“We’re All Connected”

“We’re All Connected” July 10, 2022 Dr. Roger Ray https://youtu.be/xU9HfU8_2s0 Click here to see the video

From the “Charter for Compassion” The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and put another there, and to honor the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect. It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion. We therefore call upon all men and women to restore compassion to the center of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies. We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. https://charterforcompassion.org/charter/charter Some of you will remember me stating the self-evident truth that there are two kinds of people in the world, those who divide the world into two groups and those who do not. I personally tend towards the latter; in that I see people as being either self-centered or compassionate in their world view. You either see that you are connected to virtually everyone else and you try to live accordingly, or you ignore everyone else and try your best to live your life in a self-serving way. We have a perfect example of this in Americans’ attitude about gun ownership. Regardless of the fact that the 2nd Amendment spoke of a “well-regulated militia” something like our National Guard, and that it was included to assure slave owners that they would not be parted from their weapons which helped them to keep their slaves from revolting, gun owners cite the Second Amendment as a God-given right to own virtually any weapon they want and many of them resist even registering their guns or submitting themselves to background checks or limiting the number of bullets that they can shoot in any given minute with the toys they use to shore up their insecurities. But as our country has gone from the absurd to the insane, annual gun deaths shooting up from the totally unacceptable level of 30,000 a year to now more than 40,000, with mass murders dominating the news week after week, they are willing to accept the deaths and make symbolic gestures about how to correct the problem. We already know what works. Effective gun regulations have been put in place in every western democracy, but every gun manufacturer’s shill keeps trying to say that it is not the availability of guns, it is mental health or a shortage of hardened targets and armed guards… the old “good guy with a gun” argument. The United States is spending nearly a billion dollars a year on hardening our schools and putting armed guards on site, but it isn’t working, is it? And it isn’t going to work, is it? But they would have the society spend any amount of money to avoid them having to give up their guns. We pay millions and millions, and the death tolls keep going up. We could spend that money on an aggressive buyback program and get assault rifles and handguns out of the hands of private citizens. Australia did it after the Port Arthur Massacre, bought back 650,000 guns and they have not had another mass murder since. We know what to do, we know what works. But we won’t do it because most gun owners don’t care how many people die because they want to keep the guns that they like. If they felt compassion for all of the people who were being killed, they would give up their assault rifles and pistols, but they don’t even understand the concept of compassion. They just know that the gun they hold in their hands makes them feel better about what they don’t have in their underwear, and they don’t care how many people die. So, the old “duck and cover” black and white films that my generation had to watch as we practiced hiding under our desks to protect ourselves in the event of a nuclear war, have been replaced with every school child being forced to go through “active shooter drills” and practice barricading their classroom doors and hiding very quietly so that they won’t get shot. So, we pay billions of dollars, and traumatized millions of kids, while school shootings increase and we have to listen to self-righteous morons telling teachers that if only they were carrying a gun, that they could stop a shooter in their school and save their children. The only thing that would work would be to outlaw assault rifles and, very probably, handguns, but we will waste time and effort on everything else because the sociopaths with guns will not consider doing what is right for children, for people who attend church, synagogue, or mosque services, or a movie, or a concert, or go to the grocery store. There are two kinds of people in the world, the ones who know that they are connected to everyone else, and they try to live accordingly, and there are those who do not allow themselves to think about other people, even if they know better. Of course, we are all varying degrees of one or the other. The most narcissistic, the most seriously sociopathic usually at least care about their own children or a few friends, everyone except Donald Trump, of course. And we all experience a certain compassion fatigue. We can’t care about everything and everyone all of the time. Compassionate people at least try. The self-serving don’t even think about it. As many of you know, I have spent my time off this year on a Caribbean Island off the coast of Honduras where I was trying to improve my social life. My friend there works in an office with just three other employees, and I got to know and like all of them. But one day, in casual conversation with my friend about the woman who worked next to her, I was told that this woman, a widow with a 12-year-old daughter, also kept a household servant . . . a servant who was also 12 years old. So that every morning, she sends her 12-year-old daughter to school and the other 12-year-old in her care starts to wash the dishes, iron the clothes, and mop the floor… a real life Cinderella story. My friend saw that I was upset, and she said, “I know it is wrong and I wouldn’t do it, but it is still common here in Honduras.” Classism is pretty stark in Central America but, as an American, I don’t feel like I have much room to be critical. But child labor…. And I’ll admit, I have seen it before, in Egypt and in Nicaragua but even there, the children go to school for half of the day before they make carpets in Egypt and weave hammocks for tourists in Nicaragua …. But keeping this little girl illiterate and in service to another girl her own age in the house where she lived . . . that was a cruelty that I have not been able to let go of. But, when I had returned to the USA after that conversation, in the produce section of my grocery store, I was leaning over to pick up a watermelon when I saw the sticker . . . it was March and no one in the USA is growing watermelons in March. The label said, “A product of Honduras,” and I couldn’t buy it because, I have every reason to believe that children are employed in agriculture there. When I was a child, you couldn’t buy watermelons in March but with international trade, we have virtually all kinds of produce all year long and even though we don’t pay much for it, that low price is coming out of someone’s childhood. My Honduran friend is well aware of how a century of colonialism has broken both the economy and the culture of most of Latin America. It shows up in subtle ways. Honduras was the original Banana Republic, supplying the American demand for bananas that we cannot grow here. The Spanish word for “banana” is “banano.” Easy enough, right? But that isn’t what most people in Honduras call them. They call them “minimos” which translates as “too small.” Too small to export to American grocery stores so they are sold to the Hondurans who grow bananas for the American market and keep only what Americans won’t buy. So, I hate that Hondurans still tolerate child labor, but I know that more than a century of American economic colonialism is a part of why they don’t have enough self-respect to stop the practice. They don’t only accept that they get bananas that are too small. They somehow still accept that the poor among them also don’t deserve to be treated better. We are all connected. We won’t stamp out all inequality, but we’ll never stamp out any of it if we are not willing to allow ourselves to be aware of it, to try to grow and learn, and evolve ourselves. I’m sure that you will recognize the famous Martin Luther King, Jr. quote that says, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If the exercise of our second amendment rights means that we have to traumatize our children and waste billions of dollars on bullet proof windows and doors and armed guards, none of which works . . . then how can you enjoy going out to the shooting range and squeezing off a few hundred rounds? I understand that most guns are never used in a mass shooting or domestic violence or suicide. Most guns are symbolic and will never be used to create a tragedy. And yet, these symbols, these toys, these phallic substitutes still end up killing 40,000 Americans every year, so the people who do keep their guns responsibly have to recognize that their access to these lethal weapons makes it possible for the people who will kill themselves or others with their guns to be able to get them. We are all connected and that means that sometimes I have to give up something that is harmless in my house because it could be lethal to my neighbor. If getting watermelon and pretty bananas year round in our grocery stores means that children are kept illiterate and their parents are kept hungry and poor in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, AND Texas, California, and New Mexico, then maybe our produce should cost twice as much and we can eat it less often? …. Or spend less on guns. Of course, I am saying this in a community where more than half of our neighbors never even got the Covid vaccine while the elderly and ill were dying of covid all around us. The pandemic has been the most obvious test of compassion among us and we got an “F” on that one. Maybe it snuck up on us. Maybe we’ll do better next time. But we have a long history with colonialism and guns, don’t we? Now, if I say this only to point out that there are good people and selfish people, that there are spiritual people and there are narcissists, then I would just be fueling the tendency to divide the world into two kinds of people. But, here is the crux of what I want to say today . . . selfishness, narcissism, being self-serving, is our natural state. Babies don’t wake up crying in the middle of the night because they are afraid that you are hungry, or that your tummy hurts, or that your gums or teeth hurt. Babies are, if I may say it just this way, raging sociopaths out to meet their own needs without regard for how much you need to sleep, or how much it may gag you to change their diapers. But, if we do it right, little by little, we can teach them compassion. We can take the edge off their screaming about how much they want all of the chocolate or even a new Assault Rifle, and gradually teach them to care about their siblings, maybe even their parents, and friends, and eventually, maybe even, the strangers who grow and harvest their apples, bananas, and Cheerios. Otherwise, why should I keep preaching? I am still connected to some of the old guys who live in Kentucky that I have been scuba diving with for most of the last two generations. Good guys, all of them, but good guys, some of whom, have never left rural Kentucky and, well, it sometimes shows. There have been times when we were together in the dive boat but at other times, I had to seek out my own space to avoid conversations that might make the teacher in me come out in ways that would ruin a good trip to the islands. But I have noticed over the past few years that I need to separate from them less and less, and social media has allowed me to see that they have some very progressive views, and, when I open the mail at the office, I even see donations from them to our church from time to time. I noticed on social media recently that one of my old dive buddies had reposted a ten-year-old post in which he said: Millions of Americans are now going to have to pay their health insurance instead of making me pay for it! I see things like that and, well, I’m not surprised but I still have to debate myself to see if I can let it slide or if I have to respond. Fortunately, in this case, I didn’t have to say anything. He commented on his own ten-year-old post, saying: The old me didn't care if they couldn't afford it. I didn't even care if it got so expensive that my Grandchildren wouldn't be able to afford it (which it will). The old me was stupid, greedy, and somewhat psychopathic. What he said about himself, who he was ten years ago, was ten times more harsh than what I would have said to him. And without even correcting the difference between being “psychopathic” and “sociopathic,” a distinction that may only be important to me, I had to just sit back and marvel at the transformation. I hope that listening to my sermons may have played a part in that change of spirit. He says that I have been a big influence. But the bigger issue is that he was willing to take an honest look at himself, his attitudes, and to accept new information, new ideas, and he decided to change. He is now a huge advocate for Medicare for all, for sensible gun laws, an assault rifle ban, and I have heard him say really kind things about immigrants. None of which is what we tend to associate with rural Kentucky, right? I remember going to visit a church member about 30 years ago who had stopped coming to church. She decided to be very honest with me and she just told me, “I am not going to be coming back. Life is hard and I go to church to help me to feel better but when I listen to you, I always feel worse.” I like it better when people tell me, “You really made me think today,” or “I never knew about those things before,” but she was being honest and, if I am being honest, I get it. David and I talk about hard things. David is nicer about it than I am but, at the bottom line, we are both more likely to tell folks what is going wrong than we are to sooth your anxiety and tell you that everything is going to be OK. I get it. Sometimes I feel like the mean older kid who looks into the kindergarten classroom the first of December and announces, “Santa Claus isn’t real!” I will only offer this in defense of prophetic preaching: Ben Franklin once observed that people only change when they are uncomfortable. Compassion can be taught, but teaching compassion usually means that you have to make people a bit uncomfortable first, whether you are teaching your children that they must share their toys with their playmates, or if we must realize that sometimes we need to eat the small bananas.