America: Part II
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
Intergenerational Thanksgiving Service
November 20, 2022
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Somewhere packed away in a box in my parent’s attic is a small white painted wooden board decorated with grains of gaudy, multi-colored sand adhering to an outline of a turkey traced in Elmer’s glue. A relic from an age long past when I was a cub scout and my mother a den leader. Although I haven’t laid eyes on it for decades now, for a few years after its creation this homage to Thanksgiving adorned the fireplace mantle in the family room of our home every November. Its very memory serves as a vivid reminder that Thanksgiving in America was viewed very differently in the 1970’s than it is today.
Back then, in addition to making glistening tacky turkey pictures with sand in cub scouts, we were kept busy in school, rounded tip scissors in hand, making leaves and turkeys traced with our hands out of multi-colored sheets of construction paper; and for the Thanksgiving pageant, Pilgrim hats and Native American headdresses. It was same story every year.
The Pilgrims, fleeing religious persecution back in England boarded a ship called the Mayflower and eventually landed at Plymouth Rock. They are met with hardship and disease, but with the help and cooperation of their new Native American friends, aka, the “Indians”, they manage to not only survive, but thrive in this “new land”. In gratitude for their good fortune, they share a feast together, the first “Thanksgiving.”
It was, and no doubt still is a nice, no… inspiring story to many who hear it.
A story of faith and self-determination.
A story of conquest over nature and of friendship between strangers.
A story celebrating the triumph of the human spirit peppered with a dose of humility from a species that God, according to the psalmist, “has made… a little lower than the angels.” (Psalms 8:5).
A story that has informed the larger story of the United States from the first murmurs of revolution to the present day.
America: Part I.
Inspiring, perhaps; but it’s not quite right either, is it?
It is said, “History is written by the victors.” But today we can, if we choose, read more than the “victor’s” accounts of history. And while doing so may cause some of the history we’ve long admired or taken at face value to lose its luster, it in fact represents an opportunity to live into being a better, more truthful history going forward.
Indeed, reflecting on the popular version of the American Thanksgiving story, that sentimental tale I just summarized, we find a story that on the surface sounds more or less accurate, sort of. But dive a little deeper and we find that it is in fact not accurate.
The most obvious inaccuracies are those of historical fact of which much has been written. But there’s another, more subtle inaccuracy revealed in an often unnamed undercurrent of the whole story: control.
Control pursued through autonomy.
Control acquired through domination of obstacles be it nature or its other inhabitants.
Control justified through covenant with one’s personal god.
Pursuit, acquisition, and justification of control, the trinity of American exceptionalism has given rise to one of the most defining and enduring characteristics of America Part I, a fervent insistence on the sanctity and reality of human independence. And while it may make hearts swell with pride and patriotism, it is and always was an illusion. A rapidly shrinking world thanks to technology, human population now at 8 billion, and the increasingly dramatic effects of climate change witnessed globally, has only confirmed this illusory nature of human independence.
America: Part I is done.
Enter America: Part II.
Indeed, America part II is already being written. We heard from some of the authors today. Cara, Kite, Jenny, Brigid, and David who read for us, “The Corn Spirit”, a Native American story. Now, they didn’t write, “The Corn Spirit”, but in sharing that story with us, echoing its warning and lending their voices to its guidance they become authors of American Part II. It is a story that challenges us in our understanding and appreciation of the world and our relationship with it. A story that lays bare the illusion of human independence. It is a story of the world before the United States, before the Pilgrims, before even America. It is a story of interdependence. A story whose truth has remained constant through every attempt at human resistance, through every effort to disprove we are indeed a little lower than the angels, and through every striving to wrest control from an unfathomable other to which we owe our origin and must entrust our end.
The story warns disrespect for the spirit governing life, that is, our interdependence, leads to arrogance, waste, cruelty, fear, and despair. Indeed, as we heard in the story, that disrespect threatens to unravel the whole of society.
And the story might have ended there had a moment of improbable clarity, a vision of complete abandonment, not overwhelmed, then inspired the people to turn a page in the history they were writing with their lives. On that new blank page they began to write anew, breaking with the conception of interdependence as some unwelcome fate to loath and free oneself from to one of a reality connecting all life, deserving of respect and, crucially, gratitude. For gratitude, at its heart, means we’ve truly seen someone or something and that we value what we’ve seen.
“The Corn Spirit” story invites us to see and value our connections not just our possessions, to give thanks for who we are not just what we have.
And who are we?
We are sibling, all of us, part of an interdependent web of existence…
A web that connects to our origins, to sun and soil, clouds and rain, and part of every meal we consume to sustain our lives…
A web that connects us to creatures great and small, to ecosystems and micro-organisms that impact the health and wellbeing of all…
A web that connects us to other people, to friends and families, biological and chosen, where DNA and BFF’s (that’s best friends forever for those of us over a certain age) as well as strangers, influence our lives in ways obvious and oblique…
A web that connects us to geographies of place and purpose, social, political, and vocational entities where laws, policies, and practices affect all who dwell within and beyond them…
A web that connects us to this community, a place and people intentional in our affirmation of mutuality, where the joy of one is the joy of all, and no one grieves alone. A community committed to living the story of America: Part II.
In this we endeavor not to rewrite history, but to right what we have gotten wrong in history. Whatever was good, bad, and in between before, we cannot change that it happened. We can however act in the present to help shape a different present and future.
And that is what we are doing when our children and youth discuss our seventh principle affirming respect for the interdependent web of existence and debate whether their outreach project should be directed locally or globally.
It’s what we’re doing when we open worship with a hymn reflecting imperfect or incomplete ideas of the past and close with the same hymn reworded and though still imperfect and incomplete, better reflects where we are now or to strive toward still.
And it’s what we’re doing when we applaud news of a birth, betrothal, and coming out, celebrating and affirming the courageous beauty of new life in its various forms.
History reveals America Part I was defined, in part, by an illusory belief in both the reality and attainability of human independence. That many have prospered under this belief while many others have been displaced, denigrated, and destroyed points to its fallacy. The effects of every act and assertion made in favor or pursuit of human independence has never been contained to those have acted on or asserted their cause.
Indeed, as Chief Seattle of the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes is credited with saying, “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” His point is clear. Humanity is not meant to control the world or our place in it. We must instead cooperate with the web of life and accept our place as interdependent beings.
America Part II then will be defined by a grateful respect for the interdependent web of existence of which humans are but one part. Our task in this true, not new, world, is to recognize, celebrate, and give thanks through how we live, work, and play that we have a place in the web at all.
May it be so.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Amen and Blessed Be
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
Intergenerational Thanksgiving Service
November 20, 2022
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Somewhere packed away in a box in my parent’s attic is a small white painted wooden board decorated with grains of gaudy, multi-colored sand adhering to an outline of a turkey traced in Elmer’s glue. A relic from an age long past when I was a cub scout and my mother a den leader. Although I haven’t laid eyes on it for decades now, for a few years after its creation this homage to Thanksgiving adorned the fireplace mantle in the family room of our home every November. Its very memory serves as a vivid reminder that Thanksgiving in America was viewed very differently in the 1970’s than it is today.
Back then, in addition to making glistening tacky turkey pictures with sand in cub scouts, we were kept busy in school, rounded tip scissors in hand, making leaves and turkeys traced with our hands out of multi-colored sheets of construction paper; and for the Thanksgiving pageant, Pilgrim hats and Native American headdresses. It was same story every year.
The Pilgrims, fleeing religious persecution back in England boarded a ship called the Mayflower and eventually landed at Plymouth Rock. They are met with hardship and disease, but with the help and cooperation of their new Native American friends, aka, the “Indians”, they manage to not only survive, but thrive in this “new land”. In gratitude for their good fortune, they share a feast together, the first “Thanksgiving.”
It was, and no doubt still is a nice, no… inspiring story to many who hear it.
A story of faith and self-determination.
A story of conquest over nature and of friendship between strangers.
A story celebrating the triumph of the human spirit peppered with a dose of humility from a species that God, according to the psalmist, “has made… a little lower than the angels.” (Psalms 8:5).
A story that has informed the larger story of the United States from the first murmurs of revolution to the present day.
America: Part I.
Inspiring, perhaps; but it’s not quite right either, is it?
It is said, “History is written by the victors.” But today we can, if we choose, read more than the “victor’s” accounts of history. And while doing so may cause some of the history we’ve long admired or taken at face value to lose its luster, it in fact represents an opportunity to live into being a better, more truthful history going forward.
Indeed, reflecting on the popular version of the American Thanksgiving story, that sentimental tale I just summarized, we find a story that on the surface sounds more or less accurate, sort of. But dive a little deeper and we find that it is in fact not accurate.
The most obvious inaccuracies are those of historical fact of which much has been written. But there’s another, more subtle inaccuracy revealed in an often unnamed undercurrent of the whole story: control.
Control pursued through autonomy.
Control acquired through domination of obstacles be it nature or its other inhabitants.
Control justified through covenant with one’s personal god.
Pursuit, acquisition, and justification of control, the trinity of American exceptionalism has given rise to one of the most defining and enduring characteristics of America Part I, a fervent insistence on the sanctity and reality of human independence. And while it may make hearts swell with pride and patriotism, it is and always was an illusion. A rapidly shrinking world thanks to technology, human population now at 8 billion, and the increasingly dramatic effects of climate change witnessed globally, has only confirmed this illusory nature of human independence.
America: Part I is done.
Enter America: Part II.
Indeed, America part II is already being written. We heard from some of the authors today. Cara, Kite, Jenny, Brigid, and David who read for us, “The Corn Spirit”, a Native American story. Now, they didn’t write, “The Corn Spirit”, but in sharing that story with us, echoing its warning and lending their voices to its guidance they become authors of American Part II. It is a story that challenges us in our understanding and appreciation of the world and our relationship with it. A story that lays bare the illusion of human independence. It is a story of the world before the United States, before the Pilgrims, before even America. It is a story of interdependence. A story whose truth has remained constant through every attempt at human resistance, through every effort to disprove we are indeed a little lower than the angels, and through every striving to wrest control from an unfathomable other to which we owe our origin and must entrust our end.
The story warns disrespect for the spirit governing life, that is, our interdependence, leads to arrogance, waste, cruelty, fear, and despair. Indeed, as we heard in the story, that disrespect threatens to unravel the whole of society.
And the story might have ended there had a moment of improbable clarity, a vision of complete abandonment, not overwhelmed, then inspired the people to turn a page in the history they were writing with their lives. On that new blank page they began to write anew, breaking with the conception of interdependence as some unwelcome fate to loath and free oneself from to one of a reality connecting all life, deserving of respect and, crucially, gratitude. For gratitude, at its heart, means we’ve truly seen someone or something and that we value what we’ve seen.
“The Corn Spirit” story invites us to see and value our connections not just our possessions, to give thanks for who we are not just what we have.
And who are we?
We are sibling, all of us, part of an interdependent web of existence…
A web that connects to our origins, to sun and soil, clouds and rain, and part of every meal we consume to sustain our lives…
A web that connects us to creatures great and small, to ecosystems and micro-organisms that impact the health and wellbeing of all…
A web that connects us to other people, to friends and families, biological and chosen, where DNA and BFF’s (that’s best friends forever for those of us over a certain age) as well as strangers, influence our lives in ways obvious and oblique…
A web that connects us to geographies of place and purpose, social, political, and vocational entities where laws, policies, and practices affect all who dwell within and beyond them…
A web that connects us to this community, a place and people intentional in our affirmation of mutuality, where the joy of one is the joy of all, and no one grieves alone. A community committed to living the story of America: Part II.
In this we endeavor not to rewrite history, but to right what we have gotten wrong in history. Whatever was good, bad, and in between before, we cannot change that it happened. We can however act in the present to help shape a different present and future.
And that is what we are doing when our children and youth discuss our seventh principle affirming respect for the interdependent web of existence and debate whether their outreach project should be directed locally or globally.
It’s what we’re doing when we open worship with a hymn reflecting imperfect or incomplete ideas of the past and close with the same hymn reworded and though still imperfect and incomplete, better reflects where we are now or to strive toward still.
And it’s what we’re doing when we applaud news of a birth, betrothal, and coming out, celebrating and affirming the courageous beauty of new life in its various forms.
History reveals America Part I was defined, in part, by an illusory belief in both the reality and attainability of human independence. That many have prospered under this belief while many others have been displaced, denigrated, and destroyed points to its fallacy. The effects of every act and assertion made in favor or pursuit of human independence has never been contained to those have acted on or asserted their cause.
Indeed, as Chief Seattle of the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes is credited with saying, “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” His point is clear. Humanity is not meant to control the world or our place in it. We must instead cooperate with the web of life and accept our place as interdependent beings.
America Part II then will be defined by a grateful respect for the interdependent web of existence of which humans are but one part. Our task in this true, not new, world, is to recognize, celebrate, and give thanks through how we live, work, and play that we have a place in the web at all.
May it be so.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Amen and Blessed Be