The UU-UNO would like to remind all Unitarian Universalists that UN Sunday is coming up in less than 3 months! For those of you who may be unfamiliar with UN Sunday, it is a special service that many congregations across North America hold every year to recognize the strong ties between Unitarian Universalist principles and the United Nations’ mission of international cooperation, peace and justice. This year, the theme for UN Sunday is “Human Rights: Dignity and Justice for Us All”. We invite all of you to craft a service that centers around this theme. Try to make it as engaging as possible. Find engaging hymns, great music and interesting speakers to create a dynamic service.We also ask that-if possible-participating congregations donate their offering for that day to the UU-UNO’s important work.

In order to assist you in your efforts, we have prepared a packet of materials that you can use in your service. Copy and paste this link into your browser: http://uu-uno.org/un-sunday-resource-packet/un-sunday.html?Itemid=75

Then click on “Download UN Sunday Packet” – it’s only 2 megabytes!

We wish you the best of luck in organizing your UN Sunday service this year!

The UU-UNO would like to send its deepest condolences to the members and friends of the Tennessee Valley UU Church. They are in our hearts and minds.

We strongly urge you to visit the UUA’s website to donate directly to the congregation and the victims of shooting, or to find out more information about this tragic event.

Here’s a great example of what you can do to help build a culture of peace:

Instead of presents on her birthday, Joy Sullivan (above), a new UU-UNO Youth Envoy from Tallahassee, FL proposed having her friends and family make contributions to either an environmental organization or one working on peacebuilding in Rwanda, after being so moved by the film Sometimes in April. After working with the UU-UNO to come up with a few good organizations, she chose Women for Women International, a nongovernmental organization which has empowered over 153,000 women survivors of war to move toward economic self-sufficiency with their year-long program of direct aid, rights education, job skills training and small business development through microcredit loans and other program services. Their Rwanda work is a great example of women overcoming every obstacle and creating new lives after the horror of the 1994 genocide when an estimated 800,000-1 million people were killed in about 100 days. Through their programs, women have received better health care, began their own businesses, learned how to read and write, and learned valuable job skills.

Joy held her birthday party last weekend and through her efforts and the generosity of her friends and family, she was successful in raising $162 for Women for Women International! She is an inspiration to other youth and peace advocates and we congratulate her on a great initiative!

” As a company that has been supporting peace initiatives for thirty years, Ben & Jerry’s wants to recognize the outstanding work that these Peace Pioneers do. If you or someone you know is working to create positive change, inspire others and further the cause of peace and justice, we want to know about it. Tell us, in 200 words or less, what you or your friend is doing to bring about peace.

To give them their “just desserts,” the 2 Grand Prize Winners will each receive:

• a $10,000 donation to the peace organization of their choice
• a trip for two to New York to be part of the launch of our Imagine Whirled Peace campaign

Just like efforts for peace, you’ve got to act now! Contest ends on May 9th!”

Sounds like a great contest and a fantastic place for all of you to showcase the work you’re doing to build a culture of peace. The application form can be found at http://www.benjerry.com/features/imagine/peace_pioneer/.

CONTEST ENDS FRIDAY, MAY 9 – sign up quick!

A plug for a friend’s organization working on a peacebuilding project in Burundi’s Riyugi Province. Many of you play team sports and so you might relate. After a few trips to the province, Heather has begun working with one of the soccer clubs there to secure uniforms, equipment, cleats, etc for their youth teams, who are currently playing barefoot and with sparse equipment. She hopes to create partnerships between some teams here and over there and help build up their programs! Youth usually love helping youth so if you’re interested and want more info, check out her website http://burundikids.wordpress.com/ or email office@uu-uno.org and I can put you in touch!

This is a very grassroots initiative that is going well and its first fundraiser will be in New York on May 17 in the Lower East Side for those of you of legal drinking age who want to find out more about the project. In the spirit of good sportsmanship, my sports league will be sponsoring the event to get the ball rolling!

To those interested – a teleseminar directly related to our Spring Seminar for anyone to participate in. Please email office@uu-uno.org for phone-in instructions and access code. Thanks!

Building a Culture of Peace:
How Can UUs Lead the Way?

You are warmly invited to join in a series of informal discussions by teleconference featuring noted UU leaders and scholars, on the topic of how UUs can provide leadership in building a culture of peace. This presentation is sponsored by the UU Peacemaking Congregational Study/Action Core Team.

Seminar #2 – “Strategic Options for Building a Culture of Peace” – presentation by Sharon Welch

8 pm Eastern Time, Monday, April 28

Presenter: Sharon Welch, provost of Meadville Lombard Theological Seminar, and author of several books including After Empire: the Art and Ethos of Enduring Peace. Sharon is a leader in the UU Peacemaking Congregational Study/Action Issue Program. Her new book, Real Peace, Real Security will be published very soon.

Moderator: Judy Morgan, CSAI Core Team

Host: Mac Goekler, CSAI Core Team

Without further ado…

Please find below the homily given by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull at the worship service on Saturday, April 5, 2008.

“Peace Work”
A Homily by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
UU-UNO Intergenerational Seminar
New York, NY
April 5, 2008

It’s good to be here. It’s good to be here with you as we think, speak, plan, strategize, worship, sing, sleep a few hours or so, and hold silences, because how can we not be silenced by what we know still rages in our oh so fragile world. Violence brims, propelled by rhetoric that conscripts the language of faith and the psychology of fear in this slice of history in which you and I happen to be alive. How can we not be silenced by what we know rages in each of us when we turn away, too busy to notice, or when we close the ears of our hearts to the story of another and become complicit with a nuanced lack of reverence for one who stands before us, or when we heaven forbid gather in a circle of self-righteousness because how could we cool UUs not be right even though our affinity bends somewhat to the left?

Peace work is hard work, humbling work, harrowing work. It calls us to remember, to reflect, to listen, to move out of our comfort zone into our conscience zone, and to engage in acts of conscience. Peace work is hard work.

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” we read in the Second Testament’s Gospel According to Matthew, “for they will be called children of God.” At one point in my life, I had all the “blesseds” memorized:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit….
Blessed are those who mourn…
Blessed are the meek…
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…”

“Blessed are the merciful…
Blessed are the pure in heart…
Blessed are the peacemakers.”

And that’s not conclusive. It’s reported that Jesus, that scruffy thirty-something who lived and taught radical love two millennia ago, added a few more “Blesseds,” but these are quite enough for this morning.

These are words that “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” as relentlessly as any I can imagine. Surely his message caused some squirming in the halls of power for those who caught wind of what Jesus was saying. Surely we’re not intended by the powers that be in our own day to take this guy seriously, anymore than we’re intended to take to heart that seasonal carol of angelic voices, “Peace on earth, good will to all!”

Peace work is hard work. It costs us. Jesus knew this. So did another prophet among us who spoke radical words of peace and universal love. Forty-one years ago yesterday, Dr. Martin Luther king, Jr. invoked the congregants in the expansive marble sanctuary of this city’s Riverside Church to the hard work of peace amid a time of war not so unlike the time that is ours. King was moving from a message of racial equality at home into a message that linked oppressions within and across nations. He saw the powerful of the earth wielding unabated violence against the powerless of the earth, and he spoke out. “We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now,” he roared, hauntingly aware that his own time was running out. “We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world—a world that borders on our doors.” ….echoes of “Blessed are the peacemakers…blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” blessed are those who are downwind of power unchecked. It was not a mainstream message. Truth-telling prophets sometimes pay with their lives. Jesus did. One year to the day after his words rang out at Riverside Church, King did. Forty years ago yesterday, King did.

Peace is hard work. It calls us like the prophet Jonah was called to places we’d rather not visit. It calls us like the prophet Micah to “do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly.” And it calls us to know when to voice our outrage and when to hold our rage altogether in the strength of containment—like the Buddhist monk who stood on a late September evening six and a half years ago in that same marble expanse where King had spoken. How can I forget sitting there, with my husband, Dan, and a few thousand other New Yorkers as Thich Nhat Hanh recalled the devastation of his country at the hands of this one, recalled his anger, recalled his choice, grueling as it was, to hold his anger in the palms of his hands, recalled his decision to come to this country and plead with our leaders to change course. On a September evening when hearts were raw and minds confused, Thich Nhat Hanh looked us in the eye and offered timely counsel:

“I believe very strongly that the American people have a lot of wisdom and compassion within themselves. I want you to be your best when you begin to act, for the sake of America and for the sake of the world. With lucidity, with understanding and compassion, you will turn to the people who have caused a lot of damage and suffering to you and ask them a lot of questions.”

We know now, surely we know now, that “the people who have caused a lot of damage and suffering” isn’t just “them.” It’s us again, once again. What questions do we ask of ourselves as people of faith and as a nation whose rhetoric and reality of practice have rarely worshipped together? What questions do we dare ask of ourselves?

How about that core question of whether violence and war are ever justified? It’s the leading question of an issue that rose through our Unitarian Universalist Association’s social witness process and was adopted at our General Assembly almost two years ago as a Congregational Study/Action Issue for at least four years of committed attention. Our Peacemaking Congregational Study/Action issue begins heavy duty:

“Should the Unitarian Universalist Association reject the use of any and all kinds of violence and war to resolve disputes between peoples and nations and adopt a principle of seeking just peace through nonviolent means?”

Take a deep breath and remember to exhale! Some of you here this morning are on the Core Team mobilized through our Commission on Social Witness that shepherds our social witness process. It’s a compelling team of disparate Unitarian Universalists who partner with congregations across the country for study and action, reflection and discernment. How many of you are from the more than 120 congregations engaged in this issue? [pause] You’re doing amazing work, you are. You’ve rolled up your sleeves and headed right for the kitchen in taking on the kaleidoscopic stuff of peacemaking. But that question that heralds the verbiage of the issue as posed remains as the elephant in our sanctuaries.

As adopted, the text states that:
“Historically, [we as] Unitarian Universalists have agreed with the theory and practice of “just war,” or use of force in self-defense to preserve the life of another person. However, we have also supported peace and disarmament in over eighty resolutions since our merger in 1961. We offer counseling for conscientious objector status. We call on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Our principles are models for peacemaking yet we act as if violence is more effective than nonviolence in certain situations. As a religious denomination, we need to clarify our position and apply our covenant to affirm and promote the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”

The either/or of “just war” v. “pacifism” is a slippery slope; yet we choose our slopes, and flat terrain is a non-choice. Violence as I understand it, as I have experienced it, as I have enabled it, as I have practiced it with a closed heart and mind, is toxic and intoxicating. Violence is addictive. From Mi Lai to Memphis, from Golgotha to Guantanamo, from cool glance to cold murder, violence is addictive.

I know in my heart of hearts that if someone dear to me were being threatened with lethal harm by another, I am wholly capable of using lethal force against the person threatening that harm, all 5’3” of me. I would do it! Where do I stop? How vulnerable am I—liberal, self-righteous Unitarian Universalist I—to the forces that would “justify” my complicity in violence that is violence that is violence?

The notion of just war is a seductive myth. The notion of redemptive violence is an even more seductive myth. Yet pacifism is a misnomer, as explained by theologian Walter Wink. Pacifism carries the assumptions of passivity and non-resistance to oppression. While “just war” invites us to descend the slippery slope of rationalizing any lethal conflict as having a “just cause,” as waged with a “peaceful intention,” and engaged in as a “last resort”—to name just a few “just war” criteria—the way of Jesus, claims Wink, is “beyond just war and pacifism.” The way of Jesus and of King and of Thich Nhat Hanh is “nonviolent resistance.”

Wink proposes that we scuttle the language of “just war” criteria for the language of reducing or eradicating any and all forms of violence. Nonviolent resistance is neither passive nor placating. “Nonviolence,” writes Wink, “is highly aggressive, and Jesus,” he argues, “is the best example of it.” He didn’t strike back; he talked back. He called domination for what it was in terms savvy and strategic. He made the powers squirm in their thrones and their pews and reminded folks that thrones and pews are ever interchangeable.

We know there are other prophets of peace—all the invisible women and men and children and youth who are doing heavy-duty soul-stretching peace work day after day after day. Many of you are among them. All of us are called.

All of us are called to the hard work of peace, because what is the alternative? Shall we be among the bystanders who believe we can do nothing? Shall we be among the deniers who opt for so many diversions we’re doomed to remorse at best and complicity at worst? Or shall we sign on to the tough-minded, open-hearted, persistent, passionate company of blessed peacemakers?

“Blessed are the peace makers, for they will be called children of God.” Just what we need, to be God’s offspring, but here we are, plunked into the miracle of our lives and the possibility that we might, we just might, live up to such a blessing. Amen.
__________________________________________________________
Sources

The Book of Jonah and Micah, The Bible, Revised Standard Version.

The Gospel According to Matthew, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Matthew 5:1-9

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam,” Address delivered to the Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, at Riverside Church, New York City, 1967 – http://www.africanamericans.com/MLKjrBeyondVietnam.htm

“Peacemaking,” The Congregational Study Action Issue (CSAI) for 2006 – 2010, http://www.uua.org/socialjustice/issuesprocess/currentissues/44160/resourceguide/44160.shtml

Thich Nhat Hanh, “A Public Talk by Thich Nhat Hanh at the Riverside Church, New York City,” September 25, 2001. http://www.theconversation.org/essence.html

Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1992.

Almost everyone at Spring Seminar must have seen a man walking around the seminar, crouching behind seated people, perching on the sides of the stage, and popping up in other areas with a giant camera lens, documenting our Spring Seminar with gorgeous photos. Unless you go to his church in Brooklyn, what you don’t know is that Rev. Tom Martinez went home and wrote a sermon on his seminar experience. Please click on the “Read More” link below to find his sermon for all to enjoy.

“I Was There”
Rev. Tom Martinez
All Souls Bethlehem Church
Brooklyn, NY
April 6, 2008

You all know I like movies. I like the way they draw you in and enable you to experience other times and places. Too often movies are primarily an escape, without a much plot or layered meaning. When a film is a true work of art, life’s deeper dimensions are opened up: the mystery of suffering, the joy and fragility of existence.

At the Spring Conference of the UU-UNO we watched a true work of art: Sometimes in April, directed by Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck. Watching that film was what will stay with me I suspect for the rest of my life. It’s of course impossible for anyone to capture or in any way do justice to the enormity of the Rwandan Genocide. Simone Monasebian, the attorney who served on the international criminal court, tried to put it into perspective by saying that it would be like having three 9/11 tragedies every day for a hundred days. Phillip Gourevetch points out that the killing of an estimated 800,000 people in three months is roughly at a rate three times that of the Nazi Holocaust.

While the enormity of the tragedy is incomprehensible, Peck grounds the mind-numbing statistics in the real-life dramas of two brothers, Augustin, who was in the state-sanctioned army and Honore, who was a popular radio DJ later accused of fueling the genocidal fire with hateful diatribes against the Tutsi minority.

In terms of the ethnic and political conflict the brothers, as Hutus, are on the same side. But the brother in the army is married to a Tutsi. As the horror unfolded people with Tutsis in their families were faced with a Sophie’s Choice kind of situation where they either killed their Tutsi relative or turned them over to the bloodthirsty mob.

Augustin loves his Tutsi wife dearly and is willing to risk his life to save hers. But because his name has appeared on lists and it’s known that he’s married to a Tutsi, it would be suicidal for him to try and make it through the roadblocks. So he begs his brother to try and get her out. They load up the car and Honore does his best. They get through a couple of road blocks but then they run into trouble. Tensions mount as you sense something horrible is going to happen….

Peck, the director, does an artful job of suggesting the terror of the situation and then moving on, not allowing us to know how complicit or heroic Honare was. We learn what actually happened over time through the eyes of Honare’s brother, Augustin. So at the critical instant the drama shifts away from the roadblock to other aspects of the story. We know only that Augustin’s wife and children died and that Honare was arrested months later having fled the country.

The film begins with Augustin receiving a letter from his brother, who’s in prison, scheduled to go before the tribunal for his complicity in the genocide. He doesn’t want to go to his brother. He doesn’t want to face the pain of all that happened. And yet he can’t turn his back on his brother either. And deep down he knows that if he runs from his past he’ll be forever cut off from the deepest dimensions of his soul and psyche.

I want to say more about the film itself, but I also want to say a little bit about the experience of watching it, beginning with a confession. The night we watched it we were supposed to break up into small groups and discuss it. But instead of doing that I headed home. I told myself that was because Marian was away writing and I had to get back to Aidan. But the truth is after seeing the film I just wanted to be with Aidan.

Of course God does have a sense of humor. Marian’s brother, Luke, was babysitting Aidan and when I got back home that night they were both on the couch Aidan watching—without Marian’s approval—the Matrix part III. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Matrix trilogy. They’re actually some profound ideas to be found there but to see it you have to look past the constant shooting of mechanized alien invaders to see it. So after being blown away by the film about the Rwandan genocide I got back to a very relaxing night of machine gun fire.

That is, of course, part of the challenge of peacemaking: figuring out how to work towards a more peaceful world in the midst of the crazy reality we find ourselves in. This was underscored by the fact that the conference coincided with the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, so there were continuous references and reminders of that terrible day. More than simply mourning his loss, the nature of the conference required that we take a good hard look at the issues King wrestled with as related to the issues we face today.

He of course battled for Civil Rights, then became an outspoken critic of his era’s unjust war. At the time he was gunned down he was beginning to speak out about economic social justice and the unacceptable working conditions of the sanitation workers in Memphis. His carefully choreographed movements from domestic to international to domestic issues reflected his underlying sense that we are all ultimately part of one human family. He saw the connections between the kids blown up in the south and the kids captured in the famous LIFE photograph running naked as bombs of flaming napalm destroyed their village.

The ongoing unfolding of this vision of one human family is the foundation of any and all peacemaking. This notion gets expressed beautifully in the one of the most powerful scenes in the film about the Rwandan genocide. A bloodthirsty mob comprised of soldiers and henchmen storms the gates of an all-girls private Catholic school and chaos erupts. By this time many thousands off people have been massacred and there’s an awareness that a wave of violence is sweeping across the country. The teachers frantically try to explain to the children that they may have to divide themselves up according to their Hutu or Tutsi ethnicity—knowing as they say this that the Tutsi children face imminent death. With gunshots going off in the background one young girl says to her teacher, “no, we refuse to be divided. We are sisters.”
The teacher, who is to be one of the only survivors of the massacre, asks, “Do you know what you are saying?”

They do know and when the soldiers come crashing into the room they refuse to cooperate and all of them are killed. (The teacher was knocked unconscious and mistaken for dead.)

Surely there is no ultimate justification for this kind of man-made horror. As a species our task is to shine the light on our warring madness, to see and confess and redeem the moral darkness of the soul so that, in the end, the scales of fate might be tipped ever so slightly in the direction of life and love. But as we engage in that process, these profound moral insights that are born from the crucible of such great suffering must be allowed to light the way. We cannot turn away from the horror, for if we do we leave unanswered the questions about the west’s deafening silence in the face of genocide. Even now as we lament the bungling of the international situation through films and tribunals, another genocide is taking place in Sudan.
One of the most powerful comments about the movie, Sometimes in April, came from one of the youth at the seminar who said, “I wonder if someday we’ll watch another movie about how we didn’t do anything about the genocide in Darfur.”

That young person’s comment begs the question: what can we do? What can we do in the face of the enormous injustices of the world?

It’s an important question, possibly the most important question we can ask. And before I add my two cents by way of an answer let me say that there are as many answers to that question as there are people, since we each have something to contribute to the unfolding vision of justice that flows down from the mountaintop like a might river. I also want to say by way of preface that the conference I attended called our attention to all kinds of peacemaking resources on the web that we can all draw from. We can also support the work of the UU-United Nations Office either financially or by volunteering.

Now: my two cents. I don’t know if you noticed the bulletin cover, but if you didn’t you might want to take a look at it now. This is an image that comes from the cartoon exhibit at the United Nations, which, as you can see, pokes fun at our warring madness. The larger message here is to retain your sense of humor, which may sound like a stupid thing to say in the face of overwhelming pain and suffering, but I think upon closer scrutiny the ability to laugh is linked with the ability to heal and it’s when we start taking ourselves too seriously that we stop being of use to anyone.

As an aside I have to recommend the cartoon exhibit (which is free by the way) to everyone and if there’s interest I’ll be happy to lead an outing to the UN. (I have to go back anyway because Aidan didn’t like the color of his t-shirt.) But seriously, the images are not only funny and insightful, downright brilliant, really, but they tap into something we talk a lot about here at ASBC: namely, the power of the arts in the larger battle for social justice.

We participate in that same fine tradition when we host the open mic with a soul here at the church. The power of the arts to sustain us along the way is fresh in my mind in part because of the closing ceremony at the UU seminary yesterday. Two young performers closed us out, one a spoken word poet, and the other a folksinger. The spoken word poet looked like he was about ten but not thirty seconds into his poem I felt myself lifted off the ground and I could tell it was something everyone felt. He swayed with the power of his vision and railed against the war and the fools that led us into it. When he was done the room erupted with applause but he was already outside the room, bowing in thanks but not even basking in it at all. Then this young woman comes out and sings an equally beautiful and moving song—she happens to be in the neighborhood so I’m gonna see if I can get her to come and sing.

But perhaps the best example of the power of the arts comes from the film I’ve been talking about, Sometimes in April. The film ends a vignette drawn from the truth and reconciliation process. Several men accused of killing the children at the private girls school are standing in front of a group of villagers. There crimes are stated and then the person facilitating the process says, “does anyone recognize any of these men?” There’s a deathly silence and then a woman rises and you see she’s the teacher that survived the massacre. “I recognize these men,” she says. “I was there.”

All in all, it was a great conference. I know, because I was there. Amen.

The UU-UNO has its own facebook group and a couple of others have created one as well as a follow-up to the Spring Seminar. Please check them out at:

UU-UNO – http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2210980722

Youth for Peace (started by Kelly Pryde and Christy Samuels): http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24248153112

If anybody else has created groups on facebook, post them so people can join!