By the Rev. Judith E. Meyer
Unitarian Universalist Community Church
Santa Monica, California
December 8, 2002

 

 

When the international community, 

    gathered in Paris,

        adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

            in the early hours of the morning of December 10, 1948,

                they gave life to their vision

                    of the world of the future.

Their declaration proclaimed all people 

    were "born free and equal 

        in dignity and rights."

Everyone is entitled to live with this freedom and dignity.

The concept of universal human rights

    recognizes that freedom and dignity

        are as essential and life-giving as water.

 

From this concept comes a vision of a world

    that looks to me like the world 

        in the Haitian children's story

            we heard earlier in the service.

God gives a well to the thirsty animals,

    for they all need water to live.

But the animals must learn the hard way

    that the water is for everyone.

"The hole in the ground is yours,"

    the Haitian people say,

        but "the water is God's."

 

The world we create is all ours,

    for better and for worse;

        but like water, 

            human rights are a gift of God -

                or of life, if you prefer -

                    either way, they are not for people 

                        to give or take away.

And because human rights should belong to everyone,

    we could conclude 

        that everyone is more or less same.

We all need the same conditions for a decent life;

    our common humanity shapes our hopes and dreams;

        we are more alike than we are different.

 

This assumption - 

    that people are more alike than different -

        has inspired our own Unitarian and Universalist traditions.

Yet our ideals

    often conflict with the reality of today's world.

For we live in a society in which injustice, 

    greed,

        and the desperate scrambling of people 

            whose only wish is to survive

                does little to confirm what we say is true.

All may be entitled to their rights;

    but the quality and condition of life

        are very different,

            depending who you are.

Denying that reality 

    has consequences for everyone.

 

In her original and compelling work, "The Alchemy of Race and Rights",

    law professor Patricia Williams

        tells a simple true story 

            that helps to understand sameness and difference.

"Walking down Fifth Avenue in New York not long ago,"

    she writes,

"I came up behind a couple and their young son.

The child, about four or five years old,

    had evidently been complaining about big dogs.

The mother was saying,

    'But why are you afraid of big dogs?'

'Because they're big,' 

    he responded with eminent good sense.

'But what's the difference between a big dog and a little dog?' 

    the father persisted.

'They're *big*,' said the child.

'But there's really no difference,' said the mother,

    pointing to a large slathering wolfhound with narrow eyes

        and the calculated amble of a gangster,

            and then to a beribboned Pekinese

                the size of a roller skate,

                    who was flouncing along ahead of us all,

                        in that little fox-trotty step

                            that keeps Pekinese from ever

                                being taken seriously.

'See?' said the father.

'If you look really closely you'll see

    there's no difference at all.

They're all just dogs.'

 

"And I thought:" wrote Patricia Williams.

"Talk about your iron-clad canon.

Talk about a static, unyielding, totally uncompromising point of reference.

These people must be lawyers,"

    she added.

"Where else do people learn so well the idiocies of High Objectivity?

How else do people learn to capitulate so uncritically

    to a norm that refuses to allow for difference?

How else do grown-ups sink so deeply 

    into the authoritarianism of their own world view

        that they can universalize their relative bigness so completely

            that they obliterate the subject positioning

                of their child's relative smallness?

                    (To say nothing of the position of the slathering wolfhound,

                        from whose perspective I dare say 

                            the little boy must have looked exactly like a lamb chop.)"

 

Patricia Williams argues that the attitude 

    that there are no differences

        leads oppressed people 

            to disbelieve their own experience.

As an African American woman, 

    she offers compelling stories from her own life

        that attest to how different her experience

            is from that of white people.

All people should have equal rights.

But we are not all the same -

    just as all dogs, 

        from the point of view of a fearful child,

            are not all the same.

And our view of the world is most definitely not all the same

    in a world that treats people as differently as it still does.

In his Friday column in the Los Angeles Times,

    columnist Steve Lopez cites the United Way's

        "Tale of Two Cities" report 

            about conditions here in Los Angeles.

According to this report,

    "twenty-three percent of L.A. County's households

        earn less than $20,000 a year,

            eighteen percent live in poverty,

                and thirty percent of adults over 25

                    didn't make it through high school."

Today - during tough times for many of us,

    including people in our own congregation 

        who have lost jobs in the past year,

            there are "roughly seven residents 

                per available job

                    in South Los Angeles" -

                        "as opposed to fewer than three residents 

                            per job citywide."

It's difficult here.

It's even worse over there.

Uncertainty and discouragement may abound,

    but some people still have 

        a better shot at the future than others.

Everyone needs the water from the well.

The work we all must do is to understand

    what it takes - on our part -

        to see that no one goes thirsty.

 

"What is necessary to practice [our beliefs]

    in democracy and equal rights?"

        asks ethicist Sharon Welch.

"Both an affirmation of their value

    *and* a forthright acknowledgement 

        of their failure to be implemented,"

            she answers.

"It is this dual vision,

    this awareness of possibilities of justice

        and the actuality of injustice,

            that Patricia Williams sees

                as the constituent of 'alchemical fire,'

                    the energy that makes real the possibilities

                        for decency, 

                            equity,

                                and transformation."

 

These are today's truths,

    according to Welch and Williams,

        two original thinkers and activists

            whose work has influenced each other's.

We must understand the ways in which 

    we are alike and different,

        the ways in which 

            some people have been cut a better deal than others.

We must learn how

    to hold ourselves accountable

        for what needs to be made right

            to bring the possibility 

                of justice to life.

If, as we sang in our opening hymn,

    "the earth shall be fair,

        and all its people one,"

            we must begin with the truth.

Truth can be told,

    but someone has to listen.

For people to tell the story of their experience -

    even if it is painfully different

        and acutely challenging -

            there must be people who are willing 

                to risk the pain and the challenge

                    of hearing what is said.

There are costs,

Sharon Welch warns.

But the gains far outweigh them.

For it is by telling the story

    and listening to it

        that people create community together.

Enriched by our differences

    and educated by each other's joy and sorrow,

        we create together an environment 

            in which human rights can flourish.

 

In a community such as the one we have here,

    we can work to create more opportunities

        to listen to each other,

            to know each other

                and to understand how 

                    we are both alike and similar.

I don't think I am alone

    in making the assumption, 

        often in error,

            that Unitarian Universalists have so much in common

                we have little diversity 

                    to experience together.

Making this assumption is just as insensitive

    as telling a fearful four year old child that all dogs are the same.

It is in recognizing difference 

    that we learn who the other really is.

If we want real community,

    we should start to find out.

 

On a global scale, the same approach applies.

Human rights - like water - may be a gift,

    but universal human solidarity,

Sharon Welch writes,

    is not.

It is a task.

It is a way of learning and growing.

It is a way of living and listening.

And it is a vision of a new community,

    in which the earth is indeed fair

        and all its people one.

 

"Social cohesion is created by contact," Sharon Welch writes,

    "by working with other people."

It does not require that we all be the same.

"It does not require uniformity or total agreement."

What it does require is that we be willing 

    "to create relationships of mutuality and respect."

"The connections that give life meaning -

    that bring delight and joy,

        that evoke and sustain work to heal,

            to end injustice,

                to establish fairness - 

                    at times take the form of the shock of recognition.

But just as often, the connections that give life meaning

    come from the shock of difference,

        of being surprised by the novelty of someone else's insight,

            by the jolt of unpredictability..."

Once people understand that everyone benefits

    and is enriched by relationships as real and sustaining as these,

        no one will choose to deny others the power

            to reveal who they are

                or to live freely in dignity and respect.

 

In a world that grows smaller - 

    and not always in good ways - 

        every day,

            our universal ideals and values come under close scrutiny,

                and they don't always match up to reality.

We should strengthen ourselves to see the truth.

For if we are to build a world 

    in which human rights are a given

        and people share equally in the power to realize their dreams,

            we must begin by seeing how far short we fall.

We human beings have much in common,

    but our differences can teach us 

        how to grow closer together.

 

Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the Human Rights Commission

    and worked tirelessly for the adoption of the Declaration,

        was once asked where universal human rights begin.

Her now famous answer

    still influences how we think about human rights today.

Human rights begin, she said,

    "in small places, close to home -

        so close and so small 

            that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world.

Yet they are the world of the individual person:

    the neighborhood he [or she] lives in; 

        the school or college he [or she] attends,

            the factory, farm or office where he [or she] works.

Such are the places where every man, woman and child

    seeks equal justice,

        equal opportunity,

            equal dignity without discrimination.

Unless these rights have meaning there,

    they have little meaning elsewhere.

Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home,

    we shall look in vain for progress

        in the larger world."

 

So we begin with ourselves.

Eyes open, 

    ready for the truth,

        hands stretched out to another

            so that the richness and growth 

                that make life worth living

                    will come to us,

                        and all people.

This is what will make the difference.

This is how the world will change.