Opening Words:  Alice Walker   “We Alone”

We alone can devalue gold
by not caring
if it falls or rises
in the marketplace.

Wherever there is gold
there is a chain, you know,
and if your chain
is gold
so much the worse
for you.

Feathers, shells
and sea-shaped stones
are all as rare.

This could be our revolution:
to love what is plentiful
as much as what is scarce.

READING:  by Albert Camus  from  Resistance, Rebellion, and Death

Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that this hope lies in a nation, others in a person. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished, by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history.

SERMON:    “Afflict the Comfortable”  - Rev. Alison Hyder

Joseph Pulitzer once said that the purpose of a newspaper was to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.”  Pulitzer, a Hungarian immigrant, owned several newspapers that specialized in exposing corruption in the government, in corporations and public institutions.  In 1887 he hired pioneering investigative reporter Nellie Bly to write about poverty, housing and labor conditions for the New York World.  After Bly went undercover as a patient at Blackwell Island insane asylum her scathing exposé of the treatment of the mentally ill improved mental hospitals nationwide. 

The New York World concentrated on human interest stories, scandal and sensation. But Pulitzer also promised to use the paper to “expose all fraud and sham, fight all public evils and abuses, and to battle for the people with earnest sincerity.”

By the time he was 43, Pulitzer was virtually blind. He withdrew from the newsroom, but he continued to manage the editorial and business direction of his newspapers. When he died in 1911, he left $2 million to establish the School of Journalism at Columbia as well as the annual prizes that carry his name.  His son took over the newspaper, but it lost business steadily. In 1930 it was sold to the Scripps-Howard organization, an early newspaper syndicate. 

This would have dismayed Joseph Pulitzer. He mistrusted most corporations and kept close watch over institutions of power.  Now few newspapers are in private hands. Most of them are owned by multimedia corporations that control television outlets, publishing houses, and recording companies, like Disney, or AOL/Time Warner, or an overseas conglomerate: for-profit companies that put dividends before the public good.  Much of what we see is controlled and manipulated for maximum ratings.  It’s a brave editor that reports news at odds with the corporate interest or casts doubt on the prevailing culture. Even public broadcasting is influenced by business considerations. They rely on corporate funding to buy many of their shows. Who is going to back a series about labor issues or radical feminism or the bartering systems in Argentina?  Institutions have to work within the power structure to survive.

Pulitzer believed that if he established and published the facts people would demand reforms that would improve society and “comfort the afflicted.” If people could only hear the truth they would be shocked out of their easy complacency or shamed into action. 

He was right, largely. People do want justice. We do want fairness and equity and harmony. But we want security first, for ourselves and those we love. News shows scare us with stories about crime and violence and corruption and electrical fires and warn us of impending storms.  They might report about escalating prescription drug prices and even do a holiday story about the local food pantry. But they cannot make the connection between starvation in Haiti and falling wages in Ohio and Mississippi, or explain how trees make cities safer. There isn’t time. Sports is coming up next. “News you can use.”

I confess to being as bad as anyone else about keeping up with current events. I don’t like watching the news. I feel bombarded by negativity and cruelty. Instead of being inspired to acts of social justice I’m left feeling helpless and depressed. Newspapers aren’t much better, though at least they cover foreign affairs. But every paper has a bias.  It is not only how they chose to report a story, but all that is left out. Who’s truth are they telling?

You would never know that there’s a strong and viable peace movement in this country. In small towns, on campuses, in religious communities and living rooms and on the Capitol steps, people are questioning the government and wondering about the ramifications of a war on Iraq. People are connecting through the internet and sharing information. But you’d never guess it by watching TV.  There everyone speaks with one voice and the tide of skepticism is silenced.  So the machine of state rolls inexorably on.

I have rarely felt so discouraged with the world. I’ve felt disgusted, yes. Angry too. But not so helpless or sad.  The interconnected structures of power and money seem so complex and inexorable and dominant that everyone is a participant, whether we like it or not - when we are getting gas and starting IRAs and buying sportswear and videos and laundry detergent. How can we gauge the impact of our actions on our neighbors or on the earth? Who benefits, and what is being destroyed?  And I can’t even say that the economic and political systems of power are malevolent, unless indifference and greed and selfishness are malevolent. There is nothing personal about it. It simply has no soul.

And that is where we come in.

There is a story about A.J. Muste. During the Vietnam War this man, then in his eighties, stood in front of the White House night after night with a candle. Sometimes others joined him. Sometimes he stood alone. One night a reporter interviewed him as he stood there in the rain. “Mr. Muste,” the reporter said, “do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone with a candle?”  A. J. Muste answered: “Oh, I don’t do this to change the country. I do this so the country won’t change me.”  [Andrea Ayvizian, the Sun, Nov. 1994]

It is our task to remain human, to maintain our integrity as people of compassion and courage. It is an act of faith.  It is an act of will.  We have to be true to what we believe and what we value in others and in ourselves. When the demands of the world chip away at our generosity and our kindness and our patience, we must continue to see each other’s worth.

There’s a Jewish fable about a poor man and his horse. The man had a lot of children to feed, so he thought, if the horse ate less, the children could eat more. He got the idea that he could wean the horse from eating so much. And a horse is a horse. He didn’t complain. He just ate less. Then one day the man came into the stable and the horse was dead. And the man said, “what a stupid horse! He was almost weaned, and now he went and died.”  It is the same with people. If you don’t stay true to your beliefs, if you say to yourself, “I’m not going to do this one little thing that is required of me,” before you know it you will not be doing anything. You will no longer be true to what you stand for.  [adapted from “Survival and Memory” by Itka Frajman Zygmuntowicz, in Four Centuries of Jewish Women’s Spirituality ed. by Umansky and Ashton]

We can’t wean ourselves from our principles and remain whole. An important part of us will starve.  Every concession to apathy or to intolerance or to self-absorption makes us less responsive and alive. South African author Alan Paton, wrote  “I shall no longer ask myself if [a thing] is expedient – but only if it is right. I shall do this not because I am noble or unselfish, but because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey – a star that shall not play false to me, a compass that will not lie – I am no longer able to aspire to the highest with one part of myself, and to deny it with another.”

I recently subscribed to a new magazine, an antidote to all the network news programs and papers and news magazines.  Yes! A journal of positive futures describes the work being done in neighborhoods and countries throughout the world to rebuild local economies and create community and provide missing services. It describes how individuals are making creative changes in the midst of crisis.

One of the articles is about MadHOURS, a system of exchanging services and goods in Madison Wisconsin. Everyone in the pool uses a form of reckoning to exchange their goods and services without money. For every hour of service they donate, they get a slip of paper, a MadHOUR, that they can use as currency in the community. Author Camy Mathay says “…I buy coffee at Mother Fool’s and food at the …co-op. I’ve bought custom sewing, a felt hat, a printer for my computer, and garden seedlings with MadHOURS. My kids bought a unicycle with their own hard-earned MadHOURS. You could also hire a cook, a naturalist, rent a truck, take French lessons, hire a pet-sitter, have custom furniture built, or get your toaster repaired, among a variety of things and services.”  [Camy Mathay, “Money’s Conversations” in Yes!, Fall 2002]

Mathay adds that the program started in Ithica, NY to combat low wages and unemployment and to spur sustainable, grassroots economic development.  But the MadHOURS, she says, have also “connected people as neighbors and members of a common regional community.”  They have led to deep conversations about money and the value of human activities.  “This could be our revolution:” says Alice Walker, “To love what is plentiful as much as what is scarce.” To treat each other as partners and not as commodities.

Service hours.  Wouldn’t that be a great program for the lower cape?  Now, that is news I can use. Constructive, personal, and inspiring.  The article includes a web address with more information. [see www.madisonhours.com or call 608-259-9050]. There’s also an article on an Appalachian economic co-op, Non-Violent Peaceforces, and peer tutoring. I need to hear things like that, to know about the small victories and what can be done with a little creativity and determination and respect for individual worth.

But we all have stories that we can tell, of small kindnesses, people who have gone out of their way to be helpful, of programs like Habitat for Humanity or Helping Our Women that answer a real need, that comfort the afflicted one person at a time. “Great ideas,” Camus said, “…come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that this hope lies in a nation, others in a person. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished, by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history.”

You may not think you have anything to offer, or you fear getting in over your head. And it is true that it is much safer and easier to stay within the limits of our culture, without questions or doubts. People are unpredictable, difficult, needy. Someone could get hurt. But someone could also get helped. It may be you.

Daniel Berrigan, the activist priest, said, “What type of work we do seems less important to me than that we do the work that we are attracted to. If we touch human need, or human sorrow or loss at some point, I think we are touching it at all points. I hesitate very much to indulge myself in some kind of grocery list of world ills. We are bombarded with that so much anyway. The main thing is to touch human life at some neuralgic point in which we can serve and be served, and heal and be healed. Then a lot of other things become clear, because these things are all connected.”  [Heron Dance Interview]

There is still an awful lot that we can do in the world, right where we live, in our own communities.  The real key, I think, is not to feel discouraged or helpless. We need allies who will help us along the way, and bandage us when we’re scarred, and cheer us when we’re tired. We need the good news of human accomplishment and love. 

That’s why we’re here, I think. To find strength and encouragement, but also to share with each other our accomplishments, to find hope and companionship and meaning in our everyday lives.  To prod each other out of our comfortable complacency, and comfort each other when we are afflicted. To remind each other that the beloved community is within reach if we are willing to work for it. It dwells inside us, whenever we find hope.

CLOSING WORDS:  by Rev. Charles S. Stephens

I wish for you a troubled heart at times
As woes of world and friend come close beside
And keep you sleepless.
I wish for you the thrill of knowing who you are,
Where you stand, and why.
Especially why.
Not prosperity but dreams I wish for you:
Not riches, but a sense of your own worth I wish for you,
Not even long life, however proud we’d be to have it so.
But life that is crammed with living, hour by hour.
And love I wish for you: may you give it frequently.
I wish for you solitude in the midst of company.
And a mind full of company within your quiet times.
Full todays I wish for you, and full tomorrows.