“Who Do You Most
Admire?”
Service Series from:
Ten Eternal Questions,
by Zoe Sallis
(An Intergenerational Service)
for
the Unitarian Universalist Church of
Winchendon, Massachusetts
29
October 2006
The Rev. Jennie Ann Barrington
Morning Reading, the words of Helen Keller, from, Three Days to See:
“If I were the president of a university, I should establish a compulsory course in “How to Use Your Eyes.” The professor would try to show his pupils how they could add joy to their lives by really seeing what passes unnoticed before them. He would try to awake their dormant and sluggish faculties. Perhaps I can best illustrate by imagining what I should most like to see if I were given the use of my eyes, say, for just three days. And while I am imagining, suppose you, too, set your mind to work on the problem of how you would use your own eyes if you had only three more days to see. If with the oncoming darkness of the third night you knew that the sun would never rise for you again, how would you spend those three precious intervening days? What would you most want to let your gaze rest upon?”
Homily:
“Who do you most admire?” That’s the question we are all exploring this morning, especially the children and youth of our church, since this is an intergenerational service. You often hear me talk about God, or that which is divine, and justice or fairness, and the importance of treating one another with love and honor. But it is also essential that we have some people we can admire-- some people who make us feel, “That’s who I want to be like when I grow up.” And it’s important to choose those people very carefully-- to have reasons why we admire them, and know what our reasons are. And it is always important not to expect real live people to be like superheroes. Every human being has some times when they make mistakes or neglect to do the right thing. So every human being we admire also has ways they could disappoint us. We should not expect other people to be perfect; we should not expect ourselves to be perfect. But we should have some people in our minds and hearts who, when it came to making the word a better place, did so much more than anybody said they had to do.
For this morning’s reading, I chose the words of Helen Keller, because she is one of the people I have admired ever since I can remember. I’m sure you know that when she was only 19 months old, she became extremely sick, from what was probably scarlet fever, and became blind and deaf, so she was unable to speak in words. At that point, some people thought she was stupid, and said she should be put in an institution, where I’m sure she would have died at a very young age. But her parents believed that what she needed was the right teacher-- an unusual teacher who could understand her, but not spoil her, and could help her learn how to communicate with other people. So her parents contacted the Perkins School for the Blind, in Boston, and found Anne Sullivan, who came to live with the Kellers at their home in Alabama. In some ways, I admire Anne Sullivan more than I do Helen Keller: because Anne Sullivan doesn’t get talked about as much; because she had, not just a job, not just a career, but a vocation-- She gave her whole life over to being a teacher; teaching was her life’s work. Knowing that about Anne Sullivan is a large part of why I was determined to figure out what my vocation, or life’s work, would be; and that became ministry. Anne Sullivan helped Helen Keller to find her voice. She did that by continually spelling letters into the palm of Helen Keller’s hand. Helen Keller’s breakthrough came when Anne Sullivan spelled “water” into Helen Keller’s hand while pumping water so it flowed over their hands onto the ground. That’s when it all came together in Helen Keller’s mind-- that the letters weren’t just random, they spelled the name of water, and that everything has a name. Then Helen Keller immediately wanted to know the name of everything-- everything in the yard, everything in the house, everything in the whole world. Once she found a way to express herself, everyone could see how intelligent, warm, loving, and brave she was. She eventually learned to read several different languages, graduated from Radcliffe College, wrote several books and articles, and traveled to many countries. She particularly loved Japan, and the Japanese people loved her. What we don’t hear as much about is the fact that, in her politics, Helen Keller was a socialist. That means she had a special concern for factory workers and all people who were poor. She held these beliefs and convictions because she learned that bad working conditions and poverty and malnutrition were the major causes of blindness and deafness. Therefore, if she could help people have a healthier and less desperate way of life, then there would be less blindness and deafness in the world. So she was a strong advocate for people in hardship, and for the American Foundation for the Blind. These words she wrote are famous: “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” Think of that water that ran over her hands at her moment of great insight. It would have flowed along the ground, cutting into the earth, and making a path for more water to flow; for a rushing stream of water to flow with force. When people like Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan bravely tried to do things some people said were impossible, they cut a new path for all of us to follow. We are following their example any time we add more insight and empowerment to the world-- any time we help anyone find their voice.
Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan were famous. But not everyone we admire has to be world-famous. In the book I read to prepare for this Sunday, called, Ten Eternal Questions, many well-known spiritual people were asked who they most admire. Several of them said their mother or father or other family members; some said anonymous people who live their lives in admirable ways. Gianfranco Ferre said: “I admire people who have helped people to express themselves in ways such as painting or writing, inventors like the printer Johannes Gutenberg, for example. Also people who invented medicines. Mostly I admire people who helped humanity to develop.” Anjelica Huston said: “Those I admire most are people like Stephen Hawking and Christopher Reeve, people with terrible life-threatening diseases and disabilities who strive on, and who have the extraordinary aptitude and courage to stay with the hand they’ve been dealt on Earth. People who survive battles and somehow transform them into something beautiful.”
I very much admire my parents, John and Judy Barrington, for having taught me how to live an ethical life, and for not complaining about what a hard job being a parent is. This weekend, my parents are very sad, because one of the most admire men in our hometown of Westwood has just died. That man’s name was Mike Lally. He was my parents’ mechanic. It’s hard to sum up how kind and helpful Mike was. But we all know he could have charged everybody so much more for the work he did and the used cars he sold. But instead he kept choosing to be quietly generous. My father also said to me, “He always stood by his work.” If he tried to repair your car, and the problem came back, you just went back to him and he fixed it but good. There’s no way to count all the times and ways Mike helped my parents. Then you multiply that by the thousands of people in Westwood who went to him over the years… What a truly nice man.
Another truly nice man I wanted to mention to you this morning was called Cyrus the Great. Several of the people interviewed for this book said he is the historical person they most admire. You may have heard of Cyrus’ Cylinder, from ancient Babylon, 590-529 BC. It’s the earliest written declaration of human rights that we know of. Cyrus’ edict said: “I ordered that all should be free to worship their god without harm; I ordered that no one’s home be destroyed and no one’s property be looted. I ordered all closed places of worship, which were built in ancient times, to be re-opened. I brought their people together and rebuilt their homes and restored peace and tranquillity for all.” Cyrus the Great was one of the first men to use political power to enhance, rather than degrade, people’s lives. If you ruled a country, and you could enact an edict, write it down, and put it in a cylinder for people to find and read 2000 years from now, what would your proclamation be?
The three great men of history who got the most votes [in this book], in an equal spread, were Jesus of Nazareth, Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi. It is fitting that they be categorized together. To their people who were poor and oppressed, they brought honor and liberation. Mahatma was not Mr. Gandhi’s first name; it’s a title of esteem that means “great soul.” Mahatma Gandhi led the people of India to become an independent nation, free from Great Britain, which, in the late 1800s, treated the Indian people horribly, with discrimination and shame. Gandhi was not just a political leader, but also a spiritual leader and teacher. He was born Hindu, but grew to embrace the best of all the great religions of the world, and worked and negotiated for inter-religious understanding and cooperation. He said, “Yes, I am [a Hindu]. I am also a Christian, a Muslim, A Buddhist, and a Jew.” Gandhi was also a vegetarian, and he took that very seriously. It was a spiritual practice and discipline for him, connected to his philosophy of life of non-violence and refraining from harming any living being, which is known as “ahimsa.” He also spent one day of each week in silence; he believed this brought him inner peace. He wore home-spun cloth which he spun himself; he encouraged other Indians to spend time spinning each day. And he did the same housework and custodial work everyone else in his ashram did. He said: “There are many causes that I am prepared to die for, but no causes that I am prepared to kill for,” and “When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall-- think of it, always.”
The last person I want to tell you about this morning is a man who, when you look in history books, is barely mentioned, if at all. But he should be-- His name was Robert Carter, III, and he lived at the same time as the Founding Fathers of our nation, and very near their houses, too, in the South. Many wealthy and powerful men at that time felt that slavery was wrong, but they didn’t do much in their personal lives about how they felt. Robert Carter, III did. His religious beliefs and his sense of justice told him that slavery was wrong. So he figured out a long and detailed way to free his slaves, put that way in writing so it would be absolutely legal, and then he freed all of them-- approximately 500 people. Why isn’t Robert Carter, III in our history books? Why hasn’t hardly anyone heard of him? Scholar Andrew Levy thinks it’s because we Americans have felt too much of a need to make heroes out of the Founding Fathers-- We like to say that the Founding Fathers did not have an example to follow of a way to stop participating in slavery. But they did have an example-- a man as wealthy as them (who loaned them money, even) who lived right down the road: Robert Carter, III. Mr. Levy has written an essay about Robert Carter called, “The Anti-Jefferson,” and a new book called, The First Emancipator: The Forgotten Story of Robert Carter, the Founding Father Who Freed His Slaves. In his essay, Mr. Levy writes:
“The possibility exists, of course, that we are the most equitable generation of Americans that has ever existed… But we ought to consider the possibility that we are the shapers of history now, and that we have made for ourselves the only Jefferson and the only Washington that seem at home amid the struggling and contradictory progress toward racial equality of the last four decades… It is a sorry tribute we make to Jefferson, Washington, and the other founders when we continue to insist that they were larger than life -- and when we do so in order to blame our own confusion and ambivalence on the heroic power of their confused and ambivalent legacy. But we tip our hand when we continue to ignore Robert Carter, whose example is enough to remind us that there existed men and women during the Revolutionary War who knew what was right and did not lack the personal will to act on that knowledge… because that forces us to consider whether there now exist similar men and women, whose plain solutions to our national problems we find similarly boring, and whom we gladly ignore in exchange for the livelier fantasy of our heroic ambivalence.” [see, The Best American Essays 2002, pp. 188-212]
The people most worth admiring have noticed what a hard walk of life their brethren and neighbors have, whether right next door or around the world, and their hearts went out to them. Then, in empathy and solidarity, they created new roads to a more enlightened world, and not for glory nor material gain. Each of you can be a person worth admiring. What if the person the children of tomorrow most admire is you? I’ll close with these words of Richard Dawkins: “…you are fantastically privileged to be alive. Make use of the eyes that you have been given, the ears that you have been given, the brain that you have been given, the hands that you have been given, to discover, to apprehend, to understand as much as you possibly can before you die; about why you were ever born in the first place; and about the place in which you find yourself. And while you are here, do all in your power to leave the world a better place than you found it.” Let it be and, Amen.
Benediction [Michael Fitzpatrick]: “Dream. Dream all the time. Dream of what was and what is to come. Take action. Initiate, plan, and follow through. Remain committed at all times. Laugh as hard as you can.”