HUU Sermon Archives

“Pacifism: Iceberg or Titanic”

Merle Wenger
October 10, 2004

A Service dedicated to World Peace

Chalice Lighting: An excerpt from The Cure at Troy

by Seamus Heaney

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

A Meditation: “Finding My Garden in New York City” by Merle Wenger Oct 8, 2004

What does it mean to respect the inherent worth and dignity of every human being? I was in New York City for three days this week, three days away from my work, and during that time I pondered these issues of war and peace. I revisited ground zero, felt the emptiness of death lingering there--somehow connected in my brain with a certain element of bondage that I associate with capitalism. I then crossed the harbor and visited with Lady Liberty for the first time in my life, and thought she looked just like that face I had seen so many times on television, silver dollars and the like. She did indeed make me feel free, the way she thrusts forth that flaming torch, held high above her head, outstretched to light the way, welcoming all who come through the harbor, perched up on her 11-point-star pedestal, that once served as the walls of a fort, that we Americans built on that island previously inhabited by Indians. My thoughts traversed many miles, many continents, thousands of years. The tour boats arriving at Liberty Island every half-hour were full.

Since I love the garden, I saved a three-hour trip to the Botanical Gardens of New York, up in the Bronx, as my final side trip. It took about an hour to travel first by foot from the Statue of Liberty to Wall Street and the financial district, and then by subway to the B & B I was staying at next to the Community UU church on 35th Street between Park and Madison. From there I walked through downtown Manhattan, to Grand Central Station. By the time I boarded the Metro-North train to the Bronx, I had probably passed more people than live in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County; I was ready to sit back and relax for this 30 minute trip.

As I departed from the center of this exhilarating “Grand Shrine of Capitalism City” I realized that throughout the day, my consciousness, not unlike this tunneled train I was riding underground on, was being pulled like a piece of string, through a variety of cultures and ideals that have come to give America her distinct character of offering open arms to those seeking freedom of religion, financial self-sufficiency.

Joe cautioned me to be careful going through the Bronx: not fully understanding how I could either be so ignorant or unafraid of the toughness out there. But I sat safely in my coach and watched the Bronx go by, miles of project housing, many windows flung open on this balmy fall day, a city rather industrial looking, reminding me of a comment visitors from Holland had made earlier in the week. The LA airport, they said, was one of the most run-down they had traveled through recently—including New York City, Brussels, Paris and Moscow. So now I wondered, how did these projects compare with the tenements in Russia? More importantly, how do the lives of the people inside compare? I watched as entire minutes of razor wired security fence went by my window—2, 3 and 4 rows of sharp wire strung up to protect, not prisons, but businesses not unlike my own where we feel secure locking up whole glass store fronts with one mostly ceremonial key. But down nearer the tracks, I was impressed alas, by something that sprung forth like a springtime display of King Alfred daffodils, amidst this otherwise dead and blighted landscape. For here on the sides of other train cars, on buildings, storage sheds and bridge abutments, was the most energizing part of the cityscape: graffiti. Old graffiti, new graffiti, graffiti filled with life and passion, some in English, some in Spanish, some simple handwritten scrawling, others beautiful works of art, modern 3-dimensional letters shaped to fit the wall. To me, the walls seemed to holler out, “We’re alive in here.”

I arrived at the Botanical Gardens. On first entering the garden, I asked myself—why am I even here. Why would I want to go through yet another garden? In fact a fleeting moment of boredom crossed my mind. Little did I know that this park held another key to organizing my thoughts on peace.

For, as I walked through my first garden of choice, several acres of rock garden, I delighted in the diversity. There were flowering plants and big spruce, little herbs with tiny thin leaves and large-leaf sedums with thick leaves. Greens of every hue, as though nature had produced a haute couture fashion show at my feet. But how could this be so perfect—so beautiful. In my own garden, I knew from experience, that one of these beautiful plants or a weed would soon overtake the other, crowding out this type of display. How many times had I planted new perennials under that one maple tree, only to have them wilt as the underground rooted labyrinth drew away all the water.

So here, I imagined a world of cultures equally diverse the way a pacifist might dream—people of every race and creed, living next to each other, in perfect harmony. “War,” that artificial rearranging of specimens, could only be attempted by professionals, like the master gardener at this garden, who had within their goals the love and preservation of every single type, laying rocks as barriers to stop marauding climbers, feeding and watering each for maximum survival. Only after consulting and finding agreement among the world’s best biologists, sociologists, architects, geneticists, and educators could one presume to reorder the human species, to speed up or slow down one culture in favor of another and not destroy the traits that make each so unique.

But imagine if one of the assistant gardeners, someone less proficient than the master, decided with his limited knowledge, upon hearing that a touch of lime would save his favorite plant, made the wrong assumption that it would do the same for all. By spreading his dream of liming the entire garden, he would in fact be declaring war on all those species who would much rather have an acid bath—the azaleas, and rhododendron and the evergreen.

So now I realized that when it comes to human nature, to fixing other cultures, to drawing new boundaries, selling off some other’s countries resources, I would only trust an organization as multi-national, large and cumbersome as the UN. Sure decisions would be made slowly; sure the process would not always make sense to me individually... But certainly the process would be superior to giving that master gardener role arbitrarily to the country, say, with the most money, or that with the most oil, or the one with the highest percentage of people who went to one church, or that country with the most unbridled hubris? Surely if such options would never work in the garden, how could they possibly work to save our planet?

Later on my drive home to this quiet little town in the valley, I remembered that last line of Voltaire’s Candide. Having traveled the world to find the ultimate source of happiness, Candide, once more in his home, invites his friends outdoors: “Come we must cultivate the garden.” To me “cultivation” represents our only hope of free will: to cultivate our gardens, whether that garden represents our aggressive impulses, our pets, relationships with loved ones, our outreach to the community, our church, or the entire world, this is the choice that tips the balance of humanity toward goodness.

Hymn: “We Shall Overcome”

The Service: “Pacifism: Iceberg or Titanic”

As I grow old, my pacifist position has moved away from its religious foundations to cultural and sociological understandings of human nature. The progress of modern history, supplies numerous examples of how our attitudes about violence and peace are changing. The rise in the use of diplomacy, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the recognition that a loss in Vietnam was seemingly insignificant, the world wide anti-war rallies prior to the current war, the developing hip-hop culture rooted in resistance, and the tendency to fill our prisons with men and women who are not so much violent, as socially maladjusted: all lend evidence to profound social change. Most American youth appear to be more interested in acting violence rather than doing violence. Yet, the pacifist position is lonely. I often feel hopeless, like a single drop of rain, in a blinding rainstorm.

A fundamental question at the root of the dilemma is whether aggression is learned or innate. If we believe in the concept of original sin, which has been the prevailing Christian belief throughout most of American history, perhaps even now, then aggression or hate or war all fall in the category of assumed behavior. However, if like Ashley Montagu, who states, “evil is not inherent in human nature. It is learned . . . Aggressiveness is taught, as are all forms of violence which human beings exhibit,” or other social scientists, you see such characteristics as learned. Your perspective might quickly turn 180 degrees. Suddenly you realize, that in a non-draft culture, like we have experienced for the past 35 years, we are teaching, at least via the secular popular culture, that to solve ones problems by the use of force, is unacceptable--in fact it will likely put you in jail. Although non-violence appears to be the commonly accepted practice in domestic problem-solving, some other hysteria seems to govern our lawlessness in broader world disputes. Since I no longer subscribe to the doctrine of original sin, I ask myself to develop a more positive pacifist philosophy.

Bishop John Shelby Spong states, “All atonement theories are grounded ultimately in some view of man as fallen, the victims of original sin . . . “Jesus died for my sins.” I find the God who is portrayed in these images to be violent, demonic, and even sadistic.” I view the Bible is a collection of books written and preserved by the ruling class, and later compiled by white, European, mostly celebant men, as a tool to control “evil” people.

I turn my back on any organized religious dogma that assumes an eschatological story of divine judgment based on human life born into evil. Such a model encourages its followers to see the world in black and white, the saved vs. the unsaved, the haves vs. the have-nots, those who deserve a disproportionate share of the world’s resources and those who do not. Such a model is a made-to-order solicitation for war.

Like the Dalai Lama, I find that the religious overtones of divisiveness underlying Christian pacifism tend to create more separation than cohesion. If I base my pacifist position on Christianity, with no demands that others base their view likewise, then there is no problem. But if I perceive the Hindu or Buddhist as a threat to my pacifism, then I must adopt a less religious view in order to change the world.

My thesis in this talk asks a rather simple question. Is the philosophy of pacifism shallowly based and comparable to the “unsinkable illusions” of the engineers who built Titanic, or is it a belief that might be taken more seriously, and is in fact comparable to the underwater threat that the seemingly passive iceberg held for the mighty ship?

As we over-militarize America, going to war becomes easier, if not mandatory. Regular war serves to rally the troops, to prepare the new generals, to reward the old, to reduce overstock of munitions and to distract Americans. For the past 50 years, war feels more like the rich man's game of sending testosterone charged young men to the other side of the world to get mixed up in other's business. The choice to go to war is seldom intellectually arguable. If it were the children of Senators and Representatives and corporate CEO's would be sending their children off to do their duty. Rather it is the brusque, smoke-filled room decision making of a few not-so-good men who choose to turn a very complex decision into a complex disaster.

So do we win wars? I don't believe we do. Not at least in the conventional sense of winning--that someone ends up with more points than the other. What war does perhaps, is attempt to speed up history or civilization, sometimes moving in the right direction, if we have been so lucky to divine the future correctly, but mostly moving entire cultures backward as the men with the biggest guns intimidate and humiliate the less fortunate. In addition, one war often creates the circumstances to begin another. What we observe from World War I was that over ten million men died to solve Europe's territorial disputes. World War II on the other hand took the lives of 58 million men to defeat Hitler, who rose to power in an economic climate desperately attempting to survive in spite of the huge war reparations of World War I.

Having rid Europe of Hitler, World War II, of course is directly tied to the Cold War that followed and the chain reaction continues--Vietnam and Korea, as well as the current struggle in the Middle East where the pain of the abused Jewish culture is inflicted on the Palestinians.

Having grown up in the Vietnam era, when we were bombarded with the idea that we must win the war to save the world from communism, having witnessed our defeat and subsequent unnoticeable negative rise in communism, and now to witness the brisk developing economy in Vietnam as well as China, one would think the War model would have lost its final trophy. We lost the war with little negative fallout--other than the 58 million Americans who lost their lives, the estimated more than 5 million enemies who died. Once you destroy the logic of ever winning war, then the idea of an "exit strategy" is as much a folly as is an "entrance strategy." The only strategy for exit, other than that which would enhance the view of war as a glorious model of valor for our youngsters, is the sooner, the better: today is the best day to begin an exit.

The Iron Curtain rearranged history, yes. But I think it is much too early to say who won the socialist/capitalist struggle of the 20th Century. With the current rise of the Chinese economy, it could be that the final reality will be that the unprecedented arms race of the 20th Century destroyed the economies of both the United States and the USSR.

It is in such a climate that I feel my lone drop of water crystallizing into a molecule of ice that attaches itself to the iceberg of pacifism. When youth around the world make it clear that they will no longer follow the antiquated, failed rules of yesterday, (perhaps the most common thread of popular music in the 20th Century--taking the music of common people and raising it to a level that was previously preserved only for the nobility) when they realize that war, like all those dusty board games passed around from one yard sale to the next, offers outdated, simplistic and unimaginative solutions to problem solving that are about as effective as arm-wrestling on the kitchen table, they seek peace.

We teach our children from toddler stage to talk it out, to take time-out, to see the other person’s side, to cool down, sleep on it, go the second mile, to think before you act, that good fences make good neighbors, to lay all your cards on the table in negotiation. But in a military culture like ours, we teach something else, as if in placid denial of all the above. We don’t talk it out, we rush to war to support the upkeep of our military machine, we act before we think, we build walls rather than fences, because you can’t see through walls, we turn shades of gray to black and white, and we always keep an ace up our sleeves—like the fact that Iraq has proven oil reserves of 112,000,000,000 barrels, and that 1991 was the first year that the US was prohibited from investing in or buying Iraqi oil companies. With this confused problem-solving process, our children can either join adults in blindfolded denial or they might already be choosing the commonsense position that their molecules are magnetically attracted to the optimism of my iceberg model.

I emphasize the affect of popular culture for two reasons. For one, as I mentioned earlier, the youth of America will ultimately decide how to spend our budget. They are the ones who will determine whether or not it is cost-effective to spend 40% of the world’s military budget, protecting 4% of her people—at the expense of other quality-of-life expenditures. The second reason I emphasize the importance of youth is that as our culture changes, as the popular culture, not religion, shapes moral principles, and if aggression and its use in problem-solving are learned behavior, then who and how we teach our children is of vital importance. My view of the popular culture, the only culture that I believe can change America, is that there is an innate desire to be more peaceful. From rap “battles,” to fight clubs, to childlike games of eating worms or simplistic physical endurance feats on reality television shows, to historic interest in organized sports and the Olympic games, to young black men writing rap poetry in the ghetto, to the increase in studying martial arts: all point in one direction.

What role does the church, the military, retired military generals, our schools, our government, our parents, the President, or the popular culture have in shaping this important issue? In a culture that worships sport, it seems critical that we make a distinction between wrestling as entertainment, as opposed to war, where soldiers kill each other because they presume their position in the world order to be higher than it actually is. The shattered dreams puffing from the Titanic smokestacks are a threat to these games of fun.

The goal of a successful reality television show, I think, is to exploit the unpredictable, cunningly impulsive, experiential, emotional, evolving persona in a way that reflects the dizzying interplay of 21st Century civilization. Here trial and error, common sense, and sensuality are interwoven with the intellectual, challenging the mainstream culture. Race, sex, sexual preference, fashion, language, ethnicity, savvy, music choice and drunkenness, are all thrown into the entertainment blender which produces a peculiar smelling, yet provocative communication concoction. To say you can not tolerate this new "slice of reality" fun time does not stop it, but rather just types you as being older and therefore naturally out-of-touch with the current desire to NOT trust authority figures. What the popular culture seems to be saying is, "we no long accept the written word, the studied truth, the carefully observed, masticated, digested, regurgitated and carefully explicated answers, as any more believable than this itzy, bitsy eenie, weenie “slice-of-life” reality account of our world, the Real World and our connection to it."

In fact authority has failed them so miserably, that this slice of life reality television and the complex culture that spawned it, are disposing of the baby, the bath water, and the basin. Unfortunately, that means the likes of Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, Henry Kissinger, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw will be cast aside as a new generation of talk-TV personalities as varied as Oprah, Sally Jesse, Sean Hannity and Dr Phil step in to take their places. But oh, do be careful before you criticize! For as you step back as far as possible from the television screen, nose pinched, exclaiming not "What has God wrought?" but "What has capitalism wrought?" you will have joined the similar protests by The Dalai Lama, Pope John Paul II. Mother Theresa, and, sorry to say, Osama Bin Laden, as only a sampling of world notables who see materialistic greed dragging the American society to ruin. Can they all be wrong? Can we call the message of one evil and the other good? And where do I put these notables in my model? Where do I put the TV personalities--on the shipload of guns or attached to the bloating belly of the indomitable iceberg?

If our own former Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, is correct, in suggesting there is at least a 75% chance the American economy will suffer a meltdown in the next 5 years, then I can only see this is as further evidence of the rise-and-fall of the American democratic experiment, bogged down by military spending. The current American capitalist model is bullish, cheatish, over-confident and over dependent on abusive military policy.

As our culture is reborn phoenix-like out of the ashes of failed materialism, the "slice of life" TV culture will be the most comfortable with the radical change required to form a more just society. The development of rock-and-roll music with it's affect on jazz, blues, rap and even Christian music, typifies the message of working-class people. From the field hands picking cotton in Alabama to the gangstas in LA who dream of reclaiming the city from their materialistic, skyscraper-owning landlords, the voice and energy of youth plays a significant role in shaping America.

When retired and active generals the likes of Colin Powell, Wesley Clark and Dwight Eisenhower, state that war should be the absolute last step, after all negotiations have failed, but then lead us off into war, it is as if we knowingly use the bodies of young soldiers, who come up from the bottom end of the social ladder, as mop-heads, cleaning up the grime of failed negotiations. The misperception that war rises, like so much acrid smoke, out of conflict in the less educated lower classes, is repudiated by the grim reality that the powerful elite have actually tired of pushing their Kings and Queens across the board, and now retire to their cigars and wine while the generals reactivate the pawns to prove their worth. During the current Gulf war, I have always imagined if the war were here in Harrisonburg; the city razed, bombed into shambles, all businesses shuttered, the streets pocked with craters, surviving vigilantes hiding in the remaining walls of windowless buildings. The reality being, of course, that this was the result of failed negotiations in city government.

To the critics of Michael Moore’s “slice-of-life” documentary, I can only say, "it’s about time" for an opposing viewpoint. For years the military machine has been advertising the pro-war stance with our tax dollars. In military promotion clips that present military duty more as a leisure time travelogue, soldiering is promoted as a religious experience by the Army: “Be All That You Can Be,” as fun in the wilderness by the Navy: “It’s not just a job, It’s an Adventure,” as the ultimate mark of achievement by the Marine Corps: “We’re Looking For A Few Good Men” and as a cure for boredom by the Coast Guard: “Be Part of the Action.” When you realize all these slogans have as their end goal, to teach young men and women to kill on command without asking questions, one can imagine that a counter-awareness program in teaching the merits of peace and the state department might is essential.

Yes, I believe the American obsession with military hubris is near the beginning of a huge, embarrassing slide into the sea. I believe the Titanic of militarism is headed full speed ahead toward the iceberg of pacifism. Because I consider no universal force of evil, that is, comparable to the forces of balance and gravity that keep millions of planets spinning in perfect synchronicity, or the natural balance that I witness in those perfect little nautilus-shaped snails crawling over my concrete patio; I feel certain that peace will triumph. Just as Fannie Lou Hamer walked into the national convention for the first time, or as Rosa Parks boarded the Montgomery bus and took her seat in 1955, or as Martin Luther King spoke unabashedly about “a dream that one day the state of Alabama, . . . , will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers," or as Nelson Mandela held steadfast to his convictions through 27 years in jail, the passively non-resistant iceberg of peace will produce a leader who helps propel the issue to the top of the national agenda--perhaps finally providing the rallying cry for a viable third political party.

I believe that war, like hate, prejudice, envy, everyday mean-spiritedness and name-calling, is something that can be unlearned I have not witnessed in my home, in the streets of the cities and villages I have lived, in the workplaces where I have toiled evidence that would lead me to believe otherwise. Instead I choose to hold "these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal," and that truth is as unrelenting as the iceberg is real.

As scientists and military engineers strategize to build the next generation of munitions so perfect that their mission is unsinkable (even almost unthinkable as the hands that remotely run them have little awareness of the ultimate doom they perpetrate), lurking out there in the dark night are the rudimentary ice crystals of the popular culture, and maybe now, maybe in 100 years, the iceberg of pacifism will reveal its underwater power of passive resistance.

Imagine if our next president announced that he was re-instituting the draft, and the opposing party loyalists would organize a boycott--say of Wal-Mart or General Motors or Shell Oil. "Reduce the military budget by 25% now" would be the rallying cry. If the boycott could press on strongly, for 90 or 120 or even 180 days; half of the country who supports the losing candidate would simply shop as little as possible somewhere else. Imagine the hundreds of miles of tractor trailers, and trains, and ships that would be stopped in their tracks all the way to China as warehouses or pipelines stopped being emptied. How long would it take for their corporate lobbyists to descend on Washington screaming, “Something has to change." Isn't this the only power we have as citizens in America? Does our vote really mean as much as the 5 to100 thousand dollars every household pumps back into the economy each year? Although such a boycott could ultimately redirect the American economy, I venture to bet the politicians would act before it did. I believe it is, in fact, the most cogent action we citizens can take. Ultimately this is the most powerful lobbying tool our lawmakers respect: the dollar bill.

The captains of our military Titanic will not give up their dollars easily. At least one military coup would be possible. Turning off electricity and internet service, stopping interstate traffic and closing the banks, or controlling the media, are all likely tools the military would use to frighten and coerce the masses. Standing firm, as though frozen in their convictions of passive nonresistance, the people will know they are truly sick and tired of war. They will know they “don’t want to study war no more.”

Democrats, Republicans and Independents must realize, on one hand, that not only is our military budget eating the lunch intended for Head Start children; it is devouring the funds needed to build new roads, dredge rivers, render veterans their promised benefits, provide minimal health care, fund Medicare and Medicaid and insure social security for the baby-boom generation and beyond. The military budget is eating OUR breakfast, dinner and lunch. Until we realize that each gun built, each new weapon developed and each "outdated" weapon sold for profit to our enemies, is robbing the quality of life from our very own wallet, then our addiction to warfare, our state of denial, will fester like the habit of a maddened junkie.

The addiction must stop. The healing process, as in most addictions, will be tenuous, the results uncertain. We recognize that the critical surgery required to remove this malignant tumor from our nation's belly, could in fact disable the patient. But the risk of waging war without reason, selling weapons without cause, and monopolizing American tax budget without any personal long-term benefit, demands that the surgery begin today. Tomorrow may be one day too late. Although the un-building of our military industrial complex might take 10 to 20 years--the payoff in optimism will be immediate. Many Americans, including those who were young during the Vietnam debacle, the veterans who were lied to about the first Gulf War, and those who deplore the current attempt to destroy the 5,000 year Iraqi culture, simply might rather go home and watch people eating worms via the television.

We owe it to ourselves, to our children, to those who have died needlessly on the battlefields abroad and to those who have died shamefully on the domestic battlefields because of failed and dismantled social programs. This is one idea that will bring all Americans and the world together. Never has there been a stronger rallying cry than a dream that benefits all humanity.

(Note: “Finding My Garden in New York City” and “Pacifism: Iceberg or Titanic” are the original work of the author and may be reproduced or used only with his permission.)

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