The Stories of our Lives
Jack Weinhold
November 29, 2015
In answer to the question, “What is the 7th Principle Project?”
We live by and through our stories. They’re the stories we imagine about the future.
Let me illustrate that idea with a story:
Buster, our cat, and I are on our doorstep. Buster cautiously proceeds into the yard;
he takes a couple steps and freezes in place. He smells, looks, and listens to his
surroundings, and that pattern continues for 10 or 15 minutes until he comes to the
far side of the yard, hops on a bench, and curls up for a nap.
I, on the other hand, look out on a beautiful summer day, and see a lounge chair in
the shade of a tree. I can literally feel myself curled up on the cushion, relaxing into
the warm summer breeze; I walk directly to the chair and do exactly what I
envisioned. I lie back on the lounge chair and take a nap.
Whether it is at the end of the next second or the end of next week, both Buster and I
must first check out how safe it will be once we have arrived in future time and
space. Not Buster, not me and not any living thing, will willingly put itself in danger.
If we don’t feel safe about what we think will happen, it’s not going to happen.
Buster can’t imagine past the end of his nose, the future for him is the next instant,
and he must be certain that every next moment is secure and safe.
Unlike Buster I ‘m capable of cognition. I look out from the front door and think…
front yard… two words that instantly encapsulate all the experience and knowledge
I have of front yards, and especially mine. So while buster is feeling his way around,
I name what I see in front of me and my brain declares it “a very low risk, you may
proceed.”
Taking a nap on the lounge chair was a different matter for me, it would not be
happening in the next moment. Taking the nap would be far enough in the future
that I had to get a picture in my head of what it would be like, and whether or not it
would be safe. Although I usually feel secure in my daily surroundings, I spend half
my time imagining the unknowable future so that I may go there.
When evolution gave humans a cerebral cortex we received a big gift… knowledge of
the passage of time. Our imagination of the future is what makes us human. It makes
our path through the world safe to explore and gives us a space in which to be
creative.
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Those images we construct of the future are, our stories.
What gets us through our days and our entire life, are those stories of the future
We have stories for everything that is going to happen. Here’s a sampling:
I receive an invitation to the Smith’s party. And I think to myself, I can’t go; I know
Harry is still angry with me about how long I took returning his chain saw.
I know life is long and hard, but when I die I will go to heaven and live happily
forever after.
What do you mean Global warming? This is coldest winter I’ve ever seen.
As with people, groups also have stories. In fact a culture is the shared stories of its
people. And vice versa; individuals and cultures alternately leading the way to the
future through story making. We are assembled in this room today because of
Unitarian Universalist stories, and also because of the stories we have about our
relationships with each other.
Following WW II our country had transformed its cultural story from a low point at
the end of the depression to a new high of “we won the war and we can do
anything.” It became permissible to question old norms. Stories about the future,
both individual and cultural, became creative, fluid and accepting of new ideas.
At the beginning of the 1960s our national cultural story was about the dawn of a
new age. John F. Kennedy told us it was no longer the time to ask what our country
can do for us, rather what can we do for our country. That energy gave birth to an
age of books questioning the paradigm of the American Way of life; stories that
suggested new ways to look at everything, from conservation of the planet and food,
to business and finance.
Think back to Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring”, E.F. Schumacher’s “Small is
Beautiful”, Frances Moore Lappé’s “Diet for a Small Planet”, and the Club of Rome’s
prescient report on the trends of the world titled, “The Limits to Growth”.
Unitarian thinking was cooking all that time in the cultural pot of changing stories.
We merged with the Universalists at the 1961 General Assembly where a statement
of 6 principles was adopted to answer the question… “what do Unitarians, and now
Unitarian Universalists, believe”. Put simply that meant, “What’s your story?”
The adoption of those principles provided Unitarian Universalists with not only an
elevator speech to answer the question, but with a guide, notably in the 4th principle,
to the inevitable change and growth of our UU cultural story.
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Please join me in reading the first 6 principles. They are printed on the back of your
order of service.
The 60s counterculture of individual freedom, and the economic and social changes
of the 70s continued stirring up Unitarian Universalist thinking. At the 1979
General Assembly President Pickett clearly made the point of needing to change our
denomination’s story in order to be pertinent to contemporary culture.
The 1985 General Assembly answered Rev. Picket’s observation with not only a
rewording of the 6 Principles but also an addition; the 7th Principle.
Let’s read together the 7th principle…
By the turn of the millennium our national culture had embraced stories about
caring for our bodies and our psyche’s, and even stories about our relationship to
earth were being published. The 7th Principle’s message of interdependency of all
existence was creeping into the national culture.
A decade later Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” put the story of climate
change on center stage for the world. The Internet gave meaning to the phrase “the
story went viral” when it fostered, reported on, and gave nourishment to, the Arab
Spring and Occupy Wall Street. The term global warming, from one perspective or
another, is now part of the vernacular language, and cultural stories of most of the
planet.
Throughout all this… Unitarian Universalists kept up with the changing stories of
the larger culture. Since the 7th Principle Project was formed 26 years ago, more
than 25% of all Unitarian Universalist congregations throughout the country, have
become part of the program. They joined the 7th Principle Project, now known as the
Green Sanctuary movement, in order to proclaim and live out their commitment to
the Earth. Each congregation is actively making the 7th Principle… and
environmenta justice a key part of their cultural story.
Last year our local Grass Roots Nantucket project had already begun working
toward environmental justice through our own initiatives when Gary Langley
discovered the Unitarian Universalist Association’s 7th principle project. We were
delighted to find that many of our recent activities clearly fit under the banner of the
movement and our hope is to become a Green Sanctuary Congregation in the near
future.
The story contained in the 7th Principle has become increasingly important since it
was drafted 30 years ago. And I believe we can thank that story for giving birth to
the concept of environmental justice.
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The story of environmental justice in turn provides a moral framework for dealing
with the issues effecting earth’s ecology; the exploitation of diminishing resources,
excessive fossil fuel use, industrialized farming, and out of control population
growth, that highlight how we humans have become the single dominant force of
change on the planet, threatening the survival of homo sapiens, and moving the
science community to rename this current geologic period, from Holocene, meaning
entirely new, to what we are now living in, the Anthropocene, meaning the Human
Age.
There is more to be done… the story of the interdependent web of existence is not
yet common enough in people’s minds. Marilyn Sewell in a UUA Blog post on the
reasons people don’t talk about climate change says, “Our species is hard-wired to
pay attention to the present. We are more motivated by our emotions than by
rationality, more by the moment than by the future. So we tend to pay attention to
current problems, both personal and civic, and put climate change out of our minds.”
Which leads me back to our mind/body imperative to imagine a safe and secure
story of the future before we can step into the future. The only way we will turn the
world around is with stories that show everyone it is safer to act than to ignore the
problems.
Two key words are associated with solving these enormous global issues.
Sustainable and resilient. We think of sustainable when we use something… without
using it up. Think of organic sustainable farming, like the Sustainable Nantucket
Community Garden on Hummock Pond Road, where the soil is continually refreshed
and renewed through conscious farming.
Resilience, on the other hand, is about the ability of a system to maintain it’s
fundamental nature and form, during and following a disturbance. Think of our
Meeting House that was constructed by shipwrights for the long haul. We knew,
when we recently restored the sanctuary, that the walls would develop cracks in the
plaster… because the building sways with the winds of the island. The Meeting
House was built to be resilient, and has survived intact through many storms for
206 years.
Sustainability and resilience; two words, two concepts, that in the midst of earth’s
systemic chaos, tell us the story of a secure future… opening the doors for us to get
on with the work that needs to be done.
Earth IS getting warmer, the seas ARE rising, and the storms HAVE gotten larger,
which is one of the reasons resiliency is the primary focus of the initiatives under
our 7th Principle Project. Our program assists people from the congregation and the
community at-large on connecting with projects of interest to them… projects that
strengthen community infrastructure and build resiliency for the island.
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Initiatives that have come from our program include:
1. A Home-kitchen compost bucket and pick up service.
2. A community garden plot that uses that compost and then supplies produce
to the food pantry.
3. Clothing drives and distribution assistance at the food pantry.
4. Organization of a meeting for the Safe Driving Bill, bringing together
undocumented workers and state officials. Over 100 people attended.
5. Organization of meetings for all interested parties on the issue of
immigration.
6. Voter registration drives targeting minorities. Ballots are printed in
Portuguese, Spanish, and English
7. Beginning-Spanish language classes at the parsonage.
8. And several more are in the works
Let’s hear it for the 32 members and friends of our congregation who are
transforming ideas into action and made these initiatives happen. I hope each one of
us can find, or create, a resiliency initiative that stirs our blood, and then join the
adventure.
As you leave please take the story of resilience with you, and tell it to everyone you
know. The politicians and government are not going to do it. The corporations won’t
do it. It’s up to each one of us, one story telling at a time, to save the earth’s
interdependent web of existence.
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