To End Cruelty
SERMON GIVEN BY REV LINDA HART AT RICHMOND & PUTNEY UNITARIAN CHURCH
One of my colleagues recently wrote a lovely short essay about what he hoped that the congregation would walk away from the service with each Sunday. I liked what he said very well, because it included things that I agreed should be included in worship: that it should speak to people in their lives, that it should offer them a chance to be reflective, that worship should inspire and that each and every Sunday the congregation should have the opportunity for a good hearty laugh.
I agree.
But there are some Sundays when finding the hearty laugh is difficult, and this Sunday is one of them. Today my topic is to the Unitarian Peace Fellowship’s Annual Appeal which begins this month. Over the course of the next several weeks, we are all invited to collect money – however we choose to do so – to contribute to Amnesty International, the organisation that the Peace Fellowship selected this year.
There is much to say about Amnesty International that is inspiring and awe evoking. As you may know, it was founded in 1961 when the lawyer Peter Benenson wrote an article for the Observer about two Portuguese students who had been imprisoned for lifting their wine glasses to toast freedom. They had been forgotten by the world, and were wasting away in a cell. Within the year, an international gathering had been pulled together and a permanent organisation bearing the name Amnesty International was founded with a mission of defending freedom of opinion and religion. An office established. The ‘Threes Network’ was launched mainly by the hands of volunteers. Each national AI was encouraged to select three prisoners and to advocate for them.
Within two years Amnesty International comprised 350 groups. In that time, a total of 770 prisoners were adopted and 140 had been released. A remarkable accomplishment by any standard.
Another two years pass and Amnesty issued its first paper reporting on prison conditions in Portugal, South Africa and Romania. They sponsored a resolution at the United Nations to suspend and eventually abolish the death penalty for peacetime political offenses.
By 1969, they had helped release 2,000 prisoners of conscience, and had received official standing at the United Nations, allowing them a greater voice to speak out on behalf of prisoners of conscience.
The year 1972 saw their first international campaign for the abolition of torture, and in the following year, inspired by the AI campaign a resolution calling for the end to torture was passed by the United Nations. We all know far too well that torture is still carried out in far too many place around the globe. It was another 3 years before the UN unanimously adopted a Declaration Against Torture.
Through the 1970's AI’s influence in international circles grew. During the terror filled times in Chile, a three person team was admitted to the country to see specifically the degree of human rights violations that were going on.
In 1977, Amnesty International was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ‘having contributed to securing the ground for freedom, for justice, and thereby also for peace in the world’.
Their work continued, being the voice for prisoners of conscience as well as expanding their influence to increasingly cast fresh light on the ongoing torture and cruel treatment of many prisoners throughout the world. They continued to speak against the death penalty.
By 1985, there were over half a million supporters internationally, and the organisation formally took on advocacy for refugees.
By their 30th anniversary in 1991, their work widened even more to include addressing abuses by armed opposition groups, hostage taking, and people imprisoned for their sexual orientation. Continuing to grow in strength and influence they launched more major international campaigns: women's rights, disappearances, political killings, for the International Criminal Court, and for the human rights of refugees.
By the end of the decade, their areas of concern had expanded again to include the impact of economic relations on human rights; empowering human rights defenders; campaigning against impunity; enhancing work to protect refugees; and strengthening grassroots activism.
Since this decade began, Amnesty International – as of this year it has more than 2.2 million members, supporters and subscribers in over 150 countries and territories in every region of the world – has continued to speak out, to enlist common folk like you and me in their work to end torture, to free prisoners, to make the world more equitable and fair for all, and simply to ensure that basic human rights are available to all of us, everywhere on earth.
Awe inspiring, indeed. But, as I said, this is a topic that is hard to get a big laugh from. It’s harder still to speak of the work that AI has done in the world without getting a little too close to home, a little too personal, a little too frank about our own lives, and how it is that we are part of the system that supports and maintains this.
The science fiction author Ursula LeGuin wrote a short story in 1972 – 35 years ago, it’s hard to believe – entitled The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. It was, and is, a remarkable piece of work because there are no named characters, no plot as such, no narrative drive. It is simply a description of a place, Omelas, which is as close to idyllic as it possibly could be. She describes a procession through the fields surrounding the town that includes beautiful banners snapping in the wind, and horses ridden without saddles or bridles. There are those who dance with flowers in their hair, and no matter who is watching or walking or dancing, each who takes part in whatever way are happy, so much so and so constantly so that they’ve nearly lost the concept of smiling. There is sunshine much of the time, and when there is rain, it is a lovely rain, and the people do not fret, nor worry, nor complain about it. There is beauty, and peacefulness in Omelas.
These are not simple people, though. They are knowledgeable, wise in their own ways. But there is a secret to Omelas that is known to all the adults who live there, and the secret is told to children when they reach 11 or maybe 13, whenever it was thought they were well suited to hear the secret. And the secret is this:
In one of the buildings in the centre of town, deep in the basement, and far back in the back, there is a small room. The floor of the room is only dirt, not ever has it been paved. There are no windows – it is little more than a closet, really. Along one wall there is a mop and a bucket, and over on the other side, barely discernable from the ground itself is a creature, curled up and moaning softly. Looking carefully you can see that this is a miserable child, chained there, unable to move more than a few feet. The whole of the child is encrusted in filth, and the face nor the limbs give up if it is male or female. It is more wretched than you can imagine any creature to be, as it sits in its own excrement. It seems to be nearly blind and an imbecile, as well, though whether it was born that way or became so through the years of neglect and imprisonment is impossible to tell. By now it is so bereft of human contact and comfort – for no one may speak to, nor touch this child – it is doubtful that there is any hope of anything resembling a normal life.
And the happiness of Omelas depends upon this child remaining here in this darkness and terror.
Everyone is given the opportunity to go and see the child upon whom their happiness rests. And most go. And they are overcome with revulsion and disgust. They rage and cry. At least most of them do. Here is how LeGuin ends her story:
At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
And if we are brutally honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we are people who to a large degree live in Omelas. Our comfort, and many of the luxuries of our lives depend upon people who live in despicable conditions, who are sorely oppressed, who are in pain or terrorised by their governments. The Economist this week had an item describing the 60th anniversary of Sri Lanka’s independence from British rule. Since at least 1983 a war has raged between the government, run by the majority Sinhalese, and the Tamil minority, whose guerrilla fighters are called the Tigers. Both sides are indiscriminately killing civilians in bombings and raids in which even children are not safe – 11 perished on 29 January, barely over a week ago, in a government placed blast in a mine. The article ends:
To stretch the army, and sow panic among the Singhalese, the Tigers have resorted to naked terrorism all over the island with chilling regularity. In a report this week Amnesty International, a London-based human rights watchdog, accuses both the government and the Tigers of flouting international humanitarian law and killing civilians regularly. It is said the perpetrators are never brought to justice and ‘a climate of impunity is becoming entrenched.’
They comment: ‘Some birthday.’
We are those who, in some measure or another, live in Omelas. We know the cruelty that goes on in our world, some of it grows out of what we have reaped from this nation’s past, some of it goes on because we won’t look and act on the behalf of those who suffer, some of it goes on because it is hidden from the sight of those who might act. We have not, and in some very real sense cannot walk away from the system that perpetuates the cruelty, the terror and the torture.
Our readings this morning point us toward this. Judith Shklar suggests that if we put cruelty first, we are forced to confront ourselves, our role, and there is no escape route: no God who can redeem the suffering, no algorithm as Richard Rorty notes, that makes it sensible. It comes back to us, to our awareness, our actions, what we can do it the world. It is a harsh and troubling judgement for us all.
But we need not end in despair. We need not condemn ourselves to a life of blindness and denial, nor a life of our own private suffering because of what we know about the world and are unable, in our own private way, to end.
Amnesty International and the work that it does is one of the paths toward ending cruelty, toward the amelioration of the condition of that wretched child in the closed off room, apart from anything humane and healing. They are the ones who don’t walk away from Omelas, but toward it, speaking the truth that lies beneath the surface, walking toward the ugliness that undergirds too much of our lives, walking towards it with the hope to heal, to offer justice, to renew mercy.
I commend to you joining with them, by taking part in the appeal, by going to their web-site, by ringing them, by asking for more information about how you can help, by finding out the actions they are taking and participating. Write a letter. Stay informed. Look at the world. Open your heart in compassion.
We lit our chalice this morning with these words:
We light this chalice this morning as a reminder that, in the face of improbable odds, life’s ember burns and glows, a corner of warmth and awareness amidst the coldness of space and the indifference of time.
Life’s ember burns and glows indeed, in the actions that we can take, in what we can offer the world for the healing of what is sorry, certainly improbably, seemingly impossible odds. May our embers glow and burn, to remind us, and to take us into action together.