Perspective: a view of USA life and elections upon returning to the United States from a year on the threshold of the Middle East.

[a sermon given at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis, Nov 28, 2004]

I awake each morning and I say thanks before I do anything else. This has been the simplest recipe for happiness that I have discovered. I lay in my nice warm bed, in my comfortable warm and dry home, besides my loving husband, my children sleeping in the room next door, the dog snoring nearby. I consider all that is good in my life. I consider the abundance of love and friends that I have and the comfort of living that I have and I say thank you to the big unknown of the universe. I say thank you to God, to spirit, to my community and to myself. I start by noticing all the gifts in my life and by taking that ease of gratitude into my body and my cells.

I arise. I make coffee. I turn on my computer. I write a letter to President Bush. First thing, each morning, I compose a letter to the President. I began on November 3rd when it was clear that he would remain our president for the next four years. Over these few weeks the letters are becoming more intimate. I begin to feel like I am writing to a confident. I try my best to be honest and forthright and to speak of life in Corvallis and reflect upon how bigger world issues ripple through our small community. I reread the letter a couple of times, paste it into an e-mail and post it to president@whitehouse.gov. If I have time I write a little more in my journal then wake the kids and Jay and get on with my day. I feel better. It is like having cleaned house. I have been able to sweep some of the cobwebs of outrage out of my mind and I can go forward cleanly into my day.

I was deeply disappointed on the morning of November 3rd and strangely energized too. I admit, I did little more than hang that big banner on my house to influence the elections. I applaud those who sat at their party headquarters making phone calls. I applaud those who found a way to feel like they could influence the election. But somehow it felt like the most I could do was just to be vocal about what I believed. I wore buttons on my hat. My favorite says ‘happy marriages for all who want one’ I’ve kept wearing that one. People read it, most agree, it is such a simple positive statement. However a few people read it and their faces pucker up as they think about the implications. They look like they had been tricked. Yes, they believe in happy families for all who are willing to live within some boundaries they believe are ‘normal.’ Something not so laudable in me likes making them uncomfortable. And something in me feels like the one thing I can do post-Bush-reelection is to ride the energy of outrage and begin to speak out more loudly about my religious values, my beliefs, my gratitude at being an American in the 21st century, and my hopes that everyone could live a life as comfortable as mine.

It has been so good to return home to Corvallis and to value again all the small and big wonders of my life. I recently read a brief excerpt from a book titled “How to be miserable” by Dan Greenberg. Here is the recipe for how to be miserable: compare yourself to others and dwell on the differences in their favor. Exercise one: compare yourself with photographs of a man or a woman who embody the contemporary ideal of physical beauty; take your own measurements and place your picture next their picture. Dwell on ways that you don’t measure up. Exercise two: choose someone whose achievements you admire, he suggests Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Compare your achievements to his. How many languages do you speak? How many symphonies operas and sonatas have you composed? To be truly miserable, dwell on the differences and on what you have not achieved.

And the converse is equally true, when we notice the what we have in our lives, when we notice the abundance of gifts and what we can be grateful for, we can find deep satisfaction in our lives and be of genunine service to others. This was one of the gifts from my year overseas. I see my positive differences very clearly between my life here and the life I led in Cyprus. I see my life in the light of my friends and community and the simple abundance with which I live and there is a deep abiding gratitude and happiness the arises from that.

Cyprus is a nation of refugees. It is a nation where many of the indigenous inhabitants consider themselves refugees and it is a nation that has been a home to refugees from around the Middle East. Like in Greenbergs examples, refugee life is frequently focused on what one does not have. Refugee life is often focused on lost homes and lost land, but not always. I’d like to tell you some stories of friends and people I met who were refugees.

Petros: Petros is a professional middle-aged man, a divorced father raising two teenage boys. He was born in North Cyprus and his father and uncles are counted among the disappeared from the 1974 Turkish invasion. Petros was a young teenager at the time of the invasion. Turkish troops came into his village and rounded up all the Greek men, even those who had been fighting to protect Turkish villagers from the violence of the Greek nationalists. Petros was himself part of the initial sweep of men but because of his young age he was sent back with the women and children. He never saw his father or his uncles again. He was only able to return to the village of his birth in 2003, 30 years after leaving. His birth home is occupied by a Turkish immigrant family. After the invasion he lived in a tent in a refugee camp while he went to high school. He slept indoors again only when he moved the New York to go to attend Hamilton College. In spite of displacement and bitterness, Petros has chosen to a life working for peace and an end to the Cyprus problem and reunification of the indigenous people of his homeland.

Nadia: Nadia is a middle-aged artist divorced with grown children. She was born in Nicosia and was raised in a mixed neighborhood of Greek and Turkish Cypriots. They lived next door to Greeks for her first eleven years of her life until the Greek Nationalists began their campaign of terror and violence in the early 1960s.. Their home was attacked with fire and gunfire in 1964. Nadia remembers leaving her mixed neighborhood in the middle of the night to take refuge in her Grandmother’s old Ottoman home in the Turkish enclave of the city center. She remembers the nights of bombings and her women relatives huddled in a basement, pulling shawls over the heads and reading aloud the Koran in Arabic, a language she did not understand. He memories of Islam are mixed with her memories of war and terror and fleeing her childhood home never to return. To her, the Turkish soldiers, who were responsible for the disappearance of Petros’s father, were freedom fighters who allowed them to live in peace again and protected her from the genocidal intent of the Greek Nationalists. And Nadia, like Petros, has been willing to work for peace and reconciliation throughout her adult life. They have both been willing to be outspoken critiques of their respective Government’s entrenched political will to keep the island divided. They have both spoken out in the face of the threats that come from the church, from the newspapers, from nationalist terrorist organizations and in some cases from the government and police. They have put their bodies and voices on the line to act for peace and rapprochement.

Alia: Alia is a middle-aged Palestinian refuge, married with two adolescent sons. We met, together with my friend Beathe, a Norwegian, once a week for coffee and an ongoing discussion of religion, sex and politics. Alia was continuously surprised to discover that her beliefs were actually closer to President Bush’s than they were to either Beathe’s or mine. She thinks sex outside of marriage is a sin and therefore homosexuality are also as sin as Islam generally condemn homosexual relationships. She doesn’t think we bathe very often, and when she took me to the Mosque for prayers, she very cautiously gave me instruction in how to clean myself: wash your whole body to the roots of your hairs. She imagines us as promiscuous and free in our sexual lives. She, like most people in the world, covets the ease and comfort of our lives. She has an obsession over body hair and weight and beauty, akin to most American women. She dreams of sending her two sons to a good American college and of coming here with them to escape the confines of her life.

Alia considers the Palestinian suicide bombers to be freedom fighters. To her and her family they are modern-day Samson’s facing the Goliath of Israeli and American imperialism with the only tools available to them. The Palestinians I met feel disenfranchised and adrift in the world and they will not rest until they reclaim a homeland. She, and many in the Middle East, do not believe Al Queda had anything to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center. They think that America and Israel are trying to steal their lands and that it is their responsibility, to community, to nation and to God, to stop the western imperialism. She covets and resents our life all at the same time.

Ladan: Ladan is an Iranian Christian woman, Seventh-day Adventist with two adolescent daughters. Her family fled Iran about 12 years ago, to escape the persecution of the Islamic fundamentalist government. Her family has work permits but no passports and no citizenship. They cannot travel. They live in a state of limbo in Cyprus, leading reasonably comfortable lives but with little hope for change in the future. Ladan believes that the freedom to worship in her chosen faith is worth exile and refugee status from her homeland. She has no one to speak up to. There is no way for her to work for change or acceptance in in her homeland. She is disenfranchised and powerless over her political status. She takes solace in the worship of a God of her choosing.

Arifa: Middle-aged American Muslim from Oakland, California with grown children in the States and a 10 year old daughter along with her in North Cyprus. Arifa was staying in the guest home of Sheikh Nazim, the leader of the Nashqbandhi Sufi sect. She had taken her daughter and fled an abusive spouse, traveling first to Africa and somehow finding her way to Sheikh Nazim’s household in Lefke. She was looking for a safe landing place for herself and her child and very adrift in a world. I sat and listened to the pain and fear in her life and her hold to religion and God and her belief that there was a purpose somehow even to being adrift. Arifa was a refuge from violence in the United States hiding in a small corner of a hidden land.

I look out across this room and I see a small miracle. I see a room of people who have come together freely in worship and community. You choose to be here. There is no one compelling you to go to church. There is no one threatening you with hell in either this life of the life hereafter. This is your choice. This is your choice to sit beside one another, to sing together, to break bread together, to acknowledge and praise that which is holy within each other and the world. We come together of free choice in this community. This is a miracle in the world where most people have no choice of religion and are compelled to believe in a particular way by their communities.

We are free to speak glibly of our personal differences and beliefs. We can malign or praise the president and our government among ourselves and in public. We worry only a little that our words are being filed away against us somewhere in Washington DCWe believe in freedom of speech as a way of life. We believe in freedom of speech tempered by the desire not to injure one another.

I must admit, I worry about pushing the boundaries of free speech. I worry that one of these days a government agent will come knocking at my door to investigate that ‘crazy lady’ from Oregon who writes those strange letters each morning. I watch my words closely, making sure that nothing could be misconstrued as a threat. I even try to quote the Bible from time to time in hope that by speaking the President’s spiritual language I might be listened to.

My sense of outrage, my sense of optimism, my sense of commitment to my own moral center, my sense of thanksgiving for all that I have, all of this calls me to action. I have to act today. I have to find ways to act for change. So I begin my day by writing my letter. I wrote a check to the school district for a bit more than I would have paid in taxes if the school levy had passed. I wear my ‘happy families for all button.’ I help Lynn with Campus Ministry and I am heartened by the hope of the upcoming generation of Unitarian Universalists. I am learning non-violent communication skills and consensus building skills. I look for ways to work for change within my community and without. I try not to burn myself out in the process. And I am learning not to take any of it personally and to feed myself well and to enjoy and play and laugh as often as possible

I have to hold onto hope and optimism. I have to believe that by making small changes in the world around me that there might be bigger repercussions, especially if all of you make small waves that add to mine. That is my request this hour, that you consider the small ways you may use your emotional response to November 3rd as energy to effect small changes in our world. May our love, our outrage and our compassion be sources of energy to change the world and ourselves. I have to believe that we can change the world with our love.
Om, Amen, Blessed Be, Alhamdulillah.