June 15, 2008
Reimagining the City
by Rev. Colin Bossen
My message this morning is the same as my message last Sunday. A strong and healthy Unitarian Universalist congregation is one that is dedicated to the spirits of life, love and liberation. Such a congregation cannot help but change the lives of its members and the greater community of which it is a part. The repetition of the message is because today's sermon is the second part of a sermon diptych. Last week we explored a vision for our congregation. This week we will consider a vision for greater Cleveland and the role we might collectively play in its future.
In case you do not remember, a diptych is an art object with two interrelated panels. Classical diptychs are usually physical objects in which a hinge literally connects the two panels. This physical connection emphasizes the interrelation of the diptych's images. Many diptych's tell a story in two panels or have images that rely upon each other for their meanings. During the Renaissance diptychs were a common form of religious art. With such art objects one panel might show Jesus as a holy infant while the other shows him as a grown man, crucified or in communion with saints. The power of the diptych is that the panels make less sense separately than they do when viewed together.
The two panels of our diptych contain two different mosaics. The first mosaic, which we looked at last week, provided us with a vision for our congregation. In that mosaic we saw that present in our congregation are the spirits of life, love and liberation. The spirit of life is what brings us together. We gather as a religious community because we need a place to mark the great passages in our lives--births, marriages and deaths--, to celebrate joy, to seek succor in times of sorrow and to wrestle with the mystery of existence.
The spirit of love is what binds us together. It is result of our human need for connection and relationship. It is found in all of the acts, small and great, that make this a caring community united in honor of the spirit of life, rather than just a loose collection of individuals. The spirit of love is present among us when we offer each other aid, when we reach out and when we welcome each other into our lives.
The spirit of liberation comes from our understanding that if the spirit of love is about connection then each person must be free to make connections as he or she best sees fit. The spirit of liberation challenges us to remember that for the sprit of life to flourish and for the spirit of love to be present we must have freedom.
The vision we found of our community in that first mosaic was of bringing these spirits ever more present in our lives and our congregation. Working together to do this would help move us towards the beloved community. It would allow us to have a community in our lives which was worthy of our loyalty and our love. Such a community would be transformative of both ourselves and our wider world.
Today we are going focus our attention on the second mosaic that makes up our diptych. That mosaic is of our polis, the Greater Cleveland area. Without that broader community our congregation would not exist. We are bound to its destiny. To lesser extent, it is bound to ours. While we would not exist without our polis, it would exist without us. However, the Cleveland area would be the poorer if this congregation were not here. The stronger we are as a religious community, the more we are able to devote ourselves to the spirits of life, love and liberation, the more we can contribute to this metropolitan area. Each step we take towards beloved community is a small step for the broader community as well.
I use the word polis to describe Cleveland and its environs. The word comes from the Greek and is often used to refer to a city state. Greater Cleveland is not a city state but it is more than might be captured by commonly used words like metropolitan or technical words like conurbation. Greater Cleveland is, to be sure, Cleveland and its suburbs but it is also the small towns like Wooster, Oberlin and Orrville that share our media market and cultural resources and the many farms whose crops frequent our tables. I like the word polis to describe this network of interdependent communities because, to me, it conjures up the image of a city and its sphere of influence.
When we look at the mosaic of Greater Cleveland we see a richness of buildings, institutions, neighborhoods, natural resources and people. The mosaic comes alive and is filled with a blur of motion and activity. The past, the present and the future all collide in it. Here in Coventry we see hippies from the sixties, the Jewish community that was here before them and the mixture of bohemian shops, slightly up market restaurants and bars and music spots that makes up the street today. Elsewhere we see downtown both in its' heyday and as it is today, the steel plants and manufacturing centers both now and before many stood derelict, the West Side Market with its ethnic vendors, meats and produce hall, the Cleveland Orchestra, the cultural richness of our museums and the natural beauty of the metroparks.
We also see that our polis is troubled. It has spread ever outwards with highways, automobiles and cheap gasoline. At the edge of urbanization, housing developments have replaced farm fields. Meanwhile the center seems to slowly rot as the foreclosure crisis, abandoned houses, a weak economy, inconsistent public schools and violence all take their separate tolls.
There are several themes that we find in our panel. They are, perhaps, less elegant than the spirits of life, love and liberation that were found in our congregational panel. Those spirits can be found embedded in our second panel but they are muted, their presence made know most distinctly by the diptych itself. The major themes that seem to emerge from today's panel are ecology, economy, culture and politics.
The French architect Le Corbusier argued "A house is a machine for living in." If this is true then a city is a complicated machine for human society to live in. Such a machine is made up of a seemingly infinite array of interlocking parts. The engines that drive these parts are ecology, economy, culture and politics.
It might seem odd to assert that ecology is one of the central forces that drives our polis. However, almost all human communities are shaped by, and shape, their environments. It is no coincidence that Cleveland grew up around the intersection of Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River. Since ancient times many cities and towns have been located on waterways. They serve as excellent sources for food, irrigation, hygiene and transportation. There are few major settlements located far from water. Those that do exist have largely come into being with advent of 20th century technology.
Water, of course, is not the only element of ecological systems and the fertility of the land, the climate and the presence of natural resources all factor into how a polis will develop and grow. The food available at the Shaker Square farmers market, for instance, is somewhat different than the food to be found in California or even Southern Michigan. The growth conditions here are different. The food locally available has historically shaped the culture of a place. Today as the local food movement gains strength this is becoming true of some haute cuisine again.
One of the charges of any given polis is that it serve as a good steward for the ecological systems of which it is a part. If it does not then both the human community and the environment will suffer consequences. The Cleveland area still smarts from the images of the Cuyahoga burning in the sixties. We have a varied and beautiful natural landscape. Many people from outside the region cannot imagine this. The abuse our ecological system suffered many years ago has left its impression.
The three other engines of a polis might be understood as all variations on how humans use our creativity to respond to the ecological systems around us. The economy is how we organize ourselves for the cultivation and creation of the goods and services necessary for life and luxury. Historically the economy of a community was limited by the ecological resources available. In our increasingly globalized society this appears to be less the case than in the past. Today the economy of a community is instead more likely to be dependent on its location in relation to trade routes and the richness of its culture.
The economy of any given polis is central to its health and long-term vitality. Without a strong economy it is difficult for workers to support their families and for communities to sustain cultural vitality. A polis with a weak economy will struggle to retain its young and maintain its infrastructure. The polis of Greater Cleveland struggles economically. It still relies heavily on manufacturing for employment long after the advent of new technologies and the practice of sending work to cheaper labor markets have made manufacturing a less reliable source for jobs. Other than health care economic development in new sectors is slow to grow.
Economic activity is one method through which we humans use and spur our creativity. It is essential to all human communities. Without the shaping and reshaping of natural resources to meet human needs and the provision of essential services no human community, no city, no town or even village, would exist. That said, life is more than work. Work maybe gratifying but it is never sufficient to meet the human hunger to create and communicate. That hunger is the origin of culture.
Culture takes many forms. Broadly defined it might be the sum of activities extraneous to subsistence. Education, religion, the arts, cuisine, fashion. theater, music, gardening and floral arrangement, dance, literature, radio, television, movies and comic books are all kinds of culture.
Greater Cleveland is not lacking in culture. Our culture is, perhaps, our greatest strength. We have a fantastic orchestra, world class museums, excellent restaurants and innovative theater. Each month that I live here I discover another something new in the mosaic of our culture. Since mid-May I have attended the delightfully down home Hessler Street fair, witnessed the explosion of colors, shapes and sounds that is Parade the Circle, seen abstract theater pieces and visited ethnic food shops where one can procure everything from pastramied smoked fish to palm oil, fufu flour and bonito flakes.
There's a word for how we as a society decide which cultural institutions and economic activities are important. That words is politics. The word originates with the Greek polis. Polis means not only a city and its environs but also a people. Politics is the word for how people chose to organize themselves. It is the last engine that drives our polis. When political systems function well they act less like engines and more like the rudder on a ship. They allow a community to set its course and change its direction while the other engines push it forward. Using an imperfect and mixed metaphor politics should be like a chemical catalyst. They should encourage and speed-up economic and cultural development rather than inhibit them.
Unfortunately, in Greater Cleveland our politics are particularly dysfunctional. In many ways the local political system and boundaries serve to inhibit economic growth and cultural creativity. There is not nearly enough coordination or resource sharing across the counties and municipalities. The region is balkanized with the duplication of many services. In some cases local government bureaucracies serve as small fiefdoms for politicians. As the economy of Greater Cleveland municipalities often compete against each other rather work together for the good of the region. The working poor become isolated in some communities while wealth sits concentrated in others. As a result urban blight spreads from pocket to pocket as each community individually lacks the resources to face it.
If Greater Cleveland is to have a bright future this political balkanization must end and our polis must move towards more robust regional governance. Failing to do so will only continue the era of destructive and unnecessary competition instead of shifting us to focusing on the cooperation we so desperately need.
As we turn from politics we see that our diptych is nearly complete. We have seen the distinct outlines of what animates our congregation--the spirits of life, love and liberation--and what animates our polis--ecology, economics, culture and politics. There is much detail that could added to both mosaics, in neither do we see a proscription for concrete steps forward nor a depiction of many of the current ills and blessings present. The broad outlines of our mosaic offer only the essence of a vision. Creating a more complete one is something we all must do together through conversation, reflection and examination.
Before we close our diptych we need to examine its most important aspect, the relation between and a vision for our congregation and our polis. Suzanne DeGaetano did much of work for us in the greetings she sent. She wrote:
This church is the spiritual heart of the community. And as a merchant I know that it's resources are available to us, whether it is meeting space for speakers or providing comfort and solace for our grief when we lose someone.
This is the role we already play within in the Coventry community. A vision for our congregation is that we play this role within all of Greater Cleveland. Such a role can be a transformative one. We are a particular kind of cultural institution. We are a religious community. Religion is a kind of culture that focuses its attention primarily on the spirit of life. Our liberal religion says that everyone celebrates this spirit of life and that, whatever our individual beliefs, there are many ways we can celebrate the spirit together.
One of the things we do when we come together celebrate the spirit of life we explore and articulate what in life we find of value. The philosopher Paul Goodman once wrote "All societies are patterns of culture..." Those patterns of culture are determined, in part, by what individuals define as a worthwhile. In such a religious community as ours we can educate each other as to the true value of the Greater Cleveland community and we can imagine and reach out to others with a vision for a justice filled thriving polis. Doing so will challenge each of us to examine our lifestyles, our economic and political decisions and the way we choose to interact with each other and our environment on a daily basis.
In our religious communities we shape and transmit culture. As our reading this morning reminded us what we do here together impacts the wider community. Our act of worship is about lifting up what is of ultimate worth in our lives. This can be a transformative experience. It can help us find connection with others and with the deeper mysteries of life. It can remind us that our community is more than people from Coventry, from Cleveland Heights, from the East side or even from Greater Cleveland. It can help us to remember that we are all part of the human family, that our congregation is connected to the broader community and that, by seeking what is good, we can build the beloved community together.
That it may be so, I say Amen and Blessed Be.