Rock the Vote

A sermon offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lafayette, Indiana
On September 26, 2004

By Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia

Readings

Jefferson Smith from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Now, you're not gonna have a country that can make these kind of rules work, if you haven't got men that have learned to tell human rights from a punch in the nose. I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a - a little lookin' out for the other fella, too...It's just the blood and bone and sinew of this democracy that some great men handed down to the human race, that's all. If you think I'm going back and tell those boys in my state: 'Look. Now fellas. Forget about it. Forget all this stuff I've been tellin' you about this land you live in. It’s a lot of hooey. This isn't your country. It belongs to a lot of James Taylors.' Anybody here that thinks I'm gonna do that, they've got another thing coming.

Just get up off the ground! That's all I ask. Get up there with that lady, that's up on top of this Capitol Dome. That lady that stands for Liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes if you really want to see something. And you won't just see scenery. You'll see the whole parade of what man's carved out for himself after centuries of fighting. And fighting for something better than just jungle law. Fighting so as he can stand on his own two feet free and decent, like he was created no matter what his race, color, or creed. That's what you'd see.  Great Principles don’t get lost once they come to light.

They’re right here.  You just have to see them again."

Steven Van Zandt (Blue Midnight Music, 1983) I Am A Patriot
I was walking with my brother
And he wondered what was on my mind
I said what I believe in my soul
It ain't what I see with my eyes
And we can't turn our backs this time

I was talking with my sister
She looked so fine
I said baby what's on your mind
She said I want to run like the lion
Released from the cages
Released from the rages
Burning in my heart tonight

And I ain't no communist, and I ain't no capitalist
And I ain't no socialist
and I sure ain't no imperialist
And I ain't no democrat
ain't I ain't no republican either
And I only know one party
and it's name is freedom
I am a patriot
And the river opens for the righteous, someday

Sermon

For two weeks the sound of the shofar has filled this sanctuary to help us awaken and account for ourselves – to write a better accounting of ourselves in the Book of Life, the Book of History, for the coming year. 

The book of history is never closed and it’s not simply the story of emperors, kings and presidents – it is story of every person who’s ever lived.  It’s written in action, word, and silence.  It’s the story of human understanding, dreaming, and doing and therefore, it’s a story of faith and of a struggle:  between faith in the creative possibilities of the human and deep doubt in those possibilities.

Democracy is the active faith in the creative possibilities of the human and it is the contract between persons to endeavor to live up to those possibilities – together.

Democracy is the practice of faith – not faith in the sense of unseeing and unquestioning – but faith in the sense of keeping faith, keeping trust, upholding and in every way honoring – honoring that sense of the human.  That is at the heart of democracy.  It does not provide a party line, a clear map, or the certainty of success in the short run.  That’s the other faith part.  Faith involves risk, involves doing the good thing even when the benefits do not come immediately to your own self.  Faith involves the heart as well as the mind.  It is a covenant – reasoned forth and then kept with the heart.  Democracy is the practice of this faith in humanity, this covenant, and once you have entered the story of democracy there is no way to step out of it or to refuse to take part or take action. 

Reader as Tony Kushner: “I am here to organize. I am here to be political. I am here to be a citizen in a pluralist democracy. I am here to be effective, to have agency, to make a claim on power, to spread it around, to rearrange it, to democratize it, to legislate it into justice. Why you? Because the world will end if you don't act. You are the citizens of a flawed but actual democracy. Citizens are not actually capable of not acting, it is not given to a citizen that she doesn't act, this is the price you pay for being a citizen of a democracy, your life is married to the political beyond the possibility of divorcement. You are always an agent. When you don't act, you act. When you don't vote, you vote…when you despair, you open the door to evil…lose your hope and you lose your soul, and you don't want to do that, trust me, even if you haven't got a soul, and who knows, you shouldn't be careless about it. Will the world end if you act?  Who can say?  Will you lose your soul, your democratic citizen soul, if you don't act, if you don't organize?  I guarantee it.
The great Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz has a poem entitled "On Angels" –

The poet is haunted by a voice:

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:

day draws near
another one
do what you can.”

So, since I can’t possible put any of this any better than Tony Kushner and Czeslaw Milosz, you could nap now.  Or may be you might listen and wrestle within that soul you think you maybe have or maybe don’t – but here’s what I know – you haven’t abandoned hope – it may be tenuous in your heart and hands – but you have it or you would not be here.  That’s not to say that those who aren’t here are hopeless -- they may be recuperating from surgery or at a family wedding, or some other pressing thing – and filled with hope.

Not only have you not abandoned hope but you sit here with the greatest gift in your hands – and no mistake – soiled as it is, sad as it may look.  Democracy is a great gift and you hold that gift now – it is power in your hands – and the world will weep if you put it back in the box.  I have faith in you – because you are here, because this is a house of Unitarian Universalism, because I know so many of you.  There is power in your hands and at no time is this more evident -- and confusing -- than when an election comes around. 

            There’s something funny about elections – like we have this system that has more faith in us than we have in ourselves – the exercise we did together earlier with the slips of paper was meant to help you see that you never really act alone – but even if you do – it matters – it changes things – lets in light, varies the music, inserts some color – encourages someone else.  You have to do what you can.  We have this system that has more faith in us than we have in ourselves.  It can be lost – this great democracy.  And that would be to return a gift to the dust that has taken generations and millennia to rise.

This a transcript from the trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the 19^th of June 1873, after her arrest for voting:

Reader as Judge Hunt: Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?

Reader as Miss Anthony:  Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil, my political, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject.  May it please your honor, I am not arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot, in justice, be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against law, therefore, the denial of my sacred rights to life, liberty, property and

Judge Hunt: The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on.

Miss Anthony: But your honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this outrage upon my citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury

 Judge Hunt:  The Court must insist the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law.

Miss Anthony:  Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men; hence, your honor's ordered verdict of guilty, against a United States citizen for the exercise of "that citizen's right to vote," simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man. But, yesterday, the same man-made forms of law, declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months' imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night's shelter to a panting fugitive as he was tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing.  As then, the slaves who got their freedom must take it over and I have taken mine.”

Democracy has been hard won.  Universal suffrage has been hard won.  Democracy is not a gift than is given to sit on your dresser – it has to be taken out and used.  It meant a world to those women and those African Americans who struggled for the right to vote.  And every election I want that little oval sticker that says, “I voted.”  Once I have that sticker I feel proud and I feel something deeper -- I know that belong.  I have reaffirmed by belonging.  Not simply to this nation – but to the world – because the decisions of this nation are felt around the world.  I am proud of that power – that power that has been called the last best hope of the world.

That power does not simply arise in the opportunity to vote – but in the constant exercise of everyday democracy – elections are only a part of that.  Sometimes there is a magical thinking that history will be rewritten in an instant at election time.  We’re learning that change can happen quickly – but real change and healthy democracy takes time and deliberation.  Tyranny is pretty quick and fear paralyzes readily – but freedom is, as the hymn says, a constant struggle.  Democracy takes persistence.  And a healthy democracy takes a combination of fierce and quick compassion and thoughtful, careful change.  And careful change is what democracy is all about – it about a living and breathing system of government that evolves and moves with the times – that hears out the people as well as leading the people.  Democracy is meant to safeguard against greed and lust for power – but even more it is meant to engender a contract among all persons to work on one another’s behalf.  The Buddhist teacher and activist Thich Nhat Hanh said: “Mindfulness must be engaged – once there is seeing, there must be acting, We must be aware of the real problems of the world.  Then, with mindfulness, we will know what to do and what not to do to be of help.” Your vote is not a revolution to reshape the world in your image – but to lend your voice and hand to the shaping of a common image.  Painstaking though that is.  Sometimes the painstaking nature of it seems discouraging – but hanging back from your role in the great belonging, your role in this democracy means living off the work of others – or it can be suffering from the work of others – or it can mean causing suffering through your own passivity.  To refuse to do even that part you are given – to hang back from your role in this democracy is -- well – it’s not what they meant when they said “the meek shall inherit the earth.”  That’s not being meek.  It is a failure of faith in the creative possibilities of the human.   

Because the work of democracy is hard, it can lead to that slide into despair that Tony Kushner was talking about.  But we hold in our hands not a completed project but one that requires our work, care, and consciousness.  It also requires that we recognize that however aggravated we may become at a turn of political events and at times we may be really aggravated, we stay with the project.  Katy Butler – a mellow meditator who began to work on the campaign trail wrote: “I was up against the raw edge of the personality I wish I didn’t have: easily agitated, sometimes arrogant, wedded to my own notions of how things should be done.  I was plunged into a river of aroused emotions.”  Democracy is a river of aroused emotions and we need an equal river of compassion, commitment, flexibility, and a real willingness to make it really to make it really work: Robert F. Kennedy said that "Democracy is no easy form of government. Few nations have been able to sustain it. For it requires that we take the chances of freedom; that the liberating play of reason be brought to bear on events filled with passion.”

Democracy requires that we have a separation of church and state – but not severing of heart and mind, or reason and feeling – they need to be wedded for the whole to work.  Democracy is a path of faith and of reason, of action and reflection.

Because the work of democracy is hard it is also easy to slide into a sort of apathy – what difference can I make? – and to forget that we are fortunate to have in our hands this amazing gift – tattered though it may be.  That among millions of people in this world for whom the exercise of freedom is a steep climb up a grueling mountain we have work a plenty ahead of us but we have the freedom to do that work. 

Jefferson Smith, in Mr. Smith goes to Washington, also said: My dad had the right idea. He used to say to me: 'Have you ever noticed how grateful you are to see daylight again after coming through a long dark tunnel?' 'Well,' he'd say, 'Always try to see life around ya as if you'd just come out of a tunnel.”

            We miss the moment to which history has called us – the moment to vote, the moment to write the letters, to march, to organize – if we continually see ourselves as in the tunnel and cannot see the ways in which we are in the light of day and able to reach for freedom.  It is true that the political scene is not what we would hope for – it is far from perfect – but we have it in our power, together, in large enough number – one person ,two persons, three persons with a small website .. we have it in our power to bring the process out of the whatever tunnel it seems to be in and bring the political process back down to the scale it is supposed to be on – the scale of the people.  

            Joanna Macy, activist a teacher has a theory that deep change comes in three ways:  The first she calls Holding Actions.  Their purpose is to prevent further harm.  Holding actions are such things as protests, political and legislative work, voting, and civil disobedience.  Second there is the work of Understanding the roots of our problems and the development of creative, alternative structures and institutions (like NGO’s) in health, medicine, education, economics (like Community Supported agriculture).  Third, there is new perceiving.  There are ways that we may look within and know ourselves better so that we can grow in understanding and in perceiving the world in new ways with new eyes.  All three of these together allow us the work of democracy in the present, the expansion of democracy, and the deepening of our common bonds in the future. 

             This place is here for you, to set aside time to be in your own soul, and reflect and deepen your understanding – not because I deliver the truth from here – I only deliver my own truth – which I hope will provide you some service and perhaps a springboard for your own deepening.  This is a place to gather in classes, forums, discussion groups, and meetings to invent together ways of bringing more justice and deeper democracy into the world. In the meantime – there is one week to get registered to vote, one month to understand better one another’s passions and commitments, one month to build our hope and redirect the tone of the political discourse, one month to bring an element of a greater faith – the faith in the creative possibilities of the human – back into the dialogue.  And after that we have generations of work before us – it is our gift and our burden.  We are blessed to be able to do it together.

            Unitarian Universalism has been called the democratic faith – in part because our fifth principle says that we affirm and promote the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process in our congregations and in society at large.  Therefore, we have individual congregations with their own conscience and bylaws.  Therefore, we have elections for congregational leadership.  Therefore, we bestow the right to vote as a gift and burden of membership.  And all of those are great reasons why we are the democratic faith – but even more deeply we are the democratic faith because we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of persons – in that creative possibility in the human that can make of democracy a work of power, hope, justice and beauty.  Not by turning away from the evil that humans do – but by calling them toward the practice of democracy – the practice of the common good.

            In the practice of our faith, in the covenant of our congregation, in our engagement in the world we can be lead heart and mind by a driving yearning for toward the common good together we inscribe more justice and goodness into the book of history and extend the story of democracy further than previous generations might have dreamed – the path is not smooth – but that is what it means to live in the course of human events.

So this year – vote, tell others to vote, helps others get out to vote, and Rock the Nation, Rock the Vote.