The Many Dimensions Of Service

November 17, 1985
Lakeland

The Many Dimensions Of Service
UUSC Sunday
“Guest At Your Table”

At this time of year, we share in the UUSC program “Guest at Your Table.” The little boxes are available for you to share your meals with someone you will never meet. The boxes will be ingathered at our annual Christmas – Hanukkah – Winter Solstice on December 22.

One of the many definitions of service is “to be of use, to answer a purpose.” The intention of my remarks today is to highlight how we, by supporting the UUSC, can be of use and answer a purpose.

It is not easy to feel deeply the pain and suffering of those we never see and who exist thousands of miles from our comfortable lives. “How to Live on a Hundred Dollars a Year in Twelve Easy Stages” may touch our imagination:

How to Live on a Hundred Dollars a Year in Twelve Easy Stages

When we hear that most of the people in the “third world” have a standard of living of less than $200 a year, it is not easy to visualize what that means. Here’s a sample exercise in imagination designed to help us understand what it’s like:

Start with a typical American family, your family – a small home, maybe in the suburbs; a car or two; public utilities, paved streets, schools and hospitals nearby; a comfortable annual income.

1. Remove all furniture from the house, except a few old blankets, a kitchen table, and a wooden chair.
2. Get rid of all the extra clothing. This leaves each member of our family with one set of the oldest clothes they own; the head of the family may keep a pair of shoes.
3. Clear out the kitchen. Leave behind some matches, a bag of flour, some sugar and salt. Also, for tonight's meal, a few moldy potatoes, a handful of onions, and a dish of dried beans.
4. Dismantle the plumbing, sewage system, electricity, and telephone. Tear up the streets and sidewalks.
5. Remove the house itself and move our family into a tool shed.
6. The suburban neighborhood has now been transformed into a shantytown, but our family is fortunate to have any shelter at all.
7. Cancel all subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, book clubs. It doesn’t matter, because our family is now illiterate.
8. Leave one radio for the entire shantytown.
9. Move the nearest clinic or hospital ten miles away and fire most of the staff, except for a midwife and an aide. While you’re at it, demolish the post office and fire stations, and move the school into a two-room building three miles away.

There are many Service Committee programs to serve human needs. We cannot solve in a short time the massive problems of hunger, sickness, and despair. Others help. But we can make a difference, and the Service Committee has, beginning with its efforts in 1939, sheltering and assisting refugees of the Spanish Civil War and Czechoslovakia.

There are emergency programs such as the recent airlift of emergency supplies to help persons suffering from the disastrous earthquake in Mexico City.

On July 4, the UUSC, in collaboration with Oxfam and Operation California, airlifted to Nicaragua 25,000 lbs of medical supplies worth $250,000. It was the fifth collaborative airlift to Nicaragua. Distributions in Nicaragua were by organizations independent of the government of Nicaragua.

In collaboration with others, food and supplies have been sent directly to those suffering from drought and famine in sub-Saharan Africa.

Great as the need is to act in emergencies to assist the hungry, sick, and victims of disasters, the parallel emphasis has been to help people help themselves. “Harambee” is a Swahili word for “let’s work together.”

In Dakar, Senegal, Africa, the UUSC is supporting an urban skills training center (FAFS – French acronym for Federation des Associations Féminines du Sénégal – Federation of Women’s Associations of Senegal). At that center, 18 young rural women gain education in literacy, home economics, and family planning. Eventually the center will be expanded to house 60 women at a time for such training.

The UUSC also assists the National University of Benin on a 3-year demonstration project that utilizes village-level resources to prepare medical and nursing students to train primary health workers.

In India, where most women are still victims of a cruel social system, the UUSC helps women take more control of their lives.

There is support for a health and economic program in Bombay, an urban women’s resource center in Delhi, and a rural women’s social education center in Madras, and [in] Bangalore, and action research in community health in Gujarat.

For years, in the Caribbean, the UUSC has mounted pilot programs. In Haiti, the projects continue, emphasizing community participation in family planning, and maternal and child health care.

During 1984-85, the UUSC played a smaller supporting role in St. Kitts-Nevis, as the government assumed control of the program. The pilot project was established to reduce infant mortality, prevent second pregnancies, and provide jobs and education for teen-age mothers. Similar programs are supported in Jamaica, Anguilla, Antigua, and Guyana.

UUSC cannot solve the immense problems of hunger, sickness, and ignorance in the 3rd and 4th worlds. But through pilot projects that demonstrate that there are answers and methods, the respective national governments and indigenous organizations have a proven base to expand the programs of self-help and community participation. The journey from despair to hope is long and arduous, but all journeys begin with the first steps, and it is helping with first steps that the UUSC serves – helping but not controlling, teaching but not dominating. This accords with the Unitarian Universalist principle “to affirm, defend, and promote the supreme worth and dignity of every human personality, and the use of the democratic method in human relationships.”

Loyalty to that principle implies that there should be efforts to get at root causes as well as the grievous symptoms. Therefore there have been efforts for human rights education. The efforts of the UUSC in the last few years have targeted several areas of concern. Central America has been a focus, not only for medical and other aid, but to discover facts in situations fogged by contradictory reports. The Service Committee has sent at least 10 Congressional fact-finding delegations to Central America. Congressmen, aides, and others have visited El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Mexico. Tonight at 7, here, there will be an audio-visual presentation prepared by the UUSC, “Windows on the Truth,” which describes the political situations in Central America. There is an obligation to be informed, even when the position may be in contradiction to the political stands and procedures of the Administration. There will be an opportunity for questioning and discussion.

Nor are the efforts of the UUSC confined to the needs and issues outside the 50 States. For 10 years, a major domestic program has been the National Moratorium on Prison Construction, [which] has been working to halt the building of new jails and prisons. Prisons are overflowing, with the result that in some places, by judicial order, no more can be locked up. Is it practical or wise to keep building prisons at enormous costs? No one wants chronic criminals free to roam the streets. But with the cast of prison cells and maintenance of prisoners exceeding the cost of a university education at Harvard or Princeton, eventually some common sense must prevail. Prisoners guilty of non-violent crimes could be supervised and trained for useful occupations at a fraction of the cost of keeping them incarcerated in the schools for crime we call prisons.

Aging – recognizing that aging persons are an increasing segment of the population, the UUSC works in coalition with such organizations as the Gray Panthers and the National Citizens Coalition for Nursing Home Reform. Older people are helped to make their voices heard on issues that affect their health, security, and well-being.

The domestic programs are supported by UUSC volunteer groups. This is a movement which can grow, and by common effort make the issues more clear and the programs more effective.

For these reasons and causes, the UUSC asks our support. Of course, there are many organizations that help human need and promote human dignity. Many of us support such organizations. But the UUSC is “ours” - we have supported it commendably, and I trust will do so this year and in the years to come. The UUSC makes no effort to recruit those it helps to become Unitarian Universalists. If the tribal religion of an African is satisfactory and inspiring, then there is no pressure or need to convert him or her. If a woman in India is loyal to the Hindu or Moslem religion, there is no price tag of conversion for our aid. If a Roman Catholic in Central America responds to the sacraments of that faith, we see no need to push on them our understanding or interpretation of what religion is, organizationally or liturgically.

Harambee – let’s work together for human need and human dignity. One of the tangible ways we can do that is by sharing our abundance by having a guest at the table at this season of Thanksgiving.

The flaming chalice is the symbol of the UUSC – to me, it represents the light of knowledge, the spark of hope, and the glow of persistence toward the goals of more just, more fair, and more free social orders.