May 4,2008
Reality is What You Make of It;
Or The Strange Case of Emperor Norton I
by Rev. Colin Bossen
Call to Worship
We are born from words.
We are born from stories.
Human language binds us,
contains us,
sets us free.
We are born into light,
into seeking,
into sharing and fighting,
and loving and dreaming,
into hate and into peace.
We are born together,
each minute of every hour of every day,
each time we reach out,
each time we close in,
with every gesture,
with every word,
we are born anew.
We are born from words.
We are born from stories.
We are here to share,
to be together,
to seek and give comfort,
to find justice,
to offer love.
Come, friends, let us worship together.
Spoken Meditation
Enter with me into the space that some call prayer and others call meditation.
Close your eyes,
open your hearts,
open your ears,
open your minds.
The first of May has passed us by again.
The day of labor,
the day of flowers,
and May poles,
and celebrating spring,
and freedom,
and labor.
On this first Sunday after May Day
let us be thankful for the hands,
the minds,
the hearts,
the bodies,
the spirits,
that work to make the world run.
Let us be thankful for the sun that shines,
the rain that falls,
the rich humus of the Earth.
Without these things we would not be.
On this first Sunday after May Day
let us be thankful for all of those we have struggled for freedom,
for peace,
for honest work.
Let us lift the forgotten martyrs of Chicago who died for the eight-hour day,
the women and men who were beaten,
blacklisted,
cursed,
spat upon,
so that we might have a weekend.
Let us lift up the workers, the laborers, the poets, the artists,
the scientists, the intellectuals, who dream of a better world
and refuse to hurt their fellow humans.
Let us celebrate the dockworkers in Iraq, San Francisco, Oakland and South Africa,
who this week said, if only for a day, that they will not be party
to shipping arms to kill their fellows.
On this first Sunday after May Day
let us remember all of those we have come before us
and all of those who will come after us.
May our dreams be worthy of theirs,
may our hands reach out and touch them,
no matter the gulf in time or in distance.
Blessed Be and Amen.
Sermon
Joshua Abraham Norton was the first, and so far, only Emperor of the United States. He reigned from the fair city of San Francisco between September 1859 and January 1880. During that time he also served as the Protectorate of Mexico.
Emperor Norton was not born an emperor. Like most monarchs his authority was essentially self-invested. He made his rule known on September 17, 1859 by marching into a newspaper office and handing the editor a proclamation. It read, in part:
At the peremptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the past nine years and ten months of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these U.S....
Thinking its' readers would be amused, the newspaper printed the proclamation the next day. And thus began the career of the emperor of the United States.
Prior to becoming emperor Joshua Norton was a merchant. He came to San Francisco from South Africa during the Gold Rush not to mine gold but to supply miners with their needs and take advantage of the boom town business market. For several years he was quite successful. At one point he is supposed to have accumulated a fortune worth around a quarter of a million dollars, no small sum in the 1850s. But he lost most of fortune in a bad rice deal. By the time he had declared himself emperor he was essentially penniless.
Now there are a lot of people who think that Emperor Norton was mad. At least one of his biographers has labeled him a paranoid schizophrenic. There is probably some truth to these assertions. Any person who believes himself or herself to be Emperor of the United States is, in all likelihood, almost certainly mentally ill. Ill or not, the thing about Norton was that he was able to get people to go along with his madness.
At first it was just some of his old business associates. Taking pity on their friend they willing submitted to his requests for an occasional imperial tax. Eventually, much of the city went along and over the course of his twenty year reign Norton became a mascot for San Francisco. He was able to print his own money, eat free meals at restaurants and ride anywhere in California he wanted on the railroad. He was always given at seat at opening night theater performances and he befriended many of the prominent San Franciscans of his day. He would travel to Sacramento every year to supervise a bemused legislature. Cities and towns throughout the state, and even from as far away as Oregon, tried to curry his favor. Some say that while he was not actually an Emperor he was treated like royalty. Others say that his eccentric antics were good for the tourist industry and that the merchants of San Francisco got far more from him than they gave to him.
Norton would spend his days parading around San Francisco in his imperial regalia. It consisted of an Union Army soldier's uniform with massive epaulets, an enormous plumed hat, an ornate walking stick and a pair of beaten-up old boots. Often Norton would stop and review the local police or civic officials.
The police would usually salute him in response. Only once did an unwitting rookie arrest Norton and take him to jail for lunacy. The police chief upbraided the youngster and let Norton go. This was consistent with the general view that he was harmless. Other than the fact that he considered himself to be Emperor he has been described as a quite reasonable human being. He was peaceable, jovial and generally fairly quiet. As one admirer commented: "...since he has worn the Imperial purple [he] has shed no blood, robbed nobody, and despoiled the country of no-one, which is more than can be said for his fellows in that line."
During his lifetime Norton was undoubtedly San Francisco's favorite eccentric. When San Francisco was connected to the rest country by railroad Norton became a popular tourist attraction. People would buy postcards with his picture. Restaurants, bars and retails stores often advertised themselves as recipients of his patronage. In the 1870s it was not uncommon to see signs in shop windows that read: "Gentlemen's Outfitters by Appointment to His Imperial Majesty" or "His Imperial Majesty, Norton I, Eats Here."
Norton's actual influence on both his city of residence and the country at large was minimal. Though he was fond of issuing decrees and proclamations that he intended to serve as a governing instruction his wishes were rarely, if ever, followed. His first round of proclamations, issued shortly after he declared himself Emperor, dealt largely with such matters as dissolving Congress, demanding that the U.S. Army clear the halls of Congress for continuing to conduct business against his wishes and other things necessary to convert the United States from a republic to a monarchy.
One proclamation issued around that time called for the dismissal of the governor of Virginia for hanging John Brown, the abolitionist guerilla who tried to incite a slave rebellion in Virginia with the hopes that it would launch a national revolt against slavery. Brown's mission, embarked on with only 21 men, was a failure and he was executed for treason against the state of Virginia. Abolitionists across the country were outraged. Norton objected on slightly different grounds. In his proclamation he wrote: "Brown was insane and that he ought to have been sent to the Insane Asylum for capturing the State of Virginia with seventeen men" instead of executed.
This proclamation is actually revealing of Norton's general temperament. Back in the early 1850s, before he had lost his mind, he was noted as being one of the few people in San Francisco who objected to the habit of the local Vigilante Committee of lynching people without a trial. It is reputed that he actually stopped one of the city's anti-Chinese riots by kneeling in the midst of the rioters and reciting the Lord's Prayer until the violence ended.
Another curious thing about Norton was his objection to religious sectarianism. Two of his proclamations called for religious unity. In one he ordered the "obliteration of all religious sects and the establishment of an Universal Religion" and in another called for an alteration of the teachings of religious groups so that "the Hebrew and Christian faiths will become united."
This view was consistent with Norton's general desire for unity. He is also supposed to have advocated for a league of nations. His self-declared assent to the throne might have been a rather bizarre effort to preserve national unity in the years proceeding the Civil War. If the nation could not be preserved as a democracy Norton might have thought it was better off as a monarchy.
With that in mind, it is probable that the Emperor's religious views were at least partially shaped by his attendance of the First Unitarian Society of San Francisco. According to Charles Murdock, a contemporary and member of the congregation, Norton "often attended the service of the Unitarian church, and expressed his feeling that there were too many churches and that when the empire was established he should request all to accept the Unitarian church."
Undoubtedly, Norton's most famous proclamation is his call for the construction of a bridge and a tunnel to connect San Francisco and Oakland. He is, as far as is known, the first person to call for the construction of either. Today many San Franciscans regard him as a visionary in this matter.
Norton died on a street corner in January of 1880. Though many had supposed him to live quite luxuriously, after death his quarters were revealed to be a meager 6' by 9' room. His possessions consisted of some scrip, a handful of forged telegrams congratulating him on his upcoming nuptials with Queen Victoria and a few dollars. He had insufficient funds to even pay for a decent burial. A collection was immediately taken up and a fine casket was secured. His funeral procession was over two miles long and as many as ten thousand people are purported to have attended. He lives on in the stories of San Franciscans, as saint of the parody religion Discordianism and a figure in popular culture.
Norton might seem like an odd topic for a sermon. His life story evokes a mixture of pity and humor. I am never quite certain whether I should laugh with or weep for him. However one reacts to Norton, I think his story illustrates a useful theological point. What we consider to be reality is at least partially a social construct.
As individuals we all view and respond to the world slightly differently. In order to reach some agreement about how the world actually is, we tell each other stories. The society we are born into, our parents, our experiences and our education largely determine which stories we hear and which stories we take seriously. Most religions are shaped around a specific story, something theologians and philosophers often call a metanarrative.
A metanarrative is a narrative that wraps up and contains other stories within it. It explains some fundamental truth about the world and offers a lens through which to view reality. To give a few examples: Christianity is the story of how Jesus saves and redeems humanity. Judaism is the story of God's relationship with a particular people and through them the rest of the world. Buddhism is a story about how the Buddha received enlightenment and escaped suffering and how, by following his path, we each can receive enlightenment. The religions of many indigenous peoples are the stories of their relationship with their land.
In our culture we have a number of other metanarratives that are thrust upon us. The so-called "war on terrorism" with its idea that the most dangerous threat facing our society is the varying groups of desperate and stateless individuals who want to forcibly impose their values on the rest of the world is one such metanarrative. The central doctrine of capitalism, that individuals buy and sell goods and labor according to their own rational interests and that, as such, the market is the best place to determine human social values is another. In our culture two different metanarratives are currently competing to define humanity's relationship with the natural world. One says that human activity and industrial waste is causing a fundamental shift in the planet's climate. The other says that humans are not capable of affecting nature in this way and that whatever climate changes that are occurring are part of a natural cycle.
These stories, and how we choose to relate to them, order much of our lives. As the theologian George Tinker writes: "All of us live in an imagined, thought-up world--a social and mental construct. Our task is either to imagine the future of this world into existence together or let it be imagined for us and to play out the rules that others will impose on us." In other words, we have to each decide how we relate to the stories of our cultures, religions and ancestors. Do we accept them as we are? Adapt them to meet the needs of contemporary society? Reject them outright? Create new ones?
Here our Unitarian Universalist faith can be helpful. Unitarian Universalism does not lay claim to a particular metanarrative. Or rather, our metanarrative is that the story of each religion is not the only story. All of the world's different metanarratives overlap and bump against each other. Each story offers only a partial view. To get the most complete picture of the world we need to learn and consider the merits of many stories. Forrest Church, the one of the ministers of All Souls, Unitarian in New York, has written a sermon about the world's many stories. In it he calls us to "Imagine the world as a vast cathedral." He says:
In the Cathedral of the World there are windows beyond number...Each in its own way is beautiful...Each tells a story about the creation of the world, the meaning of history, the purpose of life, the nature of humankind, the mystery of death. The windows of the cathedral are where the light shines through.
The light is truth. Viewed through each window it looks a little different. As Unitarian Universalists we know that truth has a common source and that each window offers us only a partial view of it. Each story is incomplete. We have to consider the stories of our neighbors if we want to every even grasp at a larger story. No matter how hard we try we will never have the complete story.
Norton's story suggests that it is possible for even one individual, even a mad man, to slightly change the stories of those around him. No one actually thought Norton was the Emperor of the United States, not even the handful of old miners who sat with him in the park every day and let themselves be labeled his court. But Norton was able convince his society to take care of him by presenting an engaging story. People changed their behavior because of his story. Rather than rejecting him as just another washed out old bum silently fading at a flophouse Norton was looked after.
The lesson of Norton's story is that we change the world when we change our stories. There are plenty of stories to choose from in the world and an infinite variety available if decide to create our own. The dominant metanarratives in the world should best be understood as just one set of stories among many. Their totalizing tendencies can be put into perspective when we consider the many stories that exist in the world. Throughout human history people have found a myriad of different ways of organizing themselves. The dominant stories in our culture are best understood as but one set of stories among many. Like all stories these stories only offer a partial truth.
We have the power as individuals and as a society to choose new or different stories than the ones we have used thus far. We could replace metanarratives that call for violence with nonviolent ones. We could replace stories of oppression and hatred with stories of liberation and love. We could swap stories of poverty and scarcity with those of richness, abundance and sharing.
That it may be so, I say Blessed Be and Amen.