Eleventh Hour, Eleventh Day

Today is my partner’s birthday. When she was a very young child, her brother, fifteen years her senior, told her that the parades on November 11th were for her. She couldn’t quite figure out the gun part of the parades, and what that had to do with her, but she still decided to accept her brother’s answer. It took a few years for her to realize that November 11th was its own very special day. For as you probably all know, it was in the 11th hour of the 11th day of this 11th month of the year that the fighting stopped in World War One. Except then, it was the Great War, the War to End All Wars. Oh, had that been so. But it was not.

I came of age during the Vietnam War years, in a family and a church that was opposed to the war. While I was in high school, I remember when there was one fellow who took sanctuary to avoid the draft in a different Detroit church, and everyone there took to wearing buttons saying, “My name is. . .” with the now-forgotten name of that young man. If everyone claimed to be him, how could the federal agents know who to take? I baked brownies and cookies for those staying with him, and I was the only one in my 10th grade class to show up in school with a “My name is . . .” button.

I remember petitioning my world history teacher to do a paper on the Vietnam War and my participation in the anti-war activities, to no avail. Her response was that it was not history unless it was at least 20 years ago. While that might be true in order to get a balanced view of something, it was, at the time, a pretty flip response. I can’t remember what other topic I settled for, but it didn’t matter, because the teacher eventually cancelled the papers, anyway.

My brothers worried about the draft. One went to college, even though he didn’t want to, and the other was able to drop out of school because he got a low number in the lottery. I remember, when I got to college, friends trying to figure out whether they would try to stay in school, move to Canada, or serve when they didn’t want to. Very few thought about alternative service—it was really hard to get conscientious objector status unless you had a long track record to support your claim. Easier to go to Canada, they thought.

I remember the peace marches. I remember noticing the soldiers with guns on the rooftops, staring down at us. Once in Detroit, where we decided to occupy the offices of the draft board downtown. We went up the elevator, and filled every space on the floor of the office. When people started pulling out and destroying the files, I left, not wanting to be part of that. I remember a demonstration in my church, where the protestors decided to burn the American flag. My friend Jennifer and I stopped them from burning it. We weren’t opposed to burning flags, per se, but we did not think that this group should burn the church’s American flag—the church was providing the space for the protest, and their stuff should be respected. Never mess with territorial 16 year olds. And when, in college, the peace march ended up at the freeway, with students climbing up the embankment to stop the traffic, I turned away at the end.

It was at church that my mom received her training to take the young men avoiding the draft across the border. She had been a WAV in the Second World War, but didn’t think this war was right. Every now and then, she’d drive down, and help some young man find a new life in Canada. She withheld the tax on our phone bills, since this tax went exclusively to the military. Years later she became a war tax resister, and a Veteran for Peace.

It was also the church that chartered buses to go to the big March on Washington in 1970. I remember riding on it all night long, going to a service at a All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church, and then walking with hundreds of UU’s and thousands of other people. We felt, that day, that our protest would end the war. We felt that we were on top of the world—that this was the way things were supposed to be.

And in a way, they were. The majority of our UU congregations, and our UU movement, were opposed to the war. Some congregations tried to remain neutral, and some succeeded, but those days were tumultuous ones. Many of our congregations were torn apart by the war, and what to do about it. Although preachers are given the freedom of the pulpit—the right to preach truth as we know it or imagine it—the wise minister is always aware of her or his congregation, and how they feel, but we do have the right to speak as we know truth. And in those days, many ministers spoke out against the war, and many congregations were long divided. Some congregations did not survive the battle, and split down the middle. Some lost members in droves.

Yet in our churches and society at large, there was no visible celebration as the men and women came home. No ticker-tape for them, no parades honoring those who had fought, no national sorrow for those who had died. Rather for them the scorn and derision as people who had done the wrong thing. As a protestor, I stepped back from violence and was peaceful in my desire to stop the war, and yet I didn’t have a clue about how to treat those who came back from the war. I fell in with those who chastised and denigrated them for going. I don’t remember calling them baby-killers, or really saying anything at all to them, but I knew in my heart of hearts they were bad. Good people wouldn’t be fighting half-way across the globe. The Vietnam War was a divisive time for our nation and our young Unitarian Universalist Association.

Desert Storm was not much easier, for us, or for those who returned. Just before Desert Storm began, I once again boarded a bus for Washington. This time it was from Harvard Divinity School. There we sat, many UU’s in the midst of our colleagues, cramming for finals as we rode the ten hours there and back again, to protest against this war that seemed only folly, or only in support of cheap gas prices in this nation. Unlike the optimistic belief we could change the world of the anti-Vietnam era, we in the 1990s were jaundiced, cynical, hoping against hope that we would prevail. But we did not. The war began, without as much congregational divisiveness as during Vietnam, but still there were those within our congregations who felt that war just. We were again a movement divided over what was the right thing to do. And again, the soldiers came home, uncelebrated, unknown.

But it was not always that way within our movement. Unitarian Edward Everett Hale wrote his novel, Man Without a Country, as an attempt to get Northern soldiers to enlist in the Civil War. Thomas Jefferson, as close to being a Unitarian as anything else, was the President who finally had the nerve to root out the Barbary Pirates with military force. Before him, presidents paid monetary tribute to the pirates—it was only Jefferson who said enough is enough.

But other Unitarians were more loathe to enter into battle. During the Second World War, British Prime Minister and Unitarian Neville Chamberlain kept negotiating with Hitler. Believing in the goodness of man, Chamberlain could not conceive of someone lying so certainly during diplomatic sessions. He presumed on Hitler’s reasonableness, and he believed that the agreements that they made would hold, bringing peace instead of the Second World War. But we all know that that was not the case.

During both World Wars, the vast majority of Unitarian and Universalist clergy were in strong support of the wars, and the US’s involvement in them. Preachers spoke in favor of war, the homeland sacrifices and our brave men and women. Young men, returning home from years on the battlefields, were heralded as heroes, as people who deserved the very best of all. The vast majority felt this way, I say, because it was not a universally held belief.

John Haynes Holmes, minister of Community Church in New York, was a pacifist. He believed that we should not be involved in any war, and spoke about it eloquently from his pulpit. During those days, it was not uncommon to have federal agents sitting in congregations to report back what preachers said. Community Church was a frequent stop. The Church leadership started receiving pressure about their minister’s outspoken statements. It got so bad that the Board eventually met to discuss what should be done. Most of them were opposed to Holmes’ statements—they believed that the war was just and right. But they also knew our tradition well, and they decided that Holmes could speak the truth as he knew it. The freedom of the pulpit stood.

But what that gained Holmes was the disrespect of his colleagues, their ire and disdain. No one would exchange pulpits with him—they did not want this radical speaking to their people. There were a few other ministers who were vocal in their opposition, but Holmes received the bulk of the approbation. It wasn’t until many years after both wars that Holmes received the apology of his colleagues for the way they treated him.

These, though, are different times. Veterans Day began as Armistice Day after the Great War, and with it was that dream for world peace. The League of Nations was borne, again hoping that this would mean no more wars. Yet this was hope against hope, for this year Veterans Day comes in the midst of wars against terrorism taking place on this continent and also in Afghanistan and Iraq. And Veterans Day also comes in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, a day that changed the complexion of this nation forever.

On that day, as a nation we lost our innocence. It was in those moments when we once and for all knew that we were part of the world around us, not protected by seas that divided us from others, but that we, too, were subject to attack. A disquieting sense prevails that still makes us wonder what’s around the next corner. As a nation, we long to be safe again. We want to root out evil, we want to know we will not be attacked again, and for many, the route to this safety is through military action. By bombing first, and now fighting on the ground, we imagine that once again sleep well, once again fly friendly skies, and open mail with joy rather than dread. Once again “my country, right or wrong,” becomes the rallying cry.

Yet even as people rushed to proudly display the colors and be patriotic, they didn’t even know that they don’t remember, or never learned, how it is to be done. Flags are left to tatter on car antennas, they are left out in the rain, they are left out all night without being illuminated. They are kept off the ground, but not from the bushes, flowerbeds, or other surfaces. Maybe not so much in Marin, but in the Midwest for sure. We don’t know whether we should put our hands over our hearts when the flag is raised, or during the singing of the national anthem, or during the Pledge of Allegiance. We don’t know whether to stand or sit, or exactly what to do. Many of our children don’t know the words to the Pledge of Allegiance, nor the words to the National Anthem.

And yet, I can’t help but wonder what it all means. Is this the only way to go? Growing up, I learned to be skeptical and cynical about our government. Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, left me always doubting. I’m not at all sure that I trust this administration—or any administration for that fact—to lead us well through this difficult time. I question whether or not the tactics used have, rather than make us the victors, embroiled us in another war that cannot be won, or that will cost us all more in the long run. I wonder if we are not committing our young men and women without good cause, without good sense. My niece is one of those “in country” with her toddler son waiting for her at home. I long for another way—for a way of diplomacy, of speaking our way through.

And yet, I remember the well-meaning mistakes of Neville Chamberlain. And I wonder what will happen to that part of our world, to the Iraqi people and in the Middle East, if we pull out now, with the rebuilding and the stabilization incomplete. Can it be stabilized? Are we done with our work there? As much as I long to have all our troops come home, I can’t help but wonder what greater devastation and disasters we might create if we simply pull out now. What do we really owe to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan? The answers aren’t as simple as I long them to be—the truth is that we really cannot know what will happen next—if we stay or if we go. Only guesses.

I find myself going over this again and again and again. I have dear friends, both UU and not, who strongly believe that we are doing the right thing—that without our intervention not only will the Iraqi people and country be lost, but that we will leave the entire world much more vulnerable than is good for any of us. And I have dear friends, both UU and not, who believe with all their heart and mind and soul that what we are doing is a mistake, and that we have no other honorable recourse than immediate and complete withdrawal. And I have my niece in the middle of it, joining everyone else’s sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins and mothers and fathers and dear friends—all over there working hard to bring peace to the world.

So what does it mean, to be a citizen, to be patriotic? In my opinion, one of the best parts of democracy is the free flow of ideas. It is the chance, and the responsibility, to question, to wonder, to look at what is, and what could be, and what should be, and know that in the doing, one is living out their patriotic duty. To bow and scrape, without reason or thought, that is the greater violation of our democratic way. To live without the debate, without the demonstrations for another way, is to live the narrow party-line government of those whom we criticize around the world. Those who demand unfailing support without question misunderstand the basic nature of this country, and of democracy itself. Just as those who demand unfailing opposition without question misunderstand the basic nature of this country, and of democracy itself.

I won’t go into my rant against the use of God and other theological language to justify actions on either side. I’ll simply say that by asking God to bless our nation, and ours alone, we enter into dangerous territory, elevating ourselves and forgetting the humanity of others. This we should not do.

Yet in the midst of my doubts and questions about this war and our world, three things have also come clear to me. The first is that even in the midst of honest debate, none of this should be borne on the backs, or the hearts, of those who serve. The biggest error of the Vietnam days was that we took out our dissatisfaction with what our government was doing on the hearts of those who—sometimes through no desire of their own—served in our armed forces. We caused them much ill, a hardness of heart, a blow at the spirit and soul. Rather than realizing the hell where they had been, and providing healing for it, we inflicted a different kind of hell by not embracing them in their return. I say “we” for it includes me, and, perhaps, many of you. The culture did not welcome home those who went in our nation’s name.

There are many still badly wounded from that war. We see them everywhere—every time I preach on military service, I have people come and tell me, in tears, that they have never felt safe acknowledging that service in their UU congregations. There is no room for them, and this should not be so.

This we must not do again. For those who fight and offer themselves for our democracy deserve our respect, and deserve our thanks. Our quarrels, if quarrels there be, are with those who send them into battle, not those who merely serve. And for that, for them, it is that I celebrate Veterans Day. It is my chance to remember that people are different than policies, and that if we are to see a day of peace, then we must treat each other with loving care.

Second, through the work that I did for my Doctor of Ministry degree, it became painfully clear that we, as a nation, need the military and police to safeguard the freedoms we so highly cherish. Without them, none of us would be safe. We might not agree with any particular administration’s policies and tactics, but it is naiveté of the worst kind to think that we could do without either the military or police and live in a world that values human life more than getting ahead. The presence of the military and police is an imperfect human solution to an impossibly complex situation—people around the world have been engaged in warfare every single day since that eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. We have never been without war. We need the military.

And lastly, we must remember the true meaning of this day, a day of prayer for peace. We must all strive for it, work for it, whether it be by the sword, by prayer, by debate, by flying the flag, all of the above. We must pray, and work, for peace. We honor all who have served by honoring that which they strove to provide: a world made fair, with all her people one.

In the aftermath of September 11th, we heard Irving Berlin’s song, God Bless America, over and over again. Yet the story was not told of how Berlin came to write it. In 1938, Berlin visited Europe, saw the buildup of fascism, and the horrors that were happening. He feared greatly for the future. He came home and wrote this song as a prayer of peace, as a prayer that we could find another way. There is a first verse to the song, one we rarely, if ever, hear. It is with Berlin’s song and prayer that I end today:

While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free,
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer:

God bless America.
Land that I love
Stand beside her, and guide her
Through the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America
My home sweet home.

God, if God there be, bless America, and all the peoples and all the nations of the world. May we, on this Veterans Day, commit ourselves, once again, to the peace that passes understanding. May we live, all of us, one day soon, in a world of peace. May this be our prayer, and our labor of love. Amen. So be it. Shalom.

Eleventh Hour, Eleventh Day by the Rev. Dr. Lisa Presley November 11, 2007

Eleventh Hour, Eleventh Day
by the Rev. Dr. Lisa Presley
November 11, 2007