Independence Day: All in the Family

Rev. Louise Green

July 5, 2009

I have been thinking a lot lately about the tension between the ideal and the real, in every aspect of living. Perhaps you remember Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, a book dedicated to those who want to change the world, from what it is, to what they believe it should be. That kind of vision is essential for community organizing, or for the development of mission statements. However, we also have to come to terms with where we actually are, before we decide where we want to go. Anywhere we look—this city, the nation or planet, All Souls or the UUA, our families and friendships—there is a tough disconnect between idealized hope and lived reality.

Around this time of year, I’m also engaged in inner wrestling about Independence Day celebrations. On the one hand, it’s inspiring to hear Jimmy Smits recite from the founding documents of our country down at the Mall—I admire and aspire to the ideal, the world as it should be. (Plus, where else can you enjoy Barry Manilow, the Cookie Monster, Aretha, and the Marines, all on the same bill?) On the other hand, the more you know about the many histories of this nation (to name a few: the voices of American Indians, African slaves, women suffragists, working class immigrants), the more complicated the picture gets. That’s reality, the world as it is.

Let’s take a few examples of historical contrast today. The texts are from earlyamerica.com, in case you need to brush up on your U.S. history!

Church bells rang out over Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.... the Declaration of Independence was approved and officially adopted by the Continental Congress... “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

World as it should be. Yet, it’s always good to ask about any sacred text, what was left out here? What passages didn’t make it past the editors, representing those with the most power? We learn this on the website:

Two passages in Thomas Jefferson's draft (of the Declaration) were rejected by the Congress — an intemperate reference to the English people and a scathing denunciation of the slave trade.

Uh-oh, world as it is. The wealthy, highly educated, male participants in the Congress did not want to insult all the English people, which would have been bad for business, just King George III. As Saul Alinsky would have taught, organize by polarizing on one person, and Thomas Jefferson does just that in the Declaration of Independence. In addition, the signers and future generations were unwilling to deal with the horrific slave trade for another century. The results of that delay, a futile attempt to erase the world as it actually was, are still playing out to this day.

Going on, in one version of history we hear this:

Before the Constitution...there were The Articles of Confederation… Drafted in 1777 by the same Continental Congress that passed the Declaration of Independence, the articles established a "firm league of friendship" between and among the 13 states.

And an interesting quote from that document:

“The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union, the free inhabitants of each of these States--paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted--shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States.”

Well, now. Mutual friendship, privileges, and immunities among the people who are free inhabitants, yet specifically excluding paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from justice. As for the American inhabitants here first, or those brought to these shores with no freedom, they are simply never named.

Shifting to a different historical source, what else was left out?

From The Wisdom of the Native American, by Kent Nerburn: The Five Nations…formed the Iroquois Confederation long before Columbus set foot on America…their constitution was used by Benjamin Franklin as a model for the Articles of Confederation.

And from that Constitution of the Iroquois Nations, two excerpts Franklin didn’t use:

Women shall be considered the progenitors of the Nation. They shall own the land and the soil…When a (leadership) title becomes vacant through death or other cause, the women of the clan in which the title is hereditary shall hold a council and shall choose one from among their sons to fill the office made vacant.

What were the criteria used by Iroquois women to choose male leadership?

The (Leaders) of the Confederacy of the Five Nations shall be mentors of the people for all time. The thickness of their skin shall be seven spans -- which is to say that they shall be proof against anger, offensive actions and criticism. Their hearts shall be full of peace and good will and their minds filled with a yearning for the welfare of the people of the Confederacy. With endless patience they shall carry out their duty and their firmness shall be tempered with a tenderness for their people. Neither anger nor fury shall find lodgement in their minds and all their words and actions shall be marked by calm deliberation.

You really have to wonder how things might have gone differently if Mr. Franklin had let the Colonial women chose the delegates to the first Constitutional Convention, or maybe the first few U.S. presidents! Just saying. It seems to have taken until 2008 to get a President with an Iroquois temperament…

As we know, our new U.S. Constitution went a different direction. Delegates to the “world as it is” Convention signed the Constitution in September, 1787, in Philadelphia, stating that:

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States… according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”

So we start with the number of free persons for representatives and direct taxes, or actually the male free persons. Add in those bound by indentured servanthood. Subtract the Indians, who are not taxed, but not represented either. Then add in three fifths of all other persons, meaning that each slave is counted as less than a whole human being. The world as it was in the new United States of America, and not very pretty.

These are the true roots of this nation’s family history—all there at the first Independence Day, along with the great ideals of a young nation, a vision we have been living into ever since. Because anywhere we look—this city, nation or planet, All Souls or the UUA, our families and friendships—there is that inevitable disconnect between idealized hope and lived reality. Those who are included, and those who are left out. The voices heard, and the ones erased. The promise of what might be, and the painful shortfall. What we hoped for, and what we actually got.

Last night Jimmy Smits, the enthusiastic host of the Washington July 4^th festivities, said that the Declaration of Independence might be called the “original audacity of hope.” I am not so sure about that. Perhaps the greater audacity was to assert that “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and, at the very same time, delete Jefferson’s scathing denunciation of the slave trade. What does it mean to hold these two things together, the world as it should be, and the world as it is? And most importantly, how do we find the creative power to make change towards the “should be,” claiming the vision, even if acknowledging reality?

In The Art of Possibility, from a chapter entitled“The Way Things Are,” Rosamund and Benjamin Zander suggest that our power to move comes from first acknowledging “what is.” They say:

When we dislike a situation, we tend to put all our attention on how things should be rather than how they are…When our attention is primarily directed to how wrong things are, we lose our power to act effectively. We may have difficulty understanding the total context or discussing what to do next, or difficulty overlooking the people who “should not have done what they did” as we think about a solution.

In other words, we become mired in the world as it is, by incessantly comparing it to the world as it should be, thereby locking in our suffering. All of our energy goes towards the complaint, and little is left to explore solutions. We have all spent personal time periods in this kind of tension: mourning the marriage we were supposed to get, or the job we thought should have been easier, describing the daughter who never lived up to imagined potential, or the father who fell short of the parent for which we longed. And in this nation, we progressives have a thick catalogue of what has gone wrong, even as we see the Independence Day story we were taught in elementary school celebrated nationally. It’s vitally important to know those histories, to broaden our view by including more voices. But beware the lists of grievance. For as the Zanders say, when our attention is primarily directed to how wrong things are, we lose our power to act effectively.

Many centuries before the American Founding Fathers, or the matrilineal Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy, an enigmatic writer in China called Lao-tzu, or “Old Master,” wrote the Tao Te Ching, around 550 B.C.E. Full of wisdom, and startlingly direct, he patiently coaches his readers on accepting this world, as it is. Not so that we might stay there, stuck in limitations, but so that we might have infinite directions in which to move. I close with his words, translated by Stephen Mitchell:

If you want to shrink something,

you must first allow it to expand.

If you want to get rid of something,

you must first allow it to flourish.

If you want to take something,

you must first allow it to be given.

This is called the subtle perception

of the way things are.

The soft overcomes the hard.

The slow overcomes the fast.

Let your workings remain a mystery.

Just show people the results.

May it be so, that the world as it should be will emerge, step by step, from the world as it is. Amen.