“How We Live Now”
A Sermon by
Rev. Robert M. Hardies
All Souls Church, Unitarian
Washington, D.C.
Sunday, 16 November 2008
Our
reading this morning is a brief quotation that I shared with some of you before.
But it’s a really good one so I like to share it often. It’s from the
great political activist, Emma Goldman, who said:
I don’t want to be part of a revolution that doesn’t dance.77
Here ends our reading. [Laughter and applause] That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?
Historians of the middle ages note a curious phenomenon that occurred during this otherwise lackluster period of history. Apparently, the people of Europe would often festoon themselves in masks and costumes, grab their musical instruments and break out into ecstatic fits of dancing, communal dancing. As unbelievable as it may seem, the historical record is filled with these so-called “dance manias.” In Utrecht, 200 Dutch danced so furiously on a bridge that it collapsed, dumping all of them into the river. In Italy, fits of spontaneous boogying were blamed on the bite of the tarantula, hence the popular dance term, tarantella. Now, naturally the powers that be frowned upon such fits of collective pleasure and power and, sometime during the 16th Century, the phenomenon died out.
Barbara Ehrenreich traces the genealogy of ecstatic celebration in her book, “Dancing in the Streets; A History of Collective Joy.” Such dance, she argues, is present in cultures across the globe and driven by a primal intuition: “We dance together because we need each other.” Dancing simultaneously expresses and fulfills that need, and that’s why it gives us joy. So maybe that all explains why my companions and I felt an almost gravitational pull to the streets at about 11:00 p.m. on election night. [Applause] When the networks first called the election for Obama, someone in our group threw open the windows to our apartment and shouts and blaring horns poured in on the night air. After the speeches were over, we put on our coats and followed the noise, which brought us to the intersection of 14th and U Streets which the police had closed to traffic.
I wish you all could have been there. Because there a circle of drummers formed the epicenter of a pulsing mosh pit of revelers. Howard students danced on bus shelter roofs and homeless people banged on cans. Fancy dressers from the nightclubs danced with progressive hipsters from Busboys & Poets. There were gay folks and straight, young folks and old and, I might add, not a small number of All Souls folks as well. And there we all were, strangers and friends, high-fiving, fist-bumping, hugging one another, a singing, dancing, beautiful mass of humanity. It was a remarkable scene, one that was played out on streets across this city, in cities across our nation and, indeed, across the world. Even in the little village in Kenya where Barack Obama’s father was born. Dancing in the streets, an expression of collective joy and solidarity.
For me, the experience at 14th and U Streets vividly evoked two other historical moments, moments that I couldn’t get out of my mind that night, nor since. This morning, I want to use those two historical resonances to help give a little perspective on all of this, to try to begin to understand what happened during the election of 2008 and what it means for our nation, our church and ourselves.
The first memory that came up for me on election night took me by surprise because it seemed entirely incongruous. But as I danced with my neighbors in the streets, I simply couldn’t stop thinking about September 11, 2001. That the memory persisted, I realized, was because that was the last time that I had seen the people of this city and this nation treat one another with such tenderness, respect and compassion. It was the last time I had felt such a palpable sense of solidarity and common purpose with my fellow countrymen and women and the last time that I felt the eyes of the world on us, blessing us. Recalling that moment seven years ago brought tears to my eyes on election night, tears not so much for the tragedy of the terrorist attacks themselves, but tears of regret for how we betrayed that brief moment of tenderness, how our unity turned to division as terrorism became a wedge driven between red and blue America, how our respect for one another turned into mistrust of Muslims and fear of immigrants, how we went from painstakingly recovering dead bodies from the rubble to torturing living ones, how our sense of solidarity as Americans was mocked by the unconscionable response to Hurricane Katrina and how our relationships with friend and foe alike were squandered by a pre-emptive, unnecessary and unilateral war in Iraq.
I’ve had tears in my eyes ever since. And I still find myself looking back and wondering what more could I have done, what more should we have done to have prevented that betrayal, the travesties of the last seven years? Because as easy as it is to point fingers at others, and especially our political leadership, my tears for this betrayal are tears of guilt and repentance – my own -- because, in a democracy, every citizen bears some responsibility for the sins of the nation. And so one of the things that I hope this election will come to represent is the end of this seven-year-long betrayal. One of the things that that pulsing election night mosh pit felt like to me was a kind of communal exorcism of the demons of nine-eleven and a return to the better angels of our nature we had so briefly discovered in the wake of those attacks.
But friends, the dance is only the beginning. We must all work to atone for the sins of our nation and hold our newly elected leaders accountable for restoring the civil liberties that they took away, for closing Guantanamo and striking torture once and for all from our legal code, for ending this unjust war in Iraq and for reaching out to the rest of the world. Years from now, when we look back on this moment, I want us to be able to say that November 4, 2008, was the last day of the long nightmare of September 11, 2001.
On election night, 14th and U was the center of a joyous rioting, fueled by hope. Just 40 years before, that same intersection was the center of a destructive rioting, fueled by a profound sense of betrayal and despair. In 1968, in the wake of Dr. King’s assassination, both 14th and U Streets burned, leaving a physical scar in this city that really was only repaired five or seven years ago when they finally redeveloped those strips, and leaving emotional scars that endure in this city and this nation to this very day. For me, that’s what made standing at that intersection that night so profoundly resonant. To imagine that, 40 years before, that had been the site of such despair and anger and that, on this night, people of all ages and all races were gathering in hope and aspiration. It felt like we had made a great circle. There was no place that I’d rather have been on election night than the corner of 14th and U Streets in Washington, D.C.
But once again, the dance is only the beginning. There are members of this church who still remember coming to church on the Sunday after Dr. King was assassinated. They remember the smoke that still hovered over the street and the debris and dust that covered everything. They remember walking past the National Guard tanks that were parked in the park across the street and they remember the question that was in everyone’s heart that morning: Where do we go from here? In response to that moment, the members of All Souls Church did an extraordinary thing – they led. They hired the Reverend David Eaton, All Souls’ first African American senior minister. And, under David’s leadership, All Souls grew into a multiracial congregation and became one of the few places in the city where black folks and white folks could come together and dialog and begin rebuilding the community. The church became one of the centers of the opposition to the war in Vietnam. And, long before Target and Whole Foods, when no one wanted to touch the decimated 14th Street, All Souls became one of the developers on that ravaged strip, building more than 400 units of affordable housing that stand to this day. The church responded to its moment in history and, once again, became a leader in its time. Not perfectly, not without difficulty, but a leader nonetheless.
I believe with all my heart that this church has a leadership role to play now, at this historic moment. Let me try to be clear about what I believe that opportunity is. I believe that the election of last week was about much more than a change in president or a change in party. I believe that what happened in our election last week was a vote for a new dream for this nation. Maybe we should say a renewal of a very old dream for this nation. A dream of a nation in which people of all races and classes, where all souls, are able to fulfill their God-given potential, the dream of a nation in which the human family, so long divided by ethnicity or race or sexual orientation or gender can, at long last, dwell together, reconciled and whole. That’s what the euphoria was about at 14th and U Streets on election night. At least in part that’s what it was about. This is the dream on which our nation was founded and the dream for which so many of our ancestors, our loved ones who came before us, struggled and labored, never to see its fruition.
But friends, we will not achieve . . . Let me just stop and say something for a second. I have often used the phrase, “But friends” or “Friends,” when I address you all. [Laughter] I’m not going to stop saying “friends” just because [Applause and laughter] someone stole my line. [Laughter] We will not achieve this dream simply because we elected a black man President of the United States. And we will not achieve this dream simply because we all danced together in the streets at the corner of 14th and U. We will achieve this dream only if real-live communities of people across this land decide that they will become laboratories of that dream, incubators of that dream. Friends, I can’t think of a better community to do that than this community of our own – All Souls Church. I believe that we must be an incubator of this dream of a human family, reconciled and whole, where we equip people to live into the future as a people and as a nation.
Our President-elect will be the first to say that voting for him is not enough. And I want to say to all of you today, because we’ve got a big crowd today and it’s good to see you all here, but I want to say to you today that it is also not enough to come to church on Sunday mornings and to listen to some preacher and to listen to some good music on Sunday mornings. We need your active participation to make this dream come true. [Applause] We need you. I know how hard you all worked this fall; I know how hard you all worked. And I know how much it meant to you. And I want to ask you to keep on working hard, to keep on working for that dream and to think of your investment in this community as a continuation of that dream. If the church can’t lead us into this vision of a human community that is whole and reconciled, then who can? And if not All Souls, then who will?
So I want to invite you to get involved. Whether it’s organizing with the Washington Interfaith Network, teaching ESL, serving meals at Christ House, singing in the choir, marching for immigrant rights or to end the war in Iraq. I want to invite you to join us, to be active participants in this community. In fact, next Saturday, the Reverend Louise Green and I will be hosting a retreat – next Saturday at noon – in which we’re going to invite leaders of the church to come together and envision the next chapter of our social justice ministry together here at the church. I said “invite leaders;” that’s an invitation to all of you. You’re all leaders in this church. I want to invite you to come to that and help be a part of envisioning our future together.
In January, during inauguration weekend, which also happens to be Dr. King weekend, All Souls will have an opportunity to share its vision of the human family with other people. We will host, on Martin Luther King Day, an enormous gathering of religious progressives from across this country. The keynote speaker will be the great Jim Forbes, Reverend Jim Forbes of Riverside Church in Manhattan, as well as many others. It’s an opportunity for us to open our hearts and our homes to provide hospitality for people and, as we do that, to share with them our vision of the human family, reconciled and whole. So join in, participate, be a part of this change. Because I believe this is an exciting time to be a citizen of the United States of America and I believe that this is an exciting time to be a member of All Souls Church, Unitarian. And I agree with Emma Goldman: I don’t want to be a part of a revolution that doesn’t dance.
On election night, we had our dance. The dance is only the beginning. Let’s bring on the revolution. [Sustained applause]