Reading from The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dosteovsky

[A man seeks advice from a monastic elder.]
“I love mankind,” he said, “but I am amazed at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is, individually, as separate persons.  In my dreams I often went so far as to think passionately of serving mankind, and, it may be, would really have gone to the cross for people if it were somehow suddenly necessary, and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone even for two days, this I know from experience.  As soon as someone is there, close to me, his personality oppresses my self-esteem and restricts my freedom.  In twenty-four hours I can begin to hate even the best of men: one because he takes too long eating his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps blowing his nose.  I become the enemy of people the moment they touch me.  On the other hand, it has always happened that the more I hate people individually, the more ardent becomes my love for humanity as a whole.”

This reading addresses what I feel is the most daunting obstacle in the efforts of well-intended privileged people to reach out to those on the margins, whether they be gay, black, Puerto Rican, or handicapped.   We want to help others, we want to think of ourselves as inclusive and diverse and all sorts of good things, but we don’t want to be touched by others.  As Dostoevsky’s confessor puts it, “I become the enemy of people the moment they touch me.”

In 1962 James Baldwin addressed this phenomenon in his book The Fire Next Time.  Baldwin writes that northern white liberals often want to help blacks for selfish reasons – they want blacks to assimilate and become like whites, thereby helping whites feel good about themselves.  He writes that whites don’t really want blacks to be themselves and be honest, because whites don’t want to see the “mirror that blacks can show them.”  He also writes that, on a deep level, whites need those mirrors, need to see reality reflected back to them from another point of view.  But since this kind of honest exchange is uncomfortable, people in positions of privilege rarely take the risk.  Malcolm X said he’d rather deal with a southern white racist than a northern white liberal who pledges support but disappears when times are rough.  Martin Luther King also struggled with this fair-weather support from whites, especially from those in the clergy.

As Unitarian Universalists, we inherit an optimistic faith in humankind and in the universe.  There is no Hell, we believe.  God, if there is a God, is good.  Humans can and do solve their own problems, using their minds.  This faith encourages us to take action to solve problems when others would bow before “God’s will” or rely on prayer alone.  But we also have blind spots, particularly for “The Dark Side” – the dark side of society and the dark side of ourselves.  In our “onward and upward” mentality, we can overlook human suffering and our own complicity in the evil that causes it.  Our blindness to the dark side can lead us to trumpet ideals without making the sacrifices or taking the risks necessary to achieve those ideals. Like Dostoevsky’s confessor, we have a tendency to love people in general, or love diversity in general, choosing safe, abstract love over the discomfort of actually getting to know somebody who is different than us, somebody who can challenge us in unexpected ways.  And, like Dostoevsky’s confessor, we can admit our shortcomings, ask for help, and change.

The question I would like to pose this morning is this: What does it really mean to welcome the stranger?

I pose this question on a day declared “Solidarity Sunday” by an ecumenical group in support of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people, especially those who have fallen prey to violence.  It is a question that has specific application in this congregation’s efforts to be welcoming to these particular groups, but it is also a question that has broader and deeper meaning.

In July 1991, the “Welcoming Congregation Committee” became an officially recognized committee of this church.  This committee originally included Ken Sawyer, intern minister Elz Curtiss, and four members of the congregation, including Maddie Sifantus, the chair.  It later expanded to include seven other congregants.

In alignment with our Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes, which you may find near the front of your hymnal, this group helped First Parish extend a “Wider Welcome” to gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.  The Welcoming Congregation Committee held workshops, brought in guest speakers, inserted statements of inclusivity into official church documents and brochures, and more.

The very existence of this group has helped members of this community feel more comfortable talking about their children or other relatives who are gay.  Some of these people offered moving testimonials right here during a Sunday morning service.  I think that this step may have been the most important one.  It is one thing to speak in the abstract, ‘gay this’ and ‘lesbian that’; it is quite another to hear somebody you know and respect speak from their heart.  Skip Sweitzer did just this when he talked about his learning to understand and appreciate his daughter’s “coming out” as a lesbian.

Like testimonials, stories can be an excellent way to get to the heart of complex issues. Children’s stories often have a way of getting to the crux of basic human issues with a powerful weapon that cuts through our defenses: humor.  When I think about  “welcoming the stranger,” I think of children’s tales with the “new kid on the block” theme, such as Chester’s Way.

In this story Chester and Wilson form bonds based on their shared passions -- peanut butter, croquet, and bicycle hand-signals.  They instinctively avoid Lilly, the loud-mouthed, loud-dressed, squirtgun-wielding newcomer.  Eventually, through her own persistence, Lilly makes a positive impression on the boys.  They come to be friends, discovering that they had more in common than they thought (such as Muscle Mouse cups!) and that they really enjoyed learning new things from each other.  All three found strength and pleasure in diversity.  Nobody could have foreseen at the beginning what he or she was to gain from these friendships.  Even Lilly probably did not guess at the beginning that she would learn to use bicycle hand-signals and to double-knot her shoes!
 
Adult relationships usually don’t come about this way.  The ways we avoid and exclude each other are more subtle, and we don’t change our minds and adapt as readily as children.  But we too can open ourselves to the stranger, open ourselves genuinely – in a way that allows the newcomer to have a real impact in our lives, to become not a stranger, but a friend.  And the more different the newcomer appears to us, the more we have to learn from that person.

More often than not, the stranger seems to come uninvited – as did Lilly in the story.  But how much room is there in our churches for somebody as different as Lilly to come in and make an impact?  I think it was Jesse Jackson who said that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America.  We have to take special measures to improve the odds on somebody as different as Lilly even showing up on Sunday morning, let alone sticking around.  That’s why we need something like The Welcoming Congregation program.

For six years I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, a metropolitan area that is in many ways a Welcoming Congregation of sorts to non-heterosexual people.  But even in the Bay Area, even in a liberal Unitarian Universalist church in Oakland with a handful of gay men and a strong contingent of lesbians, we could fall into patterns that might be called “heterosexist”.

Every year our men’s fellowship held a retreat in the spring.  Although most of what we did at the retreat I consider “people stuff,” we also did lots of “guy stuff” as well.  (When writing this sermon, I tried describing some of the “guy stuff” and became too embarrassed.  So picture Robert Bly and tone it down a few notches).

At the closing circle at the end of the retreat, we were invited to share something we had gained from the weekend.  Mike, a gay man who had not spoken out much said, quietly and matter-of-factly, that the weekend had reminded him of the great gulf between straight and gay men.

 This disturbed me: What I thought was “guy stuff,” I realized, was really “straight guy stuff.”  Mike’s remark helped me realize that, while we didn’t consciously intend it, a lot of the habits we had developed in the group served to reaffirm our identity as straight men.

With a few high school and college friends who have “come out of the closet,” I have long been in support of gay rights.  But I have tended to put restrictions on my support.  For instance, I have had no problem with people like my friends who “act normally,” whose mannerisms don’t draw attention to the fact that they are gay.  It took me some time before I would not wince at gay men who acted in ways I considered effeminite or “gay.”

“You’re just like a stereotype!”  I’ve wanted to yell at some gay men.  Gradually, though, it began to dawn on me how much most of the straight men I know act like straight stereotypes.  Even me – a sensitive nineties man!  It has been a challenging and liberating experience for me to step outside of my cultural group and see the behavior patterns in which I and others get stuck.

The area in which I currently feel myself being stretched is with transgendered people. During my last year at Starr King School for the Ministry, a first-year student I admired announced that she was transgendering.  Shawni was becoming Sean.  In my rituals class she announced that she was going to have a Naming Ceremony to mark the change, to be an official transition from “Shawni” becoming “Sean” and “she” becoming “he,” and so on.  Before I knew what I was doing, I signed up to help facilitate the ceremony.

I learned so much doing this – more than I can share today.   My ideas about gender were completely shaken up.  And, most of all, I was taken with Sean’s courage in making such a drastic change, one that carried great costs.  Imagine how the people in your life would respond if you transgendered.  Nobody would do this if they didn’t feel they had to.

This experience has brought up many questions for me.  In what ways do I  feel that my body does not fit my personality?  In what ways do I  compromise myself to be accepted by others?  What am I willing to give up to have other people see me as I see myself?

And more questions: Why do so many people have such a hard time referring to my cat, Nowanda, as a “he”?  Even when I correct them, somewhere in their brain “Nowand-A” means female, and they stick to it, and they get upset when I suggest that the cat they thought to be female is actually male!  How is the gender of my cat relevant information to anybody in the first place?  He’s neutered, for Christ’s sake.

Why does gender matter so much?

I think part of the reason we stay away from these issues is that we sense a domino effect.  One question leads to another question leads to another question, and pretty soon you’re questioning EVERYTHING.   I would like to say this is not true, but I’m afraid that it is.  At least it has been for me.

Having relationships with people different than us, having more diversity in our religious communities, brings unexpected problems and unexpected benefits, just as it did for Chester and Wilson.  In preparation for this service, I interviewed Skip Sweitzer, who could not be here this morning but said that I could share some of his story.   A few years ago Skip stood up here and told you his story himself, about his struggle to come to terms with his daughter’s homosexuality.  There is one aspect of his story I would like to highlight now.  Skip said that this family crises led he and his wife, Betty, to marriage counseling, and that out of the confusion and fear sparked by their daughter’s news came a stronger marriage.  In their case, at least, the domino effect led to greater understanding and love with each other as well as with their daughter.

Having a real, honest relationship with someone who is a lot like you is hard enough, let alone with someone who can easily shake the pillars of your beliefs about yourself, your gender identity, your sexuality, and more.  But I believe that these relationships are worth it.  When I hear the word “transgender” now, the images and feelings that come to me are more complex than they used to be.  Instead of just seeing some freakish person, I see a friend.  Instead of feeling only repulsion – and I still do feel some of that – I also feel the complexity of Sean’s transition, and the discomfort it raised for me as well.  Instead of fear, I recall the Naming Ceremony, and I feel proud.

 Welcoming the stranger means welcoming uncomfortable growth and change.  It means being willing to let go of our illusions and question some of our habits and behavior, as well as our beliefs.

 I would like to quote from Dostoevsky again before I close.  This is from the Elder Zosima’s response to the confessor:

Active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams.  Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching.  Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one’s life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising.  Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science.

Let us strive to be more welcoming.  Let us strive to be more welcoming not of categories, of people in the abstract.  Let us strive to be more welcoming of real people, individual human beings with their own peculiar mix of strengths and weaknesses, needs and yearnings, quirks and habits.   Let us welcome people who push our buttons, people who carry squirt guns in their pocket “just in case.”  Let us welcome diversity and change not only in our church community, but also in ourselves, as the newcomer introduces us to parts of ourselves we never knew or had forgotten.  And let us trust the power of love to transform us as we reach out to others.

Amen.
 

Bibliography
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
Kevin Henkes, Chester’s Way.
Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Thanks to…
Dick Hoyt and Lucy Parker for support and feedback.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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