I finally cleaned the back yard the other day, a task I had spent several months avoiding. In fact, in about 90 minutes, I accomplished something that I had actively avoided for at least sixteen hours. I calculate those hours from the time I spent staring out the kitchen window, cursing the mess and myself for not cleaning up the mess.

So you might be wondering what finally propelled me to do it? Was it a guest coming, someone I wanted to impress? Nope. Just the day before, two friends stopped by independently, having called to say, “I’d love to stop by and see your garden.” I showed them around the beautiful, well cared for front yard, with a dismissive “ignore the back yard,” as if they could. Didn’t bother me a bit.

Was it the fact that the dog dug a huge hole in my perennial garden because she could no longer access the parts of the yards which are hers to dig, full as they were by chest high weeds? Nope. Those holes have been coming for a while. They’re annoying, but mostly I couldn’t see them for the weeds.

Was it that we had a hard rain the other night making weeding easier and providing a pleasant temperature? Well, that didn’t hurt any, but it wasn’t the deciding factor. There have been scads of rains that have not motivated me in the past.

What finally propelled me out the back door to this long-avoided task was simply this: I wanted to avoid another task even more. Suddenly the activity which had been on the top of my procrastination list was bumped. Suddenly, the back yard was the lesser of two evils. I woke up thinking about what I needed to do, and thought, “You know, I REALLY should clean the back yard!”

Five minutes into the job, I was thoroughly happy, wondering why it had taken me so long to get there, delighted by how quickly a huge mess could turn into tidiness (and lawn bags full of limbs and weeds) and vowing, though with little credibility with myself, it would never happen again.

Have you ever noticed this: The same task can be done to avoid something else, or to simply accomplish the task itself? For me at least, each one of these ways of doing something has a distinct energy, rhythm, and value.

Much has been made of simply doing what you are doing. Ram Dass’ book, “Be Here Now,” was the Bible for my generation, and what he didn’t say about simply being in the present, Thich Nhat Han finished off with all of his mindfulness talks about doing the dishes when you do the dishes and stuff like that. Sure, I’m good with all of that. Who can argue with it?

But what about the value of being here later, or earlier? Or going somewhere else altogether because we just can’t bear to be where we’re supposed to be? There’s a certain lifeforce in that as well, though I’m not aware of any religious teachings which embrace it as central. Although Unitarian Universalism comes close sometimes. I mean, as much as we like to say, it’s not about what we don’t believe, it’s what we do believe, that’s only partly true. In reality, for many of us, knowing what Unitarian Universalism is NOT was of keen importance, before we would commit ourselves to taking the time to learn what it was.

So my backyard is clean, for the moment, and I’m not going to tell you about this other task I’m avoiding. I don’t even want to think about it!

We human beings have many times many different prejudices. I’m not trying to make a value statement in saying that, just naming something that I believe is an inherent aspect of human nature. We are deeply prejudiced beings.  The primary difference I have seen among human beings was whether or not they were aware of their prejudices.

Why is it impossible for us to not be prejudiced? Because we are beings of infinite yearnings and finite knowledge. We feel called to make decisions and judgments, even though it is impossible for us to have perfect knowledge of all that is around us.

At the base of my argument on this issue is a theme I’ve turned to many times before, and that is that while objective reality and objective truth do indeed exist, it is impossible for human beings to ever comprehend, grasp, or access it. Each time we seek to define any objective reality, or any objective or ultimate truth, we are prevented from doing so through our own limited perspective as a single human individual, and by our incapacity to grasp all knowledge that can be related to any given subject.

And yet, even with the incapacity to achieve objective reality or ultimate truth, many human beings inherently yearn for it. While objective reality and ultimate truth do indeed exist, we human beings do not have the capacity to discern or conceive it. We spend our lives in our own masses of perceptions, preconceptions, prejudices, and assumptions.  And as I do not know all of humanity, even my statement that no one can access objective truth must itself be a subjective statement, no matter how objectively I frame it.

Religions have long realized this tension between the human desire to encompass ultimate truth and objective reality, and our near complete incapacity to do so. Some theologians have even proposed this tension as the ultimate source of all human religion… the attempt to address this tension by designating an ultimate truth a

Politicians throw about plans for health care, Social Security, and Medicare as if they were stand-up comedians trying joke after joke to see what gets a rise out of their audience. To many of us, the effects of these plans are abstract and distant. We intellectually engage with them, thinking that our rational side is best when evaluating how our nation should take care of its old, poor, and vulnerable.

Perhaps instead, we should feel something. This week, I’m feeling anger—make that rage. Why? Allow me to introduce you to my grandpa.

My grandfather turned 87 last week, and I visited him to celebrate and take him out to dinner. Grandpa has an amazing history: Born in Marseille, France, he served in the French Merchant Marine, and then fought in the French Resistance until the liberation of France from Nazi rule in 1944. Soon after, he came to the United States, where he met and married my grandmother and became a U.S. citizen.

Grandpa worked on the docks in Brooklyn, unloading cargo ships, until his back was injured at work, forcing him to find less-physical labor. For years after that, he worked for an independent governmental agency. When he retired from that agency, he was promised a pension as well as health insurance for life (the same health care given to retirees from New York City employment).

Knowing that this was assured, he worked a series of jobs with few benefits: he managed a McDonald’s, he drove a commuter van, he managed a boutique. Then, at the age of 65, he graduated from Police Academy, becoming a special forces policeman in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. There, he was a crossing guard and worked events like parades and school dances as extra security. When he finally retired from work altogether, he was 75 years old.

In late 2010, the governmental agency he worked for was closed down by the state and city. Legislators could not reach a deal to keep the agency, which was supposed to make money, solvent. When the agency was dissolved, retirees got a letter saying that the city and state would no longer be providing them with health insurance. The courts ruled that this was legal, despite the promises that were made by generations of politicians. My grandfather’s health care was left to the whims of Medicare.

No more dental insurance, either, apparently (it was part of the package he was promised for life). For a birthday gift, my parents, brothers and I paid for my grandfather’s dental bill. One of his teeth had become infected, and the extraction and subsequent false tooth cost some $2000. Grandpa otherwise couldn’t have afforded it, and he would have lived with a big gap in the side of his mouth.

Did I mention that my grandparents live only on Social Security checks and that small pension check (thankfully, it’s against the New York State Constitution to renege on the promise of a pension)? From their less-than-$2000 a month in income, they have to pay rent, utilities, food, car insurance, gas (thankfully, they don’t drive much), doctor’s bills and medicine.

Which brings us to Medicare. My grandfather has asthma. My grandmother has high blood pressure. It’s not like they take a raft of pills every day, but those conditions require constant medication. Here in September, they find themselves in the infamous Medicare “doughnut hole.” Apparently, the asthma medication costs $400 a month, and the blood pressure medication $200.

My grandparents don’t have $600 a month to spend on medicine, but because they would die without this medication, they find a way. They beg their doctors for free samples so that they don’t have to refill their prescriptions quite as often. Grandma is currently calling the drug companies to try to qualify for discount programs. Neither of them can wait until 2014, when the Affordable Health Care Act closes that hole.

Because every spare dollar is going to pay for asthma medication, they can’t afford the health care they need, either. My grandfather’s back hurts so much (from that injury 45 years ago) that he can hardly get in and out of a car. I watched him struggle to go out to dinner with us, and I could hardly believe it. His doctor thinks that regular physical therapy would help—but he can’t afford the three-times-a-week co-pays. I’m going to be paying them for him.

Thankfully, my grandfather has a family who can help. But at 87, he doesn’t want to have to ask for it, and he knows that we have other financial considerations. My parents are retired, too, and not exactly flush with cash. My next youngest brother supports his family of 4 on his income. My youngest brother is about to start graduate school. I’ll be paying for grandpa’s physical therapy.

Which makes me mad. Our society is failing our elders. It is utterly contemptuous that someone who worked hard all of his life could be reduced to having to decide whether to seek the medical care he needs or ask his grandson for money. It is beyond the pale that my similarly hard-working grandmother (none of whose jobs left her with retirement security either) has to call the doctor and beg for another free asthma inhaler.

So the next time a politician says something about the “doughnut hole,” I want you to think of my 87 year-old grandpa. The next time a politician mentions the promises that we make to our senior citizens, think of my grandpa. The next time someone decides that cutting Medicare spending is the only way to save our nation, think of grandpa. I know I will be.

One hundred and fifty years ago today, President Lincoln issued a Preliminary Proclamation that mandated the emancipation of all slaves in Confederate territory that did not return to the Union by January 1 of the following year. It was the beginning of the end of one of the greatest blots upon the face of liberty, a chattel system of coerced servitude in a nation founded upon ideals of equality and freedom.

“President Lincoln Reading the Emancipation Proclamation to His Cabinet” by Francis Bicknell Carpenter

Lincoln was many things, but let us never forget that he was a politician. He had to assuage the concerns of various constituencies, he had to build alliances, he had to pursue his advantage when necessary and compromise when it was called for. Yet ultimately, the greatness of Lincoln’s leadership lay in his insistence upon doing what he knew to be right, his steadfastness in pursuing that right, and the deftness with which he pursued the right.

The road to true freedom is a long one. Look at how Russia, South Africa, Haiti, Myanmar, and so many other nations have ambled, not always sure-footedly, away from tyranny and slowly, slowly in the direction of embracing human dignity. The setbacks are many, and the outcome far from certain. Our own country has made great strides, but we know there is still much for us to do. Slavery as it was once known in this country is no more, yet its legacy still haunts us. Poverty still cripples dreams in this land of wealth. Injustices still abound among us. There are brief moments in the history of any people when a creative genius like Lincoln steps in and enacts fundamental change. Yet we cannot wait for the strong arm of one person to right our wrongs for us. Each of us needs to cultivate that blend of heroic idealism and cunning pragmatism that made Lincoln our country’s greatest president.

I’m sure you’ve heard the aphorism, that violence never solves anything.  It is a good line, one I have previously used myself.  In the long view it even has some truth to it… violence often does lead to more and more complicated problems over time.

The problem with it is that in the short view (and most human beings live in the short view) it is demonstrably untrue.  Violence can seem, for awhile, to have solved some problems rather neatly.  Violence, be it the violence of a mob in Cairo or a planned strike under the cover of a mob in Benghazi… violence can seem a viable solution to a problem, even an attractive one.  Why attractive?  Because somehow we continue with the myth that killing people creates some kind of finality, some kind of closure, in a visceral denial that we are all interconnected and interdependent.

And yet, I’ve come to realize that there is a deeper truth about violence, one that, in my experience, comes as close to an absolute truth of anything I have ever encountered… and that is this.  Violence begets more violence.  When one violence is perpetrated, it created a continuing cycle that creates more and different forms of violence, spreading out in a wave from the initial point.

In fact, I wonder if there really are very many new initial points of violence, and if rather our reality is made up of a continuing harmonic of violence stretching back to the dawn of human time.

I also want to clarify what I mean by violence, for I am talking about far more than physical violence.  I might strike you, which is an act of physical violence.  In reaction to my striking you, you might go home and be emotionally violent to a spouse.  That spouse might then tell a child that the God they learned about in Sunday School must be dead for such things to happen, perpetrating an act of religious violence on the child’s growing faith… And on, and on, and on.

We all live in these cycles and waves of many different forms of violence each and every day of our lives.  It is a spiritual practice to intentionally seek to interrupt these waves of violence when they come our way.  It is a spiritual practice to notice the wave, the form of violence that is perpetrated upon you, and respond with loving kindness.  It is a spiritual practice to transform that violence within your spirit.

As one person doing this, the wave will likely crash around you and flow on… but as one of millions?  Perhaps we can, one day, break the cycle of violence that has plagued humanity since the dawn of our awareness.  Perhaps we can break the cycle in which, in this small part of this ongoing wave of violence, an Israeli-American committed an act of religious violence upon the Islamic faith, and then many enraged by that act committed these acts of physical violence upon Americans, leading us now to political calculations around another act of military violence upon Muslims.

Without such millions of people seeking to intentionally interrupt the waves of violence of all forms, we are stuck forever battered by the surf.

Yours in faith,

Rev. David