I envy people who come up with catchy titles for their sermons. I don’t. Mine usually only describe the topic in two words or less. I guess that’s clear, but I miss the poetic flourish. Today I proudly report that with this sermon I have brought along a catchy title: To Savor the World or to Save it. Not my own creation, but borrowed from a poem by UU minister Richard Gilbert, it nevertheless speaks to an important question for many of us as we strive to make a positive impact in our homes, in our relationships, with our children, through our work, in our volunteering, in our communities and so on. I assume we want to do good, but how do we decide where to focus our efforts so that we can make a difference? It seems to me that each of us, in some way, feels the tension between our wish to savor the world and our hope to save it. From "To Savor the World or Save It" by Richard S. Gilbert
I arise in the morning torn between the desire To save the world and to savor it-- To serve life or to enjoy it-- To savor the world or save it? The question beats in upon the waiting moment-- To savor the sweet taste of my own joy Or to share the bitter cup of my neighbor; To celebrate life with exuberant step Or to struggle for the life of the heavy laden?
Savor the world or save it? Maybe the answer is a little bit of both, but sometimes we do have to choose which side we will put our energies into. I want to look at those moments of choice today. Partly because many of us are pulled both ways and not only is it unclear what to focus on, but we often end up feeling guilty, or discouraged or dissatisfied with our choices.
Lest you think this choosing exists only between weighty issues of obviously great import, let me remind you of the raging controversy over toilet paper. This has even made it to the pages of the New York Times. The United States is the largest market for toilet paper in the world. Some manufacturers use many trees and other resources to make soft toilet paper, which they insist the consumer demands. Indeed, sale of the soft stuff rose by 40% in some markets last year. Others use recycled materials and their paper is not so soft, even downright scratchy. Which to use? Help the environment or help your hind quarters? Can one fully justify either choice? Now I will not do a survey regarding your preferences in toilet paper, and we will speak no more of it, but the example points out how even very personal choices can have larger import in this interconnected world.
For me, savor the world or save it is not so much an either/or choice as a prioritizing of what has more importance to me, what makes the best use of what I have t o offer. Savor the love I feel by tending relationships; savor the joy in life by tending to my own needs and spiritual practice or save the world through service, through involvement in larger causes and movements and through living my ideals. We are asked all the time to choose our priorities. When I was in Turkey we learned that the Sufi ideal was service to community. Thus the leaders often called for volunteers to take care of the tea, to help clean up and the like. I’m slow to step forward for that sort of thing and the leader’s assistant remarked upon that in a seemingly critical way. It gave me pause and yes, I admit on that trip I did not often choose service of the kind he requested. I did, however, offer ministry to other participants as they navigated the sometimes intense waters of living in a foreign country with strangers. I attended to personal needs, which is service of a different kind. Or, and this really happened here at UUCC, when told about the Buddha’s decision to leave his wife and child and follow his religious ideals into the forest to meditate, where he became enlightened and taught a way of life that still influences the world today, the children of our Sunday School asked, but how could he have left his family?
All the time we decide whether to savor the world or to save it; whether to give priority to the needs of ourselves and those we care about or to our ideals and principles. Often the choices we make cause us to turn away from the needs of individuals, like the Buddha, or away from the needs of communities, like me in Turkey.
Often we judge ourselves or encounter judgement regarding the choices we make. If we tend to the personal joy of love, family, friends and/or to the needs of those in our closest circles we might feel guilty, or that our service to them is not as good as saving the world. We might be judged selfish. If we jump into our efforts to save the world we might find our personal lives empty or full of dissatisfaction. We might find that the personal behavior of others in the movements contradicts the ideals we work so hard for. We might be judged for a hypocrite. On the continuum of savor and save, those closer to either end exhibit distrust of one another. The activist complains about the lack of participation in social causes; the one who stays within his/her closest circles deems the activist personally insensitive. I think we’ve created a false duality here.
Two films have helped to clarify my thinking on this question. They have showed me that the choices we make about where to put our energies are always incomplete and can never be fully justified. We needn’t try; we must simply live with them.
I love to watch movies because I learn something from the stories of others, even when the particular circumstances do not, even remotely, reflect my own life. A good film tells a universal story.0 Stephen Daldry’s film The Reader fits that category and there is much we might relate to the film. The story presents its chief characters Michael and Hannah with a choice of priorities. If you have not seen this movie, don’t worry. I will not give away the plot. Anyway, Michael finds himself, after some years, in the presence of Hannah, a woman he had an affair with. He is a law student and she is on trial, with others, for a crime. The rest of the defendants place the blame on her and she accepts it. When the judge asks her why she did what she did she says, in essence, that she chose duty, as she understood it, over the needs of the people around her. Hannah is not someone capable of tending to relationship. Michael, though, is in possession of some knowledge about her that could change the outcome of the trial. What does he do? If he reveals the secret, it would partially exonerate her and place responsibility and punishment more fairly where it belongs. Justice would be better served; the truth would come out. He is also aware that Hannah is deeply ashamed of what he knows and making the secret public would cause her great pain. What does he do?
Regarding Hannah’s choice, what would you do? Have you ever had to choose the principle and ideal over the person? Duty over an individual need? I think about all of the layoffs currently taking place and I wonder what they feel, those who make the decis ions about who will lose their jobs. Or those who send others into dangerous situations. It’s business, it’s duty; it’s not personal. I don’t mean that flippantly. I’m sure some of us have found ourselves in that situation. What would you do?
As to Michael’s choice: Have you ever had knowledge of something that, had you revealed it, would have served an ideal and had you not revealed it, would have protected an individual? You learn that your friend is having an affair. Do you tell his partner? If it were you, would you want to know? Some people think it necessary to out public figures as gay or lesbian, for the sake of the furtherance of LGBT rights. Others think each person should come out in his/her own time. What has priority? Principles like human rights, justice and truth or the needs, preferences and rights of individuals? Not easy choices to make, yet we are called upon, at times, to make them.
Another movie that dwells in the savor or save tension is The Counterfeiters, a German film. I will tell you this story. Salomon Sorowitsch, one of the greatest counterfeiters in Germany, was also Jewish and sent to a concentration camp where he and others made counterfeit money for the Germans during WWII in order to destabilize Allied economies. The story starts in 1936 with Sally in Berlin, living only for his own pleasure and not interested in helping other Jews. After his arrest and deportation to the camp h e sees great suffering but at first uses his talents and wits to help only himself. Slowly, though, he starts to care for others within his immediate circle. Sally holds a leadership position in the counterfeiting operation and there he meets his foil, Burger, a printer. Burger wants to save the world by sabotaging the counterfeit money so the Nazi scheme would be discovered by the Allies. He feels guilty because he has it relatively easy while other Jews do not. Sally says adapt or die. Burger says revolt. He is aware that if the counterfeiting group does sabotage the operation they will all die. Burger is willing to pay that price for himself and cannot understand why everyone else would not want to pay it as well. Sally is not willing to die and will not do anything that would bring death for the others. Burger delays the operation by sabotaging the printing process but Sally again uses his wits and his talent, this time in service not just for himself, but for the whole group, even Burger. Most of them survive. And, Burger’s delaying tactics helped to avert an economic crisis. Which takes priority? The larger principle or the people in front of you?
I think each of us has a default position that determines our answer. Perhaps our choices arise from personal style or experience or personal needs. One set of priorities is not necessarily better than the other. It is not always preferable to choose the needs of the those in our closer circles over wider princip les and ideals. Nor is it always preferable to choose the wider principles and ideals over the needs of people around us. It depends, of course, upon the situation, though we do tend to make the choice that feels most comfortable for us. My default position is to choose the people in front of me. As I watched The Counterfeiters I found myself admiring Burger and mistrusting him at the same time. On a gut level, I felt better about Sally because in Burger’s prioritizing of principles over people, he would have sacrificed me and that scared me. Sally would have tried to keep me safe.
At the end of the film, when the Germans have left the camp and the prisoners realize the war has ended, they leave their barracks and join the other inmates. As they recount to them the counterfeiting scheme, they downplay their efforts to stay alive and present Burger as the hero who delayed the operation and helped to defeat the Germans. They say nothing about Sally. For public consumption, choosing to save the world takes precedence over savoring it. The idealist seems more noble, whether or not he/she is. Again, a false duality, I think.
Whether I have to prioritize principles over individuals or individuals over principles, I come away unsatisfied with whatever choice I make. It never feels like enough and I realize it never is enough. When I don’t join the march, write the letter, go to the meeting I feel like I’m not living my Unitarian Universalist ethics and p rinciples. When I don’t take care of myself and those I love, when I neglect friends or children, I feel alienated and cut off, a position which also has its ethical problems. Our choices are incomplete.
Toward the end of his poem Richard Gilbert writes:
What am I to do-- . . . What is that you say? To savor one must serve? To save one must savor? The one will not stand without the other?
The one will not stand without the other -- that’s the point. We need those who would hold up the ideals and principles and call us to them. We need those who would take care of the people around them. Those who want to change societal structures and those who put band aids on bleeding wounds. Unless we live and bring up our children as loving, ethical people, our ideals and principles carry no weight. Unless we look to our ideals and principles, our ethics have no wider circle than ourselves. The one does not stand without the other.
And in those times when we have to prioritize between principles and the individuals we care about, our choices are incomplete. That is the paradox of savor and save. The one does not stand without the other. They do not exist as either/or choices, but rather on a continuum. When we put our efforts into savoring or into saving, we move along the different parts of that continuum. Like a see-saw it needs people at both ends to balance out.
When you have needed to prioritize, have you chosen to lean toward savoring or toward saving? I have leaned toward savoring, toward more personally based action. Yet we need not feel guilty about where we have chosen to place our energies because all of our efforts matter. They make a difference. If we devote less time to larger social causes and more time to raising our children ethically, or being a trustworthy friend, or placing band aids on wounds -- it is necessary. If we devote more time to larger social causes and less time to placing band aids -- it is necessary. We want people who make different choices working side by side because the needs of this world and of the individuals in it are so complex that neither savoring nor saving can address them on its own. The one does not stand without the other
Based upon this, I would expand the term social action to mean all efforts on this continuum, beginning with the individuals in front of us and moving all the way to actions on behalf of larger principles. Activism usually refers to efforts that fall on the saving end of the continuum. I would want to include efforts on the savoring end as well. The parents bringing up their children as kind, caring, community minded people are performing social action, as are many social workers, teachers and others in the so-called “helping” professions. The people who work to change societal structures and attend meeting after meeting and organize tirelessly -- they are also perform ing social action. I have heard the wish expressed that 100% of our congregation be involved in a cause each of us feels passionately about. Perhaps that already exists. For me, one of the most important socially active things I do is host the radio show Spiritually Speaking. On it I offer people a chance to tell their stories and talk about their work in the world, through which they bring meaning and purpose to their lives and to the lives of others.
Saving the world and savoring it, giving priority to principles and ideals or focusing upon the people closest to us, exist on a continuum. And the continuum is love, or a need for connection with others, expressed as a commitment to help by making the world more just, more safe, more peaceful. It is a continuum through which love walks with ethical step. Now in closer circles when it moves on the savoring part; now in wider circles when it moves on the saving part. The spiritual roots of social activism are the same roots as those that nourish our friendships and families: they are grounded in love and a need for connection that expresses itself as a commitment to helping.
A little girl stood on the sand one morning throwing starfish back into the ocean, from whence a heavy tide had left them stranded on the beach. There were hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. A man, out for an early walk, saw the little girl and watched her for a long moment. Then he spoke and said, “What are you do ing? Look how many starfish have washed up on the shore. You will never be able to put them all back into the water. What difference do your efforts make?” The little girl turned to him and looked at the starfish she was about to throw into the waves. “My effort makes a difference to this one,” she said.
The story usually ends there, but how much more powerful if the man then went to his neighbors and organized them into a brigade and they all came and not only threw the starfish back, but built a breakwater so that the tide would come in more gently. “I arise in the morning torn between the desire/ To save the world and to savor it--/ To serve life or to enjoy it--/ To savor the world or save it? . . . What am I to do-- . . . / What is that you say?/ To savor one must serve?/ To save one must savor?/ The one will not stand without the other?” (Richard Gilbert) And indeed they will not.
“Soon the day will arrive when we will be together and no longer will we live in fear. . . . Wait and see, wait and see what a world it can be if we care, if we share, you and me.” (Ehud Manor) “Love will guide us.” (Sally Rogers) May it be so.
Songs #146 Soon the Day Will Arrive and #131 Love Will Guide Us.
Closing words by Judith Meyer. . . . We all have so many needs -- a thousand prayers -- a thousand need s --that really only need one answer: let the world not be indifferent. And may we live and be with each other in the way that shows this truth whatever the day brings: that neither are we indifferent to each other.