The Great Pumpkin, Faith, and Letting Go, by Rev. Linda Olson Peebles, Oct. 31, 2010

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The Great Pumpkin, Faith, and Letting Go,

by Rev. Linda Olson Peebles, October 31, 2010

Reading
Adapted from Antoine de St.-Exupery and Ida Hughes. In honor of children everywhere and of UNICEF, which is 60 years old this year.

In a house which becomes a home, one hands down and another takes up the heritage of mind and heart, laughter and tears, musings and deeds. Love like a carefully loaded ship crosses the gulf between the generations.

We pray for and we accept responsibility for children.
        For all children, those we know and those we’ll never meet.
For children who sneak Popsicles before supper,
        Who lose their homework and can never find their shoes.
        Who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.
And for children
        Who stare at photographers from food lines and behind barbed wire;
        Who have no sneakers to run and play in;
        Who never get dessert,
        Who don’t have rooms to clean up,
        Whose monsters are real,
        Who watch their parents watch them die.
        Who live in an X-rated world.

Let us build memories for children, lest they drag out joyless lives, less they allow treasures to be lost because they have not been given the keys. We need to transmit the wisdom of love and compassion from generation to generation.

We pray for and we accept responsibility for all children.
For children who don’t like to be kissed in front of the carpool,
        Who squirm in church,
        Whose tears we sometimes laugh at, and
        Whose smiles can make us cry.

And We pray for and we accept responsibility for children –
        Whose nightmares come in the daytime,
        Who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
        Who live and move, but have no hope.

Let us nurture the children. It is not the place of someone else to hand them their heritage of mind and heart. If others impart to the children our knowledge and ideals, they will lose all of us that is wordless and full of wonder.

We pray for and we accept responsibility for children –
        For those who want to be carried,
        And for those who must;
        For those we love to hug
        And for those who will grab the hand of anyone kind enough to offer it.

Love like a carefully loaded ship crosses the gulf between the generations.

The Great Pumpkin, Faith, and Letting Go

        Charles Schulz warned us, through his character Linus in the comic strip Peanuts: "There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin." Well, let me dare to risk it today, in a church, just before Election Day, on Halloween: talk with you of all three… and how I see them all mixed up.

        Remember the Great Pumpkin? The character showed up in the comic strip series in the late 1950s, and became really popular with the 1966 animated television special It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Poor Linus, Charlie Brown’s philosophical friend, believed that the Great Pumpkin, who he kind of mixes up with Santa Claus, on Halloween night will rise up and appear in the pumpkin patch of only the most sincere believers, and bring them lots of toys and candy. How many Halloweens Linus waited, for several decades, actually; some years with a different friend ready to try to accompany him, most often alone, missing out on the usual fun of costumes and trick-or-treating. Linus steadfastly believed there was something deeper in this holiday of costumes and candy, believing it had something to do with an invisible and somewhat judgmental figure – and he SO wanted to be worthy of that Great Pumpkin!

        Leave it to Charles Shultz to reveal to us the mixed up nature of this holiday, and the universal existential questions of meaning, community, despair: Linus pondering faith; his friends deciding it is more fun to haul in lots of candy trick-or-treating in costumes. Good old Charlie Brown getting nothing but rocks in his bag. Mid-Twentieth-century spiritual crises.

        There’s another Halloween story written at almost the same time as Shultz created the Great Pumpkin – that’s the closing scene of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. She wrote it in 1960, as the Civil Rights struggle was just coming into a nation’s conscience. This tale reveals which monsters Lee believed we have to truly fear. In a small town in the south, during the Great Depression, Atticus Finch’s little children Scout and Jem were afraid of the reclusive, shy and strange man who lived on their street. They called him “Boo”. But on Halloween night, they found out what they really had to be frightened of. Walking home from a school play, wearing their Halloween costumes, and feeling a little spooked by the dark and the wind, they were attacked! Who was the monster that broke Jem’s arm and tried to kill Scout? A white man filled with hatred because of lawyer Atticus Finch’s defense of a black man who had been wrongly accused of a crime. And the person who saved Scout and Jem, who overcame his own fear to come out of the safety of his home, and fight off the attacker and carry the children to safety, that person was Boo Radley. The children found out that Boo was actually not who was scary in their town; it was the presence of racist hatred. This Halloween tale powerfully reveals the truth that some times monsters live in places we don’t expect, and what we fear most might turn out to be our friend.

        I thank Harper Lee for her inspirational reflection of what she realized is truly to be feared in this life – hatred; and the only thing that can save us - love. And Shultz for his empathetic view of the pain of alienation & doubt, which can be eased by friendship. There is so much power in the way we use words, tell stories, shape meaning. The power is there to distort or to illumine, to divide or to unite. The stories we tell, the saints we revere, the ideals we have faith in – they are what shape our families, our cultures, our lives. We need to be so very aware of what we are telling each other about this life and our world. What are the 21st stories being told? And by whom? CNN? Fox? Bloggers? We must be very careful. How we name, recognize, and respond to our world and what we fear affects not just us; it affects our children. And if we aren’t careful, or if we leave the telling of the stories to others who set up false gods and demons, then the world may be filled with very scary monsters of hate and separation which will hurt our children, and squander our inheritance of love and compassion.

        When our children are being attacked by hate and exclusion, we need to be like Boo who overcame his own fears to arrive on the scene and save Scout and Jem. WE MUST SHOW UP. That’s what so many of us at this church are dedicating ourselves to, and we invite others to join in! This is my passion.

        Our children get so many negative messages from the media and the culture, it is clear what people of liberal faith need to do. Like the teachers in our Sunday School right now, spending their Sunday morning talking of love and service with our kids; like the Peace Camp community which guides us into peace-making. WE MUST SHOW UP!

        It is atrocious that children can be so bullied by homophobia that they would want to kill themselves to escape. We can tell bi, gay, lesbian, trans youth stories of hope and give them arms of welcome. We MUST show up.

        As recent school reformers have insisted, Geoffrey Canada in Harlem, Michelle Rhee in DC, the crisis in our schools can be addressed if we face up to it. When the worth and dignity of children of color or poverty are ignored or undervalued in our schools, we MUST show up.

        Immigrants – especially people of color – are characterized by so many these days as being undesirables or even evil. People of reason and compassion must counter hate-mongering, and tell the real human stories of hope and harm. When our neighbors are in danger, WE MUST SHOW UP.

        Many people showed up yesterday to the DC Mall, along with John Stewart and Steven Colbert. The rally “To Restore Sanity and/or Hate” was a satiric but also serious critique of demagoguery designed to rev up fears, to get us to cling to some imaginary, exclusionary, narrow view of the world. Many of us were there. A UU young adult received one of Stewart’s “Sanity medals” - Jacob Isom from Amarillo, Texas, made famous for a You-Tube video of him saving a Qu’ran from a book burning. Our UU Standing on the Side of Love Banner was there, testifying that we all need to speak love’s power to stop oppression, exclusion, and discrimination. Public discourse is becoming increasingly bitter, and far too many cynical politicians are looking for scapegoats – such as LGBT people, immigrants, and Muslims. We stand on the side of love to call for an end to this scape-goating, to ask others to aspire to respect, inclusion, and compassion. That is the story, the message children need to hear.

        Election Day is Tuesday. It is traditional for ministers to deliver Election Day sermons on the Sunday before this national act of democracy, to deliver a message to the faithful. This is my message to you: Don’t let the children down. Vote not out of fear, but out of love. Election Day is right after All Saints Day, and on All Souls Day this year – the Day of the Dead. SO my second message is: Don’t let our ancestors and elders down. Vote for the vision and ideals of the saints – those whose commitment and love brought us here thus far, caring for the common wealth, for freedom of conscience, and rights for all. On Election Day vote for the ideals that will pass on to our children the messages from our inheritance that we believe will give them LIFE.

Jem and Scout were hurt by fear.
        They were saved by love.
Linus was left alone and anxious, sincerely longing for something other-worldly to come to him, to make sense of a confusing world.
        He was saved by the compassion of his friends.

        On Halloween, children get to play with fears; and we can respond with faith, faith in the powerful spirit which really abides within us. We must have faith in telling our stories of love, and be willing to let go of clinging to self-doubts or old fears placed within us by hateful goblins invading our world. Let go of that, and open our bags for the new treats that will come, and for what we can generously share – with our children, one another, this church, our neighbors.

        As the world grows more fearful, the time is right for us to be more faithful and more openhearted. The time is right for us to be generous and to be bold to tell our stories of love. The time is right for us to claim a renewed sense of our power and purpose. We know that the deadliest goblins come out of fear itself. So, fear not. We know that what hurts our children the most is our not showing up for them. So, Show Up! We know that there can be no clearer revelation of a society's soul than the way it treats its children and honors its elders. So tell the stories and live the lives that honor and empower us all!

        Let Go of the fears of imaginary things not here. Fear instead the real horrors of this world – hatred, discrimination, poverty, war, injustice.

        Let Go of a faithlessness that keeps you waiting, alone in your sincere pumpkin patch, for some Great Pumpkin to come and bring you rewards. Claim instead a real faith of engagement: get to know the children, join your neighbors, be in the world to see the light of humanity in the eyes of people around you right here and now, everywhere!

        Let Go of the notion that you have no power in the face of the overwhelming troubles of the world. Realize and embrace the power each of you, and all of us together, do have - the power to tell our stories and to be a haven for community and love.

        That is a faith worth having and worth sharing, a story that needs to be told! Let it be so. Happy Halloween to you, to our children, and to All the Saints!