It IS a Wonderful World

 

I had planned to blog more about our new Living Interfaith Church.  It is so energizing as well as exciting to realize we will hold our first service on March 14^th.  But something intervened.  Well, actually someone intervened.  Her name is Marjorie.

 

Sometimes the problems of the world, large and small, macro and ever so micro can seem to overwhelm us.  Health care: yes or no?  Climate change: will we act or not?  Politics: have we as a people devolved to the point that those who combine the least truth shouted with the most invective win the argument?

 

On the micro level, I’ve had people I thought were friends act … well, in decidedly unfriendly ways.  And yet…

 

And yet, there’s Marjorie.  Marjorie’s in her mid-teens.  She’s smart, talented, sensitive, shy, and in possession of a magnificently thirsty mind.  She has her whole life ahead of her.  And she is full of hope and excitement – as well she should be.

 

I had the joy of sharing a pizza with Marjorie and her parents a few nights ago.  It was as if, for a night, I had a granddaughter.  It was a glorious and uplifting time.  And the pizza wasn’t bad, either.

 

Last Sunday, one of my choirs sang “It’s a Wonderful World.”  A few in the choir found it a bit “sappy” and weren’t all that excited about sentiment.  Still, they were good sports and not only sang the song, but sang it beautifully.  Yet it occurs to me that from time to time we need to remind ourselves of something truly important …

 

It is a wonderful world.  All anyone who doubts it needs to do is talk to Marjorie over pizza.

 

Do we need to care for the world?  You bet.  Strive to make it better?  Absolutely.  Are there huge dangers ahead?  Yes.  Are we living at a moment in history where what we do or do not do may well affect generation upon generation to come?  I believe so.

 

But it IS a wonderful world.  One huge reason to remain active in it is because it’s a wonderful world.  We must, I believe, refuse to give up our work or our smiles, precisely because we know just how wonderful the world can be.

 

I have a friend for whom I have the deepest admiration, respect and love.  It breaks my heart that virtually every time I see him all he can think of and speak of his how dreadful he thinks things are.

 

It’s not that he’s all that wrong.  We live in a most difficult time.  There are monumental  choices to be made: and at the moment, frankly, far too many of us are making these choices selfishly, thinking only of our own comfort and of our own advantage.  But there are also many who are active in their city, their state, their country, their earth, not for selfish reasons but because they care and care deeply about what we will leave to our children and grandchildren … what we will leave for Marjorie.

 

It IS a wonderful world, and there are wonderful people in it.  And there are more wonderful people yet to come.

 

“I hear babies cry,” says the song.  “I watch them grow.  They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know.  And I think to myself: what a wonderful world.”

 

I do not care who is screaming about “Doom!”  Nor do I care how loud they scream.  This is not a time for despair.  It is a time for hope.  This is not a time to give up.  It is a time to be tirelessly active.  It is a time to smile, to be joyful and to be confident, as well as a time to roll up our sleeves and to get to work – if not for our own sakes, then for Marjorie’s, and for all the young people of every race, religion, ethnicity, and culture.

 

I not only “think to myself” but proclaim it aloud.  What a wonderful world! 

 

[And just in case you’ve never heard/seen Louis Armstrong sing this classic: click here.]

Are We For Sale?

 

I received an e-mail yesterday, pointing me to a New York Times article about a once lowly political caucus and how it has become a money powerhouse thanks to a lot of corporate contributions.  It’s a disturbing article.  And I’m reminded of our Supreme Court which, in a 5-4 decision, decided that corporations can spend as much as they like on politics.  What’s the saying?   Oh yeah, in the U. S. we have the best politicians money can buy.

 

Yet as I pondered that, I wondered how different we are from the politicians we so regularly scorn?  Granting no one may have found it worthwhile to try to throw the kind of money at us that gets thrown at our politicians, or our corporate executives, or our sports stars.  But still …

 

I’m bad with punch lines and worse at remembering jokes.  But one I almost remember is about a person who railed against prostitutes, but admitted that he (or was it she?) would sleep with someone for ten million dollars.  “So” the punch line goes, “we’ve established what you are, we’re just arguing about the price.”

 

My question is, how for sale are we?  Are we, for example, willing to buy a product that harms the environment because it’s cheaper?  Is that all it takes to “buy” us?  Are we willing to buy at a product that comes from child labor or slave labor because it’s cheaper?  Is that all it takes to “buy” us?   Are we willing to shop at a store that mistreats its workforce, because the store sells for less?  Is that what it takes to buy us?

 

Are we for sale?

 

With health care, are we willing to keep the status quo because we like our own health care coverage, even though it means more and more people will be unable to afford their health care?  Is that what it takes to buy us?

 

A few weeks ago, I recommended the book “The Better World Shopping Guide.”  I still do.  It’s a good start, but it’s not enough.

 

In this difficult economy, I’ve watched people, good people, actively subverting others because they feel (rightly or wrongly) that their own position is at risk.  Is that what it takes to buy us?

 

The longer I live, the more I believe that the most important question in all of Abrahamic Scripture comes from Genesis.  It is a simple question, deceptively simple … and endlessly profound.  “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  And there is that most important of definitions that is never made in Scripture: “Who is my brother?” 

 

We come back to last week’s blog.  That there is no them.  There is only us.  Everyone, of every race, every religion, every nation, is my brother and my sister. 

 

Shortly, a choir I direct will sing a beautiful song called, “You Raise Me Up.”  But if we are our brother’s and sister’s keepers, then it’s not enough to acknowledge with humility that I need you to raise me up.  I must raise YOU up as well.  To make this work, to make our lives truly meaningful, we must raise each other up.  If and when the answer to the question of “Are we for sale?” is a resounding “Not at the expense of my brother or my sister,” then we may really say we are making progress.

Are We Our Brother’s Keeper – And Who Is Our Brother?

 

Yesterday marked the 20^th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s walk to freedom through the gates of Victor Verster prison.  He’d spent 27 years in unjust confinement.

 

It is a reminder to those of us who are overly pessimistic, that change can happen, that the grit and honor and example of one person can truly make a difference – and indeed can change the world.  It is good for the more cynical among us to remember this.

 

It is a reminder to those of us who are overly optimistic, that real change comes at a huge price, and demands immense sacrifice and suffering.  It is good for those among us who live in a world that delights in instant gratification to remember this.

 

We can change the world.  We can make it a better place.  But it will not be easy.  It will not be without real and disquieting sacrifice.  And it will assuredly not come if we mortgage who we are in order to gain the change we seek.

 

If there is anything in the life of Nelson Mandela that we should look to, and indeed there are many things, it is that he never surrendered who he was.  He never gave in to the lesser angels of his conscience, at least not for very long. 

 

There is something important here that is to be remembered.  We remember it with Martin Luther  King, we remember it with Mohandas Gandhi.  How long their dreams took.  How much work their dreams demanded.  How much sacrifice was required.

 

I do not compare Barack Obama to any of these people.  He hasn’t been on the world stage long enough to deserve the comparison (neither a comparison that shows him coming up short, nor a comparison that shows him their equal).  But what I will say is that “Change we can all believe in” never comes easily.  Never.  I would suggest that real change involves:

 

1. Strength of character,
2. A willingness to sacrifice,
3. A willingness to risk failure, and 
4. An ability to comprehend that change that is worthwhile takes time.

I believe that as a nation and as a world we must begin to recognize that we are one.  I will be speaking about this two Sundays in a row, one at the Interfaith Church in Ballard on February 28^th, the other at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Marysville on March 7^th. 

 

The upshot is this.  We are imprisoned by a mindset from which we will either walk free, like Mandela, or through which we will condemn our grandchildren to a truly miserable life.  And their grandchildren to an equally miserable life.  This imprisoning mindset allows us to divide every human being into one of two categories: “them” or “us.” 

 

As an Interfaith minister, I am acutely aware of how consistently we have done this with our religious beliefs.  Christian or Jew?  Muslim or Hindu?  Buddhist or Baha’i?  Theist or Atheist?   It has divided us and kept us from engaging the world with truly compassionate lives for thousands of years.

 

But, of course, divisions into “them” and “us” move well beyond our religious paths.  Dividing the Middle East into “Arab” or “Israeli” is something we are familiar with and recognize.  But do we equally recognize divisions into “wealthy” and “impoverished”?

 

This past January 23^rd, Andre Bauer, a candidate for governor of South Carolina, was referring to people on such government assistance as food stamps, when he said:

 

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better.”

 

He later apologized for the wording but not the sentiment of the statement.  The poor, to Mr. Bauer, are akin to stray animals.  If you feed “them,” you just encourage them to breed.  “Them.”

 

There’s an excellent op-ed piece that Leonard Pitts wrote on January 31^st.  Click here to read it.  He posits, correctly I think, that if Mr. Bauer had written about Jews or African Americans, or women in such a way it would have become a national scandal.  But, as Mr. Pitts writes, Bauer “said it of the poor, so he got away with it.” 

 

But I think even Mr. Pitts misses a crucial point.  For Mr. Pitts too considers people who live in poverty as “them”  He thinks kindly of the poor, but they are “them.”

 

I submit and I believe that there is no “them.”  There is only “us.”  Some of us live in wealth, and some of us live in poverty, and most of us live somewhere in between.  But it’s all us. 

 

The poor are a part of “us.”  As such we should be speaking out and looking out for all of us.  We need to speak out strongly, because some of us don’t have decent health care; some of us are homeless; some of us are going hungry.  Not “them.”  “Us.”

 

The rich are a part of “us” as well.  And as such we should be speaking out for all of us.  Where are our values, if some of us live bathed in obscene wealth, while others of us can’t get a decent meal?  What does it say of our values, when we applaud the multi-million dollar salaries of those of us who are good at manipulating money, or baseball bats, and stand by while those of us who are teachers can barely make ends meet?  In this context, I’d like to plug a book on values by Jim Wallis.  It’s just recently published.  The book is “Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street and Your Street.” 

 

We indeed need to rediscover values, and the most important value to rediscover is us!

 

It will not be easy.  It will not be overnight.  But I submit to you that if we cannot learn that there is no “them,” that there is only “us,” then our future, and our children’s future is bleak indeed.  But I submit to you also that it need not be!  This twentieth anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s walk to freedom teaches us that it need not be.

Sometimes You Just Need to Ask!

 

If you’ve been reading the blog regularly, you’ll know that I’ve been deeply concerned with how and what we buy.  I’ve been advocating for “Spiritual Consumerism.”  Rather than just searching for the “best value at the cheapest price,” I would urge us to be asking questions like: was this product made from child labor? or was the product made by a predatory company? or what effect did the production of this cereal, or laundry detergent, or shirt have on the environment?  And what effect will USING the product have on the environment?  Spiritual consumerism also wants to know: how does the store where I buy this treat its employees?

 

I remember blogging about this in mid-December, explaining why I had long since cancelled my subscription to “Consumer Reports” and asking, “Why doesn’t someone track this stuff!??”

 

Well, as it turns out, “someone” does track this stuff … or at least a lot of it.  I just didn’t know.  A reader of this blog pointed it out to me.  The reader pointed out that there’s a book that has much of this information, and has it in an easy to access format.  So I sent away for the book.  It arrived yesterday and I’ve been browsing through it ever since.  And you know what?  It’s a wonderful book that every reader who cares about more than him or herself should have … should read … should use.

 

The book is called, “The Better World Shopping Guide.”  To get to the Better World webpage, click here.  Once you’re on the page, click “new” – and for $10.00 you can support the effort and get this amazing book for yourself.  And no, I didn’t write the book, and I won’t make a penny from it. 

 

“The Better World Shopping Guide” will be invaluable to any person who truly cares about people and the planet.  As the back of the book so eloquently states, “Every dollar you spend is a vote for the world you want to live in!”  This book will help me, and can help you, to vote wisely – day after day.

 

The book offers a “report card” on things like cereals, coffee, gasoline, supermarkets, retail stores, office supplies and the like.  You won’t learn which product is “best tasting” or “longest lasting.”  You will learn which chocolates, as example, are made by using child labor – indeed, you’ll learn which famous chocolate company is being sued over child labor allegations.  

 

I hope you’ll not only buy the book, I hope you’ll encourage friends to read this blog and buy the book themselves.

 

Now after all this positive commentary, a caution.  It’s a small book.  There are products I tried to check that weren’t in the book.  You won’t find everything.  The book doesn’t answer every question.  It is not perfect and it is definitely not complete.  But it DOES fill a huge void.  It DOES provide us with a powerful tool for making choices. 

 

And, as the book reminds, we are voting with our dollars every day of our lives.  Make your vote count.  Please, make your vote count.