"The Wolf is Not Our Enemy"
Unitarian Universalist Church of Muncie
Sunday, February 21, 2010
©2010 Rev. Thomas Perchlik

A few weeks ago I was on Vashon Island, in the Puget Sound, near to Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. There my sister lives with her husband and three children in a house surrounded by the tall evergreen trees of the Northwest. I woke up early, since my body was still on Muncie time, just as their rooster was rousing from sleep. The day was gray with low clouds. A gentle mist and rain came and went through the dim sky. As I sat to eat a little cereal and read, I heard the rooster again, and then another sound, low and far off, rising and falling, like the sound of a distant train whistle rolled about by the wind, or the voice of wind rolling around itself. But this was not the wind. I opened the door to listen closely. It was the sound of many wolves singing, "yooowooouooo." This was not the sound of Hollywood horror, the hunting beasts circling in for the kill. This was a song of waking of celebration of life. Dogs were barking off to the left, the rooster joined in with them, and as I listened carefully I heard little birds chirping in the trees. I was quiet, not wanting to wake my niece and nephews, but my spirit hummed. It was a great, life affirming moment of celebration and praise for the morning. In that moment I thought, "The wolf is not our enemy."

These wolves do not roam the island but are in a place called Wolf Town, a little like Muncie's ARF, but for wolves. If you want to hear wolves howling in Indiana the best place is Wolf Park, near Battle Ground, Indiana, north of Lafayette.

The point I want to make today is that both our enemies and competitors can be objects of our love and respect. We must claim that fact that we are in community with all things, even with our enemies. At times when we must face them and beat them in a shared struggle we can also love our enemies. In fact one of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life, or the life well lived, is to turn our enemies into opportunities and to face all opportunities with an open, generous, and powerful spirit. Beyond all their will to harm, oppose and undermine us. To do so is to understand our greater strength, our complete wholeness and thus become something greater than we imagined before.

Many people have thought of wolves as being something very like terrorists. As terrorists we waged a war and killed them, driving them to threatened status in some places. Yet cultures of this continent did not see the Wolf as enemy. Wolves were often seen by the First Nations of this land as sources of health, vital power and strength. People who watched them closely see that they are loyal, mostly monogamous, that they work and live in groups, and take care of their young, playing with and teaching them how to hunt and be part of the pack. American stories of Wolf, the First Person, describe him as a noble and handsome character. As Noble hunter or as icons of fear we see in them something of our own spirits. Realizing they are not our enemy then we can see in wolves our own greater selves, healthy and grounded in this good earth.

The book Wolf Totem, by Lu Jiamin (published under the pen name Jiang Rong) is the second biggest selling book in China next to The Little Red Book of Mao's quotes. In this book a young man takes Mao's advice to live with the people of the countryside and goes to the rough Mongolian steppes. There he finds wolves are free and vital. They are also dangerous. The book opens with the main character nearly being killed while riding alone through wolf country. The wolves often attack and kill the Mongol horses that are crucial to the people's economic well-being. Sometimes calling them "sinister" and "savage," they seem enemies, but the narrator of the book emphasizes that they are not a curse. Their hunting of the horses is a gift to the herders. "Mongol horses rank number one in strength, stamina, [good] digestion, [strong] immune system, and the ability to withstand cold and heat," he writes. "All these qualities were forcefully developed by the wolves' speed and fangs." We should feel likewise, our own health dependent on challenge. Despite their often negative, threatening image, wolves have variously been credited, in mythology, fiction and reality, with adopting, nursing and raising human children, some who become heroes. They become heroes because they know they are more than human.

Nicole Pasulka of CBC news wrote: "Grazing horses destroy the grassland with their ravenous appetites, their manure and hoofs, while wolves regulate [them] through the destruction they wreak; this is the persistent logic of Wolf Totem. Fitness, hardship and economy ensure the well-being of people and animals. Wolves, through the sacrifices they exact from the herders, preserve the tribe's fitness and allow the nomads to thrive in their harsh environment."

That does not mean that they treat the wolf with nothing but respect, awe and reverence. They are not merely good for horse breeding. They don't like the fact that they kill their horses. It is expensive; they cause loss of valuable helpers. So, they fight the wolves and kill them. They hate the wolves as enemies and respect them none the less. They affirm their relationship with one another. In general wolves stay away from human beings and our livestock. But once a lone wolf or a pack begins to focus on us as a source of food, it becomes necessary to fence your livestock or kill the wolves to protect what is your own. Thus the Mongolians have come to a working truce with the wolves. In Wolf Totem the Han Chinese destabilize the situation and the destruction of the wolves becomes emblematic of all the environmental ruin we have seen around the world when nations become industrialized. Lack of strength, stamina, good digestion, vital immune system, and the ability to withstand cold and heat, even a truncated sense of self, becomes apparent in the in the mountain people, and in the Han Chinese.

And so it is in the religious realm. If we become complacent, if we think we have overcome all our enemies then we forget that their challenge is the source of our strength and energy. If we denigrate our opponents as being beyond respect then we forget who we are, we forget who we have forged our identity in contrast to and we forget why this hard work of coming together in community is so important. We UUs, one branch of the great body of religious liberalism, draw heavily on our opponents for strength. We must see in their faces a little bit of ourselves. We must become as the wolves as well as the doves.

A prime example is the relationship I had with Mr. Keller. He is a good man, kind man. He is loved and respected as generous and loving by people in his religious circles. He is an honorable man, but one with a bad agenda. A few years back he had no understanding of interfaith cooperation. He had learned to tolerate many forms of Christianity, even if he knew they were tainted with heresy. What he wanted was for Christianity to be the explicit and sanctioned religion of this nation, and to keep its God supreme over all. Mr. Keller had over several years created a civic program on a governmentally declared Day of Prayer in order to showcase the fact that Christians and the Christian God were the rulers here. He wanted do this for very good and kind reasons. He truly believed, I assume he still believes, that not only was the peace and goodness of our land dependent on maintaining Christian dominance, but the very fate of every person's soul was at stake. He was trying to keep people from the fires of Hell.

But we know the results of his narrow, authoritarian religious vision would be to cause harm, and create division and divisiveness by marginalizing minorities. We are as confident as he is about what is needed to keep this world from becoming like Hell. So, he and I talked on the phone, I tried to get him to imagine being peaceably on a stage with Muslims listening to them give a peaceable prayer. Sadly, I failed to spark his imagination in that direction. He could only imagine it ending with a fight. So we made a peaceable agreement, with kind words of success to one another, to have two separate events on that day. Then the newspaper proclaimed it was a battle for a divided city. Echoes of fear, division and separation spread from Detroit to San Francisco. So the two of us opposed each other as best we could, and it is my assertion that the liberal spirit won. Not just UUs but the majority of people in this city liked the idea of affirming diversity and inclusion of minorities. People saw the two options and decided that the way that affirmed the decency and goodness of other people who disagreed with us on matters of faith made us all stronger. It made us see our faiths as vital decisions, not just governmentally established truths. I like to think I was applying not only the Buddhist teachings of metta, extending love and kindness to all, and Pagan teachings of "first do no harm, and even the words of the Christian Paul who wrote:

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." (Romans 12:17-21).

I love the turn in his words. He does not just say love your enemies, but do so because in that way you get them in the end. Then he said, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" I place the emphasis on overcome, as in win the competition. That is what it means to be part of this congregation, to overcome and win.

So how do we defeat our opponents and love them at the same time? There is a story of a very cruel, vicious abusive man who dies. No one wants to speak at his funeral for they have nothing good to say. Finally the Rabbi calls out; "certainly there is someone who can say something good about the deceased. Slowly one person gets up, hesitates before saying "Well, his brother was much worse." This is the way it is. Some seem beyond good regard. There are people in the world who harm others, who do not respect the dignity of each person but who are willing to fight to the death for victory over others. In response we must try to affirm the worth and dignity of all, even those who have denied it for others, to show where we stand. But we must also fight those people, tooth and nail like wolves. To weed out sickness, bad thinking, and cruelty, and to overcome evil we must see doing goodness as a form of struggle and combat.

There are people who are willing to do terrible things, people who are filled with anger, anguish and fear. They see not a recession but a collapse of the economy and they do not trust in the human community to protect them. The message that has been given over and over is that there is no hope for you in a world of enemies. If you lose your money you will be destitute; there is no one to love you, no one to help you, only strangers and enemies. Or the only ones to protect you are of your gang. This deep fear of the enemy caused one man to shoot and kill Unitarian Universalists in Knoxville, KY, because he took literally the assertion that liberals and terrorists were on the same side. He could not see that we assert a greater truth and power than that of guns and bombs, a power within the human heart, and beyond perhaps.

Ironically, liberals are not much into public displays of piety, and the National Day of Prayer falls in the middle of Ball State Finals. So, that interfaith practice of celebrating religious diversity, which we wrested away from exclusivists in this city, has fallen by the wayside. Still we must take time to assert and affirm the ability of all human beings to come together and see something larger than opponents on a battlefield. We must show that religious competition can be part of serving a larger truth and deeper goodness. We must undermine the politics that divide people into political camps and winning against one's enemies, and make it instead about serving all human beings the larger public good. We give to the church because it gives to us. We give to the church because it makes the world around us better, more generous and just. We give to the church because it is the best response to those who are our enemies, to show them that we embody the larger power of love and mercy, compassion and care. But I don't like this idea that all the lovers are on one side and all the "haters" on the other.

Last week our congregation and others talked about "Standing on the Side of Love." We proclaimed, with hundreds of other UU Churches, that we stand together, with Jews and Christians, Pagans and atheists, to bind all human beings together to promote the rights and lives of everyone. I read online this week that my colleague Ricky Hoyt, preached last week on this subject and said, that you can't really stand on the side of Love because Love puts you in the middle of things. Love is not a side but in the middle of work and struggle, the center of activism and truth telling. Sometimes love demands that you say "No," or "this is wrong," or "I will not let you harm other people." When you stand against the wolves trying to harm the horses you must get into the middle of tough times and difficult things.

One problem is that not all our enemies are easily defined. Injustice and suffering are not just creations of human will. Injustice and suffering are not merely creations of hateful people. They are created by systems. And we are all entangled in these larger systems and patterns of action. I was thinking about this during the past week about the Baptists, released this week in Haiti. They got arrested in Haiti for taking in Haitian children. They were going to give these children better lives, but they got arrested because they were doing this in an overt legal adoption, they were simply taking these children, with the permission of their parents of course. When they were released earlier this week they attributed their release to the actions of God, not just kindness or justice of the Haitian officials. They said God was with them in jail and had led them out and they sang Michael Smith's song "Awesome God." I think this song became popular a few years ago simply because it has the word ‘awesome' in it. It also affirms the power of God in a very positive way. "Our God is an awesome God / He reigns from heaven above, / with wisdom pow'r and love, / our God is an awesome God." Instead of seeing themselves as fighting the Haitian people as an enemy they reframed the entire experience as a way of nurturing their faith. This is a good thing, to nurture hope and confidence and claim that they were standing on the side of wisdom, power and love. This is what they believe they were doing, even in the midst of an awful situation, stuck in a prison in an impoverished country during a time of crisis. This could have been a time for despair.

The problem was that they had not gone far enough in their reframing. They had misunderstood their enemy as merely poverty. In Buddhism we talk about the "near-enemies." There are all sorts of things that seem good but are really unenlightened, hurtful. For example, it is good to be compassionate, to suffer with the suffering of others and wish them well. But pity, that self serving pity that makes you feel good that you are not suffering, or makes you feel good that you can help, can look like compassion, but what you are really doing is making someone else look weaker so you can feel stronger. And it was this way with these Baptists, they had not understood what their god and their actions had to do with the suffering of these impoverished people, who were also Christians; who had also prayed to the awesome god; who also believed God was with them in this time of trouble. They had not realized that they are part of a nation that has helped create the poverty of that nation. They had not realized that our national policies, often patronizing "we know better" in style are part of what keeps them in poverty and desperation. Also, Haiti has a particular problem with trafficking of children. These Baptists had not thought about the fact that when you take children away from their parents, with their approval, promising a better life for their kids, you are doing the exact same thing that the slave traders and sex traffickers are doing. They had not realized that they were becoming aligned with the wolves that come in sheep's clothing.

To stand against evil in the world requires a lot of intelligence and thought. More than any of us has. So that is why we come together in this pack, this community, to stand against the wolves and also be like the wolves. Because it is a fight we must be brave, strong, powerful and cunning. To end this sermon I will share a little parable about the wolf as enemy and not:

"A grandson came to his grandfather with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice.... The grandfather said, "Let me tell you a story. I too, at times, have felt great hate for those who have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do. But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. Being hateful is like taking poison in the hopes that it will kill you enemy. So I feel as if there are two wolves inside me and they are fighting with one another. One wants to live in harmony with all around him, to take only what he needs he is brave and self assured. He helps his companions and is loyal. He will only fight unless forced to do so. He always follows the right road. But...the other wolf... ah! The littlest thing will send him into a fit of temper. He feels there is never enough and that others are trying to take his share. He fights everyone, all of the time, for foolish reasons. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. He fears that first wolf. It is helpless anger. He fears the first wolf and tries to kill him. And so they fight. I can feel them fighting sometimes. It is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit, but one must win." The grandson asked him, "Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?" The grandfather answered: "The one I feed."

Which do you feed? Do you feed the idea that this is scary world, full of enemies, that you are alone and afraid, and your state is hopeless? Or do you feed the wolf that stands loyally with his friends in the middle of life? Do you feed the wolf that cares for the pups? Do you feed the wolf that howls with joy, at mornings and weddings? Do you feed the wolf that licks the wounds of its companions and makes the pack and the horses strong, whole and hale? Which wolf do you feed?