Reaping what we sow

Davidson Loehr

19 May 2002

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

CENTERING: The Duck, by Donald C. Babcock

Now we are ready to look at something pretty special. It is a duck riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf. No, it isn’t a gull. A gull always has a raucous touch about him. This is some sort of duck, and he cuddles in the swells. He isn’t cold, and he is thinking things over. There is a big heaving in the Atlantic, and he is part of it. He looks a bit like a mandarin, or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree, but he has hardly enough above the eyes to be a philosopher. He has poise, however, which is what philosophers must have. He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic. Probably he doesn’t know how large the ocean is. And neither do you. But he feels it. And what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it. He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity – which it is. That is religion, and the duck has it. He has made himself part of the boundless, by easing himself into it just where it touches him. I like the little duck. He doesn’t know much, but he has religion.

SERMON:

I need to stop watching Jay Leno’s “Jaywalk” segments:

A woman who stares at a huge photo of Colin Powell and says she’s never seen that face before in her life.

A man who isn’t sure what country the Vietnam War was fought in, or what century the Civil War was fought.

The woman who, when asked what the two sides were in the Civil War, guessed that it was between East and West.

And this wasn’t just any Jaywalk segment; these were all college students.

Those of you who watch this show more regularly than I do will have your own favorite list of appalling answers from American voters. It seems undeniable that the quality of education in our country has fallen drastically in all areas of the humanities, as well as knowledge of world events.

This week, I was given an article from the local paper written five years ago that compared the education of 8th graders in 1997 and 1907, and it felt like watching another Jaywalk segment. Here are some of the questions from that old test:

Eighth-grade students were asked to “find the interest on an 8 percent note for $900 running two years, two months, six days, and to reduce 3 pecks, 5 quarts, 1 pint to bushels.”

They were asked to define words including zenith, deviated, misconception, panegyric, talisman and crypt.

Among the ten questions in geography were “Name two countries producing large quantities of wheat, two of cotton, two of coal and two of tea” and “name three important rivers in the United States, three of Europe, three of Asia, three of south America and three of Africa.”

Also in history, students were obliged to give “a brief account of the colleges, printing and religion in the colonies prior to the American Revolution,” to “name the principal campaigns and military leaders in the Civil War” and to “name the principal political positions which have been advocated since the Civil War and the party which advocated each.”

The professor of humanities who wrote this article in 1997 said reading this exam took his breath away, and he bet that most university students today couldn’t pass it. “We have come a long way since 1907,” he said, “but it is certainly not the high road we have taken.” And he concluded by saying, “A small world is long gone, as are the standards that made this national exceptional.” (May 3, 1997, Austin American Statesman, page not available).

And we reap what we sow. we’re not only slipping badly in basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic – as they used to label ‘the three R’s” – but in our awareness of the size of the world, and the role decent citizens of the world’s most powerful country should be striving to play in this world.

I’m glad there are a lot of good and dedicated people working at writing and publishing textbooks, and I’m glad I’m not one of them. The many layers of politics involved in textbook publication would drive me absolutely nuts. Textbook publishers are harassed by special interest groups from everywhere, each trying to put their spin on what is taught to our children.

There are corporate groups who want all talk of economics to stress the free-market economy, and identify that kind of capitalism with American democracy. Right-wing groups want America’s heroes to be white Christians, want creationism taught as a viable scientific theory, and want history books to omit or play down the murderous role of Christian armies during the Crusades. Jewish and Muslim groups want to check anything that mentions their own special interests, and the list goes on. I’m being led to understand that the truth is that it’s hard or impossible to get very liberal or multicultural messages into textbooks, if the publishers hope to sell them. Some books are scrutinized by so many special interests it seems a wonder that books dealing with more controversial subjects get published at all.

The teacher guides that accompany the textbooks aren’t under this much scrutiny. These guides give teachers other information and ideas for teaching the courses.

But even if we could try to fill out teacher guides, even if we had some power to help our public schools begin educating the character of our children again, we couldn’t go back to the McGuffey Readers. Times have changed. And a liberal education, especially in the humanities, is much more important than it was a hundred years ago.

Several people have asked me why there are no Unitarian schools, the way there are Catholic or Jehovah’s Witness schools. It’s a good question; maybe it will happen some day. Maybe that’s the only way we are likely to get the kind of education we need and wish for.

In the meantime, without our own schools or the power to get a decent humanities education back in public school curricula, I”ve had to realize this week that all I’m really doing here is fantasizing. That’s all I have to offer you today: a fantasy trip into the kinds of character-building ideals I wish our public schools taught, and a few ideas for how they might be taught.

The method is the same used by the McGuffey Readers, and by all religions: stories. So I’m going to tell you some stories.

Three Points: To keep this from getting completely out of control, there are three points, three lessons, I think we must be teaching our children if they are to become people of noble character in the 21st century. These are slightly different from the points taught by the McGuffey Readers, because our world is so different.

1. We are all brothers and sisters, children of God, and the hope of the world. All of us; all the peoples in all the countries in the world: male and female, white, brown and yellow, rich and poor, weak and powerful. All of us. We are all brothers and sisters, children of God, and the hope of the world.

How could teachers make this point in memorable ways without violating the important separation of church and state? Very easily, just as they did in the days of the McGuffey Eclectic Readers. Here are a few stories taken from religions and folklore around the world. See if you connect with them.

A. A family went to a restaurant: father, mother, and seven-year-old son. The waitress takes the parents” orders first, then turns to the boy. “And what would you like?” A little hesitantly, the boy says, “I”d like a hot dog.” Before the waitress can move her pen, the mother says “No hot dog. Bring him a steak, mashed potatoes and carrots.” The waitress ignores her. “Would you like ketchup or mustard on your hot dog?” “Ketchup!” “One hot dog with ketchup, coming up!” In the stunned silence at the table after the waitress leaves, the boy sits up quite tall and looks toward his parents: “You know what? She thinks I’m real!”

B. The Buddhists make the point in a classier way, when they tell us that everyone, every one of us, has within us a “Buddha seed.” Every one of us has within us that sacred possibility of becoming awake, enlightened, of becoming a blessed and holy person living a blessed and holy life. And our task is to look beyond the surface of others, to know that Buddha-seed is there, and to speak to their Buddha-seed, to speak to the part of them that is capable of the highest rather than something less.

C. The Jews have a similar story dating from the time of Isaiah, more than 2500 years ago. There are 36 people in the world, they said, who are capable of responding to the suffering that is part of the human condition. It is for their sake that God permits the world to continue. We don’t know who they are, and neither do they – so it’s important to treat everyone, including ourselves, as if they might be one of the 36 people for whose sake God permits the world to continue.

D. Sometimes, we can’t see it. Sometimes, both children and adults get beaten down, get buried under bad teachings, bad teachers or mentors, or life situations where all they can try to do is survive. There is a story to address this too: a true story, taken from science.

One of the most amazing examples of the power and persistence of the life force is found in the plant kingdom. When times are harsh and what is needed to bloom cannot be found, certain plants become spores. These plants dampen down and wall off their life force in order to survive. It is an effective strategy. Spores found in mummies, spores thousands of years old, have unfolded into plants when given the opportunity.

When no one listens, children form spores. In an environment hostile to their uniqueness, when they are judged, criticized, and reshaped through approval into what is wanted rather than supported and allowed to develop naturally into who they are, children wall the unloved parts of themselves away. People may become spores young and stay that way throughout most of their lives. But a spore is a survival strategy, not a way of life. Spores do not grow. They endure. What you needed to do to survive may be very different from what you need to do to live.” (Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom, pp. 36-37)

Those are some of the stories that teachers would, in my fantasy world, use to teach the first point of character formation to all children: that We are all brothers and sisters, children of God, and the hope of the world.

2. My way of putting the second point is to say that the whole human sound goes up only from the full choir. We each have only a piece of the truth. The truth we need can only come through open dialogue and collaboration with those who see things differently than we do. And the arrogance of confusing our opinion with the Truth is often a sin against our humanity.

How to teach this? This one’s very easy, and often taught.

A. The oldest and most famous story is the ancient Indian story of the blind people and the elephant. You know the story. A bunch of blind people come across an elephant, which they’ve never experienced before. Each one tries to define the elephant just by the particular part of it they have bumped into. So the man who has bumped into the trunk is certain that an elephant is like a large snake. The woman who ran into one of its legs corrects him: an elephant is like a tree. No, says the woman who has got the tail, it’s like a thin rope. You’re all wrong, says the guy with an ear. An elephant is like a flat, leathery leaf. This is not a story about elephants! It is a story about blindness.

B. A shorter story comes from the Islamic tradition. To a visitor who said he was seeking the Truth, the teacher said “If what you really seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else.” “I know,” said the visitor, “an overwhelming passion for it.” “No,” said the teacher, “a constant readiness to admit that you may be wrong.”

C. And a folk tale tells the same story in another way. The devil once went for a walk with a friend. They saw a man ahead of them stoop down and pick something up from the ground. “What did that mind find?” asked the friend. “A piece of the truth,” said the devil. “Doesn’t that disturb you? Don’t you want to take it from him?” asked the friend. “No,” the devil laughed. “I love it when they find a few pieces of the truth. They turn them into beliefs, for which they are willing to kill.”

D. From Africa comes a story about salvation and religious pluralism. A little girl saw a monkey grab a large fish out of the stream and carry it up into his tree. “What on earth are you doing?” she shouted at the monkey. “Can’t you see?” called back the monkey, “I am saving this fish from drowning!” The sun that gives sight to the eagle blinds the owl. Monkey salvation will not save a fish, and fish salvation will not save a monkey.

E. And the Sufis tell this witty tale to make the same kind of point. A dead man suddenly came to life and began to pound on the lid of his coffin. The lid was raised; the man sat up. “What are you doing?” he yelled at the assembled congregation, “I am not dead!” His words were met with silent disbelief. Finally one of the mourners said to him “Friend, both the doctors and the priests have certified that you are dead, and so you are certainly dead.” And they buried him again.

3. The third point I think we should teach all our children is the most important, but it can only be learned if the first two points are learned. It is this: Our task is to reclaim the world for these noble ideals. These ideals aren’t new. They have been preached by every religion I’m aware of for thousands of years.

This is an easy point to teach, for here, the stories just abound, from traditions all over the world and throughout history, for this has always been our most important task: reclaiming and restoring the world.

A. The 16th century mystical Jewish teachings of the Kabbala say that in the beginning was Ein Sof, a great holy light, containing all the holiness and light in the universe. It exploded, and sparks of that great light went throughout the universe. There is such a spark within each person. And our job is to find those holy sparks and coax them into flames, so that together we might restore the world.

B. Some stories make the point much more modestly. A couple went to the Master, asking him how they could stop their endless quarreling. He said, “Just stop claiming as a right what you can ask for as a favor.” They did, and their quarreling instantly stopped.

C. These achievements of character aren’t easy, and they often involve some suffering, as we all know. There is, of course, a story about this too, another true one from science. It’s about oysters.

An oyster is soft, tender, and vulnerable. Without the sanctuary of its shell it could not survive. But oysters must open their shells in order to “breathe” water. Sometimes while an oyster is breathing, a grain of sand will enter its shell and become a part of its life from then on.

Such grains of sand cause pain, but an oyster does not alter its soft nature because of this. It does not become hard and leathery in order not to feel. It continues to entrust itself to the ocean, to open and breathe in order to live. But it does respond. Slowly and patiently, the oyster wraps the grain of sand in thin translucent layers until, over time, it has created something of great value in the place where it was most vulnerable to its pain. A pearl might be thought of as an oyster’s response to suffering. Not every oyster can do this. Oysters that do are far more valuable to people than oysters that do not.

Disappointment and suffering are a part of life. Many times we can just put them behind us and move on without them. But some things are too big or too deep, and we will have to leave or block important parts of ourselves with them. These are our grains of sand, the possibilities for our wisdom to grow into something precious. It starts with our realization that this particular loss is a part of us from then on, that we cannot go back to the way we were before.

Something in us can transform such suffering into wisdom. The process of turning pain into wisdom often looks like a sorting process. First we experience everything. Then one by one we let things go: the anger, the blame, the sense of injustice, and finally even the pain itself, until all we have left is a deeper sense of the value of life and a greater capacity to live it.” (Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings, p. 140.)

E. Two brothers had inherited the large family farm after their father died. Each received half. One brother was single and lived alone. The other was married, with five children. One night while lying in bed, the first brother was troubled by a recurring thought: ‘this isn’t fair. My brother receives the same amount of grain that I do, yet he has seven mouths to feed, while I have only one.” So he got up, snuck over to his granary, loaded a large sack full of grain and carried it over to his brother’s granary, dumping it in.

About the same time, the second brother was also awakened by troubling thoughts of a similar nature. “How can this be right? I have five children who can care for me when I get old, while my brother has no one. Yet he gets no more grain than I do. It isn’t fair.” So saying, he got up, snuck down to his granary, and carried a large sack of grain over to the first brother’s granary.

These secret nighttime exchanges went on for several years. Then one night – it was bound to happen – the two brothers picked the same time of the same night for their secret donations. Coming around the corner of a large building, they ran into each other, and the secret was out.

The story became an immediate favorite of the townspeople. Many years later, after the brothers had died, the town elders were looking for just the right place to build their new church. After much discussion, they built it on the spot where the two brothers had bumped into each other, as no more sacred spot could be found.

F. Another story comes from the 1970s at the height of the Hippie movement. It occurred on Easter Sunday morning, at an Episcopal church that practiced such “high church” that the head usher – who had held this position for nearly fifty years – wore formal coat and tails. The place was packed; there wasn’t an empty seat. And the hippie got in because he walked through the door while the old usher was looking toward something else. Walking down the large and long aisle, he stood out in every way. He was barefoot, for starters. His hair was dirty and uncombed, his clothes were tattered, and even those far away were sure he must smell. Unable to find a seat, he walked all the way to the front of the church, finally sitting down cross-legged in front of the first row of pews, and directly beneath the pulpit.

There was a hushed silence as the aged usher, seeing what had happened, started his slow and dignified walk down the aisle toward the front. People rehearsed their own silent rationalizations for what they knew would come next.

“Well, of course the dear old man will ask him to leave. It’s just so inappropriate. After all, that young man could see the kind of church this is. Where does he think he is, for God’s sake?”

At length, the old usher arrived at the front of the church. He walked directly over to the young hippie, removed his own shoes, and sat next to the young man, cross-legged.

This left even the preacher speechless. ‘the words I say to you today you will forget by next week,” he said to the hushed congregation. “What you have just seen is today’s real sermon, and you will remember it for the rest of your life.”

G. There are many more stories longing to make this point, but to bring this to a timely end, I”ll choose just one more. It is an old story about the Buddhist who asked his students how they could tell when the night had ended and morning had come.

“When you can tell a cow from a horse,” said one.

“Wrong,” the teacher replied.

“Well then,” said another, “when you can tell an oak tree from a maple tree.”

“Wrong again.”

“Well then, how?” the students asked.

“When you can look into the face of any other man and see your brother,” the Buddhist answered, “and when you can look into the face of any other woman and see your sister, then it is morning. Until you can do that, no matter where the sun happens to be, it is still night time.”

It is morning when the Buddha-seed, that spark of light from the creation that is within all our hearts, comes to light and comes to life and defines us and our part of the world.

This brings us back to Ezekiel’s dream from last week, doesn’t it? It was Ezekiel who put the words into God’s mouth that made God say he would take out our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, and put his spirit into us. We reclaim and restore the world when we have found the Buddha-seed in our hearts and in the hearts of others. The medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart called it, naturally, a God-seed. It’s the same seed.

But the seed has become a spore, hiding there where it is safe, hoping that some day we may find it, set it free, let it flower and help us grow into a new kind of world.

It is our most ancient and most abiding dream. Until we can bring it to truth, we just have ourselves, each other, our hopes, and these terribly sacred stories.