Making Peace With One's Past

Sermon by Stephen D. Edington, April 19, 1998

One of the more hopeful notes that was sounded this past Easter weekend was the announcement of the agreement to a plan to settle the hostilities in Northern Ireland, where the Republican and Unionist sides had seemed in a hopelessly intractable state, and where more than 3000 men, women and children have been killed in the past 30 years alone. Under the persistent urgings and tirelessly guiding efforts former Senator George Mitchell, negotiators representing a wide range of constituents, and a wide range of opinion and investment in both the Unionist and Republican camps, signed on to a framework that provides for a widely representative governing body in Northern Ireland which is designed to protect the interests of all, and could possibly, over time lead to a unified Ireland.

The actual success of this agreement, of course, remains to be seen. For all of the meticulously worked out details and compromises, what finally determines the outcome of all these efforts will be the ways in which the past is allowed--or not allowed--to impact the present. The fears, hatreds, misunderstandings, and violent misdeeds of decades past--for which there is more that enough shared responsibility to go around--are still very vivid in the minds of all of those who have been tragically caught up in what has been generally referred to as "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland.

While a large majority, I am sure, of the people living in Northern Ireland are ready to endorse this settlement with sighs of relief, there are persons in the extreme wings of both the Unionist and Republican camps who cannot countenance a peaceful present. Rev. Ian Paisley, an ultra-unionist spokesperson, who at age 72 has made a career as a purveyor of anti-Catholic hatred is already taking to the barricades to oppose the agreement. And there are those in the ultra-Republican wing who now regard Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein as selling them out, and who may well come up with their own efforts to scuttle any kind of negotiated settlement.

Unfortunately and tragically, we have seen a similar process unfold in Israel and the Middle East following the Oslo agreement of 1993. The hope and optimism engendered by the Rabin/ Arafat handshake on the White House's South Lawn four and one half years ago has been painfully diminished by the actions of persons in ultra-nationalistic wings of both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Here again the memories or the reminders of past hatreds, and of acts of injustice and violence, have tragically been allowed to supersede attempts to live peacefully in the present and in the future. The full fruition of what was agreed upon in Oslo and ratified in Washington nearly five years ago now hangs in serious doubt.

I hope its not too simplistic on my part to suggest that what continues to seriously threaten any accord between the Israelis and the Palestinians; and what could (although I pray not) undermine the efforts of the past several weeks in Northern Ireland, is the unwillingness or inability by certain parties in each of these situations to make peace with their pasts. By "make peace with" I do not mean forget, deny, or downplay. Enough wrongs, enough horrible wrongs, have been committed in both locales to give each place a terribly troubled and angry past. The issue now is how those pasts will be remembered and what role those memories will be allowed to play in the days and years ahead.

There was an editorial in last Thurdays's (4-16-98) Boston Globe that spoke very well both to this issue and to some of the related points I want to pursue this morning. It was written by a gentleman named John T. O'Connor and it was titled "What the Irish Can Learn From South Africa." Mr. O'Connor is the Chairperson of the Irish Famine Committee which is based in Cambridge. His piece was about a meeting his group recently had with South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It is Archbishop Tutu who is currently chairing, in South Africa, a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission". The Commission was set up by South Africa's President, Nelson Mandela, and its purpose is to bring to light many of the atrocities committed against black South Africans during the years of apartheid rule. It offers both victims and perpetrators an opportunity to tell their stories. Mr. Mandela, whom I am convinced will be counted among the truly outstanding political leaders and moral figures of the 20th century (and you don't always find such a combination as that these days) is granting an general amnesty for all apartheid-era crimes as long as both the perpetrators and victims tell the truth of their pasts.

In speaking of the work of the Commission Archbishop Tutu says

"We cannot tolerate amnesia, because denying the truth to victims is morally abhorrent. Truth is the road to reconciliation."

But the Archibishop then goes onto say,

"Are we looking for retribution? No, we are looking for restoration....We are not looking for and eye-for-eye revenge-based justice (we are looking for) a restoring of relations between people who were at war."

Drawing upon the Archbishop's words Mr. Connor concludes his editorial by saying,

"Let's hope the parties in Northern Ireland are listening (to this)...Over past decades, everyone around the table in Belfast had done physical or mental harm to some other participant in the talks... (and) simply putting ink to paper won't create trusting human relations. For that to happen, Irish and British governments, political parties, and people on the ground must engage in a process of remembrance...and truth. Because in Ireland or South Africa, unless there is forgiveness, there is no future."

I can imagine that events in Ireland or South Africa or the Middle East may seem quite removed from us in any personal sense. As the people of good will, which I take us all to be, we look to these places and hope, for the sake of the persons living there, that a measure of reconciliation will come about that allows for the inhabitants to live in peace and safety, and with a sense of a secure future. We listen to the wisdom of an individual like Archbishop Tutu and give thanks for it, as well as for the presence of such a person in a place like South Africa where a process of healing is essential if that country is to have a peaceful future. At the same time, it may be difficult to see any of these events about being about us and the lives we are living.

Well, the events themselves may not be specifically about us here in this room, but there is an underlying dynamic in each of these cases that also is at work in human lives. In most instances it does not have the same intensity, and it may not involve the same memories of pain and devastation as in the cases just cited, but the dynamic remains in place nonetheless. I am referring to how we bring our past into our present and future, and the ways in which our pasts define our present and future lives. The choice being faced by the peoples and governments in Ireland, South Africa, and in the Israeli and Palestinian communities, is do we now do we acknowledge and own our past while also looking to move beyond it, or do we allow it to keep us locked into some of the same patterns of thought and behavior which have, in a very real sense, enslaved us. While acknowledging, one again, that we are looking at extremely troubled histories--troubled pasts--in each of these areas; this is still a choice that presents itself to us--in one way or another--at various points in our lives.

In introducing this topic in our Newsletter for this month I cited a line by a gentleman named Angus MacLean from a book he wrote called The Wind in Both Ears. Rev. MacLean was an outstanding leader in the old Universalist Church of America and, for a time, a Dean at St. Lawrence University--which was originally founded by the Universalists. He wrote:

"I believe in order to be really and constructively free one has to make peace with his or her cultural background, be it good or bad. This is a peace made up of some appreciation, some understanding, and some forgiveness."

Dr. MacLean wrote these words toward the end of a chapter where he describes his own journey from orthodox Presbyterianism (as it was in his case) to Universalism. Bear in mind his three key words: Appreciation, understanding, forgiveness. I'd like to use Dr.MacLean's words as a way of speaking to one of the very important roles I feel our Unitarian Universalist congregations are called upon to play in the lives of many of the people who make them up. I think part of our mission is offer a setting, a community, where our members and friends can make peace with their pasts. Such a mission, I know, pertains more strongly to some of our members than it does to others. Still, we each come here with a story, and with a journey. Some of us arrive relatively unscathed; while others come with lingering emotional and spiritual scars. Whatever our individual situations may be I think we each have a part to play in fulfilling this aspect of our mission.

Let me quickly reiterate what I said a few moments ago; "making peace with" does not mean to forget or deny or downplay. Very little peace, in fact, is gained by such an approach. Persons who have had to come to terms with a personal past of abuse are certainly aware of this. Whether its physical, emotional, or sexual abuse--and it can often be a combination of those three; and whether it came from within one's family of origin or some other source, it is attempting to forget the past that makes for a hellish present. Bringing such a past into the present is often very difficult and painful, but it is also the beginning of finding some measure of personal reconciliation. Dr. MacLean's formula may work to some extent in this area. There is really no appreciation to be found in an abusive past; perhaps some degree of understanding can be gained as to how things came to happen as they did; and maybe, if the time and the circumstances permit it, some degree of forgiveness can be offered and received. But whether these steps happen or not, even as painful as past as one such as this can become a bearer of personal peace if dealt with within a loving relationship, or with the help of a dedicated caregiver and therapist, or within a supportive and caring community--ideally with all three in concert with each other. My hope is that our community here can be one of the places where persons with a such wounded past can find some level of peace with it.

Moving to another area now, one of the several reasons I've felt it important for us to embark upon a Welcoming Congregation program is because gay, lesbian, and bi-sexual persons often have a past they are seeking to make peace with. I do not mean to be either pitying or patronizing when I say that. Being gay does not automatically place a man or a woman within the ranks of the emotionally or spiritually walking wounded. I know that. At the same time I also know that, while things have somewhat improved of late, ours is a culture that still sends out its anti- gay/lesbian messages. As adolescents and young adults become aware of their sexuality, and as some of these young people find that they have a gay or lesbian orientation, they are often get the message--by one means or another--that there is something "wrong" with them. And that message then becomes internalized, and on some level, believed.

While this is not something I've had to personally deal with, I've had enough conversations over the years to know that a large part of the process of coming to self-affirmation for gay and lesbian persons involves making peace with an uneasy or difficult or painful past. And in these conversations I sometimes hear an echo of Dr. MacLean's three measures for becoming free from, and making peace with, one's cultural background. There is the learning to appreciate the sexual identity he or she was coming to discover; there is often an attempt to try to understand the fears and apprehensions that were behind the negative, and sometimes hateful, messages that were being heard and received; and maybe there is even a coming to some degree of forgiveness towards those who could not or would not understand and accept them. It is, again, my hope and my belief that we can be, and are becoming, a congregation and a community where this kind of peace-making can take place.

The final area I want to look at with respect to our topic is the one I'd originally intended to build this whole sermon around before it went and took on a life of its own--as tends to happen with me on occasion. Most, if not all, ministers have at least one story of how the sermon they sat down to write was not the one they ended up with. Something like that happened to me with this one.

Anyway, and to pick up the thread I first introduced back when I first quoted Rev. MacLean, our UU congregations serve something of a unique function by being a place where persons can make peace with their religious or spiritual backgrounds. I say unique because some 80% of us--denomination wide--have come to UUism from another religious tradition. Our birthright UUS are certainly valued and needed members of our congregations; they are also more the exception than the rule.

Most of us, myself included, had to leave some place else in order to come here. For me, and perhaps for all to whom this pertains, such a leave taking was a freeing, liberating experience. In one of his poems, in fact, Robert Frost writes, "The only certain freedom is in departure.." But Frost, being the wise Derry, New Hampshire guy that he was, had another line to counter-balance that one when he referred to himself as a "pursuitist, never an escapist..." There is some real wisdom contained in those few words. It is well and good that our UU congregations provide an escape from orthodoxy or from narrow religiosity, for us to be the place where Frost's "freedom in departure" is found. The rejoinder, however, is that very little growth--spiritual or otherwise--takes place if one does not move from the "escape" mode to the "pursuit" mode; if one does not, at some point, shift the focus from whatever past he or she is escaping from, to what it is one wishes and needs to pursue.

I can appreciate the fact that, more often than not, one needs to escape before one can pursue. I'm not extolling one at the expense of the other. I do think, however, that our ways of worship and our use of religious language need to be such that they take us beyond escape to ways of engagement with what it is that gives both our personal lives and collective life their meaning and depth. My hope is that our ways of worship, and our ways of being with one another, and our ways of speaking with one another in this place will give us a heightened sense of relationship both with each other, and with the larger life, the Spirit of Life, with That Which is Greater Than Ourselves, however we may choose to name it.

Here is where I think Angus MacLean's three approaches to making peace with one's past become especially relevant. I think they provide a way, a process, for moving from the escape mode to the pursuit mode. Speaking personally for just a moment, even after more years than I care to number, I still struggle at times with the strong evangelical Protestantism that is a large component of my cultural background. Even today its difficult for me to sit through a service in the very church that I also have to give a lot of positive credit to for how it helped shape and develop me. Its an irony I'll probably carry for the rest of my life. But standing within the Unitarian Universalism that has been central to me for over 20 years now, MacLean's three steps come quite easily. I appreciate the love and the care I received, and the encouragement I got for the ministry in that earlier cultural background. I have little difficulty in understanding how so much of what I've had to reject continues to be meaningful and nurturing for those who have remained in that setting. And at this point in my life I also have little difficulty in feeling a sense of forgiveness for the occasional wounds I did receive from that time and experience.

But then, I've had a lot of time to work on this. New folk, many who are making their own departures, continue to come into our midst. As I noted a couple of Sunday's ago, we have been blessed with an especially large influx of new members this year--to the point that I'm going to run my third "UU 101" series in May. As we welcome them, may we each be mindful of the journeys we've made in order to find this place we call home; may we be mindful of the pasts with which we have had to make peace--and with which we may still be making peace. As we continue to grow our congregation needs to be large enough to welcome those who are fresh from departure, and who may still looking for reconciliation with their pasts; and those who done much of that work and are pursuing greater depths of meaning for themselves.

I'm going to close with some words by the late Rev. Don Johnston that speak in a more poetic way to what I've just attempted to say. Its a poem called "Be Here":

Listen for the gospel of your heart and mind. Bring with you all your faculties of feeling. Sit next to living persons.
Feel a kinship with their yearnings Though they be unlike your own, Yet just as real and just as urgent.
Remember what has been, but be not its slave. Revise your hopes until they speak for more than you alone.
Be large enough to care and small enough to need. No one is ever old enough to have no need to learn to love, And to find their way anew.

Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua

Making Peace With One's Past