Truth Alone is Strong ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
October 9, 2022
If you are like me, perhaps you felt your eyebrows raise at the mention of Abraham Lincoln in our reading, ordering the execution of 38 Dakota warriors on the day after Christmas in 1862. Reading this made me realize once again how little history I know. We hear so little about what are lumped together under the heading of Indian Wars, but like so much of our history the stories are there, easily discovered if we know where to look.
It turns out there was an uprising of the Dakota people against European settlements in southern Minnesota in 1862. The Dakota had been living on temporary reservations which were being whittled away by more and more settlers. The rebellion was triggered by the failure of crops and lack of food, and was quashed fairly quickly by the US Army. Over 300 men were ultimately convicted in brief show trials, and President Lincoln commuted the sentences of all but 38. Still, it remains the largest mass execution in US history.
Today we are honoring the holiday that many are beginning to call Indigenous Peoples Day, instead of Columbus Day. We are doing this by shining light on some of the stories from our history, stories that are easily forgotten, but just as easily discovered. We are marking this holiday by taking an honest look at our country’s past, and by telling the truth.
Our Soul Matters theme for October is Courage. In planning our messages for this month, it struck me forcibly that this is a time in our country’s history when Americans are being called to act with courage; to tell the truth about our past, to look honestly and squarely at our very foundations, at the wrongs that were committed as we created this country.
We are being called to act with courage, and we are failing. Americans are missing what could be a great moment, a great turning point in our history, by responding with cowardice, by flinching in the face of the mounting stories, and voices, that are demanding that we simply tell the truth.
I know I’ve said this before, but whatever has happened to the home of the brave?
There are two deeply disturbing truths about the beginnings of the United States. One is the genocide of the native people; the systematic effort to drive them ever farther west so that their ancestral lands could be turned over to European American settlers, to build farms and railroads and cities. This story has been mythologized into the story of our Manifest Destiny; that God was smiling on this new nation as it colonized much of a continent. The myth states that our conquest was our right, and our destiny, and that our cruelty, greed, and violence were justified by a higher purpose.
The second disturbing truth, of course, was the enslavement of African people captured and brought here against their will, forced to provide labor for free, and not just the original people captured and sold, but all their descendants, in perpetuity.
You know as well as I do that right now, in the United States, there is a considerable backlash against the telling of these truths. People who are shining light on these stories, on the harm done, on the cruelty and exploitation and oppression, are derided as ‘woke’ and contributing to something being dismissively called ‘woke culture’. Suddenly, telling the truth has become wrong, something to be ridiculed. Attempts are being made to suppress teaching of these stories in the public schools, along with suppressing any acknowledgement of the very existence of LGBTQ+ people. I heard on the radio this morning that some communities are defunding their public libraries. The narrative is that we mustn’t talk about anything that might make straight white people, especially white children, uncomfortable. We must hide these topics.
When did some white people become so fragile? And what are some of these people so terrified of?
Because this backlash is grounded in fear – fear of great change to their culture, which works well for them, fear of losing power and control, and, I suspect, fear of what happens when their children begin to learn the truths they so badly want to hide. There must be terrible fear of the feelings of guilt and shame. After all, why else would you not want your children to learn about the past? And of course, what people refuse to see is that their fear, their insistence on hiding from the truth, indicates more clearly than anything else how aware they are deep within that there is something to be ashamed of, to feel guilty about.
Last week, we talked a lot about what a healthy process of confronting harm, and working toward repentance and forgiveness can look like. If you remember, we talked about the five steps set forth in the 12th century by the Jewish scholar Maimonides. He rejected the idea of a quick apology, and a quick request for instant forgiveness. Instead, he spelled out a lengthy process for attempting to right a wrong, to restore right relationship. The steps began with confession – an admission of wrongdoing. Following a confession, the next step should be a conscious effort to change the behavior that caused the harm to someone else. After that, with a process well underway to confront one’s behavior and to learn how to keep it from happening again, the perpetrator would then begin to look for ways to make amends. As part of making amends, they would make a true apology, and maybe ask for forgiveness. And then finally, perhaps even years later, people reach the final step in the process, when they learn to see themselves honestly, to be willing to find a different and better way forward, and truly become the best person they can be.
The best person, or the best country. We know, of course, that all the lofty words of our founding documents, the foundations on which we have built our national history and culture, are only aspirational. And the question that has been before us for the entire life of the country, and especially now, is this: when do we finally live into those words: that all are created equal, that all are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
When? And how?
We start by telling the truth. And we do not seem to have the courage, the national will, to do this. Other countries have made better attempts, although none of them have been perfect. There was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, in the wake of apartheid. Germany summoned the will, imperfectly and haltingly, to confront the Holocaust. I lived in Germany for a year, in 1984, and was struck by how much television programming was devoted to processing the events of World War II.
But here in the United States, we are profoundly stuck. Perhaps it is the enormity of the crimes that keeps us from being willing to confront our past. To some extent, the task is so great it is hard to know what to do. I suspect, however, that it is the fear of economic losses that makes people hide. How do we compensate the descendants of enslaved people whose labor was stolen? How do we return all the stolen land to the Native American peoples? It is a huge question, and it feels so much easier to simply keep quiet, to try to hide the stories from ourselves and our children. But of course, the stories never go away. They will not die. We have learned in recent years that trauma to our minds and bodies does not leave us; it resides in our bodies. The same is true of countries; the national trauma will not just go away. So there is only one way to move forward, to begin to wipe away the feelings of wrongdoing; we have to be willing to admit that these crimes against people happened, and to find ways to make amends.
Now, this congregation has had some experience with this. As most of you know, a few years ago we joined the UU Society of Rockport in an effort to explore enslavement and abolition here on Cape Ann. In order to make it easier for others to talk about this, we began by looking at our congregations’ histories. Rather than shining a light outwardly, we chose to shine it onto ourselves. And we found some things we didn’t expect.
We found, for example, that this congregation had, among its leadership, people who engaged in the slavery economy; either through trade with plantations in the Caribbean, or ownership of schooners that transported Africans back to the US to be sold at auction. And of course, some of them were wealthy, and were major contributors to this church. As I’ve done many times, I will direct your attention to the stained glass window at the back of the sanctuary dedicated to the memory of members of the Pearce and the Hough families, who were active in schooner ownership, and in the ownership of the Rockport Cotton Mill. As always, a story hidden in plain sight, with the sunlight shining right through it.
Our congregation did not try to hide this story once it became known. We’ve had the courage to talk about it openly. I have tried to tell everyone that this isn’t a matter of guilt, but rather, one of accountability. We here today did not commit this harm. I can state confidently that not a single one of us would ever consider participating in a system that owned other humans. We have grown, and we work to approach the ideals of who we want ourselves, our church, and our country to be.
We’ve had the courage to tell our story. We have acknowledged that we benefitted materially as a congregation from the money that came through the slavery economy. But we have not yet considered how to make amends.
Of course, this leads us into a conversation about reparations. That’s a big topic, and too much for us to consider today. But I wonder what it can look like for us, and for the country as a whole?
Perhaps for us, we could find ways to impact the lives of people of color here in Cape Ann; getting more active in racial justice work. Perhaps we can do as little as host groups who want to hold meetings, or maybe look for ways to help support education for young people. What ideas might you have? More importantly, what ideas might local residents of color have?
What can the United States do? I saw an article about an interesting possible model. The City of Providence RI has just announced a $10 million fund to help people of color who live in particular neighborhoods that were damaged by the construction of Route I-95 right through the city. There will be no cash disbursements. Instead, money will be used to help people buy and repair homes, to support small businesses, and for other efforts to reduce the growing gap in wealth. The important part of this is that people of color have led the effort to choose how to spend the money. They are not passive onlookers, with something well-intentioned being done to them, or done for them.
This is what reparations can look like; making amends in smaller ways, guided by listening to the voices of people who have been marginalized and kept from participating in the economy on an equal basis.
My friends, there is so much work to be done to be the people, the country, the churches, the cities we would like to believe we can be. And the work starts at the most basic level; telling the stories. Telling the stories, and listening to the stories; being willing to simply listen, to open our minds and our hearts to what we hear. To push aside any feelings of shame or guilt, or the fear of those feelings, and allow others to teach us. This work takes courage. But until it can begin, we will never heal. Just think how badly the effort to keep from telling the truth and acknowledging it hurts us. It shuts us down, it keeps us from growing in empathy and understanding. It keeps us from becoming the people we would like to be.
My hope for us all, both here today and all across the country, is that we can have the strength and the courage to open ourselves to our past, to accept it, and to search for ways to finally begin to make it right. Until we shed the burden of our secrets, to stop being defensive and begin to be curious and receptive, we will never live up to our aspirations of peace and justice for all. Isn’t it worth it?
