PeaceBang

Three Month Check-In

As my regular readers know, I met SweetieBang while vacationing in Florida at the end of January. We spent four days together which were not the torrid days you might imagine, considering what happened next — which is that he drove up the entire East Coast a week later and moved in with me. Those days were filled with laughter and yes, romance, but mostly with comfort. With a sense of kinship. With a feeling of having come home in some ineffable way.

We are not an obvious couple. We are, in fact, total opposites in many significant ways. He is Buddhist in his ways of thinking and processing information, while I am thoroughly imbued by Christian practice. I am an academic. He is intellectual but definitely not academic. I am ambitious. He simply wants to do a good day’s work and earn an honest paycheck. I am mercurial, extroverted and dramatic. He is almost consistently positive and definitely introverted, more animated around me in the privacy of our home than anywhere else. I am a leader. I set a course and want to bring others along. He is an true individualist; not leading and not following but finding his own path and ambling along it.

We are also alike in some important ways. We are both inescapably Jewish in temperament and humor. We are generational peers, but I am four years older. We are both musical. We share a love of food and have large appetites. We love animals and neither of us has ever wanted to parent a child. We both have an edge, but mine is far sharper and honed by years of feminist rage. His is keen, sharpened by years of silent and solitary observation of inane human behavior. We tend to have the same visceral admiration or dislike for the same people and things.

“It’s the people that you hate together
Bait together
Date together,
That make marriage a joy.”
- from “It’s The Little Things You Do Together” from Company
Lyrics, Stephen Sondheim

We have no idea what insanity led us to agree to share our lives after knowing each other only four days. Had a friend of mine done this, I would be shaking my head and predicting disaster. But my friends and congregants, thank God, have been wonderful, respecting an innate wisdom that I myself doubted and welcoming Greg with open arms. He has a good natural knack for being the Minister’s Guy. His sophisticated technique in establishing the appropriate persona is to be himself and not worry about anything, which I think is a good one. He likes church. He goes sometimes and not others. He genuinely likes and cares about people and is comfortable at coffee hour. He admires the church’s commitments and hopes that his work schedule will allow him to be involved in our environmentalist work in some meaningful way. He does not own a tie but says that he wants to buy a summer-weight blazer so he can “doodly do” around with me to formal events. For a guy who lived on a tropical island in swim trunks and flip-flops for years before I met him, I think this shows fairly astonishing flexibility.

It has been incredibly stressful at times. We have fought. But we fight pretty constructively, and we have quickly learned how to make up and move on. He has a talent for defusing terrible situations that I greatly admire. We brought a dog into our little family almost right away, contributing another set of stressers to our new relationship. Our beagle baby is expensive, he requires constant care and discipline, and Greg and I don’t always agree on how to achieve those things. For all his Zen equanimity in most other matters, I find that he is an over-protective, worried Jewish papa when it comes to Max. This makes me laugh. I love having found the chinks in Greg’s peaceable warrior armor.

He is Togetherness Man, I am Give-Me-Some-Space Girl. We are learning to cross borders into each other’s territory, to grant space or companionship as acts of love, respect and compromise. This makes me want to spend more time with him and I think it makes him much more comfortable with my desire for privacy and time alone or with others. He goes off to work and says, “I won’t see you for another seven hours.” I say “ONLY SEVEN?” We laugh a lot. He makes me laugh every day. He does not take me too seriously, which helps me to not take myself so seriously. This is a wonderful development, even though it makes me peevish at times.

He never used a personal computer before he met me, doesn’t have an e-mail account, and doesn’t mind that I write about him, as long as its in the interest of sharing wisdom about relationships in general and not just to dish. My interpretation, not his words.

What happened here? What is this story about, so far? I think it is about timing and luck and I think it is about commitment. I have been attracted to plenty of men I’ve met on vacations. I’ve been smitten in St. Louis and intrigued in New York City and gone ga-ga in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. I’ve been addled in Philadelphia and pined in Columbia, Maryland and almost married in Minnesota. The big difference here is that this time, the object of my initially very-casual-interest turned out to be a true mensch who was ready to commit himself to someone, who recognized in me that someone, and did not hesitate to take his heart out of his body, slap it on the table in front of me, and say, “Take this. I want you have it.” It was a good heart. I could see that immediately. As for my own, it was split in two: I had a Minister’s heart that was joyful, open and pulsing with life. My women’s heart was cold, shriveled and tucked away under layers of anger, resentment, hurt and disappointment. I took it out, showed it to him, said, “It’s not in very good shape but it’s what I’ve got.” He said, “Looks good to me, we’ll have it all fixed up in no time.”

This was a non-verbal transaction. For a woman who is used to analyzing everything within an inch of its life, that is profoundly refreshing. We don’t talk endlessly about “our relationship,” we just have it. A friend said to me that the first three months would be a nightmare, and then we would know whether or not we had something real. My friend guessed that we would. He just felt it.

And we do. So I want to say happy spring to my Pan, my ocean blue-eyed boy, my Troll Mate, my sweetheart. Congratulations, kid. We made it through the first three months and for all our struggles, they’ve been revelatory, and you are the best insane decision I’ve ever made.

There’s Something About Mary

Oh dear, darling UU minister colleagues and lay people,

I’m working on a paper on why Unitarian Universalists love the poetry of Mary Oliver so much that she’s become “sacred scripture” to many of us (certainly her poetry is used liturgically on a frequent basis in our congregations).

I’d love to hear from you.
1. Do you love Mary Oliver’s poetry? Why?
2. Do you use it in worship? Approximately how often and in what place in the service?

Thank you!! Gracias! Merci! Tack!

“The Orphanage:” A PeaceBang Review

This film by Guillermo Del Toro (who did “Pan’s Labyrinth”) was truly scary and has lingered with me since we saw it a few nights ago. The acting is terrific, the sets and cinematography gorgeous, and the screenplay is deeply disturbing. It’s the kind of movie where, the day after you see it, you’ll be calling the person you saw it with at work and saying things like, “Do you think she killed him, or would you really blame the ghost? Or was it ultimately the mother of the ghost, would you say?” And then you’ll talk about it and then you’ll say, “I’m afraid to go upstairs. When are you coming home?” And the other person won’t even think that’s ridiculous, because he’s been kind of afraid to go to the basement at work all day himself.

Just leave lots of room to think about everything that happens, and leave time to go back and replay certain scenes. I’m not a fan of horror movies but this was wonderful.

Barack Denounces His Pastor

And it just makes me sick.
It’s a capitulation to the muckraking media.
Maureen Dowd called it political patricide, which sounds just right (forgive the pun).
It’s a failure to stay the course of integrity, insisting that Americans look beyond the sensationalism of a few phrases spoken by a very fine minister who is a known, and respected, radical progressive.
And above all, it’s all the evidence we need that the liberal church has absolutely no credibility or relevance when it comes to the hothouse of presidential elections. It is evidence of the profound failure of the liberal church — and I submit that we are irrelevant and that we have failed because we are not united, we have allowed ourselves to become invisible to most and mocked and stereotyped by those who do “see” us and don’t like what they see.

We have played Inclusive Nice Guy for so long that when one of us dares to speak in tongues of fire in the true liberal prophetic way, we can neither protect or defend him.

And so he has been cast out by one of the only men who should have had the courage to say, “Yes, this is my church. It is a church of free thought and dissent, where we rage with as much passion against ignorance and injustice as the hellfire and brimstone preachers whose theology we utterly reject.”

The teaching moment is over, and it’s politics as usual.

[This just in: Thanks to commenters Philocrites and Melody who have tuned me into a part of the story I wasn’t aware of, which is Rev. Wright’s discrediting of Obama to the National Press Club. I’ll have to read about that and catch up. But I know that I’ll still be heartbroken when I’ve done that, just adding another layer of complexity to my emotions. - PB]

[Thank you all for your interesting comments. I find that I agree most of all with Rev. P’s assessment. After having read the entire transcript of the talk at the National Press Club, I do not consider his remarks a denunciation of Barack Obama, nor do I hear in him an out-of-control ego. After all, he never asked for all this attention to be focused on himself. That’s all I’ll say now, but to add this, too, which does not surprise me. - PB]

Heard Outside A Nursing Home

A six year-old boy swinging off his mother’s arm leaving Plymouth Life Care Facility on Saturday afternoon, in the cheeriest of tones:

“This would be a good place to get dead at.”

Even though someone I love very much did “get dead” at this very place the next day, I still smile at that little boy’s blithe observation, and I think my dear parishioner would have found it hilarious, too.

NOW IS THE TIME Strong-Arming

Friends,
I am not trying to be a trouble-maker here, but since there are so few forums for Unitarian Universalist laymen and women and ministers to speak frankly together about Associational issues of concern, I thought it worthy to pull this comment from “Rev E” from the previous post and to invite further reflections on her experience:

I don’t see many comments about PeaceBang’s lead-in, which was the tremendous pressure put on us clergy last year to hold an “Association Sunday,” and help raise funds for the UUA’s “Now Is the Time” campaign.

Although it’s slightly off-topic, I’d like to weigh in as a minister who *did* designate the UUA as the recipient of our regular “half basket” giveaway (in October), but who bitterly resented the UUA’s process & tone during its campaign, for the following reasons:

1. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I felt downright harassed by the UUA, and in particular by Stephan Papa’s team (whom I’ve dubbed the “Papa Posse”). They literally chased me down the corridors of Portland’s convention center, left many high-pressure voice mails for me at the office, and otherwise insinuated the primacy of their project into the fabric of my congregation. I don’t think my experience was unique; many of us were virtually strong-armed into either holding an Association Sunday, or defending our (unpopular) decision not to.

2. UUA material crowed about the need for money for “growth” and “advertising.” Like PeaceBang, I’m not thrilled with the content of our TIME magazine ads, but I’m satisfied enough with the sheer publicity. When I received detailed information about the funds raised, however, only in the small print was it mentioned that 25% of those monies would be given to congregations with ministers of color. Ministers of color? FINE. Admirable, even, for an Association with a commitment to anti-racism & multiculturalism. But it’s the *process*, people! Don’t tell me that 25% of a stated goal of one million dollars (!) falls under the category of “publicity.” I still feel misled by the UUA’s lack of transparency around the use of those funds.

3. Call me a fool, but I honestly thought that Association Sunday was a one-time deal. Perhaps I just wasn’t paying attention. Now that I understand that the UUA expects this to be an annual event, I just feel weary. The only silver lining in this gray cloud of disappointment is that my District has chosen to distribute its “Now Is the Time” payout back to us, the congregations, in the form of grants.

Thanks to all in the PeaceBang community for your thought-provoking comments, and all that I learn from you.

Thank you for your honest critique, Rev. E, wherever you are. I echo your sentiments. I was also very put off by the strong-armed tactics used by “the Papa Posse,” and will not fall prey to them again. “Fool me once…” and so on. I must also be naive, because I assumed that NOW IS THE TIME/Association Sunday was a one-shot deal, and will have to speak with my lay leaders about the implications of an annual expectation that we do this. I personally don’t intend to support a second big additional gift to the UUA for advertising or anything else in the coming fiscal year. I want to know much more about how the monies raised last year were/are being spent, and to what good end.

And in case I wasn’t clear about this: I think it truly offensive for the UUA to leave messages on any minister’s private study line requesting that we call a UUA staffer to discuss our participation in a fund-raising campaign for them. The barrage of e-mails and mailings we also received were overkill and thoroughly obnoxious (and how much did they cost??)

Again, if this sort of campaign happens on a rare occasion and has clearly exciting outcomes, I’ll tolerate it with little grumbling. But to hear that “Association Sunday” may be an annual expectation is not only exhausting, it is very upsetting (perhaps we’d like to vote as congregations on this? How many of us want to pay for what amounts to piles of junk mail generated by NOW IS THE TIME?), and I hope it’s not true. Our congregations serve the good of the Association by being strong, well-regarded local congregations, by giving our fair share in dues for the services we receive from HQ, and by sending a team of committed delegates to our General Assembly. Requests for gifts above and beyond these should be few, far-between, and made with far more respect and less pushy, cheerleadery, “All the cool kids are doing it! CMON, quit worryin’ about all those pesky details about how we’ll spend the money” fervor. Like I said, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, not gonna happen.

Killing Off the Independent Affiliate Organizations of the UUA: PeaceBang Finally Yaps Her Flap

When the UUA board decided to KO the Independent Affiliate Organizations last year, I kept my blogging mouth closed about it. I beefed about it with colleagues and laypeople, and I recognize that a residual bit of fall-out was that I did not enthusiastically participate in the UUA’s big “NOW IS THE TIME” campaign. My laypeople were as lukewarm as I — mostly wondering how, exactly, all this money would be spent in a way that would undeniably strengthen Unitarian Universalist life — and we folded in “NOW IS THE TIME” with our regularly scheduled General Assembly service, declining to make it a special worship service. This decision, and our skepticism about the specific goals and vision of NOW IS THE TIME may have drastically limited the amount of money my unusually generous congregation raised for the effort.

(I am always offended to the ends of my hair when any UUA organization expects congregations to have a special “Something Sunday” to promote a cause or program and take up an offering. First of all, we have a liturgical tradition to respect and although we are committed to thematic worship, we are not committed to Theme Sundays, which are too often as inauthentic and contrived as theme parks. “This and That Sunday” smacks of boosterism and presumes that the worshiping congregation is a captive audience to be exploited for the purpose of “education” — as in “you need to be ‘educated’ about our pet issue/organization so that we can pry open your wallets”– as opposed to ministered unto and challenged to become more conscious and responsible human beings in general. It is for the local church to decide when and shall it is worthy to take up a special offering for the relief of suffering people or for the support of organizations deemed worthy by a trusted committee of the congregation charged to discern such things. When appeals for “Give Me Money” Sundays come to us in the mail, my Worship Chair and I gnash our teeth and then promptly relegate them to the recycling bin.)

I was personally disgusted by the dissolution of the Independent Affiliate Organizations. It seemed a lazy, unnecessary, ignorant and cavalier decision by the UUA board. I have not said so in public until now. Today, however, I received a letter from an esteemed elder colleague who has eloquently put into words what I would like to now endorse with my own, “TELL IT, Brother!” With his permission, here is the Rev. Dick Fewkes’ letter to the UUA leadership about his distress regarding their decision, and his own subsequent decision to refrain from sending financial support to 25 Beacon Street in the future.

Dear Bill,

This is to let you know why I have decided I can no longer make any more
personal contributions to the UUA. The reason is because of my deep and intense
disapproval of the UUA Board action to remove Independent Affiliate Status from
the overwhelming majority of such organizations. Among others I am a member of the UU Christian Fellowship, the UU Buddhist Fellowship, the UU’s For Jewish
Awareness, the UU Psi Symposium (of which I am President), the UU Historical
Society, the UU Retired Ministers & Partners Association, plus I have been a
supporter of Project Harvest Hope, Uniquest, UU Women and Religion, UUs for
Ethical Treatment of Animals, and UUs for Justice in the Middle East.

It hardly needs to be noted that these fine IA organizations have provided
programs, guidance and inspiration for hundreds of individual UUs as well as to
countless UU churches, congregational leaders, educators, ministers and GA
delegates for so very many years. More than a hundred and sixty years ago
Theodore Parker complained to his fellow Unitarian colleagues that they had
struck his name out of their Almanac and asked him to resign from their Boston
Association because of disagreement over his theological views. I wonder what he
would think about the removal from the pages of our UUA Directory of any
reference to these former IA organizations and denial of their previous right to
sponsor lectures and programs at the General Assembly under their own auspices.

Moreover, their removal was based on an overemphasis of a few lines at the end
of our principles and purposes in the UUA By-Laws about “serving the needs of
member congregations”, while forgetting that the IA’s were the institutional and
organizational embodiments of the sources of our living tradition: words and
deeds of prophetic women and men—wisdom from the world’s religions—Jewish,
Christian, Humanist and Earth Centered teachings, etc.—all of them excellent
examples of “the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith.” It
seems that the UUA Board was “proof texting” one part of the principles and
purposes while ignoring the far greater significance of what many of us consider
the heart and soul of our multi-faith religious tradition. “That transcending
mystery and wonder” needs to be incarnated in specific UU related groups and
organizations in order for individual UU’s and our various member congregations
to be informed as to who we are and what we stand for in
our many forms of faith and ethical action. You have taken these sources of
faith away from us and denied us the right to be informed of their existence.

A bumper sticker slogan expresses my sentiments about this unfortunate action on
the part of the UUA Board: TO QUESTION IS THE ANSWER. I for one question the
right and authority and wisdom of the Board in taking this action without the
debate and approval of the General Assembly and its member churches and
delegates. [emphasis mine - PB] Moreover, I respectfully request that the Board seriously consider
reversing or rectifying its action so as to restore IA status (or something
comparable) to the organizations cited above. Not to do so is to forfeit my
financial support to a denomination and religious institution that I hold dear.

Sincerely,
The Rev. Richard M. Fewkes, Minister Emeritus, First Parish of Norwell, Mass.

“The Visitor:” A PeaceBang Review

I am preparing for a five-week sabbatical and a bit swamped, so I don’t have time to give this beautiful film the detailed review it deserves.

So maybe you should just read the Rolling Stone review here and hie yourself to a theatre to see it yourself as soon as you can.

What I loved best about this film was that it featured eminently decent people living through a crisis with no gratuitous scenes of sex or violence designed to manipulate the viewer’s emotions and raise our blood pressure to create the sensation that the movie is something more than it is (”The Brave One,” I’m talking to you!).

Richard Jenkins, the wonderful character actor you’ll remember as the father from “Six Feet Under,” has the role of a lifetime as Walter Vale, a widower whose life is changed by an encounter with a Syrian and Sengalese immigrant couple. You definitely want to see this on the big screen; it’s a film about faces, eyes, small shifts in expression that communicate depths of emotion that can never be spoken.
Hiam Abbass, as the mother of the Syrian man arrested in the subway and held in detention, will break your heart with her feminine dignity and ordinary-wife-and-mother beauty.

I think Richard Jenkins should get a big, fat Oscar for this performance. I would double vote for him because not only is he brilliant in this film (I will always love Walter Vale), he was the artistic director for the Trinity Repertory Theatre in Rhode Island for years, and that’s just plain cool.

HANDS

Since you were all such marvelous help pointing me toward resources about modern day slavery, I thought I’d ask you for your favorite readings, poems and stories about hands.

I’m preaching a sermon about hands this Sunday — my last service before I go on a five-week sabbatical. I think I’ll call it “All Hands On Deck” (thanks, Rali!). I have a pretty good treasure trove of tales from my own life and some stories from the Jewish tradition, but I’m always on the hunt for more good stuff.

If ya got something, I’d love to hear it. And thanks!

“Enslaved” - A Passover Sermon

Friends, I would like to thank you so much for your help in preparing this sermon. Our service this morning was all the more powerful for your help and aid in connecting me with resources on contemporary slavery.

We did an early reading by Marge Piercy explaining the significance of the Seder, leading to a reading of Exodus 6: 1-13.

After the Offertory, I gave a synopsis of the Plagues from Exodus 7-12, deciding at the last minute to harshly bang a gong after the naming of each plague so that as I read the next one, the resonance from the gong still rang through the words. It was upsetting and I think very effective. It certainly affected me!! The Student Minister then came forward and read Exodus 12:14-20, which was followed by a prayer.

After the Anthem, we included this reading:

READING FROM THE CONTEMPORARY
from the Forward by Gloria Steinhem: Enslaved: True Stories of Modern Day Slavery, Jesse Sage and Liora Kasten, Directors of the American Anti-Slavery Group

“In wealthy nations like the United States, we may see occasional television exposes of undocumented immigrants forced to work for no play at guarded sweatshops in our cities, yet our responses still have the blame-the-victim quality of “Why don’t they escape?” After all, slavery ended in the nineteenth century.

We may read about Midwestern farm girls found chained to beds in Times Square or Tokyo, but our understanding of the Stockholm Syndrome is more likely to focus on intellectual political prisoners than young females whose will to survive is sapped by human traffickers adept at luring them with false promises, then “seasoning” them until are convinced that no one will ever accept them again. After all, slavery ended in the nineteenth century.

In developing countries, we see the abduction and auction of child slave laborers, families trapped in debt-bondage toiling in the fields, phony “adoptions” or poor children, false promises of good jobs used to lure and enslave domestic labor across borders, and even the use of the enslaved as sources of organs to be sold in a burgeoning black market. Yet many people vulnerable to these dangers continue to avert their eyes, if only because the need to survive leads to denial. After all, how could slavery exist in the same world with modern police and the United Nations?

Even by the strictest definition, slavery’s soul-murder and slow death are facts of daily life for millions of people.

Yes, most forms of slavery are now illegal, at least on paper. But some cultures normalize them by caste or debt servitude or sexual practice; others create laws but do not enforce them; may pay or supervise officials so poorly that bribery becomes a way of life; and most of the enslaved themselves are too dependent, invisible, or fearful of reprisal to speak – even supposing they would be listened to.”

— Gloria Steinhem

THE SERMON “Enslaved” Rev. Victoria Weinstein
First Parish Unitarian Church in Norwell
April 20, 2008

Moses died on April 5, did you hear? Of course I’m not speaking of the actual Moses, but of actor Charlton Heston who will always be Moses for some of us. Right in time for Pesach, or Passover, the holiday observed by Jewish families this week as it has been for thousands of years.

I went to my first Passover Seder as a kid, and I haven’t been to many since. It’s a very long meal with prayers and songs and recounts the story of the liberation of the Jews from slavery in Egypt in (at anyone’s best guess) about fifteen hundred years before the Common Era. There’s a recitation of all the plagues (Exodus 7-12) and you get to do fun things like throwing drops of wine from your goblet onto your plate and some not-so-fun things like eating symbolic items like bitter herbs, horseradish and gefilte fish. And speaking of wine, there’s a lot of it. I went away from my first Seder thinking that it was sort of a religious drinking game, sprinkling wine on our plates as the plagues were read off (“Frogs!” “Locusts!”) and drinking four full glasses at prescribed times during the meal.

Why not celebrate your survival when you’re one of the most ancient ethnic groups in the world who have been the objects of systematic and organized efforts to annihilate you since the beginning of your history?

Jewish history is a wild history, and the Passover Seder is rowdy. It is not a synagogue observance but a family observance that happens around the dinner table. It commemorates terribly violent events and turns them into a feast of rejoicing. The songs are loud and triumphant. It reminds me of a saying I learned from a Voudon priestess, also the ancestress of slaves: “I will build my house upon the heads of my enemies.” It is no accident that the African-American people embrace the story of Exodus as their own, as have enslaved people everywhere.

What a story Exodus is. There is that portion we just heard where God is instituting the observance of Pesach and where, within 6 verses, he repeats the words “unleavened bread” or “no leaven” nine times. God doesn’t just tell the Hebrews to avoid leavened bread during this seven day festival, he demands it nine times. He’s like your mother before a long car ride when you were a kid. “Did you go to the bathroom?” “Yes, Mom, I went to the bathroom.” “Are you sure you went?” “Yes, Mom, I went.” A minute later she says, “This is a long ride and I don’t want to have to stop. You get in there and use the bathroom.” (“MA! I told you, I WENT!”)

I wonder if there’s a drinking game at a liberal yeshiva somewhere where they read Chapter 12 of Exodus and take a shot every time God says “leaven” or “unleavened?” And it’s not just God who emphasizes unleavened bread. Moses gets into it, too. In chapter 13 of Exodus, as he is reminding the Israelites of their duty to remember what God has done liberating them, he tells them that for during this observance for seven days they shall eat no leavened bread. He says it five times in four verses.

Now, you could say that this is just the style of the unknown author who recorded Exodus for posterity. But I don’t think so. I am sure that rabbis don’t think so, either, those experts at finding every nuance in every book of their Bible and debating and illuminating every possible meaning over centuries upon centuries. So in the rabbinical tradition, if I may, I would like to share my own sense of why the word “unleavened” is repeated so many times in the telling of the exodus story, and my thanks go to our student minister Misty-Dawn Shelley for suggesting the idea in the first place:

When freedom comes, there is no time to waste. When we are set free from enslavement in a literal or a spiritual or psychological sense, we must be ready to move, and to move fast, and to leave behind things that weigh us down, ready to leave behind even things that we think we need, things that will not serve us on our flight out of captivity. You heard how the Israelities first responded to Moses when he told them they were to be set free: they didn’t believe him. Slavery had broken their spirits and they weren’t ready for this news. They weren’t able to believe in the possibility of freedom.
We are all captive in some way or another. Captive to damaging ideas, limiting attitudes, family or societal expectations that stifle, responsibilities that keep us careful where we might want to be more risky, grounded where we would like to try to fly. That is the human condition. When we have an opportunity to experience liberation from limitations that bind us, it is also very human to say, “But I can’t change. I can’t leave what I’m familiar with. I’ve always baked bread this way. Just wait until this dough rises and I’ll be right with you.”

God in this story is saying, and saying, and saying again, “You don’t have time for the dough to rise. Grab what you have and go. I am making this happen NOW.”

Go. Go. The freedom train is here, get on now. God is going to send horrific plagues to kill the oppressors. God is going to open the Reed Sea and send it crashing closed after the Hebrews have crossed it and just as Pharoah’s charioteers are starting across in pursuit of them. This story is littered with corpses, is full of blood and vengeance. It is a very tough read, more action adventure film than anything we think of as “spiritual.” We don’t like the old blood-and-guts mafia don God. I understand that. I share with you the hope that if there is a divine unity underlying creation, it is characterized by Love and experienced as peace, healing and harmony – not traveling through the night as an angel of death killing the first born of the people of anywhere.

It is a tough read. Even the animals suffer. Even the land is destroyed. “The hail shattered every tree of the field.” Awful.

But yet, as I spent time these past weeks in this ancient stories, there was part of me that appreciated this enraged God. Because if there is anything holy in this world, shouldn’t it be each human being’s absolute right not to be owned by another human being? If anything enrages the great “I AM,” would it not be slavery? The Ten Commandments expressly forbid humans owning other humans, we all agree that it is an outrage. I think, therefore, that it is a good thing for the human community to keep alive a story that says when a spokesman for an oppressed people cry, “Let my people go,” you had better do it or there will be hell to pay.

There’s that old expression, “fear of the Lord” that free-thinkers don’t much use anymore. The Passover story, filled as it is with terrifying and vivid images of a divine wrath unleashed on a hard-hearted leader who insists on basing his economic might on slave labor, makes me think that a nation or a people that have lost a good, healthy “fear of the Lord” may have also lost the ability to be ashamed of themselves. Fear is the beginning of wisdom, so it says later in the Bible.

Where is our shame today, all nations who permit humans to be owned as chattel? Slaves still hold up much of the world’s economy on their broken backs.

Let me share with you some information about slavery today, provided by the United Nations, who sponsored the first International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade on March 25, 2008.

“The first annual International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade also serves as a reminder that contemporary forms of slavery – such as human trafficking, forced prostitution, child soldiers, forced and bonded labour and the use of children in the international drug trade – are still flourishing today, largely as a result of vulnerability exacerbated by poverty, discrimination and social exclusion.

• It is estimated that more than 250,000 children are currently being exploited as child soldiers in as many as 30 areas of conflict around the world. Many of the kidnapped girls who are made into child soldiers are also forced into sexual slavery.

• The International Organization for Migration estimates that annually 700,000 women, girls, men and boys are being trafficked across borders away from their homes and families and into slavery.

• An estimated 5.7 million children are victims of forced and bonded labour, also known as debt bondage, and 1.2 million children are victims of child trafficking.

• Linked to trafficking is the commercial sexual exploitation of children of whom 1 million, mainly girls, are forced into prostitution every year. These girls are sold for sex or used in child pornography in both the developed and the developing world.

“Despairingly credible comparisons of scale and suffering may be drawn with the trans-Atlantic trade in Africans in the Americas in which more than 12 million people were forcibly transported over the ocean in four hundred years. It is to our great shame that if today’s statistics are correct, and 700, 000 people are now being trafficked across borders into slavery annually, we will have equaled that total in a mere 20 years.”

And we thought the cause of abolition was settled in the nineteenth century.

That latter quote comes from Mrs. Ndioro Ndiye, the Deputy Director General International Organization of Migration (IOM). “It is to our great shame,” she says. A good word. A good word if it means that the conscience is activated, that we come out of our shells a bit and say, “If this is going on in such high numbers, where might it be going on around me? Am I willing not only to hear the stories of those trapped in systems of slavery, but am I willing to look for it, to investigate how my life, my assets, my comforts, might be tangled up in these systems? What am I consuming, wearing, eating, using and enjoying that was produced by slave labor?” Modern people should have morally progressed far enough to understand that we plague ourselves by refusing to see the Pharaohs in our midst, and to hold them accountable.

The congregation of Beth El in Sudbury, Massachusetts, contributed this reading to the Unitarian Universalist hymnal. It speaks of our human responsibility to do the work that the Bible story says Moses and God teamed up to do so long ago. It reads,

What sacrifices would we make for freedom today?
What would we leave?
How far would we go? How deeply would we look within ourselves?
Our ancestors had no time to await the rising of the bread.
Yet we, who have that time, what do we do to be worthy of our precious inheritance?
We were slaves in Egypt… but now we are free.
How easy it is for us to relive the days of our bondage as we sit in the warmth and comfort of our Seder.
How much harder to relieve the pain of those who live in the bitterness of slavery today.

To live enslaved must be absolutely brutal. We are lucky not to have to know the pain of it. But to be free is also to bear a burden. It is to bear a burden of responsibility, of constant moral decision-making, of self-cultivation, of obediences and obligations chosen out of respect, not out of coercion. To be free requires speaking and living the truth as best we understand it to and with other free people, sometimes trying to persuade, sometimes trying to listen more carefully in order to understand. And always, always at the end, to advocate for everyone’s liberation from every kind of enslavement.

The easiest thing is to be technically free but unconscious, entirely self-interested, pursuing only what is comfortable, only what is pleasant, mostly what is familiar, and concerned only with the well-being very small circle of family and friends. To be truly free is to recognize that we are easily lured into a smaller life and field of vision than is best for us to have. To be truly free means to rail against the self-imposed chains of ignorance and pettiness. To be truly free is not only to be free from something but free FOR something – something that magnifies our souls and beckons toward ever onward toward a shining goal. Freedom is not a gift granted us once and finally, but is a process, a calling, and is the work of our lives to embody in the certainty that, in the words attributed sometimes to Mahatma Ghandi and sometimes to that great author, Anonymous, “no one is free when others are oppressed.”
(sung:)
Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land.
Tell old Pharoah, let my people go.