Join the Losers: Shame, Pride, and the 99%

a talk given January 29, 2012 at First Parish in Billerica, MA

[earlier versions were presented at the Unitarian Church of Quincy, IL and First Parish Unitarian in Athol, MA]

Opening Words:

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." -- Desmond Tutu

Readings

There is a web site called "We Are the 99%". Maybe you've seen it. People write their story on a single sheet of paper and then post a photo of themselves holding the paper. By now there are more than a thousand stories on that site.

Here's one:

“I am a 20 year old college student trying to better myself and my family by gaining an education although my husband and I both know that with the way things are, we’re both almost better off working our minimum wage jobs that we have and are barely scraping by with than even attempting to do anything more. we rely on government assistance for food/medical/daycare, work insane hours each week to get by and still cant afford basic necessities.

Our combined 100 + hr work week shows no profit. None of our jobs provide medical (which due to asthma, I cannot go without medications or I will die. Since a stable home for my children is more important that my own health, rent comes before my $150 prescriptions)

My husband is trying to find another full-time job on top of the one he has so we can stop relying on assistance but due to a buy out and closing of the company my dad worked at, so are 900 other people in the area who are suddenly unemployed or like my dad, took a 75% pay cut and can’t afford their bills anymore.”

I AM THE 99%

Here's another: “Got my bachelor's. Got low-paying job. Business went under. Defaulted on 70K student loan debt. I make less than 20K a year -- 2 jobs. Not enough to pay debt. No dental/health. 6 cavities -- used car -- no savings -- no $ in bank.”

There's another web site called "We are the 53%". It's a response to the 99% site, and it uses the same format. The title comes from the fact that only 53% of American households owed any income tax last year. In spite of the fact that most of the other people pay plenty of other taxes, "the 53%" has come to symbolize those Americans who are pulling their weight, as opposed to the rest who are baggage.

Interestingly, the people considered to be baggage are not the idle rich, who need no jobs. They're not trust-fund kids, who have never worked, but live on vast inherited wealth. No, the baggage, the 47%, are often like the folks on the 99% site, who might work two or three minimum-wage jobs, but can't make the minimum amount to get into the lowest tax bracket.

The first 53% post was put up by Erick Erickson, who is actually quite well-to-do and famous. He started redstate.com, the premier conservative group blog, and now he's a commentator on CNN. He tells his 53% story like this:

"I work 3 jobs. I have a house I can’t sell. My family insurance costs are outrageous. But I don’t blame Wall Street.

Suck it up, you whiners. I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain."

With that post as a model, the site drew posts from people whose lives are much harder than Erickson's:

"I get up at 4:30 a.m. to work a job that pays me to get yelled at. I work around 50 hours per week, but still struggle. I've given up luxuries, shop clearance racks, do not own a new car or a home.

But I pay my bills and my taxes. I work hard to do so. I am an American. I am the 53%."

Here's a similar story that's been shared on Facebook. It doesn't come from the 53% site, but expresses a similar attitude:

"I am a college senior, about to graduate completely debt free. I pay for all of my living expenses by working 30+ hrs a week making barely above minimum wage. I chose a moderately priced, in-state public university and started saving $ for school at age 17.

I got decent grades in high school and received 2 scholarships which cover 90% of my tuition. I currently have a 3.8 GPA. I live comfortably in a cheap apartment, knowing I can't have everything I want. I don't eat out every day, or even once a month.

I live below my means to continue saving for the future. I expect nothing to be handed to me, and will continue to work my @$$ off for everything I have. That's how it's supposed to work. I am NOT the 99%, and whether or not you are is YOUR decision.

So who are the people who aren't making it? Do they deserve our sympathy or our scorn? CNBC's Rick Santelli goes for scorn. In his viral YouTube rant from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, he raised this question: "I'll tell you what. I have an idea. The new administration's big on computers and technology -- how about this, president and administration? Why don't you put up a web site to have people vote on the internet, as a referendum, to see if we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages ... or if we'd rather reward people who could carry the water rather than drink the water."

And finally, here's Herman Cain, in an interview with Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal. And I'm picking on Cain not because what he said is unusual, but because it is typical. Cain just said it more plainly than anyone else:

"Don't blame Wall Street. Don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself. … When I was growing up, I was blessed to have had parents that didn't teach me to be jealous of anybody, and didn't teach me to envious of somebody. It is not a person's fault because they succeeded. It is a person's fault if they failed."

Sermon

From kindergarten to eighth grade I went to a Lutheran elementary school, where I spent nine years with the same core group of about 20 kids. We had a lot in common: same small town, same religion, and a lot of the same advantages -- we were all white, from middle-class, two-parent homes, no major disabilities, and so on. In general, we were also pretty good students. Our parents hoped we would go to college, and most of us eventually did.

But in spite of all our similarities, we had a pecking order -- two of them, one for boys and one for girls. God knows how we came up with it or what we based it on, but it stayed remarkably rigid from year to year. I had a place in that order that, but I did not achieve it on my own. I was the best friend of the most popular boy.

Until seventh grade. That year a new kid transferred in. He was athletic and handsome, and he already had friends in the eighth grade class. He very quickly became the new best friend of the most popular boy, and my place in the order plummeted. By the time the reshuffling was complete, I was second boy from the bottom. But at least I wasn't last.

Another kid was. As I said, he was not that different from the rest of us. If you had met us all one-by-one, you probably couldn't have picked him out as the one destined to be the doormat. But there he was.

After my downfall, he was the only one who wanted to be my friend. He tried to sit next to me. He did me little favors. He invited me to his house. Now, I wish I could tell you that I reciprocated, that we had a bunch of great adventures, and that we are still in touch today.

But that's not how I thought in seventh grade. What I wanted more than anything was to get out of being Second Boy From the Bottom, and I was never going to do it by hanging around with him. Better, I thought, to be alone on the lowest rung of the ladder than to form a two-boy leper colony at the bottom.

That grade-school way of thinking often shows up in the adult world of politics. If you are near the bottom of society's ladder, your most natural allies are the people below you. But it is so hard to group up with them. As corrupt and unfair as you know that ladder to be, it is so, so hard to let loose of that one rung you have and make common cause with the people at the bottom.

And so the same pattern plays out again and again. During the Civil Rights era, many of the people who fought hardest against integration were those at the bottom of the white pecking order. Whiteness was the one advantage they had, and they didn't want to lose it.

Similarly, many of those who fought hardest against women's equality were men near  the bottom of the male pecking order. And where do you see those American-flag decals and the bumperstickers with jingoistic slogans? Not so much on Cadillacs and BMWs. No, you're more likely to see them on rusted-out pick-up trucks. The closer you are to the bottom of the American pecking order, the more dearly you hang on to the idea that Americans are better than everybody else.

If you've only got hold of one rung of the ladder, you hang onto it. That's how humans think.

 

Now, that human trait is very convenient for the people at the top. Because the more people get pushed down onto the lower rungs, the harder it is for them to unite to change the ladder or make it easier to climb.

I doubt I'm telling you anything you don't already know if I say that inequality has been rising in America. The economy as a whole has grown a lot since the 1970s, but (after inflation) the median household income has not grown, and in the 21st century it has actually dropped. And even those statistics are too rosy, because often they compare today's two-income households with the one-income households of decades past. People are working longer and sometimes harder, but not benefitting from it.

You will hear many explanations for the increasing inequality. Some will tell you that people who work with their brains are pulling away from people who work with their hands. Or that the educated are pulling away from the uneducated. Or that those who understand technology are pulling away from those who don't.

And while all those things are happening to some extent, the economists who study inequality say that they are secondary effects. The trend that drives all the other trends is that the people at the very top are pulling from everyone else. It happens at every level. The top 10% are pulling away from the bottom 90%. Within the 10%, the top 1% are pulling away even faster from the other 9.

And if you look even at the 1%, the top tenth of a percent are pulling away from the rest faster yet. The billionaires are pulling away from the millionaires.

In 1965, the average CEO made 50 times the minimum wage -- not a bad paycheck. But by 2005, he was up to 800 times.

The IRS publishes statistics about the top 400 tax returns. Between 1992 and 2007, the amount of money it took to get into that group quintupled. And their percentage of the total national income tripled. Out of every $100 of income in all of America, those 400 households now get a dollar and a half.

That might all be reasonable if the people at the very top had become fantastically more productive, and were being rewarded for the prosperity that they bring to the rest of us. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Economic growth was higher, not lower, when the rich were not quite so rich.

Former Federal Reserve Chief Paul Volcker denies that financial innovations like credit default swaps have added any productivity to the economy. They don't increase the national income, they just capture more of it for the bankers.

Worst of all, it seems that the law itself is different for the very wealthy. When the housing bubble popped, bankers were bailed out but home-owners weren't. When Goldman Sachs was charged with committing fraud, it paid a fine, a small percentage of its profits. No one went to jail.

Bank of America has foreclosed tens of thousands of homes illegally. Again, they will probably pay a fine and no one will go to jail. Will those families get their houses back? Maybe, if they can wait through years of litigation. Or maybe not.

By contrast, when ordinary people protest against this kind of fraud, say by camping out in public parks, their lack of proper permits calls down the full wrath of the law. Police show up in riot gear with pepper spray and rubber bullets. But police never shoot tear gas into board meetings of Goldman Sachs.

 

In a democracy you would think it would be impossible for 99% of the people to be dominated by 1% or a tenth of a percent or 400 households.

So how is this happening? Well, obviously, the 99% have not been able to pull together to defend their interests.

Why not? That brings me back to the way humans think. If you examine your own mind, you will see the buttons that the 1% can push.

When we are victimized by an unjust economic system, it is remarkably easy to make us feel ashamed of our own victimhood, or to use our pride and denial and resentment to turn us against the system's other victims.

How does that work? Let's start with shame. Rick Santelli had a name for the people who can't pay their mortgages -- Losers. And Herman Cain laid it right on the line. If you're failing, he says, don't be angry at the system or at the people on top, be ashamed of yourself.

Psychologically, shame is the first line of defense of any unjust system.

In 7th grade, I could have rejected the whole idea of a pecking order and been nice to the boy who was being nice to me. But I didn't, because I was ashamed to be Second Boy From the Bottom. I was too ashamed to quit the game while I was losing.

During the Depression, some unemployed men from prosperous suburbs kept dressing for work and taking the train into the city, because they were ashamed to let their neighbors know they were unemployed. Some didn't even want their wives to know.

People who are ashamed don't change the world. They don't protest and they don't organize. They hide.

The 1% would love it if we all hid our losses from each other and kept up appearances and pretended that everything is fine.

To me, that's the biggest significance of the 99% movement so far. Those people who march in the streets or publish their photos and stories on the internet -- they aren't hiding. They are rejecting the system's attempts to shame them into silence. Those pictures on the 99% site are saying: "Look at me. I am losing in this economy. This is what a loser looks like in America today."

If you spend much time paging through that website, you'll probably see that they look a lot like the rest of us. The losers look a lot like you and me.

 

Now that is a scary thought, and fear tends to evoke another very human reaction: denial. No one likes to be scared.

So when you hear about someone whose situation scares you -- the parent whose child vanishes into thin air, the athlete who suddenly drops dead, the old person who is too frail to keep working but too poor to retire --  when you meet someone whose situation makes you worry about your own situation, the most natural response in the world is to try to find some difference between them and you, some waterline where you can imagine that the tide of misfortune will have to stop.

You may not set out to blame the victim, but still we'd all love to find something that the victims did wrong that we always do right. The woman with lung cancer -- did she smoke? The guy who got mugged -- I never go to that neighborhood. The lifelong employee who got laid off -- that couldn't happen to any of us, because we're different.

And when you find that difference, that waterline, it's so tempting to build an imaginary wall there, to exagerate, to turn a small difference of degree into a clear difference of kind.

So if they stay ten minutes past quitting time and I stay 20, then I am hard-working and they are lazy. If some choice I made has turned out better than their choices, then I am wise and they are foolish. If they broke a single commandment that I have kept, then I am upright and they are sinful.

An unjust system's second line of defense is to help us build those walls of denial, to help us convince ourselves that the people below us on the ladder are of some other species entirely.

And to the extent you accept that separation, you help justify the whole ladder. If losers belong to a different species, then maybe the CEOs do too. Maybe they deserve to rule over us.

 

But even if your virtues don't make a different species, you do still have virtues. And that's how denial gets mixed up with legitimate pride. If you are managing to tread water in difficult times, then you have a right to be proud of the fact that you haven't drowned yet. But those who are treading water are kidding themselves if they imagine that they are a different kind of person than those who have gone under.

That's what I think is going on on that 53% web site. The woman who gets up at 4:30 to be yelled at, works 50 hours a week, doesn't own anything, and still struggles to pay her bills -- she deserves to feel proud of her efforts. And yet, is her story really so different from the stories on the 99% site?

And why is life that hard? Is that just "how it's supposed to work"? Or is life so hard because our society has made choices that favor the rich? Could we make different choices?

Likewise, that college senior who has no debt and works her ass off is imagining a sturdy wall that separates hard-working people who make good decisions from everyone else. She pictures herself on the deserving side of that wall, and imagines that she will always be there -- because luck plays no role in her world, and decisions that seem wise at the time never turn out badly down the road.

So that is an unjust system's third line of defense: appealing to your pride. They will tell you that what you take pride in only has meaning within their value system. If you deny that the current system is founded on merit and virtue, then you have denied all possible standards of merit and virtue.

The thought of making common cause with the people below you is supposed to offend your pride, because some of the people down there don't share all your virtues.

But of course, some of the people above you don't share your virtues either -- they don't work hard and don't take risks and don't make the world better for others. But you're not supposed to pay attention to that. That's just how life is. Even to bring that issue up, we are told, is engaging in class warfare, in "the bitter politics of envy", and the "resentment of success".

Resentment does play a role here, but not the way the 1% would have you believe. Again, let me illustrate from my childhood. Growing up, I wasted very little time thinking about the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. Multiple homes in exotic locales did not rouse my envy. But if my older sister got two scoops of ice cream when I only got one, that was not fair.

Resentment tends to stay close to home. It's much easier to resent people who are almost like you, but have some small advantage. Maybe they have just a little more than you, or maybe they have exactly what you have, but didn't work as hard or suffer as much to get it. Those are the people that it's easiest to resent. Not the billionaires.

And so, an unjust system's fourth line of defense is to deflect your legitimate resentment away from the real beneficiaries of injustice and onto your neighbors.

Last spring, when the bill to take away the collective bargaining rights of public employees was being debated in Wisconsin, the Club for Growth blanketed the state with a very effective ad. It talked about the sacrifices that private-sector workers in Wisconsin had been forced to make to save their jobs, and listed the cuts in their benefits and wages.

But where did the ad suggest those workers should focus their resentment? Should they resent the owners, who pocketed those sacrifices as higher profits? Or the executives who raised their own pay while firing some employees and squeezing concessions out of the rest?

Oh no. The ad wanted Wisconsin's distressed private-sector workers to focus their resentment on the public-sector teachers and nurses and bus-drivers who hadn't made equivalent sacrifices yet.

If my money has been transferred to the rich as profits, then my sister's money should be transferred to the rich as tax cuts. It's only fair.

 

Supposedly, we are the 99% and this is a democracy. If we can hang together, it ought to be possible to re-write the rules so that the economy works for ordinary people again.

But there are big obstacles against us holding together. You don't have to look far to see them, because they are sitting right in your own brain:

•the shame you feel in your own defeats;

•the denial that makes you want to say, "That couldn't happen to me";

•the pride that sets you above anyone worse off;

•and the resentment you feel against those who are only one or two rungs higher.

Those impulses sit in your brain for good reasons. In other circumstances they serve you well. You ought to criticize yourself and try to learn from your failures. In the face of adversity, you need to identify reasons to hope. You deserve be proud of all the things you're doing to keep your head above water. And you should stand up for yourself when others are treated better than you.

So I'm not saying you should throw all that stuff out of your head. That would be naive advice, because I can't do it myself. I am ashamed, I am in denial, I am proud, and I resent all the wrong people -- just like everybody else.

All I'm saying is: Pay attention. Watch yourself. Shame, denial, pride, resentment -- those are ways you can be manipulated into working against your own interests and against people whose problems are just like yours.

The manipulators have enormous resources. You hear their message from all directions: The people who want change, the people who are protesting in the streets or in the occupation encampments -- they are losers. They are lazy, jealous, misguided, dirty, disgusting, unreasonable, and violent. They are minions of some dark conspiracy against all that is good. You should be ashamed to have any connection with them. Instead, you should identify with the 1%, because you want to join the winners, not the losers.

Of course you do. Everyone wants to join the winners. And if it were that easy, we all would. Every one of us would say, "Starting right now, I'm going to be a winner."

But it's not that easy. The deck is stacked against ordinary people, and it's going to stay stacked until we all do something very difficult: We need to join the losers. We need to look down the ladder and see not what makes us different from the people below, but what makes us the same.

When we find the courage and the confidence and the compassion to do that, then, together, we really do become the 99%. When we do that, we really do have the power to rewrite the rules, enforce them justly on the rich as well as the poor, and make this country work again for everyone.

Closing Words

"Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." -- Eugene Debs

At my mother's funeral

My quarterly column is up at the UU World web site. If you read this blog regularly, you'll suddenly understand where the ideas in May's My Volo Credere post came from. More and more, I'm seeing UUism as being about religious self-discipline, not religious freedom.

My Halloween Column

My Halloween column A Candy Bar for Death appeared today on the UU World web site. If you've been reading this blog, you recognize some of the ideas from The Story of Our Deaths.

I'm reading the comments both here and on the UU World site. I suspect the bigger discussion will be there, the smaller one here. So, whichever appeals to you.

Let Us Pray?

a service given at the Unitarian Church of Quincy, Illinois
September 18, 2011

Readings

from The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

in the Middle of all my Labours it happen'd, that rumaging my Things, I found a little Bag, which, ... had been fill'd with Corn for the feeding of Poultry, ... what little Remainder of Corn had been in the Bag, was all devour'd with the Rats, and I saw nothing in the Bag but Husks and Dust; and being willing to have the Bag for some other Use, ... I shook the Husks of Corn out of it on one Side of my Fortification under the Rock.

It was a little before the great Rains ... that I threw this Stuff away, taking no Notice of any Thing, and not so much as remembring that I had thrown any Thing there; when about a Month after, or thereabout, I saw some few Stalks of something green shooting out of the Ground, which I fancy'd might be some Plant I had not seen, but I was surpriz'd and perfectly astonish'd, when after a little longer Time, I saw about ten or twelve Ears come out, which were perfect green Barley of the same Kind as our European, nay, as our English Barley.

It is impossible to express the Astonishment and Confusion of my Thoughts on this Occasion; I had hitherto acted upon no religious Foundation at all; indeed I had very few Notions of Religion in my Head, or had entertain'd any Sense of any Thing that had befallen me, otherwise than as a Chance, or, as we lightly say, what pleases God; without so much as enquiring into the End of Providence in these Things, or his Order in governing Events in the World; But after I saw Barley grow there, in a Climate which I knew was not proper for Corn, and especially that I knew not how it came there, it startled me strangely, and I began to suggest, that God had miraculously caus'd this Grain to grow without any help of Seed sown, and that it was so directed purely for my Sustenance on that wild miserable Place.

This touch'd my Heart a little, and brought Tears out of my Eyes, and I began to bless my self, that such a Prodigy of Nature should happen upon my Account; and this was the more strange to me, because I saw near it still all along by the side of the Rock, some other straggling Stalks, which prov'd to be Stalks of Rice ...

I not only thought these the pure Productions of Providence for my Support, but not doubting, but that there was more in the Place, I went all over that part of the Island, where I had been before peering in every Corner, and under every Rock, to see for more of it, but I could not find any; at last it occur'd to my Thoughts, that I had shook a Bag of Chickens Meat out in that Place, and then the Wonder began to cease; and I must confess, my religious Thankfulness to God's Providence began to abate too upon the Discovering that all this was nothing but what was common; tho' I ought to have been as thankful for so strange and unforeseen a Providence, as if it had been miraculous; for it was really the Work of Providence as to me, that should order or appoint, that 10 or 12 Grains of Corn should remain unspoil'd (when the Rats had destroyed all the rest,) as if it had been dropt from Heaven.

from Spirit and Flesh by James Ault

Registering needs and recognizing how the Lord met them was the bread and butter of conversation at Shawmut River. But special time was taken at the beginning of Sunday-evening worship for testimonies and prayer requests. They represented two sides of the same reality. Testimony pointed to the perceptible evidence of God's work in the world -- a job found, a marriage saved, an illness healed -- and prayer requests brought these same needs to public attention in the first place and made them a matter of community prayer.

... As prayer requests were given, members jotted them down on prayer lists, which they slipped into Bibles or pockets, eventually to stick them up, perhaps, on their refrigerator doors alongside shopping lists and other items of household business. And many looked to those lists in the course of conducting their "prayer lives." It occurred to me at the time that these practices were probably an effective means to seeing needs met merely by social means. As faithful members meditated regularly on their prayer lists, I reckoned, they would be routinely reminded of specific needs and have them in mind when someone mentioned news, say, of an apartment becoming available, a job opening up or another member's unexpected windfall. In this way, needs and resources would be providentially brought together.

from "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" by Bertrand Russell

Sometimes, if pious men are to be believed, God's mercies are curiously selective. Toplady, the author of "Rock of Ages," moved from one vicarage to another; a week after the move, the vicarage he had formerly occupied burnt down, with great loss to the new vicar. Thereupon Toplady thanked God; but what the new vicar did is not known.

from "Pat Robertson & Hurricane Gloria" on the web site anecdotage.com

In 1985, with Hurricane Gloria headed toward the east coast, televangelist Pat Robertson promptly went on the air to pray. "In the name of Jesus," he declared, "we command you to stop where you are and move northeast, away from land, and away from harm."Incredibly, the hurricane did in fact begin to head northeast. Robertson's claims to have changed the course of the hurricane were met with considerable scorn, however, particularly in Long Island - which lies to the northeast of Robertson's native Virginia and was devastated by Gloria after she changed course.

from a proclamation from the Governor of Texas

WHEREAS, the state of Texas is in the midst of an exceptional drought ... NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas.

[Imprecatory prayer means praying for God to do harm to someone. Baptist minister Wiley Drake advocates imprecatory prayer. He has admitted to praying for the death of President Obama, and Drake called the assassination of the abortionist Dr. George Tiller "an answer to a prayer".]

from "Pastor Wiley Drake Calls for Imprecatory Prayer against So-Called Religious Liberty Watchdog Group" Christian NewsWire, August 14, 2011

In light of the recent attack from the enemies of God I ask the children of God to go into action with Imprecatory Prayer. Especially against Americans United for Separation of Church and State. I made an attempt to go to them via Matt 18:15 but they refused to talk to me. Specifically target Joe Conn or Jeremy Learing.

from "The Language of Faith" by former UUA President William Sinkford

my son Billy, then 15 years old, had overdosed on drugs, and it was unclear whether he would live. As I sat with him in the hospital, I found myself praying. First the selfish prayers for forgiveness…for the time not made, for the too many trips, for the many things unsaid, and, sadly, for a few things said that should never have passed my lips. But as the night darkened, I finally found the pure prayer. The prayer that asked only that my son would live. And late in the evening, I felt the hands of a loving universe reaching out to hold. The hands of God, the Spirit of Life. The name was unimportant. I knew that those hands would be there to hold me whatever the morning brought. And I knew, though I cannot tell you how, that those hands were holding my son as well. I knew that I did not have to walk that path alone, that there is a love that has never broken faith with us and never will.

My son survived. But the experience stayed with me.

 

Let Us Pray?

I grew up in a religion where God was very literal and personal. God was someone you could talk to, and if you did, He could give you real, tangible help.

When you believe in a God like that -- I mean really believe, and not just go through the motions -- prayer is a very serious act. You have asked the Ruler of the Universe to listen to you, so you don't chatter about trivia. You don't posture or pretend, because God is not fooled. You don't ask for things you don't really want, because you might get them.

To pray well, then, meant more than just saying the right words. It meant being centered and authentic. A good prayer got to the heart of things. It boiled down what was really going on in my life, what my true hopes were, and what kind of help I really needed.

As I got older, though, I stopped believing in the kind of God who mucks about in the physical world, changing the directions of hurricanes and zapping away tumors. I also began to see the dark side of prayer. I had come to believe that bringing justice to the world is a human responsibility, and it bothered me to watch people push that job off on God. "I'll pray for you," the rich man says to the beggar, and then he walks away. When people on the other side of the world suffered from famine or war or natural disaster, we prayed, and that disquieting sense that we ought to do something was satisfied.

Some of the readings displayed other kinds of dysfunctionality. Believing in prayer can make the Universe seem like a big patronage system. It all depends on who you know upstairs, whether God likes me better than he likes you. So the winners thank God, but what the losers say is not recorded.

Prayer can be a way to avoid reality. So Governor Perry can ignore what science says about global warming and instead fight the drought in Texas with a day of prayer.

Some people even project their vindictiveness onto God. If Wiley Drake hates President Obama or Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, then God must hate them too. And maybe God will send an assassin if Drake prays hard enough and gets enough people praying with him.

Having spent my share of time sitting by hospital beds, I can testify that even those desperate emergency-room prayers can have a dark, narcissistic side. The crisis isn't about the person who might be dying. It's not even about the doctors and nurses. It's about me and my relationship to God. God kills or saves people just to make a point to me. That's how important I am.

Atheists ridicule talking to God. "You just have an imaginary friend," they say. And as I lost my childhood faith, the act of prayer did begin to seem ridiculous. So I stopped. I missed it, but it was like one of those silly toys you continue to feel sentimental about, even though you're past the age. You box it up and put it on a high shelf, because it's embarrassing. It's proof that you're not really as mature as you claim to be.

Eventually, though, I began to realize that what I missed most about prayer was not the prospect of magically healing the sick or changing the weather or getting some unfair advantage. I missed the doing of prayer. The simple thought experiment -- what if I did have the ear of the Almighty, what would I say? -- cut through a lot of the noise and fog in my mind. And when I asked myself: "What advice would a supremely wise being who loved me give in this situation?" the answer was often fairly obvious.

Some imaginary friends, I eventually decided, are worth talking to.

That insight set me to taking inventory. What if you ignore the metaphysics and theology surrounding prayer and just look at the doing of it? What beneficial practices has folk wisdom encoded into prayer over the centuries? How many of them can we rescue without falling into the corresponding traps?

We saw one of those beneficial practices in the responsive reading. It did not address God by name, but for all practical purposes it was a prayer of thanksgiving. I find that I need that. The mindset of my everyday life keeps me focused on what I deserve and making sure I am not cheated out of it. It is so easy to forget how many of the good things in my life are not of my own making. A practice that regularly evokes feelings of gratitude makes me happier and saner.

Another kind of prayer can be good group process. Taking a moment at the beginning of a meeting to step back from the nitty-gritty disagreements and recall the common ideals that bring you all together -- that can make for a more cooperative, more productive meeting.

 

Two traditional kinds of prayer involve stepping outside the Ego: the prayer for forgiveness and the prayer for help. As we've already seen, these prayers have dysfunctional uses as well as beneficial ones, but fortunately there is a simple rule that separates them: Prayer is a good first step, but a bad last step.

Obviously, if you have wronged other people, you should be confessing it to them and trying to make it right with them. But this is a good first step: Admit in your own mind, to the most compassionate judge you can imagine, that you did wrong. If you can't do that much, what hope is there that you'll make things right in the world?

Similarly, if even when you are alone you can't admit that you don't have all the bases covered, that you are not in control of the situation, and that you need help from somewhere -- then how will you admit that to anyone else? And how will get the help you need if your Ego will not let you admit that you need it?

The reading from James Ault illustrates how prayers for help can work in a community. Having assigned a long list of tasks to God, the parishioners of Shawmut River don't leave it there, they start looking for ways they can help God do his work. Sister Mabel wants God to find her a ride to the doctor next Thursday? Well praise Jesus, that's my day off. That nice young couple is asking God to replace their refrigerator that died? I've got one in the basement that I couldn't figure out what to do with. Hallelujah!

Now, we may laugh at this community, because Jesus isn't driving anybody to the doctor. They're doing it all themselves. But if our community doesn't have as effective and as cheerful a way to ask for and receive help from each other, then what do we have to laugh about?

I've already pointed out how prayer can excuse a lack of action. But sometimes action is impossible or unwise, and prayer can keep alive an idea that otherwise might fade away. Many slaves in the old South had no prospect of escape, but they sang and prayed about freedom, and the idea stayed alive. Generations of Jews said, "next year in Jerusalem" and did little to bring that about beyond teaching their children to say the same thing. But then, when action became possible, the idea was there.

It is worth asking: What ideas do you have today that you aren't acting on, but you also aren't willing to give up? How will you keep them alive?

Finally, we come to the most difficult kind of prayer to justify: the prayer for a miracle.

The reading from Robinson Crusoe raises an important question: What is a miracle, anyway? Something is a miracle to you if it is completely outside your expectations, like the English barley that springs up on Crusoe's deserted Caribbean island. But the Universe is vast and our brains are tiny, so we're constantly ignoring, overlooking, or forgetting things that turn out to be important -- like the rat-chewed chicken feed Crusoe had dumped out in a sheltered spot just before the rainy season. The results of those forgotten causes can be so close to a miracle as makes no difference.

The future always outgrows the box we build for it. It shrugs off our theories and wriggles out of our computer models. When we let ourselves look this fact in the eye, it is as wonderful and terrible as the most primitive tribal deity. Even within the natural order, we really don't know what might happen next.

I saw that in my own life a few years ago. I was at a shopping mall when I began to feel sick. I went to the food court, thinking that if I got off my feet and drank something, I might feel well enough to drive home. Instead, I got worse, and before long I was debating whether I would be able to make to the bathroom before I threw up.

I decided to run for it, but as soon as I stood up, I fainted ... and some stranger caught me before I hit the floor.

Now, I wasn't expecting that, because in my mind, I was alone. But the vast real world contained possibilities I was not taking into account. In fact, an impromptu emergency response team sprouted up around me like Crusoe's barley. Somebody laid me down gently on the floor. Somebody ran to get mall security. Somebody called 911. And when I woke up a few seconds later, somebody was sitting there to explain to me what was happening. Strangers, every one of them, taking action "as if they had been dropt from Heaven".

Supernatural? No. Miraculous? To me -- yes.

Prayer is dysfunctional when it gives us a false confidence that we can overpower the natural world, like the pastor who expects to be saved from the flood by some means other than boats and helicopters. But it's good to have a practice that encourages you to remember that the doom you seem to be facing may not be as rock-solid as it looks. The world is vast, and it contains unimagined possibilities for good as well as evil. We shouldn't count on them, but it's also a mistake to count them out.

Finally, I want to talk about Bill Sinkford's experience sitting beside his son's hospital bed. But before I go there, I want to take a detour.

There is a common situation in which it makes perfect sense to pray for any kind of miracle you can imagine: In a dream. In the Dreamworld, the traditional explanation of how prayer works is literally true: There is an all-powerful being who has good reason to care about you.

That being is the Dreamer, who in some sense is you. You run around the dreamscape doing your dream-character things and maybe being quite miserable. But no matter how impossible the situation seems, you could get it all straightened out if only you could a message through to the Dreamer.

Now, what does that have to do with the world we face when we're awake? I believe that we are physical beings who live in a world that obeys physical laws. But a lot of our experience of life is not forced on us by the physical situation. As I discussed last spring, our experiences are filtered through the stories that we tell about our lives. The meaning of our lives is not in the motions of the atoms of our bodies. The meaning of our lives is in the stories that we are living, and a single physical situation can support many different stories.

So a very important aspect of your life is under your control, because you are the primary story-teller of your life.

But using that power is incredibly difficult. For most of us most of the time, being the Story-Teller of our lives does us no more good than being the Dreamer does us when we are dreaming. We get trapped in our stories. And even if they are largely of our own devising, we can't figure out how to escape.

Just deciding to tell a new story doesn't work. For example, whether I am a success or a failure depends more on the story of my life and how it is told than on my physical situation. If the story of my life says that I'm a failure, yes, I could start telling a new story that says I'm a success. But would that make me a success? More likely, I'd feel like a fraud -- a failure who is conning people about how successful he is.

No, the story of your life has more substance and momentum than that. Like the power of the Dreamer, the power of the Story-Teller can be very hard to access.

Now let's get back to Bill Sinkford sitting by his son's hospital bed, praying for a miracle. At that moment, Sinkford is trapped inside one of the most horrible stories there is: He is the Bad Father who deserves to watch his son die. Because he wasn't there at the important moment, and he never said this significant thing, and he did say that terrible thing instead. This character that he believes he is deserves no mercy and no compassion. He's just reaping what he sowed.

As long as Sinkford goes round and round that hamster wheel, as long as the story is about him and the failings of his character, he can't get out.

But then he experiences a pure cry of the heart, what he calls "the pure prayer": Let my son live. He's not controlling the situation. He's not reminding God of his previous promises or trying to negotiate a new deal. He's not living in the past or the future. He's just arrived at the essence of his experience of this moment: Let my son live.

That cry of the heart does not heal Sinkford's son. But it is so intense that it breaks the story. It wakes him up. For just a moment he stops being a character in a story and becomes a fully conscious human being, with all the power that entails.

I think it's important to understand what that power is. It's not physical power. He recognizes that the physical world will do what it does. His son will live or not live. Even in Sinkford's heightened state of awareness, that's not his choice to make.

But he is no longer trapped inside the character he has been, and his relationship with his son is not trapped inside the story he has been telling about it. Whatever happens, there can be a new story. That story will have the possibility of meaning and the possibility of love and the possibility of joy.

Sinkford ends his account by saying, "The experience stayed with me." I think he's acknowledging the temptation he felt to box that experience up and put it on a high shelf, the temptation to say "Things got crazy there for a while, but I'm OK now."

If you've ever had an experience like Sinkford's that seems life-changing at the time, you know that often the moment passes and you get pulled back into your old story. Or sometimes the new story is no better. That moment of revelation doesn't always work out. But it certainly won't work out if you reflexively get embarrassed about such experiences and explain them away as soon as possible.

So I close with this advice for those moments when you feel the need for a miracle: Don't repress that need, don't crack the whip and try to get yourself back in line. Try to hone it. If what you think you need is a violation of the natural order, it's probably not coming. But never forget that the natural order is bigger than you think. Stay open to the unexpected.

And if the miracle you really need is related to your character and your story, that can happen. If you need an inner transformation, if you need to reshape your relationships, if you need to break free of your patterns, if you need a new way to find meaning in the world -- that can happen. There is a powerful being who cares about you who could make that happen.

In some sense that being is you, if you could just wake up.

The first step in that awakening process is very similar to the kind of prayer I described at the beginning. Sit with your need and strip away everything that is non-essential. Strip away all the ego, all the self-importance, all the self-pity, all the desire for control, until you find that pure cry of the heart.

That is the moment when things can start to change.

 

My Volo Credere

This year, random fluctuations got my church's Coming of Age class down to one student. (It's usually five or six.) I was the young man's mentor, so my role in the Coming of Age Sunday service was to introduce his credo-reading*. The lack of other credos meant that I had a little extra time, so I decided to use it to say something about Unitarian Universalism in general, and how Coming of Age fits in.

[* If you're unfamiliar with the UU Coming of Age tradition, we have a year-long program that is comparable to what confirmation would be in a Protestant Christian church, with this exception: We're not just teaching the students what UUism is, we're encouraging them to assemble their own ideas about what they believe and don't believe. The culmination of the program is that the students write personal credos -- statements of their own beliefs -- and present them to the congregation.]

One of the old saws about UUism (which tends to get repeated when people describe Coming of Age) is that UUs can "believe whatever we want". Over the years I've heard a number of writers and speakers attack that idea with logic and evidence, but the refutation never sticks. That's why I decided to go after it in a more humorous way, by taking it literally. So instead of a credo ("I believe"), I talked about my volo credere ("I want to believe").

 

For years, people have been telling me that Unitarian Universalists can believe whatever we want. And I find that notion intriguing, because for as long as I can remember, I have wanted to believe that I can fly.

I want to believe a lot of things about myself. I want to believe that I don't really need to sleep. I want to believe that if the plan depends on me being in two places at the same time, I can do that.

I want to believe things about the world, too. Those problems that you hear so much about -- climate change, poverty, war -- I want to believe that they're not really that bad. I want to believe that it will all be OK. And most of all, I want to believe that none of it is my fault, so no one has a right to expect me to do anything about it.

That's what I want to believe.

I'm sure there are many things that you want to believe too.

And we are Unitarian Universalists. We are free from creeds and dogmas and scriptures and institutional authorities. Who is going to stop us from believing whatever whimsical, irresponsible, and self-serving things we want?

Well, I think already you know the answer to that: We're going to stop ourselves. We are going to use our eyes and our minds and our hearts, and we are going to realize that we can't believe whatever we want, because many of the things we want to believe are just not true.

You see, Unitarian Universalists are not un-disciplined. We are self-disciplined. And that is what we are celebrating today.

The public credo-reading that completes our Coming of Age program is one of the most meaningful and moving rituals in our tradition -- not because of what the credos say, but because of what they represent: young people taking responsibility for their own beliefs, demonstrating that they have the self-discipline not to "believe whatever they want".

What's inspiring about our Coming of Age program is not that we restrain ourselves from telling our young people what they have to believe. The inspiring thing -- what our coming-of-age classes prove year after year, and what I expect D_____ to demonstrate yet again today -- is that no one needs to tell our young people what to believe. They are up to the job.

I think you are about to see what I have been seeing all year as I worked with D____: a young man who is ready to claim his place in a community of self-disciplined people.

And that is truly something to celebrate.

D____, the pulpit is yours.

 

The Story of Our Deaths

a service given at the Unitarian Church of Quincy, Illinois

April 3, 2011

Summary

We live not just as physical bodies, but also as characters inside countless stories that motivate our actions and make meaning out of our lives: the stories of our careers and projects, the stories of our relationships, the stories of our days and months and years.

Perhaps the scariest thing about death is that it cuts those stories short. Our plots may have no climaxes. Our mysteries may come to no solutions. Our odysseys may never reach home. Facing those possibilities can undo the motivation that our stories give us and make our lives seem meaningless.

One way to maintain motivation and meaning is to tell death-denying stories about eternal life. Another is to live in the moment and put off thinking about death for as long as possible. But wise and skillful story-tellers have other options.

Opening Story: "The Tigers and the Strawberry"

A man was walking through a field when he saw a tiger watching him. The man began to run, and the tiger loped after him. He ran faster, and the tiger ran faster. Suddenly there was a cliff ahead, and the man tried to stop, but his heels skidded and he fell.

But on his way down he grabbed a vine, and amazingly, the vine was strong enough to hold him. And he thought: "Maybe I can figure out a way to climb to the bottom, and get away from the tiger." But then he looked down and saw a second tiger pacing back and forth at the bottom of the cliff, waiting for him.

So he wrapped his legs around the vine and hung on. "Maybe," he thought, "I can hang here until the tigers get bored and go away." But then, just out of his reach, he saw two mice come of out of a hole and begin gnawing on the base of the vine that held him up.

The man closed his eyes and began preparing himself for death. But when he opened his eyes again, he saw a luscious red strawberry growing out of the face of the cliff, hanging right next to him. He plucked the strawberry and ate it. It was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted.

Hymn: #12 "O Life That Maketh All Things New"

Responsive Reading: #558 "For Everything a Season"

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die;

A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

A time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

A time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to seek, and a time to lose;

A time to keep, and a time to throw away;

A time to tear, and a time to sew;

A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate;

A time for war,

And a time for peace.

Readings

I want to introduce the readings by telling a story from my own life, a story you can think of as the motivation for this service.

Random Death. In high school I had a weekend job at the Herald-Whig. In those pre-computer days, one of my duties was to get typewritten pieces of paper from editors like Joe Conover and walk them back to the composing room, where they were set into metal type.

[Footnote: Quincy is my home town and the Herald-Whig is its local newspaper. Joe Conover attends this church and was in the room as I was speaking.]

I was a curious kid, so I usually managed to read the stories on the way, if they weren't too long.

One Saturday, when we were putting together the Sunday morning edition, I was given one sheet of paper, about three paragraphs. There had been a windstorm that day. Some middle-aged man -- his name meant nothing to me then and I don't remember it now -- had been in his yard when a large tree-branch blew down and killed him.

Now, that was not the first time I had ever thought about death. I grew up watching westerns and cop shows on TV. People died left and right on those shows, but they died inside plots that made sense. Their deaths were heroic or tragic or the result of their own foolishness. And I had known relatives to die after long illnesses, but those illnesses themselves were a kind of story in which death was a logical conclusion.

But this guy in his yard -- I knew nothing about him, but I was convinced that this branch blowing down was not the climax of any story he thought he was living. I was sure he must have been in the middle of a million other things, and then suddenly he wasn't.

That bothered me. It bothered me, so much that for days afterward I fantasized about suicide, as teen-agers often do. I think I wanted to reclaim control of the story of my death. Better to die at the climax of a tragedy of my own devising, I thought, than to risk dying randomly and meaninglessly.

But then -- as teen-agers also often do -- I got distracted by things I don't even remember now. My death tragedy was never performed, those unanswered questions moved to a back shelf of my mind, and life went on.

The readings represent a range of responses to those questions about death. The first is the traditional Christian story of salvation, from the Gospel of John. If you were at my mother's funeral, you heard this reading there:

The Christian Salvation Story: John 11: 21-25 and 14:2-3

“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother [Lazarus] would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die."

In my Father’s house are many rooms; ... I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

A second possible answer is in the Zen story I opened with. To me that story says that since there is no escaping death, we should accept it, and appreciate what this brief moment of life has to offer. Eat the strawberry.

But to William James things were not so simple.

from Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

[M]ankind is in a position similar to that of a set of people living on a frozen lake, surrounded by cliffs over which there is no escape, yet knowing that little by little the ice is melting, and the inevitable day drawing near when the last film of it will disappear, and to be drowned ignominiously will be the human creature's portion. The merrier the skating, the warmer and more sparkling the sun by day, and the ruddier the bonfires at night, the more poignant the sadness with which one must take in the meaning of the total situation.

In other words: The strawberries may be sweet, but that just makes it worse.

Finally, there is this example, from Martin Luther King's last speech, given the night before he was assassinated.

from The Mountaintop Speech by Martin Luther King

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to ... talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I'm happy, tonight.

I'm not worried about anything.

I'm not fearing any man!

Sermon

What Makes Humans Special? There is something special about human beings, something that makes us different from the other animals.

It's not our bodies, which need to eat and sleep like any other animal.

It's not our basic drives. Like other animals we are driven to run from predators, to attract mates, to protect our offspring, and to compete to be alpha dog.

Even our emotions seem similar to the other mammals. Like us, they form attachments. Some signal and communicate with each other. Some primates can even be taught to arrange symbols to make rudimentary sentences.

It can be hard to put your finger on what makes us special. Some people say that we have an immortal soul. Some say human reason is a special spark of divinity. Some people imagine us as the pinnacle of evolution.

This morning I'm not going to deny any of that. But when I look at humanity and ask what sets us apart, I see something much simpler: We are story-tellers. We imagine situations that are different from what is happening here and now. We populate those situations with characters, and then let imaginary time roll forward in plots about what would happen or could happen.

I don't think any other animal does that. And if one did, then I think we'd have to see that animal as special in the same way. If someday it turns out that chickens have been clucking out their life stories, and pigs have been grunting about their plans for the summer, then I think you'll see vegetarianism become much more popular.

The Importance of Stories. We often think of stories just as entertainment, as movies or TV shows or novels. But stories are how we came to dominate this planet. Through stories, we live on time scales much bigger than the present moment. We gather wood in the day for a fire we won't need until night. We plant in the spring because the end of that story is the reaping in the fall.

Because we tell stories, the future seems real to us. Everything we do is in the context of time.

Somewhere tonight a high school student is going to study, not because that is the most exciting activity she can imagine, but because she is already living in the story where she passes tomorrow's test, and she's already living in the story where she gets a good grade at the end of the term, and goes to college, and has a career she can take pride in, and someday has the financial security to give good things to her own children.

Everything we do is part of a story. It's part of many stories. We get out of a warm bed when the alarm goes off, because we are characters in stories that we want to bring to a successful conclusion. Those characters have motivation, and to the extent that we believe in our stories, we have motivation too.

Sometimes, though, we stop believing in our stories. Sometimes the whole future -- the test, the grade, the college, the career, the children -- starts to sound like a ridiculous fantasy. None of it's real. None of it is actually going to happen, or come out the way I want it to, so why shouldn't I keep playing this game or watching this show or texting my friends?

In order to have motivation that lasts longer than a few minutes, you need to be able to tell stories that you can believe about a character that you want to be. If you can really do that, then your life rocks. You bounce out of bed in the morning so that you can be that character and live that story.

But if not, if the stories you are living aren't believable or aren't appealing, then the best you can hope for is to lose yourself in the moment. Eat, drink and be merry and try not to think about where this is all going.

On the other hand, sometimes we believe our stories too much. We get so caught up in them that we forget they are stories and imagine that they are the world. If our stories aren't working for us any more, we believe that there is something wrong with the Universe or with the human condition. If I feel distant from the protagonist of my life story, then I say that the Universe is an alienating place. If the plot of my life does not engage me any more, then I complain that the Universe is supposed to have meaning in it, but it does not. I may think I need a God or a Savior to put meaning back into the Universe, when actually I need something much simpler: I need a story-teller.

Mission and sustenance: The temptation of Jesus. One of the ways people express humanity's illusive uniqueness is to quote Jesus: "Man does not live by bread alone."

Let's talk about the story that comes from. According to Matthew, Jesus has just been baptized by John, and the spirit of God -- whatever that might be -- has come down and entered into him. But he hasn't done anything with it yet. He goes out into the desert on a vision quest, and after forty days the vision quest is starting to work, because he sees the Devil.

And the Devil says, "You want to know what it means to have the Spirit of God in you? It means you don't have to be hungry like this. You can just command those stones to be bread."

And Jesus says, "Man does not live by bread alone." Which I think means: "I didn't come out here for bread. They had bread in Galilee. They've got bread in Jerusalem. If I wanted bread, I would have stayed where I was."

And so the Devil tries again to appeal to Jesus' animal drives. He says, "You don't have to be afraid of anything." And then he says, "You can be Alpha Dog of the whole world."

And Jesus says no, that he's not looking for any of that. He's looking for "words from the mouth of God".

What could that possibly mean? I think he's out there in the desert looking for a mission, looking for a way to tell the story of his life that will make sense out of this strange thing he feels inside himself that Matthew calls "the Spirit of God." And he wants that story to ring so true that no matter what he has to do and what he has to suffer, he will never doubt it.

He wants words from the mouth of God.

The Devil can't give him that, so he goes away and the angels come. We aren't told what the angels say. But after that Jesus does have a mission, and it stays with him all the way to his death. As he breathes his last, he says, "It is complete."

And that brings us to the subject of death.

Death as a Plot Hole. The unpredictability of death throws a wrench into all our personal stories. The story of your life might end for no reason that has anything to do with the plot. A tree branch blows down on you and you're dead. It happens.

The unpredictability of your death creates a plot hole in the story you are telling about your life. And as any story-teller knows, the effects of a plot hole tend to ripple backwards in time. If you don't know where your story is supposed to end up, then you don't know what should happen just before that, and just before that, and so on.

A plot hole is like a loose end in a tapestry. If you tug on that end, the tapestry can start to unravel. Similarly, if you can't stop yourself from tugging on the loose end in the story of your life, all your motivation can unravel, all the way back to the present. If you can't stop thinking about your death, and you can't figure out how to tie off that loose end, you can end up like the people William James imagined living on the ice. What does anything matter, when the ice is melting and we are all going to die? The strawberry of life may taste as sweet as ever, but so what? That just makes it worse.

When your stories unravel like that, they start to work against you. Instead of motivating you, they demotivate you. Instead of adding meaning to the tedious periods of your life, they subtract meaning from moments that otherwise would be satisfying and enjoyable. It may be a bright spring day, but what is the point of noticing? The sunshine, the flowering trees -- they don't change anything. We're still all going to die.

Eternity vs. this moment. So how can you tie that thread off? How can you keep the plot hole of your death from unraveling the story of your life?

The readings provide some suggestions. In the Christian salvation story, death isn't a problem because it isn't really going to happen. Your stories will just get interrupted, their conclusions delayed, but ultimately they will continue in a place where they can't help but reach a happy ending. Your relationships will continue in a place of perfect love, your enemies will be called to account in a place of perfect justice, and all your questions will be answered.

Who can deny that that is a wonderful story? And if you can believe it, whole-heartedly, with confidence that it will not start to ring hollow as the prospect of your death approaches, then God bless you. I mean that. Don't let anything I say disturb you in the least.

But St. Paul was right: Faith like that is a gift of God, not something we can achieve by trying. If you can't believe the salvation story, then you can't. No amount of telling and retelling is going to help. The people living on the ice could all tell and retell a story that said the ice is not melting. But that would just make their lives harder. When they were together they would put on a happy face and tell a happy story, but inside, each of them would be alone with his dread.

The strawberry story points in the opposite direction. Are we all doomed in the future? Then accept it, and don't live for the future. Live for now. Savor this moment, and when death comes, it comes.

Collective stories. It's easy to imagine that those are the only choices: Deny death by believing in eternal life, or don't look into the future at all and live in the moment. But we know they aren't the only choices, because history gives us other examples. The ancient Greeks and Hebrews did not make either choice. They clearly did look into the future -- otherwise they couldn't possibly have achieved everything they did -- but for centuries neither had any notion of personal salvation. Neither the Greek afterlife in Hades nor the Hebrew one in Sheol were anything to look forward to.

In The Odyssey, the ghost of Achilles tells Odysseus: "Say not a word in death's favor; I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man's house and be above ground than king of kings among the dead."

And Ecclesiastes agrees: "even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten."

So how did ancient peoples motivate themselves? Without any pleasant notion of eternal life, how did they plan for the future without seeing all their stories unravelled by death?

The answer turns out to be fairly simple. Although ancient peoples certainly were individuals and had individual stories and motives, compared to us they lived collective lives. The bulk of the stories that motivated them day-to-day were collective stories -- stories of planting and harvest in the country, and the annual cycle of festivals in the city. Where a 21st century person wakes up and asks "What am I doing today?" they were more likely to ask "What are we doing today?"

You can see a modern account of this mindset in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Levin, the aristocratic character who most resembles Tolstoy himself, can't understand why the peasants resist his efforts to modernize agriculture, no matter how attractive and profitable he tries to make it for them. Eventually, he spends several days working side-by-side with them and comes to understand that the peasants are not motivated as much by the individual story of profit and loss, as by the collective story of the people and the land.

Tolstoy does not tell us how Levin's peasants view death, but it's not hard to imagine. If the story that motivates me day-to-day is a collective story, then the prospect of my death has no effect on it. There is a time to plant and a time to reap, a time to tear and a time to sew, a time to break down and a time to build up -- and ultimately a time to live and a time to die.

If the meaning of all that was never in me or in my personal story. If it is what my people do, then my death will not undo it.

The Mountaintop. And finally, that brings us to Martin Luther King. On the eve of his death, the story that is motivating Dr. King is a collective story. It's the story of justice for his people and justice for the world. He knows that he is playing an important part in that story, and he knows that the story will go on whether he lives or not. "I may not get there with you," he says, "but we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land."

"Like anybody," he says, "I would like to live. But [if I have to die] I don't mind."

Mindful present, collective future. Now, I realize that none of the examples I've mentioned is a perfect fit for an ordinary American in the 21st century.

Obviously, we can't all expect to be Jesus or Martin Luther King.

And while the increased individuality of the 21st century has its costs, it has benefits too. I doubt that many of us would want to recreate the collective mindset of a Russian peasant or an ancient Hebrew or Greek.

The timeless mindset of a healthy animal, always living in the moment -- that also has its charms. But the advantages we get from having a vision of the future, and the satisfaction that comes from finding your role in the larger sweep of history -- that would be a lot to give up.

But if none of the examples provides a perfect model, I still think we can cobble something together.

The strawberry story contains one piece of the truth. Personal life is not the kind of thing you can enjoy in the abstract; you have to enjoy it in a time and a place. And if not here and now, then where and when?

So to the extent that you are looking for personal satisfaction in life, you'd better grab it while you can. Feel the sunlight, taste your food, see the beauty, enjoy your friends, love your loved ones. If life will not seem complete until you see the Grand Canyon, then go see it. See it now. Don't wait until your eyes are failing and your knees won't let you hike. Eat the strawberry.

But that's not enough, I think. We still need the kind of meaning in our lives that can only come from stories that play out over time.

And so the ancient Greeks and Hebrews, the Russian peasants, and Martin Luther King give us another piece. When you do look to the future for your motivation, recognize that the further into the future a story goes, the more likely it is you will be dead before the end of it. So: the further into the future a story goes, the more collective it needs to be. Your long-term stories need to be able to contain your death; they should go on and not be interrupted when you die. Inside those collective stories, you need to find a personal role that is believable and motivating.

And that implies something that sounds paradoxical: For purely selfish reasons, you need to reach beyond yourself. You need to be part of something bigger, something whose story will go on after you die: a family, a community, a profession, this country, the human race, the web of all life.

And that connection to the larger whole can't just be theoretical. It won't motivate you, it won't get you out of bed in the morning unless you feel it and believe it in your heart and soul.

So that's the full package: Learn to take personal satisfaction in the moment, to live with a mindfulness that does not send the baggage of regret into the future. And simultaneously, learn to care deeply about something that will outlive you. Find a role you want to play in a story that will not end when you die.

It's a tall order. But if you can do it, there's a prize. You too may be able to contemplate your death and say, "Like anyone I would like to live, but I don't mind. I may die tomorrow, but I am happy today. I am not worried about anything. I am not fearing any man."

Closing Hymn: #114 "Forward Through the Ages"

Closing Story

President Kennedy used to tell this story: An old man and his young gardener were laying out plans for the trees they would plant in the coming year. But the gardener objected to one tree the old man suggested, pointing out that the species grows so slowly that it would not reach maturity for a hundred years. "Oh my," said the old man. "I had no idea. In that case, we'd better plant it today."

At My Mother's Funeral ...

… I learned that you never really know a person. Not completely.

You may have a life-long relationship, more than half a century, but you still only see one facet of the whole. Someone else remembers a buddy from high school, the kid next door, the person my father dated, an older sister, an old woman who needed help getting to the bathroom, a face at the beauty parlor, a fellow member of the Bible Study group, somebody to laugh with while the kids (me) played downstairs, and dozens of other people -- most of whom I had never met, but who nonetheless were (somehow) the same person as my mother.

After you talk to enough of your fellow mourners, you start to wonder about all the people who couldn't be here, the ones already gone. Her parents and teachers, bosses and supervisors, the staff and other patients when she was a teen-ager in a hospital far from home. And all the people who never even came up in conversation, the ones who (if they could talk to me) would have to tell a long story before I even knew who they had been.

Human beings are big. They're so big that in 54 years you can't wrap your mind around even one.