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.

Seeing injustice is an ethical obligation

As ethical humanists, we talk about injustice and its many faces and the choices we have to correct it.  As humans, we bog down on priorities and strategies and "getting it."

In the past weeks, I have been much involved in these discussions--observing, listening, talking, and writing.  My correspondence has grown substantially, and now it is time to come back home to the Hoedown to work it out in my own mind, at my keyboard.  The weeks have been full.  St. Louis for the 101st AEU Assembly. The Mountain near Highlands, NC, for the AEU's 2016 Lay Leadership School. Family.  Adventures in travel.  Making connections with other ethical societies and with the roots of the movement.  Throughout all this busy-ness have run the threads of social justice--specifically racial justice, criminal justice, and the occasional stray mention of feminism/womanism.

Where do we start to act?  Why, indeed, must we act at all, especially when our own lives are not affected by these conflicts but rather by others, perhaps based on economics or age or some other damned thing?   Here's a thought:

As ethical humanists, we commit to making the world a better place so that in and by that process we make ourselves better humans.  We are, then, obliged to look at the world around us--our home, our neighborhood, our community, our country, our world--with eyes that appreciate what is good and just but also identify what is corrupt and unjust. 

The first step in fighting injustice, I would say, is first to see it.

We often wear blinders in our daily lives, protecting ourselves from pain, getting in ruts with our comfortable routines, not seeing the suffering of others unless we are slapped with one of those late night commercials about hunger or animal abuse.  I change the channel, so much do I resist feeling that pain. But there is injustice all around us, begging to be seen. 

• Why does my neighbor keep having broken bones, falls, bruises, depression? 
• What does this article I am reading about black people being shot by police mean for my community?  Does it happen here?  
• If water scarcity and drought is a root cause of the violence in Syria, can such a thing happen here?  
• I am doing a good thing by serving meals at the homeless shelter, but why are these people homeless?

Simply being aware of the signals that something might be wrong can be a start.  If we cannot see injustice, then we can do nothing to overcome it. Seeing the signals and recognizing them as signals, we can then begin learn more about it and the problems that are being signaled.

"Black Lives Matter"--tee shirt, button, statement--is a signal that something is wrong--not only in the black community but in the white community that surrounds it.  When someone cannot understand that signal, cannot see that it is communicating something important, that too is a signal of something wrong.  It becomes a problem ignored, a wrong unrighted.  Worse, it becomes a problem prolonged and increased.  

How do we see?

Well, we look.  We scan our environment for threats--this isn't safe, that could be hurtful.  We look for anomalies--something is out of place, not right. We look for balance--the fairness that may be the most fundamental of all human values. Maybe we should expand our search beyond ourselves and our families to others in our community/world, even including strangers in our protective vision?

We interpret what we see.  That's the part about "getting it."  We tend to interpret the signals around us in personal terms.  Personal would include ourselves, our family, our friends--and moving out beyond the circle of known persons to larger entities, still "circles" to which we "belong."  We use familiar words and concepts and experiences and knowledge to interpret the signals we get so that we can read them in terms that we understand.  Not everyone uses those words or shares those experiences.  Seeing injustice will sometimes include a new perspective on what we are looking at.  That new perspective may include active study of an issue to learn more or something as simple as listening so that we can see things better.

Here's a fairly mundane example.  It's about wallpaper, but "wallpaper" eventually became a code word with my late husband that stopped a budding conflict because one of us remembered what happened when we shopped for wallpaper for the bathroom.  Well, it was a matter of taste.  I wanted the foil with butterflies (this was in the 80's!) and he wanted the stripes.  Things got tense.  We were starting to get a little more heated and a little louder and realized that our "discussion" not going well in the wallpaper/paint store.  We decided to take it over to the McDonald's across the street and try to work it out with some ice cream. And so we did, finally reaching the dumbfounding realization that he was talking about the master bath and I was talking about the guest bathroom.   We were arguing over nothing, since I was fine with stripes in the master, and he was fine with butterflies for the guests. From then on, for more than thirty years, one of us could say "wallpaper," and the other would stop to make sure that we were actually talking about the same subject. 

The point of the wallpaper story is that interpretation of data, including signals about injustice, can depend upon point of view.  "Getting it" always includes knowing the point of view from which you are "seeing."  It usually includes recognizing that more than one point of view is looking at the problem.  It should include sharing points of view until everyone can really see the same thing.

Seeing injustice, I have said, is an ethical obligation.  I also think that it is an ethical action.

What are you seeing?

Primary Highs and Lows

I went to vote in the Super Tuesday (makes me hear the Super Trooper chorus in my head) primary on March 1.  It's a thing for me.  If I can, I like to vote on an election day during a presidential year rather than taking advantage of early voting.  Voting is just a big deal for me.  I love the sense of community that comes from voting in person.  I also love the powerful feelings of unity and fellowship that come from attending the precinct caucus ("These are my people!").

Because I spent several years in another county, taking care of my late mother, I have missed this experience.  All of my voting during that period had to be by absentee ballot.  I was physically absent, but I also felt socially absent.  Issues that would have absorbed my attention and concern were far removed from my then reality.  Candidates were less familiar to me than I liked, since I like to know all I can find out about the views and records of those that I vote for.

This March primary was bittersweet for me in a number of ways.  The candidates, warts and all, reflect the frailties of humanity, the confluence of greed and opportunism, the irony of time in hurried flight--when good things come too late.  I walked in to vote with a smile and (almost) dancing feet.  It was good to be "present" again; it was wonderful to fulfill my duty as a citizen and enjoy the freedom to do so without harassment or obstacle.  I really had a gleeful time marking my ballot.  But I left with tears in my eyes.  I remembered past election days with such high hopes for the future, a future that is now and not a realization of those hopes.  I remembered past elections when loved ones no longer here shared the joy and responsibility of this civic duty, making it a family affair.

Lots of things are that way for me these days.  Important.  Difficult.  Full of memories as well as dreams of a better future.  One thing that does give me hope is that one of the eight commitments that we make in the Ethical Society of Austin is to democracy:  Democratic process is essential to our task.  We explain this:

The democratic process is essential to a humane social order because it respects the worth of persons and elicits and allows a greater expression of human capacities.  Democratic process also implies a commitment to shared responsibility and authority.

Many of the issues that drove my vote on Tuesday are expressed in that statement.  From a desire for a humane social order to shared responsibility. there were opportunities on the ballot to support them all.  And that, too, is part of our commitment in ESOA.  We look to the democratic process for the internal operations of the organization itself, we commit to participation in the democratic process in our civic lives, and we work toward preserving the best of our American democracy by supporting inclusion, transparency, and fairness in our public institutions.  Yeah, I'd call that super any old day.

Meeting by conversation

One form of meeting for the Ethical Society of Austin is called a Colloquy.  This is an old Middle English word, more used in the 19th century than the current one.  It comes, of course, from a Latin word, colloquium.  In my mind, colloquium has a more academic feel; colloquy, apparently, has a more religious connotation.  Both words mean "conversation" (of the more formal sort), but each seems to have found its more favored niche of use.

In ESOA, the Colloquy is actually a formal conversation.  The format is deceptively relaxed, given the very defined structure under which the conversation occurs.  The moderator (these days that would be Adam Gravois) introduces the topic and lays down the ground rules.  This conversation involves, he always reminds us, our listening skills.  We are not to interrupt or respond to what is being said, although we may respond at the end of the session during the discussion period.  One person, any person who wants to volunteer, begins.  Then the person to his/her right speaks, following counterclockwise around the circle until everyone who wants to speak has had a turn.  At that point we take a moment to think about what has been said.  If there is time, we can all then discuss one point or another that has been raised in the circle, validating, expanding, countering.

In the loosest sense Colloquy might be considered, as it is in religious circles, to be a conversation regarding theological questions or to resolve religious doctrinal differences, but only in the sense that the concepts and ideals under consideration deal with some of our deepest values and are approached by each of us from a different perspective. Colloquy functions to direct our thinking on fundamental concepts--love, tolerance, success, family, etc.--so that we define, as we may not have before, the concept in our own lives at the same time we are allowed to hear how others define and experience the concept.  In the welcoming fellowship of ESOA, deep emotions and intimate secrets are sometimes shared, adding to the sense of community--even family--that the society provides for its members. While not the purpose of Colloquy, this latter function might be considered a benefit.

I do not know the history of Colloquy in ethical culture.  Felix Adler proposed that society meetings consist primarily of lecture.  This is in keeping, I think, with the times.  Pre-electronic, certainly.  But also toward the end of the lyceum movement, which, for a while, provided venues for adult education from various public speakers.  Rhetoric and oratory provided intellectual entertainment as well as education in nineteenth-century America, and "conversation" would likely have been less valued as a means to consider the High Ideas that Adler intended to be the focus of ethical culture.  The concept of colloquy was certainly available, but its then context--religious discussion, especially for resolution of doctrinal differences--may have made it seem inappropriate for someone who asserted the importance of "Deed before creed."

However formal conversation might have crept into the repertoire of meeting types for ESOA, it does seem an appropriate tool for getting to the core of our values and ideals.  In the days and sometimes weeks before a Colloquy, knowing the topic, the audience/participant is already thinking about the concept. Knowing that he/she will be called upon to speak--preferably briefly--in real terms as the topic relates to one's own experience--the audience/participant is already thinking of what to say.  That entails reexamination of the concept as an abstraction:  What does this word really mean?  Then one begins to recall, to think about, to experience once more the events and people who have been a part of one's life.  This can be painful.  My own comments in Colloquy are often prefaced by "I didn't want to come today," "I really hate this topic," "This is hard."  The abstraction of "family" may present itself as a Norman Rockwell painting in our minds, but the reality of our own lives may include death, divorce, anger, abdication of roles, neglect, abuse, money issues, distance (emotional and physical)--and on through the seemingly endless list of how birth families can become weapons of mental destruction.  Or, if we are lucky, we do find love, closeness, marriage (or remarriage), children (grands and greats as well), comfort, joy--and on through the happily endless list of how birth--and chosen--families can become treasures of great worth.  In this effort, we re-examine our lives through the lens of the Colloquy's topic to get at its meaning in  the reality that we live.

Once Colloquy begins, we listen carefully as our fellows talk.  We talk about tolerance (and intolerance) in terms of limits and focus, revealing to ourselves those points of friction in society that demand boundaries or deserve our forbearance or which are mere historical artifacts that need to pass away quickly. We talk about love in terms of its sources, its types, its quantity, its presence or absence and find for ourselves new understanding of the value of this emotion in our own lives.  We talk about success and find that common definitions may not suit us, may indeed harm us, and learn of more ethical ways to define success in our lives and our world.  In the Colloquy format, the audience/participant becomes the speaker, and it is the thinking of the audience/participant that is reflected in the conversation.  The group produces the outline (albeit unstructured) of talking points and draws its conclusions about the meanings presented.

The first ESOA meeting that I attended was a Colloquy on cycles.  I had never seen this type of meeting before, not as a means to enlightenment, but I do love to talk.  Listening was harder in that meeting, because I had to think of what I might say to all these strangers, right?  As the conversation moved around the circle, I learned a little bit about these very human humanists and saw that--just maybe--I might fit in.  I have great fondness for these Colloquies now.  Yes, they have made me feel closer to the others in the Society, something I cherish.  They also made me think about some really hard issues in a more thoughtful and systematic way.  And they still do.  Long after the initial conversation is over, I am more aware of these concepts, looking at them with new eyes, thanks in part to the perspectives gained from other participants in the conversation.

How shall we meet?

Having specified a simple format for Sunday meetings and having made it clear that ritual and formalism were not to be part of those meetings in his Founding Address, Felix Adler had some specific thoughts about what would go on in a meeting:  mostly lectures and some music.  While Adler didn't actually say "but not a sermon," he did assure his audience (and us) that he did not intend that there would be a need for a "priestly office after a new fashion."

Adler did clarify that all these lectures should have a purpose:

First, to illustrate the history of human aspirations, its monitions and its examples; to trace the origin of many of those errors of the past whose poisonous tendrils still cling to the life of the present, but also to exhibit its pure and bright examples, and so to enrich the little sphere of our earthly existence by showing the grander connections in which it everywhere stands with the large life of the race. . . . Secondly, it will be the object of the lecturers to set forth a standard of duty, to discuss our practical duties in the practical present, to make clear the responsibilities which our nature as moral beings imposes on us in view of the political and social evils of our age, and also to dwell upon those high and tender consolations which the modern view of life does not fail to offer us even in the midst of anguish and affliction.

Hoo boy!  So history, religion, philosophy, human nature, standards, duty, responsibilities--no easy path does Friend Felix lay down for us.   Plus music.

How does this play out 140 years later?  In Austin, the Ethical Society meets most Sundays (did I mention that before?) if the meeting space is available (we are looking for new meeting space, in case you know of anything).  Meetings are said to be either a Platform (lecture) or Colloquy (discussion).  Sometimes they are a mix of the two.  Lectures can be presented by members or guests; colloquies are lead by our Program Chair (Adam Gravois) and quickly turned into a group activity.

There is, however, more.  Come early and share coffee and conversation.  A chance to meet and greet, touch base on Society business, get to know fellow members a little better.  Come even earlier and help set things up.  Arrange chairs, make the coffee, set out the songbooks, get to know fellow members a little better.

A single chime will halt the busyness of these activities (but not the coffee), and we all take our seats and focus on the day's leader and our purpose in meeting.  This is the point at which someone--whoever the day's leader may ask to do so in the moments before the meeting begins--and it varies--reads a statement of purpose.  We have several variants of these statements, so the reader chooses which he or she may want to read.  All of them, I have to point out, are powerful and inspiring words that help us remember why we are present and what we need to be doing during the meeting.

The leader makes or calls for a few announcements about upcoming events or decisions that the Board has made.  Then we are all called to consider whether there have been matters of ethical concern that we have encountered during the previous week.  This is an opportunity to examine ourselves and our week--if we have not already done so--to consider where there have been conflicts or victories in the values that matter to us.  We can recount what the issue was and how we resolved it or ask the group to help us figure out a resolution.  From ethical conflicts and concerns the leader then guides us to talk about "concerns or joys."  These are usually brief statements from members which range from the revelation of a happy or sad event in the previous week to a broader statement of personal concern about state-national-international events and trends.

Once everyone who needs to speak about these more individual-but-now-shared-matters has done so, the day's leader calls for another just-appointed volunteer (again, it varies) to light the lantern.  I'll write more about what follows in another post (or posts!).

For now, it's worth considering that this early part of an Ethical Society meeting is a reflection of the early part of Adler's Founding Address.  While he was trying to establish an organization that met weekly to discuss serious and high matters, he prefaced the establishment with a review of the current situation in our nation.  In some ways, the Ethical Society is doing the same by opening the floor in an entirely democratic fashion to all--members and visitors alike--to present their awareness of ethical conflicts in our society and in our personal relations as well as evaluations of life and public events that have impressed themselves upon individual consciousness and conscience.  As Adler laid out the context for ethical culture, so we lay out the context for our own small community's attempt to live better lives and make the world a better place.  The effect, from my perspective, is a closer sense of community and a better understanding of how we can help each other be and do . . . better.