"When Night is Over" - the Reverend Alison Hyder

February 11, 2001 - the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House of Provincetown

From the darkness through which we have come
we approach a light which reveals our faces
that we may read in our own eyes
and each other’s eyes
the anguish and the hunger,
the sorrow and the pain.

More warmth and understanding, compassion shall there be,
in me, in you, in all of us
who come to this light
which reveals in us
our power to love and to hope.

Reading:

Two students were arguing over when the night ends and a new day begins. How can you tell?
The first student said, “It’s when you see a tree far away, and you can tell whether it’s a fig tree or an olive tree, then you know it’s daytime.”
The second student said, “No, it is when you see a goat far away, and you can tell that it is a goat, and not a lamb.”
Well, of course, neither liked the other’s answer, and they just kept arguing. So they finally decided to go to the rabbi.
“When is the night over?” they asked? Goats or trees? Who is right?
“You are both wrong,” the Rabbi said. “It is when you see a woman in the distance, and you can’t tell whether she is black or white, and you call her sister. Or when you see a man and you don’t know if he is Syrian or Israeli, and you call him brother. Then you know the night is over and a new day has begun.”

Sermon: ”When Night is Over” - Rev. Alison Hyder

The story is told of the day Arthur Schopenhauer, the influential 19th century philosopher, was visiting a public garden in a park. One plant so captured his attention that he examined it for a very long time, poring over its every detail. A police officer, his suspicions aroused, approached him and demanded, “Who are you?” Schopenhauer looked at the officer and scratched his chin. “Sir,” he said, “if you could only answer that question for me, I’d be eternally grateful.”
Life may be less trouble when we don’t look too hard, when we ignore the deeper questions about meaning and death and ego and identity. We fit in better. But I think Schopenhauer’s actions spoke louder than his words. I think at that moment he recognized in that plant something profoundly sympathetic, a life foreign to him and yet familiar in its vitality. Something so different from him shared the same resources, dependent on light and air and water. It was unfathomable in its nature and yet obdurately alive. Perhaps he saw a connection that went deeper the longer he looked. In the end, it was not the plant he questioned, but himself – his purpose, and his identity.
Just as a clover-leaf is patterned to have either 3 or 4 leaves and to thrive in certain conditions, so we each have our own paths to discover, particular lessons that will help us to grow and mature based on our individual needs, abilities and backgrounds. We can’t force our lives into a role designed for someone else without sacrificing something vital. This is hardly a revelation to most people here, and yet it is amazing how often we try and how much we want to conform. So it is a struggle to figure out who we are and what we can and should do. We recognize that we are social creatures, dependent upon others for affection and approval and identity.
And never is that made more clear than on February 14th – Valentine’s Day – when we are suddenly aware just where we stand in the game of love. Do you have someone to romance, that special someone just made for lace-edged doilies and lacy negligees, roses and candlelight dinners? A card slipped behind the Burma Shave? Or do you get greetings from friends or family, reminders that you are loved? Valentine’s Day is made for lovers, but it can stir up feelings of fear and emptiness because it equates love solely with romance. It defines love narrowly in terms of infatuation and passion. Nice work if you can get it! But of course, not everybody does – or should! Some very satisfying marriages are based on friendship and mutual goals. Other relationships are achieved through hard work, sacrifice, and insight. But Valentine’s Day insinuates that this is not enough, that it’s the wrong kind of love. Mr. Right must be out there somewhere! If only we were more attractive. Something must be wrong with us if we are all alone. We can’t help comparing ourselves to the ideal. It is love turned competition.
I’m not trying to ruin your Valentine’s Day, or curb the perfectly sweet and natural desire to gratify your honey emotionally or physically. But by narrowly defining love, Valentine’s Day discounts our very real and deep connections to other people and to other beings. It taps into our fear that we are undeserving or unacceptable, that there is something particular about us that makes us somehow unlovable. This turns us inward, into ourselves, constricting our hearts and our actions. And we become self-protective, prickly and stiff. Like a hedgehog.
“A hedgehog is designed soft side down, spikes to the stars,” Chet Raymo writes.
It is armored against everything but the soil… [In Ireland one night, one] comes scuttling toward me out of a ditch, a small, tottering shadow, and it stops dead just at my feet…I snap on my flashlight and get down on my knees. The hedgehog, sensing my attention, curls up into a ball. It is the size of my closed fist; it looks more like a sea urchin than a mammal. [Tipped gently over] it rolls onto its spines, as rigid as a cradle, the moist snout snugly pressed against the fleshy belly. The hedgehog’s feeble eyes are closed; perhaps it is afraid of what might be seen, or is playing dead. But I am the one who is afraid of what might be seen if those eyes open, those eyes accustomed to the darkness of the ditch and the starless night of the burrow. The hedgehog quivers with fear, and I know that if the eyes open they will be overbrimming with terror, spilling over with an inarticulate prayer. The hedgehog lives all its life in a crown of thorns. I read somewhere that if you pester a hedgehog too much or too long it will die as its only means of escape… I flick off my flashlight, walk a few paces downwind …and wait…no motion. I move farther on, until I can barely make out the dark form of the animal, and I wait again – five minutes, then ten. The hedgehog remains fixed – fixed by fear, fixed by the huge intrusion of my light. [Chet Raymo, Honey from Stone pp 9-11]
We too fear the intrusion of the light, the close scrutiny of others, afraid that they will hurt us where we are softest and most vulnerable. We think that differences must create dislike and hatred. And that fear immobilizes and kills us too, just as surely as the hedgehog, by separating us from others and encouraging mistrust and isolation and violence.
Sometimes that aggression is against ourselves - as we heard last week – in the form of addictions or compulsive behaviors, workaholism, stress, anorexia, or a fear of success or responsibility. Or we turn it outward, attempting to control others, whether in our relationships or society. Racism and sexism, homophobia, religious fundamentalism - etc - are all an attempt to limit change, the need people feel to control and contain the differences we fear, the threat to our self-image that diversity involves.
Humans have always existed in tribes and circles, sharing resources in a culture of scarcity. We learn to identify who is in and out, who is safe and who is the stranger. For some, blood is thicker than water, and only family ties count. Others’ circle of acceptance is based on religion or political party or race or gender, or a narrower combination of these. Only those within the circle are worthy of the group’s resources. Only your own kind can be counted on to look after your interests in return. If you don’t share certain values or interests or characteristics, conflict is inevitable, right? So it’s better to stick with your own, with people you can trust. Only people just like you will understand your needs, will accept you and love you and look out for you.
But by trying to conform to our group – whatever it is - we cut off more and more of our true natures, restrict our individuality, and compromise our authenticity. Conformity is based on fear of rejection, fear of ourselves. Becoming yourself is not being selfish – just the opposite, because true integrity is compassionate. It is trusting yourself enough to accept imperfection in yourself and in other people, recognizing our common humanity and shared needs.
We can only see ourselves truly if we see ourselves in others. We cannot really love ourselves if we hate and mistrust others, because we are more alike than we are different. We have the same impulses toward creativity and fulfillment, the same need for love and stability and connection. Every being – human and animal and plant - has something to teach us about ourselves – what we want, how we express ourselves, our capacity for joy. Every one can help to enlarge our souls. The night is over and a new day will begin when we can see a stranger and call her sister.
The reading from the Talmud is ironic given the situation in Israel. The Jewish Israelis know what they must do. They know that they cannot really cut themselves off from the Palestinians. Their fate is interconnected, as it has been since the beginning of recorded time. (We can only see ourselves completely if we see ourselves in others). But the night is not over. Their fear – learned over centuries of persecution and exile - is stronger than their love, stronger than justice, stronger than history.
You can always find a way to justify fear. There is always some reason to be afraid, to lock your doors, to hide inside, mistrusting all that might happen. It’s a dangerous world. An earthquake can hit anytime. A bus ride can be fatal. There are people out there who are out to get you, who want what you’ve got and have claimed as your own. But the trouble is, fear doesn’t work, except maybe in the short run if your walls are high and your circle of kin is small.
Gated communities have become very popular in this country. But there are indications that they aren’t effective. Putting up walls may increase your sense of security, but invariably, others will wonder what’s inside that’s so special and different. Walls can be easily scaled. They attract burglars. And eventually, you need some help, a repairman or gardener, a friend to break the monotony. So the guard at the gate checks their identification and lets them in. No one questions the person in the Fed Ex outfit, the man in a suit. Not if he looks like you. But in fact, he’s casing the joint, counting on your false sense of safety to let him in your door.
Our fears are ruining our cities, causing artificial divisions, creating an economy based on competition and scarcity. Instead of supporting widespread good, we focus on our individual needs, on quick fixes (usually more emotional than practical) – tax cuts, school vouchers, guns, security guards, federal oil reserves, and revenge. Not the harder work of drug treatment programs, better schools, public transportation, rehabilitation, compassion, equity. You can’t keep the world out forever. And once you open a crack, there’s no turning back. The breach will widen, and life will come rushing in.
The only defense is to be the world, to embrace it, and to see yourself reflected in it. In the courage of the immigrant, the forgiveness of African Americans, the perseverance of a friend with cancer, your dog’s sense of humor, birds at play, the wisdom or patience of your favorite teacher, the terror of a hedgehog. All of it is inside you, somewhere. The key is to exist where you are, finding yourself not just in those who are the same as you, but noticing what is like you in each being you encounter.
Thich Nhat Hanh said, “People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break though the great barrier which narrows one’s perception of reality, a barrier which Buddhism calls the attachment to the false view of self.”
If the ego is about how we are individual, then the spirit is about how we are connected, joined, not separate. It answers the question, “who am I that is related to all those others out there?” When we dwell in the spirit, we know that we are related, interdependent, that we dance with each other and that the dance creates us, together. We exist as individuals, to be sure, but not irreducibly alone, for we are also tied together in unity. And we will die on our own, but if we can understand this spiritual truth, that we are all one beneath the skin, then we die into love. [adapted from Kenneth Collier, FDR 1/97]
I’m reminded of an allegory by Donald Babcock, a professor and sometime poet from Durham, New Hampshire. He says:
Now we're ready to look at something pretty special. It's a duck, riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf. No, it isn't a gull. A gull always has a raucous touch about him. This is some sort of duck, and he cuddles in the swells. He isn't cold, and he is thinking things over. There is a big heaving in the Atlantic, and he is a part of it. He looks a bit like a mandarin, or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree. But he has hardly enough above the eyes to be a philosopher. He has poise, however, which is what philosophers must have. He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic. Probably he doesn't know how large the ocean is. And neither do you. But he realizes it. And what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it! He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity — which it is. He has made himself a part of the boundless by easing himself into just where it touches him. I like the little duck. He doesn't know much, but he's got religion.
We exist as part of the totality. Just where you are you are touching all of the world, all other beings. You can rest in it, in the knowledge that we are each a part of a huge ocean of humanity, individual drops that merge into the whole. We can only see ourselves truly if we see ourselves in others – if we can recognize not only our own uniqueness, but our commonness, our common humanity, our creatureliness. We belong in this world. We create it together.
For the next few moments of silence, if you would, think of some person or creature that seems totally foreign or unpleasant to you, and try to think of all the things you have in common, the traits or needs that you share.
Let us be silent together.

Closing Words: “Meeting with a Stranger” by James Kirkup

You, through whose face
all lovely faces look, and are resolved for ever
in your soul’s true mirror:
you, in whose unspoken words
the irrevocable voices speak again,
making in this less divided moment
the remembered music that the heart accords.

O you who are myself and yet another,
who are the world, and the unknown
through which the town, the river,
the familiar gardens and the fountain shines;
here is my hand, and with it let all hands
be given, and be held, in yours and mine.

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