Habits of Mass Destruction

Pissed off.

Jimi Hendrix was pissed off and that’s putting it mildly.

So uncanny is his acoustical flag-burning we wake up and wonder why: why stretch, why bend, why torment this ballad of military might? 

Woodstock, 1969—a decade with two dead Kennedys and Martin Luther King but a year in his grave.  Bras burned, though babies did too as napalm fell across Vietnam.

Land of the free and home of the brave:  while we vilify undocumented workers, torture prisoners, and deny the rights of marriage to every couple God has brought together in love and hopefulness.

Hendrix tore through the Star Spangled Banner with his guitar because he wanted America to hear what its national anthem sounded like as a seething, spiteful cry for justice. 

Hendrix also wanted us to explore, to discover, to imagine the world in truly new ways.

Across the globe violence and struggle shaped the late sixties.  Though so did tremendous hope: just a month before Woodstock, men walked on the moon for the first time, and humanity saw itself upon this earth as it never had before.

July 4^th, 1776 was also a moment of tremendous new possibility.  Late in the Enlightenment colonial Americans made a decision as bold and brilliant as it was foolish and ill-considered.  But they won.  They took ideas seriously and dared to try something new, to make mistakes, to seek a more perfect union. 

Today we imagine science and technology and medicine to offer unprecedented salvation.  Yet the greatness we celebrate this weekend was made with words.  Pen and paper and an open, inspired, considerate mind have more power than anything else in this world.

You need not write grand pronouncements: proverbs and the most pedestrian considerations make life what it is.  To say I am afraid, I am sorry, I do not know—these are the hardest things.

I am convinced that we are far more creatures of habit than of heroism.

And since founding the first modern democracy, we have developed habits of mass destruction.

Conserve, reuse, recycle.  Yet seek more: grow, gain, and multiply. Embrace equality; but don’t forget to get ahead.

While making ourselves free, we have ensnared the world with our waste and toxins and acrid exhaust.  This is not a national problem; global warming is not a joke; climate change is happening and we are responsible.  You and me, right here, right now.

Nor will only environmentalism, green engineering or buying local solve this crisis.  Flashy solutions tend to blind us to enduring problems.

We need justice.  Justice for those suffering from draught across Chad, Sudan and Somalia; for those millions threatened by rising waters in Bangladesh; for those in China breathing the filth we require to shop at everyday low prices.

We also need justice in our everyday lives.  As we have thoughtlessly objectified and commoditized our planet, so too patriarchy and our pernicious silence about how we treat women—looks before voice, body before min—and how we treat men—courage ahead of caring, conquest ahead of camaraderie—so too our silence enables discrimination, uncertainty and fear to undermine our potential for creative, beautiful fulfillment.

We can still, we must still flirt and play and find exhilaration in our lives.  But this is not the same as power ill-used— entitlement, belittling comment, crass glance, forced hand on the shoulder or worse.  We should never live in fear.  We should never cause fear.  Rather it is in the awesomeness of vulnerability that we realize the true power of love.

Gay or straight, man or woman, confident or confused: we must scrutinize and act deliberately, all the more so if you think this doesn’t apply to you.

It’s no accident we so often imagine nature as female, that to be protected, or to be ravished and left behind.

How we interact with one another, with all living species: I think we need to think small—big and boldly about the little things.  To break old habits, however hard—we can not continue with those of mass destruction.

‘You only need to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.’

Or, ‘To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,’ —as the Shaker’s have it.  ‘'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.’

Very Woodstock; very much the fun and possibility and brilliance we all possess.  This is the freedom, the independence we need today.

Imagine that awesomeness.

Live that awesomeness.

Let us imagine and live together, vulnerable, in kindness and in love.

•••

This piece was originally given as a Chapel Talk to the students and faculty at the Advanced Studies Program, St. Paul's School, summer 2010.  It spoke to questions specifically related to the Fourth of July but this version has been edited slightly to remove any confusing references.

I took the photo at a temple nearby Siem Reap, Cambodia, in January of 2010.