See How We Are

SEE HOW WE ARE

A Sermon Delivered to Pathways Unitarian 

Universalist Church in Hurst, TX, June 4, 2023

Some of you can do this and some of you will have to imagine it, but I want to take you back a moment to 1987, when the band X released its penultimate album See How We Are. We’re in the final dying throes of what Mark Green would call Ronald Reagan’s Reign of Error, whose cultivated meanness of spirit and deeds we thought we’d never experience again.

          Into this miasma waded songwriters John Doe and ex-wife Exene Cervenka, whose punk group X had achieved some success with their 83 release, Los Angeles, eventually one of Rolling Stones’ Top 100 albums, The title song swiftly became an anthem for the disaffected punk of the times. What was punk? If you watched American TV at that time, programs like Phil Donahue and Quincy and even CPO Sharkey convinced you punk music was music about nihilism and what you hate. On CHiPs its lead punk was portrayed by Donny Most, an actor better known for Ralph Malph on Happy Days. It may have been an accurate portrayal of Donny Most but not of punk.

Punk, rather than being rooted in hate, is rooted in love. You don’t bother singing about what you don’t like. Just for fun I typed “punk rock wedding songs” and received at least one list with nearly 100 options. Admittedly, many of them were about wedding-type love rather than agape. But while Chuck D famously called hip hop and rap “the CNN of the ghetto” and rock historian Greil Marcus wrote “the goal of every rock n roll band is to make everyone listen;” I would argue the goal of every punk song is to make everyone aware what needs to change. Natalie, a young woman in Manchester, England, has said, “’punk’ isn’t just a mohawk and leather jacket, it's about being true to yourself and not being afraid of who you are, being brave and bold and strong.” You can’t change what you don’t love.

        *I cut this section in the sermon for time but it does explain why I call this what I do.  [By the way, what I’ve identified as Punk Spirituality I’ve named that because when I was beginning to articulate my beliefs I was listening to a lot of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, numbered by Marcus among the “cult prophets” of the late 60s and early 70s like Captain Beefheart, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, and the New York Dolls and made up early punk playlists. At a different time and in a different mind I would identify my spirituality, as Donald Miller does, with jazz, or like Moya Harris with the hip hop of Lauryn Hill. And while both of them root their revelations in Christianity, my life has had greater spiritual experiences with non-Christians, so my spirirtuality is, I think, faster and noisier.] 

What needed to change in 1987? According to John Doe and Exene Cervenka, crowded jails, women “knowing their place”, dividing ourselves physically and emotionally, the capitalist emphasis on commodification of wants while ignoring kids going without basic needs. An emphasis too on “what can I get out of you, what can you do for me while I give nothing in return?” What little you have is what someone else wants so we’ll push you another rung down, addict you, poison you, literally displace you if necessary to take it. In the ensuing 35 years, how much has changed? A major element of punk is Do-it-yourself, exemplified by the probably apocryphal comment by Brian Eno that the Velvet Underground didn’t sell many records but everyone who bought one started their own band. You’re responsible to change what you don’t like, even in music. To paraphrase Toni Morrison, If you can’t find the life you want to live, make it yourself.

There is something in us that wants to be better than we were. A part of our makeup that tries to improve, even if briefly, that gets us up in the morning and puts us to sleep at night. Leaving us unfulfilled if, throughout the day, we haven’t moved otherwise. I’m not talking about ambition. I mean an urge to do, even if it’s “just” thinking or eating, so that we ruminate, if nothing else.

Maybe that’s what theists mean when they say we’re made in the image of God. Taking them at their word, God made everything in God’s image. It might be for this reason they also say, and I agree, that you can’t meet anyone or anything God doesn’t love. Yes, even mosquitoes. Yes, even Donald Trump.

We laugh but let me give you a literary example. Unitarian Universalist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, in his play Happy Birthday, Wanda June, includes a character who was a Nazi in life. He describes heaven to us. No one in heaven is singled out for punishment or exhortation. Everyone, even Jesus, even Hitler, spends eternity basking in the sun. Hitler, he tells us, is just another guy playing shuffleboard.

I’m going to leave you with another video. I’m not going to read the lyrics to you, because the lyrics, by Iggy Pop and David Bowie, won’t make much sense to you unless you’re familiar with William Burroughs’ novel The Ticket that Exploded. The song, “Lust for Life”, was released in 1979, somewhat at the height of US punk music but this video is from a concert this past April. Despite its esoteric lyrics, the song quickly became an anthem of punk for its energy. “Got a lust for life”. To add a little extra oomph, the guitarist and percussionist on his recording, who later went on with David Bowie and Reeves Gabrels to form the group Tin Machine, were Hunt and Tony Sales, sons of Soupy Sales. Iggy has famously performed shirtless since at least 1980. You might be familiar with the song if you saw the movie Trainspotting, based on the Irvine Welsch novel about Glasgow heroin addicts. If you saw the trailer for that film you’d have seen a couple dozen men and boys “dressed” like Iggy, all of them flaunting their huge bellies or their chicken wings or their sunken chests. 

In the absence of the lyrics what do I want you to notice? This is a cut-down version of an 8 minute video [the video played during service was necessarily short] and what I want you to pay attention to at first is Iggy. Notice that he’s limping and not trying to hide that he’s tired. The man is 74 years old. His belly is sagging, he’s developing moobs, and his scraggly beard is gray. He rests against a stool before he starts singing. But he has no trouble demanding of his audience that they come up there and dance with him. And they do.

And look at those kids! Fewer than a third of the people who jump up there with him were even alive when the song was released, and certainly not the age to have attended one of his shows. The vast majority of his companion dancers are celebrating and singing along to music released 45 years ago. At best, it’s their parents or their grandparent’s music.

This is what it means to be at one with God or the universe or reality. To  see ourselves as we really are, warts, moobs, and all, the way the universe or God sees us and nonetheless to celebrate our own and God’s lust for life. You’ve heard the phrase “dance like nobody can see you”. My friend’s daughter improved on it: “Dance like everyone wants to see you dance.”