Our Enlightenment Tradition

Remaindered

I truly love a bargain.  My consumer passion is dress shirts. 


Before there were outlet malls I shopped manufacturers’ stores. When I was in college, I travelled 80 miles from Newark, DE, to the Eagle shirt factory in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. Ellie’s New York home was across the lake from Burlington, Vermont, where there was a Hathaway Shirt outlet;   when I was in graduate school UVM, I shopped at Burlington's Hathaway store at least once a week. More recently, I bought shirts at the Bachrach outlet at the North Riverside Mall.  Sadly, it’s been closed for a couple of years.

Not only do I not like to pay full price, I loathe the markups that branding and advertising create. Over the years I shaped an occasional sermon about the role of advertising as the slippery slope of deceit.

I preached one of my all-time favorite sermons in the early 1980s. Do you remember when so called generic products first reached the grocery stores? Visually, generic products had a similar look: white packaging and industrial – stencil lettering. No illustrations. Nothing but the generic name, ingredients, nutritional values, and a bar code. 

Thanks to my daughter who lives in Orange County California and who was born to shop, I've developed a fascination with what are called $.99 stores there and dollar stores here. I often visit the dollar store off of La Grange Rd. in Countryside. Typically, I'll buy every day sundries there, including rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide and even deodorant and toothpaste.  It’s all a buck.

It takes a little energy to sort the good and substantial from the merely cheap, but the process for me is a little adventure – something of a consumer’s meditation about the meaning of stuff – at least that's how I rationalize it.

I've even bought a few books from that Dollar Store – books I hadn’t known about.  I practice discernment. The Dollar Store’s little pile of books usually contains a bunch of unsuccessful self-help guides and a cache of Christian orientated pap. Now and again there's something worthwhile. A couple of years ago I purchased an outstanding book by a Vietnamese woman, a doctor, who kept a personal diary during the war against American invaders; she died in service to her cause.

The basis of this sermon comes from another book I found in the Dollar Store, Garry Wills Head and Heart: American Christianities, published in hardcover by Penguin Press in 2007, originally selling for $29.95.  I bought a first edition this summer for a dollar.

Having once been remaindered by Penguin press, I had considerable compassion for Garry Wills and what I estimate to be a noteworthy and valuable book.  Consigned to a dollar store is heart wrenching for a Pulitzer Prize winning author. 

Enlightenment Religion

Wills, once professor at Northwestern University, is one of my favorite authors of popular history.  He also is an interested commentator on Roman Catholicism. Wills is sympathetic to Unitarians. One of my favorite monographs is his remarkable Lincoln at Gettysburg, which attributed famous Unitarian minister/abolitionist Theodore Parker as an influence for Lincoln’s memorable phrasing:  “of, by, and for the people.”

In Head and Heart Wills charts the scope of the American experience from the Pilgrims to the present day, relative to two opposing religious points of view: A rational or enlightenment point of view (the head) and an evangelical point of view (the heart.) 

I have all sorts of thoughts regarding the remaindered fate of this well considered and important book. The one that keeps coursing through my mind relates to my general impression that the populace prefers their prejudices to substantiated fact – in this instance, well-researched and well-reasoned fact.  At the heart of Wills’ analysis is the religious foundation of the American Republic.  And yes, Wills confirms there is a religious foundation.

Here's what he wrote in the Introduction. He pulls no punches.

Without the 18th century Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason, benevolence, tolerance, and secular progress, there would be no Disestablishment of religion in America. Without it, there would have been no escape from the theological monopoly that governments had always imposed, no rapid proliferation of sects that multiplied as soon as this Disestablishment occurred. Without the Enlightenment, Franklin's humanitarian efforts and Jefferson' s intellectual projects would have had no purchase on the citizenry. Without it, Quakers could not have challenged the Bible' s sanctioning of slavery. It was a great stroke of fortune that the American Republic was shaped at the moment when the Enlightenment was having its full effect on the men who did the shaping. Political freedom and religious freedom arrived together, nudging each other forward. Before then, it had been assumed that a national throne and national altar must be an alliance, to command the necessary ad hoc quiescence of the rule. The United States rid itself of the throne and altar in one inclusive gesture.

Though there was no official religion for the nation, the framers had an enlightened religion. Those who have a different kind of religion said in the past and say now that this is no religion at all, simply a cult of reason. It is true that some leaders of the Enlightenment in France were hostile to religion, but that was not true of the main and most numerous followers in enlightened America. They were friendly to religion and were religious themselves. Even the most secular of them, Tom Payne, believed in a personal God, in divine providence, and in the afterlife.

Enlightened religion was such a strong force in all the founding period that it might also be considered the typical American religion. It is true that this form of belief has assumed the moral leadership of the nation at certain crucial times, and one of its forms – Transcendentalism – set much of the intellectual tone of 19th century. But it has rarely been the religion of the mass of Americans. One reason Enlightened religion had such unchallenged sway the late 18th century was that the other characteristic form of American religion – Evangelicalism – was at its lowest ebb in just that. It came roaring back in the early 19th century, and has been adhered to by most Americans in succeeding ages.

Wills's analysis is a mythbuster, reaching a conclusion that a preponderance of today’s Evangelicals don't want to accept. Their common contention, a popular, perhaps even default mode of the culture, righteously contends that the founders were Evangelical like them, Bible-based, Trinitarian believers of a personal and involved God. 

The Founders Were Deists

Accurately, Gary Wills describes the founders as preponderantly Deists. Their God had set the world in motion, then removed Himself from its operations, including human agency.  The Deist God was essentially disinterested. 

Furthermore, at its founding America was hardly a religious culture as we know it now.  In fact, during the founding of the American nation, Americans were largely unchurched; in 1776 only 17% of the population held to a formal religion.

Now, we UUs are interested in Garry Will’s argument, because we are heirs to Enlightenment Religion – a religion centered in reason that is the head.  Ironically, our way has been marginalized in a popular culture whose religion is of the heart.

You may have heard, and Garry Wills mentions it, that Thomas Jefferson among other Deists of his era proposed that Unitarianism, circa 1800, would become the American religion. Now that obviously didn’t and won't ever happen.  

                                              

As a consequence, we modern Unitarians have been by default charged with the task of continually reminding the larger culture about values and principles.  These values and principles have allowed for a lively arena for many religions to flourish, including the Evangelical sects. And so we continue to lift up reason, as well as freedom of belief and conscience, while maintaining the Disestablishment of religion with the notion of strict separation of church and state. Not only were these and the like founding values, they are the components of the best soil for Religion to flourish.  The American Experience testifies to this.

This assertion regarding the American experience and the flourishing of religion is not well understood, nor is it often spoke to. It answers an obvious question. Among all the Western nations in the beginning of the 21st-century, why does religion in America remain so vital, so much a part of so many people's lives?             

The answer, repeat after me, is the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment … as it was institutionalized by a generation of Enlightenment geniuses who head the list of those we call our founders. Without a doubt, this is the greatest generation.

As I said earlier, in Head and Heart Garry Wills looks at the sweep of the American experience, from 1640 through these early years of the 21st century. It is an overview, of course, but also dense with particulars he assumes the informed readers have an acquaintance with.  It’s not so much a book for the uninformed.

He does pause to focus and elaborate on a few of the key Enlightenment-besotted players who shaped the American Republic: Thomas Payne, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and George Washington. These individuals were Deists, or strongly influenced by Deist thoughts. These men and their like were, after their own fashion, were religious; but they were not religious from the perspective neither of their contemporary Evangelicals nor of Evangelicals today.

These American Deists did not walk in lock-step, though they generally advocated reason, Disestablishment, and freedom of belief when it came to Religion. 

Wills takes a particular interest in George Washington. He wrote:

One founder is often thought of as “something more than a Deist, “ though there is nothing in his writings to indicate that this is the case. The director of Washington's home in Mount Vernon, James Reese, told me that people often inquire why there are no marks of religion in the building – the crucifix, or holy picture, or prayer displayed, or any religious symbol at all, though  Washington was very shrewd of symbolism and carefully chose signs of peace, Republicanism, and agrarian virtue for his home. Jordan has to tell them that Washington was not a devout man in the way they want him to be. The famous 19th century engraving of Washington kneeling in prayer at Valley Forge is fiction, though bloggers on the religious right protested when it was removed from the classroom. …

The same people who think Jefferson was not religious contrast him with Washington, though Jefferson thought and wrote about religion far more than Washington did. The reverence toward Washington as reverent is not based on history or scholarly treatment but on the early myth mongering including the extraordinary popular (and fanciful) biography by Parson Weems, which ran through 29 editions during its author's lifetime, and extended to many dozens more after he died.…

There is a heavy investment by some modern conservatives in the idea that Washington was devout. This belief has endured despite the work of scholars showing it to be groundless. Washington never himself invoked the name Jesus or Christ in prayer – he referred to Jesus only once, speaking to some Indians. He normally used terms for God that were common parlance of other Deists – “governor of the universe," or the “architect of the universe," or "author of the universe," terms that Thomas Payne would have been quite comfortable with. … There were no clergy called for or prayer said as Washington was dying. "There were no ministers in the room, no prayers uttered, no Christian rituals offering the solace of everlasting life… He died as a Roman stoic rather than a Christian saint."

Furthermore, Washington went to church with his wife, but he always left before communion was served.  When his minister challenged him on that, Washington thereafter conspicuously didn’t attend services on communion Sundays.

In Head and Heart Garry Wills does a commendable job in setting the record straight: doing decent history and a fair job of demythologizing popular misconceptions. That's what a reputable historian tries to do, to set the record straight according to the best evidence available, while providing a compelling narrative. But such history is a hard sell in American culture embedded in its prejudice and righteousness.

We Are Charged

Here's your take away. We Unitarian Universalists are the heirs of an Enlightenment religion that joins reason and freedom of belief, as embodied in the first amendment freedom of religion. We are scrupulous in maintaining the separation of church and state, the result of the doctrine of Disestablishment in which our founders saw wisdom and made America a model for the world. 


In this Enlightenment scheme, all religions flourish.

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Stoic Calm

A Philosophy of Life Point of View

Being a Unitarian Universalist minister has been an extraordinary occupation.  


At UU ordinations the charge to the newly minted minister traditionally includes the phrase “to speak the truth in love." As I understand truth, it is all-encompassing and love relates to the intimacies of the human condition.  So, I have been free, indeed charged, to explore and soar among all disciplines. As I’ve soared I have been centered by attention and service to others, thereby coming into greater self-knowledge.

I've been an active minister since 1978.  When I'm reflective, as I frequently am these days, I look back and see a clear progression of my interests in the broad realms of religion and ethics as I’ve sought  “to speak the truth in love.”  Here’s a chronological sketch of my journey.

1) When I studied theology at McGill University in the early 1970s, the psychology of religion – religious experience – was a focus. I read William James's foundational,  The Varieties of Religious Experience, explored mystical experiences through the writings of Evelyn Underhill, and became acquainted with the work of Carl Jung. I found Jung’s scheme of archetypes and what later was called the Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell, the process of individuation or the lifelong journey of becoming one's true self, a compelling explanation of universal religious questing.

2) When I began as minister of the first Unitarian Church Youngstown Ohio in 1978, I continued my interest in the Jungian scheme.  I also read deeply in the naturalistic mysticism of my colleague Kenneth Patton, a humanist.  I also found a great resonance with Transcendentalism, Emerson in particular. Nature led me into naturalism.

3) When I came here in 1983 I was working intently on developing a coherent scheme of what I called natural religion, religion free of religion, if you can imagine that. I was moving ever further away from institutionalisms, dogma, systematic theology, and other such traditional stuff. I was of a postmodern state of mind.  All rational systems, theologies in particular, I contended, deconstruct.

4)  By the mid-1990s I became deeply interested in the extraordinary  advancements of science, particularly social biology/social psychology and neuroscience in describing the human condition. I became a great fan of the so-called father of the sociobiology, Edward O.  Wilson. His notion of consilience, the unity of knowledge in one realm – that is the natural world encouraged me.  Thomas Wolfe's celebrated essay of the late 1990s, "Sorry Your Soul Just Died," for me, summed up the great shift from supernaturalism to naturalism that has taken place. With brain imaging, we were acquiring the tools to understand the intricacies of the human condition, not by speculation, rather by fact.

5)  Most recently I’ve drifted into the area of what might be summarized as “philosophy of life.”  I’ve had a half century of interest in the eccentric Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes, part of an ancient Middle Eastern  Wisdom tradition.  Ecclesiastes offers one of the most enduring and influential philosophies of life of all time.  Two summers ago I did a season-long study of Ecclesiastes and chronicled it in a recently self-published book, Wisdom for the Ages: A Season with Ecclesiastes.

The notion of philosophy of life rather than systematic theology has resonance for me these days.  It meets the needs of an age when more and more individuals are claiming to be spiritual (if they call themselves anything), rather than religious, while becoming non-affiliated with any religious tradition.  In my own experience, Ecclesiastes has been an incredible mentor.  I often muse about the influence Ecclesiastes had in the publication of my five quote collection books by Skinner House, because Ecclesiastes was a famous collector of aphorisms.

Ecclesiastes was compiled some 2300 years ago by a cosmopolitan Jew, who led an assembly or school. It was a yeasty era after the Babylonian exile, in a yeasty place, a crossroads of the world. Those who study Ecclesiastes find diverse influences, including the two popular emergent Greek philosophies, Stoicism and Epicureanism.

                               

While working on Ecclesiastes throughout the summer of 2010, I came across a contemporary philosopher and writer, William B. Irvine, and his recent book, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, via a Canadian Broadcast Corporation podcast.

              

I recommend this book to you for a variety of reasons. It offers an accessible and relevant introduction to Stoicism. For a philosopher, the author has an easy and jargon free/unacademic style. He accurately delivers well organized information about a much-misunderstood and underappreciated philosophy of life.  I particularly recommend his personal and anecdotal introduction, much of which I agree with regarding the significance and value of a personal philosophy of life.

I close this first section of my remarks with an excerpt from Mr. Irvine's Introduction: “A Plan for Living:”

What do you want out of life? You might answer this question by saying that you want a caring spouse, a good job, and a nice house, but these are really just some of the things you want in life. In asking what you want out of life I am asking the question in its broadest sense. I'm asking not for goals you form as you go about your daily activities but for your grand goal in living. In other words, of the things in life you might pursue, which is the thing you believe to be most valuable?

Many people will have trouble naming this goal. They know what they want minute by minute or even decade by decade during their life, but they have never pause to consider their grand goal in living. It is perhaps understandable that they have. Our culture doesn't encourage people to think about such things; indeed, it provides them with an endless stream of distractions so they won't have asked. A grand goal in living is the first component of a philosophy of life. This means that if you lack a grand goal in living, you lack a coherent philosophy of life.

Why is it important to have such a philosophy? Because without one, there is a danger that you will mislive – that because goals can come into conflict, we need to decide which of our goals should take precedence when conflicts arise. She will therefore help us sort through our goals and place them into a hierarchy. The goal at the pinnacle of this hierarchy will be what I call our grand goal for living: it is the goal that we should be willing to sacrifice to attain other goals. And after helping us select this goal, a philosopher of life will help us devise a strategy for attaining it.

The obvious place to look for a philosopher of life is in the philosophy department at the local university.… But unless we are at a most unusual University, we will find no philosophers of life in the sense I have in mind.

It hasn't always been this way. Many ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, for example not only thought philosophies of life were worth contemplating but thought that the raison d’etre of philosophy was to develop them.… Furthermore, these ancient philosophers did not keep their discoveries to themselves or share them only with their fellow philosophers. Rather, they formed schools and welcomed as their pupils anyone wishing to acquire a philosophy of life.…

This book is written for those seeking a philosophy of life. In the pages that follow, I focus my attention on the philosophy that I have found useful that I suspect many readers will also find useful. It is the philosophy of the ancient Stoics. The Stoic philosophy of life may be old, but it merits the attention of any modern individual who wishes to have a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling – who wishes, that is to have a good life.

In his book, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, William Irvine described how he stumbled into Stoicism through his academic study of Desire.  He admitted to having been largely ignorant of and otherwise misinformed about Stoicism. Also, at age fifty he was seeking a philosophy of life that would take him out of what he called his (and society’s ) default philosophy of life—an enlightened hedonism, marked by affluence, social status, and pleasure.  He suspected that Zen Buddhism might be the answer for him. But once acquainted with Stoicism, he found admiration in famous Roman Stoics; he also found Stoicism has striking similarities with Zen.  In Stoicism he found an agreeable philosophy of life that results in a “cheerful disposition and secure joy,” attained in large part by recognizing and controlling negative desires.

Principles of Stoicism

Stoicism’s emergence is associated with the beginnings of the Hellenistic Age, an era preceded by Alexander the Great's conquests and specifically his death in 323 BCE. This was a yeasty time, an early and great episode in what we now call globalization.  This was also an era of new philosophies, of which Stoicism was prominent.

Stoicism’s name references the meeting place of the first Stoics.  Stoa means porch.  There was a colonnaded porch projecting from the central market and communal gathering place in Athens, the Agora.  Known as the painted porch, it was there that Zeno, a Greek from Cyprus, began to discourse on a new philosophy of life. 

The Stoics were embedded in a truly a new age. As the world was unified under Greek influence, so the Stoics saw a unified world of nature and society.  They were newly formed cosmopolitanites, worldy in outlook, if not citizens of their brave new world.  They looked to nature for their inspiration, viewing the divine or god in a pantheistic fashion.   Their sense of the Divine—portrayed through Zeus, was essentially optimistic. 

The Stoics held to a benign determinism.  Nature was the macrocosm; the human spirit or soul was the microcosm. The Stoics sought to bring the inner life, the microcosm, in accord with the outer world, the macrocosm.  When this harmony was achieved, happiness was realized.  (This suggests to me an inherent psychological savvy.)

So, like all philosophies of life, Stoicism sought an answer to the question of successful living with the goal of happiness. The Stoics found an answer to this question by controlling negative or violent emotions. Their aim was to achieve a state of equanimity – proverbial Stoic calm. 

Contrary to popular understandings, the Stoics weren’t emotionally cold, intentionally indifferent.  They were involved but contained by self-control, as they sought the inner means to avoid unnatural anguish or pain.  The individual was responsible for her or his happiness.

Stoics sought to live a life of virtue as a means of controlling negative emotions.  A logical understanding of nature provided insight into personal virtue.  Integrity mattered in the most practical sense, because right and fitting actions resulted in happiness.  Actions, not beliefs, best measured personal virtue and character.  Stoicism, as compared to another new philosophy of life Epicureanism, had a strong ethical component for the self and for society.

Living the good life was active and reasoned, a matter of deliberate choice and continuous attention.  It had a well-developed scheme of philosophical/spiritual practices that included:  attending to the teachings of Stoic sages, self-reflection about happiness as it related to the cause and effect of one’s own desires and emotions, seeking to understand the natural harmony of the macrocosm of Nature, contemplating mortality and death, seeking to live in the moment, and what we might now call mindful meditation.  Stoics were not casual observers but engaged and involved practitioners of an aware and engaged philosophy of life.

Features of the Stoics’ cosmopolitan worldview included a broad respect and even the inklings of an inherent egalitarianism among human beings, for aren’t we all the product of the same nature.  For example, the major organizer of Stoic philosophy was Epictetus, who lived from 55-135 CE.  Of Greek heritage, he was born a slave and lived and philosophized in Rome.  At the other end of the Stoic social spectrum was the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations remains a standard for personal self-control and civic duty.  (It would be good required reading for anyone seeking public office today.)  Stoics were socially aware and applied their sense of natural harmony to society.

Stoicism was a popular and influential philosophy, particularly among the learned and ruling classes of the Roman Empire, through 529 when the Emperor Justinian I closed all philosophical schools in the name of Christianity.   That’s some eight hundred years of significance and influence.

Why Stoicism Today?

Stoicism has several significant correspondences to our contemporary situation. First, it looks to a unified nature for guidance and inspiration. Second, the yeasty age in which it came to prominence parallels our own age, particularly through the influences of globalization. Third, it preceded Christianity, finding the answer to the purpose and meaning of a human life through nature and human experience. We live in a post-Christian age and once again find ourselves seeking the answers to the great questions in a naturalistic scheme.  Fourth, Stoicism strikes me as very congenial to our Unitarian way, with its emphases on personal character and integrity. In this regard, listen to this quotation from the Stoic Marcus Aurelius:

Make for yourself a definition or description of the thing which is presented to you, so as to see distinctly what kind of a thing it is in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, and tell yourself its proper name, and the names of the things of which it has been compounded, and into which it will be resolved. For nothing is so productive of elevation of mind as to be able to examine methodically and truly every object which is presented to you in life, and always to look at things so as to see at the same time what kind of universe this is, and what kind of use everything performs in it, and what value everything has with reference to the whole.

To me this resonates with a great Unitarian mantra, the text from the first Unitarian sermon preached by William Ellery Channing in 1819: "Prove all things, hold fast to that which is good."

Incidentally, Stoicism survives through a number of wise quotes – sayings that are very accessible, understandable, and relevant. They often ring the reader like a bell.  Who among us would disagree with the observation of the Stoic Seneca the Younger:  “The point is, not how long, but how nobly you live.”  Or the proposition by the Stoic Epictetus:  “If, therefore any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone.”

William B. Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient of Stoic Joy is an excellent starting place to become familiar with Stoicism’s enduring and relevant philosophy of life.  Immediately accessible is his literary website that includes three essays (see articles on pull down menu) on his experience and insights into Stoicism’s contemporary relevance.  The essays will be a good test to determine if you want to go deeper into this ever relevant  philosophy of life.

  

Tolstoy Argues with Ecclesiastes

[This is both a coda to my recent sermon on Leo Tolstoy's  "dark night of the soul" and an additional chapter to my new book Wisdom for the Ages: A Season with Ecclesiastes.]  

Leo Tolstoy (born 1828) had a spiritual crisis at full midlife.  By then, this scion of old Russian nobility had become the acclaimed author of two monumental books, War and Peace and Anna Karenina.  Many already considered him the greatest novelist of the 19^th century.  Additionally, he had privileges of status and wealth, as well as a large family.  Yet he was a spiritual wretch.

He chronicled his life experiences, as well as his state of mind, in Confession, one of the most noteworthy religious autobiographies ever written—still readable.

In Confession, Tolstoy sketched the dissipations and debaucheries of his youth and early adulthood.  He also expressed guilt over his inherited privileges, including a large ancestral estate, replete with serfs.  (His early debauchery resulted in an illegitimate child by one of these serfs.)

A contemporary of Tolstoy, the American psychologist William James, in the now classic Varieties of Religious Experience, provided a handy category to understand Tolstoy’s spiritual state of mind as he approached fifty years of age.  Tolstoy was a classic “sick soul,” tormented by his sinful nature in the midst of a meaningless world.

In Confession, Tolstoy described his dilemma clearly and cogently:  “My question — that which at the age of fifty brought me to the verge of suicide — was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man from the foolish child to the wisest elder: it was a question without an answer to which one cannot live, as I had found by experience. It was: ‘What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life?’

“Differently expressed, the question is: ‘Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything?’ It can also be expressed thus: ‘Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?’”

A rational, organized thinker, Tolstoy posited four responses: 1) ignorance—not knowing the question in the first place; 2) Epicureanism—living in the moment and moderately enjoying life, nonetheless, oblivious to deeper concerns; 3) the way of strength and courage--suicide; and 4) the way of weakness—knowing life’s absurdity, yet clinging to in vain hope. Tolstoy saw the fourth way as his personal situation, yet another instance of his inherent wretchedness.

My appreciation for Ecclesiastes causes me to examine Tolstoy’s criticism of the Epicurean solution, which Tolstoy strongly identified with Solomon of the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Tolstoy opined, “Solomon expresses this way out thus: "Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: and that this should accompany him in his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.

"’Therefore eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart.... Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity...for this is thy portion in life and in thy labours which thou takest under the sun.... Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is not work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.’

“That is the way in which the majority of people of our circle make life possible for themselves. Their circumstances furnish them with more of welfare than of hardship, and their moral dullness makes it possible for them to forget that the advantage of their position is accidental, and that not everyone can have a thousand wives and palaces like Solomon, that for everyone who has a thousand wives there are a thousand without a wife, and that for each palace there are a thousand people who have to build it in the sweat of their brows; and that the accident that has today made me a Solomon may tomorrow make me a Solomon's slave. The dullness of these people's imagination enables them to forget the things that gave Buddha no peace — the inevitability of sickness, old age, and death, which today or tomorrow will destroy all these pleasures.”

In a previous chapter of Confession, Tolstoy had quoted more than a thousand words of Ecclesiastes, one fifth of the ancient book’s text.  This suggests that Tolstoy realized how formidable a voice Solomon (or whoever wrote it, Tolstoy editorialized) presented.

Tolstoy’s judgment of moral dullness is an apt criticism of Ecclesiastes and Epicureanism.  Both lack ethical responses to injustices and inequities.

The moral acuity of Tolstoy—the moral acuity of Siddhartha, too, before his Enlightenment--might be the peculiar sensibility of what William James called a “sick soul.”

In the end, Tolstoy embraced faith in answer to his despairing question, in particular, the radical Christianity of Jesus’s teachings as evidenced in the Sermon on the Mount. (Tolstoy became a Christian anarchist and something of an ascetic.)

Ecclesiastes and Tolstoy both faced the notion of life’s absurdity arbitrated by death and reached divergent conclusions.  These conclusions show the divergence of the “sick soul” from the “sick soul’s” counterpart, the “healthy minded” person.

Ecclesiastes leans to a realistic healthy mindedness, that is, a reasonable enjoyment of life in the face of life’s absurdities, nonetheless.

A New Normality: A Culture of War

The events of September 11, 2001, turned the world upside down – at least from the American perspective. Almost immediately, commentary asked, when would there be a return to normality; or would there ever be normality again? Normality of course, referred to the relative halcyon days of our common life before that fateful day.


Ten years ago, I remember thinking about this hoped for, so-called return to normality, in part, because normality is one of those words I stumble on. Back in the day when I studied history, I learned about one of the great linguistic faux pas by an American president. In his 1920 inaugural speech, President Warren G. Harding coined the phrase a “Return to Normalcy," referring to the way things were before the first world war. At the time normalcy wasn't an accepted word.  Through the years, for some perverse reason, I haven't been able to keep the two words straight, though that distinction no longer matters, because normalcy has become an acceptable word alongside the normality.

The decade of the 1920s – the decade of the lost generation; of women's suffrage, short skirts, and bobbed hair; of jazz, prohibition, and speakeasies; and, of course, the great crash – established new standards of what was normal.  There was to be no returning, rather a radical reordering.

History, for the sake of convenience, often breaks time into decades.  In an ironic sense, the “Return to Normalcy” is sometimes used to describe the 1920's.

I wonder, what will the decade of our new millennium be known as?  It surely seems a significant decade.

After a sober review of the past 10 years, the decade 2001-2011 appears to be, at the very least, a time, of transition, relative to the narrative arc of the American experience. That arc is comprised of a number of bands. There's a social/cultural component. There's an economic component.  There's a political component, including human rights. There's an international component, also including human rights. Most, if not all of these components, can be interpreted as converging in the decline of America.

There are clear nodal points: the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; wars with Afghanistan and Iraq; hurricane Katrina, the perfect storm, and the tragedy of New Orleans; the bursting of the housing bubble and with it the meltdown of the US economy; the melancholy years of what is now known as the “great recession;” and a populist response against all aspects of government known as the tea party movement, that aggravated a red and blue divide in American politics, as well as highlighted what is now being called class warfare.

With all this in mind, rather than a return to pre-9/11 normality, we have a dramatically reformed normality.  Bill Schulz mentioned aspects of this new normality in his Christian Science Monitor piece, that includes the acceptance of the term American gulag, the humiliation and torture of prisoners of war, a pre-emptive war, and the assassination of an American citizen deemed to be a terrorist. 

And of course, the new normality includes the tacit acceptance of war.  It was decade of varied wars.

Commentators generally agree that the term “the war on terror,” from the outset promised to be protracted, against a nefarious enemy, with, at best, vague objectives.  Rashly, uttered, the “war on terror” almost as quickly lost most of its cachet.  Though they are being drawn down, we continue to wage hot wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to mixed reviews.

History will emphasize the Bush administration's policy of war (and the Obama administration continuing it), from the immediate rhetoric of September 11, 2001, including the open-ended declaration of war against terror, beginning with attacking the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan; through the propaganda against Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction that resulted in the invasion of Iraq; to the surges that sought to counter the insurgents first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan.

At the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, there is a program named the Eisenhower Research Project.  The Eisenhower Research Project is a new, non-partisan, non-profit, scholarly initiative dedicated to studying the effects of militarization on U.S. society, democracy and foreign policy. The Project derives its purpose from President Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address, in which he warned of the 'unwarranted influence' of the military-industrial complex and appealed for an 'alert and knowledgeable citizenry' as the only force able to balance the often contrasting demands of security and liberty in the democratic state.

The Eisenhower Research Project assembled a team that included economists, anthropologists, political scientists, legal experts, and a physician to do this analysis—to determine the “cost” of ten years of war. 

Here are the project’s findings:

While we know how many US soldiers have died in the wars (just over 6000), what is startling is what we don’t know about the levels of injury and illness in those who have returned from the wars.  New disability claims continue to pour into the VA, with 550,000 just through last fall.  Many deaths and injuries among US contractors have not been identified. 

At least 137,000 civilians have died and more will die in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan as a result of the fighting at the hands of all parties to the conflict.

The armed conflict in Pakistan, which the U.S. helps the Pakistani military fight by funding, equipping and training them, has taken as many lives as the conflict in neighboring Afghanistan.

Putting together the conservative numbers of war dead, in uniform and out, brings the total to 225,000.

Millions of people have been displaced indefinitely and are living in grossly inadequate conditions.  The current number of war refugees and displaced persons -- 7,800,000 -- is equivalent to all of the people of Connecticut and Kentucky fleeing their homes.

The wars have been accompanied by erosions in civil liberties at home and human rights violations abroad.

The human and economic costs of these wars will continue for decades, some costs not peaking until mid-century. Many of the wars’ costs are invisible to Americans, buried in a variety of budgets, and so have not been counted or assessed.  For example, while most people think the Pentagon war appropriations are equivalent to the wars’ budgetary costs, the true numbers are twice that and the full economic cost of the wars much larger yet. Conservatively estimated, the war bills already paid and obligated to be paid are $3.2 trillion in constant dollars. A more reasonable estimate puts the number at nearly $4 trillion.

As with former US wars, the costs of paying for veterans’ care into the future will be a sizable portion of the full costs of the war.

The ripple effects on the U.S. economy have also been significant, including job loss and interest rate increases, and those effects have been underappreciated.

While it was promised that the US invasions would bring democracy to both countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, both continue to rank low in global rankings of political freedom, with warlords continuing to hold power in Afghanistan with US support, and Iraqi communities more segregated today than before by gender and ethnicity as a result of the war.

Serious and compelling alternatives to war were scarcely considered in the aftermath of 9/11 or in the discussion about war against Iraq.  Some of those alternatives are still available to the U.S.

There are many costs of these wars that we have not yet been able to quantify and assess.  With our limited resources, we focused on U.S. spending, U.S. and allied deaths, and the human toll in the major war zones, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.  There is still much more to know and understand about how all those affected by the wars have had their health, economies, and communities altered by the decade of war, and what solutions exist for the problems they face as a result of the wars’ destruction.

So, the new normal includes a permanent war culture, out of sight and out of mind of most Americans.  I believe these wars were ill-advised and ginned up.  (Remember the so-called neo-conservatives’ line of rhetoric ten years ago?)  They have had questionable positive affect.  (I’m of the mind they have had many and varied negative consequences.)  They have cost us a treasure and will continue to do so, at last 3.2, perhaps 4 trillion dollars.

The Eisenhower Project recommends that it’s not too late to implement more beneficial policies. 

Remember the Chinese proverb from an earlier reading:  “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” …  The second grave is ours. We dug it ourselves. The question now is: do we have to lie in it?

The Gannets: Excellence in Our Common World 2011

I & M Canal, Morris

Some years ago I offered a yearly sermon series called “the annual vulgarity awards.”  I would rant a little about four or five egregiously ugly or corrosive aspects of our common culture.  But I tired of that series; and I also felt, I was, ironically, contributing to a negative social climate.

So I flipped the series 180 degrees and developed a yearly sermon series on what I find to be excellent in our common life.  I immediately named this new series The William Channing Gannett Awards in honor of the first minister of this congregation, whose signature phrase “domestication of the infinite” suited my sense of the source and result of excellence.

Mr. Gannett was a remarkable man with an impeccable Unitarian pedigree.  His father, the Rev. Ezra Stiles Gannett, was the first President of the American Unitarian Association, 1825.  Ezra Stiles Gannett was also the associate minister at the famed Federal Street Church in Boston, where the saintly founder of American Unitarianism William Ellery Channing was for senior minister.  Dr. Channing was William Channing Gannett’s godfather, hence the middle name Channing.

Mr. Gannett was a modernist compared to his godfather and father, who were Christian Rationalists.  Young William was influenced by Transcendentalism’s more expansive vision of religion; and when he made his way west, he joined the Unity Men of the Western Unitarian Conference, whose motto “the unity of all things” summarized their broad view of religion.  The Unity Men also promoted ethics as the proper focus of religion, in which character (ingenuousness) blended with what we now call social justice.

William Channing Gannett wrote the great compromise, “The Things We Hold in Common” that allowed the Christians and the emergent not-just or more-than Christian liberals to stay in one Unitarian denomination.    His essay, “The House Beautiful,” inspired the magazine of the same name thanks to the efforts of his good friend Frank Lloyd Wright.  And his plan for our Church-Home has shaped generations of Hinsdale Unitarians over one hundred, twenty years.

Before I present this year’s awards, I want you to think about Mr. Gannett’s signature phrase “domestication of the infinite.”  The ideals we recognize (and you might see them in terms of the great categories of the good, the true, and the beautiful), if they are our ideals, are necessarily compelling—so compelling that we must implement them in our self and our world.  This is a process of domestication—of household and home infusing our larger world.  The doors open in and welcome the worthy; the doors then open out and infuse the world with the warmth, intimacy, and values of the home and the home-like.

I’ve been greatly influenced by William Channing Gannett, through his writings and through his sculpture in wood, brick, and stone, this Church-Home, that he was instrumental in designing.  In his honor and memory I once again lift up the excellent in our common world.

The I and M Canal

I have neglected an obvious choice, The Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor.  Here’s a summary of the Corridor from the official website:

The Illinois & Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor is a 100 mile long cultural park between Chicago and LaSalle/Peru. It is a geographic area of about 322,000 acres within the counties of Cook, DuPage, Will, Grundy and LaSalle. On August 24, 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation establishing the region as the nation's first National Heritage Corridor. It thereby recognized the historic importance of this region and the waterway that connected Lake Michigan and the Illinois River. The goal of the Corridor is to preserve, protect and interpret its rich natural and cultural history while fostering economic growth in the region. The Corridor is not owned or governed by a single authority. Its creation involved the partnership of federal, state, and local governments in cooperation with private industry and interest groups. The corridor is an on-going partnership between the public and private sectors created to achieve a successful mixture of preservation, public use and industrial activity.

I've known about the I and M national historic corridor from its onset, thanks to a church member, Stan Johnson, who died a few years.  From its outset, Stan was deeply involved with the civic authority that joined the various municipalities along the old canal’s hundred mile length.

The history of the I and M Canal is integral to the history of Chicago. It was constructed from the early 1820s through the late 1840s, beginning in Bridgeport on the south side Chicago, reaching ever-further West to Lasalle/Peru, connecting Lake Michigan to the Illinois River and eventually the Mississippi. It helped Chicago become, what one historian has so aptly described, Nature' s Metropolis.  I recommend that you review the canal’s history – an easy Internet search.

And with the history and perhaps lore of the canal in your imagination, visit a remnant stretch of it. The most accessible stretch is within a few miles on Willow Springs Road near Archer Avenue.  But even more, I recommend a very beautiful stretch of the old canal that's in Morris – a pleasant drive of the some 60 miles. Today is a good day to stroll the towpath, because you can also take in the last day of the Grundy County corn Festival in downtown Morris, a remnant shire town along the Illinois River. (The Corn Festival is one of my favorite agricultural celebrations. I'm especially fond of the roasted ears of corn.) You can follow a towpath from the foot of Morris's main street and walk southwest. Within a half mile or so, you'll enter a serene section of the canal, towpaths on either side, canopied by graceful trees, and with mirror like water. This time of year, autumn-painted leaves float and slowly eddy, while the water reflects those on the trees. When I'm there, I like to imagine the convergence of nature and history.

A good day trip, or perhaps weekend trip, would follow the course of the canal (along blue highways, of course) with visits to surviving sections. For example, at canal’s end in LaSalle you can board a replica towboat pulled by a mule from the towpath. 

Joliet Public Art

I award my second Gannett to the city of Joliet for its public art. I have a perverse fondness for Joliet – one of America's many aching post-industrial cities. Perhaps Joliet reminds me of my 5 1/2 years in Youngstown, Ohio before I came to Chicago. Joliet is a city supported by the notorious penitentiary, Statesville, two casinos, and a regional hospital. It has a history of corruption. Like many other struggling cities it tries all sorts of things to keep it viable – creating, if only an illusion, of vitality.

The recent history of Joliet's public art has an interesting parent, joining local artists – many of them women, if not feminists, – with public money, is now driven by a not-for-profit organization known as Friends of Community Public Art, organized in 1996.  Their website offers this narrative: FCPA is dedicated to the creation, planning, promotion and preservation of public art increase the awareness of the communities rich historical and cultural heritage. FCPA was formed to the an artist run, multiracial, intercultural organization that represents the economic diversity.. F CPA captures communities history and culture through site-specific, audience responsive art work.

FCPA specializes in murals, mosaics and sculpture…

The FCPA traces its origin to 1975, when a group of women painted the first mural on a concrete viaduct, titled " Downtown is Our Town." This was followed by a major project, a large mural painted in the then recently renovated railroad station downtown, circa 1991. Between 1994 and 1997, 42 original works of art were created on walls around the Joliet area, using public funds set aside for viaduct beautification. The friends of community public art, founded in 1996 and incorporated in 1998 as a not-for-profit corporation, embarked on an ambitious program of painted murals, mosaics, and sculptures. Many of sculptures were placed on column-like, mosaic decorated pedestals distributed throughout the city of Joliet.

I like these sculptures a lot. They are didactic – sculptures with clear messages, lifting up collective values. Here are a few examples: Planting The Seeds: Children And Education;  An, Informed Mind Make Better Choices;  History Clings Like Ivy;  Education Is The Window To The World; A Teachers Gift.

You can spend an interesting day visiting the various pieces of public art in Joliet. (The Friends of Community Public Art has an informative website with images of the art and their locations.)  You might plan to eat lunch in the downtown Renaissance Center restaurant operated by the Joliet Junior College.  Nearby is the Route 66 Museum. And if you drove to Joliet via Archer Avenue, you will pass through Lockport, where you can visit a peaceful of stretch of the I and M Canal and one of the better restaurants in the area, the Gaylord Building.

Minor League Baseball

Joliet has another gift for our common world – a minor-league baseball team, called the Slammers. The city, a few years ago, built a downtown stadium, White Cross Field, not far from Union Station in the old downtown. The stadium seats nearly 6000.  Parking is close and free. Libations are relatively inexpensive. The best seat in the house costs only $10.

I long ago lost my interest in major league baseball; the Cubs and the Sox in my quarter-century here have only occasionally captured my interest. So when I get an urge to watch a game, I now go to Joliet to watch aspiring, young athletes play what used to be called America's pastime.

Joliet's Slammers are typical of the minor-league baseball's revival that's taken place across the country in the last couple of decades.  In these venues, the atmosphere is family centered; the kids always seem to have a good time in a fan-friendly atmosphere. The games are entertaining and between every inning is entertainment.  By the way, the Slammers, two weekends ago won the championship of the Frontier League.

So my third Gannett goes to minor-league baseball, especially my champion Joliet Slammers.

The Contrary Farmer

Last year I presented a sermon based on a curious novel, Pope Mary and the Church of Almighty Good Food, by Gene Logsdon.  Gene bills himself as The Contrary Farmer.  A former editor of the Farm Journal magazine, for the past 30 years or so, he's operated a small farm in Sandusky, Ohio region and has written prodigiously. His passion is the small family farm; his farming philosophy incorporates responsible environmentalism and traditional values, along with a progressive outlook.  He has a host of qualities of what I call a wise elder.

I read his blog, The Contrary Farmer, with every post.  (I recommend it to you, if you have an interest in rural life, as well as provocative ideas.)

He recently wrote something in his blog that I adored.  He advocated small family farm of 300 acres over the industrial farm of 5,000 acres as a partial solution to our national economic crisis.   I’ll let him tell the economics as he sees it:

The 5000 acres of industrial corn, which is employing two people, could be providing jobs and homes for about 17 family farmers and their wives and children. Run all the figures and all the farmland out to a logical mathematical conclusion and the number of new jobs created by restructuring agriculture is unbelievably awesome. There are about 90 million acres in corn this year. That would make 300,000 family farms of 300 acres each. That means 600,000 parents would be fully employed and let us say two teenagers who are trying desperately right now to find part time jobs,— a total of 1,200,000 new jobs. If we take into account industrial soybean, wheat, and cotton acreages as well and divide all that land  into 300 acre family farms, the number of new jobs created rockets to somewhere in the three to five million range.

Gene’s line of reasoning fascinated me.  Not feasible, I first thought.  But then, I wondered, why not?   What a wonderful combination of traditional, down- to-earth-thinking and radical, out-of-the-box-thinking.   (This combination reminded me of his advocacy of manure, including human excrement, over chemical fertilizers, that he wrote about in his recent book Holy Shit.)

For his humane and reasonable advocacy of the small family farm, Gene Logdson receives my fourth Gannett this year.  I’ve begun to think of him as a national treasure, along the likes of Pete Seeger or Wendell Berry.

Tony's Breakfast Cafe

I usually have one food oriented Gannett to give each year. I don't like to think of myself as foodie, in part, because of my contrary nature. I'm drawn not to the trendy and expensive, but to the honest and simple, and, yes, the off-the-beaten-track, if not obscure.

Surrounded by choices, last Sunday, Ellie and I considered many possibilities of where to have Sunday dinner –either sit down or take out.  Not that we go there often, we decided to go to a smallish family restaurant in Brookfield on Ogden Avenue called Tony's – the sort of place that has a seven or eight page menu with inserts, including a senior citizen’s insert.

The place suited our criteria: fast and efficient service, friendliness, a big menu with comfort foods, and just enough busyness to make for a cozy feeling.

We each ordered a complete meal from salad to desert with beverage included. I could only eat half of my plate, Ellie too.  So we took our leftovers home in Styrofoam boxes-- dinner the next day. And the total bill was under $20.

There still are plenty of such family restaurants, sometimes I call them greeky spoons, because their often run by Greek families, in the Chicago area.  Tony’s, “over-the bridge” in Brookfield, is one of the type, but better than most. And Tony’s certainly seems to try hard with basic food and attentive/fast service, and even a certain cheerfulness.

So my final Gannett of 2011 goes to Tony’s in Brookfield a truly traditional, old-school restaurant, a good example of all the warm, fragrant, embracing, comfort-food places you’ve been in throughout he years—the sort of place you might hope to find in a small town along a blue highway when you want to be in the midst of real people and never have your coffee cup be empty.