“Because We are all Connected”

“Because We are all Connected”     June 24, 2018   Dr. Roger Ray    
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Marcus Aurelius -  Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web.

 We have one fact stated as undeniable in two entirely different perspectives. The famous astrophysicist, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, succinctly says: We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.

And the revered Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, has said that we are here to awaken from our illusion of separation. That is, your sensation of, your belief that you are separate from other people, from the earth itself, is just an illusion.

I like the way that Eckhart Tolle says it: You are not in the Universe. You are the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately, you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself.

From both a scientific and a spiritual perspective, we affirm one of those very basic facts of existence, we are all connected at the most fundamental level of existence. Why then is there so much apparent division, such rivalry, so much prejudice and partisanship?

In the early days of our church, Michael Larsen captured these two photographs that we have long displayed here in our building. This is a photo of two of our children when they were very young, the picture literally preaches a sermon about the innocence that children can experience before they are exposed to prejudice. A lily-white child and a black child find friendship, affection, joy, in simply discovering the wonder in one another’s faces. This is the natural state of the world before prejudice is taught.

And this picture of Ruth Miller, a senior white woman, the wife of a retired pastor, lovingly touching the face of a young black gay man. This is a better sermon…. This is a sermon about how you can live in a world that fills you with prejudice, mistrust, rejection, rivalry, can be overcome. The connection can be restored. If a church is what a church should be, the church should be a place of healing, of restoration, of literally unlearning the messages of division, prejudice, and partisanship that the world is so full of.

The wonderful song from South Pacific, You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught, prophetically says:

You've got to be taught To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught From year to year,
It's got to be drummed In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

We learn prejudices from our families, from subtle messages of assumed divisions that just hang in the air, prejudices are portrayed in sit-coms, and whispered in gossip. The little town where I grew up in Kentucky was 90% white, and about 10% black. To the best of my knowledge, there was not a single Hispanic or Asian living there. There was one Jewish family, only a few Catholics, but my father was a case study in irrational prejudice.

He was prejudiced against black people in general, though notably generous and considerate of the black people he actually knew. He hated Jews though he loved buying his clothes from the men’s clothing store owned by our only Jewish family in town. But strangely, he hated Asians, and communists, and socialists, and oddly seemed to think that they were all basically the same. He actually believed that Japan was a communist country because the Japanese are Asian. The only people who were communist who were not Asian were labor union members.

My dad, however, was not stupid. I think that he was inherently, quite bright, but he was gullible. He uncritically preserved the prejudice of his slave owning ancestors, he accepted the anti-Catholic teachings of the Church of Christ where he was taken to church, and he embodied the brain washing of his military training. During WW II

young men taken from the farms of the mid-West were not killers. They were not soldiers. They might have been rough in lots of ways but to turn them into fierce soldiers, they were pilloried with images of Nazi’s burning books and raping American women. The Japanese were portrayed as monkeys with tails and as rapists and murderers. My dad wasn’t stupid, but he was carefully taught by the United States Army.

But that was a long time ago. Where is all of this prejudice and division coming from today? As tempting as it is to blame almost everything on Donald Trump, it isn’t that he invented dog-whistle politics, he is not the author of racism, or xenophobia. But, when he launched his campaign by invoking fear of immigrants saying: When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re sending people that have losts of problems and they’re bringing those problems. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people…” he was just throwing another log on the fire of prejudice that has been smoldering in America all along, a flame that had been building up fuel all during the eight years that a black family inhabited the White House, and during the time when the United States government, intentionally or by inference, fed the public on fear of Arab Muslims.

Here is the fact that I am extolling today: We are all connected. There is only the most slight differences biologically between races, slight differences theologically between religions, insubstantial differences based on languages or nations of origin. Every attempt at division is deception. It is trickery, manipulation, it is a lie.

Trump didn’t invent the lie. But he knew how willing that Americans are to believe the lie. You may of seen tweets by the imaginary character, Werner Twertzog, a clever creation intended to dispense wry observations on life in the style of the German film-maker, Werner Hertzog, but this one grabbed my attention as going far beyond clever immitation. It is shockingly true, as we have watched people trying to defend the recent practice of putting babies in cages at the southern border of America, something that would never happen on the northern border of America, that America is waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of our people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 just watches.

There are some seriously messed up things going on in the world right now. I have always been one to ignore those who made constant references to Nazi practices and tendencies but when Trump brought out a group of victims of crimes committed by illegal aliens, it really did look like a page out of Hitler’s playbook.

Hitler used to publish lists of people who claimed to have been victimized by Jews in order to imply that all Jews were criminals. Trump is trying to trick you into believing that all Hispanic immigrants are criminals.

This kind of propaganda can work. The Russians probably changed the outcome of our last presidential election by filling social media with deceptive charges against Hillary Clinton. It isn’t that she, or anyone else for that matter, was squeaky clean but trying to blame her for the deaths at Benghazi or act like the use of a private email server was the most horrible crime since the abduction of the Lindberg baby, only worked on people who were willing to be led by the nose through manipulation into doing Russia’s bidding at the ballot box by delivering their useful idiot to the White House.

I have a three-point sermon today. I can’t usually say that but today it works out that way. The first point is that we are all connected. That is a fundamental truth. It is true scientifically and it is true spiritually. The second point is that the world is being torn apart by those who insist upon dividing us between Republicans and Democrats, between conservatives and liberals, natives and immigrants, Christians and Muslims, the rich and the poor, the black and brown and the white, the young and the old, the educated and the experienced. Trump’s arrogance and ineptitude increase the chances that nuclear war may break out in Asia or the Middle East or even here. The stakes are high, and we must remain informed and involved.

But my third point is that we must not become what we loath. We have to remain meaningfully engaged but we don’t need to be drawn into the divisive battle in a way that turns us into the kind of people we find to be so dangerous and repulsive.

To that end I really appreciate the meditation exercises that David Ketchum has been leading us in during class time. It seems to me to be vitally true that if we are going to meaningfully engage in fighting the injustice and insanity of the world that we must remain centered, sane, peaceful, and united ourselves.

David asks us to picture ourselves sitting on the bank of a river and when negative forces try to drive our thoughts into anger, hostility, or division, to just come back to that vision of ourselves, sitting peacefully by a river. Of course, in monastic tradition, they often will use an icon to center their meditation, or a candle, or the sound of a bell. Whatever takes you back to that place where you can remember that we are all connected and all the prejudice and division the world is trying to drag us into is nothing but deception and manipulation.

I have lately found myself coming back to this little video of a two-year-old girl dancing to the music of her own soul. I don’t know if she knows that she is black. . . That there are already millions of people who will not hire her, daddy’s who will not let their sons take her to the prom, or movie producers who will never be able to see her beauty.

I don’t know if she knows that she is poor and that most doors to education will be closed to her. I don’t know if she knows that she lives in a dangerous neighborhood and that she might have to fight to even keep her brother alive through his teen years.

Maybe I’m being silly. Maybe I am indulging myself in fantasy. But, I feel like she’s got this.

I don’t usually lose my cool. I don’t think that I get a lot of credit for it but I can actually be quite patient, even in the face of mind numbing stupidity.

But I had a bad day this week… it just so happened that I had a lot of different places to be, several community organizing meetings. And it seemed like a domino effect. Everything that someone said to me was dumber than the last thing that someone had said. The train of community organizing had jumped the track and was headed for the munitions factory.

I managed to just walk out of the last meeting without betraying my thoughts and I searched for a friend who could let me rant for a while and, as it happens sometimes, everyone I normally abuse with my screeds was safely otherwise occupied.

So I just came home and visited this little clip of Coco. The practice of separating families at the border was stopped. Smart and caring people are working to restore the children in dentention to their families. Melania’s coat may declare that she doesn’t really care but a whole of people who do care also vote and November is just 4 months away.

There is still a lot of stupid prejudice in this country but in 2045 there will no longer be a white majority in America and some things are gonna change.

There are bad things in the world. You have had false friends who have betrayed you. Family members who have rejected you. Love relationships that became toxic. People you have loved and needed have just died on you, before you were ready.

Crazy, bad people become heads of state of powerful nations, and CEO’s of major corporations, and sometimes they take charge of the EPA and the State Department. I’m not asking you to deny those facts or forget them, I’m just inviting you to rise above them. Don’t let the bad stuff that has happened rent too much space in your skull.

The people who have hurt you are not lying awake at night thinking about you so why are you wasting your life thinking about them? Don’t do your critics any favors. Take a giant step above the mud puddle they tried to drag you down into.

We are all connected, and the more we move away from the illusion of our separation, our perceptions of differences in race, gender, sexual orientation, nation of origin, or political party, the more we move into the kind of spiritual integrity that we came here looking for in the first place.click here to see the videoClick here to watch on YouTube