SERMON: “The Great Turning”
Rev. Paul Beedle
August 27, 2006
This week I started reading Matthew Pearl's new novel, The Poe Shadow. Its main character (the narrator) is a lawyer who agrees to help Edgar Allan Poe launch his own literary magazine, by defending him from attacks on his character that might hurt his subscription sales. But before the enterprise can be undertaken, Poe dies mysteriously, and the lawyer spends the rest of the novel (so I understand) investigating his last days and death. Before Poe's death, the lawyer argues with his law partner about taking on Poe as a client – and here's his account of the argument:
“You'd probably guess that the real reason Peter objected was because I could not answer his questions about the fees. Poe was regularly reported in the papers as penniless. Why take upon ourselves, Peter argued, what others wouldn't? I pointed out that the source for our payments was obvious: the new journal. Success was guaranteed for it!
“What I wanted to say to Peter was `Do you not ever feel you are becoming hackneyed by the lawyer's routine? Forget the fees. Wouldn't you wish to protect something you knew to be great that everyone else sought to desecrate? Wouldn't you wish to be a part of changing something, even if it meant changing yourself?'” I can't wait to finish this novel!
So there I was last June, sitting in a meeting room in the St. Louis convention center, listening to David Korten talk about his new book, The Great Turning. [1] And I might say that those questions of Matthew Pearl's narrator about sum up what he said: “Wouldn't you wish to protect something you knew to be great that everyone else sought to desecrate? Wouldn't you wish to be part of changing something, even if it meant changing yourself?” He was compelling not only because he seemed to be asking these basic religious questions, but also because of the sheer scale of the change he wants to be part of, and was inviting us to be part of.
The title of his book, The Great Turning, is borrowed from Joanna Macy, who seems to have coined it. She describes herself on her website [2] as “[an] eco-philosopher, ... Ph.D., [and] a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. She is also a leading voice in movements for peace, justice, and a safe environment. Interweaving her scholarship and four decades of activism ... [h]er wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science.”
“The Great Turning” – there's a movement behind that phrase. I first encountered it in an article by Joanna Macy. Here's what she wrote:
“Future generations ... will look back on these beginning years of the twenty-first century, and they may well call this time the `Great Turning.' I imagine they will say, `Those ancestors back then, bless them. Though involved in the Great Turning, they had no way of knowing whether they could pull it off. It must have looked hopeless at times. Their efforts must have often seemed isolated, paltry and darkened by confusion; yet they went ahead, they kept on doing what they could – and, because they did, the Great Turning happened.' A good number of us today are already using that term, the Great Turning. And many realize that it is comparable in magnitude to two other revolutions in human history[:] some 8000 years ago, ... the agricultural revolution [which] took centuries to unfold[;] ... some 250 years ago ... the industrial revolution, [which] took generations. Now, right on its heels, as the industrial growth society spins out of control, comes this ecological revolution [which] must happen not in centuries or generations, but within a matter of years. ... It unfolds in three simultaneous and mutually reinforcing dimensions. [The first is] activism. ... The second ... involves systems change [from] political and economic structures that lead us to use our Earth as supply house and sewer [to] alternative institutions [which] are mushrooming... At no other epoch of human history have so many new ways of doing things appeared in so short a time. ... [The third is] values and attitudes ... how we experience our relations to Earth and each other... As we reflect on these three dimensions of the Great Turning, we can recognize how they are stirring our hearts and lives, and the lives of countless brothers and sisters. The great adventure is underway. ... We cannot tell which will happen first: the final unraveling of complex life-forms on Earth, or the moment when the elements of a sustainable civilization cohere and catch hold. But without that gamble, could we discover the full measure of our courage? Could our own, wild creativity be really unleashed? When the times we are living in seem apocalyptic, it is good to remember the true meaning of that word. Though `apocalypse' came to connote disaster, it originally meant revelation, disclosure. The very crises confronting us now ... [awaken] us to our mutual belonging in the living body of Earth, and the joy of working together...”
I really like that. I want to believe that humanity can put away the distractions of violence and violent philosophies and get our energies mobilized to create a peaceful world and a sustainable world economy and an end to needless human suffering. And I do believe it, because there are so many examples, now and in the past, of large and small successes toward creating that kind of world. And I want to be playing on that team, or cheering on that team. That's what I was feeling in that meeting room at the St. Louis convention center, listening to David Korten share the same vision that Joanna Macy described. Before, I had seen words on paper describing a breathtaking vision and very ambitious program. In that meeting room, I saw the team.
As a result, I almost don't recommend reading Korten's book. Better to be on the team than read about it! Except I think the last section, titled “Birthing Earth Community,” is worth a look. He outlines there some principles and strategies for the team. He has a chapter apiece on “Leading from Below,” “Building a Political Majority,” and “Liberating Creative Potential.” And the last chapter is titled “Change the Story, Change the Future” – that's what he talked about in St. Louis.
He said that stories are how a people defines its values. That's not a new idea, and he didn't mean it to be. He simply meant to focus our attention on it, because he wanted to invite us to participate in changing what he calls “the stories of empire.” Joanna Macy called it the industrial revolution, he calls it “empire” because it helps him make his point about the power of these stories.
He talked about three imperial stories that we live like the Greeks lived their myths. One is the story of prosperity, which says that an eternally growing economy benefits all, and growth depends on there being wealthy people, so wealthy people must be liberated. This story affirms economic inequality, and as we all know, it is used to rationalize economic injustice.
A second story is the story of security: that it's a dangerous world – and that's the most important fact about the world, that it's dangerous, and don't you forget it! – and so we have to invest a lot in protecting ourselves and eliminating our enemies by force. Of course, this story now holds the center of the world stage.
A third story is what Korten calls the story of meaning. It tells of a God who commands dominion – “subdue the earth” – and who rewards the just with wealth and power; so we know who's the most godly and just, it's the people with the most wealth and power, right?
Those are the three stories of empire he sketched for us. Korten's background is that he used to have a career sharing the secrets of American business success in developing countries, trying to help create global prosperity. The more he did that work, the more he saw that the secrets he was sharing served the prosperity story. His work produced wealthy people – economic inequality – not prospering societies. So in 1992 he came back to the United States and tried to share secrets about prosperity that he'd learned in Africa and Asia, which he published three years later in his book, When Corporations Rule the World. And for the last decade he's been exploring and developing his thoughts about the global political and economic system that he now calls “empire.”
Instead of these stories that affirm economic inequality, and the use of physical force, and the righteousness of the wealthy and powerful, he wants to promote the optimistic idea that “creation is intelligent and compassionate and wants humanity to succeed.” He invoked the power of some recent memories that living generations share, that he thinks support such optimism: the great vision that conceived of a United Nations; those iconic photographs of the earth taken from the moon, including the famous “earthrise” picture, that made the idea of “One Earth” – the Earth as one living system – so vivid and compelling for us; and the experience of instant global communication, first by telegraph and telephone and now by the internet, an experience that has made “One Earth” more real in our daily lives. “One Earth” – against such worries as peak oil, climate change, injustices in world trade and the violence and fragmentation of terrorism? Yes! I want to believe in that!
For Korten, the Great Turning is about shifting our shared values in the cultural, economic and political realms. The cultural turning, he said, is turning from a focus on money to a focus on quality of life, from a belief in limitations to a belief in possibilities, and from the artificial scarcity of conflict to the abundance available through cooperation. The economic turning is from raising the welfare of the top to raising the welfare of the bottom, from hoarding to sharing, and from focusing on ownership to focusing on stewardship. And the political turning is from one-dollar-one-vote to one-person-one-vote, and from passive to active citizenship. These turnings, these shifts in our shared values, he says, can be achieved in part by situating our lives in different shared stories than we've been living. The Great Turning is from empire to Earth Community.
Now, I think Unitarian Universalism has a very meaningful contribution to make to this movement. I think our tradition has a position to play on this team. Here's how I'd like to put it: ours is a freedom-loving, covenant-making tradition where we as people of faith strive to live as love demands. And when we take our stand in the public square, or write to our political leaders, or participate in community organizing, or offer direct service to our neighbors, I think we ought to say that. I think we ought to say, “we are people of faith who believe in living as love demands, and this is what we think love demands of our society.” I think we ought to frame our study of social issues that way: “considering the whole picture of this social issue, what does love demand?” If we develop a habit of thinking and talking that way, and share that with the larger community, it might just catch on. At the very least, they'll know what we're about.
I also think that if we really plumb the depths of the give-and-take – or the give-and-receive – of being a freedom-loving people and a covenant-making people, we'll have rare wisdom to share in the public square. The covenants we make express the spirit of our commitment to one another and the values we strive to embody. That's in contrast to the dominant form of agreement in our culture, the contract. A contract lays out rules and punishments. A covenant reminds us how we want to be together, how we want to treat one another, and the values we all want to live up to. As a freedom-loving people, we value our differences because we learn from them and grow from them, and they make our community wiser – especially when we see that we need and complement each other. As a covenant-making people, we hold ourselves accountable to live as love demands and to view our differences that way. Wouldn't it be nice if America had a freedom-loving, covenant-making culture? If we get real good at this, I think our neighbors would admire that about us and want to learn it from us. “Hey, I've heard of the Unitarian Universalists: they're the people who try to live as love demands! They love freedom and they make covenants. I'd like to hear what they have to say.”
Well, ya gotta have a dream!
“When the times we are living in seem apocalyptic, it is good to remember the true meaning of that word.” It means to reveal, to disclose. And it's not just danger and fear that these times disclose – it's hope and possibility.
Let us look for ways, large and small, to turn from fear toward hope, to try new things and new ways of living that promise peace and sustainable living and relief from human suffering, to protect the great and good things of the Earth that others have been willing to desecrate. And may we be willing to be part of such hopeful change, even if it means changing ourselves. So may it be. Amen.
[1] The website, www.thegreatturning.net, was started in response to Korten's book.
[2] www.joannamacy.net