BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON: Longing, Denial, Murder & Dreams of Home
by James Ishmael Ford
29 April 2012
First Unitarian Church
Providence, Rhode Island
By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down, and we wept when we
remembered Zion. In the midst of it all we hung our harps upon the
willows. They that carried us away captive required of us a song. They
wanted us to sing of joy. `Sing to us,’ they demanded, `one of the
songs of Zion.’ But how shall we sing the Lord’s song in this strange
land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its
skill. If I do not remember you, if I do not hold Jerusalem as my
chief joy, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.
Psalm 137 1-6
Today we’ve received more members into this thriving community of hope
and promise. For some it will prove a way station on a longer
spiritual journey. For many this will become the place of exploration
and depth, where the promise of fulfillment can be found, a genuine
spiritual home. And so, wherever we are on our various paths, today is
an invitation to consider that journey, and our home, what might be
our true home.
The one hundred thirty-seventh Psalm dates from the Babylonian
captivity, somewhere in the sixth century before the Common Era. This
is a very important moment in history. What we have there is a small
community of intellectuals and craftsmen part of that mix of people
living in what we today think of as Israel and Palestine who when
their land was conquered had been carried away to Babylon.
Who they really were is complicated, and further complicated by the
contending myths of peoples who claim that land today. But, for our
purposes here let’s call them Judeans. It’s hard to say how much they
thought of themselves as a separate people from their neighbors in
that land before this time. But during that captivity something
happened, a spiritual alchemy, a distillation of more ancient fables
and stories into a holy book containing a more or less coherent
history and, even more important, a promise. During those years
birthed much of what we have come to call Judaism.
All brought together in a dream of home, of separation, of exile and a
promise of returning to that home. And so it has always been. Whoever
we are, wherever we’ve come from, that story of being lost and found,
that’s always ours, as well, isn’t it? Do you notice how it lives in
your heart?
It does seem most of us are not settled, are not at home. We have
different ways of saying this, smaller, larger. A popular one here is
to listen to a sixty year-old ponder what he thinks he’ll do when he
grows up. But there are more serious ways of speaking to that sense.
Somewhere within our hearts there is always a sense, which whispers,
which calls to us in our dreams. In the midst of whatever conditions
we’re caught up in, we feel this urge, this need, this longing of our
hearts.
And, as natural as this is, without our attending to this movement of
our heart, we find ourselves lost. This is true for individuals, and
it is true for peoples. This longing is one of the most powerful
currents of our hearts. And when not tended to in healthy ways, it
will emerge in very dangerous and sometimes terrible ways.
So, this past Tuesday, the 24th of April marks the ninety-seventh
anniversary of the beginning of what the Armenian people call the
Great Calamity, and what the rest of the world calls the Armenian
genocide. That terrible event visited upon a small nation is sadly,
part of a litany, possibly, probably endless, of people bringing
terror and death to their neighbors. The Jewish holocaust in the 1940s
was the most notorious bead on this string of deliberate and
systematic destruction of a people, of a culture, justified because
they are the `other,’ and therefore are a threat whose destruction
offsets the basic morality of every culture. Sadly, there are nearly
endless examples.
Thus it has been, thus it is. More recently we have Rwanda and
Srebrenica. Glaringly, our own American history is marked by the
genocide of the Native American peoples, together with slavery one of
the two original sins resting a rot at the foundation of our nation.
I find myself considering the Armenian genocide in particular, and how
it is denied. We have a similar problem here in how many are not
willing to consider the genocide of the Native American peoples, as
well. I suggest this is one of the most dangerous things we can do for
the health of our hearts, for the possibilities of change. We need to
not turn away.
Indeed, that is the nut at the heart of it all. Today I want to
reflect on the nature of our longings, remind us of how dangerous it
is to ignore them, to not attend to the currents of our hearts. And,
also, to share a word of hope, to say what comes with attention, in
our bringing full presence to what is.
No doubt our human minds and hearts are complex things. Events happen
and we order them, we give them meanings. At the very center of this
is the mystery of our human memory. What we give our attention to and
how we shape it creates the narratives of our lives, tells us where we
come from and points to where we can go.
An example. My people are the Irish. While my direct ancestors came
here at the turn of the last century almost certainly fleeing poverty,
the majority of my people came to this nation fifty years earlier,
fleeing something even worse, the great hunger. There’s a memory.
Fleeing horrors, we came to a country that was reluctant to accept us.
Within the mad rush forward of course we wove stories about ourselves.
Some of these were useful, others, not so much. For many the stories
were little more than maudlin inspirations for tin-pan alley. Green
beer once a year is a sorry remembrance of a lost nation.
Other memories were of past deprivation and oppression and out of
those came dreams of new hope and possibility. Irish Americans are
second to none in our patriotic fervor for our adopted nation and the
opportunities we claimed. And, and this is an important point. What we
weave together as our stories are always mix of truth and fantasy. And
what we deny or forget may be just as influential on future events as
that which we remember,
Which raises the other issue for us to struggle with, also deeply
connected to memory. That is place. What is home? Where is home? In
addition to those more ancient homelands, do you come from the rocky
soil of New England? Perhaps the plains of the Midwest? Or, like me,
that far country of teeming cities clinging to rugged coasts, high
mountains in the distance, and a moderate climate? For each of us, no
matter how far away our lives may take us, these places have a
permanent part in our hearts, and of who we are.
And, in that sense of where we come from, we also have that ancestral
homeland. Germany? England? China? Japan? Armenia? And what if our
ancestors were kidnapped? There are those in this Meeting House who
know that bitter question. Where in Africa? Where? Or, what if you
know, but if you go to that place and there are only a few stones
piled upon each other for you to touch and to recall how your people
were shaped, and lived? What if that homeland is now a place where the
songs of your ancestors are no longer sung? I think of the native
peoples of this continent.
And, this is the greatest mystery of it all, the one that must inform
every other thought we have: at some point we’re all connected,
deeply, truly. One family. We are all bound up in these acts of memory
and loss, of place loved and taken. These are not empty words: the
harm done one, is harm done to all. If we hope to act with grace in
this world, if we hope for peace in our own lives, for joy, for
authenticity, we need to remember all this; and we need a place to put
our feet.
So, back to memory. Back to the power of presence.
People often, I believe, misunderstand the call to presence, to notice
this place, to stand here. A person who cannot take memory into this
moment is not fully present. And, that’s not the end of it, either. We
need to have the cascade of hopes and fears for the future living in
our hearts, as well.
This is how it can be so complicated. The one hundred and
thirty-seventh psalm, so lovely, so compelling in its dream of
captivity and longing for home, has a line at the end, of wish for
vengeance on the captors so terrible that it is always cut from the
reading. I suggest turning away even from these dark dreams of
vengeance is a mistake. We need all of it.
But, we need it not be the end point. Not the end of our song. We need
to never forget the Armenian genocide, never forget the murders of the
Jewish people, never forget the killing of so many Native American
cultures. And the consequences of those things. We need to not turn
away.
If there is no memory, and no thought of the future, then there is no
present. Not really. Not in a way that counts. Not in a way that
allows the pregnant possibility of our existence to come forth.
And living into that possibility is the task at hand. What does it
mean to live full, to be fully present?
I find as I consider the great sadness of the Armenian genocide, along
with all the other horrors and indignities perpetuated upon people,
great and small, I feel a sense of loss that I have trouble describing
to you here today. But when we don’t turn away, when others deny, but
we know in our hearts, found through presence to what is, the vastness
of our true home, things happen. And within that I feel some sense of
hope, some sense of that birthing of possibility as presence itself,
shining, fully visible.
Because, and here is a great secret. This place here is our home. All
those places that dream in our hearts, and which we should never
forget, bring us in their own good time: here. To this place. To this
moment.
This is our home.
And this seems to be our call. We must remember. To forget is to
collaborate with those thieves of the heart who would deny what we
have been and what we might yet become. But if we do remember, however
much the world changes, we will find a place to stand.
And it is here. To be here fully, to bring it all together is to throw
open the gates of paradise. This is our true home.
Finding that longing. Knowing that longing. Dreaming that longing. And
bringing it here. This is the great healing. This is coming home.
Amen.
From: A. Papazian
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2012/04/by-the-waters-of-babylon-longing-denial-murder-dreams-of-home.html