If I had a hammer

I attended the American Ethical Union's Lay Leadership Summer School in North Carolina this past August. It was a "mountaintop" experience on several levels, not least because we were in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, staying at a resort and learning center called The Mountain.  A part of the training that I and 19 other ethical humanists from across the country undertook included breaking out into teams to create "End of Day Ceremonies," part talent show, part creative rethinking of how we celebrate and mark transitions in our local societies.

My team included six people from congregations of differing sizes and disparate communities.  What we had in common, however, was music.  Not everyone saw themselves as "a singer," but everyone was game to try.  Not only were they willing to sing in public, they were willing to rewrite the lyrics of favorite songs to communicate ethical culture.  We presented our "ceremony" as a cabaret with much participation from the audience--singing along, dancing, general hooting and hollering.  It was, we thought, replicable for other societies:

• select an occasion
• set the (desired) scene
• gather a few volunteers to start a song
• project the new lyrics on a screen so the audience can sing along
• enjoy

This is not the kind of performance that needs to be perfect or fancy or even all that good.  Exuberance can make up for a few flatted notes--assuming the audience ever sings softly enough for anyone to notice.  It was all about fun and the "joy of ethical."  We even called our cabaret "Felix's Joy Joint" and required a "secret password" to get in.  The password:  "Don't postpone joy!"

My own performance took a slightly different tack.  (Surprise, surprise!)  I knew what I wanted to sing.  Was thrilled that I would get to sing.  Loved every minute of it.  And what I sang was "If I Had a Hammer," pretty much in the style of Peter, Paul and Mary.

Why this old song?  Why not change the words to "be more ethical"?  Because of this:



Part of our "performance" was to tell our story.  How did we come to ethical culture, what does ethical culture mean to us, what about ethical culture keeps us coming back for more?  Each of us had different stories to tell.  My story, for that day, came from the deep distress that is calling me to action, ethical action, to make our world better, more humane, safer for human beings.

In 1970, the images in the video above were splashed across America.  Armed soldiers shot down American college students who were protesting the War in Vietnam.  They shot down protesters as well as random bystanders, including one fellow in a phone booth who was calling his mom to tell her that, no, he was not part of that protest and not to worry.  I, too, was on a college campus in 1970.  Not protesting.  Not too knowledgeable about much outside of my chosen field of study and the work that I needed to be doing to get my next degree.

Then I heard the news:  "They're killing college students."  I saw the images.  I realized that things were happening that could cost me my life, so I had better figure out what they were pretty damned quick.  So I joined the march.  And I manned the barricades with my sign.  And I helped keep the campus radio station going with my editorial skills.  And . . . I was changed.  (This is how you radicalize people, by the way.)

Years of various levels of activism and political involvement later, I was again asleep to the world around me.  My life was consumed with personal grief and recovery.  I could not watch or read the news--my own pain was too much for that.  I did, however, eventually find that famous Road to Recovery and read the news now and then.  I was, however, clueless on the morning of June 12.  June was Gay Pride Month.  I wore my Freedom Rings to our Sunday Meeting at Ethical Culture of Austin and made some bland announcement about "awareness" and "being a good ally."  It was only on the way home that I happened to turn on the radio.

Forty-nine dead.   And I was awakened.

What my waking eyes saw were things that had certainly been going on a long time--often out of my line of sight even before I lost family members and began the never-ending process of grieving.  LGBTQ.  Latinx.  Police violence.  Religious radicalism--of all sorts.  Hate and oppression and discrimination and dirty tricks and . . . it just doesn't end, does it?  But now I see it, as if anew, and am determined to try to make a difference.

So, in those beautiful mountains and that ramshackle "resort," in humidity that exceeds what Houston can do, in a welcoming room of ethical humanists, I told my story of two awakenings and how I felt that ethical humanists, joined in ethical action, could make a difference.  And I sang.  And we sang.



For me, this was a mountaintop experience because I got to sing out loud what I had been humming and softly singing to myself for weeks.  It was a mountaintop as well because I was heard--not merely as a chance to sing, which meant a lot to me--but as a voice, calling out those words:  Danger, Warning, Love.  And it was a mountaintop because I know that others share that sense of danger, are calling out warnings, and exclaiming that Justice, Freedom, and Love for each other are essential to our survival as a nation.