Engaging, Listening and Learning
Cricket Potter
Martin Luther King Sunday, January 14, 2007
“Deep listening in all its variations is infinite. Deep listening is love.”
-Pauline Oliveros
READINGS:
1. Our first reading is a prayer written by composer, performer, and author Pauline Oliveros. She has written extensively about what she calls deep listening. Deep listening, she believes, is essential to creativity whether in music or in life, and it is critical in our journey of growth. This prayer was written for the new millennium.
I pray for deep listening in the new century – listening alone – listening together – listening to others—listening to oneself – listening to the earth – listening to the universe…helping to create and atmosphere of opening for all to be heard, with the understanding that listening is healing. Deep listening in all its variations is infinite. Deep listening is love.
2. Our second reading is from Martin Luther King’s famous essay, “Letter from Birmingham City Jail.” King wrote this essay in 1963 while serving a sentence for participating in civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham. He wrote this piece in response to eight prominent clergymen, all white, who had criticized King for his nonviolent resistance to segregation. They declared that he should be patient, not incite people to take to the streets -- even if in nonviolent protest – and that he should let the cause of integration be sorted out in the local and federal courts. Here is an excerpt from King’s “Letter”:
I received a letter this morning from a white brother in Texas which said: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry…. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth”….
King then goes on to say:
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights…. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim…when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky…when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”… when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title of “Mrs.”…when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
Having to tell your six-year-old that she can’t go to the brand new amusement park
because it is closed to children with her color skin.
Watching her hopeful face turn sad and confused.
Your heart dying inside as you see clouds of inferioritystarting to darken her once bright horizon.
As the mother of a six-year old child, I can’t imagine such anguish.
I just can’t.
Yet, here we are some forty years after King shared his famous dream of bringing inequality to an end,
and I feel that not much has changed.
Income disparity, unemployment rates, health issues,
racial profiling, incarceration statistics, police brutality, hate crimes –
these are just some of the telltale signs that racism is alive and well in our culture.
And, in ways we often don’t realize, racism is not only around us but perhaps in us.
I for one continue to learn how my privilege shields me from much of racism’s ugliness.
I am also learning that I might have assumptions about race that need to be addressed.
That is not an easy task.
“So, where to begin?” I kept asking myself this past week.
What can I say that can encourage us all as we consider both the blatant and insidious aspects of racism?
The beginning of my answer came from my own childhood
and from my experiences with a woman who loved me dearly.
So, let me tell you about Katie.
Kate C. Stewart, like her many siblings, was born sometime in the early 1900’s –
she would never let on exactly when --
to a family in the Richmond, Virginia, area
that had, in a previous generation, been share-croppers.
“We got by,” was how Katie described her childhood.
Katie clearly wanted more than the limited existence she could eke out in the south
So at the age of 16, she got up the gumption to head north, New York City to be exact,
where a family contact would help her find a job.
As a child hearing this story, I could never imagine how life could be so bad
that you would want to leave your family and go far away.
But Katie did.
She took the train north, all by herself,
convinced that she could make a better life far away from the south.
A number of years later Katie found her way to Boston and to my family.
First she cleaned house for us; then cooked.
And then, when I came into the world, part-time nanny was added to her duties.
In many ways, she was part of our family, living with us off and on during the weekdays.
My memories of her consist of her always being there for me
and letting me know in unspoken ways how important I was to her --
whether it was the days she greeted me home from school with cookies and milk,
or the afternoons we walked from our apartment in Boston to the Public Garden
to ride the swan boats and feed the pigeons,
or the evenings she would fix my favorite – mashed potatoes and honey carrots –
and say, “I made it just the way you like it.”
As I got older, my time pulled me away from Katie.
And once I graduated from college, she retired and moved into a senior living complex.
We kept in touch on birthdays and holidays, and I visited her whenever I was home from the west coast.
She had pictures and memorabilia of me all over her apartment –
right there amidst pictures of her family and church friends.
She knew the details of my life intimately and always asked for more details whenever I visited.
We also talked about her church which was the core of her life,
and the goings-on with her friends and family.
Katie’s health eventually began to fail.
Her family brought her back home to Virginia so that they could care for her.
We did not hear anything for a long time.
Then one day, weeks after the fact really, my mother received a brief letter from Katie’s family
saying that she had died peacefully in her sleep.
I’ll never forget the afternoon my mother read that letter to me.
I just couldn’t believe that Katie was truly gone from my life.
I felt empty and numb.
Yet, the real sadness hit me later.
It hit me when I wanted to piece her story together and suddenly realized
that I knew next to nothing about this woman who had loved me like a mother.
Neither did my mother or sisters know anything, much to my growing dismay.
Katie’s family, her childhood in Virginia, her brave move to New York City and later Boston,
the challenges she had to overcome, the inequality she had to live with….
In all my time with her, even as an adult, I never really asked, and now I will never really know.
Here was a woman who loved me dearly and who cared for all of us for years.
Katie was an intimate part of our family story.
Yet, her own story went largely unheard.
I know she had powerful experiences to share – if only we had thought to ask and listen.
And that is why I wanted to tell what little of her story I could today.
It is all but lost to me.
It is one of millions of stories about many different people,
people of color, people from other countries,
people whose voices and experiences do not get our attention.
We see the statistics and pictures and headlines in the paper.
But, do we really stop to consider the human story behind it all?
Are we truly aware of the hardships that the many people who look and sound different from us endure?
Are we really listening to the people who bag our groceries, mow our lawns,
clean our houses, or watch or children?
Please understand that I ask these questions
as someone who realizes her own need for greater awareness in this area.
To think that right in my own life was a woman who loved me and I loved back.
And yet, I have so little understanding of her life.
It is as if her story was secondary.
And I guess in some unconscious way for my family – and probably for the larger world – it was.
As Martin Luther Kings tells us, there are stories of people all around us –
and of people in past generations – that need to be heard.
They are beckoning for our attention, our awakening, our understanding.
Stories of mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers all trying to make a life against great odds.
In King’s “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,”
we heard the stories of black men and women not so long ago
struggling to live amidst the dehumanizing reality of racism and segregation.
“We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights,” King declares.
And he continues:
“I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, ‘Wait.’ But…when your first name becomes ‘nigger’ and your middle name becomes ‘boy’ (however old you are) and your last name becomes ‘John,’ and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title of ‘Mrs.’…when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness’; then you will understand…”
When you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of nobodiness, then you will understand.
And, for those of us with white skin and the inherent privilege that comes with it,
it will take deep listening for us to understand.
As Pauline Oliveros offers in her prayer:
“Listening alone – listening together – listening to oneself…
helping to create an atmosphere of opening for all to be heard…”
Without this intention and attention, we never will understand the nobodiness –
the unbearable sense of being invisible and unheard that so many people have had to bear.
Likewise, we will never care enough to do the hard but sacred work of ending such nobodiness.
So, we can begin by asking about the life of another –
by giving our attention and our time to their experience.
Such listening builds bridges and brings about change.
It also speaks of the worth and dignity we accord another.
In a sermon I gave last fall,
I spoke about the importance of listening to one another’s story – really listening…
That, in so doing, we widen our circle of compassion for each other and for the world around us.
Quoting from the author Christina Baldwin, I said,
“Story… breaks us into pieces, shatters our understanding and gives it back over and over again…(connecting) us with the world and (outlining) our relationship with everything.”
So, we begin by engaging -- by listening and learning.
By seeing others as their humanity deserves that they be seen
and opening ourselves to ways in which we may have fallen short.
As multicultural scholar Ronald Takaki puts it, we Americans have been looking through a glass darkly,
and it is high time that we “(view) ourselves in a mirror which reflects reality.”
Some of this listening will not be easy for us.
We will hear stories that disturb us.
I know for myself, as I have sought out the history and stories
of the many people that make up this country,
I have been saddened and angered by the suffering that others endure and still endure.
It has not been easy to be with these emotions.
But ignoring the truth does not make it go away.
“Seek the truth…know the truth… open your heart to the truth,”
Jesus said over and over again to those who would listen.
Our faith calls for it, and our humanity calls for it.
We are all sacred creations regardless of our race or our color.
So, let’s begin by engaging with the truth.
By listening and learning from the different people who already inhabit our lives and have a story to tell.
Let’s look at our own attitudes and experiences
and consider how our concepts of race have informed – or perhaps misinformed – us.
Claire and I are working on a three-part class we plan to offer this spring
based on the acclaimed PBS series, “Race: The Power of an Illusion.”
We want to look at:
our assumptions about race,
how these assumptions have shaped our lives and relationships,
and how our institutions give meaning and power to our concept of race,
however faulty that concept might be.
I would love to see all of you join Claire and me for these important discussions.
I pray for deep listening –
listening alone – listening together – listening to others
so that we can create an atmosphere of opening for all to be heard.
For, as author Christina Baldwin declares,
“(listening to one another’s) story builds bridges where opinion builds walls.”
Some forty years ago, Martin Luther King told stories of degradation and separation.
Hearing those stories is important in bringing us all together even now.
King also imagined a new story in which children of all types would join hands gleefully
and not be judged by the color of their skin.
Let’s each do our part for those whose stories we have yet to hear,
for Katie, whose story we barely know,
and for all the children we hope someday can join hands as one.
Deep listening is infinite.
Deep listening is love.
Amen.
This sermon is given in loving memory of Kate C. Stewart.