This is a sermon I gave at the Unitarian Society of Hartford on February 15, 2009. Even though President Obama has not been able to fulfill the vision he brought to us after his inauguration, I still believe that the vision is what is required of us today.
Good morning! I would like to dedicate this sermon to two wonderful girls—Amelia Anne Davis, age 4 1⁄2, and Nora Beth Davis, age 3. With these granddaughters I have experienced the wonder of children growing and developing in the first years of life. They, and children like them, are our future.
One and a half years ago I was working hard to complete my book on Spiritual Transformations. The book focused mostly on the spiritual transformations we undergo as individuals during our lives. I also wanted to write a chapter on societies—a chapter called “Societal Revitalization.” However, I was unable to put this chapter together, and the book was published last summer without the societal transformation chapter.
Since then things have happened in my mind and in our country that prompt me to try this again. Today I am going to suggest that there now is an opportunity for a spiritual transformation of America. My remarks will reflect our minister BJ’s image of the three legged stool: science, spirituality, and service. Grounded in some of the sciences, and rooted in spirituality, we are and can engage in service that helps revitalize our nation.
Because revitalizing America involves a kind of spiritual transformation, let’s begin by exploring what spiritual transformations are. In my book I suggest that a spiritual transformation is a fundamental change in our individual identity. This, first, consists of how we understand ourselves in relation to other people and our world. Second, it consists of changes in the basic values by which we live. And it also consists in living from what I call “our sacred center,” what BJ in her sermon two weeks ago called having a “beginners mind.” Using the curiosity of this state we are able to step away from our selves, much as BJ showed a larger doll calmly surveying the sensations, thoughts, and feelings of its smaller self. As we practice stepping away or up into this balcony viewpoint, we also are able to take in the behaviors, feelings and thoughts of others. We are able to experience what is really happening in the world around us. Our hearts expand as our awareness and perspective expand, and we experience a state I call “listening love.” With this ever evolving listening love, we attend to our own inner lives and the lives of others with curiosity, clarity, compassion, calmness, and creativity. When we are in this state, we are in the core of our being, in a state of spirituality. Spiritual transformations are those changes in our identity that help us to realize more and more this state of listening love as we go through our lives.
1There are many things that can help us more fully realize our sacred centers, our living with listening love. Worship services can move us to internally re-experience aspects of our lives, and so can more individual practices of prayer and meditation. I find that small-group ministry meetings help, because of their emphasis on listening without judging. And last month I discovered a practice that for me is quite effective. I call it “one breath at a time.”
At one of our worship services last month I came away with a couple of ideas floating in my mind. One was breathing. The other was the image that sometimes our lives are like riding dangerous rapids in a swiftly flowing river, while at other times our lives are like resting in calm waters. As I left our church I felt like I was in the rapids. My life was hectic as I was responding to some family crises and at the same time trying to meet some public speaking deadlines. Outside I walked to my car saying to myself: “One day at a time, Karl.” But that didn’t do it. So I tried “One moment at a time?” No. Not quite. And then I thought “one breath at a time.” As I walked to my car, I started saying to myself, “One breath at a time—with each breath. One breath at a time.” I became aware of each breath as I walked. Suddenly in the rapids of my life I was in a state of calm, fully aware of the present—and enjoying what was happening around me—even as I was on my way to a difficult meeting.
Being in the rapids comes about in many ways. Sometimes a health crisis; sometimes the loss of a job; sometimes getting ourselves overcommitted; any number of things can threaten to overwhelm us, and increase uncertainty, anxiety, and stress. At the same time these crises can also provide opportunities to become transformed spiritually, so that we emerge with new self-understandings, new ways of living, and greater maturity.
Can the kind of transformation that happens to us as individuals also happen to an entire society? Even a large-scale, complex society such as our American society today? One way of looking at societal spiritual transformations is with a model provided by anthropologist Anthony Wallace. In the 1950’s Wallace and one of his graduate students Sheila Stein studied data about transformative change in societies around the world. Stein suggested that they be called revitalization movements. Such movements may be religious but they also can be secular and political. Whether religious or secular, they exhibit a similar pattern. Wallace writes that a revitalization movement is “a deliberate, organized effort by [somel members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture,” centered in a sacred message enunciated by a prophet or maximum leader. The message states what is wrong with the society now, what it should be like in the future, and how to get from now to utopia.”i
Let’s take a look at our society today and ask if we are in the midst of a revitalization movement that has the potential to bring about a change in the basic identity of who we Americans are, a change in our core values.
For years now I have been hearing some anthropologists say that we may be in the midst of a revitalization movement. If we ask how we know this and what is wrong now, we can say that a storm of crises has been coming across the horizons of our lives: global climate change, extinction of species, ongoing war around the world, terrorism, violence in our cities, economic injustice, and political instability. The river of change in our lives has been growing more and more turbulent. Now with our current
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economic depression, we as a nation and world are in rapids that are beginning to overwhelm many and increase the level of stress on those who still manage.
Moreover, we are in a crisis of values—a crisis of American identity, of who we are as a nation. According to political scientist Andrew Bacevich, it is a crisis of how we understand our American heritage of freedom. In his book The Limits of Power, which came out last year, Bacevich writes: “Today, no less that in 1776, a passion for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness remains at the center of American civic theology. . . . Yet . . . Americans . . . have, over time, radically revised their understanding of those ‘inalienable rights’. Today, many Americans use their freedom to do many worthy things” creating and appreciating the arts, building and preserving, and “in commendably large numbers attend[ing] to the needs of the less fortunate. . . . Yet [Basevich continues] none of these in themselves define what it means to be an American in the twenty-first century.
He writes, “If one were to choose a single word to characterize that identity, it would have to be more. [Although many resist this,] for the majority of contemporary Americans,” he says, “the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness centers on the personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors. . . . The ethic of self-gratification has firmly entrenched itself as the defining feature of the American way of life.”ii
In his book Bacevich develops the thesis that the continual demand for more has driven us to expand our attempts to dominate the world. Ironically, at the same time we are actually becoming more and more dependent on other countries to satisfy our needs. Bacevich calls us to step back, look at ourselves with a clear mind, and recognize how we have distorted our precious value of freedom.
While many are indulging themselves in freedom as more, others in society are suffering. Among those suffering the most are families in the inner cities of our country—often single parents—trying to raise children. The environment of these children is often impoverished and stressful—with long-term consequences that affect these children all their lives.
To understand this we need to know that, according to a “Science-Based Framework for Early Childhood Policy,” published in 2007 by the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, the first three years are critical for human brain development. Early brain development in children is the result of the interaction between genes and experience. “Genes determine when specific brain circuits are formed and experiences shape their formation.” If the environment is continuously stressful, a child’s brain will not develop properly. Some stress is helpful for healthy brain development, especially in a nurturing environment. However, if in early childhood there is “strong and prolonged activation of the body’s stress response, and if there is no buffering protection of adult support,” and especially if children are abused and neglected, a child can suffer a “lifetime of greater susceptibility to physical illness . . . as well as mental health problems (such as depression, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse).”iii This results in considerable cost for society as it tries to respond through remedial education, health care, and the criminal justice system to the results of poor brain development in the first three years.
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Most recently, while it is not the only cause of the current economic crisis, the underlying attitude of freedom as the license to acquire so as to outstrip the workings of the financial system, is a major reason why we now are in the turbulent rapids of change. All of us are in the rapids, but perhaps those most affected by the stress of turbulent times are those at the very beginning of life. If healthy brain development is hindered, opportunities for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness can be greatly diminished. From the revitalization perspective this is one way of seeing what is wrong with our society now.
A second aspect of a revitalization movement is the emergence of a leader who has the vision and effectiveness to attract and guide the hearts and minds of a significant number of people in a society. Wallace calls such a person a charismatic leader, a maximum leader who heads the process of revitalization. Of course, in a complex society like ours, such a leader cannot act alone. He or she requires the assistance of many others who share the vision and can help implement it.
It is reasonable, I think, to see President Barack Obama as such a leader. Every time I have seen him on television, he impresses me as a person who is calm, compassionate, clear, creative and completely there. He is humble, able to make fun of himself. He seems to be fully present as he listens to others. He seems to be “awake,” as a Buddhist might say, someone who is in what I call a “sacred center.”
I think that from this state Obama offers a vision of the new society, of what America can become, a new vision that reaffirms old values as is often done in revitalization movements. His entire inaugural address fits Wallace’s pattern for revitalization: a charismatic, maximum leader outlines our problems and presents a vision of the future and how to get there. The vision is one that reaffirms traditional values: “The time has come,” Obama says, “to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.” Later he says: “Our challenges may be new . . ., but those values upon which our success depends— honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism—these things are old. These things are true. . . . What is demanded . . . is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility—a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world. . . . This is the price and the promise of citizenship. . . . This is the meaning of our liberty. . . .”iv
With such words Obama calls our nation to be revitalized—spiritually transformed—from following a selfish idea of freedom, of always getting more for ourselves, to following the vision of shared freedom in community that involves living in service to others and thus rebuilding our nation and world.
These words of our new President ring true to me. They ring true because they articulate what I have experienced us doing here at the Unitarian Society of Hartford. As BJ has put it with her image of the three legged stool: grounded in science and rooted in spirituality, we live in service to others in the wider community. Some of us work for racial justice, some support marriage equality regardless of sexual preference, some promote sound environmental living, some help educate the children in our
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community, some lobby the government for universal health care, some seek fair access for the disabled, some join in internet activities to ban torture. Together with a variety of individual and small group efforts, we are carrying forth, as our President says, that great gift of freedom and delivering it to future generations.
I wonder, however, if we are doing enough for the next generation that is just starting life, for those in the first three years of life. As I said above, a continuously stressful environment can impair brain development and result in a lifetime of physical and mental problems—with great cost to society. As a result of what science is telling us about this critical phase of a human life, in January of 2008, Governor Jodi Rell called an early childhood summit. According to the Hartford Courant, Rell said, “Every child gets one chance at their first 1,000 days. We don’t want to squander that.”v
Two weeks ago, at the dedication of Caleb Maloney-Hastillo, Gail Syring presented these words: “Every child needs to be received by and held in loving arms; to be given basic care: food, clothes, shelter and protection. Each child needs nurturing; to be loved abundantly and creatively. Each child needs structure and discipline; to be surrounded by mature adults who understand how to challenge and support them as they mature.” As I remember the dedication of Caleb, his loving parents and God-parents, and our community commitment to him, and as I remember my grandchildren Amelia and Nora, I wonder if, in addition to all the others things we do, we can also find ways to support the youngest children and their struggling parents in our wider community during this time of turbulent change.
Today, as individuals and as a nation, we are riding the rapids into the future. Taking one breath at a time, in the stillness of our sacred centers, let us step back and look at ourselves with clear minds and listening love. Let us examine our own values. And let us discover what we can do—each in our own way in our own sphere of influence—to join with others to revitalize America. And with other people of other lands and cultures—let us build a better world of love, peace, freedom, and justice for all.
i Anthony F. C. Wallace, “Recurrent Patterns in Social Movements,” CC/ART HUMAN, (26): 18‐18 DEC 17 1990. The general description of the type was published in the American Anthropologist paper in 1956
ii Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Henry Holt, 2008), pp. 15‐16.
iii “A Science‐Based Framework for Early Childhood Policy.” Cambridge, Mass.: Center on the Developing Child, National Forum on Early Childhood Program Evaluation, and National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2007, p. 9. www.developingchild.harvard.edu.
iv “Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address” Transcript, New York Times Online, January 20, 2009.
v Arielle Levin Becker. “Pediatrician: Life’s Tracks Set by Age 3: Early Child Care’s Importance Stressed.” The Hartford Courant (January 16, 2008). http://www.courant.com/news/education/hc‐ ctwired0116.artjan16,0,4930379.story.