Sunday, October 1, 2000
"The Handless Maiden"
Rev. Annie Holmes

For a better appreciation of this sermon see "Women Who Run With The Wolves"
by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, story "The Handless Maiden,"  p. 389.

In 1998 I attended four workshops on racial justice at our national church's
General Assembly.  One of these workshops was very disturbing to me.  It was
disturbing because it was supposed to be a healing workshop designed to help
those minister's who had gone through a conference in March of that year,
where a white minister had offered a workshop on the history of black
preaching.  Many people, mostly black UU ministers and UU lay people were
incensed that the conference planners had asked a white minister to do such a
workshop on black history.  There was a protest at GA before this healing
workshop and many angry words and accusations.  Then came this meeting
designed to allow people to speak their minds and maybe, just maybe there
could be some healing.

Instead, what happened was the people who attended, begin to holler at each
other and started calling each other names and slinging assumptions at each
other about other's motivations. It was a battle of whose fault it was, each
side blaming the other side of racism and not understanding.  In short, it
was anything but healing. I felt more hurt was generated.  This workshop was
designed to continue the discussion from the March conference and hopefully
have some healing. But, what I witnessed was more name calling, more hurt
feelings spilling over, more assumptions about people's motives. In short, it
was a very raw meeting. Towards the end of the time together, one person said
they felt their hands were tied as far as any resolution being possible. Then
the minister who had led the Black preaching workshop, stood up and said she
felt she was innocent of the guilt that was levied against her and that she
was washing her hands of the whole affair. She said she was powerless, as far
as changing the situation of the anger and hurt feelings that this situation
of the conference and her workshop had motivated.

At that point, Rebecca Parker, Dean of our UU theological school in Berkeley,
CA, who was moderating this workshop stood up and spoke. As she addressed the
group she startled everyone there. Rebecca explained that her friends who
grew up under the influences of Eastern religions see innocence in a very
different way than we do here in the US.  During the discussion, many wanted
to be sure they had stated their innocence of being racist, or a bigot or a
fanatic. But, Rebecca explained, in the Eastern countries innocence is a
state that young adults and adults, in general, hope to grow out of, on their
way into something else, into wisdom.

Innocence in many Eastern countries is seen as a descriptive word, a state of
being that can be a block,  be a hindrance to changing and growing into
maturity. It is seen as a childish condition that any sane adult would never
want used to describe themselves.  In Eastern countries one would be foolish
to want to stay innocent.  To be innocent would be to be foredoomed to a life
of denial, to be naïve about the workings of the world, to remain afraid of
the multifaceted nature of reality and the interpersonal relationships of our
world. In other words to be innocent was to be a child, or as an adult, to be
a fool.

The room at the GA workshop was very quiet. People held their heads in their
hands and did not look at each other. It was decided, rather hurriedly, that
there would be more discussions on these issues of race, in order that there
may yet be understanding between peoples or different races within the UUA.

I have contemplated what Rebecca said for many years now. And I was struck by
the metaphor made by the white minister who had led the black preaching
seminar, that had caused so much ill will, the metaphor of her washing her
hands of the whole situation, or the other person saying their hands were
tied. They both felt they were unable to do anything different than they had
done. Was there a connection between a person seeking innocence and a person
feeling their hands were tied and therefore there was no way they had any
control over how they acted?

Yes, there definitely is a connection, and that connection is graphically
portrayed in the story, "The Handless Maiden."  If story is the seed then we
are its soil.  The maiden in the story is all of us. We are indeed born
innocent and that is as it should be.  But, no sentient, awake being in this
world is allowed to remain innocent forever. In order for us to thrive, our
own instinctive nature drives us to face the fact that our world is not what
we may have first perceived it or told it would be.

Training our psyches to take the raw material of life and break it open in a
way that makes it usable - this is called process - asking "How shall I use
the material I have learned about the world in the best way possible?"
In the story, the maiden is betrayed by her father. If you remember the mill
is not working, the father had not learned to process information that the
world gives, so neither had the daughter.  So, when the devil comes along, he
is not recognized and it was easy for him to offer easy riches, in other
words, there is a bad bargain made. Now, because of the foolishness of the
father, the daughter must suffer, be in sorrow, pain and ultimately have to
leave her home. But this is a good thing. She needs to travel, as each of us
must, from the inexperience of innocence, in order to find new knowledge, a
new way of being.  The daughter is each of us about to embark on a journey
into deeper knowing, a journey from innocence to wisdom, from naiveté to
understanding, from gullibility to awareness, into the shadows and more
complicated areas of life.

Because of the bad bargain, the daughter's hands, which are her perceptive
powers, as well as our hands may have been severed, therefore we, like the
daughter, are rendered useless, for a time, in "handling" our own affairs. At
first, when our innocence is taken us, we realize life is not the way we were
told it was supposed to be. Do you remember the first time you realized 6
million Jews and others were murdered in the Holocaust? Do you remember the
first time you understood what rape was, or what injustice felt like? 
Therefore, handless, we lose hope, we travel as in a trance - unbelieving of
the injustice, the pain, the horror, the sorrow around us.  This is a story
about not taking the easy way out. We could accept hands that have been
fashioned by others, even if they were fashioned in love.  The maiden
accepted the iron hands, but they don't fit us exactly either, so once again
we must flee, our education about the world is not completed. So, this story
is also about mixed messages, the way we were led to believe life could be,
and how the messages get switched.  Like the messenger in the story, at
different times in our life, we fall asleep, the sleep of denial that life
could really be that bad. This is a story about ultimately traveling to the
forest, traveling into our unconscious, the psyche, the intuitive self where
we will finally be able, as the maiden did, to grow our own hands, not the
clumsy iron hands fashioned by others, and finally be ready to handle life as
an adult, fully awake.

Think of our culture, our racially torn society, let us ask ourselves as
individuals, and as a church community, do we wish to dwell in a place of
naïve misinformation or do we wish to grow up and be wise because of what we
have learned and assimilated over the years about life and about our society?
When the daughter losses her hands, the story tells us, life as she had known
it had ended. That is wonderful news, truly it is. Who among us would choose
to bargain with the devil of denial over the hard work that we know in our
heart of hearts will take us to new understandings, new life? We know that
our innocence about racism will have to burn to the ground in one way or
another, and then we must sit right in the ashes of what we once thought what
reality was and go on from there.

Yes, we have suffered, individually and collectively. We may feel we have had
to give much to the process of growing up, but that which has been given away
can be reclaimed, reclaimed but only in a different form. There may be many
places in your life you need to approach a project, a problem, an issue with
new hands. Often our lives have changed so completely in the twinkling of an
eye, that the inadequate hands of old cannot complete the task at hand. We
feel losses, we may feel victimized, powerless, or even unaware of the
stresses that may pull at us and we only feel their effect. There is an
expectation in the story, an expectation that wisdom not naiveté will
prevail.  Healing that is done with our eyes wide open, is deep, true healing
indeed.

In the early Spring of 2001, this church will be engaged in an antiracism
training and discussion on how we as individuals and as a church community
can be more culturally aware. This is a bold move, because as a congregation,
as we will invite the Jubilee World presenters of the Unitarian Universalist
Association into our church community for a weekend. We are saying, by this
invitation, we are ready to admit we can no longer remain innocent. We, as a
congregation are ready to say, let us grow new hands that will allow us to do
the work of ethnic inclusivity.

The opposite of innocent is not guilt, it is wisdom and understanding. The
wisdom that comes of melding our inner world and our outer world and
realizing how they can work together. What a poor bargain do we make with the
world, when we promise not to look, not to see, if only we can remain unwise,
unchanged, innocent of injustice, or poverty, of disease, of corruption and
of our place within all of those. What a poor bargain we make if we simply
say, our hands are tied in this problem of racial inequality in our world, in
our church.  Often we make poor bargains with life without knowing what we
are doing.
We need to recognize that we have been betrayed by a culture that often
creates walls instead of windows. And now is the time for action, but with
new hands, new minds, new outlooks.

In many Eastern religions, the loss of innocence is a rite of passage for a
young person to pass through to become a mature adult of society. As these
young people wake up from the sleep of innocence, or not seeing life in its
full complicated nature, they are urged to see life more clearly. They are
taught to peel back the layers of baby perceptions and defenses and
encouraged to take a hard look, a close look at what lies underneath. This
takes courage, faith and commitment. It is to be applauded by the rest of
society, when any one of us wakes up and uses the hands of wisdom that we
have fashioned ourselves. 

The Jubilee World Workshop can be seen as our rite of passage, of beginning
to deal with issues of race where we may have wanted to wash our hands of
this issue.
Let us be innocents no longer - let us untie our hands. Let us unclench our
fingers,  and now with our hands held open be ready to receive new
information that will make us well rounded and wise. Let us be innocents no
longer - as the young daughter was innocent, hiding behind the mill content
to sweep back and forth, back and forth, not caring or even aware there was a
whole world out there waiting for her light and her wisdom.  Let us be
innocents no longer - thinking we are faultless, spotless, naïve and
therefore blameless. 

Let us rather, lend our fully formed hands to struggle for racial awareness
and the need for justice. Let us do the work of facing our fears of racism in
ourselves and in this church and city. Let us do the work of healing the
wounds that racism has caused in our lives. Let us do the work of educating
ourselves on these problems. Let us do the work of getting acquainted with
diverse ethnic cultures here in Des Moines. Let us do the work of looking
squarely into the problem, that although as UUs we say our doors are open to
all, why there are so few people here of other races and cultures than white
middle-class.  Let us continue by doing the work of decoding the messages
that have been sabotaged our whole lives. The messages that say: -
differences are something to fear -racism will always be a part of our lives
-some ways of living are better than others
-humanity will always be at war with each other.

"The Handless Maiden" is a real-life story, inviting all of us to let go of
our innocence and be ready to give it up willingly. It is about a journey we
will be on our entire lives.
I walked away from the healing workshop at GA depressed and angered at my own
innocence and naiveté at my inability to change even the small world that I
live in.   But I was renewed by Rebecca Parker's insights of our Eastern
neighbors.  What I have to hear and did hear, that I certainly did not
particularly wanted to hear, is that I am not innocent, but I am not guilty
either.  Rather, I am no longer allowed to be in denial about my role in
healing relationships.  Join me on this road, a journey toward wisdom. Let us
continue to grow new hands everyday. We remember to listen, to learn, because
if story is the seed, then we are its soil.