Harriet
Dyer Adams hasn’t been active in our congregation since she moved to the
Beechwood facility in Troy in 1993.
Daughter
of famous early ecologist Charles C. Adams, curator of the New York State
Museum, she grew up on Manning Boulevard.
Inspired by her mother, she studied art and developed a strong interest
in Nineteenth Century French self-portrait painting. After completing her masters of fine arts at New York University,
she lived in France and Spain taking classes at the Sorbonne and the University
of Madrid. Harriet worked at a number
of art institutes and galleries before returning here to Albany in 1955 when
her father died. The art world never
offered steady and secure employment, so on the advice of a professor friend,
she returned to school for a masters in library science which she completed in
1960. She then worked for Skidmore
College and U Albany from which she retired in 1977.
Harriet’s
attraction to becoming a librarian was partly inspired by her interest in
collecting books, especially on art.
She loved to garden, calling the small woodlot behind her house a pocket
park. Harriet also loved to travel,
especially on riverboats. Most years
she traveled to Britain or Europe with her librarian friends.
Because
of her fathers ecological work, Harriet has endowed the Charles C. Adams and
Harriet Dyer Adams Biodiversity, Conservation and Public Policy Fund, which
will support fellowships, visiting lectureships, and research in the
University’s new Biodiversity, Conservation and Policy program. In establishing the fund, Harriet hopes to
bring scientists and policy-makers together to study and collaborate on
ecological issues and formulate effective environmental policy. The strong point of this program, said
Harriet, is that it includes other academic disciplines, the marketplace and
the political sphere…If we do not take the concerns we have on world ecology
and develop them into government policy, we won’t get anywhere.”
As
Harriet didn’t want a memorial service, there will be a reception for her after
the second service today in Channing Hall.
Please stay and remember her with her friends.
How
do we practice our faith in a personally transformative way that brings justice
and equity, healing and renewal to the world around us and beyond us? The Fourth Wave of Feminism Lecture Series
is exploring this question looking at how spirituality can support and advance
our advocacy for women’s rights. My
involvement with community organizing through ARISE, the West Hill Minister’s
Fellowship, and more recently with the NAACP is one way I explore this
question. You can hear more about ARISE in two weeks, the date of the ARISE
public meeting at the First Methodist Church in Schenectady at 4:00pm. Be there or be square!
I
return again and again to the question of how to integrate personal and
spiritual growth with social action.
This question is at the center of the ministry I bring to this
congregation. Unitarian Universalists
don’t want to find the correct prayer to offer or mantra to chant to escape
this world of woe and appear in some heaven realm. Uus don’t want to retreat to a cave and do meditation and yoga to
create their own personal sanctuary of delight on earth that abandons the
suffering of others. We want to lead
healthier, happier more fulfilled lives while at the same time working to end
hunger, homelessness, and poverty and institutionalized racism, classism and
oppression.
This
morning I bring to you a vision of this work from an American Jew become Zen
master who is working on these same questions.
I find his writing very inspiring and I think we can learn from him.
Tetsugen Bernard Glassman grew up in New York
City and graduated from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1960. In a pizza parlor, he made three vows to a
friend:
Over
his lifetime he accomplished all three in ways that have shaped his life and
teaching. He studied Zen in Japan and
received transmission from Taizan Maezumi, Roshi in Los Angeles. He returned to Yonkers to set up a Zen
community. As he began his teaching
work, he was also exploring new, American friendly, ways to adapt the
traditional Japanese way of transmitting awakening to his students. Seeing the poverty around him, he was moved
to action that would also integrate with the Zen transmission process. Glassman initiated projects to build
apartments for homeless families living in Westchester motels and started
Greyston Bakery to provide jobs for the unemployed.
But
after 27 years doing this good work in the community he still hadn’t fulfilled
his last vow to live on the streets. He
also noticed his students working in Greyston projects with him were identified
with being helpers but didn’t fully understand or connect with the experience
of being vulnerable and needing help themselves. Remembering that Southeast Asian Buddhist monks have no
possessions and beg for their food, he decided to start having street meditation
retreats.
For
a week, in groups of three or four people for safety, the participants lived on
the streets of Manhattan. They began
with no money in their pockets. They
ate only what was given to them. They
slept wherever they could find a place, wet or dry. Each day they would meet in a public park and share their
learning and experiences. Then they
would separate in groups again for the next 24 hours. The goal was the same as a meditation retreat, to bear witness.
Bearing
witness, in Glassman’s understanding, is directly experiencing reality in the
present moment. New insights and
understandings arise along with a broader sense of compassion and a deeper
feeling of connection. In the moment of
bearing witness there is more direct contact with emptiness and unknowing.
Not
knowing where your next meal may come from is a humbling experience. The experience of receiving a bowl of soup
in a shelter is quite different than being the one ladling it into the
bowl. On the streets, the dirt and
grime accumulate quickly on one’s clothes. Few of us, probably, have had the experience of being scorned as a
social outcast. One of the shocks of
these retreats is both being treated like a beggar, and also, at other times,
receiving unexpected kindness. These
direct, personal experiences intensify the experience of listening.
Here
is how Glassman describes the listening activity of bearing witness on the
streets:
When we really listen, when we really pay attention to the sounds of
joy and suffering in the universe, then we are not separate from them, we
become them. Because, in reality, we are not separate from those who
suffer. We are them; they are us. It is our suffering and it is our joy. When we don’t listen, we are shutting
ourselves off—not from others but from ourselves.
We can’t do this from a
place of knowing. When we think we know
something we don’t listen. We have to
empty ourselves over and over, return to unknowing and just listen. And listen.
And listen.
Central
to the Buddhist approach to reality witnessed in the present moment is what
Glassman describes as being in a place of unknowing. He didn’t start out to be a social activist dealing with the
homeless, unemployed and hungry. The
Greyston Foundation that supports the inns and businesses in Yonkers that serve
these people is in constant flux, adapting to changing conditions and noticing
the opportunities that arise. He could
not have imagined Greyston in its present form when he began. He just worked skillfully with each present
moment as it arose. Carolyn Stetson is leading
us in this kind of exercise right now looking for ways to be directly involved
in hurricane relief.
A
visit to Poland inspired Glassman to design another retreat format, but with a
much larger scope: doing a meditation
retreat at a former Nazi concentration camp.
On
the week of Thanksgiving, 1996, Glassman brought 150 people speaking English,
Polish, German and French to Auschwitz-Birkenau to sit together where over a
million met their deaths.
The people came from all over the world and every connection to the
camp. There were survivors, children of
survivors, children of Nazis, children of German soldiers and children of
refugees as well as those with no direct family connection to Auschwitz.
They gathered with
the range of emotion you might expect, from some pale and tense filled with
anxiety and dread to light hearted disconnection catching up with old
friends. There was concern and distrust
not knowing what might happen.
Their buses first brought
them to the Auschwitz museum and their differences vanished into collective
horror. Glassman writes:
Grisly evidence of dehumanization … greeted us everywhere: mountains
of grey hair shorn from the women about to be killed, huge collections of shaving
brushes, luggage, clothes and prosthetic devices. There were rooms full of baby’s and children’s clothes. The endless rows of photos of gaunt, starved
faces stretched across wall after wall, face staring … out of hollow black
eyes, the eyes of men and women who knew that they were dying…They died there
nameless and alone, forgotten by the world, dehumanized by their executioners.
The effect of being
exposed to this kind of suffering completely overwhelms the most hardy defense
mechanisms. Some were crying; most were
in shock. The struggle to make sense of
senseless brutality had thrown them into a profound place of unknowing, a place
where bearing witness becomes sharpened and intensified.
Each day they would
walk together the two miles from their residence to the selection site. Each period of meditation began and ended
with the blowing of the shofar. During
the meditation, they chanted the names of the dead found in the Death Books
compiled by the Gestapo as well as others who had died in other holocausts. The names were kept in a red lacquer box in
the center of the group. Jewish,
Buddhist, Christian and Moslem prayers were offered in memory of the dead. Each day closed with an interfaith service
led by leaders from all four religious groups.
At first this was
very difficult as people reeled from the shock of the museum. Yet stripped of their usual protective
mechanisms, people began to really meet each other as human beings joined in
worship and prayer. In the overwhelming
presence of death, new life blossomed forth as they lovingly attended to the
memory of those whose lives were abruptly and savagely cut short.
The work of making
peace requires bearing witness to the realities and the possibilities of
life. In the protective cocoon we spin
for ourselves, we are insulated from that reality … and the vibrant
possibilities that can emerge when we are in contact with reality. Many couldn’t or didn’t want to chant the
names of the dead at first. Toward the
end of the four days many participants developed a deep sense of reverence as
they heard and chanted those names honoring the memory of each soul still bound
to Auschwitz.
By the end of the
retreat, the diverse group of Jews, Muslims, Christians and Buddhists found
oneness. Listen to Glassman’s
description of what happened:
By the time our retreat ended at Auschwitz, it had become a
one-people event. Adolf Hitler had also
wanted a one-people event. His way of
doing it was to eliminate diversity. He
created hundreds of places like Auschwitz and Birkenau where he could destroy
diversity and create one people who looked the same, thought the same, lived
the same. Be he couldn’t do it. Because the one thing we ultimately have in
common is that we’re all different.
Living with differences is not easy.
Throughout our time together people came to me with advice on how to do
things better: We shouldn’t permit the Our Father prayer at Birkenau; we
shouldn’t have Islamic prayers at all; we shouldn’t translate the Kaddish; we
should do more meditation; we should do less; we should talk more; we should
talk less. They had many ideas about
what would make them feel more comfortable.
But the retreat wasn’t about making any of us comfortable. It was about bearing witness to our
differences.
And during those five days we came together—not despite our
differences but because of them, because we acknowledged and honored them. Out of diversity, we became one.
Isn’t this what
Unitarian Universalists are trying to do too?
We don’t all have to think alike to love alike said Universalist John
Murray? Atheists, theists and agnostics
can coexist and thrive together drawing sustenance from our
differences. People of different
ethnic, racial and socio-economic backgrounds can find common
purpose together. What we have to give
up is always getting our way … and that means at times being
uncomfortable. That means not just
tolerating hearing God language but listening carefully for the context and the
meaning in the words. That means making
commitments to powerful ideas that involve action that isn’t comfortable. That means being open to bearing witness and
being changed.
The Zen Buddhism of
Bernie Glassman is one source for understanding how to bear witness. Another source, perhaps a childhood
inspiration for Glassman, is the Jewish tradition. Ten days starting with Rosh Hashanah and ending with Yom Yippur
is not a comfortable time. During the
Days of Awe also called the Days of Repentance, the observant Jew must review
his or her life ferreting out the sins of the previous year and repenting
them. They seek reconciliation with
those they have wronged. God is
believed to be inscribing in the Book of Life the names of those who will live
and who will die, who will prosper and who will suffer, in the coming year. Thankfully, God is merciful and can be
influenced by repentance, prayer and charity.
The anxiety and distress can grow as sunset approaches on Yom Kippur,
when the Book of Life is sealed till next year.
The fresh start
helps Jews make peace and let go of the past that allows them to begin the New
Year renewed, reunited and restored, more present and able to bear witness to
the moment. Dwelling in unknowing
during the Days of Awe creates a new opportunity for oneness.
The goal of the Days
of Awe and the goal of Glassman’s ideas of bearing witness are both making
peace. Glassman makes these sixteen
vows the foundation of his Zen Peacemakers Order:
1.
I vow to be oneness.
2.
I vow to be
diversity.
3.
I vow to be harmony.
4.
I vow to penetrate
the unknown.
5.
I vow to bear
witness.
6.
I vow to heal myself
and others.
7.
I vow not to kill.
8.
I vow not to steal.
9.
I vow not to be
greedy.
10.
I vow not to tell
lies.
11.
I vow not to be
ignorant.
12.
I vow not to talk
about others’ errors and faults.
13.
I vow not to elevate
myself by blaming others.
14.
I vow not to be
stingy.
15.
I vow not to be
angry.
16.
I vow not to speak
ill of myself or others.
Glassman’s Zen Peacemaker community is finishing a
retreat center in Montague, Massachusetts called House of One People. I visited it in September to ask Glassman to
be the theme presenter for the Unitarian Universalist Buddhist Fellowship’s
Convocation in April 2007. He
accepted. Perhaps some would want to
join me on a field trip over there – the center is only two hours away. Let me know.
The core work of any
religious community is helping its members make peace with being conscious
beings that know they must die and social beings that experience conflict with
each other. Glassman’s visionary work
blending social action and interfaith spiritual practice grounded in bearing
witness, I believe, holds great inspiration and promise for what Unitarian
Universalists are trying to accomplish today.
Now I’m
uncomfortable and moving into a place of unknowing.
I’ve exposed my excitement about Bernie Glassman’s work.
I’m ready to bear witness to your response.
Benediction
Mark Belletini’s adaptation of the
Kol Nidrei a traditional Jewish prayer offered on Yom Kippur.
Gone are the promises we
made
because of pressure or praise.
Gone
are the promises we made
because of shame or guilt.
Gone
are promises and vows we made
because of habit, because of custom, or
because of confusion.
Gone
they are, vanished! I see them no longer.
They are no more.
Gone
the excuses for why I can't.
Gone
the vows I made to confirm my vanity.
Gone
the dreams I dreamed that cut me off
from everyone else's dream.
Gone
my vow to never have dreams,
so that I could carry my
future in my dark little pocket.
Gone,
vanished, just like that!
As
magically as sunset, as wondrously as moonset,
it disappears, this habit of
refusing to live on the edge.
The
paper is blank, the field is empty, the map has not been made. The guarantees
are gone. And, thus, now I can begin to set down my burdens, and define myself
no more by my failings.
The
breath of my life will bless, the cells of my Being sing in gratitude,
awakening!
Go
in peace. Make peace. Be at peace.
The quotes
are from Bernie Glassman’s book, Bearing Witness: A Zen Master’s Lessons in
Making Peace, © 1998, Bell Tower, New York
Copyright © 2005 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.