Stories about Social Service

Once again I have to refer to the work that I am doing on the Bibliography of Ethical Culture and the ideas that seem to be flying at me from my discoveries.  Today's idea is Social Service.  

Social service seems, in my knowledge and experience, to include assistive services provided to those who are somehow at a disadvantage in our community, whether they are disadvantaged by poverty, ability, genetics, place of origin, language, etc.  These would be services provided by public or private entities to relieve those disadvantages with food, funds, pro-social policies, translators, etc.  There's a great deal of assumption built into that notion of "disadvantaged," but the focus on social service will have to skip those assumptions for the time being and merely note that my and, I believe, our common understanding of "social service" speaks of services of whatever sort provided by a group entity to individuals who are considered to be "disadvantaged."

Today, I'm documenting a book by Frederick James Gould, called The Children's Book of Moral Lessons. Gould was a crusader (I think the word is apt) for moral education for children--in both public and private settings.  He worked with Stanton Coit to found the East London Ethical Society, was known as a "pioneer of secular humanism," and spoke widely as a representative of the Moral Education League.  This particular book is the second in the series, and focuses on "kindness" and "work."  The first, which I have not yet located, focused on "self-control" and "truthfulness."  The search is now on for the first series and any later series.

In the meantime, I took the opportunity to glance through the very lengthy table of contents and noticed a section under "work" called "social service."  I am increasingly disturbed by the attitudes I am seeing among my fellow members of Ethical Culture regarding "Ethical action," concerned that there is too much emphasis on the act of providing social services and not enough emphasis on the ethical roots and purposes of those actions and services.  I hope someday to be able to articulate that concern in some better fashion.  At the moment, I find that Gould has given me a new point of view on social services.

In Chapter 41, Gould begins with a discussion of Michelangelo's statue of David.  He has a charming way of keeping his narrative at a child's level (I'm thinking elementary school level), defining his terms, making sure that, when he talks about the Italian setting for his story, he is providing parallels for understanding by the English schoolchild.  His story talks about Michelangelo's carving of the statue as a social service--service to his community--because he used an abandoned piece of marble, seeing in it the future David.  The marble had been laying about near the cathedral for "more than a hundred years" (p. 193), and Michelangelo's service replaced an eyesore with a work of art.  Gould's story continues with more "social service" by those who talked about what to do with the statue (where to put it), those who struggled for four days to move the statue with ropes and rollers, and even those who criticized the statue.  In all cases, individuals--sometimes working together, sometimes independently--provided a service to their community through their skills, their energy, their ideas.  That service he called "social service."

Later Ethical leaders referred to "public spirit" for some of the same "services."  They referred to the duty to vote, the importance of speaking out in councils (both public and private), the value of stepping up to serve on those same councils.  

I have talked in the past about four modes of Ethical action:  Living, Giving, Serving, and Teaching/Educating/Testifying.  (I am still working on that fourth label.)  In my thinking, some of these same modes of action fit into the notion of "social service" that Gould advocates and also with the idea of "public spirit."  As we make ethics central in our lives, how we live can (and should) be an Ethical action.  What we give (including time, talents, and money) can also be an Ethical action when it is given in the spirit of social service--and not merely as charity, which makes us the giver of bounty rather than a servant of the community.  Serving is easiest for us to see as both Ethical action and social service, but, interestingly, Gould turns the notion on its head when he tells the story of the cathedral bell-ringer in Switzerland.  Simple actions that serve the community, he points out, should be respected just as the grand deed of an artistic genius such as Michelangelo should be respected.  In that, the respect we give to others is an Ethical action.  The final mode--teaching, etc.--is simply how we use our voice to show others the ethics of the situation, whether it is to speak up and point out wrong, plan a better path forward, or to clarify the benefits to community and self in a particular course of action or event.  Speaking up to assert, challenge, praise, identify--all of the ways in which we can express our Ethical values in the presence of others--becomes, in that way, an Ethical action--and a social service.

OK, Boomer!

 

King Solomon in Old Age, by Gustave Dore

One of the rewards for working on the Bibliography of Ethical Culture is exploring new ideas and meeting new (to me) authors.  Right now, the Archive Team for the New York Society for Ethical Culture (and the Ethical Culture Movement) is focusing on the Adler Study in NYSEC's building in New York City.  So far so good; we have photographed the title pages and verso for most of the books in the first bookcase (there are 10), and I have started creating a bibliographic inventory of the case.  Of course, I can't just create a bibliographic entry without looking at the book (if it has already been digitized), so I've been taking quick peeks at a number of those books.  I've never, for example, read Carl Sandburg's biography of Abraham Lincoln.  A quick peek resulted in reading a few paragraphs of the chapter on Lincoln's humor and his religion.  I expect I'll return to that when I have time.  I also encountered Ralph Linton, an anthropologist that I knew through other works.  However, I hadn't seen The Tree of Culture before, and I expect I'll try to read that one before too long.  It was also kinda fun to see Ida Tarbell among the authors consulted by Felix Adler--and later Ethical Culture leaders.  (According to Wikipedia, Tarbell spent some time in Chicago, meeting and working with Jane Addams.  Is there a connection to Ethical Culture???)

Today's fun comes from Ralph Barton Perry, a prolific writer, labeled "a strident moral idealist" in Wikipedia.  So far, I've seen two of his books in the Adler Study, and, given his focus on William James, there could well be more.  Part of my process in working on the Bibliography is to check for online availability, so, naturally, I checked to see if the Perry books were available online.  The Internet Archive (archive.org) is my first stop, but, if they don't have a book, I'll check Google Books (and Scholar), Hathi Trust, WorldCat, etc.  Both books--Puritanism and Democracy and In the Spirit of William James can be found in the Internet Archive.  I didn't look too closely at the former, but I did look at the contents of the latter and read a couple of pages of the first chapter.  That persuaded me to check to see if I could buy my own copy for some, more or less, entertaining reading in philosophy.

After meandering through a rather long list of Perry's publications for sale at rather high prices, I happened to notice A Plea for an Age Movement, published in 1942.  There were photographs of the covers and one or two pages inside.  This poem by James Ball Naylor ("Ancient Authors") was cited on page 5:

King David and King Solomon

    Led merry, merry lives,

With many, many lady friends

    And many, many wives;

But when old age crept over them--

    With many, many qualms,

King Solomon wrote the Proverbs

    And King David wrote the Psalms.

My first thought was:  And we live in the age of "OK, Boomer!"  I bought the book.

The Art of Happiness and Life after Death

Arthur Dobrin has written a book titled:  The Lost Art of Happiness.  He, along with about 12 members of Ethical Culture from four Ethical Culture Societies, just completed a 10 week seminar, discussing the book.  We met for the last time this week--and the final discussion centered on death, dying, losing a loved one, and life after death.

Dobrin has a nice section in his last chapter that talks about the memories that we hold of those we've lost--and that others will hold of us when we are gone.  Not believing in heaven, hell, assorted deities, etc., we might still like to continue for a time in the hearts and minds of those we've touched on our journey.  While there was some discussion of this, there was more in the vein of not having so many connections in this life and feeling unsettled about what happens after life.  "Nothing" was not very satisfying.

I decided to keep my thoughts to myself.  My thoughts might have been even less satisfying to these, mostly, strangers to me, and I did not want to debate.  What came to my mind focused most intensely on funerals and that memory thing.

My experience with funerals falls mostly into the traditions of the Southern Baptist Church.  I've been to a lot of those, from quite an early age.  They have a pattern, which I don't need to recount, and they serve a need for the community.  Serving that need is where my thoughts went in that last seminar discussion.  I wanted to say that funerals don't do the deceased a damned bit of good.  Funerals are rituals that help those left behind adjust to their new status in life.  A husband dies, the wife is now a widow.  A mother dies, the child is now motherless.  Each new status will come with expectations for behavior--from the person whose status has changed and from others who must now shift their relationships to that person.  That's a fairly bald statement of a lot of years of anthropological research (not mine) that points to funerals (and other rituals related to life changes) as a means to assert community beliefs and maintain social organization in the face of change.

What we talked about in the seminar was making sure that we had planned ahead so that our family knows what our wishes are regarding our own funeral.  This will settle future family arguments about what to do--and give us some comfort about our dignity in those last hours above ground.  Well, yes, except that what I wanted to point out is that once you're dead, well, you're dead.  We all know that "you can't take it with you."  We all need to know that "you're not actually going to be present at your own funeral."  I wanted to say that funerals are for the living, not the dead.  What we should be wanting for our loved ones is whatever they need to get through the ordeal, if it is such, of separating from us.  What gives them comfort?  What gives them closure?

I write about this from some experience.  My husband's death was sudden, unexpected.  He had, however, frequently said that he did not want a funeral.  No fuss, no muss, just cremation.  He was also an organ donor.  I honored his wishes.  No funeral.  And I gave permission, at nearly midnight on the day he died, to the caller who let me know that they would be taking him away for a while to let him make one last contribution to others.  I didn't want to know the details, but, yes, he was a giving and caring man, and we both would want him to help someone else in their time of need--and certainly to increase our knowledge of medical science.  So, no funeral and a fragile body from which some parts had been removed--so that, once he had been removed from my late mother's home, I might never see him again.  It was a blow.  I had so much change to cope with at that point, and little support to cope with it.  

Still, I honored his wishes.  Except.  If he was to be cremated, I could not let his body just be tossed in a fire.  I ordered the special casket that is used for cremations and began the two-week wait for the one bay that could accommodate him at the crematorium to become available.  I also knew that his daughter would need to see him to say goodbye, so I arranged with the funeral home that we would have a "viewing" before he was taken to be cremated.  One request that I made was that his casket be covered with a flag.  Even though his "service" was in the Army Reserves, I thought his dedication and service-to-country extended well beyond that brief period of time.  The funeral home was helpful in placing a flag (a loaner) over his casket--and I was comforted by that chance to honor my husband.  Other than that, I had only a moment to talk to him, to tell him that I . . . well, I was cut off mid-sentence as the funeral home representative said that my step-daughter, her mother, and her step-sister had arrived.  And then the discussion turned on their comfort and solace.  A few days later, when I went to the crematorium, there was a moment, when the hearse left with his casket and I followed behind, when my grief overflowed.  This was the funeral cortege--a hearse and me, following behind.  It seemed both appropriate that there would be such a journey and so inadequate for the kind of man that he was.  At the crematorium, I stood at a window and looked at the bays where bodies were consumed in flames, all closed, of course.  I watched his casket enter that larger bay.  I held up as long as I could, but I know that someone came to stand by me and help me survive the closing of those doors.  

And that was it.  No magic words.  No ritual motions.  No comfort.  No closure.  No healing.  

Could I have found healing in words spoken by someone who did not know him?  Could I have had some closure with songs and flowers and family standing beside me?  I had left the church long ago.  I did not want, nor would he have wanted, bible verses and "when we all get to heaven."  Well, honestly, I do like the song.  I don't accept the meaning, but I love the joy and community in singing it.  But it would have meant nothing if sung at some service for my husband.  

His death remained a raw wound for years.  I wrote to him, as I had been doing before he died.  Years of emails exchanged while I took care of my mother in another city turned into long notes about my days, my thoughts, my concerns as I ended or began a day with "notes" written on my computer.  I joined a grief support group at a local hospice.  I eventually found community at the Ethical Society of Austin.  Every event meant to help someone else get through grief became a moment for me to seek some comfort for my own loss.

So what I wanted to say at that last meeting of the seminar is that your funeral is not about you.  You may be the center of your life today, but when you are dead, you are gone, not here, not aware.  Those you leave behind, however, are still living, still thinking and feeling.  It is not your ears that will hear the songs, not your eyes that will see the flowers.  Your mouth will not taste the food of your funeral feast.  The question is not what you want people to do to send you on to your grave (which is pretty much the end of the road for you) but how badly you want them to get on with their lives, grateful to have had some time with you, but prepared to continue living and breathing a little while longer.

Honestly, I don't know what could have helped me get through these past 10 years any more easily than I have, but I do think I needed a chance to say goodbye.  A chance to speak privately with my husband, to talk to him one last time, to finish my sentence.  I was grateful to be able to give him the small honor of a flag.  I could barely see to drive in that last mile before reaching the crematorium, but I remember being grateful to have that particular ritual, wishing that others could have been there to honor him on that journey.  But there was never a goodbye.  I think now that I should not have honored his wishes, because I really needed that goodbye.  Still do.

Fire and Ethical Friends

Fuego is a local eating establishment which seems to be popular with graduates of the local university.  I selected it as the place to meet up with several friends from Ethical (one of the New Jersey branches) who were passing through en route to view the upcoming solar eclipse.  I had intended to invite them to that local establishment also known as the Texas Stop Sign (DQ), but a quick check showed no coffee on the menu and an opening time of 10:00 am.  Fuego is open 24 hours.  

So we met.  I knew all three of my visitors either from working together through the American Ethical Union or attending the same meetings online.  It was really nice to meet them all three in person.  We had a chance to share some Texas foods (banana pudding, breakfast tacos, horchata--and coffee, of course).  We also shared a bond, each having our own experiences of the past few months of drama in the AEU and each extending spoken and unspoken words of empathy and compassion for the slings and arrows that seem to have flown out of that drama.  

What I had not expected was the depth of discussion that we had about the ups and downs of membership in Ethical Culture.  As with most forms of religious community these days, our membership is declining.  We talked about "nones," and the apparent commitment in that group to remain uncommitted.  We talked a bit about the social shifts that occurred because of the COVID pandemic, and the technology that continues to support our isolation.  

The conversation gave me a chance to talk about my own ideas about membership growth.  The 1% reversal of decline that moves us in a positive direction.  The need to be a visible to those who are needing--or seeking--our community.  The back and forth of discussion pointed out a weakness or two in my ideas and opened new possibilities of thought.  In other words, it was an Ethical discussion among Ethicals about Ethical--conducted ethically.  What a delight!

We often think of the positive benefits of our community in terms of a safe haven, a compassionate space, a warm welcome.  We share our joys and concerns and get to know each other better.  All true and good.  I think our community also provides a chance to exchange ideas in an open manner with respect for each other as well as for reality.  How refreshing!

Fuego ("fire" in Spanish) provided us with a different "light of understanding, warmth of compassion, and fire of commitment."  The banana pudding was good, too!