Crash?
Margaret A. Hart
July 9, 2006
First Universalist Society of Central Square, NY

While it is said that first appearances are important, we often can’t tell much from first appearances. Someone who may appear to be physically fit and well put-together, may also be experiencing a major disease. We just can’t tell by looking. Actually, sometimes diseases are hidden, like mental illness, alcoholism, or a physical infirmity which doesn’t show through the use of a cane or a wheelchair. It can be very difficult to become aware of and sensitive to such limitations. It may be that we simply need to expect that people will do the best they can, and cut them some slack when they don’t measure up to our expectations. We all need that compassion from each other, and from ourselves.
We may appear to have a wealth of instruments in this church - an organ and two pianos- and yet only the organ is in tune. We were told by one piano tuner/ repair-person that neither piano could be fixed; another piano technician assessed that both pianos could be fixed. Who is right? What to do? And how do we best spend the money which has been entrusted to the church? Thank goodness we have a Music Committee to make recommendations, and a Board to sort it all out and make decisions. While I’m glad to put in my two cents, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for figuring it out on my own! In this church we are open to hearing various opinions, in fact we depend on it. So, if you have an idea about pianos, we’d love to hear from you. Please talk with me after the service.
We celebrated the July 4th holiday and Independence Day earlier this week. So I have been thinking about independence. I also watched a few movies recently which made me reflect more on the themes of independence and interdependence, or interconnection. I saw Bowling for Columbine, a movie which I have been meaning to watch for a long time and finally got around to, This movie struggled with the question of why there is so much violence in the United States. in comparison with other countries. The bottom line seemed to be that we have a lot of violence on our news; as I have watched the news since viewing the movie I have been keenly aware of how violent much of it is. So, what can we do? We can choose to watch the news and get depressed. We can choose to get our news from different sources which are more uplifting (sources which can be difficult to obtain). We can avoid the news altogether. Or we can listen to various sources with an understanding of the sources and their rationales for portraying the world as they do, and use our discrimination so that the news won’t get us down unnessarily.
Unnecessarily. I used that word intentionally. I think we can avoid the news and live in a world of light and love to a certain point. I believe that the world is basically good, and that there is a reality beyond the here and now- that we are all spiritual beings having human experiences. But while I believe that it is important to focus on the good and the transcendent. I also think that we have some responsibility for knowing what is happening and taking actions to improve the world for ourselves, for others, and for future generations.
Another movie I saw recently was Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, about the reality of global warming. There are those who deny that global warming is a reality, and some of them are in our government, representing us. And yet, scientific evidence points out that global warming is happening, and that there will come a point in the near future when it cannot be undone but will have catastrophic consequences for our earth and its inhabitants. We can be like the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand, ignoring the signs of the times, or we can accept that there are inconvenient truths with which we need to deal, and develop a plan of action. Kind of like our church’s piano problem- decisions need to be made and actions taken. It will require the input and actions of many to deal with some of the larger problems- but the first steps always seem to involve awareness, information, and hope for a better future.
Another movie I watched recently was Hotel Rwanda. I guess summer has been a time for me to catch up on movies! I found Hotel Rwanda to be a moving story of the civil war and genocide in Rwanda. It was striking to me that the Hutus referred to the Tootsies as cockroaches which should be squashed underfoot I have seen repeatedlty in situations of war that the enemy has been described in terms which are inhuman, as a way of distancing us from them and making it acceptable, and even a duty, to kill them. A similar use of inhuman descriptors has been seen over time among the powerful, as they have spoken about the oppressed. Who wouldn’t want to squash a cockroach? Who would seek to shelter those who protected cockroaches? And yet, who among us could describe another human being as a cockroach? In the movie, the difference between Tootsies and Hutus was explained. I never had understood it before. It was revealed that the difference was a social construct which had come about while Rwanda was under foreign rule; it was an issue of so called racial differences being created to support political power differences.
This reminded me of the Public Broadcasting series we examined recently in an Adult Religious Education module: Race: The Power of an Illusion. We learned that race has no biological basis- that there is just one human race. We also learned that we can’t just have a colorblind society, but that the illusion of racial differences has had a lot of power and accumulated influence over the years.
While much of the movie Hotel Rwanda was devastating, with its graphic images, it also contained an element of hope. Paul, the hotel manager who was a Hutu married to a Tootsie, managed to save over a thousand people, including his family, a dozen Tootsie children who had been orphaned, and an aid-worker, from the carnage around them. When the aid-worker saw the crowded bus which could take them to freedom, she said “it doesn’t look like there is room.” Paul responded: “There’s always room.” That had become his approach at the hotel, too. When he was first made manager, he was concerned with keeping his job at the hotel. But when he saw the death and destruction happening around him, despite the hotel rooms being filled to capacity, he found space for more people in the hallways. It felt as though his concept of family expanded as he saw the great suffering and need, and worked to meet them as best he could.
The situation seemed overwhelming.. it was overwhelming. It would have been easy to have been paralyzed with fear, anger, and grief. Saving a little more than a thousand people could seem like a drop in the bucket when thousands of deaths are considered. And yet, to the people who were saved, and to their children, and to their children’s children, it made all the difference. Hotel Rwanda is to me a story of how cruel people can be to each other, but also a story of kindness and hope. It has been said that the line of evil passes through each person’s heart; I believe that the line of good does also. We have a choice about whether to pursue good or evil, in each moment, with each breath, and with each action. There’s a saying over my kitchen sink: If I cannot do great things, I’ll do small things in a great way. I think that message is something we can all use each day.
Another movie that we studied as part of the module Racism: The Power of an Illusion, was the very deep and powerful Emmy-award winning film Crash. It’s interesting that the star of the film Hotel Rwanda was also a key actor in the film Crash. Actually, interconnection, or interdependence, is a theme which I want to draw from the film Crash. The film takes place in Los Angeles, and near the beginning of the movie someone hypothesizes that the reason there are so many car crashes in L.A. is that people need to connect with each other; when they spend most of their time behind glass barriers (cars, offices, and houses) about the only opportunity to connect is through crashing their cars into each other. While there are significant car crashes in the film, we see that the characters are really much more interconnected than we would have ever imagined. They keep showing up, in different combinations. One police officer’s lack of sleep and difficulties caring for his sick father affect his actions on the job, which then affect several other people. A Persian shop-owner’s poor comprehension of English,,, the racism of the gun-salesman... biases stemming from 9/11 ... so many factors lead people to misunderstand and mistrust each other. And one thing we discover is that they had no idea how interconnected they were... how one affected another.
The younger policeman complained that his partner had acted as a racist, and he requested a different partner. The African-American police supervisor, to whom he made the request, clarified with words fo the effect: It’s interesting that he has been on the force all these years, many of them under my supervision, and it’s never come to light that he’s a racist. Yet you think he’s a racist, and it’s ok that he’s on the force, but you just don’t want to ride with him? Sometimes we, too, take personal stands about what we think is acceptable or not, but how willing are we to go the next step, and take the actions which will help to promote needed systemic changes? Sometimes that is more difficult, and requires greater risks and greater creativity. I’d like to share a story I was recently told by a friend in the Raging Grannies, a friend who is quite a social activist ...

The women from the village were doing their washing in the stream, and noticed two babies floating in the water. They rescued the infants, and took them home to care for them. The following day, they were again doing their washing in the stream, when they saw four babies floating in the water. They pulled them out and took them home to care for them. The next day, they were again doing their washing in the stream, and they saw eight babies floating in the water. They immediately pulled them out of the water to care for them. One woman said to the others: I wonder where the babies are coming from, and why they are floating downstream. Another woman replied: Who knows? We just need to take care of them. The first woman said: Well, I’m going to walk upstream to find out. Anyone want to come with me?

Returning to the movie Crash, I’d like to look further at several of the characters. The police detective, his brother, and his mother, were all in the movie. The mother seemed to have health probems, including dementia, but she also had moments of lucidity. She raised the question as to whether we are our brother’s keepers- whether we bear any responsibility for insuring the welfare of our family members. And then there were the two police officers who were on patrol. The younger one had my sympathies immediately. Although he had been fairly passive at the time that his partner behaved like a racist, he had followed up with a complaint to the supervisor. Granted, that complaint didn’t lead to systemic change, but I still felt sympathetic. Then, after the young police officer was assigned to his own patrol car without a partner, his former partner said to him: You think you know who you are. But just wait ‘til you’ve been on the force for a few years. I thought I knew who the young officer was, too, but found I didn’t. It wasn’t even a day later when we saw another side of the young officer, and he discovered another side of himself. And the older officer who had acted in a racist and demeaning way, ended up risking his own life to save the woman he had humiliated the previous day. We’re neither all good or all bad, and it’s difficult to judge another person’s character, let alone our own. What we can do, in each moment, is to try to recognize the powers at play in our own lives, and to always choose to lean towards justce... towards mercy..... towards love.
I’d like to close with these words from the Dalai Lama*:.
"As human beings, we are all the same. So there is no need to build some kind of artificial barrier between us. ...Today, because of the complexity of interdependence, every crisis on this planet is essentially related with every other, like a chain reaction. Consequently it is worthwhile taking every crisis as a global one. Here barriers such as 'this nation' or 'that nation' , 'this continent', or 'that continent' are simply obstacles. Therefore today, for the future of the human race, it is more important than ever before that we develop a genuine sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. I usually call this a sense of 'universal responsibility'."

There have been numerous television shows in which the goal seems to be to reject the weakest members of the group and to find out who will be left surviving- “The Weakest Link”, “Survivor”, “The Apprentice”, and so on. But in real life, when a person is seen to be faltering, instead of harshly saying “good-bye” we can ask, “How can we help?” We can, like the Dalai Lama, choose to embrace ‘universal responsibility’. May it be so.

*from "Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection" by His
Holiness the Dalai Lama, translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa and
Richard Barron (Chokyi Nyima)