Rev. Tom Disrud

First Unitarian Church
Portland, Oregon

March 1, 1998

There is an immutable life principle with which many people will quarrel.

Although nature has proven season in and season out that if the thing that is planted bears at all, it will yield more of itself, there are those who seem certain that if they plant tomato seeds, at harvestime they can reap onions.

Too many times for comfort I have expected to reap good when I know I have sown evil. My lame excuse is that I have not always known that actions can only reproduce themselves, or rather, I have not always allowed myself to be aware of that knowledge. Now, after years of observation and enough courage to admit what I have observed, I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies.

Of course, there is no absolute assurance that those things I plant will always fall upon arable land will take root and grow, nor can I know if another cultivator did not leave contrary seeds before I arrived. I do know, however, that if I leave little to chance, if I am careful about the kinds of seeds I plant, about their potency and nature, I can, within reason, trust my expectations. -- Maya Angelou

A few weeks ago, when the scandal first broke that President Clinton allegedly had an affair with a White House intern, and then pressured her to lie about it, I found myself reacting with more than one emotion.

Part of me was angry and repulsed. Could the President really have been involved with a woman not much older than his daughter? And the reporters. They are on a feeding frenzy, reporting on what other reporters were reporting. In this process, a question or comment seems to become fact instantly. In the interest of reporting something first, standards suddenly go out the window. And then there’s the so- called friend who wears a wire to tape conversations with her friend. What does that say?

That was one reaction. Then, of course, there was the part of me that is fascinated. This is the part of me that was reading every single word I could about it. It had all the juicy elements of sex and risk and intrigue and betrayal. How could this be happening? If it is true, how could he be that stupid?

In the midst of all this, it is important to be able to laugh. Have you heard about the sequel to Hillary Clinton’s book: “It Takes a Village to Watch My Husband.”

Politics: can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

Feeling both angered and intrigued is actually a pretty common response to politics, especially Washington, DC, politics.

More than anything else, I usually want to detach myself from it all. I’m drawn to the intrigue and maneuvering, but in the end I find I also want to have little to do with it. All in all, I feel like it is something going on back there that I have little control over. I don’t feel like I have much power in the situation, so why bother.

This is not an altogether new sense, of course. Our leaders have talked about integrity through the generations, and it hasn’t always rung true. As Emerson once said: “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

And so we come to believe they deserve each other back there. David Sarasohn said it well in the Oregonian last month: “It’s possible, at this point, to have the unsettling feeling that Clinton and Starr deserve each other.”

My first sustained memories of politics happened during the 1972 presidential election. I was 10 years old and thought George McGovern could do no wrong. He was the right man for the nation, I believed. I couldn’t understand how Nixon would go on to win by such a landslide.

But it wasn’t long before the climate shifted. The Watergate story would evolve, there would be hearings and denials upon denials of wrongdoing. Finally, Nixon would resign. I remember the night it was a warm summer evening. For this 12- year-old, the situation seemed fixed. The bum was out and things would go on.

It wasn’t as simple as that, of course. For me, that was a defining event in terms of how I view political leaders. I learned early on to see things with a skeptical eye.

It was not the sense of trust I inherited from my mother about leaders. On the wall of my her kitchen were plates of the Kennedy brothers, John and Bobby, and of Hubert Humphrey. The mention of Humphrey’s name would often prompt a tear in my mother’s eyes.

These were people she believed in, not just for their policies, but about what was possible in the world. They set a tone that was a model in her life.

None of those men who were my mother’s heroes were prefect, we now know. They were far from it. But there was a sense of covenant between leaders and people that today seems all too uncommon.

Today much of our political life seems focused on winning and losing. The goal seems not only to get your policies and candidates in place, but to bring the other guy down, whatever the cost. If it means betraying a friendship or smearing someone, then so be it. It is all part of the game.

Any sense of the greater good is often lacking. It gets lost in the process.

In his book called “Integrity” Stephen Carter asks if we as a nation have lost a sense of integrity. He talks of how popular the word is, even if people don’t exactly agree on the meaning. He says it is like the weather. Everybody talks about it nobody knows quite what to do about it.

There seems to be a disconnect between what people do and who they are.

In our current context, most people don’t think much of the president’s personnel behavior, but his approval ratings are the highest ever. If the economy is good and I feel good, then the rest doesn’t seem to matter. They’re all bums anyway, the theory goes. I’ll get as much as I can and leave the rest.

The word integrity comes from the same Latin root as integer or whole number. Historically it has carried much the same sense, the sense of wholeness. A person of integrity, like a whole number, is a whole person, a person somehow undivided. The word conveys not so much a singlemindedness as it does completeness. It is the sense that a person is living his or her life rightly, that they are on the path.

Stephen Carter says that integrity is not an easy process and defines it in three steps.

The first comes from an act of discernment. We are asked to deeply consider what is right and what is wrong. It is not necessarily believing what everyone else believes, but looking around us and discerning what we believe.

Once we have done that, we are asked to act on what we believe, even if it is at personal cost. If we believe in something we are asked to take a stand and act on those beliefs.

And finally comes what may be the hardest step. Being willing to state that we are acting out of our principles and why. In an age when we often want to conform, this may not be easy. This means standing up for what you believe and also being open to engaging others and further discerning.

I think of the story of Nick Cardell. He is a Unitarian Universalist minister from Syracuse, New York, and faces six months in a federal prison after protesting at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. This is where military officers from Central America are trained and often go home to support military regimes. Manuel Noriega, the former dictator of Panama, was trained there.

Cardell discerned that the school was wrong, protested at the sight, was arrested, and stood by his conscience to continue protests. He now faces prison time along with a Catholic nun.

Cardell’s example shows what standing by our beliefs can lead to. It is easy to talk about integrity from the perspective of what leaders do or don’t have in that regard. It is perhaps more difficult to look at our own lives and to put our principles on the line.

Stephen Carter makes the point that we talk about integrity, but asks if this is really what we want from our leaders. There are the stated rules, and then there are the unstated ones, or as Carter calls them, the rules are about following the rules.

He tells the story of a football player who fails to catch a ball thrown his way. The player hits the ground, rolls over, and then jumps up, celebrating as though he had caught the pass after all. The referee was standing in a position that did not give him a good view of what had happened, was fooled by the player’s pretense, and so moved the ball down the field. The player rushed back to the huddle so that his team could run another play before the officials had a chance to review the tape. Viewers at home could see what had happened. The only response from commentators was, What a heads-up play, read: Wow, what a great liar this kid is, well done.”

Carter points to this as a metaphor for our society. If we have lied and not gotten caught, then it is OK.

And imagine what would have happened if the had gone to the referee and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t make that catch.” It is likely that the fans and coaches would have been furious. He would have not been seen as a team player. It is questionable is his honesty would not have won him many friends.

We have rules in our culture, and we also have the rules about following the rules that don’t always say the same things.

If we have leaders who can shade the truth, then it certainly seems a lot more acceptable for the rest of us to do the same.

But what happens is a dissatisfaction with the political process. A lot doesn’t get done that needs to get done. And just like when we shade the truth to get by, the process doesn’t make us feel very good about things. Just more detached and disillusioned.

When we see integrity demonstrated, it is a different feeling.

When we have leaders who are willing to do what they believe is right, we are better for it. There are examples of leaders who do this, I believe.

Our own Gov. Kitzhaber is one, I believe. He is a person who seems more deeply concerned about the state than his own image. And he is willing to make unpopular decisions. Recently, there has been the controversy over The Capes, the uninsurable homes that were build on a beach cliff that is now eroding. Kitzhaber refused to declare an emergency and allow a stone retaining wall to be built, stating that he would be obligated to do this in countless other areas up and down the coast, and that would put a blemish on our public beaches.

And there’s the story of Peter Edelman.

Peter Edelman was an assistant secretary in the Department of Heath and Human Services during the first Clinton administration. He is also the husband of Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund. In September of 1996, he resigned because of profound disagreements with the welfare law that Congress passed and President Clinton signed.

What is interesting is how he did it. At the time, it was only a couple months before the election. The welfare bill was a vast change from how things had been and he felt a sense of betrayal, loss, and disillusionment at Clinton.

He could have vented his spleen, saying how awful Clinton was, but the discernment told him that was not the best way to handle it. He said simply that he had worked as hard as he could over the past 30 years to reduce poverty and that in his opinion the bill moved in the opposite direction.

In the midst of his hurt and anger, he kept sight of the larger picture, believing it was still in the best interest of the country to have Clinton reelected. Despite his disagreement over the welfare bill, he believed a second Clinton term was better that electing Bob Dole.

He stated why he was doing what he was doing, but he did it in such a way that kept his higher goals in mind. That has integrity.

And a current example happening in Washington is the alliance between Senators John McCain of Arizona and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. They are the authors of the current campaign finance reform bill before the Senate. McCain is a republican and Feingold is a democrat. They have a deep respect for each other despite being on opposite ends of the political aisle. Their bill is in trouble, but at the core of it is a relationship of respect and willingness to work together.

There are examples of integrity in our political life.

It would be easy to spend most of this time looking at politicians and their integrity, or lack of it. It is important we look to our leaders for integrity, but it also happens in the context that we includes all of us.

If we or our leaders sense that they can do the politically expedient thing and get away with it, they are probably going to do that. In the short term, at least, it is probably the easiest.

But it is also probably how we have gotten to where we are today—a lack of strong covenant between leaders and people. If it is OK for Clinton to not be totally honest about things, then it is probably also OK for me to do the same.

This is where integrity gets tricky. We, too, are called to discern what is right and to live accordingly. As the Edelmen story shows, we all are asked to take responsibility for our roles and our actions, and to strive for integrity.

It is certainly easier to project things onto leaders and expect them to fix it. That is too easy a solution. We are part of it.

The process of discernment is a constant one. We have to ask who we are and what our priorities are. And we have to be open to changing our minds. Integrity is not necessarily staking a claim on a position and standing there no matter what. Part of the discernment process is being open to changing our minds and seeing the bigger picture.

Socrates said “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Viktor Frankl said this about survival in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany: “Any attempt to restore a person’s inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal. One who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how. What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing ones, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

When we live out of the why, the rest follows. It allows us to move from a strong place of our beliefs and to do what is right.

This discernment is a constant process, one where we are asking ourselves what is right. It leads to many steps, some big and some small. Some things are clear, and we have to constantly be open to listening for the indicators around us.

I saw a couple examples in the past week here in our church. The first happened on Monday morning when many people from our church were part of a peace demonstration downtown. Five of our Board members were there. It was a process of putting beliefs into action and standing against a potential war. It meant moving from a belief that the potential war was wrong and getting up early and walking on a cold February morning.

The other event was a meeting. It was a committee that faced a difficult decision. The issue was potentially divisive and could have long-term consequences. But the process was allowed to work. People said their pieces, and slowly some clarity began to emerge. It was a setting where people were willing to say what they were thinking, people listened to what they were saying, and slowly the group started to move toward some conclusions. I remember the sense of integrity I felt about the people in the circle and how that influenced the discussion. That process will continue, but it is how the process should work. A final decision was not made, but the group came a lot closer to finding that decision. Because the process had integrity, the finale decision will be OK whatever it turns out to be.

This ongoing discernment process may not always be easy, but it may help us feel a deeper sense of wholeness. Too often we feel like part of us has to stay under wraps, and we have to be one person in this context and another person in this context. That is not easy either.

And we usually know what is right when listen to ourselves. The impulse is there.

For me, when I look back on that early political memory in 1974, after the resignation of President Nixon, my impulse was to move into action. In that case I decided to join the Young Democrats of Wisconsin. The impulse was strong and it didn’t feel like I had any choice but to follow it. Today, I expect, I would find more excuses about why I couldn’t do it. But at the time it felt like something I had to do.

Words of William Stafford:

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote, important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

May it be so. Amen.

Copyright © 2000, Reverend Thomas Disrud. All rights reserved.