Vonnegut to Kriebel

 Sermon by

Reverend Nancy Bouchard

June 14, 2009

I can only imagine that Gail is sitting and wondering about this path leading from Vonnegut to Kriebel.  Relax Gail, -WE WILL WALK CAREFULLY!  And, I promise you it will be good, it will all be good.

Over the last several weeks I’ve been participating in a Bible Study with some UUCLV members and friends. It’s interesting, to say the least, when you put the Bible in the hands of Unitarian Universalists.

A week ago Wednesday, we read and discussed some of the book of Jeremiah. He is one of the four Major Prophets, called to his prophetic office in 628 BC. As we concluded our lively discussion, someone asked who might be considered contemporary prophets. The question was intriguing.

I might not have been totally conscience of this, but as a teenager I found a prophetic voice and it wasn’t in the Bible. My search brought me to a personally meaningful and profound place, the writings of Kurt Vonnegut.  Many of you probably know this 20th century “genre bending novelist.” [1]

Vonnegut can easily be described as unconventional and one who knew much suffering.  He and his two siblings were fourth generation German born and raised in Illinois during a time of anti-German sentiments...  The Depression ruined the family, financially and emotionally.  Vonnegut’s mother died of an overdose the day before Mother’s Day, and his father, and in future years the author and his son, suffered from severe depression.

 Kurt Vonnegut was initially denied the opportunity to pursue his passion for writing because of family pressures. His father was an architect and his brother a physicist so the push was towards science. He journeyed into the science of biology until WWII when his plans were interrupted by the Army. Vonnegut trained as a mechanical engineer but it was his experiences as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany that served as the powerful image for future writings and his decision to pursue his writing.  Vonnegut married, raised 6 children (three from his first marriage and three of his sisters children-after died of cancer and her husband was killed in a commuter accident.

Vonnegut described himself as a freethinker, a Unitarian Universalist, a humanist, an atheist, an agnostic, who was in search of God, and he spoke regularly of his great admiration for Jesus.  In a letter to American Humanist Association members, (of which he was the honorary president until he died) Vonnegut wrote: "I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead.”[2]   Vonnegut also was a guest at the Unitarian Universalist Association Ware Lecturer, at the 1986 General Assembly. He read from his essays “Fates Worse Than Death.”

Politically savvy, willing to explore controversy, attuned to the chaos in society that stirred the conscience Vonnegut was also acutely aware of  human nature and human tragedy. He knew the questions humans had been asking since the beginning of time. “How do we become self-aware, what about self-realization, self-fulfillment, the path of our destiny, the depth of love, our spiritual relevance, the meaning of family and faith?”  He loved paradox and turned it into great satire…trying to capture the intangible and make it tangible,  human reason against meaninglessness, understanding suffering and universal disorder, the nature of truth in a world where we struggle with contrasting views of illusion and reality?

My favorite novel was Player Piano-

Player Piano depicts a fictional city called Ilium in which the people have given control of their lives to a computer humorously named EPICAC, after a substance that causes vomiting. In his first novel, Player Piano, (named after the piano that can play itself with a special scroll OR be played by a person),the author warned us, “prophesied” if you will, about the industrial revolution and the growing problem of classicism. In the city of Ilium people are divided into two categories; the wealthy, educated class and lower class laborers; but they all relinquish their control and destiny to a computer.  The brilliance of Vonnegut is how he wove in the big questions--humans asking themselves-“isn’t this task to mundane for a person, can’t we replace it with a machine, surely the rich and the educated have a greater worthiness”?

Despite the collective achievements no one saw the possibility that someday all humans might all be replaced by machines or at the very least prisoners to them…think about it-cell phones attached to hips and Ipods permanently implanted in ears.

The novel’s hero joins a secret society to save humankind from extinction. Vonnegut calls the movement the “Ghost Shirt Society”-an incredibly insightful association with the Native American Ghost Dance, a movement advanced by Native American, Jack Wilson, known as the “prophet of peace.” Wilson “prophesied a peaceful end to white American expansion while preaching messages of clean living, an honest life, and cross-cultural cooperation,” [3]  This morning Ginnie read to us from one of the great Transcendentalists of our Unitarian history-Henry David Thoreau. 

“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys which distract our attention from serious things.”  What are the serious things that you are distracted from?  Am I really happy? Do I deserve what I have, or don’t I deserve more then I have? Do I show my family how much I love them?  Have I shared with my church, my community and beyond my gifts? How can there be a divine and still be hate, suffering, and tragic human pain? How will I find peace in my life?  What must the prophet say to call you to the present?   

We have found much to avoid seriousness as well as elevate our status to enlightened human-At the time I was reading Player Piano, we still had party telephone lines and some communities still had the crank phone, we didn’t have telephone answering machines, microwave ovens, VCR’s or DVD players, no computers, no laptops, no Internet or clock radios, or cable TV, or Satellite TV, or CD’s, ATM machines, TV remote controls, cell phones, Ipods, TIVOS, no GPS, no video games, no cordless tools, no smoke detectors, no Prozac, NO PROZAC!!!    

In Player Piano Vonnegut is the prophetic voice warning us that science and gadgets and machines and technology will not be bring us to who we are, but may ultimately lead to our demises.  

Are you an idealist or a materialist?  Emerson divides into two sects similar to the way  Player Piano divides into two classes. Ginnie read us the controversy that gave strength to the Transcendentalist. The traditional way was accumulating data, facts and history vs. thought, will, intuition.  In Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle questions arise “What do we trust, how aware are we of the essence of science and senses” do we strive for perfection or process, can the human intelligence that created the atom bomb meet with the humanity who lives by the words of a religious belief “to love others as you love yourself,” “to hold the heart of humanity in the palm of your hand,” to be a universal family. 

Which brings me to Gail Kriebel and to words of gratitude and love for her prophetic voice at UUCLV in times of chaos, in time of grief, in times when she herself struggled with her own health, her own mortality.  And who could convey this message with more grace then Marilyn Hazelton?

Blessed be.

©2009 Rev. Nancy Bouchard