A Mythopoetic Tale of Human Diversity

[from a sermon Around the World Religions]

When Nature’s God, using the slow but sure means of evolution, shaped and then sent our ancestors across the face of the earth to inhabit it, She did so with great expectations:

First, that through the millennia women and men would have many and diverse experiences, thereby teasing out and embodying the vast possibilities of the human condition in varying climates and cultures.

And second, that someday, when the world would seem to grow much smaller, as it has in our times, we might gather together the many people of the earth along with the deposit of their respective cultures. Then, now, we might learn of multitudinous experiences and discover how the various cultures not only evolved but also found and lived the meaning of their lives.

Why did She do so? She did so because she is a bountiful and generous God. She made the human condition virtually boundless that we might discover the many meanings that may be lived and discovered, not just in a particular life but through many, many lives.

No one life, no one culture is large enough to encompass the human condition. For She is a wise and Loving God, who delights and unconditionally loves all Her progeny in all its diversity.

An Anthem, by Goshen

Goshen College, a tiny (1000 student) liberal arts school has deep Mennonite traditions. It's ensconced in lush Amish and Mennonite country of north central Indiana. The Mennonites are a "peace church," with well-established pacifist ways.

One of Goshen College's enduring customs was not to play the national anthem, which they perceived as a war anthem, before college sporting events. As a NY Times article reports, they broke with that custom at a baseball game this week, though they followed an instrumental recording of the anthem with a prayer attributed to St. Francis.

Apparently the administration felt pressure to conform to cultural standards and bow toward a student body that, while still Christian, is decreasingly Mennonite. Perhaps the change was seen as preserving a fragile institution by making its ways less controversial.

In my estimation though prudent, playing the anthem without words still seems a kind of capitulation by Goshen College to public pressure at the sacrifice of values.

The playing of the "Star Spangled Banner" originated in 1918 in Chicago at a World Series Game. The country was at war and President Wilson had declared the SSB the "unofficial" anthem of the United States of America. When the series moved to Boston, the team's showman/owner ratcheted up the ante: at each game a large and enthusiastic band played the anthem.

The SSB didn't become the official anthem until 1931. The events around WWII, then of the Cold War led to a larger practice of playing the national anthem before all sports events.

Richard C. Crepeau, a scholar who has studied the relationship of the national anthem and sports, concludes, "In recent years, the national anthem has lost its patriotic air in most sports venues. It has become an occasion for entertainers to display their talents or lack thereof, fans to create new cheers, and the networks to run commercials. Its symbolic significance has been overshadowed by commercial purposes and public indifference, but it can still rattle the cages when someone uses it as an occasion for protest."

I've often wondered about the incongruous custom of the anthem opening sports events. And I've long suspected that the gestalt of spectator sports has religious significance with ritual, pageantry, patriotism, hero-worship and more to lift the spectator to a higher level of consciousness/being. In this regard the anthem reflects the amalgam of what is called Americanism, the melding of patriotism and religion.

Social Justice and the Hierarchy of Needs

Yesterday I spoke on the theme of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs relative to self actualization. An interesting after-service conversation considered how social justice issues might be predicated on this famous hierarchy, that poverty and its injustices preclude an individual from ever participating in a value-rich life. That is, a person always concerned with securing food, shelter, and safety can hardly begin to consider healthy self-esteem let alone rise to self-actualization.

This morning an article The Obesity-Hunger Paradox in the NY Times sketched circumstances of hunger and obesity in the South Bronx: " A 2008 study by the city government showed that 9 of the Bronx’s 12 community districts had too few supermarkets, forcing huge swaths of the borough to rely largely on unhealthful, but cheap, food.

'“When you’re just trying to get your calorie intake, you’re going to get what fills your belly,” said Joel Berg, the author of “All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?” “And that may make you heavier even as you’re really struggling to secure enough food.'”

In my estimation there's insight here regarding the timeless debate regarding the influences of nurture versus nature. Circumstances matter, not a little but a lot in the formation of character. In this regard social justice, at its best, seeks to change circumstances for the better, so that a person might become all that he or she can be.