Yearning for goodness in ad campaigns

Do you want to know how optimistic I am? When I first saw the headlines that the American Humanist Association (AHA) was doing an ad campaign that involved Biblical passages, I thought..."Hey, that's great! That's what I did in the class I taught last spring. They'll find passages in the Bible that speak to the humanistic impulse, like love your neighbor, and talk about how humanism and traditional religion share so many of the same ideas and values. I love it!"

I was wrong. I do not love the new AHA ad campaign, which actually juxtaposes negative passages from the Bible and the Koran with positive things that famous humanists have said, in an effort to prove that humanism has the real moral high ground over traditional religion.

The ad campaign was intended, I suppose, to be sensationalistic, and it's succeeded. People are certainly talking about humanism, and especially about the AHA. But I so wish the conversation could be different.

It's easy enough to find less-than-wonderful passages in any religious tradition, including humanism. Holy texts are created over hundreds and sometimes thousands of years, and one of the interesting things about them is that they display the range of human behavior. I love the Bible's psalms of lament, even some which are pretty violent, because they are essentially poems of mourning--and they truly do speak to the depths of grief that we sometimes experience. The Bible also has prophetic passages that are inspiring, poetry that is just beautiful and life-affirming, and plenty of humanistic ideas about our connection to each other and our care for the world.

But more importantly, I'm just not that interested in talking about all the ways humanism is different from traditional religions, all the things we are not. I'm so much more interested in talking about what we share in common, and about what we are. To me, humanism is about the dignity of the human spirit, the preciousness of life and the world we live in, our deep connection to each other. There are Jewish humanists and Christian humanists, Buddhist humanists and all kinds of other people who find the ideas of humanism to resonate for them.

I don't know that what I think about the new ad campaign matters much. I'm not a member of the AHA, and neither is my congregation. The American Ethical Union, of which my congregation is a part, has a national relationship with the AHA, but no control over what they do. But when I see those ads, I know I want to raise my hand and say they don't speak for me!

I'm not willing to cede the idea of humanism, though. It's too beautiful, too deep. It's about human dignity and cherishing a faith in human goodness, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. So I suppose what I want to say to the AHA marketing experts is: despite what you've created in this ad campaign, I'll keep the faith.

Everyone Loves a Baby

I was taken by the recent story in the New York Times about a new anti-bullying curriculum that uses babies to teach empathy to schoolchildren. The idea is simple: a parent brings a baby to the class every month for a year, and the teacher helps the children to experience life from the baby's perspective, to imagine what the baby might be thinking or feeling, to identify the baby's personality. Studies have found that the children are engaged and excited by interacting with the baby...and that they begin to understand their own different perspectives and experience empathy among their peers, as well.

The same day I read that article, I read this one, about a baby in a stroller who was separated from her mother on the DC metro. It was presented as a kind of sensationalistic story, and of course it must have been quite traumatic. But--also of course--the baby and mother were quickly reunited, the baby watched over by fellow train travelers to the next stop and then handed off to metro police, sleeping the whole time.

I say of course because there's something about us that can't help but care for a baby, I think. When I get within 20 feet of an infant, I can feel my face pulled into all kinds of strange contortions, as I play peek-a-boo almost against my will. It taps into that hard-wired empathy we all have, and it's difficult to resist.

And so I really loved the idea of using babies with children who might otherwise get a lot of practice in empathy...using our natural pull toward the littlest among us to encourage seeing different perspective and, ultimately, to cut down on bullying. As Felix Adler says, the human spirit really does yearn for goodness. And sometimes babies can help show us the way.

Saying Thank You

November has begun, and with it the flurry of "I am grateful for..." postings on Facebook. I participated last year, and I'm doing it again this year. I like the idea, of posting something I'm grateful for each day, and the way that it really does keep me attuned to the bounty in my world.

But this year I wanted to try something a little deeper. As clergy in a tradition that places emphasis on human relationships, I wondered about being grateful not just for something, but to someone. Sometimes my gratitude really does go out to the universe in all its mystery, but often there's a person who can be seen as the source of the bounty, a person who deserves my thanks.

So this November, I'm writing thank you notes. Schooled in the art from a young age by my mother, I think that thank you notes really are a hallmark of a civil society. But more than that, they connect my experience of gratitude to the person who's given me something. And they give me a chance to spread gratitude, to share my feeling of abundance.

I've been wanting to try thank you notes as a spiritual practice for a while, and this is the right chance for me. I invite you to join me this month. Spread a little gratitude around. They're like the best kind of chain letter: nothing will happen if you don't send a thank you note, but something wonderful might happen if you do.

Sanity Restored

It seems as though everyone I know was at the Rally to Restore Sanity this past Saturday...although of course I didn't see ANY of them because the crowds were so huge. My husband, daughter, and I walked through the slightly-less-packed areas and looked at the signs.

I had my favorites, of course, which included "Everyone needs to take a deep breath" and "God hates...when you go around saying God hates things." But what I really loved was the combination of equal parts earnest beliefs and wacky humor. For every sign about health care, there was someone dressed up in a goofy Halloween costume. And for me, that seems to be about the right ratio.

It's not that I don't feel passionately about injustice in the world--I do, and I feel strongly that there are some things that are so serious we must act. But I also know that if I don't hang on to a sense of humor, things will get so overwhelming that I won't be able to act. For me, humor is a key part of sanity.

Humor and connection, which is the other thing I felt on Saturday. Many of the signs were asking people to listen to each other, to stop shouting and try just talking. Humor and connection aren't unrelated, I think. Sharing a funny moment is almost as good as sharing a meal in the bonding-with-strangers category.

And of course humor and connection are both missing when the national conversation devolves into name-calling, pundits, and 10 second soundbytes. I want more people dressed up like Yoda and fewer people yelling. There. Sanity restored.