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WHERE DO THE MERMAIDS STAND?
A Sermon By Rev. Dr.
Patrick T. O'Neill
Delivered Sunday February 18, 2007
At The Unitarian Fellowship of West Chester, PA
A Robert Fulghum story is the starting place for today's
sermon. I can think of no more appropriate centerpiece for a
sermon on religious education than this one. It's from
Fulghum's Kindergarten book:
"Giants, wizards and dwarfs was the game to play.
Being left in charge of about eighty children seven to ten
years old, while their parents were off doing parenty things,
I mustered my troops in the church social hall and explained
the game. It's a large-scale version of Rock, Paper, Scissors,
and involves some intellectual decision-making. But the real
purpose of the game is to make a lot of noise and run around
chasing people until nobody knows which side you are on or who
won.
Organizing a roomful of wired-up gradeschoolers into two
teams, explaining the rudiments of the game, achieving
consensus or group identity-- this all is no mean
accomplishment, but we did it with a right good will and were
ready to go.
The excitement of the chase had reached a critical mass. I
yelled out, "You have to decide now which you are--a GIANT, a
WIZARD, or a DWARF!"
While groups huddled in frenzied, whispered consultation, a
tug came at my pants leg. A small child stands there looking
up, and asks in a small, concerned voice, "Where do the
Mermaids stand?"
Where do the Mermaids stand?
A long pause. A very long pause. "Where do the Mermaids
stand?" says I.
"Yes. You see, I am a Mermaid."
"There are no such things as Mermaids."
"Oh, yes, I am one!"
She did not relate to being a Giant, a Wizard, or a Dwarf. She
knew her category. Mermaid. And was not about to leave the
game and go over and stand against the wall where a loser
would stand. She intended to participate, wherever Mermaids
fit into the scheme of things. Without giving up dignity or
identity. She took it for granted there was a place for
Mermaids and that I would know just where.
Well, where DO the Mermaids stand? All the "Mermaids"-- all
those who are different, who do not fit the norm and who do
not accept the available boxes and pigeonholes?
Answer that question and you can build a school, a nation, or
a world on it.
What was my answer at the moment? Every once in a while I say
the right thing. "The Mermaids stand right here, by the King
of the Sea!" says I. (Yes, right here by the King's Fool, I
thought to myself.)
So we stood there hand in hand, reviewing the troops of
Wizards and Giants and Dwarfs as they roiled by in wild
disarray.
It is not true, by the way, that mermaids do not exist. I know
at least one personally. I have held her hand."
(From All I Really Needed to Know I Learned In Kindergarten
by Robert Fulghum, Villard Books, New York, 1988, pp.83-85)
About once a year or so, in whatever congregation I happen to
be un-settled in at the moment, I give a sermon on religious
education for children as we try to practice it in the
Unitarian Universalist tradition. I look for different ways to
say what I think our purpose and our method ought to be
regarding the spiritual growth and nurturance of our children.
Some years I think I say it better than other years. This
year, when people ask me what we are about in our church
school program, I think I'm just going to give them a copy of
the Mermaid story and say, "Here. This is what we ought to
strive for in a quality religious education program."
In this one small parable, it seems to me, there is
illustration of what good religious education is capable of
producing in children. And it shows what happens when good
teachers interact with children in ways that ultimately
empower children, nurture and affirm them, encourage their
rightful inquiries and discoveries.
Think for a moment of the tremendous ego strength,
imagination, and willingness to define herself in terms that
come from within that are exhibited by that little mermaid as
she inquires for her place in the grand scheme of things.
Where does a child
learn all that?
A lesser teacher than Robert Fulghum might have taken longer
to recover from her innocent but assertive challenge to the
established order. He might have failed to accept her
invitation to broaden the game; he might have failed to honor
her own understanding of what the purpose of such
categorization was in the first place.
I want to suggest that a lesser teacher might have been more
concerned with the stated rules than with the spirit in this
instance, and would have missed the opportunity of affirming a
child in her risk of self-definition, in her request for
recognition, in her claim for how she wanted to be viewed and
accepted.
I want to suggest that somewhere along the line, I think this
child had received the benefit of a very successful religious
education. For the evidence is there that this child has a
very secure sense of self-worth, number one. And that surely
is the most basic goal of all religious education: to instill
in each child a sense that he or she is inherently worthy as
an individual. Even when her assertion is questioned by higher
authority, this child knows what she knows. "I am a mermaid!"
she declares. She has already learned how to speak truth to
power. And from a good teacher she now learns that power can
be made to respect such truth.
Somewhere along the line, this child came to trust that there
is a rightful place for her in this world, and that, too, is
evidence of a good religious education. She has the courage to
speak her claim. "I may be different, but I have a place in
this community. Don't ask me to be what I am not, don't ask me
to believe something outside my own experience, and don't
expect me necessarily to conform to your mythos where I am not
comfortable and where I do not feel acknowledged."
In the Unitarian Universalist church school we begin by
teaching our children that they themselves are lovable and
worthy people. We ask them to respect the others around them
as equally lovable and worthy. And over time we seek to open
before them a range of choices and various expressions of
religious truths and values, and we encourage the questioning
that such choices require of them.
As regards our children, we are not interested in
indoctrination or adherence to fixed dogmatic teachings. We
are not in the business of producing little cookie-cutter
versions of Unitarians. Our primary goal and wish and dream
for them is that they become good people, strong people, brave
people willing to stand up for justice and dignity and honor.
If they evidence that much in their lives and in their
relationships, then we know we have succeeded.
Most of us in this room have some image of Sunday School based
largely on our own experience growing up in another time and
another place and probably in a church or temple other than
Unitarian Universalist. And some of those images and memories
that we carry from our own childhood are positive, and some
are negative.
I myself never attended Sunday School, because my siblings and
I attended Catholic parochial schools, from first grade
through college, where religion and general education were
never distinguished from each other. We got nothing but
religious education five days a week, all day long.
Our religious training was through the Catechism approach of
memorized questions and answers that illustrated Catholic
doctrine and tradition. The aim of that education was never
ambiguous or hesitant: it was "in-doctrination," literally -
the instilling of doctrine into our young minds and hearts; it
was to mold us into adult practicing Catholics, and teach us
how to live our lives in accordance with Catholic values and
ethics.
I had my differences with that doctrine as a young adult, and
I parted ways with it eventually, but it was nonetheless a
serious grounding for an ethical life, one that taught me how
to ask moral questions and make serious moral choices for
myself, a grounding that served me well as my own intellectual
life matured and deepened, a grounding that I have always been
grateful for.
But its principal limitation was its rigidity. Alas, that
indoctrination/catechism method was laden with psychological
guilt and unyielding obligation that conditioned Catholic
children of my generation always to genuflect before authority
and always to question individuality of thought. It
discouraged us from trusting our own experience, our own
ideas, our own bodies, our innate childlike tolerance and
acceptance of neighbors who might be different from us.
And in retrospect, I see now how such indoctrination serves to
disempower young adults at the very time in their lives when
they need most to be pushing against the boundaries of
cultural stereotypes and biases and restrictions on their
emerging personhood. Young adulthood is in fact defined and
determined by that very process of “pushing out” to find one’s
selfhood: Who am I? Where do I come from? Who are you? What
does it mean to be a good person, a good man, a good woman?
What is my capacity to love others? How am I to behave, how am
I to relate, how am I make my own way through this world? What
do I think for myself? What do I feel for myself? What happens
when I tell the truth about who I am, and what I believe, and
what I dream for my own life?
Those are the formative essential questions - part of every
human life story - that any religious education for children
should be equipping young people to ask when the time comes.
And whenever I meet adults who are still resentful or even
bitter about the “inadequate” or “repressive” or even
“abusive” religious education they got as children, it’s
almost always because of what it cost them personally as young
adults break free of that indoctrination. Fifty or sixty years
out from their childhood people are still carrying some of
that anger and resentment. It’s sad. I think there’s a better
way to teach children than that.
For those of you who grew up in traditional mainstream
Protestant churches, your young Christian education was
probably not much different methodologically. You probably got
more Bible stories than us Catholic kids, but you too were
taught that Jesus is the pathway to Salvation, and that the
observance of the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule were
the best bases for a life of worth and dignity. Some of you
got more about sin and depravity and hellfire and brimstone
than any child ever needs, which is probably why you're in
these Unitarian Universalist pews this morning and not where
your parents expected you to wind up.
And some of you grew up in Temple Schools, where you were
taught the traditions and language and obligations of 5,000
years of Judaism. And of necessity, you also learned there
what it meant to carry with pride and with dignity your
identity as a minority religion in a culture where prejudice
still abounds. The timeless didacticism of the Torah and
scholarly tradition of the Rabbinate shaped the religious
education you received there.
And some few of you, I know, grew up in households that were
"un-churched" either by design or by default. I'm glad to see
that you turned out as well as you did anyway, even without
Sunday School!
When people ask me about our Unitarian Universalist approach
to religious education for children here is what I say. First,
I admit that I am absolutely biased in favor of a strong
structured religious education program for children. You would
expect no less from a minister, but I speak first as a parent
and as a citizen and as someone who loves and cares about
children, and as someone who is increasingly alarmed and
frightened for children as I look around at our society.
This is a different world from the one in which you and I grew
up. Children today face factors and societal conditions that
were simply unthinkable, unimaginable years ago. And I don't
just mean the availability of drugs, the obscenity of violent
themes and overlays of mass media, television, movies, music,
advertising, the non-stop assault on our everyday environment.
All that is but the background against which every child in
America today has to learn to live somehow.
To allow a child out into the world today without some kind
of serious moral grounding under their feet is unconscionable.
When you consider the hundred ways in which a child or an
adolescent or a young person today can get lost or pulled
apart by inducements they don't even recognize and choices
they aren't ready to make and dangers they don't even
comprehend - what do we give them, how do we equip our
children to navigate their way through such a world?
Anne LaMott has a wonderful piece in her book, Traveling
Mercies, about why she brings her young son to church every
week despite his protests that he would much rather be
somewhere else on Sunday morning.
"First of all, I outweigh him," she writes.
"But the main reason is that I want to give him what I found
in the world, which is to say a path and a little light to see
by. Most of the people I know who have what I want - which is
to say purpose, heart, balance, gratitude, joy - are people
with a deep sense of spirit. They are people in community, who
pray or practice their faith. They are Buddhists, Jews,
Christians (Unitarians) - people banding together to work on
themselves and for human rights. They follow a brighter light
than the glimmer of their own candle; they are part of
something beautiful.....
When I was at the end of my rope, the people in my church tied
a knot in it for me and helped me hold on. The church became
my home in the old meaning of home - that it's where, when you
show up, they have to let you in. They let me in. They even
said you come back now...."
(Anne LaMott, Traveling Mercies. Pantheon Books, New
York. 1999. p.100)
We begin by giving them our love, of course. Everything begins
with that, every life is lost without love. But love alone is
not enough. We owe our children more than that. To make their
way through this world children will need not only their
parents' love and everything we can teach them, but they need
a community's love, as well. Never was that more true than
today. And never has a loving and supportive community
environment been harder to find for our children than it is
today.
I want to suggest that this is what Sunday School is about - I
don't care what denomination we're talking about, or what
particular approach it takes, this experience of giving our
children a "community of love" in which to learn self-worth
and ethics; an appreciation of right and wrong; a sense of the
good and the true and the holy; and the saving grace of
justice and empathy and equity; a sense of the sacred center
both in themselves and in all of creation.
Maybe it's possible to give your child all of these gifts
without the benefit of a Sunday School of some kind, without
the support of a loving community of some kind, I don't know.
But this much I do know: sooner or later, at some point in
life your child is going to need all of these things and more
in order to become a moral person.
In our Unitarian Universalist approach to religious education,
"indoctrination" is not our goal or our style. What we seek to
provide for our children, what we hope they end up with as a
result of their passage through this loving community is,
first, the basic ability to make sound moral decisions
for themselves and to know the difference when they don't;
second, the capacity to choose their own religious
community as adults; third, a basic religious literacy
that acquaints them with what some of the world's great
religions have had to say about what it means to be human and
what it means to find God; and finally, a profound and
loving respect for all of life and for our rightful place in
life's mystery.
Some years ago D. Krieger, a volunteer teacher in one of our
UU church schools, wrote these words entitled, "What Do We
Want Our Children to Know?"
That the world is magical,
that its wonders never cease,
that its beauty is enormous.
That life is a sacred gift,
that all life has worth,
that life deserves our deepest
respect and reverence.
That humans are caretakers,
not the masters, of our frail planet.
That this is only planet we have.
There is much we don't know,
even the wisest among us,
that there is much we disagree upon,
and that it is alright to disagree.
That knowledge is precious
and wisdom even more precious.
That we have learned from the past
and must contribute to an uncertain future.
That life has purpose
which is for each of us to find.
That we are each a part of the whole
of human kind.
That our hands are for building, and holding,
for hard honest work.
That our hearts are for loving.
That our minds are for creating.
That we must each learn to judge
right from wrong,
and must act for what we know is right.
That life will be painful at times,
even hard and cruel.
That what we give of ourselves
will be its own reward.
I'll close this morning with a story that I heard my colleague
Tom Owen-Towle tell some years ago. Tom was for many years
co-minister of First Unitarian Church in San Diego.
One of the parents in their church school got a call one
Saturday night. "Are you the mother of Tommy Brown, the
first grader at Johnson Elementary School?" asked the
caller. "Yes, I am," she answered. "Well, may I ask
what Sunday School your son attends?" A little nervous
now, Tommy's mother replied, "We attend at First Unitarian
in San Diego. Why do you ask?"
"Well, you see, we are new in town and my son is in Tommy's
class at school. My son is painfully shy, he has a very bad
lisp, and all the other children have been teasing him
relentlessly in recess and it has been very hard for him. Your
Tommy, however, put his arm around him today and asked if he
could be his friend. We don't have a church of our own here
yet, but I think I would like my son to attend whatever church
school Tommy is in. I figure they're doing a pretty good job."
So do I.
To those of you who made time in your life for teaching in our
church school this past year, thank you. We owe you more than
words can express.
-- Patrick T. O'Neill |
