Reverend Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church
Portland, Oregon

May 5, 1996

"Inside, his heart is filled with peace;
Outside, he keeps his sword sharpened."
from Samurai warrior tradition

I heard an interesting editorial on PBS yesterday. It was by a man living in Sarajevo. He said he had just had his car towed from the main street, the street known as "sniper's alley." The street had acquired this name because so many civilians had been killed by sniper fire while walking down the street or stopping at red lights. It was more dangerous there than at the front. And now something simple and everyday and ordinary had happened--his car had been towed because of a parking violation. Back to normal. And yet he had to ask himself--and this is the fascinating part of the editorial--could he get used to a life this boring, after the excitement of war?

James Hillman is thinking in a similar vein, when he asks the question, "Do we, as a species, need war?" He recalls a scene from the film Patton , in which the American General walks the field after a battle. Patton sees the ruined land, the burned tanks, the dead soldiers. He takes a dying officer in his arms, kisses him, looks over the scene, and says: "I love it. God help me, I do love it so. I love it more than my life."

What is this love, this love that is more than life itself? That calls to something strangely transcendent? What is this warrior role, that soldiers remember with a kind of joy that is found no other place, where they found a kind of comradeship and willingness to sacrifice that has no equal? "It is well that war is so terrible," said Robert E. Lee, "else we would grow too fond of it." Perhaps it is only in the midst of death, in the midst of this intense fear of not living, that we feel so alive.

We have had wars for as long as we have walked upon the earth. And there has been a special place for the warrior. The warrior was called out from the people, was blessed by the shaman or by the priest, and then was ritually cleansed when he returned from battle, so that he could enter the tribe once again.

Somewhere along the way, that kind of warriorhood died. Perhaps it was in the Civil War, when brother warred against brother, and ranks of men were shot down at close range. Perhaps in WW I, when thousands of men were mowed down with machine guns by men they couldn't even see. Or perhaps in WW II, when bombs brighter than the sun destroyed hundreds of thousands of civilians. Today there is no blessing, no ritual cleansing. You get your papers and 24 hours later, you step out of the plane, and you're back home. Is it any wonder that thousands of Vietnam vets have committed suicide?

Let's talk about men for a moment. Because traditionally males have been our warriors. They do sacrifice, they do act boldly, they do put even their lives on the line. But the honor is hard to find now. We send the poorest and the youngest off to die, too often for dubious reasons. Too often they are sent not to defend the weak and the innocent, but rather to defend the business interests of their country. Where do men go, then, with this warrior impulse? Many adopt the role of the shadow warrior. They become rebels--join gangs or militia movements. Or more commonly they make the place of work into a battleground, full of strategizing, conquering, controlling. Or they refuse the warrior role altogether and become passive, become invisible--the "soft males" spoken of by Robert Bly and other writers. Shorn of their masculinity, their ability to act decisively in the world, they shrink from the strength of women.

I see men struggling with their masculine identity. What does it mean to be a man, nowadays? Because they have seen the shadow warrior at work--destructive energies unleavened by tenderness and love--some reject that way of life. They don't want bullying or shouting or endless jockeying for position. But do they need to give up their boldness, their bravery, their strength? I was talking to a man about this masculine identity thing a while back, and I said that maybe it wasn't fair, but if we were walking in a dark alley and we were attacked, I'd like to think that the man I was with could protect me. He said, "Well, I'd like to think that at least I wouldn't be the first to run."

The question that I bring to you today is, how do we deconstruct war and deconstruct the warrior? Both for men and for women, for all human beings have masculine and feminine aspects of being. It appears that we need the God of war, who is also the God of Awakenings, says Hillman. How can we be aware, awake, fearful, and ready? How can we be poised for action? How can we live life boldly, balanced and ready to sacrifice for the greater good? These are the ways of the warrior. How can we live like a warrior?

Let me read to you from Don Juan , by Carlos Castaneda: "One day Don Juan asked me: 'Do you think you and I are equals?' I was a university student and an intellectual and he was an old Indian, but I condescended and said: 'Of course we are equals.' He said: 'I don't think we are. I am a hunter and a warrior and you are a pimp. I am ready to sum up my life at any moment. Your feeble world of indecision and sadness is not equal to mine.' Well, I was very insulted and would have left, but we were in the middle of the wilderness. So I sat down and got trapped in my own ego involvement. I was going to wait until he decided to go home. After many hours I saw that Don Juan would stay there forever if he had to. Why not? For a man with no pending business, that is his power. I finally realized that this man was not like my father who would make twenty New Year's resolutions and cancel them all out. Don Juan's decisions were irrevocable as far as he was concerned. They could be canceled out only by other decisions. So I went over and touched him and he got up and we went home. The impact of that act was tremendous. It convinced me that the way of the warrior is an exuberant and powerful way to live."

Will, gesture, decision, action. That is the way of the warrior.

A warrior is present. A warrior shows up. Fully. Think about how seldom that happens in this culture. To show up. Fully. To be really there, in all you are, and just be willing to be present as you are. What a gift, when it comes to us! It is so clean, so pleasing, so fearless, so deserving of respect! The warrior is balanced and focused. The warrior is able to listen, to be there, without a need of your approval, and open to receive all of you that you can bring to the encounter. Forget the chatting, forget the game playing, forget the massaging of egos. The warrior cuts through it all, and stands there, poised, disciplined, unafraid of his power--or yours. She knows who she is, and doesn't put on a face for you or anyone else. He defends his boundaries and respects yours. You feel safe in his presence.

Simone Weil's mother disapproved of her activism with the French Resistance during WWII, and Simone Weil simply said to her, "Mother, if I had two lives to live, I'd be glad to give you one. But I don't." And that was that. The warrior knows about death, knows how short and how fragile life is, and that knowledge becomes the ground of authentic courage. Yes, I know that I can die, that I will die, and so life is ever so much sweeter, and so I will not hang back in fear, but I will taste life fully. Around such a one opens a ground of freedom, a breath of sweetness, an invitation to fullness.

The warrior is aware of his anger. There is no one of us who is not angry. Because we all experience in this world loss and betrayal. When someone leaves or dies. When ideals are dashed to the ground. When the world's manifold injustice lights upon us or upon one we love. When people are hungry or hurt or disrespected. If you are not angry, then you are not alive. If you are a man who denies your anger, you may become the soft male I spoke of earlier. If you are a woman, you may live wrapped in a cocoon of depression, waiting for your anger to transform you and give you wings to fly. But now, what does the warrior do with anger? She turns it around and redeems it. She blesses the world with it. Gandhi taught us about that. And Martin Luther King, Jr. "Get angry, but don't get violent," said King. Which is more difficult--to fight in the streets, or to go back to the segregated lunch counter day after day and get threatened and beaten and dragged off to jail? The warrior does battle not with persons, but with evil. Again, the words of King: "Suffering is infinitely more powerful than the law of the the jungle. . . ."

The warrior is in touch with his own woundedness. Have you ever noticed that people who do not know they are wounded are always bleeding on everybody else? When you know you are wounded, you can care for yourself, you can retreat from the fray and bind your wounds and rest. But if you don't know you're hurting, if you are just too frightened to admit how hurt you are, then you become a dangerous animal. Never go after a trapped animal, you'll get hurt every time. I have learned to be wary of them, these hurt souls. They don't want to heal themselves, they would prefer that everyone else hurt, too. They're vengeful, and they'll scratch your eyes out. But a warrior never fights for revenge; a warrior fights to defend the right, to protect the good.

A warrior is willing to take a stand, willing to act. Perhaps this is the essence of it--a warrior has enough self-respect that she will risk failing. Life is full of conflict and misapprehension. Anyone who acts will make mistakes, but the warrior is willing to be accountable--to say, yes, I did that, and hey I was wrong. Sorry. Which brings me to say that the warrior must be perpetually repenting. Daring to be wrong. Daring to be ignorant and foolish. And therefore having to forgive himself and be forgiven. Again and again. This life is full of paradox, and truth turns back upon itself and inside turns out and back is front. Two ways to go, and both cause pain. Be true to one principle and end up false to another. The warrior acts, nevertheless, and takes the consequences of his action.

A warrior is fierce. Now that's a wonderful yang quality. Ferocity! The ferocity comes because something we love is at stake. We defend it with all our heart and soul. Listen to the fierceness in the voice of African American poet Audre Lorde as she writes about her breast cancer. "Well, women with breast cancer are warriors also. I have been at war, and still am. So has every woman who has had one or both breasts amputated because of cancer . . . ." For me, my scars are an honorable reminder that I may be a casualty in the cosmic war against radiation, animal fat, air pollution, McDonald's hamburgers, and Red Dye No. 2, but the fight is still going on, and I am still a part of it. I refuse to have my scars hidden or trivialized behind lambswoool or silicone gel. I refuse to be reduced in my own eyes or in the eyes of others from warrior to mere victim, simply because it might render me a fraction more acceptable or less dangerous to the still complacent . . . . I refuse to hide my body simply because it might make a woman-phobic world more comfortable." Audre Lorde is so fierce here and so loving! Her words tell us that a woman must be more than "an externally defined sex object." That we must stop poisoning ourselves. That her breasts are beautiful, and she misses them, but she will love herself as she is, with her scars. Yes, she was a warrior, a great warrior.

Because a warrior honors and respects himself, he honors and respects others. He is modest, having no need to boast or to display his prowess. She has integrity--and by that I mean, that she is consistent with her words and actions. You can count on her, that what she says is true, and she lives out of that truth. Every day--even when no one else is looking. He is gentle, and he can afford to be, because his gentleness rests in strength. He has nothing to prove, no one to conquer but himself.

Do we need war, as Hillman says? We need much that war brings to us, makes of us. We need to be disciplined and present. We need to be in touch with our anger, our ferocity. We need to know our own woundedness, and we need to acknowledge that we are marked for death, that we might live fully in the moment. We need to act, even when there is no clear way to go. And most of all--and I think this is what gives the warrior the strength to go on--we long to be in service to something bigger than ourselves, a transcendent purpose outside the self. A person can endure heat and cold and fatigue and poverty and pain if there is a reason, and if that reason is grounded in love and in hope. The true warrior's life is organized around commitment to something he believes in and wants to serve.

So why aren't there more warriors around? Instead, why are there so many mere soldiers, following lock-step in line? Why do we deny our strength, our ferocity? Why do we not step out, boldly? I'm remembering a scene from Dr. Zhivago , a movie I saw trillions of years ago. The Russian Revolution was beginning, and as I recall it, there were these mounted troops, the White Army (the Czar's troops, I take it) and the foot soldiers of the Red Army, both on the same side at first, and then the Reds turn on the Whites. Most of the Whites flee, but one White officer waves his saber in the air and tries to force the Reds back in place, and of course, he gets pulled off his horse and cut down. The friend I was sitting next to bent over and whispered to me, "I think I would have gotten down off my horse and mingled."

I think that's my biggest temptation--to get off my horse and mingle. Just fit in. Don't stand out. People will notice and react. People might not like what I say or what I do. When you act boldly, you become a target, and there are always those who are ready to pull you down off your horse.

And then there's the desire for comfort. For escape. For ease. Oh, just eat another Snicker's bar and forget about death. Forget about living well. Forget about the moment and all of its realness. Forget about the face in the mirror. Forget about the dream last night. And drift off into illusion with whatever is your ticket out.

The hardest battle we face is with ourselves, with what we fear we may be or what we hope we will become. The bravest act of all is to be with ourselves as we are, to acknowledge all we are not, and to forgive ourselves and to love ourselves. As a person hating and pretending and judging and escaping--and dying, yes dying, that's the big one. When we are able to be with ourselves as we are, then we will surprise ourselves that our warrior nature will begin to unfold. We will have nothing to lose. If someone says, "You are arrogant and foolish," you can just say, "And that's not the least of it, you haven't seen anything yet!"

And the peace of the warrior comes to you. Because, you see, you have nothing to lose. Nothing is at stake. You are free to give yourself away. To serve the King. The Annointed One. And, oh, what a freedom it is! Every day, you fall to your knees in thanksgiving.

So be it. Amen.

Copyright © 1996, Reverend Dr. Marilyn Sewell. All rights reserved.