The Abundant Life

October 25, 1992
Lakeland

July 7, 1996
Sarasota (re-written)

[Introductory Reading: Genesis 1/26 and ff. RSV

CJW Note: That paternalistic permission and recommendation to subdue and have dominion over everything else on earth, allegedly granted by God, represents some of the worst advice ever given to humankind.]

Sermon:

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” So plain-speaking Jeremiah warned his people. (8/20) Jeremiah was no naive optimist; neither am I. There are shadows on the rosy hopes for human progress most of us once held. In speaking of the abundant life, I am an aging humanist curmudgeon, and speak not for your comfort.

In the Middle Ages a monk framed the Law of the Monastic Cycle: “Discipline begets abundance, and abundance, unless we take the utmost care, destroys discipline; and discipline in its fall pulls down abundance.” This Monastic Cycle applied to those monasteries and religious orders which had through a stern routine of work and prayer accumulated wealth, lands, and power. But yielding to the temptation to spend and enjoy the riches led to varieties of corruption, unseemly pomp and luxurious possessions, greed for more money and sumptuous living, violations of the oaths of chastity, with many monasteries deserving the name of brothel rather than sanctuary. (Roland Bainton, REFORMATION OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, and other sources.) Henry VIII, by proclaiming himself Head of the Church in England, and by severing allegiance to the Pope, not only secured his divorce in order to marry Anne Boleyn, but also gave himself the power to seize the immense hoard of jewels, wealth, and large estates of the monastic orders. Which he forthwith did, giving much of these to his favorites; thereby altering irrevocably the distribution of land, wealth and power in Britain.

The “law of the monastic cycle” may not be a universal rule. But it merits thoughtfulness in any place and time. We live in a nation of much abundance. (How that abundance is distributed is a dilemma of values and economics that is not the subject today.) Has our abundance destroyed discipline, and consequently, will abundance become scarcity?

Our land has rewarded us abundantly. For two centuries discipline was required: dawn to dusk hard work to clear, plow, seed, tend, and reap the crops; hardship and determination to push ever more West, seeking the furs, gold, silver, lumber. The great rivers became channels of profitable commerce. Engineers and sweated labor built the railroads that created and transported abundance. The ancient forests provided lumber for houses, barns, masts, furniture, and other uses beyond counting. The rivers and streams irrigated the arid West, producing fruit, vegetables, wheat, beyond any visionary dreams. We became the richest nation that history records. The paternalistic promise of Genesis was being fulfilled – we had dominion.

But in the last century or so, something went wrong. We polluted the rivers and streams. Fish died. We dumped immeasurable tons of garbage into our ancient Mother, the sea. Forests were denuded and became barren, ravaged hills. Chemical pesticides poisoned not only insect life, but also farm workers, not to speak of the unknown but probable toxic effects on many people who consumed the produce. One could go on in book-lengths how we have harmed ourselves and our posterity because we believed the natural world was ours to use for unlimited abundance, rather than recognizing that, we, too, are the natural world and certain to be maimed by our own excesses. Shakespeare has Hector say to Troilus, “Nature craves all dues be rend’rd to their owners.”

“The land was ours before we were the lands’”. It may not have been Robert Frost’s poetic intention, but that opening sentence grabs me. The land was ours before we loved the land. We possessed the land; we used the land; but we did not love it. And scarcities loom on the horizon.

[Crossed out for 1996 version: You may recall that the last lines of Frost’s “For John F. Kennedy – His Inauguration”:

“It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young ambition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.”

The legend has it that for one brief moment there was Camelot – a radiant aura of high hopes. But we did not experience the glory of a next Augustan age. There has been no golden age of poetry and power.]

Is the “Law of the Monastic Cycle” in effect? Will the breakdown in discipline lead to scarcity? Who knows the future? But there are ominous portents.

A culture of consumerism prevails. There are t-shirts and shopping bags with the motto, “shop till you drop.” Comedy or tragedy?

Last month there was a news story reporting that the shopping malls are now considered tourist sights. The story takes as an example the 225-store Potomac Mills discount mall, Maryland, where last year 17.2 million shoppers spent 358 million dollars. Of these shoppers, 4% million people were tourists – more tourists than visited nearby Arlington National Cemetery, Colonial Williamsburg or Mt. Vernon. There are other examples: in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where only 3,300 people live, an outlet mall drew 10 million visitors, a million more than visited nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

There is much political noise about the goods we consume and where these goods were manufactured. My walking shoes were made in Taiwan, my typewriter in Korea, my little calculator in Thailand. Thumbing through some of my shirts, I see these countries of origin: India, Thailand, Philippines, Hong Kong, Dominican Republic, Panama.

Should I feel embarrassed or disconcerted when I see a bumper sticker, “Buy American?” In all the cases I mentioned, I’m sure the labor cost of shirt and shoe-making and assembly were far less than the minimum wage a worker would receive here – as low as one dollar an hour for skilled and semi-skilled work. In some poverty-stricken countries, a dollar a day is not unheard of.

My older son, who is considerably smarter than his old man put it this way, “those exploited workers are contributing to our affluence.” Those provided some of my abundance. If we paid U.S. skilled wages for shirts, shoes, calculators, typewriters, we could not afford them, or so many of them. Prices would soar, inflation run wild, sales plummet. Then jobs would vanish in the shopping malls for sales clerks, buyers, truckers, warehouse, and office people. There is an interdependent web.

How to solve this? I don’t know whether I should feel guilty or positive about the shirts I wear or the TV, VCR, and radio I use. I don’t have any economic suggestions. But it is increasingly evident that any proposed solution that fails to recognize that this is a world economy is ultimately unrealistic and unworkable. Another reality is that not in my lifetime or any of yours will there be any just balance in the world between the “haves” and “have-nots.” Not that we should give up on the principles we advocate or the hopes we hold – but Emerson said, “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”

In the May 20 issue of NEW YORKER, there was a review of the show, VENUS. John Lahr commented, “In this well-directed tale, evil is demonstrated as the inability to imagine the suffering of others....”

Now that definition would not be acceptable to most philosophers and theologians, but does it not have at least an element of truth? Emerson’s words still resonate.

[Deleted for 1996 version: Our national economy seems to rely on constantly accelerating consumer purchases, preferably, “big ticket.” An article in the business section not long ago pointed out that because only interest on home mortgages is now deductible on the Federal Income Tax return, buyers were paying up credit card debt because interest on that is no longer a deduction. A parallel consequence is that people are buying less in order to to limit debt interest, thus reducing sales. Such a mercantile and marketing worry is a reminder of Emerson’s judgment, “things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”]

“Discipline” is a much re-iterated word. Too often it is a scapegoat term – blaming school teachers for failing to enforce discipline when it is obvious, to this old feller at least, that discipline, like charity, begins at home. Discipline is a big word in the military services. Whether the concept prevails widely in our civilian culture is arguable. In one of Saki’s (H. H. Munro) inimitable short stories, set in the days of the British colonial empire, there is a cutting satire about discipline. An army regiment mutinied and killed its officers because the food was deplorable. “...(the) War minister saved the situation by his happy epigram, “Discipline, to be effective, must be optional.’” Ridiculous? Of course.

However, if there is not a strong motive of self-discipline, coerced discipline, in the long run, fails. The famous naturalist, John Muir (1838-1914), once said that he was richer than railroad multi-millionaire, E. J. Harriman. Said Muir, “I have all the money I want and he hasn’t.”

Now I am not so uninformed and dense to assert that everyone with abundance will be victims of the Law of the Monastic Cycle. I have known and know many many persons who have acquired abundance and maintained their self-discipline. They have found the balance between authentic needs and fleeting desires. They know the difference between a sales pitch and an answer to the issue at hand. They are less likely to strike out on a split-finger fastball or an illegal spitball. They have not fallen victim to the Monastic Cycle. May the numbers of these self-disciplinarians increase. Millions more are needed if if there is to be some grasp on susceptibility, waste, calculated appeals to self-interest, pollution, corruption. Individually and in our institutions we need the guts to to resist easy, pleasant (and wrong) answers to hard unpleasant problems. If a thousand loggers are scheduled to lose jobs to protect a forest, which candidate gets the votes, the one who says “we must protect and conserve the forest”, or the one who says, “jobs are more important than trees.” If a weapon of war is no longer needed or is obsolete, there are instances where it will continue to be produced because a Senator or Representative fears the votes of those in his home state who would otherwise lose their jobs. Taxes and deficits – those are big emotional words these days. There is much shouting and conniving about who shares pieces of that enormous Federal pie. Dim, almost unheard voices may be saying, “yes, but we must pay for what we get.” It is said that a politician once answered the problem by saying, “don’t tax me, don’t tax thee, tax that feller behind the tree.”

You well might ask, “Any suggestions, Old Timer?” I could refer you to the Book of Lamentations in the Hebrew scriptures. But although I am no naïve optimist, I am not as gloomy or sorrowful about our times as that author was over the destruction of Jerusalem and the desolation of of the Jewish people. Instead, I’ll use an extended metaphor about the Beetle Ring.

Thirty-four or so years ago, I conducted services at the Cobblestone Universalist Church on the shores of Lake Ontario. Both area population and membership had dwindled; there was just an Annual Service. This Universalist Church was built in 1834, using lake stones smoothed by aeons of wind, wave, freeze, thaw. The building is a gem of the stonemasons’ craftsmanship. The laying of cobblestones was much more difficult than brick. Bricks nest solidly together, but cobblestones do not. The layering of mortar so that precise uniformity of tiers could [be] achieved was a skill that the stonemasons kept to themselves. The cobblestones were uniform in size and the method of selection was not a secret.

The stonemasons used the Beetle Ring to sort the cobblestones. Nothing to do with John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Those Beetles would not be born until more than one hundred years later. The Beetle Ring, either iron or stone, was a slab in which a hole had been cut away. If a cobblestone could be passed through the Beetle Ring, it was not too large for use; too small cobblestones would be obvious.

If many of us would use a Beetle Ring in our handling of abundance, perhaps self-discipline would be less vulnerable. We have needs; we have wants. Many times our “wants” are disproportionate to our needs. With a Beetle Ring of the resources of our minds, emotions, and values, we might discern if our “wants” are too large for our Beetle Ring. Then we could decide not to put that “want” into the building of our lives. All of us have desires beyond our basic needs. That’s OK – reasonable self-indulgence is not a vice. I hope not, for I have many times of self-indulgence. Midas would have been happier if he had used a Beetle Ring. So could the so-called “jet set” of the “rich and famous” if there is truth in the stories of their extravagance, frantic relationships, and the lack of happiness. Every one of you could cite other examples.

There are many issues which need a Beetle Ring to emphasize that not only stonemasons of 1834 but also those of us now alive in 1996 need to make careful and discriminating choices. There are many causes of depletion of natural resources, starvation, and despair. Over-population is directly connected to all these ills. There are now more than 5½ billion people in the world, and this number increases by 95 million every year. Globally, almost one billion people suffer from malnutrition. In Mexico City, with a population of 22 million, the world’s largest city, 40% live in slums.

[Crossed out for 1996 version: But officially, the U.S. opposes planned parenthood and birth control methods. The current administration vetoed an appropriation for International Planned Parenthood. The combined power of the U.S. and the Vatican kept family planning off the official agenda in the recent Rio conference on global resources. Quoting an article in “Time”, “the Reagan-Bush administration agreed to alter its foreign aid program to comply with the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on birth control.”

In 1970, Congressman James Scheur, (D-NY) co-sponsored “the first national program to fund family planning clinics. The co-sponsor (of all people) was a new congressman from Texas – George Bush. As George Bush changed his political mind about that, maybe he can be persuaded to change it again – although I have not the slightest expectation of that.]

The United Nations has made high and low projections of population increases by the year 2050. The high estimate is 28 billion – a figure completely unthinkable. One can predict with assurance that plague, famine, or war would kill billions before that total was reached. The low projection is a peak of 8 billion by 2050. That lower figure assumes family planning on a global scale and there are some hopeful beginnings: Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, Trinidad. Our UUSC has been involved in some pilot projects.

If I may say so, I have been a supporter of Planned Parenthood for many years, have served on the Board of Central Florida Planned Parenthood. I resent the lies and slanders heaped on Planned Parenthood by so-called ‘pro-life’ groups.

Perhaps I am too pessimistic, but I am not confident that politics as played out in our country will make any substantive change in the wasting of our resources and the transfer of an ever-increasing deficit (now 4 trillion) to our children and grandchildren. The money, power, and control of voting blocs seem overwhelming countervailing forces, no matter who calls himself the next President. I do not discount the strong efforts of conservation groups of many kinds, but they are candles in the wind.

That’s my Jeremiah. My hope is that there will be a rising tide of national and world consciousness to the end that not a few thousands, but many millions, raise their voices and direct their votes, so that even the most greedy of special interests will of necessity change their ways.

Lest you think I am an incorrigible old gloom and doom curmudgeon, let me make an observation. One of the memorable opening sentences in a novel that I have remembered for many years was in Sabatini’s dashing story, SCARAMOUCHE: “He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” If you think enough about that line, you may come to believe, like I have, that living could be worse. If we can’t now and then chuckle and laugh at absurdities, even painful ones, we will miss ways we can cope with the strangeness of it all. Pogo said, “you’re lucky to be here in the first place.”

I’ll write no Book of Lamentations. No one of us is compelled to obey the Law of the Monastic Cycle. Each of us can create his/her own Beetle Ring. We need not assent tamely to institutions, government, corporate or religious, who mistakenly believe they are exempt from that law.

But essential to avoiding or conquering the Law of the Monastic Cycle is not only the efforts of small groups but also a growing national and world-wide conviction that that this Earth is our only home, and to continue despoiling it is not only to foul our own nest, but also to curse our posterity.

Closing Words (Ulysses – Tennyson)

“Come my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down ...”