Giving Life the Shape of Justice

Reading

She had done something of which her father disapproved, although no one any longer remembered what it was. But her father had dragged her to the cliffs and thrown her over and into the sea. There, the fish ate her flesh away and plucked out her eyes. As she lay under the sea, her skeleton turned over and over in the currents.

One day a fisherman came fishing, well, in truth many came to this bay once. But this fisherman had drifted far from his home place, and did not know that the local fishermen stayed away, saying this inlet was haunted.

The fisherman's hook drifted down through the water, and caught, of all places, in the bones of Skeleton Woman's rib cage. The fisherman thought, "Oh, now I've really got a big one! Now I really have one!" In his mind he was thinking of how many people this great fish would feed, how long it would last, how long he might be free from the chore of hunting. And as he struggled with this great weight on the end of the hook, the sea was stirred to a thrashing froth, and his kayak bucked and shook, for she who was beneath struggled to disentangle herself. And the more she struggled, the more she tangled in the line. No matter what she did, she was inexorably dragged upward, tugged up by the bones of her own ribs.

The hunter had turned to scoop up his net, so he did not see her bald head rise above the waves, he did not see the little coral creatures glinting in the orbs of her skull, he did not see the crustaceans on her old ivory teeth. When he turned back with his net, her entire body, such as it was, had come to the surface and was hanging from the tip of his kayak by her long front teeth.
"Agh!" cried the man, and his heart fell into his knees, his eyes hid in terror on the back of his head, and his ears blazed bright red. "Agh!" he screamed, and knocked her off the prow with his oar and began paddling like a demon toward shoreline. And not realizing she was tangled in his line, he was frightened all the more for she appeared to stand upon her toes while chasing him all the way to shore. No matter which way he zigged his kayak, she stayed right behind, and her breath rolled over the water in clouds of steam, and her arms flailed out as though to snatch him down into the depths.

"Aggggggghhhh!" he wailed as he ran aground. In one leap he was out of his kayak, clutching his fishing stick and running, and the coral-white corpse of Skeleton Woman, still snagged in the fishing line, bumpety-bumped behind right after him. Over the rocks he ran, and she followed. Over the frozen tundra he ran, and she kept right up. Over the meat laid out to dry he ran, cracking it to pieces as his mukluks born down.

Throughout it all she kept right up, in fact grabbed some of the frozen fish as she was dragged behind. This she began to eat, for she had not gorged in a long, long time. Finally, the man reached his snowhouse and dove right into the tunnel and on hands and knees scrabbled his way into the interior. Panting and sobbing he lay there in the dark, his heart a drum, a mighty drum. Safe at last, oh so safe, yes safe, thank the God, Raven yes, thank Raven, yes, and all-bountiful Sedna, safe at last.

Imagine when he lit his whale oil lamp, there she ­ it ­ lay in a tumble upon his snow floor, one heel over her shoulder, one knee inside her rib cage, one foot over her elbows. He could not say later what it was, perhaps the firelight softened her features, or the fact that he was a lonely man. But a feeling of some kindness came into his breathing, and slowly he reached out his grimy hands, and using words softly like mother to child, began to untangle her from the fishing line.

"Oh, na, na, na." First he untangled the toes, then the ankles. "Oh, na, na, na." On and on he worked into the night, until dressing her in furs to keep her warm, Skeleton Woman'' bones were all in the order a human'' should be.

He felt into his leather cuffs for his flint, and used some of his hair to light a little more fire. He gazed at her from time to time as he oiled the precious wood of his fishing stick and rewound the gut line. And she in the furs uttered not a word ­ she did not dare ­ let this hunter take her out and throw her down to the rocks and break her bones to pieces utterly.

The man became drowsy, slid under his sleeping skins, and soon was dreaming. And sometimes as humans sleep, you know, a tear escapes from the dreamer's eye; we never know what sort of dream causes this, but we know it is either a dream of sadness or longing. And this is what happened to the man.

The Skeleton Woman saw the tear glisten in the firelight, and she became suddenly sooooo thirsty. She tinkled and clanked and crawled over to the sleeping man and put her mouth to his tear. The single tear was like a river, and she drank and drank and drank until her many-years-long thirst was slaked.

While lying beside him, she reached inside the sleeping man and took out his heart, the mighty drum. She sat up and banged on both sides of it. Bom, Bomm!ŠBom, Bomm!
As she drummed, she began to sing out "Flesh, flesh, flesh! Flesh, flesh, flesh!" And the more she sang, the more her body filled out with flesh. She sang for hair and good eyes and nice fat hands. She sang the divide between her legs, and breasts long enough to wrap for warmth, and all the things a woman needs.

And when she was all done, she also sang the sleeping man's clothes off and crept into his bed with him, skin against skin. She returned the great drum, his heart, to his body, and that is how they awakened, wrapped one around the other, tangled from their night, in another way now, a good and lasting way.

The people who cannot remember how she came to her first ill-fortune say she and the fisherman went away and were consistently well fed by the creatures she had known in her life under water. The people say that it is true, and that is all they know.

Told by Mary Uuklat
to Clarissa Pinkola Estes
quoted in Women Who Run With the Wolves

SERMON

This morning I want to talk about redemption, in the sense of repairing something broken, for instance, a relationship.

This morning, the third day of Black College Reunion I want to focus on the relationship between Whites and Blacks in this country as needing redemption. I will use Clarissa Pinkola Estes' story as an extended metaphor, employing various images from her narrative to illustrate a possible process of redemption from racism.

I know I am preaching to the choir here. This is not a new subject. Many of you have taken part or currently take part -- or both ­ in anti-racism activities. You realize that the term "anti-racism" is a positive term ­ recalling the days when only "anti-slavery" people were opposed to slavery. Anti-racism echoes the work of William Ellery Channing and Theodore Parker, both religionists in our history with distinguished contributions to the anti-slavery movement.

Pinkola Estes' story begins with the banishment of a daughter by her father because of something of which he disapproved. My analysis begins with comparing racial segregation to that banishment. I believe we are more acquainted with segregation in the era prior to the Civil Rights movement than we are with the forms segregation takes today. We thought when we dismantled the legal structure on which segregation was based that we had dismantled segregation. Angela Davis, the noted author, social critic, and expert on the history of consciousness visited Volusia County this week to remind us of the forms segregation takes today. Tom Wicker, retired New York Times political columnist and author of 14 books, both fiction and non-fiction. corroborates her testimony in his book Tragic Failure: Racial Integration in America. Today, we don't segregate our public schools, public transportation, public accommodations, public restaurants, public restrooms, and public water fountains ­ at least not legally. We do, however, segregate our population into two classes: free and imprisoned.

We have almost the highest rate of incarceration of any nation of the world, including South Africa at the time of apartheid. We are saved from having the highest rate by the former Soviet Union. In mid-1998, for every 100,000 of our population, 668 were imprisoned. That's about 1 out of every 150 people. That's twice the 1985 rate. At least thirteen US states have a population smaller than our prison population.

Ok, you may say, so we are tough on crime. What have these statistics to do with racism? Here are some facts which may startle you ­ I know they do me. Seventy percent of the 1.8 million people who were behind bars in the US in mid-1998 were people of color. Is it any wonder that Norval Morris, the noted criminologist would say, "'The larger and tougher prisons and jails of the United States give the impression of institutions for segregating the young black and Hispanic male underclass from society.'" (emphasis added)

Some who are imprisoned suffer what Professor Davis called civil death ­ that is, they lose their civil rights permanently. The Sentencing Project program says that 3.9 million of our citizens have suffered civil death. Of these, 1.4 million are Black men ­ yet Blacks (men and women) represent only 12% of our total population and 1.4 divided by 3.9 yields a percentage three times that number. So three times as many Black men as White men and women have suffered civil death. In case you're interested, Florida has the fourth highest rate in the country.

Let's get back to our story. Instead of throwing our Black sons and daughters in the sea we throw them into prison and jail cells.

So here comes the unsuspecting fisherman who throws his hook into the haunted inlet. He expects a good haul ­ perhaps enough to feed the whole village. Instead he hooks the skeleton ­ racism. Let's compare him to the City of Daytona Beach, putting together what the City fathers and mothers thought was a fair traffic control plan for Black College Reunion, only to be served with a federal injunction, preventing them from putting the plan into effect. Or attending a lecture expecting a lesson on Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (the title of Angela Davis' latest book) and, instead, hearing a disturbing discourse on what Dr. Davis called the Prison Industrial Complex.

Her thesis is that corporations are making money off of our criminal justice system, both directly (through constructing them and the privatization of prisons) and indirectly. As a for-instance on the indirectly part, she reminded those of us who have received collect calls from friends and families in prison and jail that these calls are all handled by MCI and cost much more than a regular long distance phone call transmitted over the same distance between two people in the "free" world.

To continue with the images in the story, when the fisherman discovers he's hooked the skeleton, he takes evasive action, paddling and running as fast as he can, unaware that he and the skeleton are joined by the tangled fishing line. I'm reminded here of Dr. Martin Luther King's famous quotation, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."

Much as we'd like to escape from the skeleton of racism, much as we'd like to be able to hide out in our homes, like the fisherman tried to do, we are tied to the bones of racism, just as surely as the skeleton in the story was tied to the fisherman. And as long as we have public media coming into our homes, and youth bringing home what they've learned in school, and children marrying outside of their own race or adopting children of another race, and events like Black College Reunion happening in our own backyard, we can't get away from the skeleton.

In the story, redemption begins when the fisherman takes a good look at the demon ­ the skeleton -- and sees for the first time what a predicament it is in. Singing softly to himself, he engages with the skeleton He begins the task of disentangling her from the fishing line and arranging her bones in order ­ doing what he can to make her comfortable ­ thus the repair begins.
Harlon L. Dalton, a Professor at Yale Law School says,

Engagement is critical to healing. It has the potential to transform our lives. It can change the way we see, hear, think, and feel. It can propel us across vast differences in culture and experience. It can move us past our fears. When we engage, truly engage, we let go and grab on at the same time. We loose our hold on old truths even as we reach out for new ones. We sacrifice neatness for the messiness of reality and comfort for the occasional pain of honest dealing.

After the fisherman completes his task of disentangling and re-ordering the bones, he covers them ­ not to hide them, but to warm them, to comfort them. Then he climbs into his own furs and sleeps. However, as he sleeps he sheds a tear and the skeleton, feeling her thirst, drinks the tear.

We who have been caught in the tangled knots of racism as oppressors do grieve and we do try to atone for our own transgressions and those of our forebearers. It is the sign of our grief, our tear that brings the skeleton to life. She recognizes her thirst. Those who are banished want to return to the larger race ­ the human race ­ and take their rightful place in creation and fully mutual relationship with others.

Professor Dalton, goes on in his book to quote Wendell Berry, who

refers to race as America's "hidden wound." [Professor Dalton say he likes] this metaphor because it suggests that the afflictions of the past, if left untreated, will sooner or later undo us. Sometimes dull, the race wound can be so achingly familiar that we mistake it for a natural part of us. At other times the pain can be so insistent that it takes our breath away. When things are quiescent, it is tempting to fantasize that the wound has somehow spontaneously healed itself. But then Los Angeles erupts. Or, less dramatically, something at work, at school, or next door blows up in our faces, and we are reminded once again that wounds fester and pain endures.

Going back to our original metaphor, the next thing that happens in the story is that the skeleton reaches into the fisherman and takes out his heart to use as a drum ­ bom, bommŠbom, bomm. What a wonderful image! The skeleton uses the pulse of the fisherman's heart to re-enflesh herself. Once the fisherman has created the environment where healing is possible and then withdrawn, his heartbeat, his caring, the throb of his passion, his compassion, the vibration of his soul, his love provides the beat of the song which re-empowers Skeleton Woman.

This is such a crucial part of the story. We cannot do for others which only they can do for themselves. After we have done our part ­ made retribution, restored harmony, begun the holy ritual by laying the bones in their proper order -- then we must withdraw to let happen what will happen of its own accord.

When Skeleton Woman is fully enfleshed she comes to the sleeping fisherman, she joins herself to him, and together they co-create the happiness which follows ­ a good life where both are fed because of their attunement with each other and with all Creation.

Today the young men and women who held their reunion on our beach will return to Chicago, Atlanta, Charlotte, Washington, New York, Orlando, and Jacksonville. Some of us had the privilege of being fishermen at that gathering. Dressed in black T-shirts, some of us wearing black hats, we walked among the people, greeting them, answering their questions, helping them navigate through the traffic, on occasion protecting them sometimes simply by our presence. If I am to believe this morning's newspaper, if what I've heard on the radio this morning is correct, we have come through the most perilous time of this gathering ­ Saturday night ­ with only a few bumps and bruises, no fatal wounds. Glory, glory! What good news!

I have one more thing I want to say. It involves the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. If you are looking for a way to do your part to disentangle racism, I invite you to consider becoming a member of UUSC.

Last Friday night, as I was leaving our last God Squad and Ambassador briefing, Daytona Police Commander Williams called to me. "I want to talk to you," he said. Uh, oh, I thought, what have I done wrong. I needn't have worried. Commander Williams greeted me with this amazing fact ­ he used to work for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. He was a Program Associate. He remembers our movement's efforts to dismantle racism in the criminal justice system when we joined others to declare a moratorium on prison construction. He knows who we are. He respects us. He respects our Service Committee so much he was once a part of it. If, like Commander Williams, you would like to be a part of the UUSC, then I invite you to use the membership form in the brochure in your bulletin.

Finally, I know how concerned and disturbed you are about events in Kosovo If you want to help relieve the suffering of Albanian refugees you may write a check to the UUSC and write "Kosovo" on the memo line. You may leave either your membership check or your Kosovo check with us today, and we will forward them all to our Service Committee. You may leave them in this box, which will be on the Visitors' table.

Do you remember in Clarissa Pinkola Estes' story that redemption needs a song? Please let us sing together Carolyn McDade's redeeming words, Hymn 123, "Spirit of Life."