{"id":258,"date":"2017-10-15T11:40:52","date_gmt":"2017-10-15T18:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=258"},"modified":"2020-10-09T11:28:30","modified_gmt":"2020-10-09T18:28:30","slug":"me-and-we","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=258","title":{"rendered":"Me and We"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We live in the tension between longing to be recognized as unique, and needing to be included as one of many.  If we stand too far away from others we are lost.  If we stand too close to others we are still lost.  How are we found?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            When I was a child I loved a book called, The Island of the Blue Dolphin<\/em>.  The author was Scott O\u2019Dell.  It had been published in 1960, two years before I was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The book is about a young girl living alone on an island.  I don\u2019t remember much of the details of the book.  I can\u2019t remember how she comes to be alone on the island.  Of the adventures she has to keep herself alive, and fed, and safe, and what she does for fun and so on, I don\u2019t remember.  What I do remember about the book is the horrible feeling in my stomach as I read, when I realized that this girl was alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            To be alone, was horrible to me.  I was frightened for the girl.  But more, I was sad for the girl.  To be alone.  To wake alone.  To eat alone.  To find interesting things to see or think and not be able to share them.  To spend the day alone.  To go to sleep alone and know that when you closed your eyes, as far as you knew the whole world closed its eyes and there would be no conscious thought or feeling or action in the world until you, you alone<\/em>, opened your eyes again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cHow does she survive?\u201d  Might have been the suspenseful question that pulled some readers through the book.  For me, the question was, \u201cHow does she live?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Many years later, I learned that The Island of the Blue Dolphin<\/em> was inspired by a true story.  And that the story took place right here in Southern California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The \u201cIsland of the blue dolphin\u201d was actually San Nicolas Island, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of California, about 90 miles west of Catalina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The young girl was a member of the Nicoleno tribe of the Tongva people.  Her name was Juana Maria.  She had been born on San Nicolas.  In 1814, a group of Alaskan sea otter hunters, working for a Russian-American company arrived on San Nicolas.  One of the hunters was killed.  The hunters accused one of the islanders, and then retaliated by slaughtering nearly all of the people living on the island.  For eleven years a small remnant of the Nicoleno tribe remained on the island, until, in 1835 a ship arrived at the island to remove the few survivors to the mainland.  Juana Maria, around 30 years old at the time, wasn\u2019t with the others when the ship arrived, and then, due to an approaching storm the ship couldn\u2019t wait, so Juana Maria was left behind.  They left her alone on the island.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But she wasn\u2019t entirely forgotten.  In 1850 a missionary hired a man to look for her.  He couldn\u2019t find her, but his stories about the mysterious woman living alone on the island inspired other persons to try.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            In 1853, 18 years after being left alone, Juana Maria was finally discovered by a man named George Nidever.  George Nidever brought Juana Maria to the mission in Santa Barbara.  She was delighted and amazed at the strange world around her.  People were amazed and charmed by her.  No one understood her language but she used hand gestures and drawings to describe her experience.  Her mainland experience was happy, but short-lived.  Having eaten a very restricted diet on the island her system couldn\u2019t handle the variety of food available on the mainland.  She contracted dysentery and died only seven weeks after being discovered.  She was buried in George Nidever\u2019s family crypt.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The reason Juana Maria\u2019s story is so fascinating is because it\u2019s so rare.  People don\u2019t live alone.  Robinson Crusoe had his man Friday.  Gilligan had the Skipper, the Professor and Mary Anne and the rest.  Even Juana Maria lived 30 years with other people on the Island before she lived alone for 18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can we live truly alone in the world?  Alone with ourselves?  Are we individuals?  Self-sufficient, self-defined, each of us our own singular person of inherent worth and dignity?  Well yes, of course, we are that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            But aren\u2019t we also, somehow caught in an interdependent web of all existence?  We are entangled in connections.  \u201cWe arrive out of many singular rooms\u201d  But \u201cWe come to be assured that brothers and sisters surround us, to restore their images on our eyes.\u201d  We need community, because we are, in a sense, beings of community.  We arrive through mothers and fathers.  We are raised in families.  We learn language and culture, gifts received from other people.  We\u2019re given food.  We are kept safe.  We are loved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The horror I felt reading The<\/em> Island of the Blue Dolphin<\/em> was the horror of imagining all of those strands of the web suddenly severed.  What if no one were there?  It felt like a threat not just to livelihood but to self.  Who am<\/em> I without my relationships with other people?  With the character in The<\/em> Island of the Blue Dolphin<\/em>, or with Jauna Maria the real woman, I felt, were I to live alone, for 18 years, not only might I cease to live<\/em>, I might cease to be<\/em>.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            A few months ago, Jim and I went to an LA Philharmonic concert at Disney Hall.  We go to the symphony fairly often.  But on this night I was especially excited because they were playing the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, one of my all time favorite pieces.  The soloist was a Swedish man named Martin Frost.  The orchestra played beautifully. Martin Frost gave us a thrilling performance of one of the most sublime pieces ever composed.  It was wonderful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The soloist, played his part:  individual, featured, alone.  The orchestra accompanied:  a community, supporting, all together.  I could identify exactly the sounds that the soloist made, and sometimes the clarinet was the only instrument playing for a few bars.  Other musicians were more anonymous.  I had no idea what sound specifically belonged to the second chair, third stand violinist, for instance.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            But Martin Frost playing alone would have been a very different experience:  a very diminished experience.  He played the solo part, but the concerto requires the accompaniment.  When the orchestra takes over for a phrase there is contrast and color the clarinet cannot provide alone.  It\u2019s an experience of the whole.  Martin Frost didn\u2019t do it alone.  Neither did Gustavo Dudamel, nor the third stand violinst, not even Mozart.  Even my ears were required to make the experience complete, And Frank Gehry\u2019s hall.  And Jim beside me.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            We are both self-constructed, and socially constructed.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am who I am, individually and separately. I have my own thoughts.  I have my own talents.  I am unique.  I am irreplaceable.  I am valuable because there is no one like me and never can be.  Born into the world, I bring with me a being that the world has never seen before.  Through my experiences I develop a perspective on the world that no one but me can see.  That truth makes every person rare and wonderful in a remarkable way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But each of us is also a member of a group.  My body was given to me by my parents.  My parents gave me my name.  I learned to speak English, which is only valuable precisely because I\u2019m not<\/em> the only person that speaks it.  I learn from others, and teach.  I read their stories and share mine.  I love the music of others and sing their songs.  I find love and friendship. Every part of myself that I value is merely the end of a line that can be traced back through networks of others.  Church and faith and school and art and cities and homes, my knowledge of the world, my enjoyment of each day, my hope for the future, all depend on others.  Without you I\u2019m nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            So if it is right to claim that I am an individual, surely it is just as right to say that I am a node in a complicated network of relationships.  I can\u2019t tell you anything about me that doesn\u2019t also describe who I am in relation to others.  I\u2019m a minister but not without a congregation and a faith tradition.  I\u2019m an artist but not without a history of art defining that term.  I\u2019m a man but only one of billions.  I\u2019m married, meaning I have one special relationship, but also part of a legal, social and historical culture of marriages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The web requires both nodes and connections between the nodes.  We honor the nodes.  We must learn to honor the connections, too.  My identity formed and defined by community is as essential as my identity alone.  I am I and I am us.  Me and we.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Because both poles of our identity are true and necessary, the me and the we, to be successful in life, means a constant maintaining of the balance between the two.  The soloist can\u2019t be buried beneath the accompaniment.  But a soloist too filled with ego can ruin a performance by leaving the orchestra lost.  The individual must play with, not against the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            It is a struggle.  It will always be.  Because the two are forever in tension with each other.  The more I look for ways to express myself, and demand to be respected for my unique gifts and glorious self, the more I set myself off from the community which I also depend on.  The more I set myself into community because I need the love and safety and order and meaning that the group provides, the more I must suppress the parts of my individual identity that don\u2019t quite fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our larger culture, too, we struggle to maintain the balance between the individual and the collective.  We swing back and forth from pole to pole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United States in the first decades of the 20th<\/sup> century had an individualist culture.  Individuals pursued their own ends.  You made a fortune or starved on your own ability or turn of fate.  We tolerated vast disparity between the super rich and the poor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1930s and 40s, we shifted to a collective culture.  The common experiences of the Depression and the Second World War forged Americans into a common identity.  Roosevelt\u2019s welfare and work programs instilled in our national ethos a shared responsibility to care for all members of society.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But by the 1950s the collective culture began to feel oppressive to individuals.  McCarthyism enforced a restrictive group-think on society.  Too many individual identities were left out of the common picture of \u201cAmerican\u201d.  The models for living accommodated by the collective were too narrow to contain our diverse selves and particular gifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the 1960s brought a needed rebalancing toward respecting individual identities.  Civil Rights for African Americans, Women\u2019s rights, Gay liberation were movements by marginalized groups not against the collective but petitions to be recognized as equal participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the pendulum soon swung past the center.\u00a0\u00a0Trust in government as a guarantor of collective care, and a common duty of patriotic service learned during World War II, were disparaged by Johnson\u2019s lies about the Vietnam War followed by the corruption of Nixon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the 1970s saw the United States swing hard away from community to individualism.  The \u201cme\u201d generation came of age.  And then came Reagan, a Messiah of the gospel of individualism.  \u201cGovernment isn\u2019t the solution.  Government is the problem\u201d was his famous line.  Reagan: Cutter of taxes.  Destroyer of Unions.  Dismantler of the Welfare state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For 40 years starting with Roosevelt we lived closer to the collective pole of identity.\u00a0\u00a0Now we\u2019ve had a 40-year experience starting with Reagan of living near the individualist pole of identity.\u00a0\u00a0Though we\u2019ve had presidents of both parties in the last 40 years, the over-arching ideology hasn\u2019t changed.\u00a0\u00a0The glorified self.\u00a0\u00a0The individual alone.\u00a0\u00a0Personal responsibility.\u00a0\u00a0Limited government.\u00a0\u00a0Maximal individual liberties.\u00a0\u00a0Destruction of social compacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think of gun rights:  the necessity of the individual to defend himself.  Think of weakening welfare supports:  the demand that every individual care for themselves.  Voluntary military service meaning no collective responsibility to defend the nation.  Climate change caused by putting individual greed above community need.  Short-term thinking above long-term, which is another way to put the individual above the collective.  College education and health care are luxuries you can have only if you can pay for it or assume the debt.  Company pensions replaced by individual 401Ks and Social Security constantly under threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rise of individualism comes up in deeper ways, too.  The philosophy of Post-Modernism was founded in the late 1960s on the insight that every individual has an entirely subjective experience of the world.  Thus, the concept of an objective \u201ctruth\u201d is unknowable.  There is no common world, only individual experience.  Discourse begins with staking claims based on personal identity, rather than shared reality:  an interior view of truth that must necessarily be opaque to anyone outside the individual.  \u201cYou can\u2019t know me,\u201d we say.  Which means, if you can\u2019t understand me, you can\u2019t care for me.  Which means, then, most likely, you are a threat to me, and I\u2019ll treat you as such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we find comfort in labeling ourselves ever more narrowly and closing in our circles of community into tinier and tinier cliques of people as much as possible\u00a0just like me<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Social media and cable television create bubbles that protect us from challenges to our self-identities, but also prevent us from connecting across differences.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donald Trump is the epitome of the individualist ideology.\u00a0\u00a0Supreme narcissism.\u00a0\u00a0Zero moral principles based on respect for others.\u00a0\u00a0Every human relationship a battle where what matters is what\u2019s in it for me.\u00a0\u00a0That he is praised shows how far we have sunk.\u00a0\u00a0That he is so unpopular shows that maybe, at last, we are ready to close the ultra individualist era and start anew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s required then, is to shift the balance back toward the center, meaning to move, now, back in the direction of the collective.  From me, toward we.  To find a common character we could cherish in which to expand our identities through broad relationships into wide community.  To see in other individuals not a different \u201cother\u201d but an expanded sense of self.  To see me in we.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we sang this morning, \u201cBeyond all barriers of race, of color, caste, or creed,\u00a0let us make friendship, human worth, our common faith and deed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the possibilities of what that common character might be seem hopelessly quaint or irredeemable in this ultra-individualist age.\u00a0\u00a0But they weren\u2019t so odd 70 years ago.\u00a0Citizenship.\u00a0\u00a0Duty.\u00a0\u00a0Heroism not in pursuit of personal fame, but as sacrifice to others.\u00a0\u00a0Patriotism.\u00a0\u00a0Rule of law.\u00a0\u00a0Respect.\u00a0Trust.\u00a0\u00a0The Golden Rule.\u00a0\u00a0Membership.\u00a0\u00a0Covenant.\u00a0\u00a0Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mission of church is to help us find the healthy balance between the collective and the individual.  Spiritual practice is the quest to soften the ego-boundaries that keep us locked in our individuality, and to open ourselves out into that thing greater than ourselves which includes us, but is more than us, which loves us particularly, but also loves all of us generally, and calls us to express that kind of universal love throughout our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we sing in church, \u201cOne more prayer, we will say one more prayer, ’til every prayer is shared by everyone, we’ll say one more prayer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2010, the publisher of The Island of the Blue Dolphin<\/em> released a 50th<\/sup> anniversary edition of the book. They invited another children\u2019s books author, a woman named Lois Lowry, to write an introduction.  This wasn\u2019t her first experience with this celebrated book, or with its author, Scott O\u2019Dell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lois tells this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1979, she attended an American Library Association convention in New York City.\u00a0\u00a0One of the events was a reception for Scott O\u2019Dell thrown by his publisher, Houghton Mifflin.\u00a0\u00a0Lois was excited to attend the reception because\u00a0The Island of the Blue Dolphin<\/em>\u00a0had been a favorite book of hers and her daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was staying at the St. Regis hotel.  She\u2019d packed a nice dress for the occasion.  But when she pulled it out of the suitcase she realized that the dress fastened with a row of buttons at the back.  Alone, she could do the very top buttons, and the very bottom, but not the ones in the middle.  She had nothing else to wear.  After a few minutes of consternation, she left the dress half unbuttoned and stepped out into the hall hoping for the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She waited for the elevator.\u00a0\u00a0When it arrived she joined an elderly man and woman already inside.\u00a0\u00a0She turned her back to them, as you do in an elevator, and asked for help with her dress.\u00a0\u00a0The man politely obliged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lois made it to the reception and stood around with a glass of wine waiting for the guest of honor to be introduced.  Finally he was.  You guessed it.  The old man in the elevator who had buttoned her dress was Scott O\u2019Dell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lois tells the story as a charming coincidence.  But I see a story that proves even the author of The Island of the Blue Dolphin<\/em> and the woman who wrote the Introduction to the 50th<\/sup> edition know that you cannot actually live alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We cannot live alone.  We cannot live as pure individuals.  Juana Maria lived alone longer than nearly anyone, but even she lived with a family originally, and a tribe, and had a happy, though brief, re-uniting with community at the end of her life.  Her story touched people she met, and they remembered her after she died.  And her story inspired an author to write a celebrated children\u2019s book, which I\u2019ve read, and perhaps you have, too.  Juana Maria\u2019s story made me think and wonder and inspired this sermon.  She is in my community, now.  And maybe this sermon has made you think and wonder.  You\u2019re in my community, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are connected in so many ways.  We are, we truly are, a vast community of givers and receivers:  interdependence.  You cannot live alone.  Don\u2019t try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By yourself, you cannot even button your own dress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We live in the tension between longing to be recognized as unique, and needing to be included as one of… Read more Me and We<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","category-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":963,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions\/963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}