Revelation, Guilt, and Social Change
A Sermon By The Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
August 29, 2004
Hymn 298: “Wake, Now, My Senses”
Responsive Reading 592: “The Free Mind”
--From Singing the Living Tradition
REVELATION:
As we go through life, there are many things of which we are unaware. We are raised in a certain family, a particular race, one of thousands of cultures in the countries of the world. We cannot begin to know all there is to know about another person’s life. Our world-view is very limited even though we grow up believing ours is the way life is.
At some point, though, we wake up. Something happens to make us see deeper than what we had always believed. Among the many awakenings or revelations I have experienced was the time I began to consciously recognize society’s embedded prejudice against women, a prejudice practiced even by my own father and brothers. I could see how I had been excluded from the backyard fort my brothers and father built when I was younger than six, as was my older sister, because we were girls. I could see how women were left out of the images of divinity, the hymns, and the religious language at our supposedly liberal Unitarian Universalist church where my father was minister. I could hear society’s put-downs toward those women who tried to be themselves as equals with men. The privileges of the males in my family and community became so blatant that I felt betrayed and I became depressed for a while, but not for long. My mother was a feminist, and soon my father was, too. My brothers took a little longer--they found great delight in teasing their sisters.
Revelations never end. Just a decade ago, a women’s rights group showed films at ASU depicting ads with women being abused and subdued and stepped on, all to sell men’s clothing. Subliminal advertising they called it. Even a few days ago I read about a military woman who was chastised by her superiors for wearing a man’s cap. She was the same woman who, when stationed in Saudi Arabia, went against her commander’s dictates and refused to wear the native women’s garb, the kind that completely covers the body (I forget its name), when walking out in the city. Our country is willing to deny our citizens’ rights when they compromise the prejudice of another country. And everyone knows, don’t they, that the military calls their men “ladies” as a derogatory term. I guess when officers yell out, “What are you? A bunch of ladies?”, women in the military would say “Yep! And proud of it! ”
Many prejudices are perpetuated by television, of course. When I was a child, African-Americans were almost universally depicted as living in poverty. They were excluded from visible roles such as news anchors and reporters, game show hosts and movie stars. When I learned that many lived in middle or upper-class houses just like mine, I was amazed. I could hardly believe it. Just as I had a hard time believing that gay ministers could be good counselors. After all, what did they know about relationships, said those around me?
We spout the tales we have been told, and when revelation comes to us, whether from a compilation of experiences or a personal relationship with the traditionally marginalized or hearing someone’s story in a way we can relate to, it is just as in the song “Amazing Grace”: “…was blind but now I see.”
Today, we proudly say we welcome all, regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, class, and ability. I think I’m leaving some out of that list, but I also know I’m probably leaving some out to which I remain blind, but will someday see. After all, the list has continued to grow as our eyes have opened. It is as the Rev. William Ellery Channing wrote, “I call that mind free…which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come; which receives new truth as an angel from heaven.” It has been a hundred and seventy-five years since our Unitarian forebear preached those words, and we continue to work for that freedom, light and truth.
Even as we say those “regardless ofs” the prejudices remain very hard to overcome. Count the African-American Unitarian Universalist ministers today and the openly gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender ministers (yes, we have transgender ministers). Look how we need to have a Welcoming Congregation curriculum today to point out the subtle and not so subtle ways our congregations discriminate against and exclude through ignorance and fear the gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders who come searching for a free faith and a welcoming community. And I must point out that it has only been a decade or a few years since they added those last two, bisexuals and transgenders, to that list.
It is not only those in power who participate in marginalizing others. Everyone wakes up, over and over, to the ways we deny the humanity and rights of our brothers and sisters. Everyone experiences revelation in their lives. “Wake, now, [our] senses, and hear the earth call.” (hymn 298)
Responsive Reading 648: “Beginners,” by Denise Levertov
GUILT:
Guilt is not a bad thing. It shows a personal acknowledgement of one’s own participation in prejudice, in oppression. Instead of blaming other people for the condition of society, those who experience guilt are feeling their responsibility and regret. This is a very healthy reaction.
Some people, upon experiencing a revelation, retreat into denial. It is too painful to see oppression and to know one has had a hand in it. Such people search for justification of the status quo, of the situation of the marginalized. They fight to retain their power, fearing its loss and the collapse of those hierarchies of society as they know it. They close their eyes that were once opened; they close their ears to the call. Rather than feel guilt, they feel fear, and deny or blame the marginalized for their own oppression.
Those who feel their guilt are the hopeful of the world. They do not hide, deny, or justify. They keep their eyes open, their minds free, as Channing said, “refusing to cower to human opinion.” Their road is not easy. They, too, feel fear, fear of imagined or real repercussions, that the marginalized will hate them and do unto them as the oppressors did. Revelation comes hand in hand with a new or renewed distrust of those who teach oppression: teachers, parents, friends, religious and political leaders, religious texts, etc. Depression or anger can result from the realization that what they thought and were taught as good and right was not. Guilt keeps them from retreating from their wrong-doings, even though those were done in blindness.
No, we must not retreat. “Not yet, not yet,” Denise Levertov says, “--there is too much broken that must be mended, too much hurt that we have done to each other that cannot yet be forgiven.” How hard it is to live in such a state!
I have always felt guilty for participating in silence. I had gay friends in high school and college, but I didn’t talk openly about it within my family. Maybe I just didn’t think about it, or silence was society’s way of keeping peace. When my brother let us know he was gay, I heard his stories of feeling alone and wondering if we as his family would still accept him. This was in spite of the growing openness in our congregations toward gays and lesbians. I felt guilty that I hadn’t shared my love of my gay and lesbian friends. I wasn’t there for my brother, as a sister should be, as I wanted to be.
Before we can move on in powerful ways, we need to practice forgiveness of ourselves, even when there is too much hurt to be forgiven by others. And we need to practice forgiveness of those who have marginalized us if we are to mend ourselves. We have to forge ahead through the pain, to a place where we begin to make change in ourselves and in our larger world.
Song 396: “I Know This Rose Will Open”
Responsive Reading 666: “The Legacy of Caring,” by Thandeka
AND SOCIAL CHANGE:
Thandeka doesn’t say “I begin the legacy of caring;” she says, “I begin anew the legacy of caring.” Just as revelations or awakenings happen over and over in our lives, and the feelings of guilt associated with our sense of participation with oppression, so are we called to care again and again, feeling the desire to minister to a hurting world.
Compassion is the natural next step for those whose revelations have led them through the pain of guilt. The process is one that expands our sense of identity, of family. We feel the other’s pain and identify with their struggles. It is our compassion that leads us to want to do something to help make life better.
Social change happens because of this process of revelation, guilt and compassion. If everyone was brave enough and strong enough to pass through this process, it wouldn’t take so long for us to make life better for all who have been marginalized. But many people aren’t strong enough or brave enough. Those who fear change and deny reality also learn to work, not for social change, but for maintaining the oppression. Laws defining marriage as between a man and a woman is an example of the ways many people are fighting to maintain their own powers and privileges at the expense of a marginalized group.
It is a kind of war. It is a social war and it is going on all the time. It is a war of those who see themselves as privileged and powerful against those who have been marginalized. Dehumanization is one tool of the oppressor. Another is justification through ancient and out-moded religious teachings.
This week I read about gays in the military who have been discharged for being openly gay. There are hundreds of them. At the same time, the military is complaining of needing more troops, and have extended again the service of those poor folks in the national guard. Is that outrageous or what!
How do we change those who don’t want to change? How do we change those people who deny the humanity and peaceful choices of others? I can think of several ways that seem to work. Direct contact with another is a good way to overcome fear of the other. To be in relationship with another over time leads to an identification with them that infiltrates their sense of self and community. At this point, some people say things like, “I’m not prejudiced. My best friend is disabled. I just think we shouldn’t have to comply with all these expensive regulations just for a few people. But I’m not prejudiced. My best friend is in a wheelchair and he gets around just fine!”
Mutual experiences help move people out of that type of thinking. When one has experienced another’s struggles, heard their stories, walked part of the road of oppression with them, they aren’t as likely to disregard their needs in daily life and their rights in society. After a while, perhaps a long while, the privileged become willing to let go of some of their power to enable others to gain rights and respect and quality of life. This is the most lasting method of social change, because it happens inside a person moved by compassion. Then we expand the pool of those who can demand the changes that will improve the lives of all who have been marginalized rather than one or two with whom they have become familiar.
Social change happens step by step, two forward and one back, one forward and two back. Forward is toward respect and rights for everyone. Backward is toward the days of oppression and hierarchy in society and the dehumanization of groups of people to keep them marginalized, powerless and voiceless.
We must reach out, each to the other, keeping ourselves open to revelations, to the light of truth, moving bravely through the pain of guilt, and allowing our compassion to lead us toward truly being a welcoming community who work for the rights and privileges of all the world’s people. Regardless of…
Song 168: “One More Step”
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson