Kurt Vonnegut and I spent some time in a cemetery once. It was 1995 and, with my professional partner Susan Feinstein, I was producing a literary lecture series in Rochester, New York. Our guest lecturer for the evening was Mr. Vonnegut.
It was the 25th anniversary of the publication of Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut’s fabled absurdist novel about (among other things) the carpet-bombing of Dresden, Germany, by British and American planes near the end of WWII. Firestorms engulfed the city and tens of thousands were killed. Vonnegut was a young prisoner of war in Dresden when the city was hit. The reason he wasn’t also burned was because, when the bombs fell, he was in a basement laboratory making vitamin supplements for the Germans. After the fires receded, he and the other POWs were sent out into the city to collect the bodies from the rubble and place them on massive pyres to finish what the bombs had started.
The central character in the book is Billy Pilgrim, “a very young infantry scout who is captured in the Battle of the Bulge and quartered in a Dresden slaughterhouse where he and other prisoners are employed in the production of a vitamin supplement for pregnant women.” Apparently some things in the novel are autobiographical, but during his Rochester visit Vonnegut told us that Billy Pilgrim was modeled on another young POW, an awkward fellow named Ed Crone who, as it happened, was from Rochester. Crone died of malnutrition while a prisoner because he traded his thin food rations for candy. His character portrait wasn’t entirely favorable, Vonnegut said, so he had resisted telling people it was based on Crone until Ed’s parents died.
Now the Crones were deceased and Vonnegut was in Rochester. Through a local journalist we learned that Ed Crone was buried there in Mt. Hope cemetery and we offered to take Mr. Vonnegut to visit the grave.
Vonnegut looked confused. “But he’s in Dresden. I saw him buried myself—in a paper suit—because there wasn’t enough fabric to bury him in a suit of clothes.” Well, we explained, his family had traveled to Germany after the war and had his body exhumed and re-interred here.
So we drove to the cemetery and left Mr. Vonnegut at the gravesite for a private cigarette and talk with Ed. Walking back to the car he said, heavily, “Well, that closes the book on WWII for me.”
Later that evening, Mr. Vonnegut recounted his visit to the cemetery and explained that Ed Crone was the inspiration for Billy Pilgrim. He waxed about life and meaning and absurdity. Musing about his own eventual death, he said he hoped that when he died, people would look up to the sky and say, “Well, I guess he’s in heaven now….” As you know, Kurt Vonnegut died this week at the age of 84. I guess he’s in heaven now. God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut.
But:
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…
Imagine. A dream of peace…
Our world is at war, our streets stained with blood from gun violence.
Trust in the truthfulness of government and business leaders is faltering.
The consequences of global warming are fearsome.
The magnitude of the problems besieging us are so overwhelming that our influence on outcomes seems beyond our control. We are losing our ability, it seems, to dream a dream of peace.
As Americans, we share a cultural consciousness that is always imagining a better future. Our mythic story is one in which progress prevails: Science will redeem us. Or Superman will arrive in the nick of time. We like happy endings. Even the more mystical among us derive comfort from assurances in dire times like Julian of Norwich’s, “All will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”
But our collective consciousness is troubled. Questions loom: Will our children live better lives then we did? Than our parents and grandparents?
If faith in the American dream of prevailing progress is diminishing, if our hope for a better future grows dimmer, how can we still dream a dream of peace? And how can we hope, if not for the future?
Orienting our perspective toward the future—as we do, as we cannot help but do, it seems, as humans—has been a way to think about the world and to maintain a certain optimism. Even if things are not so great right now, we hope they are bound to be better in the future. Religion has, for a large part, contributed to this future oriented thinking. Suffering, pain, death are “handled” and “processed” through a future-forward filter of soon, and next year and ever after.
While I would not be one to dismiss or denigrate the possibility of an ever after, the religious humanist in me is far more deeply focused on the present possibility. I live in this world with you—now--and it is this world and its future that are my chief concerns.
As I look to the future, I am not blithely optimistic (despite my reputation). While I might imagine a peaceful future, I do not have confidence or assurance that I will ever encounter that future in my lifetime. Nevertheless, I firmly believe that it is possible to hope for that future anyway, without being unreasonable or engaging in magical thinking.
But what do we do when the now of this world reaches up and challenges our ability to dream a dream of peace? When we pause and reflect on history, or when we open the newspaper and read of Baghdad and Imus and understand we have not come very far and that we can barely see where we might go from here. Then what are we to?
In a report to the Council of World Churches on Nurturing Peace in a Violent World, the commission wrote: “Peace is not a state of escaping the real world of violence, strife, exploitation and injustice to seek solace in a virtual world that is entered into through imaginary leaps, even if propped up by ‘feel good’ gestures or by invoking the [term] hope…”
In other words, we can’t just talk the talk. We have to walk the walk. It is not the merely invoking the word, but engaging in the practice of hope, in the face of history, reality, the facts of life as we know it, that will sustain us in our dream of peace.
So what does the practice of hope look like? How can we practice hope?
Theologian Flora Keshgegian has undertaken these questions thoroughly in her book, Time for Hope. Among her thoughtful proposals are ones we have often lifted up in this community for consideration and practice. For example, the idea of taking time—stopping, stepping outside the normal rhythms of life, breathing—and taking on the practices of appreciation, thankfulness and reverence.
She has a number of other ideas that I would not have thought of as practices, but I am happy to consider with you. For one, she raises the idea of imagining creatively as a way to practice hope.
Imagining creatively is, simply put, the practice of dreaming the world beyond what is plausible into what is possible. Where would Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. be in our collective inspiration now if they had only dreamed the plausible and practical?
To imagine creatively, she says, we need to take time in our lives to escape the loud influences of the culture and the past that colonize our imaginations, that tell us “it’s always been this way” or “we can’t because it’s never worked before.” How to do that is a back to the future idea (without drugs this time around): turn off and tune out.
Challenge yourself to turn off the television or stop checking your email for an hour or two and free your imagination to dream, to see visions, to get in touch with your passion.
Notice in this technology free zone: What makes you feel alive and energized? What gets your blood moving? What are you willing to live for? What are you giving your life to?
What we imagine is possible--what we dream--shapes our hope and gives shape to our lives. If we imagine a healthy, healed planet, for example, we will make choices, even sacrifices, for the sake of that dream. If we imagine a just world, in which the inherent worth and dignity of all people is affirmed, then we will take up the hard, long work of justice making, for the sake of that vision.
But I must offer a caution here: dreaming does not promise fulfillment. In fact, we will be better equipped to sustain hope if we understand it is likely we will not participate in the achievement of our vision. Knowing that it is beyond our reach, we are less likely to lose hope when we encounter setbacks, disappointments, even threats to our dream. Knowing we may not succeed in our dream—that it may be beyond our generation’s grasp—liberates us to envision expansive, beautiful, and unbounded futures!
Dr. King had a dream he shared with this nation, but he also knew he might not live to see his dream fulfilled. “I have been to the mountaintop…and I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the Promised Land…I may not get there with you. But..we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” His dream has not died and his hope, if we share it, still shapes our lives.
Imagining creatively is a hope-sustaining practice. It calls us to dream large and improbable dreams. Fed by passion, our dream will inspire us to participate in making that dream come true—even if we never see it succeed. Do you have a dream? I hope you will share it with others. Who knows what hope, what peace, will live from it…what lives will be shaped by it…
For hope is not only private and personal; it is social. It relies on our interconnectedness and interrelatedness. This is what Thich Nhat Hahn refers to as Interbeing and our 7th principle enshrines as the interdependent web of existence. Interbeing or interrelatedness does not require us to become one undefined, amorphous, amoebic body, all moving in the same direction or away from the same unpleasant stimulus. (We are, after all, Unitarian Universalists, and we don’t cotton to that kind of thing…)
On the contrary, it requires that we acknowledge and respect that we are individuals, human bodies and beings with limitations and boundaries. We have edges of skin and nerves. Having these limited bodies offers us a very tangible place from which to engage in the practice of hope. See what you think of this.
As individuals, we take up space and use resources. Using space and resources as we do, limits the space and resources that others can use. Acknowledging that truth, coming to terms with that truth, respecting that truth, is a practice of hope.
As I learn to respect my embodiment and limitations, I develop respect for your embodiment and limitations.
When we are blurry, when our boundaries aren’t clear, we cannot fully understand or express our needs. And we can have great trouble distinguishing our needs from our desires or our hungry grasping. We can become resentful that too much is taken or expected from us.
As we gain clarity through practice, and learn to maintain clear boundaries, we can also learn to distinguish what we need to live well enough, hopeful enough, happy enough. What is sufficient for our lives? As we gain that distinction we are led, almost effortlessly, into an attitude of gratitude and generosity towards others and the world.
This may sound contradictory or counterintuitive at first. But, if I practice respect for my self, for this body, for the limitations of my energy or time or talents, I will know myself better, more honestly and be able let you know me, to see me, in turn more truly.
If I respect my limitations, my boundaries, I will deepen my appreciation for your limits and boundaries. That practice leads to mutual respect. Mutuality in turn leads to more gratitude and generosity. And gratitude and generosity are practices of hope. Hope that there will be enough to go around for all of us, and we will not have to grasp, to steal, to fight or to kill for what is mine. Rather than placing limits on hope, creating and respecting individual boundaries nourishes mutuality, generosity and hope, and sustains a dream of peace.
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
So it goes. AMEN.
