The little towns in their squares

light up, as do the scattered

lights of farmyards in the tilting,

fuzzy squares they’re locked in.

 

I balance a Chilian red

on a bumpy flight out to

one of those squares.

 

The West is red too,

after we bump to a

cruising altitude through

clouds threatening snow.

 

I’ve been here before,

but not in this sundown;

in these clouds;

drinking this wine;

in the lines of this poem.

 

Somewhere out there

I’ve been on the last

cool ride in the back

of a truck at evening,

watching a huge moon rise

and knowing this, too,

would be a last.

 

We knew that time would pass;

we knew we, too, would pass;

 

we knew that the land

would not forget us

because it never heard

our cries anyway.

 

We knew it, but

the terrible wrench

of knowing it

 

again and again—

 

the land proved careful

about showing us that,

 

or perhaps even we

might have rebelled.

 

Perhaps even we

might have blown out

our little lights

in the squares

and called it a night

 

with no tomorrow.

 

Land, what would you

have done without

our fierce burning?

 

What would we have done,

without our fierce burning?

 

For now, there is the red.

 

Then, the darkness,

but for the burning.

There’s an old Zen story that does like this:

 

Once there was a great warrior. He had never been defeated, and he continued to win every confrontation into old age. He was known far and wide as the only warrior who had never suffered a defeat.

This of course was a challenge to younger warriors, and one day a young man appeared to challenge the old warrior. He, too, had never suffered defeat. His technique had become famous: he allowed his opponent to make the first move, then exploited that move and always won the day.

Despite the concern of his students, the old warrior consented to join in combat with the young man.

On the day of the battle, the young man walked up to the old warrior and spat in his face. The old man did not move. Then the young man began to hurl insults. This had no affect either. Then the young warrior began to throw dirt and stones at the old warrior. The old warrior stood, impassive.

Finally, exhausted by all his effort, the young warrior bowed to the old warrior, admitting defeat.

After the young man had left, the disciples of the old warrior gathered around him. “Teacher! I would have split that young man’s skull open! How could you allow him to hurl such insults at you?”

The old warrior replied, “Consider this: if someone offers a gift and you will not receive it, to whom does that gift belong?”

 

Nonviolent resistance embraces the techniques of both the old and the young Zen warrior. Like the old teacher, nonviolence does not accept the gift of violence or insults. Like the young warrior, nonviolence provokes a first response, then watches the opponent to see what the first move will be.

On April 12th, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama for parading without a license. There wasn’t a great deal of reading material in the jail, but one of the people arrested with King had been allowed to keep a newspaper he had in his pocket. That newspaper contained an editorial written by eight Euro-American Alabama clergy titled “A Call for Unity.”

The editorial began with the premise that, yes, African Americans deserved equality, but—that said—that said equality should be allowed to happen slowly—in the fullness, shall we say, of time. Without hubbub and marches.

King had heard this argument many times—just calm down and let the South change, slowly but surely. He had heard it from Euro-American centrists; he had heard it from within the African American leadership itself.

King began writing a response immediately. He used the bottom of his shoe for a desk. He wrote first on the margins of the newspaper; then on toilet paper; then on scraps provided for him by an African American trusty in the jail.

What he wrote is one of the great documents in US history, up there with the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. What he wrote is an argument based on the Unitarian thought of Henry David Thoreau’s masterwork, “Civil Disobedience.”

MLK knew that violence was the nature of racism. But it is also a basic human response to threat. In his letter King says this:

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps:

collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist;

 negotiation;

 self purification;

 and direct action.

We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham.

 

Besides the moral high ground of nonviolence, King also knew that his cause itself stood for a higher order of morality. In “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau had asserted, “If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.”

King was asking for that plank back. He saw the higher moral order, as did Thoreau and  Tolstoy and Gandhi before him. Rather than getting the plank back, the Civil Rights movement got a small concession: I’ll let you hold onto my plank once in a a while, when you’re going down for the third time.

This is the unfinished business of what King started. And the continuing challenge to those who strive for a higher moral order. Still, today, I must restore the plank that I wrestled from a drowning human being. And there are many, many of those.

King’s letter is there still to remind us: “An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”

And,

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

 Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Over winter solstice, I watched my father tending to KG, his first grandchild, with unconditional love. We had just celebrated her one year birthday and she was beginning to cruise around with increased confidence.  As she found herself standing in front of my mother’s highly breakable ceramic nativity scene, KG began to methodically hand each figure to my father.  He gratefully received them from her and moved them to another shelf. 

My sister, the mother of the much adored child said, “No, KG.  No touch.”  My dad just stayed there, receiving each figurine from the determined Katie Grace.  “I’ll catch them,” he said.  “I don’t really tell her no.” 

Now I confess, my sister and I both nearly fell off the sofa in that moment.  Who was this man gently hovering over his grandchild with a blissful air of yes, the same man who was forever telling us no as children? 

“ No! Kristy quit!   No, no!  Deanna don’t!”

I mean sometimes we thought those were our names: Deanna Don’t and Kristy Quit.

Did someone body snatch our father? 

Upon further reflection, I think it is maybe a little less complicated than alien body snatching.  I think my father has had an epiphany about unconditional love. 

The way that child lights up every time her Pop Pop walks into the room.  How she reaches for him no matter who is holding her. 

It is powerful to be loved that way.  It breaks open our hearts.  It tells us we are enough and calls us to love others with broken open hearts.  Radically inclusive, unjudging hearts. 

Beloveds, may you all know that you are loved the way KG loves her Pop Pop.  Unquestioned, unjudged.  Loved.  Beloved.  Yearned toward. Reached for.  Held.

May this knowledge continually break open our hearts so that we can experience the divine love of the universe and shine the light of this love onto each other. 

May this season of Epiphany bring you not only the sweetness of King Cake – may it also bring you the sweetness of receiving the unconditional love of the universe.

As the Community Minister for the Greater New Orleans Unitarian Universalists, I spend a lot of my time immersed in the injustice of layers of oppression. New Orleanians still trying to get back into their homes over 8 years after they were flooded out, transgender women forced to be housed with and often abused by men in prison and in shelters, a football field of wetlands lost in this state every half hour … Each day there’s more. Family diagnosed with chronic diseases, babies born too soon, people die… and.

AND Christmas comes each year in this country, whether you celebrate it or not. While I often find myself in the position of protesting the dominion of the dominant culture, I don’t fight Christmas. I choose to enjoy Christmas. I think that Christmas can be sweetly subversive.

Hey World – people are ill and homeless and jobless and imprisoned and killed! For most of the year, most of the world ignores these hard truths, pretending that the poor are poor because of poor choices instead of acknowledging a system of oppression that radically tilts the playing field towards some –and away from others.

But come Christmas, pretending stops – at least for a moment.   Suddenly we collect coats and toys and feel good stories about providing shelter and hope to families down on their luck.

Suddenly we tell a story about a great leader born in questionable circumstances, sharing his birthday crib with the donkey’s dinner, soon exiled to the immigrant life in Eygpt with his family.

Rumors of premarital sex, poverty, immigration … you name it, the Christmas story goes there…

And tells us – joy to the world. Hope has come.

Let there be peace and kindness and respect among all creation.
It’s a 6th Principle: The Goal of World Community with Peace, Liberty, and Justice for All!

Yes, I know. That’s not exactly how the scriptures or even the carols go.

But I am grateful for the promise of this season…For once a year our deeply embedded cultural story tells the world:
 Children are precious.
 Where you are born should not predict the quality nor the value of your life.
 Women too have the holy within them.
 It matters that we bear witness to each other and to the vast brilliance of the universe.
 Sometimes knowledge needs to bow to intuition.
 Life is a gift, utterly unpredictable, infinitely possible.
 There is hope for change.

And where there is hope, friends, there is joy.  Beloveds, may there be joy for you and your loved ones today and every days.

I confess it all seems a bit silly to me, this whole notion of there being a “war on Christmas” because some institutions are wishing people “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.” Does it really matter? OK, I admit that I, personally, am annoyed with the signs that declare that Jesus is the Reason for the Season. The season, after all, is winter, which is caused by the fact that the earth rotates on a slightly tilted axis, which takes the Northern Hemisphere a little further from the sun this time of year. Jesus has nothing to do with it. Jesus also has nothing to do with a variety of holidays that take place in this season, such as Chanukah, Yule and Kwanzaa.

However, pagan symbolism such as fir trees, holly and mistletoe aside, Christmas is Christmas, and I have genuine sympathy for the people who are concerned that it is time to put the Christ back into Christmas. It seems a bit bizarre to me to celebrate the birth of a baby born in a stable by indulging in an orgy of consumerism. But how people conduct their celebrations is not the war.

No, the war on Christmas, on the man who declared “blessed are the poor,” is being declared by the folks who are determined to cut billions of dollars from programs that keep families from going hungry. The war on Christmas, on the man who overturned the tables of the moneychangers, is being conducted by financial institutions that expect the public to assume the responsibility for their losses on risky investments, while they reap the rewards. The war on Christmas, on the baby who could only find shelter in a stable, is being conducted by immigration policies that have no room for the notion of hospitality. The war on Christmas — on the man who said we will be judged on how we have fed the poor, given drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, and visited those who are sick or in prison — is being conducted by those who would describe those in need as “takers” and those who think it’s a good idea to fill prisons with young men so that private corporations can make a profit.

Frankly, I couldn’t care less whether you wish me a merry Christmas, happy holidays or simply a nice day, so long as it’s done in a spirit of civility. Pipe Bach chorales and Handel’s Messiah out into the streets, and put up a Nativity scene on your lawn. Fine by me. Be my guest.  But don’t put yourself in the role of Mr. Scrooge, loving the fruits of business so much that you care nothing for the poor, and then step out in the public sphere and declare your horror at the neglect and abuse of Christmas. For that is the real war on Christmas, and it looks like Christmas is losing again.