Mustering Courage

Rev. Mark Stringer

First Unitarian Church of Des Moines

1/19/03

Opening Words (Rollo May)

“Courage [is not] the opposite of despair.  We shall often be faced with despair, as indeed every sensitive person has been…. Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.”

Meditation (adapted from the words of Howard Thurman)

Creative Spirit, spirit of life

Known by many names spoken and unspoken…

In these, the extraordinary, boring, surprising, painful days
of our finite lives,

We seek the courage to live.

It is not difficult to keep going—to keep the flame of life burning—

As if to breathe were life.

The daily round may very easily be merely the daily round. 
The common chores persist, going to bed and getting up,
eating and making provisions for subsequent meals,

talking day by day the same talk,
using the same set of well-worn concepts, clichés and tired words. 
In one sense, it is good that this is so. 
For it means that the mechanics of living
can be learned by heart and forgotten
so that the resources of the personality
may be put completely at the disposal of the new way,
the fresh goal, the expanding horizon.

 
We seek the courage to live.

We seek the courage to live—this day. 
How easily each of us can slip into the mood that is desultory,
that quietly informs our minds that tomorrow
we can begin the new way,

tomorrow we can make the fresh turning in our road. 

We seek the courage to live—this day.
Courage to strike out on a path we have never trod before,
courage to make new friends,
courage to yield ourselves to the full power of the dream,
courage to yield our lives with abiding enthusiasm to the spirit of living and the wide reaches of all the creative undertakings of our shared humanity.

This we seek today…the courage to live.

Amen.

Reading

This morning’s reading is from UU minister Vanessa Rush Southern.

Stanislaw J. Lec is quoted as saying, “Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.”  That quote has two very different potential interpretations.  First, that horrible things can and do happen when we pile little injustice upon injustice.  Furthermore, that when a bad thing does happen, we can often be unaware of the part our deeds played in its occurrence.  The quote is a reminder that little acts can add up, like snowflakes on an overhang, sometimes with tragic consequences.

Second, and more positively, the quote reminds us that small acts of kindness and courage can also pile up.  It is a reminder that seemingly inconsequential acts of goodness and mercy can precipitate avalanches of their own—avalanches of good.  This interpretation is great news for the cowards among us.  Rather than exclude us from the struggles for good, Lec offers us a place.  His is a clarion call to lives constructed from small acts.  His battle cry is one that, even in our weakest moments, we are capable of responding to.  It is the call to the journey that begins with just one step.

So, certainly we ought to hold up the lives of Martin Luther King Jr. and the heavenly host of saints and martyrs whose lives were courageous and bold.  And certainly there are times to ask ourselves what we are willing to die for as a way of getting at what is worth living for.  Yet, on those days when we don’t feel up to being the David against the Goliath of injustice or cruelty or ignorance, we can ask ourselves what small steps we are willing to take.  We can build up our courage by taking our place as a snowflake (for good) and find solace and strength in the mounting pile of snow that builds as others do the same.  The fact is, were we all to commit to a couple of small acts, done with great love, in the name of causes or concerns that worry us sick, the avalanches of this world would take care of themselves.  And heroism would cease to be the realm of the few.

Sermon

Scott Dafoe was his name.  Sometimes I wonder if his name wasn’t picked from the book of classic bully names.  Scott Da-Foe.  I first met Scott Dafoe, a hulking, pimply-faced 14-year-old elephant of a man when I was an awkward, pimply-faced 12-year-old baby giraffe of a boy.  Well, I’m not sure our first contact really constituted meeting each other in the traditional sense.  It’s not like we had a conversation.  Our first meeting was much like most of our subsequent meetings.  In the crowded halls of Schrop Junior High, his fist met my arm, I winced, and he laughed…and that was pretty much it.

Each time we met for the next few months, which was at least a few times a week, he punched and laughed, I winced and bruised. Of course, not only my arm bruised.  My pride took a beating, and my enthusiasm for school faded.  At the risk of sounding too dramatic, I’ll tell you my faith in humanity suffered as well. I was weaned on “Sesame Street” and grew up going to Sunday school, where people didn’t do things like randomly hit each other. Scott Dafoe targeting me for daily doses of abuse just didn’t fit with what I knew in my heart to be the way that people should treat each other, and yet, I didn’t really know what to do about it.  Somehow I just knew that I wouldn’t be able to reason with him.  I played the possible scenarios over and over in my head.  I would imagine saying “Scott, can I talk to you for a few minutes…” but I knew that before I would finish my sentence, “pow” he’d have thrown his punch and bellowed his laugh.  I didn’t have friends that would want to touch this situation either.  My family had recently moved to the school district and I didn’t know very many students.  Besides, I didn’t really want to start a war, you know.  I didn’t want to do anything that would increase the violence, or that would include others on Scott’s list of targets, or make my daily run-ins with him even worse. I was a “let’s all get along” kind of guy and the harsh reality was that my commitment to peace was insuring that I would continue to get my thumps.

So here you are, knowing that the sermon today will be about courage, and you no doubt are already connecting the dots in your mind:  “OK, Mark is going to tell us how he overcame adversity, how he summoned the courage to stand up to this bully, how he fought and won back his dignity.”

And…well…you are right.  But it didn’t happen the way you may have seen it in the movies.  There was no dramatic build-up…no theme from Rocky playing underneath.  I didn’t summon some superhero strength I didn’t know I had and I didn’t use my intellect to outsmart my opponent. I finally secured my escape from my foe because I accepted the fact that I had no other choice.

I woke up one morning knowing that I simply could not take it anymore.  I knew that the next time Scott punched me, I would fight back.  I had to fight back.  I knew that I probably would receive more punishment, that I would probably get it worse the next day.  But, I also knew that any punishment I might receive would be no worse than the punishment I was accepting already.  It was a big decision for a 12-year-old because it felt like my life was hanging in the balance.

Later that morning, as I walked down the hall with a few of my classmates, I spotted Scott’s head hovering about the crowd and coming my way.  As I had done so many times before, I steeled myself for the punch I knew was coming.  But I also felt an inner voice, an inner rage even, that reminded me the time had come for me to stand up for myself.  As he approached and our eyes met, I saw his stern expression change to delight, as though he had come upon a long lost friend, or as if he were a hungry man spotting a well-cooked steak.  In a matter of seconds the whole thing was over.  He threw his usual punch, it struck my arm like a lightning bolt, and I freaked out.  I threw my books down and went after him.  It was like I was possessed.  I was swearing and swinging and making a huge scene.  I probably didn’t even make contact other than my first weak blow to his back as he passed by.  But my Tasmanian Devil act apparently did the trick.  Scott didn’t know what to do.  My unruly act of resistance was enough to convince him to avoid me in the future.  When our paths would cross again, he would usually fire an obscenity or two my way, but the punching stopped…and so did my fear of Scott Dafoe.

The important part of the story for my purposes today is not that I fought back, if that’s what you would call it…and not that I ultimately won my freedom from the perpetual persecution of being Scott Dafoe’s punching bag.  The important part of the story is that, in order to preserve my own inherent worth and dignity, I really had no other choice. The morning I had had enough and lashed out at Scott, thereby securing my freedom, was not all that unlike many other mornings when I had simply accepted my punishment.  I didn’t have a great epiphany…I just decided I wasn’t going to take it any more.  My courage was not something I donned like a suit of armor or Superman’s cape.  Nor was it something I ate, like Popeye’s can of spinach or some horse-pill of confidence.  My courage arose from paying attention to what was happening, from recognizing that there was no dignity in living this way, from enduring this kind of punishment, as though it was my obligation to tolerate the abuse.   In the end, then, my act of resistance was probably more a product of desperation than of determination.  But even more, it was an act of compassion…compassion for myself.  I decided that any further punishment I might receive was no worse than the punishment I was already receiving by conspiring in my own diminishment.  And even though I may have received more abuse in return for my resistance, I knew that whatever came my way would be no worse than what I was already enduring.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, my decision to finally stand up to Scott Dafoe is hardly worth a mention.  As we all know, the conflicts of our lives are usually much more complicated than a junior high scuffle.  And when we do face up to the things about our lives that brutalize and bully and dehumanize us, the risks are usually a lot greater than they were for me in the halls of Schrop Junior High.

So I share my story with you this morning with a simple purpose in mind, really.  I share it with the hope that it may provide a springboard for you to consider your own acts of courage…the times of your life when you did what needed to be done not so that you could feel self-righteous or superior, but because your very dignity (or the dignity of others) was at stake.  Courage, then, at least as I suggest we define it this morning, is really a commitment to compassion in the face of despair…compassion for oneself and compassion for others…it is the ultimate way of saying “Yes” to life, even in the face of what can feel like an overwhelming “No.”

All this week as I have thought about courage and what it means and how we can encourage it in ourselves and in others, I kept coming back to the recognition that many of you probably know a great deal more about courage than I do.  I know this to be true because I have heard some of your stories.  There are some here who have battled the demons of depression, who have beaten back the urge to give up, to throw in the towel on a life that may have seemed hopeless.   There are some here who have suffered the loss of spouses and children, who found the strength to survive shattered expectations and dreams.  There are some here who have struggled with addiction, who have not only hit bottom, but who have bounced back and have continued to battle.  There are some here who have endured abuse at the hands of individuals they trusted or should have been able to trust…and some who have faced painful discrimination because of their sex or race or body shape or sexual orientation or physical limitations. And as I think about all the stories I do know, I can’t help but consider all the stories I don’t know…all of the stories out there, in and outside of our church, that remain untold.  The stories of people who may drain whatever reserves of courage they have just to get up in the morning…to face another day without a place to live, or food to eat, or love to share.  The stories of people who every day have to make decisions most of us cannot even imagine, and yet somehow find the strength to make it to through to another tomorrow.

My guess is that most of the folks we might call courageous would not necessarily describe themselves that way.  As one of you reminded me this week, “People need to be told they have courage before they realize it for themselves.”  It’s true isn’t it?  How many times have you told someone who has just shared with you a story of a difficult time in her life, that she was courageous only to hear, “I just did what I had to do”?

Again, maybe that’s what courage really is:  simply doing what we just have to do.

A few months back I heard another story of courage, of doing what had to be done, that has stayed with me.  It was shared in a sermon delivered by one of my colleagues at a minister’s retreat.  It comes from a book by Ian Frazier called On the Rez, a story about South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation and high school basketball, and how the courageous compassion of one young girl may have changed an entire town.

“… Pine Ridge [Reservation] coaches know that when Pine Ridge is the visiting team, usually their hosts are courteous, and the players and fans have a good time. But Pine Ridge coaches [also] know that occasionally at away games their kids will be insulted, their fans will not feel welcome, the host gym will be dense with hostility, and the referees will call fouls on Indian players every chance they get…

In the fall of 1988, the Pine Ridge Lady Thorpes went to Lead [South Dakota] to play a basketball game... Getting ready in the locker room, the Pine Ridge girls could hear the din from the fans. They were yelling fake-Indian war cries, a ‘woo-woo-woo" sound. The usual plan for the pre-game warm-up was for the visiting team to run onto the court in a line, take a lap or two around the floor, shoot some baskets, and then go to their bench at courtside. After that, the home team would come out and do the same, and then the game would begin. Usually the Thorpes lined up for their entry more or less according to height, which meant that senior Doni De Cory, one of the tallest, went first. As the team waited in the hallway leading from the locker room, the heckling got louder. The Lead fans were yelling epithets like "squaw" and "gut-eater." Some were waving food stamps, a reference to the reservation’s receiving federal aid. Others yelled, "Where’s the cheese?" - the joke being that if Indians were lining up, it must be to get commodity cheese. The Lead high school band had joined in, with fake-Indian drumming and a fake-Indian tune. Doni De Cory looked out the door and told her teammates," I can’t handle this." SuAnne quickly offered to go first in her place. [SuAnne was a freshman, fourteen years old.] She was so eager that Doni became suspicious. "Don’t embarrass us," Doni told her. SuAnne said, "I won’t. I won’t embarrass you." Doni gave her the ball, and SuAnne stood first in line.

She came running onto the court dribbling the basketball, with her teammates running behind. On the court, the noise was deafeningly loud. Su Anne went right down the middle; but instead of running a full lap, she suddenly stopped when she got to center court. Her teammates were taken by surprise, and some bumped into one another... Su Anne turned to Doni De Cory and tossed her the ball. Then she stepped into the jump-ball circle at center court, in front of the Lead fans. She unbuttoned her warm-up jacket, took it off, draped it over her shoulders, and began to do the Lakota shawl dance. Su Anne knew all the traditional dances – she had competed in many powwows as a little girl – and the dance she chose is a young woman’s dance, graceful and modest and show-offy all at the same time. "I couldn’t believe it – she was powwowin’, like, ‘get down!’" Doni De Cory recalled. "And then she started to sing." SuAnne began to sing in Lakota, swaying back and forth in the jump-ball circle, doing that shawl dance, using her warm-up jacket for a shawl. The crowd went completely silent. "All that stuff the Lead fans were yelling – it was like she reversed it somehow," a teammate said. In the sudden quiet, all you could hear was her Lakota song. SuAnne stood up, dropped her jacket, took the ball from Doni De Cory, and ran a lap around the court dribbling expertly and fast. The fans began to cheer and applaud. She sprinted to the basket, went up in the air, and laid the ball through the hoop, with the fans cheering loudly now. Of course, Pine Ridge went on to win the game. [adapted]”

An extraordinary story of courage, yes.  But also a story of compassion…compassion for herself, compassion for her teammates, and I would add, compassion for everyone in the room.  Su Anne did what needed to be done.  Not by freaking out the way your future minister did all those years ago, but by embracing who she was, by choosing to resist the ignorance and abusive behavior of others by putting her dignity on display.  Since I heard my colleague share that  story, I have thought a lot about the things that I do (and more importantly, the things that I don’t do) to honor my own dignity and the dignity of others.  Perhaps a member of the church my colleague serves put it best when he summed up the story by saying that every day we are offered little invitations for resistance, and we each make our own responses. He explained "You know, that little girl changed the world out there in South Dakota, and I know it because hearing her story has changed me, and ever since I heard it (and I wish I hadn’t heard it), I’m moved to do things which I never would have done. I couldn’t see the way. Or wouldn’t." He then shared how at his job, in a large corporate setting where he’s a department manager, he had placed an 41⁄2 inch American flag upside down on the outside of his cubicle.  He said he did it because he feels his country is in desperate trouble, that its soul is in trouble, that its soul is sick. "I guess it’s like my shawl dance," he said.[1]

Every day we are offered little invitations for resistance, and we each make our own responses.  We each choose what we will do.  We each have an opportunity (no matter how small) to do what must be done.

Tomorrow, a day set aside to honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, is probably a good time to think about courage this way.  Courage as doing what must be done.  Courage as putting compassion into action.  After all, King was a man revered the world over for his persistent courage…his willingness to not only listen to the still, small voice of his heart, but to share it with others…  to speak the truths that many others could have spoken a long time before him had they allowed their compassion to rise above their fear. 

Bob Franke wrote a song about this:

(sung)

“In a still small voice, in the middle of the night

Brother Martin heard the simple truth

And he followed its pleading though it led to a crossroad

Parting in the days of my youth

From the heart of my city came a single scream

And I heard it, through all the white noise

The papers told us that they killed the dream,

But they never killed the still small voice.”[2]

One of the misconceptions about courage is that to be courageous one has to have complete confidence that what one is doing is right.  But how, I wonder, is this possible when we surely cannot see the whole picture at any given time?  If we are waiting to be absolutely certain, we may be waiting until we are either deluded or dead.  A better kind of courage, one that goes beyond mere stubbornness and blind faith, is one that accepts the possibility of several competing alternatives, that allows room for doubt and uncertainty, yet still leads us to do what we must do if we are to maintain our own integrity as human beings.  Courage arises not simply when we have decided to be bold, but also when we begin to trust our innate abilities to be compassionate to ourselves and to others, to witness the troubles and suffering we see as our own troubles and suffering.  Courage then is a product of sensitivity:  we see the pain and suffering of others and allow what we see to transform us…to be moved from a place of apathy or disinterest to a place where we not only want to do something…we have to do something.

Courage of this kind may be needed now more than any time in recent memory.  As I think about the possibility of our country initiating a war with Iraq I am, like many of you, predictably confused.  Is it possible that Iraq does have designs on developing weapons of mass destruction?  Sure it is.  Is it true that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who has victimized his own people?  Facts say yes.  And yet, when I weigh all the arguments (or propaganda, depending on how you look at it), I still have seen no clear evidence that the US should unilaterally invade Iraq, overthrow its government and establish the government that would make life easier for us.  There is too much at stake, too much harm that could befall the innocent Iraqi people who have already suffered enough.  Of course I could be wrong. Certainly there are some in this room who disagree with me, who believe that the danger posed by Iraq far outweighs the potential death and destruction an invasion of US troops would bring, to both sides. And perhaps there is information out there I have yet to see that would change my mind.  I reserve the right to change my mind. But for now I will continue to do what I can to pay attention, to speak up for what I believe to be the more compassionate choice, both for my fellow citizens and for our brothers and sisters in Iraq and around the world, the choice to avoid war as long as possible. 

On this weekend when we will honor the memory of Martin Luther King, let us be reminded that he fought not only for the rights of those who faced discrimination, but for principles of non-violence in a violent world.  He encouraged us not to be overwhelmed by the fear that leads to violence, but to find the courage to utilize peaceful means to work out our problems.  He wrote:

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.  You may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. You may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate, nor establish love. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

(sung)

“All the lies come at you in a million ways,

Some you hear, some you tell yourself

And they say that virtue is a pile of gold

And that weapons are a nation’s wealth

But when kings stand naked in their ugly schemes

Will the poor of this world rejoice

Will they sell their children down a bloody stream

Or will they listen to a still small voice

Will they listen to a still, small voice.”[3]

Closing Words
As we leave this gathered community and make our way back out into our winter world, may we remember the words of poet Alice Mackenzie Swaim, who wrote, “Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.”