A panda walks into a cafe

“Punctuated Disequilibrium”

A sermon by Rev. John E. Gibbons

delivered on Sunday, September 17, 2006

at The First Parish in Bedford, Massachusetts

A Thought to Ponder at the Beginning:

We can choose between hating our neighbors
or feeling kindly toward them. We can avenge
or forgive. We can participate in political life;
we can also leave politics to the demagogues.
We can help the suffering, the ill, the unfortunate;
we can let them die. We can encourage the
search for truth and free expression of ideas
or we can join in the clamor for
suppression of all with which we disagree.
We can work toward a united world community,
or we can work for American dominion or isolation.
These are all fateful choices,
and it is our duty to choose.

—Rev. Howard Brooks, 1949

Sermon

This is the best-selling book Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss; and on its back is the explanation of its title:

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

So, punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.

That’s what it says on the back cover.

I’ve given myself a terrible assignment this morning: I’m to start with some genial commentary about punctuation – about grammar – and then I intend to end up addressing matters of life and death. I’ll start with this little book but then I really want to tell you about my visit on Thursday to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and, further, I want to say some things about, of all places, Darfur and our own relationship to that humanitarian crisis. There is a very important rally happening today, as we speak, in New York City – calling attention to the contemporary genocide in Darfur.

And so my task this morning feels to me rather like Houdini being dropped into some sort of water chamber after wrapping himself in locked chains in a locked trunk and without a single key. You, the participant/observers, may already be in a state of dread and soon I or possibly we will be gasping for air or words; and none of us will be sure of getting out of this alive. So I’d better start lock-picking.

This was the first book I read over the summer. I must have needed something light and it is – though its dedication (by the way, there is considerable discussion in the book about the word its: when, where and whether there should be an apostrophe, i-t-s or i-t-apostrophe-s; there’s quite a lot about apostrophes in this book and, as I was saying, its (no apostrophe) dedication is “to the memory of the striking Bolshevik printers of St. Petersburg who, in 1905, demanded to be paid the same rate for punctuation marks as for letters, and thereby precipitated the first Russian Revolution.”

So, you see, punctuation can be a serious matter but the book is filled with other less revolutionary but nonetheless significant matters, such as the difference between “a woman, without her man, is nothing” and “A woman: without her, man is nothing.”

Or, similarly, a letter from Jill addressed:

Dear Jack,

I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy – will you let me be yours? Jill

Contrast that with the same words, differently punctuated:

Dear Jack,

I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men I yearn! For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours, Jill.

The book goes on like this, with abundant commentary about apostrophes, commas, colons, semi-colons, exclamation points, question marks, and periods (which you know the British call ‘full stops’) all of which is a subject, well, quite engaging to people who are sticklers about language and who love words – Unitarian Universalists, just for example.

And the author cites many examples of improper and offensive usage errors: there’s a banner close to her house, for example, that says, “Come inside for CD’s, VIDEO’s, DVD’s, and BOOK’s.” Though I can’t always decide just where the apostrophe should go on some possessive constructions (before or after the ‘s’ or not at all)… these are the sorts of things that drive some of us nearly crazy.

Last week I visited Bedford’s town hall for a meeting with Rick Reed, our town manager. Outside his office there is a sign which says, Town Managers (no apostrophe) Office. And so, of course, I proceeded to annoy the secretary by asking if any of the town managers were available and then when Rick gave me a less than satisfactory answer to whatever my question was, I asked him if I could speak with one of the other town managers. All of them, no doubt, found my approach annoying. It was my inner stickler for punctuation that made me do it.

And so, the author of this book advocates, she says…

“Action. Sticklers unite, you have nothing to lose but your sense of proportion, and arguably you didn’t have a lot of that to begin with. Maybe we won’t change the world, but at least we’ll feel better. The important thing is to unleash your Inner Stickler, while at the same time not getting punched on the nose, or arrested for damage to private property. You know (she asks) the campaign called “Pipe Down”, against the use of piped music? Well, ours will be “Pipe Up”. Be a nuisance. Do something. And if possible use a bright red pen. Send back emails that are badly punctuated; return letters; picket Harrod’s. Who cares if members of your family abhor your Inner Stickler and devoutly wish you had an Inner Scooby-Doo instead? At least if you adopt a zero tolerance approach, when you next see a banner advertising “CD’s, DVD’s, Video’s, and Book’s”, you won’t just stay indoors getting depressed about it. Instead you will engage in some direct-action argy-bargy! Because – here’s the important thing – you won’t be alone.”

Well, perhaps you’re beginning to get a glimmer of how I’m going to move in the direction of things relevant to life and death (I am relieved to tell you that I too have begun to sense that glimmer) but I will go just one step further on the topic of punctuation and say that this book’s author discusses the very definition of punctuation and says, “Some grammarians use the analogy of stitching: punctuation is the basting that holds the fabric of language in shape. …Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.”

It was when I read that, I think, that I began to think of grammar as analogous to religion. Religion – from its root religio – that which holds things together, that which gives shape to our experience, that which makes meaning out of what would otherwise be senseless or absurd. Religion is the basting that holds together the fabric of life. Religion – or at least liberal religion of the sort we practice – tells us at the appropriate moments to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and sometimes to stop.

We would, most especially during these “Days of Awe” between the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah that begins this Friday and the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur on October 1st, remember and be reminded of that which is most meaningful in our lives. And we would recall, among a great many other things that do also press upon our conscience, that the greatest challenge to meaning that yet burns in living human memory is the challenge posed by the Holocaust, the Shoah, the Nazi genocide of six million or more Jews, gypsies, social undesirables, sexual minorities and political dissidents.

I’m sorry in a way for softening you up with punctuation before slamming you with the Holocaust but – whatever the topic may be here, this Sunday or any other – I want you to understand that our purpose is to make meaning. Life – as I know it – is not subject to divine intent and has no intrinsic meaning or purpose except that which we create, shape and perceive. We gather here to talk about punctuation, throw fish or recall the Holocaust that we may clarify who we shall be and what we shall do with the ticking-remainder of our lives. Our words do matter – our commas, apostrophes and all the rest – but they matter only insofar as they make plain our purposes and direct our deeds.

I want to tell you of my visit to the Holocaust Museum. In 1939 in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, the minister of the Unitarian Church was a man named Waitstill Sharp. I met him once and Jack knew him. Jack remembers him as a pacifist, the most aggressive pacifist he ever knew. Our parishioner Betty Hefner was a friend of his; and she recalls that he had strong opinions and seldom stopped talking.

Anyway, in 1939, the American Unitarian Association – having been alerted to the refugee crisis in Europe and especially in Prague where Jews and other anti-Nazi Germans were being cared for in great numbers at the large Unitarian Church there – the AUA sought a minister willing to assist in refugee relief. Sixteen Unitarian ministers declined before Waitstill Sharp agreed to go, accompanied by his wife Martha, a trained (Hull House in Chicago) social worker. Leaving their 2-year old daughter and 7-year old son behind with parishioners in Wellesley, Waitstill and Martha Sharp set sail from New York (you may see their picture on the back of your order of service) and they arrived in Prague just as the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia.

For six months, compelled by their faith and their moral outrage, the Sharps arranged for visas, secured the release of people from prison (in one case smuggled someone out of a hospital on a gurney from the morgue); they found the scholarships and employment necessary for emigration, and they pioneered routes of escape. Waitstill Sharp arrived with the prim ethics of a Sunday School teacher but he soon learned how to exchange money on the black market and to bribe officials. The Nazis destroyed the Sharps’ office and put their furniture in the street. The Sharps burned their own records and stayed but steps ahead of the Gestapo.

The network established by the Sharps came to be known as the Unitarian Service Committee and, needing some visual symbol to make the Service Committee’s documents all the more impressive, a refugee Czech Jewish artist came up with a symbol we now know as a flaming chalice.

The Sharps returned to the US in August of 1939 but, in May of 1940 they again agreed to a request from the Unitarian headquarters in Boston to return to Europe and establish an office in France. Paris fell to the Nazis before they arrived so they established an office in Lisbon – Portugal being a neutral country besieged by refugees – and then later in unoccupied Marseilles. Helping children to emigrate was a big part of their work because many parents, unable to escape themselves, turned their children over to helpful strangers. (You may have heard our member Hanna Papanek tell her story of escape.)

In France, the Nazis had requisitioned all supplies of fresh milk for themselves – leaving babies and small children at great risk – and so one of the first things the Sharps did in Lisbon was to arrange for a trainload of milk to be sent to Marseilles. There are many many stories with a James (and Jane) Bond flair. With incredible determination and despite immense danger, the Sharps battled bureaucracies in pursuit of exit visas and identity papers. They helped thousands of children, women and men to escape what no one then knew would later be called the Holocaust.

At the Holocaust Museum last Thursday, I attended the ceremony that recognized Martha and Waitstill Sharp as among the “righteous of the nations,” the non-Jewish rescuers of the Holocaust. This is a designation given by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, and only on the basis of significant criteria, documentation and research. Over 11,000 “gentiles” from all over the world have been recognized (you may recall Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg, for example).

From America, however, until this year there was only one such designee – a man named Varian Fry, someone who was trained by the Sharps. And so, you see, it is an extraordinary thing that the second and third people to ever be recognized as gentile “righteous among the nations” are Waitstill and Martha Sharp (she also being the first American woman to be so recognized), Unitarians from Wellesley Hills.

On Thursday at the Holocaust Museum, the Sharps’ daughter – also named Martha – was present, as were their grandchildren and representatives of those the Sharps rescued. UUA president Bill Sinkford spoke, as did former UUA president, director of Amnesty International and minister of the First Parish in Bedford Bill Schulz. Also present was Charlie Clements, president of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee who spoke here a year ago. And another there who spoke here last year was Atema Eclai, UUSC’s program director who spoke and sang in her native African language…about Darfur.

If you go to the Holocaust Museum, the last exhibit is about the only contemporary genocide emergency that has ever been declared by the museum: the crisis in Darfur. The point of learning about the Holocaust, they say, is to declare its unacceptability ever again and, like punctuation, to slow down enough to notice, to take a detour and to stop.

Hundred of thousands, possibly millions, of people have already been killed in Darfur. The politics are fractured; the causes of violence are layered; our own government is not the only one to blame; and Darfur is not on page one.

You know, in 1944 there was a poll of Americans in which 48% of the American people expressed anti-Jewish attitudes. We may not have specifically anti-Darfurian attitudes, but you can bet that a majority of the American people do not think of Darfur as a priority problem. In the 1940’s Americans knew a crisis was unfolding but they chose to ignore it. Today we know there is an African genocide but we choose to ignore it. Or do we?

The legacy of Martha and Waitstill Sharp is challenging to us on many levels. Some time after returning to the US, they divorced. Their children express some ambivalence about their parents’ extended absences. Should you be expected to leave your children, or perhaps your marriage, and go to Darfur? Of course not – though the example of the Sharps proves that extraordinary things can be done.

The Sharps’ work contributed to the establishment of institutions – such as the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee – whose work is to aggregate power and to do what individuals cannot do. This is why institutions – like churches, like the UUSC, like so many others – are important: collectively and together we can do what singly and individually we cannot.

I am prepared for many of you to feel more than a little overwhelmed: what, you may wonder, does this guy in the pulpit expect you to do? If anything, people have problems enough of their own without Darfur. Depression, just by the way, is one of our greatest public health problems. In America today suicides exceed homicides by 50%.

Let me suggest that the greatest problem that we face is not Darfur (or Iraq, or the erosion of civil liberties, or terrorism or the economy or health care or any of the rest). Our greatest problem is our fear, despair and powerlessness.

Politics has been described as “the art of the possible.” The work of people like Martha and Waitstill Sharp demonstrate that more is possible than ever we imagine. The work of organizations like the UU Service Committee and, for that matter, our work here in Bedford, is to enlarge our sense of what is possible.

That’s what we do here, no matter what we’re doing: we’re here to enlarge the possible.

In recent days, I’ve been in touch with other Bedford clergy, with members of the Bedford Jewish Community, and with local Muslims as well. We are all in agreement that, no matter the obstacles, Darfur cannot be ignored. We cannot pretend that we do not know; we do know a genocide is happening. We can urge our elected representatives and our government to do all they can to stop the violence. There is ample precedent, even in Darfur, that our government can successfully exert pressure and it is also evident that our government is not doing all that it can. (A few years ago in southern Sudan, a hospital sponsored by the American evangelical Franklin Graham was threatened by violence and, in response, the American government exerted influence to resolve the threat. As the world’s only superpower, Americans can – almost always – effect change.)

Simple though it may sound, at this point I would only (but significantly) ask you to register your concern at the website savedarfur.org. In coming days, with the help of other clergy and congregations, I hope to present more ways for us to declare that another holocaust will not happen on our watch.

I must leave you with one final thought on the topic of punctuation. There is, you may know, a concept called “punctuated equilibrium.” It’s a concept in evolutionary biology developed by Ernst Mayr, the preeminent biologist, father of one of our parishioners, at whose memorial service I officiated two years ago when Mayr died at age 100.

Punctuated equilibrium says that evolution does not happen at a constant gradual rate. Instead evolution is punctuated; it quickens when “peripheral isolates” alter the circumstances of change.

Now I’m not at all sure that my analysis will hold up in the annals of evolutionary biology, but I nonetheless believe that we all have a role to play in what happens or fails to happen in our times. Sometimes there are those – like Martha and Waitstill Sharp – who are peripheral isolates, who by their exceptionalism quicken our imagination of what is possible.

Few of us will be peripheral isolates in the way of the Sharps, but together we can still punctuate history. We can be peripheral isolates – together!

It is to history that we are accountable: to our children and our grandchildren. Together, this year, we can be a nuisance; we can do something; we can adopt a zero tolerance approach to genocide (of course). As a collective of peripheral isolates – let us engage in direct action, some argy-bargy; let us slow down enough to notice, take a detour and even stop our beloved… talking.

The good news is that we need not do this work alone.

In the spirit of these days of awe, I ask us to turn in our hymnals to #637, A Litany of Atonement:

A Litany of Atonement

For remaining silent when a single voice would have made a difference