HOPE AND COMMITMENT
by Judith Samuelson
January 30, 2005
Sarah, daughter number two, asks the provocative questions in the family. I suppose it comes from being younger than her sister Anna, and the need to question to be heard at the dinner table. Or maybe it's her inquiring mind and special gift of empathy. This question in particular made me pause.
I think she was 12 at the time. "Mom," she asked, "if you could live in any age, which one would you choose?"
Now, as both Sarah and her sister Anna know, I am a Luddite. If not a card-carrying member, I definitely tend in that direction. I am always complaining about technology in all forms. I actually believe—truth—that so-called time saving devices like washing machines and word processors and cell phones and palm pilots—have created more work and cost us more time than they eliminate. I also complain endlessly about creeping commercialization. I rail at noise and fast food and TV ads. I even refuse to buy Jiffy Pop, preferring to burn my own popcorn on the stove.
So when Sarah posed her question—and tending towards Romanticism, I naturally thought back before the turn of the last century, inspired by Little Women and Little House on the Prairie and too much Masterpiece Theatre, and images of the Waltz in long skirts, reading by candlelight and Meg Ryan falling in love with a Duke. But of course, I don't have servants and butlers or cooks, and my ancestors farmed and preached on the prairie—no gentry in the family tree—so after a brief flight to fancy, I told Sarah that I would choose my own generation.
When she asked why, I reminded her that it wasn't until my generation that women had the freedom to choose their path. To consider a wide range of professions. Whether or not to marry and have children. To me it had to be my generation—there was no other choice.
Then she asked a question I didn't anticipate—natural from her perspective. "Then why didn't I choose her generation?"—after all, the opportunities open to our children are even greater.
That is when the light-hearted exchange turned awkward. I knew the reason immediately, instinctively, but I didn't want to share it.
The fact is, as I look around the world, too often what I see is decline and despair, terror and waste. Natural disasters and disasters of our own making. Or so-called natural disasters that we may contribute to by our lack of respect for the commons, natural systems and the planet. Like many Blue Staters, I tend to see and describe the world in gaps, deficits and excesses. Growing gaps between rich and poor and between our needs and our resources. Deficits in our public will and long term view. Excessive power in the hands of the undeserving or moneyed interests or arrogant leaders. I worry about the lack of civility in Congress, the short supply of ethical leaders and excess of greed. I could go on, but you get the picture. So for all these reasons, I had to swallow hard when Sarah asked why I didn't choose to join her generation. In short, I feared we had peaked—that her class—my children's generation—has been given too tough an assignment to snare a passing grade. I was lacking basic hope about our future.
A month or two after this conversation I attended my first General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. I was new on the All Souls Board, my elder daughter, Anna, the true blue Unitarian in the family, wanted to go and she required an adult chaperone. It was close by—in Boston that year—and I thought it might be time to build more understanding of the religion I had acquired in my 30s, first to marry, and then to raise a family in what was, at least on paper, a Protestant-Jewish household.
I was perusing the Beacon Press exhibit at the conference trade show when a book title hit me like a flashing neon sign. I had not heard of the Author before, a man named Scott Russell Sanders, who, judging by the number of his books for sale was popular among Unitarians. It was the title of this particular book, "Hunting for Hope," that caught my eye. In the first chapter Sanders describes a conversation with his teenage son that cut me to the quick.
"You wouldn't understand," the son responds to his father's prodding about what was bugging him. Egged on, the son finally spills: "You're just so out of touch."
"With what?" Sanders asks.
"With my whole world. You hate everything that's fun. You hate television and movies and video games. You hate my music."
"I like some of your music, the father retorts; I just don't like it loud."
"You hate advertising," the son continues. Now he was on a roll. "You hate billboards and lotteries and developers and logging companies and big corporations. You hate snowmobiles and jet skis. You hate malls and fashions and cars."
"Why, because I wouldn't buy a Jeep?" the father retorts.
"Forget Jeeps. You look at any car and all you think is pollution, traffic, roadside crap. You say fast-food's poisoning our bodies and TV's poisoning our minds. You think the Internet is just another scam for selling stuff. You think business is a conspiracy to rape the earth."
"None of that bothers you?"
"Of course it does. But that's the world. That's where we've got to live. It's not going away just because you don't approve"..."Your view of things is totally dark. It bums me out. You make me feel the planet's dying and people are to blame and nothing can be done about it. There's no room for hope. Maybe you can get by without hope, but I can't. I've got a lot of living still to do. I have to believe there's a way we can get out of this mess. Otherwise what's the point? Why study, why work—why do anything if it's all going to hell?
* * *
If you read the rest of the book, you learn that this conversation and Sander's love for his son ignite a search for reasons to spread hope rather than despair. In a beautifully written narrative he tells stories of the restorative power of nature. Of the healing power of community. The importance of fidelity and faith. I agreed strongly with many of the things on his list; others failed to register for me, but it was the conversation with his son that spoke most powerfully. I feared the parental figure could be me.
In Sanders' case, his cynicism and dislike for the trappings of modern society had caused a riff between father and son. In my case, two smart, capable and patient daughters have tolerated my ranting and soap box lectures about the world going to hell in a hand basket. At least I think they have—yet as Sarah and I spoke that day, I realized in an instant that my world view—reflecting a strong puritanical instinct handed down by my New England bred mother and a long line of Lutheran ministers—which growing up in materialistic Southern California somehow never dislodged—coupled with liberal ideals, and the turmoil of a post-911 world—all this, as it dribbles out in overheard phone conversations and around the dining room table—was a heavy burden to lay on a teenager, and it had to change.
My exchange with Sarah and my encounter with Sanders' book took place several years ago. Now, unfortunately, if one went looking for Hope in 2001 and since, and tried to find it on the front page of the NYT, or for that matter, in virtually any other section of the paper, including the sports section with its regular features on drug use and overpaid athletes and costly stadiums, I am afraid one need to be prepared for disappointment. But that isn't the end of this story.
The good news is that holding hope is an internal game. Today, signs of hope and positive change are not found by the uninitiated. It's like the student of art who sees the landscape differently, because he or she is trained to look at the landscape differently than the unschooled. In any pursuit, study and acquired knowledge allow for a deeper appreciation of the subject matter. Hopefulness is created; it is created out of the desire to find and build hope. And it is important to build and sustain hope because creating and sustaining a vision of how things CAN be is the only way that real change takes place. So, its time to get cracking.
While I may tend towards a dark view of the world of late, I have never felt it is the result of bad people or the ill intent of others. Its not that I don't get angry, just ask my husband, Vic. But I think people act in accordance with their surroundings and the signals and incentives sent their way. A consultant I worked with used to say "the system in which we operate is perfectly designed for the outcomes we see."
On the other hand, I draw the line at the leaders and the powerful, able to influence or contribute to influencing the rules of the game and incentive system for everyone. In my day job at the Aspen Institute, I work with executives and business faculty on driving ethical questions and values based decisions into business schools and through the decision models used in business. Think of it as inviting the social scientists and divinity students into the hallways of the business school and mixing things up. So I have had lots of opportunity to observe both true leaders—which I define as people who act in the interests of the wider community including the generations who will come after us, vs. the merely powerful. And there are many examples of good leaders in every domain of society.
This summer, my husband Vic and I led a week-long family conference on Star Island, a rocky bit of Unitarian heaven off of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Our invited speaker for the week was David Cooperrider, a Professor at Case Western's Business School in Cleveland. By temperament shy and unassuming, David is sought out by everyone from business executives to the Dahli Lama to Kofi Annan as the guru of a methodology for organizational change called Appreciative Inquiry. Appreciative Inquiry has links to the rapidly growing field of positive psychology. The basic idea is that humans—and importantly the organizations and systems they create—respond more actively and forcefully to a well articulated positive vision—identifying what works well and acting on it—than to crisis or criticism or analysis of what's broken.
In Appreciative Inquiry, you probe for what is possible, what makes us most proud, what stirs our emotions and ignites our deepest reservoir of courage. The theory and practice involves working with large numbers of individuals to find the core beliefs and behaviors that support collaboration. For example, the same consultant I mentioned earlier began our meetings with business executives by saying, "What is the thing that we know is impossible to change, but that would make the biggest difference if we did?" Some of you are probably familiar with the data on kids and the amazing results that are achieved through consistent and positive reinforcement. Appreciate Inquiry is like that on a large scale. Emphasize only what your kid does right for a change and see what happens.
Now, please don't ask my kids how consistently I practice this theory in my own home, but I can say that I have seen the results in my work. There is no question but that business as well as government—with the right kind of leadership—responds more effectively to vision than to pending gloom. Remember John F. Kennedy's vision and challenge to land a rocket to the moon in 10 years? No problem. Why was Martin Luther King so effective?—because he paired his commitment to anti-racism with an eloquent vision of the City on a Hill. Successful business executives don't have time for doom and gloom, they are too busy inventing and competing and solving problems. Don't waste your time telling them how awful the situation is. Give them a problem, and why it matters to the business and get out of the way while they work to solve it.
Ironically, for me and my Luddite ways, technology also has an important role to play today in bringing about positive change. The Internet turns out to be a powerful tool for the good guys as well as the bad guys. Think back on the citizen led initiative to pass the UN treaty on land mines—a campaign that was so effective and powerful that it earned the Nobel Prize. In this historically unique and stunning example of driving change, the campaigners weren't governments or corporations or even well healed nonprofits. They were like-minded citizens—working across countries and continents and languages, linked by computers and probably IM-ing and e-mailing to a fare-the-well.
[And by the way, if you don't know how to do any of these things, I know where you can get a quick lesson from a wonderful group of young people who spend Sunday mornings about 50 feet above this sanctuary.]
So my hope for the future is fueled by the vision that committed people, acting and responding to a positive vision of change can make the difference they want to see in the world. As Margaret Mead is known to have said, "Indeed, it the only thing that ever has."
My hope gets its real wings from being a part of this extraordinary community of true believers at All Souls. Your commitment to task—first to understanding a problem—be it racism or homophobia or homelessness or the need for affordable housing or after school care, and then to putting the shoulder to the wheel in a committed and collective effort to serve and to bring about change, is all about creating hope. In some kind of chemical reaction, concern or even despair about our uncertain future converts into positive energy. Commitment to task generates hope and crowds out despair and cynicism. We have all seen it happen.
* * *
One of the curious things about the governance of this institution is that we hear more from the President of the congregation when he or she is about to step down than we do as we work to set the course for the next year. But it is a good time to reflect, and in the past year, we have had an opportunity to think not only about what it is that binds us together, but how we govern ourselves. I think I can speak for my seatmates up here in the [chancel] when I say that it has been a challenging, but thoroughly rewarding experience to represent the Congregation while it delves into the discussion of the Bond of Union. There have been difficult moments as well as downright hilarious ones. We have done things that disappoint and that deserve praise, were poorly executed and done well. And I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. I, like many of you, have found refreshing the serious debate and opportunity to know our pew-mates better. A number of people have commented to us that they have been energized by the discussion, and think it has served a useful purpose regardless of outcome, and that the opportunities to search our hearts and minds for what we believe should continue. I agree.
As for the Bond of Union itself, if I could write it all by myself in the quiet of this beautiful and spirit-filled sanctuary, I would say the following: First, this is our church and this is our moment. There will never be a better one to bring about the changes we envision for our church community, for our neighborhood, for our city, for our world. I would ask that we work to make our lives matter for our seatmates and those we care about, including those who have much less then we do. And I would state that we can accomplish more in community than we can alone. This means that as the largest, richest, best managed and most gifted Unitarian congregation in a generation, it is important to think about how to reach out and grow this denomination and faith, not just sustain the real estate and institution at 80th and Lexington. Not because the numbers matter per se, but because of what a stronger Unitarian denomination can make possible. Or bringing it home, what we might accomplish, working with like minded souls across the Park at 4th UU and in Brooklyn and uptown and down, to make this singular city shine a bit brighter for all our citizens.
In 1874, my Great Grandfather, Rev. Lars Peter Ahlquist, a newly minted minister schooled in Sweden, set out on the American prairie to perform the sacraments and bring hard working farmers back into the fold of the Swedish Lutheran church. I have visited some of the churches he founded in his years there, several still nurturing the descendents of early settlers in Nebraska and Iowa. Beautiful, peaceful places, each of them. Strong communities with deep values and tradition. Different in many respects than All Souls, but bearing the same hallmarks of what matters most—not the words, but the deeds.
LP didn't last in the plains. His missionary work wound down after he was drummed out of Nebraska during the fire and brimstone era of the 1870s by self-declared minister in his own congregation, preaching the Walldenstromian doctrine. I can only imagine the controversy and upheaval it must have caused in his community, where the church was the center of all communal life. And the heartbreak for him and for his long-suffering wife, Ida Marie, who buried two children on the prairie and left a third in a home for mentally disturbed children before retreating to New England with two other children in tow.
He eventually found his niche, rising to lead the entire East Coast synod of the Augustana Lutheran Church, but I have no doubt that the early decade of trial by fire is what made him a great leader. I know he must have been discouraged at times, but he could not have done the work he did without larger doses of hope than despair, and without firm resolve and deep commitment, and confidence that the work was worth the struggle.
I would like to close with the words of Dorothy Day:
"People say, what is the sense of our small effort.
They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.
A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts,words and deeds is like that.
No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless.
There's too much work to do."Amen!