GETTING TO NO

The Rev. Mark Ward
Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville

Asheville, NC

March 30, 2008

READING
From a letter by Mohandes Gandhi to the British viceroy of India on the eve of his Salt March, February 1930

I know that in embarking on non-violence I shall be running what might fairly be termed a mad risk. But the victories of truth have never been won without risks. . . . Conversion of a nation that has consciously or unconsciously preyed upon another far more numerous, far more ancient and no less cultured than itself, is worth any amount of risk.

I have deliberately used the word conversion. For my ambition is no less than to convert the British people through non-violence, and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India. I do not seek to harm your people. I want to serve them, even as I want to serve my own. I believe that I have always served them. I served them up to 1919 blindly. But when my eyes were opened and I conceived noncooperation, the object still was to serve them. . . .

If the British commerce with India is purified of greed, you will have no difficulty recognizing our independence. I respectfully invite you them to . . . open a way for a real conference among equals. . . . But if you cannot see your way to deal with these evils and my letter makes no appeal to your heart . . . I shall proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram as I can take to disregard the provisions of the Salt laws. . . .

This letter is not in any way intended as a threat but is a simple and sacred duty peremptory on a civil resister.

SERMON

Several years ago as I was preparing for my ordination and installation at this church I had a lunch meeting with the Rev. Joan Kahn – Schneider. I had asked Joan, who had worked with this church on the search that brought me here, to deliver the Charge to the Congregation, a portion of the service where some wise person offers counsel on how the congregation might approach a new ministry.
Joan was interested to get to know me a little and also to learn what I hoped to hear from her in that service. After listening to me talk for a while, she said, “I have a gift to give you. It’s small, but it could be the thing that best helps you define your ministry at this church. It’s the word, ‘No!’”

As a rule, the word “no” is the farthest thing from our minds when we are beginning a new project, or for that matter a new job. We have, after all, just uttered a big “Yes!” Yes, I will take the job. Yes, I will accept this new assignment or responsibility. We’re on top of the world. We’ve been affirmed, and we’re full of good feeling, full of “Yes!”

Yet, we find out quickly that if we’re not judicious in our “Yeses” we will soon be overwhelmed. As we take on more obligations, we begin to get exhausted and inevitably some of those obligations end up falling off our plate. Rather than success, all those “Yeses” can result in frustration and disappointment, both for ourselves and those we work with.

And yet, quick and dismissive “no’s” are no better. We can miss out on productive opportunities and alienate potential allies and those who look for our aid. We can find ourselves isolated and narrow our options. Too many “no’s” leaves us out of the mix of things and generally less effective and engaged in what matters to us.

This quandary of Yes and No is no less telling in our religious or spiritual lives, and perhaps especially so among Unitarian Universalists. Many of us first came to this church out with a strong sense of “No,” in that the religion of our childhoods no longer fit what we believed to be true. At the same time, we came in need of a new “Yes,” a way of approaching the big questions of our lives that made sense and that resonated with that deep sense of goodness and calm within us.

Along that journey, though, there are many opportunities for us to get stuck. Some of us have a hard time getting beyond “No.” We are very clear about what we don’t believe, what we reject, but we have don’t spend much time trying to articulate what it is we do believe. Others have come to our churches and found a “yes” that they are happy with, but they are reluctant to share it or present it to others in a setting where it might be challenged. It’s a cozy “yes,” but it’s unexamined and in many respects still not fully formed.

In the long run, neither of those strategies will serve us. Our spiritual understanding, that which grounds our lives and brings us peace, cannot be built only on rejection and denial. Ultimately, there must be something that we affirm. At the same time, our faith must be resilient and mature, able to roll with the punches, or it is of little use to us. Within our “Yeses” we must also have a way of getting to no. What I want to suggest, then, is that rather than acting as a setback to our religious understanding, “No” can actually be a source of growth, something we welcome.

Some years ago when I was working as a science reporter I came upon a term in biology that fascinated me: apoptosis. It describes that process in all living things that is also known as “programmed cell death.” Essentially, it is the way in which an organism can direct certain cells to break up and die. The organism doesn’t attack the cells; it simply communicates with them in some way that scientists don’t entirely understand yet that they are no longer needed, and so the DNA in the cells breaks up, their internal structures collapse and the immune system cleans up the mess.

There are any number of ways in which this process helps living things. For example, if a cell becomes diseased the organism may try to direct the cell to die to prevent further damage. One of the things that make cancer cells so dangerous is that they are somehow able to ignore that direction. This process also is active in the later stages when an organism is developing. After conception, cells in the organism are dividing at a rapid rate, but eventually a time comes when the developing structures need to be sculpted into their proper shape. For example, in the womb when our hands first take shape we have webbing of skin between our fingers. But then at some point in our development our body directs the skin cells in that webbing to die off so that our hands can take their proper shape.

This process happens in many ways throughout development. It doesn’t damage us in any way. In fact, it is crucial to our proper development. And so here in the midst of new life, an amazing “Yes,” is essentially a big “No”; and not merely in the midst of it, but integral to it. Without this “No” this “Yes” cannot come into being. “No” in this instance is a tool for shaping the “Yes” into a mature, resilient self.

Some 25 years ago William Ury was a co-author on the popular book “Getting to Yes.” The book described the many ways that we can get past resistance and reach an agreement with another person that will benefit both sides. But Ury writes that in his subsequent work he came to realize that getting to a rewarding “Yes” required the ability to articulate some important “No’s” along the way. Just as in emerging life, understanding what we believe means knowing what we affirm, what we want to include in defining our beliefs, and what we deny or no longer want to hold onto.

Saying “No,” though, is uncomfortable. We worry about disappointing others or even damaging relationships with our No’s, Maybe I can just go along. Sure it’s not really what I believe. It doesn’t feel entirely right. But I can make an accommodation. And, of course, it’s true. Accommodations are part of life. We can’t have everything our way. We have to pick our battles, which often means enduring a lot that we’re not crazy about.

Too much accommodation, though, saps our sense of dignity and respect. Failing to say “No” when we feel we should can lead us in time to submitting to inappropriate demands, injustice, and even abuse. Too much accommodation can leave us feeling numb and disconnected or lead us to strike out in damaging ways.

Ury urges the cultivation of what he calls a “Positive No.” What distinguishes a Positive “No” from an angry, reactive or dismissive “No” is that it is grounded in a powerful “Yes,” and it looks forward to some future agreement or relationship. Rather than cutting myself off from another whom I disagree with, I can lay the groundwork by which we might collaborate in creating an alternative future, while protecting what is important to me.

In February 1930, when Mohandes Gandhi sent the letter to the British viceroy that you heard excerpted earlier, it was about a month after the Indian National Congress had declared independence for India from British control. Gandhi had been arguing for Indian independence and using non-violent protests to bring attention to his cause. But what has become known as the Salt March was his first act of organized opposition to British rule.

Colonial laws at the time gave Britain a monopoly on the production of all salt in India, which meant that anyone who sought to buy salt had to pay a tax to the British government. Gandhi seized on the salt tax as a symbol of the injustice of Britain’s rule, and as a way of protesting that injustice he announced in that letter his intention to lead members of his Ashram on a 240-mile walk to the sea where he would gather salt and thus violate British law. The Salt March, which ended up drawing hundreds of participants from villages along the way is widely regarded as the turning point and the Indian campaign for independence.

What made Gandhi’s act powerful was not merely that he chose as the subject of his protest a commodity that was essential to everyone – rich or poor, Hindu or Muslim – in the sweltering heat of India, but also because his action, his defiant “No,” was grounded in an unshakeable conviction, a profound “Yes.”

Gandhi identified the principle at the center of his actions as “Satyagraha,” a word whose meaning he gave as “the Force which is born of Truth and Love.” And that force, he believed, was made manifest in non-violent resistance, not as a tactic or strategy but as a centering principle in people’s lives. It had implications far beyond this one act but it also gave this act a depth of integrity that could not be easily dismissed, and it projected a future that would encompass this act and many others. It sought, in Gandhi’s words, not the annihilation, but the “conversion” of the British authorities and in time the British people as well to a new way of understanding the Indian people, people, as Gandhi put it, “far more numerous, far more ancient, and no less cultured than (themselves).”

The British could still arrest Gandhi, which they did, but his “No” still endured and inspired widespread disregard for the British salt laws and eventually negotiations that led to Indian independence.

“No” is most effective, after all, when it involves not simply disassociating ourselves from something we disapprove of but moving to create a new future that embodies what we do believe in.

Just last weekend the Rev. Meg Barnhouse, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg, told a gathering of members of UU churches in our Western Carolinas Cluster of a “No” that at least in retrospect helped lead her to a Unitarian Universalist church. The story is in her book, Waking Up the Karma Fairy.

“One Christmas,” she writes, “someone invited a puppeteer to come to a Christmas potluck at a Presbyterian church I used to go to. She came dressed in white robes, and she had a little singsing-y voice. If she had been blonde, she would have looked like Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Her puppets were cute, and they told the kids to be honest and loving.

“At the end of the show, she came out from behind the puppet theater with an enormous book in her hand.

‘Children, do you know what this book is?” she asked.

‘The Bible?’ answered the innocent and alert Presbyterian children.

‘No,’ she said, ‘It’s the Book of Life. If your name is written on this side,’ she gestured with one graceful hand, ‘You go to Heaven to live with Jesus. But . . .’ I heard a scritch-scratching sound like a match being struck. NO. The entire left side of the book burst into flames, and she held it there, burning without being consumed, some prop made for a children’s show out of fire gel.

‘If your name is written on this side,’ her voice grew low and sorrowful, ‘you go to burn in hellfire forever.’

“The parents stood, frozen. She invited the children to come forward and kneel for a prayer for the salvation of their souls from hell. To their credit, the parents moved in with their children, arms around them, kneeling beside them for the duration of the prayer.

“I like to think,” Meg said, “that if I had been the woman then that I am now, I would have done something. In the movie I play in my mind of how it should have been, the scene goes into slow motion as the page bursts into flames. I stride out of the crowd of parents toward her and see three more parents are with me.

“One of them distracts the kids as I snatch the flaming prop from her hands and snap it shut, tossing it off into a corner of the room where it skids to a stop against the wall. Two others take her arms and walk her out the door into the December evening. The stars shine clear and bright in the silent night as we set the puppet gear down in the parking lot. We look up at the sky and breathe in the light. The children laugh inside the warm building.

“We must insist. Love, not fear, is spoken here. Love, not fear, is spoken here. Love, not fear, is spoken here.”

There is a vibrant and compassionate Yes at the heart of our religious tradition: one that affirms the worth and dignity of all, the free search for truth and meaning, acceptance, openness, and respect for the interdependent Web of existence in which we live.

But our tradition also demands that we have the strength, courage and conviction to say “No,” a “No” directed at all hatred and oppression, a “No” grounded in our values and centered in love, a “No” that embraces new possibilities, a world transformed by the care and concern that inform each of our lives every day.

In a principled life, “No” and “Yes” are two sides of one coin, both ingredients of a mature and resilient life. As William Ury puts it, “We need both Yes and No together. Yes is the key word of community; No is the key word of individuality. Yes is the key word of connection; No is the key word of protection. Yes is the key word of peace; No the key word of justice.”

And so, as I conclude let me return Joan’s favor, and extend to you as well the gift of “No.” Use it wisely, not as a way of escape, anger, or avoidance, but as a tool of discernment. Clear away the clutter and distractions, the fears and anxiety, and let the world experience your bright and beautiful “Yes.”Oh, yes!