by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given September 30, 2001

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

OPENING WORDS

Welcome to all of you. Do you come here today needing rest? May you find rest. Do you come needing community? May you feel surrounded by love. Do you come eager for truth? May you find your own truth, as we support one another in the search. Come, let us worship together.

There are times in the life of nations in which a tragedy of huge proportions visits itself upon the people, and wise leadership is crucial. Surely this is one of those times. People are looking to their political leaders: President Bush, Colin Powell, Rudy Guliani. What will happen now? Where next? People are looking to religious leaders, too, to comfort and strengthen them and to help them sort through the moral issues. Many of you are leaders in your own context in this community, and you too will be called upon to help us through these difficult times to safer, more stable ground.

This morning I’m going to explore the question of leadership. What do we ask of leaders? What qualities do they have? What behaviors do they evidence?

I want to begin with a story. The story is about the Tuskeegee Airmen of World War II. They were a band of courageous fliers trained at Tuskeegee Institute. They were excellent fliers, but they were not allowed to fly in combat simply because they were African Americans and therefore not trusted. It looked as if they would spend the war grounded on their Alabama training field. Then Eleanor Roosevelt learned of their plight.

Against all advice, she traveled to Tuskeegee and visited the airmen. It looked to be nothing more than a "photo op." But then she surprised everyone by asking one of the pilots to take her up for a ride. He agreed. She climbed into the small plane, and an hour later they landed. History was being made. The wife of the President of the United States led the country to the understanding that the Tuskeegee Airmen deserved to fly for their country.

And fly they did. They were escort planes for the B-17 and B-24 bombers attacking Germany’s industrial complex toward the end of the war. The Tuskeegee Airmen proved themselves to be such superior pilots in their P-51 Mustang fighters that bomber crews universally requested them as their escort. How good were they? By the end of the war, not a single bomber escorted by a Tuskeegee P-51 was lost to enemy fighters.

Eleanor Roosevelt embodied many of the qualities of a leader. She was tough and willing to go against the grain; she was not caught up in her ego needs, but rather had given herself to a higher purpose; she acted decisively, out of her own convictions; and she was grounded in clear values, elevating the values of those around her.

Let’s look more closely now at the characteristics of a good leader.

Interestingly enough, the ancient linguistic root of the word lead means "to go forth, to die." The forward motion is there, and the dying to self. True leaders don’t necessarily set out to be leaders—I believe they are called into leadership, by history and by circumstance. Some kind of adaptive change is needed, and a leader comes forth. They are visionaries who see a future that is not yet visible to their followers, and they can articulate that vision in a way that will inspire others to follow.

Leaders are clear and decisive—they can be so because they know themselves well, know who they are, accept both their strengths and their weaknesses, know what purposes they are living for. If a leader doesn’t lead, followers are left insecure and without direction. Remember what Alice asks the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland?

"Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?" Alice asked the Cheshire Cat.

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don’t much care where—" said Alice.

"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"So long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if only you walk long enough."

That wonderful kind of nonsense in Lewis Carroll’s book hits so close to home! Sometimes companies fall into that kind of aimlessness—or churches. We need always to ask ourselves as an institution, "Where are we going, and why?" If we’re clear about that, the easier piece is getting there. This is true in our personal lives as well. What is our life really about? I mean, really. Sometimes we just drift along, just kind of going through the motions, without asking any defining questions. We just, you know, pay the mortgage, feed the kids, floss our teeth, watch the birthdays go by, and wonder at last what it was all about.

Leaders are willing to put some greater objective ahead of personal gain. Leadership is not about individual accomplishment or self-aggrandizement—it is about service. Good leadership is grounded in values that reflect the best in human nature, not the base in human nature. A leader can draw from a people qualities they never knew were even there, can call them to be their noblest selves. I’m thinking just now about Guliani and the tremendous job he did in leading New Yorkers after the terrorist attack. In the first place, he showed up—immediately. In doing so, he put himself in harm’s way, though he didn’t intend that. He focused on his people, first getting as many as possible to safety and later helping them meet their everyday needs. He told them the hard news that they could no longer expect to find alive anyone who was missing. Perhaps the most important thing he did, though, was to give them a vision of New York that was strong and steady, told them they would be all right, told them to get on with their lives, and not to be cowed by fear. He had a vision of what was needed in this crisis, he acted decisively, his focus was clear, and his actions grounded in caring and compassion. This is leadership.

Ronald Heifetz in a book of the same title as my sermon, Leadership Without Easy Answers, says that the single most important characteristic of a leader is self-differentiation. What is self-differentiation? It includes a knowledge of self, convictions that are strong and clear, and an ability to stand firm when pressured by others. In the self-differentiated person, boundaries are clear, projections of others are not taken in. You know who you are, and you feel no need to please everyone. You become, in Edwin Friedman’s term, a "non-anxious presence."

This reminds me of a story someone recently told me. A man was traveling down a long, dusty, road, with his wife and child and his donkey. They passed someone on the road who said to the man, "Shame on you, letting your child walk. You should let your child ride on the donkey." So the man put his child on the donkey and continued. Soon they passed another traveler who said to the man, "You should be ashamed, making your wife walk on this hot day. You should let her ride on the donkey." So he put his wife on the donkey. They went on and soon came to a third traveler, who said to the man, in no uncertain terms, "You should be ashamed! Look at this poor donkey carrying this heavy load in this sweltering heat." Whereupon the man put the donkey on his back and continued down the road.

The self-differentiated leader doesn’t put the donkey on his back.

To be self-differentiated, though, does not mean that the leader is inflexible and will not listen to others. He should always be testing his views against competing views, rather than defensively sticking to a particular perspective. He needs to be in touch with the thinking and also the emotional state of his followers. A good leader knows that change is difficult and, understanding the human need for protection and order, he is compassionate when others find change distressing. Heifetz makes clear, though, that this is not a soft kind of compassion, for the good leader doesn’t allow the followers much leeway to escape the difficult work they must do.

In comedy they say, "Timing is everything." Leaders must take into account the teaching moment, or the time when people are distressed enough to actually pay attention to the changes that must be made. Sometimes the leader ups the ante on distress to move the followers to a place where they can consider change. A striking example of this is Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement. King explained his strategy in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in April 1963: "You may well ask: ‘Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path? You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.’"

On Sunday, March 7, 1965, black Americans and whites in solidarity with them—some from our Unitarian Universalist movement--set out to march from Selma to Montgomery, AL, to demand voting rights. During that march, one of our ministers, James Reeb, was clubbed by a group of white men, and died. Selma had around 29,000 people, and slightly more of them were black than white—but only 3 percent of the people on its voting rolls were black. In response to the voting rights march, Governor Wallace sent the state police against the 600 marchers, and Americans all over the country witnessed with shock and deep anger the televised scenes of black men and women and children being clubbed to the ground, choking on tear gas, and being bull-whipped by troopers. Demonstrations sprang up all over the country, demanding that President Johnson do something. The pressure grew. Pickets surrounded the White House with signs shaming the President. The following Sunday, while 15,000 demonstrators sang "We Shall Overcome," Johnson asked to appear before a joint session of Congress the next evening to do what he had wanted to do all along: make his historic speech asking for voting rights for all citizens. By inaction Johnson raised the level of tension, says Heifetz, so that people could no longer ignore their own responsibility.

The terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania—horrendous as they were—have given Americans a teaching moment. We are asking questions of ourselves, questions like, what is my life about, anyway? What’s important, and what is not? What is patriotism? Is it flying the flag, or working for peace? Or both? To be shaken so deeply calls for some personal human response. "I’ve been changed, I’ve been changed"—words our choir so movingly sang on that first Sunday after the attacks. "I’ve been changed."

And for our country, too, this is a teaching moment, a time for re-evaluation, a time when we can and should be open to new ways of thinking. I’ll tell you what I want to hear from our political leaders right now. I want them to get away from the shallow jingoism they are prone to and to move towards a patriotism that takes into account our responsibility for moral leadership in the world, which we have so often failed to take, of late; a patriotism that looks hard at our disastrous foreign policy, which causes many peoples of the world to fear and hate us; a patriotism that asks us to step down from our pedestal, to renounce our arrogance, and to join other nations in the world who wish to work in coalitions for peace, to protect the environment, to stop racial injustice. Yes, we need to sign the Kyoto Treaty, we need to show up at the World Conference on Racism. Surely we have joined the suffering of the world; let us now work together for the healing of our world.

Yes, I want the terrorists who perpetrated this foul and awful deed to be found out and brought to justice. But I think our leaders are beginning to realize that we cannot do this with conventional approaches—we have to move to a new paradigm, we have to adapt to a changed world. We may find bin Laden but we will never stamp out terrorism until we understand why thousands upon thousands support bin Laden—not his ideology, but his striking out against the United States.

I was listening to PBS when a terrorist expert was interviewed. He pointed out that the war on terrorism will not be won with arms, but with intelligence operations from many countries, co-operating with one another; with communication to disaffected youth who in their hopelessness are willing to become terrorists; with economic aid instead of bombs. We have to begin thinking in a very different way if we are to marginalize terrorists. Many of you have seen the e-mail that is going around: "Bomb them with butter," it begins, "bomb Afghanistan with butter, with rice, bread, clothing, and medicine." In that starved and war-devastated country, what would best rob the Taliban of power?

What else do I want from our leaders? I want them to take into consideration many views, and to learn. I would not want to be in their place right now. I can’t imagine the pressure on President Bush, with the conservatives in Congress wanting to get on with some kind of military response, and most people supporting war. Bush has a hard way to go. He really doesn’t know what to do. All the alternatives are costly. I want our leaders, as they seem to be doing, to gather information from many sources, to think, and hopefully to act wisely and honorably.

I want our leaders to strengthen our country not by amassing more weapons, but by being sure that its citizens have food, medical care, housing, that every child in this country has a decent education. How can our country be strong when so many of us are hurting, when so many are losing hope for any part of the American dream? Unless we change our ways, we will fall, not from without, but from within. The fabric of our society is ripping, and our leaders seem not to see the tear.

And I want our leaders to begin giving moral leadership. I love this country, and I often weep when I sing the "Star Spangled Banner" or "God Bless America." I cry because I am a part of what is beautiful and good here, and I also cry because I am a part of what has gone so wrong. This is my country. There is only one way this devastating tragedy can be redeemed, and goodness can come forth from the terrible evil that took so many lives on September 11. As individuals perhaps we will deepen spiritually and open our hearts more fully to one another and to the world. And as a nation I hope we awaken to a new way of being: to conserve the resources of the earth so we won’t covet other nations’ oil; to respect other countries and other peoples, and to partner with them, instead of going it alone; to shape global policies that decrease the disparity between rich and poor, instead of increasing it, as we have been doing.

I think back to September 11. I think of the fire fighters who risked their lives—and so many lost their lives—to save others. We lost 6,000 people that day, but we would have lost many, many more except for these men who rushed into the buildings and got people out. In a society in which we are taught to look out for number one, they looked out for others. We Americans are capable of such selfless devotion. We all are. Let us think on this and imagine a new way to be together in this country. Let us imagine that we are driven by caring instead of cash. Let us imagine a time when all people are seen as an expression of the Holy, having infinite worth and dignity. Let us imagine that we really do come to understand that giving fills us with joy, and generosity makes us whole. It’s not an impossible dream. We have a choice. May we choose well. So be it. Amen.

PRAYER

Holy One, we come before you today knowing that we need to change. Our hearts need to change, our ways of relating need to change. We pray that this time of suffering might open us and connect us with others in ways we have never before imagined. May we be thankful each minute of each day for the blessings of life, and may we never take anything that is lovely, even one small flower, for granted. Amen.

BENEDICTION

Go now, and see all those around you as a manifestation of the Holy. Let the world touch you in its sorrow, its pity, and its infinite joy. Go now in love and in peace.

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Copyright 2001, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell.  All rights reserved.