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By The Waters Of Babylon: Longing, Denial, Murder & Dreams of Home

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  • By The Waters Of Babylon: Longing, Denial, Murder & Dreams of Home

    BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON: Longing, Denial, Murder & Dreams of Home

    by James Ishmael Ford

    29 April 2012
    First Unitarian Church
    Providence, Rhode Island


    By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down, and we wept when we
    remembered Zion. In the midst of it all we hung our harps upon the
    willows. They that carried us away captive required of us a song. They
    wanted us to sing of joy. `Sing to us,' they demanded, `one of the
    songs of Zion.' But how shall we sing the Lord's song in this strange
    land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its
    skill. If I do not remember you, if I do not hold Jerusalem as my
    chief joy, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.

    Psalm 137 1-6

    Today we've received more members into this thriving community of hope
    and promise. For some it will prove a way station on a longer
    spiritual journey. For many this will become the place of exploration
    and depth, where the promise of fulfillment can be found, a genuine
    spiritual home. And so, wherever we are on our various paths, today is
    an invitation to consider that journey, and our home, what might be
    our true home.

    The one hundred thirty-seventh Psalm dates from the Babylonian
    captivity, somewhere in the sixth century before the Common Era. This
    is a very important moment in history. What we have there is a small
    community of intellectuals and craftsmen part of that mix of people
    living in what we today think of as Israel and Palestine who when
    their land was conquered had been carried away to Babylon.

    Who they really were is complicated, and further complicated by the
    contending myths of peoples who claim that land today. But, for our
    purposes here let's call them Judeans. It's hard to say how much they
    thought of themselves as a separate people from their neighbors in
    that land before this time. But during that captivity something
    happened, a spiritual alchemy, a distillation of more ancient fables
    and stories into a holy book containing a more or less coherent
    history and, even more important, a promise. During those years
    birthed much of what we have come to call Judaism.

    All brought together in a dream of home, of separation, of exile and a
    promise of returning to that home. And so it has always been. Whoever
    we are, wherever we've come from, that story of being lost and found,
    that's always ours, as well, isn't it? Do you notice how it lives in
    your heart?

    It does seem most of us are not settled, are not at home. We have
    different ways of saying this, smaller, larger. A popular one here is
    to listen to a sixty year-old ponder what he thinks he'll do when he
    grows up. But there are more serious ways of speaking to that sense.
    Somewhere within our hearts there is always a sense, which whispers,
    which calls to us in our dreams. In the midst of whatever conditions
    we're caught up in, we feel this urge, this need, this longing of our
    hearts.

    And, as natural as this is, without our attending to this movement of
    our heart, we find ourselves lost. This is true for individuals, and
    it is true for peoples. This longing is one of the most powerful
    currents of our hearts. And when not tended to in healthy ways, it
    will emerge in very dangerous and sometimes terrible ways.

    So, this past Tuesday, the 24th of April marks the ninety-seventh
    anniversary of the beginning of what the Armenian people call the
    Great Calamity, and what the rest of the world calls the Armenian
    genocide. That terrible event visited upon a small nation is sadly,
    part of a litany, possibly, probably endless, of people bringing
    terror and death to their neighbors. The Jewish holocaust in the 1940s
    was the most notorious bead on this string of deliberate and
    systematic destruction of a people, of a culture, justified because
    they are the `other,' and therefore are a threat whose destruction
    offsets the basic morality of every culture. Sadly, there are nearly
    endless examples.

    Thus it has been, thus it is. More recently we have Rwanda and
    Srebrenica. Glaringly, our own American history is marked by the
    genocide of the Native American peoples, together with slavery one of
    the two original sins resting a rot at the foundation of our nation.

    I find myself considering the Armenian genocide in particular, and how
    it is denied. We have a similar problem here in how many are not
    willing to consider the genocide of the Native American peoples, as
    well. I suggest this is one of the most dangerous things we can do for
    the health of our hearts, for the possibilities of change. We need to
    not turn away.

    Indeed, that is the nut at the heart of it all. Today I want to
    reflect on the nature of our longings, remind us of how dangerous it
    is to ignore them, to not attend to the currents of our hearts. And,
    also, to share a word of hope, to say what comes with attention, in
    our bringing full presence to what is.

    No doubt our human minds and hearts are complex things. Events happen
    and we order them, we give them meanings. At the very center of this
    is the mystery of our human memory. What we give our attention to and
    how we shape it creates the narratives of our lives, tells us where we
    come from and points to where we can go.

    An example. My people are the Irish. While my direct ancestors came
    here at the turn of the last century almost certainly fleeing poverty,
    the majority of my people came to this nation fifty years earlier,
    fleeing something even worse, the great hunger. There's a memory.
    Fleeing horrors, we came to a country that was reluctant to accept us.
    Within the mad rush forward of course we wove stories about ourselves.
    Some of these were useful, others, not so much. For many the stories
    were little more than maudlin inspirations for tin-pan alley. Green
    beer once a year is a sorry remembrance of a lost nation.

    Other memories were of past deprivation and oppression and out of
    those came dreams of new hope and possibility. Irish Americans are
    second to none in our patriotic fervor for our adopted nation and the
    opportunities we claimed. And, and this is an important point. What we
    weave together as our stories are always mix of truth and fantasy. And
    what we deny or forget may be just as influential on future events as
    that which we remember,

    Which raises the other issue for us to struggle with, also deeply
    connected to memory. That is place. What is home? Where is home? In
    addition to those more ancient homelands, do you come from the rocky
    soil of New England? Perhaps the plains of the Midwest? Or, like me,
    that far country of teeming cities clinging to rugged coasts, high
    mountains in the distance, and a moderate climate? For each of us, no
    matter how far away our lives may take us, these places have a
    permanent part in our hearts, and of who we are.

    And, in that sense of where we come from, we also have that ancestral
    homeland. Germany? England? China? Japan? Armenia? And what if our
    ancestors were kidnapped? There are those in this Meeting House who
    know that bitter question. Where in Africa? Where? Or, what if you
    know, but if you go to that place and there are only a few stones
    piled upon each other for you to touch and to recall how your people
    were shaped, and lived? What if that homeland is now a place where the
    songs of your ancestors are no longer sung? I think of the native
    peoples of this continent.

    And, this is the greatest mystery of it all, the one that must inform
    every other thought we have: at some point we're all connected,
    deeply, truly. One family. We are all bound up in these acts of memory
    and loss, of place loved and taken. These are not empty words: the
    harm done one, is harm done to all. If we hope to act with grace in
    this world, if we hope for peace in our own lives, for joy, for
    authenticity, we need to remember all this; and we need a place to put
    our feet.

    So, back to memory. Back to the power of presence.

    People often, I believe, misunderstand the call to presence, to notice
    this place, to stand here. A person who cannot take memory into this
    moment is not fully present. And, that's not the end of it, either. We
    need to have the cascade of hopes and fears for the future living in
    our hearts, as well.

    This is how it can be so complicated. The one hundred and
    thirty-seventh psalm, so lovely, so compelling in its dream of
    captivity and longing for home, has a line at the end, of wish for
    vengeance on the captors so terrible that it is always cut from the
    reading. I suggest turning away even from these dark dreams of
    vengeance is a mistake. We need all of it.

    But, we need it not be the end point. Not the end of our song. We need
    to never forget the Armenian genocide, never forget the murders of the
    Jewish people, never forget the killing of so many Native American
    cultures. And the consequences of those things. We need to not turn
    away.

    If there is no memory, and no thought of the future, then there is no
    present. Not really. Not in a way that counts. Not in a way that
    allows the pregnant possibility of our existence to come forth.

    And living into that possibility is the task at hand. What does it
    mean to live full, to be fully present?

    I find as I consider the great sadness of the Armenian genocide, along
    with all the other horrors and indignities perpetuated upon people,
    great and small, I feel a sense of loss that I have trouble describing
    to you here today. But when we don't turn away, when others deny, but
    we know in our hearts, found through presence to what is, the vastness
    of our true home, things happen. And within that I feel some sense of
    hope, some sense of that birthing of possibility as presence itself,
    shining, fully visible.

    Because, and here is a great secret. This place here is our home. All
    those places that dream in our hearts, and which we should never
    forget, bring us in their own good time: here. To this place. To this
    moment.

    This is our home.

    And this seems to be our call. We must remember. To forget is to
    collaborate with those thieves of the heart who would deny what we
    have been and what we might yet become. But if we do remember, however
    much the world changes, we will find a place to stand.

    And it is here. To be here fully, to bring it all together is to throw
    open the gates of paradise. This is our true home.

    Finding that longing. Knowing that longing. Dreaming that longing. And
    bringing it here. This is the great healing. This is coming home.

    Amen.

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2012/04/by-the-waters-of-babylon-longing-denial-murder-dreams-of-home.html




    From: A. Papazian
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