Connecting to the larger body

The week before last as part of our service on “Looking Through A Historical Lens,” I showed a slideshow on my experience coming home along Mahl’s Pond Road. The trees were just beginning to turn and as many of you remember I stopped the car got out of the car took a picture from one direction and then the other, documenting the turning of early fall leaves. Noting the lush fall landscape and the wild turkeys that scattered upon my arrival, I wondered whether they scurry because they are scared or whether they are simply startled. I continued down the road to Mahl’s Pond and took a picture of the one red tree on the far side of the pond. I then turned my attention to the water plants on one side then the other and foundd myself seeing for the first time a beautiful white water lily in full bloom. I thought it is a one of a kind and then looked beyond it and saw more. Turning my attention back to the pond, I saw in looking at the far shorelines I had missed the white carpet of lily blossoms that covered the surface of the water. I realized, in that moment, that the lens that we look through determines what we see.

As most of you know, I no longer have daily duties as Publisher of The River Reporter and it has become my job to read through second sections before they are printed. This is particularly helpful I can give them a fresh eye. It is always a pleasant thing to do because the sections are really well prepared and gorgeous. The section that is going to press next week is Upper Delaware Magazine so I sat down with the pages this past Friday in anticipation of harvest thoughts. The first article was about apples and the intro talks about how they are significant throughout history, starting with the apple that Eve tempted Adam with. Interestingly, at the Universalist Homecoming at Murray Grove last weekend, I heard the Rev. Barnhouse talk about stories and their slants and related how the passage in the Bible says, “Eve picked up the apple and handed it to Adam.” She laughed that there was actually no tempting going on in the scripture and that Adam was responsible for his own choice. I changed the language to “Eve handed Adam the apple.”

In the craft section, there were instructions about peeling and carving a granny smith apple into a face and letting it dry. The name of the craft was Apple Hags. Finding nothing in the text that related to gender, and couldn’t for the life of me figure out why we must cast dispersions on older women by calling them hags, I changed the title to Apple Faces.

Next, there was reference the role the apple plays in fairy tales. Snow White, who takes a bite of a poison apple, needs to be kissed by a prince. Thinking it was putting forth an amazing heterosexual view of love, not to mention a power/riches emphasis of goodness, I thought to change the reference to, “she would be in a deep sleep until “awakened by a kiss from her true love.” I figured it would be an easily understood translation.

The feature on a road trip had a subhead of “Road Warrior.” Thinking of no non-violent manifestation of word “warrior,” I questioned whether we had to make war neutral while asking people to take a drive in the Upper Delaware River Valley.

In a story about the Revolutionary War Battle of Minisink in which Native American Joseph Brant, a Mohawk, was enlisted by the British to lead an army against the settlers, his army was sometimes referred solely as Indians and sometimes as Indians and Tories. Beyond the flow of language, I wondered whether there wasn’t a touch of racism behind the scenes and understood completely how the British and the indigenous people would have a common enemy in the European colonists. I wanted to call the fighters Brant’s army, and leave the distinction of whether they were British or Indians unmentioned, although I didn’t want to water down the history, if it was accurate.

And finally, on the recipe pages, there was recipe for baked pork chops that instructed people to coat the pork chops with the breadcrumbs by shaking them in a ziplock bag, which, while expedient, encourages the use of a high-tech plastic bag for something where a simple bowl or plate would suffice.

The section editor, agreeing that she would welcome a conversation in the future about how we could avoid furthering myths and biases, argued with me about some of the changes and not all of them got changed. “Snow White is kissed by a prince,” she said to me. “You can change the story if you like, but that is what it is.”

Which brings me back to the idea of the lens in which we interpret our world. Just because people have told stories that are misogynous, made assumptions about the heterosexual normative, elevate rich people in power as good, categorize violent language references as common everyday occurrences, unthinkingly tell stories with no thought that they might be racist and normalize unsustainable household practices, does that mean that we need to perpetuate them? Isn’t that the point of what Unitarian Universalism is trying to do in becoming more consciously a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-economically diverse denomination? Are we not attempting to put our espoused theory and theology of inclusivity into practice? Are we not trying to question the myths that have been perpetuated by those who have been the victors of the spoils and offer beloved community to others that are not exactly like us? Is this not the sensitivity that is driving the initiative to “Grow our Diversity” — to break down stereotypes, question a western, straight-white, corporate hegemony and widen the definition of family and beloved community?

And while it is relatively easy to make changes in a newspaper publication and for each one of us to look through a fresh lens on a variety of cultural assumptions that we make, it is a bit harder to make these changes in our congregations. Later this afternoon, the Executive Board will be meeting and one of the things that will be discussed is the language that we use to describe what we do here for this hour on Sundays. Is this a Sunday service? Is this a worship service? But whatever congregations call it, Sunday services at Unitarian Universalist churches and fellowships have historically been categorized as non-emotional, intellectually deep and highly controlled expression of religion. For those congregations who are activity embracing diversity, one of the questions they will they will have to struggle with is can they actually welcome a diverse population into the room without changing some of the cultural norms? And if we were to embrace this initiative to change, what would that look like here?

The good news for today is that we don’t have to go there, yet. What we can do today is support this vision of the UUA and our brother and sister congregations who are ready to embrace this vision with our economic support. In doing so, we give means to congregations throughout the country to open their doors to many different people who will find the message of Unitarian Universalism, its open mindedness, its caring heart and its helping hands, to be a sanctuary in these trying and troubling times.