans for a seemingly non-existent future – that kept them alive when others around them were dropping like flies, wasn’t it the imaginings of the boy Sam Clemens while rafting on the mighty Mississipp that gave birth to the man Mark Twain, wasn’t the imaginings of Jan Hus, as he passed the cup of the Eucharist over the railing to the common people, that led to the flaming chalice of this denomination, wasn’t the imaginings of a poor Galilean that all God’s children could live in peace that created a world religion that went on to pervert that poor Galilean’s message to the point of total non-recognition, isn’t our own imaginings that someday our lives will fall in place that keeps us going, supplies us with the energy that pushes our lives forward in spite of the entropy that leads us toward the grave?

            This morning we’re here to celebrate imagination, story and the inherent silliness of all sentient beings.

            We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

Unison Reading #528 “I’ve Known Rivers”

 

SERMON: The Baptism of Jesus as seen from the vantage point of the Jordan River  — Israels Mississip

Introduction: “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” So begins Hal Holbrook’s one-man show concerning the life of Mark Twain. Where would Samuel Clemens have been if there were no

Mississippi River. The young writer knew the lesson of a prophet not being accepted in his own homeland, so he dropped the name, the tag that had followed him thus far, and took another. There on the mighty Mississipp Clemens first heard the call of the boatswain as he swung the leaded line that gave safety and security to River Boat Captains as they navigated a river whose muddy bottom was changing daily.

Without the mighty Mississipp Twain would have been traveling by stagecoach, wagon train, cattle drive, railroad, or even possibly on foot. And what daring-do name would he have sifted from those experiences? He could have called himself, “Westward Ho!” But the later generations of freed slaves would have had a field day with that one! He might have gone under the nom-de-plume of, G. Haw, or maybe, All Aboard! – now there’s a name that gets everybody on the same track – the point is, who’s to say whether Samuel Clemens would have made it without the river, that old man river, it’s a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi mud river, that artery of America that carried what the north made to the south, and what the south grew to the north, that equalizer of society where well-healed gentlemen, loose ladies, and cards combine to make fortunes for some, and some paupers forever!

I am the River

Jordan. I know. It inspires nothing nowadays. There was a time when simply that pronouncement, I am the River Jordan, would have sent a chill of panic, pride and purpose through the listening world. But the world was smaller then. In that part of the now spacious world where I still flow, I still hold sway. There are those who remember, those who cow-tow, those who covet, those who wail as they are immersed beneath my murky waters. Yes, I make a difference to some, and am grateful for the work, but the world at large, the movers, the shakers, the prophets, the healers, the wise men, the fools, their lives still fabric the world, but their connection to me has all but ceased.

In the interest of world economy the world is being destroyed. Global warming, no longer the hex of Green Peace, but a front page New York Times reality, pollution, acid rain, raw sewage and neglect have created a disconnect between those who are two thirds water, but no longer consider the source and that disconnect is about to take its revenge.

 “Now you say you love me, and if it’s true … well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river, I cried a river over you!”

You may think that my time has come and gone, and that being a river I am nothing more than a way through which water passes, but I could say the same about you.

Rather I will tell you of my life, what I have seen, those that I have touched, blessed, baptized, and when I’m through you can babble like that Greek idiot Heraclites and swear that you never stepped into the same stream twice, but in the end you’re still all wet. You do not understand that my touch can heal, my touch can aid armies, my touch can bring the dove of God descending upon the head of one of his sons – my touch can confer the crown of eternity – not knowing this, you turn aside, uninterested.

But who am I to boast? I’m just babbling on here, running on as it were, seeking my own level, so much water under the bridge, a stream of consciousness, if you will.

They say that there are no more great ones. They say that those who rule now, both politically, and economically are but the midget children of a race of giants.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (Genesis 1:1&2 NIV)

Imagine if you can, maybe you’ve felt this in a dream, or maybe someone you really loved delivered this feeling to you with the intimate touch of their body to yours, or maybe you just have a good imagination, but think of it – the Spirit of God hovering over you, close as a breath, caressing the wetness of oblivion – oh yes, darkness was over the surface of the deep – imagine you and God like this! (Show them your crossed fingers)

I know. I know. I’m in a Unitarian Universalist Church, okay, okay so most of you could care less about God and you being like this (show them the crossed fingers again). Yeah, yeah, I get it. There’s a tendency among liberal religionist to take those two fingers and have the index bow to center, but you’ve forgotten something when you raise those contorted fingers to God, you have forgotten that an index is something that serves to guide, point out, or otherwise facilitate reference. When you flip off God, all you’re really doing is bowing to the center … and you call yourselves leftists, liberals!?

The point is God exists whether you like it or not. If you have the word in your vocabulary, if you know what the word God means, then the existence of God cannot be denied. To say that you don’t believe in God, well, that’s tantamount to saying you don’t believe in words, and you do, you do believe in words. Even atheists define themselves as being “without God.” UU’s may not have creeds, at least not ones that they have written down and repeat religiously, excuse the pun, but UU’s do have patterns of thinking and those patterns are represented in catch phrases – the seven banalities – and those phrases repeated often enough become a liturgy – ceremonial rites that invoke, remember, give thanks, bless, praise and present offerings. Within traditional liturgy these rites center on God – if not God, then what do these rites center on in this church?

In the 19^th Century one, John William McGarvey, preached a sermon entitled The River Jordan. In that sermon he noted several wonderful things about me that makes me stand head and shoulders, or should I say headwater and banks, above all other rivers in the world. And if you were thinking that this man was exaggerating then I would draw your attention to one of his biographers who said concerning Reverend McGarvey, He relies almost exclusively on facts and has very little imagination.

I, the Jordan River, am mentioned approximately 175 times in the Old Testament, and about 15 times in the New Testament. You can see a pattern there, I’m sure. Interest in me waned as time went by. For example, how many of you can tell me which direction I flow in? Where do I begin, and where do I end?

I begin in the heights of Mount Hermon north of Galilee and from multiple sources I flow south to

Lake Huleh. From there I flow into the

Sea of Galilee, where Jesus is reported to have preached, calmed storms and walked on my waters. From the Sea of Galilee I descend 65 miles to the

Dead Sea, which is so called because it has no outlet.

From my beginnings in the north around the heights of Mount Hermon to my terminus in the Dead Sea I drop 2,380 feet and I have a winding course, making its way nearly 200 miles, approximately twice the actual distance between Mount Hermon and the

Dead Sea. Unlike every other river in the world, the majority of my navigation lies below sea level and ends in a body of water, the

Dead Sea, which is the lowest lying body of water, other than the oceans, on the face of the earth.

There are four miracles that are associated with my waters that I will speak about today. Please don’t flinch when I say the word, miracles. Miracles don’t have to be acts of God; they can also be events or circumstances that give one a sense of admiring awe, or maybe even a literary devise?

The first incident is found in the book of Second Kings. A man named Naaman, a Captain in the Syrian Army, and a mighty warrior who fought and won many battles was also a leper. Now, a young girl who worked in Naaman’s house was an Israeli slave who spoke of a prophet, one Elisha, who could cure Naaman of his leprosy.

So Naaman went to

Samaria where Elisha lived to ask him to rid him of his leprosy. And Elisha wouldn’t even leave his home to see Naaman, he simply sent a servant to tell Naaman to go to the River Jordan and bathe there.

Naaman got angry when he heard this because he knew there were plenty of nice rivers in Syria where he might have bathed, and besides he had traveled far to see this prophet, and he was looking forward to the prophet’s efforts to cleanse him, even if they didn’t work.

Naaman’s own servants had to convince Naaman that since they were already in

Israel and the River Jordan was there, what harm would it do him to have a bath.

He dipped himself 7 times into my waters and when he emerged his flesh was again like the flesh of a little child.

The second incident that concerns my holy waters, was recorded in the book of Joshua. After Moses had wandered with the people of

Israel in the desert for forty years. Every woman knows why it took them forty years – just like any man Moses wouldn’t stop and ask directions.

Moses died before he could enter the Promised Land, so Joshua was chosen to lead the people across the

Jordan River and into the land of milk and honey. But it was the time of harvest, and the banks of the River Jordan were overflowing as they always did at harvest time, so Joshua had the ark of the covenant brought down to the river side and when the ark was carried into my waters, it is reported that I stopped flowing and the people of Israel were allowed to pass over into the land promised them.

The third miraculous thing reported in the Bible concerning me was when Elijah and Elisha were in need of getting on the other side of the River Jordan and Elijah took his cloak from his shoulders and hit my waters with it and again, I dried up, and the two prophets were able to pass on dry land. Shortly after that Elijah was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot. Conveniently, the good prophet dropped his cloak and Elisha picked it up and was able to smite my waters with it again, and pass back over the

Jordan on his way home.

The fourth incident that happened of great spiritual significance was, of course, Jesus’ baptism in my holy waters.

I understand that you’ve heard from John – the one they called the Baptist – in an earlier sermon and it was John who baptized Jesus.

A word about John. He not only baptized his followers in my waters, but he also bathed there, drank my water, and when there was a crowd for baptisms and he couldn’t take a break he relieved himself in those self-same waters. He was not a man of clean habits, but what can you expect from a man who insults his visitors, “You brood of vipers, who warned you of the wrath to come?” and eats bugs, and steals honey from bees?

There has been a great deal written about Jesus’ baptism. It has been reported that a dove descended from heaven and lighted on Jesus’ head. It has been reported that John declared that this was the one he’d been talking about all along, the one whose sandal he was not worthy to tie. It has been reported that the heavens opened and a the very voice of God spoke saying, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”

I can’t verify any of these happenings because I’m just a river, just passing through, just hurrying on my way, and besides, you know the way things sound to you underwater, that’s the way things sound to me above water.

What I can tell you is that when John baptized Jesus he held him under for an ungodly amount of time. To the eyes of the world it may have looked like a baptism, but to me, the River Jordan, it looked a great deal like John the Baptist was trying to drown Jesus. That would have made sense, Jesus was the new kid on the block when it came to prophets, John’s popularity was waning, surely John knew that Jesus would take his place, and that the followers he’d gathered would eventually go over to the Nazarene. Why do you think that Jesus ran off into the desert right after his baptism? He wanted to get as far away from water, as far away from me, as he possibly could!

Conclusion: Now, I wish to comment on all these extraordinary things that have been recorded in the Bible and that supposedly happened along my banks and in my waters.

            First of all those who do not understand story have difficulty with elements of story. Mark Twain was absolutely right when he said, “Why mess up a good story by sticking to the facts?”

            Stories are not about facts. Stories are about the weaving of meaning into this life. Stories take what happened and ask, “What if?” Besides as has been proven time and again, even when there are eyewitnesses, their accounts of what happened are varied to the point of seeming to be about different events.   

            Within psychological circles this is known as the Rashomon Effect. This psychological effect is named after the first Japanese film to bring Akira Kurosawa to the attention of the viewing public of this country. Rashomon, the film, was released in 1950 and received an Oscar for Best Foreign language film in 1951.

Rashomon presents a morally complex and multifacitited story in which different characters tell their versions of the same “factual” events, and although each sounds plausible, and possible, none are the definitive take on what happened that afternoon in the grove of trees as a Samurai and his new wife are accosted by a bandit and the entire affair is witnessed by a woodcutter who is hiding in a grove of trees.

Now, some of you may wonder why I would know of Akira

Kurosawa, so I will explain. He was known as “Emperor” for his dictatorial directing style. At one point while directing a film he demanded that a stream that was to be in a shot be redirected to flow in the opposite direction … and so it was!

            In the process of telling a visual story, Kurosawa thought the story would best be told if nature were reversed, and for the story he was telling it was reversed. And you say you don’t believe in miracles!?

            Things happen in this world, and it is up to us to make sense of them. Meaning is the function of story telling. For the culture and time of Naaman the Syrian it was important for me, River Jordan, to be a place where miracles could happen, even to non-Israelites and so they did.

When Joshua and the Israelites entered the Promised Land that so-called Promised Land belonged to other peoples from other cultures. The Israelites supposedly murdered those people and took their lands. It was important for that particular Israelite culture to know that God was on their side and it was God’s will not their avarice, which was the cause of those supposed genocides. Truth is, they probably intermarried and told these genocidal stories to pretend ethic purity. Hence, the story is told that God dried up the River Jordan so that the battle of

Jericho could begin. We all need signs, and stories are places where signs can be inserted.

            Sometimes when one prophet takes over the work of another prophet, it seems appropriate that the new prophet should have equal powers with the old, hence the tale of Elijah’s cloak being passed on to Elisha.

            And Jesus’ baptism what of that? I played such an important part in the story of

Israel, that for a prophet to be properly introduced that prophet must come to terms with my holy waters. Besides, Jesus was to be the new Moses, and if Moses had water miracles, then it was paramount that Jesus have water miracles, too, and even better ones. Moses parted the waters, but Jesus walked on water. Did he really walk on water, or was it simply a metaphor of power explained in hyperbole? I think you know the answer.

            And do rivers talk? Can the River Jordan preach?

I suggest that the next time you’re near a body of moving water, you sit facing the water and listen. Sit long and quiet, and you will hear the whispers, the overtones, the shouts and the murmurs of the stream that you are making conscious. Listen carefully, for it is up to you to tell the story of what the river of your life is disclosing.