My Parents Have No Children

Early in his account of taking Salesman to Beijing, Arthur Miller writes: "Our cultures and languages set up confusing sets of signals and these prevent us from communicating and sharing one another's thoughts and sensations, but...at the deeper levels where this play lives we are joined in a unity that is perhaps biological...." His is an interesting and common point—that whatever it is, there is something in all of us, as human beings, that unites us across our differences. My sermon today is on that point, but I'm not sure I always agree with him. And I'm not sure we do as a church—though if we do, then how we are obliged to live that out is an important question for us right now.

When I lived in Greece, over 10 years ago now, I spent a lot of time in a very small mountain village in the Peloponnesus, near Kalamata, renowned for its olives. In this village there were about 200 people, most of them with an elementary-level education or less. Most of them were elderly, only three children lived in the village, because it had no economic opportunity for my generation so folks my own age were living in cities, mostly in Athens. In the village, many of the older women were widows and wore the traditional black. People had cars, but also donkeys and I was as likely to see the one as the other, carrying people down the street. I used to stay with a friend and her grandmother, in a house with no running water and electricity only in one room, built for the grandmother by the grandfather before their marriage, out of stones and mortar, and white-washed with turquoise-blue shutters. He was long dead, but her grandmother resolutely refused to wear black, and got away with it because her husband had been the headman of the village in his day, and she had a lot of cachet as a result. Her Greek-American granddaughter Katerina, named for her, visiting on a regular basis from Athens in her spiffy black BMW didn't hurt either.

Anyway, these were the people I grew to know well, and love. And they grew to know me, though never quite to understand me. I wasn't Greek at all? No Greek relatives? Well then, what was I doing in their country? Why did I come? What did my parents think of this situation? Where was my family from? HALF-Jewish? Huh—there were Jews in Greece, people thought they were just fine, just so I knew. Where was I from? Boston? Was that anywhere near Los Angeles?

But some of the conversations were as complicated as they were comic or charming. One of the early ones was a stumper, and it happened a few times, in pretty much the same way, with some village folks. "Do your parents have any children?" they asked. "Do my parents have any children?" I echoed, dumbfounded. "Yes, do your parents have any children?" "Well, um, yes, there was, uh, me, of course ... (they nodded encouragingly) ... and um, my sister (uh huh) ... so that would make two, yes, two children my parents have."

"But do they have any children?" The word they were using was pedia, which means exactly "children" and is where we get our words for children's medicine: pediatrician, etc. We went around on this question a couple of times, and somehow, finally, I got it. "Do you mean do my parents have any sons?" The word for son is different, yios. Yes, they nodded, sons. Oh. "Well then, I guess, uh, no, my parents did not have any sons, any children."

Oh, that was too bad. But perhaps I had a man, did I have a man? No, I did not have a man (though in fact I did, I was secretly dating a guy from the village, hence my frequent visits after the first). But my sister, didn't she perhaps have a man? No, my sister didn't have a man either (this was true, she was going though a dry spell). Well, but my parents were healthy, our family was well? Yes (with relief), our family was well, my parents were healthy. Well (with relief on their part as well), that's something then.

Greece is a very patriarchal culture, the women rule the household and the men rule everything else. And the villages are very involved in that traditional system. None of that was what I was used to, the lack of education, the homogeneity, the unabashed prejudices and traditional values...and a lot of it didn't appeal. The blatant sexism especially was sometimes hard to swallow—and most powerfully when I uttered that sentence, according to their terms, no my parents didn't have any children—none that really counted, anyway.

But there was a lot that did appeal. I had gone to live in another country, after all. I was supposed to be experiencing life on their terms, that was the point. The sexism wasn't great, but the warm welcomes and open curiosity and afternoon siesta and caring ways were really great. The respect for the elderly, the family and intergenerational bonds that sometimes constrained but always supported, the enormous strength and endurance of those people, the fun they had and shared with me, and finally, despite all the differences, this half-Jewish, not Greek young woman with no man and a decent accent and a crazy religion that no one ever heard of which translated into Greek as "Pan-Cosmic Monotheism"...they grew to know me and care for me, fed me in their houses, welcomed me at their summer festival, improved my Greek, let me help harvest olives in December though they were sure I wasn't up to it—and owned up when I proved them wrong.

They taught me a lot, and changed me, and my experiences there are a big part of what impelled me into UU ministry. Our differences challenged us, but their forthrightness and curiosity freed me to be likewise, and our mutual interest which developed, across differences into caring, allowed us to bridge, not change, but bridge and learn from, our differences.

Living in Greece was by far my most powerful experience of multiculturalism, and I expect will remain so. I got a lot from it, and probably the most important thing was a comfort with people who think or believe really differently from me, with people I disagree with. Another thing I got was an ability—maybe good, maybe bad—to disagree with someone on principle, but like them personally.

I was lucky because this happened while I was, after all, in someone else's country. I was expecting things, and people, to be different. And since I wanted to be there, and experience difference, I was on the spot to rise to the occasion and make the best of the differences I encountered—to eat strange food, to respond graciously to well-meant inquiries, to grow from my encounters with another culture. On my own turf, I'm not always good at that, perhaps because it is my own turf. But my experience in Greece reminds me that it's possible and that I can do it, and that sometimes lasting gifts and understandings come from trying to get all I can from multicultural encounters.

I tell the story, because I think it illustrates the challenge facing not just me, perennially, but us all, now. Multiculturalism is not just a challenge for our congregation with other cultures and faith traditions, it is also a challenge within our congregation with our range of beliefs and heritages and needs, and it is a challenge beyond our congregation for our denomination. It is our challenge because we talk, more than any other faith, together and in each of our congregations, about tolerance and welcome and diversity as values we believe in and live out as Unitarian Universalists.

In particular for us there are three challenges right now within the church. All three have always been here, but two are particularly present to us now, and they are the ones we are speaking about. The third is a perennial challenge, and it's one we don't talk much about as a church.

The first of the two spoken challenges is what to do with our Muslim neighbors, particularly the Ahmadiyya mosque up the street. After September 11th last year, they were threatened and targeted. They responded to the threats and persecution by reaching out to neighboring congregations, including us, seeking to build relationships and mutual understanding. They are still reaching out. They want a relationship with us, and they like us.

Last year in a sermon I mentioned to you that I was concerned not about how things would work out between us generally, that much as there are always essential truths that bind us all as human beings, there are still differences, major differences, in what we believe is right and therefore how we live. Our congregation seemed pretty enthusiastic about our first encounters, but as we met repeatedly, those differences surfaced. It wasn't the theological differences that seemed to bother us, it was the social ones. We disagree fundamentally about rights and realities of gays and lesbians, about the role and treatment of women, about authority in a faith community. And it was not the conservative, traditional, hide-bound Ahmadiyyans who shied away as we encountered those differences, it was us. I got emails and conversations and meetings with a number of you who expressed concern or offense or mistrust of them, based on our interactions.

I don't know what to do about that. They knew we honor gays and lesbians in this church, and that it makes us proud to be such a faith community, and discussed this among themselves, and came to visit us and brought their children. They heard our criticism of the way women are treated, explained their perception, always respected me as the religious leader of this church, welcomed women into the male part of their worship space. They have no problem with the authoritarian ways their leaders may act in—we do.

They have called us this fall to ask about getting together again. One of their women leaders has called about a gathering of just women, theirs and ours. I've been stalling, because I don't know what to say, and it is not my decision to make. What do we want to do? No one here has yet asked me this fall what we're doing next with the Ahmadiyyans or offered to work on something or had an idea for an event. We're just silent on it. Maybe it's off our radar screen already. We've sure got a lot on our plate anyway as a church.

But I am recalling the issue this morning because I think that at least we ought to have some understanding of what we are or aren't doing with the Ahmadiyyans and why. When we say we welcome diversity and are tolerant, what does that mean? We welcome liberal diversity, from atheists to agnostics, and democrats to green party members? I'm the first person to say some people are not welcome among UU's because their principles violate our own—neo-nazis, satan worshippers. But I'm not sure devout Muslims, who preach love for all, hatred for none, and who are neither too offended nor too righteous about their own beliefs to associate with people like us who really disagree with them, count as anathema to us UU's, people to whom we must close ourselves. Transformation only comes in encounters with difference, that is the promise and imperative of multiculturalism as a goal. If we grow to understand them better, and value them more, and they us...isn't that what we say we believe in and work for?

Our world's religious and political violence and fanaticism reveal an important dynamic: separatism is the foundation of extremism. Separatism is the foundation of extremism. When we rope ourselves off from others, and say we're better, and we're offended by their wrongness and will not associate with such...that doesn't sound like UU'ism to me, what sounds like is some other religions that many of us came out of. The imperative of multiculturalism, what makes it good, valuable, essential, especially now, is what it stands against: separatism.

The second challenge is whether we can open ourselves up to the deaf community, which we are beginning to talk a lot about. It's a serious question, and another multiculturalism question, a question for all of us, whether we're interested or not. We have folks among us who need us, and if we want to be here for them, and to reach out beyond our more conventional membership, it's going to take some extra investment, emotional and spiritual as much as financial, investment. It means some things will change around here—are already changing. I've got to get working on my services and sermons earlier in the week, in order to give interpreters a preview of what they'll need to translate.

We all need to learn some words, at least "hello"—just like when we go to a foreign country. At Catoctin last weekend, a bunch of us started—unfortunately I can't remember all the helpful words myself but I do remember lion—"lion" (sign it). I'll have to keep working on it. I'll have to change myself a bit—we'll all have to change ourselves a bit, if we want to reach out and offer the riches of this church and this faith to others. Change is interesting, but it's not always comfortable. How do we feel about knowing not only the words but also the signs to Spirit of Life? How do we feel about being unsure of how to communicate with someone, about worrying if we say or do the wrong thing? One comfort: multicultural encounter is not a one way interaction; it's an exchange, one that offers more than we would probably anticipate to all of us—but that will certainly ask of us as well.

The third, unspoken challenge, is race, which we don't talk much about. I don't know why we don't talk about it here. Certainly we've got a variety of races and cultural backgrounds in this congregation. But this church is unlike any other UU congregation I've ever served in that we don't resemble our surrounding community—we're a lot less diverse, though we're a lot more diverse than the other UU churches I've served. Still, race doesn't seem like the elephant in the room—it doesn't feel like a source of tension here. Some of us are one color, some another. Some of us come from one history, or one part of the country, some another. Like our religious backgrounds. Like our family histories.

If we're really that comfortable, if we're all that comfortable, that's really good. But it might also be good to make our comfort, and our understandings regarding the place of racial and ethnic diversity in our congregation, something we speak more about—so that we know where we stand, why we're comfortable, whether we really are comfortable. We ought to know more about how we each feel about that kind of diversity around and in us, and what we want, as a church, to do about it. Those of us who look like each other on the outside, don't know how it feels to come here looking different, whether it feels good or okay or not. This is partly my fault—I don't talk about it much from the pulpit either. But I'd like to know more about how other people feel on this issue, and most of all, to know we're doing the best we can to make this place truly welcoming to all who hear our call.

This is a time when issues of how we make contact with difference really matters. We have a terrible person targeting us with a long-range rifle and utter cold-bloodedness, regardless of race, age, place or time. Our country's leaders are voting to go to war with a nation that has often been most "other": most different, most incomprehensible, to war with them again—and what that will do to them and us and our relations in the world is at best questionable, and at worst devastating, for all.

These issues matter to us. At the 9/11 memorial service a month ago, this is some of what you wrote:

• La Paz
• Let us light the way to a better world.
• Let us transform the lethargy of our sadness to energetic creativity.
• The past is broken, but hope for the future, and it shall be repaired.
• It's all about TOLERANCE.
• Life is short, make haste to love.
• Make every moment count.
• A prayer for open eyes, open minds, open hearts.
• May we be righteous in our loving and celebrate the beauty of life around us, and all life that has come before us.
• Live life as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
• We are one. Let us soar.
• Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
• Love and nonviolence ... justice for all.
• We have such beautiful strength.
• There is only fear and love...choose love.
• May there be peace on earth. Let it begin with me.
• Be kind and considerate with each other.
• We have today.
• Love—don't be afraid—love madly.

At the end of his book, when he is leaving to return to America, Arthur Miller concludes:

"At some point in our milling around for our last farewells for what reason I have no idea, I felt a kind of despair; maybe it was a fear that when all was said and done I did not know what I suppose I had come...to find out—what my play really sounded like to the Chinese, and what in their heart of hearts these actors had made of it. In a word, the old opacity of 'China' was once again descending over my vision. I know the audiences laugh in just about the same places as we do in the West, and I have seen many of them weeping for Willy, so maybe my questions don't matter.... So I will try to console myself with our having met and together created a kind of house, and a family, and a struggle to live, on the plain of imagination where indeed it is possible to share everything we have come to be."

His questions do matter—and they matter for us. What is life like for all of us, for each of us, and what do we make of it, and need for it, from each other? Religious community is another kind of house, family, struggle for life. We aspire to that plain of imagination where indeed it is possible to share everything we have come to be—but multiculturalism assures us what we have come to be is different from person to person, from one place or reality to another, and that there is more than one path that can bring us to that plain.

What do we believe? Bound by our beliefs, what must we do to work against self-righteousness, separatism, uncertainty or prejudice in ourselves to live up to our faith, to be open, tolerant, welcoming?

Amen.