SERMON

As Homo Sapiens we are a unique species. We have evolved as social animals who are intensely aware of our individuality. So much so that in Western culture we have become almost delusional in our belief that we can survive on our own. Even John Wayne had Maureen O'Hara and he even had, although maybe we weren't supposed to know this, a mother. He too like all of us had to spend nine months in a womb and many years after that dependent. As a species we have evolved into creatures who must be young and dependent probably longer than any other species. Social animals like wolves for example, set it up so that the adults, the elders of the pack are supposed to be in charge of the safety of the young.

So how are we doing? A quarter of a century ago Jonathan Schell, in referring to the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, said, "if we can accept this, there is nothing we can not accept." Perhaps we have all seen the pictures of the little boy running across a bridge in Sarajevo clutching his dog to his chest while snipers try to shoot him down. Before that we saw mothers and fathers rushing to the bomb site in Oklahoma City to discover their worst nightmare come true. Since the advent of television we have seen children being incinerated, bombed and shelled in innumerable war zones. And from the turn of the century, in newsreels and on the covers of magazines, we have been shown the fly-covered faces and bloated bodies of a thousand starving children.

We have become dangerously desensitized. We have gradually forgotten then we are that interdependent web. That moving to the suburbs and placing locks on our doors and on our cars and keeping to our circumscribed lives we will not in the long run protect us or our children or grandchildren. Certainly much of the current political climate tells us the answers need to be to build more prisons rather than schools. That we must guard our slice of the pie closely making clear choices between property taxes and education . That we are each irretrievably on our own cannot be further from the truth certainly in today's global economy but it is a delusion that we support, not recognizing that the walls we construct can only be in our minds and inevitably we are linked each to the other. We may believe that we are responsible only for our own children and grandchildren. But we cannot keep them in glass cages or bubbles not breathing or living in the future world we are now creating with our denial.

But what is really possible for us now?

Leach , in her book, Children First, What Our Society Must Do and Is Not Doing- For Our Children Today, tells us that post-industrial countries certainly could afford practical measures that would revolutionize all children's lives. In fact they could easily afford them for every child in the world, not just for their own. What would it cost each year to control major childhood diseases, halve child malnutrition, bring sanitation and safe water to every community, provide basic education for all children and make family planning and maternity services available-world wide? --Twenty-five billion dollars. Less than Americans spend each year on beer. Half of the money spent on cigarettes in Europe. If we could do all that for all the children of the world out of beer and cigarette money, we could also do anything we wanted for children in our communities. Some of the most expensive measures would require shifts in our immediate spending priorities, but the costs of most needed policies would be balanced by such massive long-range savings that the net expense would range from nonexistent to negligible.

But the difficult part is establishing a moral priority for children's known needs and the political will to meet them. Are we ever going to acknowledge this priority which is not only moral but practical, not just for today's children but for everybody's future? Are we ever going to find the political will as private people to insist on public action? There are around 300,000 homeless children under ten in the united states. Most lose their chance of a good education because they do not attend school regularly. Many lose their families, the older children are placed in foster care, while mothers and babies stay in public shelters and fathers sleep on park benches. Around ten million more Americans are on the edge of homelessness. The United States dropped its federal support for low income housing from $32 billion in 1978 to $9 billion in 1988.- a decline of more than 80 percent after adjustment for inflation. The resulting housing shortage, described by Barry Zigas, director of the National Low Income Coalition in Washington, D.C. as " the worst since the Great Depression" has left thousands of families who qualify for help waiting for it with out hope....

Hundreds of thousands of children without addresses, home bases or beds to call their own in the richest nations of the world? Shocking. Clearly it must be somebody's fault; clearly somebody should do something about it. But not us surely? We are only responsible for our own. Nobody says, "We have to find a way."

If the world wanted to feed starving children it could do so easily. If the world wanted to outlaw acts of war against children, it could do so easily. If the world wanted to provide homeless children with shelter, it could do so easily. But children are not a priority in the world, and they never have been. Experience shows that we can't just look to world leaders and religious leaders to cleanse our collective soul and redirect our energies toward children. That leaves you and me.

For if not us, who? It's like the father who knocks on his son's door to shout. "Jamie, get up! The son answers, I don't want to get up. I don't want to go to school. And I've got three reasons. First, `cause it's so hard; second, the kids all tease me; and third, I'm scared." To which the father shouts: "Now I'm going give you three reasons why you must go to school. First, because it's your duty, second because you are 45 years old and third because you're the teacher."

So we must all be teachers and parents. We must all be guardians of the young - not only of our own young but of everyone's. I am suggesting today that we can begin a moral and spiritual path in which we begin to tear down our own walls. That we begin to let the children into our hearts and expand the boundaries of what is possible for ourselves and for others. We might be surprised to find that as we spend time with children and truly open our hearts that they have something to give and to teach us. I am reminded of the biblical passage in which Jesus says, unless we become as little children we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

Some of the greatest spiritualist truths are found in children. First in their sense of Innocence and by this I do not mean ignorance but freshness and a way of being without defense. The Zen Buddhist tradition calls us to have Beginning Minds. To see each event as truly new, as truly the first of its kind. This is how children see naturally. They are not defended against the attacks of others in the own minds. They trust. When we are again with children we see things again for the first time and perhaps we will also see the preciousness of this trust and with it the spirit of wishing to create a world where such trust is truly possible.

Children also have a great capacity for Joy. There is a story of A young girl who became a Christian in an exciting revival in her church and was baptized the closing Sunday morning. That afternoon she ran through the house singing and dancing.

Her sour grandfather rebuked her with these words, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Just joined the church and singing and dancing on the Lord's day!"

Crushed by her grandfather's attitude, the little girl went out to the barn , climbed up on the corral fence, and observed an old mule standing there with sad droopy face and bleary eyes.

As she reached over and patted the mule sympathetically, she said, Don't cry old mule. I guess you've just got the same kind of religion my grandpa has!"

If you say to most adults, "why are you so happy today?" they can give you a reason-the one they have just been thinking about. But if you ask young children the same question they often seem caught of guard by the notion that you need a reason to be happy. Little kids simply don't analyze why they feel happy, or why they make everything into a game. To varying degrees children come into the world carrying the light of happiness with them. As we open ourselves to their teaching they can show us how to play, how to just be without worrying about the outcome.

When we value children, make them our first priority we are valuing Joy. We are creating a present and a future where Joy is possible.

When we are with children the present moment becomes magnified for children live in the present. As a result they have boundless energy and enthusiasm. This is another spiritual truth they have to teach us - how to be absorbed in the now. Most of us are so burdened by the past and future we have disimpowered ourselves. We have lost the energy of the moment but children can help us rediscover it.

With children we suddenly see the possible and the new. Of course we see the future but we can now see hope. In the words of Kahil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves the bow that is stable.

We cannot follow children into tomorrow, but with their presence we can find our own joy today. We can find a renewed capacity for love and a renewed capacity for hope. Today in this congregation we have children who could use your particular presence and care. Let us start with our own community to look for the next steps on this spiritual and moral path.

I close with the words of Hugh and Gayle Prather in their book Spiritual Parenting, A Guide to Understanding and Nurturing the Heart of Your Child upon which some of our next adult education classes will be based.

"As we find our way back to our own heart and draw near the attitude of God, we feel that children are not only our responsibility but our pleasure. Seldom are we called to intervene on a child's behalf. But when we are we must not hesitate to respond. Many in our culture are now focusing their attention on how other parents treat their kids at home while at the same time washing their hands of the more prevalent dangers to kids on our streets and in our schools. Those who include children in their religious practices must not be swayed by trends but only by the call of their own hearts.

The call we neglect to respond to so often is the one for simple compassion for the people whose lives we already touch, for the children in our own family, for neighborhood kids where we live, for the school kids in our district, for the children affected by standards and policies of our own city government.

Nothing ever has to be done in anger, but as adults it is our undeniable function to protect children. That is the basic function of the adult in almost every form of life. Yet we have a higher function as well: to be happy with what God gives us to do today. To sing with the voice of angels as we do the work of angels. To laugh with the laugh of Buddha as we go to our awakening. To extend the arms of Jesus to welcome the presence of children and let them climb in to our hearts.

Copyright (c) 1996 by Philomena Moriarty Trumbore. All rights reserved.