On duty

Tuesdays in the Chapel

September 18, 2012 ~ 8:30 am ~ MIT Chapel

Prelude: Adagio (from Trio Sonata No. 1 for Organ) ~ J. S. Bach (1685-1750) ~ Lee Ridgway, organ

READING: "If—" by Rudyard Kipling (1895)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!

Speaker ~ Daryush Mehta, Zoroastrian chaplain

Every time I read Kipling’s poem “IF—,” it brings a tear to my eye, a tear signifying the heavy weight that is our call to duty in the face of ignorance, cynicism, and malice. Kipling gives us hope that we can overcome the pettiness that life oftentimes engenders if we rise above it.

The theme of this year’s Tuesdays in the Chapel is the completion of the phrase, “In my family, we…” Today I would like to share with you that in my family, we value duty above almost all else. It might mean personal sacrifice, it might mean losing one’s place in line, or it might just mean singing to your grandmother as she lies in bed, waiting for God to take her to the next life…while the rest of your cousins laugh and play in the playground nearby.

Some may perceive a duty to be impersonal and forced upon us; indeed, the definition itself of a duty refers to an obligatory task, conduct, service, or function that arises solely from one's position in life. In a way, we do not even have control of this aspect of life. But does obligatory have to mean that a duty is forced on us and unwanted, undesirable? What if obligatory meant not that we had to do something that we did not to do, but that we were obliged to do something, that we were in such a position that we even had the ability to act a certain way?

I mentioned singing to your grandmother as an example. My mom’s late mother whom we endearingly refer to as Mummyna spent her last years bedridden and only able to move from the bedroom to the dining room for meals and back to the bedroom. She lived in Bombay and each time my family visited her in her apartment, she would always tell me, “Bring your clarinet so we can sing together!” Early on a part of me would feel that I was losing time playing with my cousins because of this duty to play my clarinet and sing with Mummyna. This duty, however, quickly turned into an obligation that I was so blessed to have. I was so happy I had that duty to be a musician for my grandmother, easing her into the next life as the aches and pains in her bones ebb and flow.

In my family, duty…sacrifice…was the status quo. Help others first. Even if it means inconveniencing yourself. I’ve adapted a personal rule that if I cannot give a stranger 10 seconds of my time, there must be something seriously wrong with my outlook on life. It could be as simple as holding a door open for someone… holding that elevator door for 10 seconds to bring a smile to someone’s face.

My predecessor in my current position as Zoroastrian Chaplain was Cyrus Mehta, an uncle of mine. He was in this role for 15 years. A couple of years ago he asked me, “Daryush, I think it is time for someone else to be in this role.” I immediately said to myself, “No” and told him, “This is not something I believe I can fill.” Neither of us is a priest, neither of us is technically qualified. There are no chaplains per se in the Zoroastrian faith. Then I thought about it and eventually came to the conclusion that this was my duty, something that I was honored to take on, to be a good steward of the Zoroastrian faith.

These are some of my thoughts as to what I feel duty is…and I am so happy to be able to share my thoughts with you today.

I’d like to close with a short reading of the Ashem Vohoo hymn, one of the most sacred prayers in the Zoroastrian scripture. Brief yet powerful, the Ashem Vohoo is recited by Zoroastrians innumerable times throughout the day to remind us of our obligations, our duties in life:

"Ashem Vohoo" hymn from the Avesta, the Zoroastrian scriptures

Ashem vohoo Vahishtem asti Ushta asti Ushta ahmai hyat ashai vahishtai ashem.

Righteousness is good. It is the best. It is light. Illumination is given unto they who are good for the sake of righteousness itself.

Postlude: Canzona in G ~ Ruggero Trofeo (17th C.) ~ Lee Ridgway

On Marriage

Tuesdays in the Chapel

September 11, 2012 ~ 8:30 am

MIT Chapel

Prelude:

Andante in D Major ~ Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Lee Ridgway, organ

READING: "Family Stories" by Dorianne Laux, from Smoke.

I had a boyfriend who told me stories about his family,
how an argument once ended when his father
seized a lit birthday cake in both hands
and hurled it out a second-story window. That,
I thought, was what a normal family was like: anger
sent out across the sill, landing like a gift
to decorate the sidewalk below. In mine
it was fists and direct hits to the solar plexus,
and nobody ever forgave anyone. But I believed
the people in his stories really loved one another,
even when they yelled and shoved their feet
through cabinet doors, or held a chair like a bottle
of cheap champagne, christening the wall,
rungs exploding from their holes.
I said it sounded harmless, the pomp and fury
of the passionate. He said it was a curse
being born Italian and Catholic and when he
looked from that window what he saw was the moment
rudely crushed. But all I could see was a gorgeous
three-layer cake gliding like a battered ship
down the sidewalk, the smoking candles broken, sunk
deep in the icing, a few still burning.

Our theme for the year is “In my family….” And you fill in the blanks. The idea is that there are values conveyed to us from our families that we may or may not recognize. I found the poem read this morning a reminder that not every family was like my family. I loved the image of a birthday cake flying through the air, but I think I would have mightily uncomfortable in such a family.

One of the values that my family taught us was that marriage was an institution to be cherished. My parents were married nearly 60 years when they died.  I was reminded of that reality the other day when a professor at a local medical school caught me after a wedding to ask me the state of marriage in the US. I gave him my best information, i.e. that one out of two weddings in the US end in divorce. We commiserated and then went to the wedding reception.

We both wondered what we might do to address the problem and there are probably things we might do, but the answers are not easy to imagine. My parents did not tell us marriage was a high priority concern of theirs. They simply chose to stay married and I still remember hearing them recount the events of the day as I fell asleep.

I find efforts to commend marriage by building into law definitions of who can marry ill advised. The suggestion that it is an attack on marriage for same sex couples to marry strikes me as nonsense for it seems to me that the opposite is in fact true. To participate in an institution suggests you value the institution. I expect same sex couples to have the same difficulties with staying married as do their heterosexual contemporaries. The issue with marriage is more complicated.

People stay married for lots of reasons. Some of them are not noble. Inertia rules for some. Fear of being alone is a significant influence. Fear for ones safety is also a factor. People stay married for the children, but you have to wonder about how the children of such marriages view marriage having seen it at its worst.  But these factors are also reasons why marriages are not healthier. Inertia does not lead to the sort of transparency that gives space for the mid-course corrections and sacrifice for the sake of children is often hiding other agendas.

Let me suggest to you that  the young people I see these days, I have done 20 weddings this year, are a cause for hope. They value marriage and they believe in it. They are not getting married because they have to get married. They are making an informed decision. Many of them have lived together and know what it takes to stay in a relationship and now they wish in the front of family, friends and God to make promises. It is a hopeful time.

But it is also a reminder that for all of our talk we do not value long term commitments ourselves. We shy away from commitments to voluntary organizations such as churches and service clubs preferring to bowl alone.

We believe that whoever has the most toys does win. Instead of passing laws limiting who can marry we would be wiser to pass limits on the video games one can own, the fantasy leagues one can join and the amount of time spent on Facebook.

My family was not perfect. But somehow my five siblings have all married and stayed married. From Mother and Dad we learned that marriages work best when promises are kept and when conversations continue late into the night even when they are difficult.

 This closing reading has shown up across the country because it captures the importance of marriage as an institution. I was first asked to use it in a wedding ceremony four years ago by a young couple getting married in our chapel.

READING: Margaret Marshall on Marriage, from "Goodridge Vs. Department of Health" by Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall

Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations...Without question, civil marriage enhances the "welfare of the community." It is a "social institution of the highest importance."

Marriage also bestows enormous private and social advantages on those who choose to marry. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family.... Because it fulfils yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition.

Robert M. Randolph

Chaplain to the Institute

Postlude:

Chorale-Prelude on "Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten" ~ Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Lee Ridgway

SOCIAL CHANGE

There is a cartoon in a recent New Yorker that has two dogs speaking to one another as their owners are using plastic bags to pick up after them. One dog says to the other, “I don’t know about you, but it makes me feel special.” It should! Right before our eyes the habits of Americans across the country have embraced a change that is remarkable. They walk their dogs, carry plastic bags, and when the dog does its business they gingerly pick up the feces depositing the bag in the trash when they return home or leave it in a trash can on the walk back.

This is behavior that seems to cut across social strata. The young do it; the old do it. I have seen men and women bending over to pick up poop. Blacks do it. Whites do it. Latinos do it. There are signs of course that ask you to pick up after your dog and I am sure there are some laws that are on the books that make it a crime not to do so.  I have, however, not heard of anyone being called a scofflaw for his or her failure

This change in behavior seems to have swept the nation without much attention being paid. There are no warnings on dog food cans or bags that remind us that used dog food should be recycled or you may step in it. There has been no public relations blitz, no plethora of bumper stickers, no demonizing of those who choose not to carry plastic bags. And apparently there are few who have given up dogs because of the expectation that they clean up after them.

The sea change in tobacco use has taken more than a half century since the Surgeon General said it was dangerous for health and he had facts and figures to back up the claim.  Congress has passed laws about discrimination on the basis of race, gender and sexual orientation and push back continues.  The Supreme Court will hear arguments about affirmative action in college admissions this fall.

Maybe there is a secret thread of resentment coursing through the country that I have missed. It could be that this is the key to the Tea Party.  People who talk about “taking back our country” are really angry because they have been forced by a rising tide of opinion to bend over and pick up dog poop. Enough is enough!

I am speculating of course. Maybe the wave of clean is what people hope would happen with issues like discrimination  and seatbelts. Let the tide of behavioral change rise as does competition and there will be fewer smokers, less opposition to buckling up, less resentment to being told how to behave.

Or maybe we love dogs more than we love our neighbors, our families and humankind in the aggregate.

There is resentment to policies that make jobs one could once count on more competitive and over the course of my career I have felt the impact of a broader competitive pool more than once. We have all been challenged to change our ways of thinking about leadership, about how work is done and about how our experiences shape us in the work we do. Learning to be part of a more diverse work force has to be easier than learning to bend over and pick up warm feces. And, over the course of human history, which practice has had the greater social return?

Robert M. Randolph

Chaplain to the Institute

Thoughts on Violence

The recent shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin have created again an appropriate conversation about guns and violence. When Rap Brown declared in 1967 that “Violence is as American as cherry pie.” some people were taken aback.  They ought not have been. Brown was/is right and only the context seems to change and that allows us to think we are seeing something unusual. The real issue is why can’t we find a way to deal with our willingness to wreak havoc on one another?

We process civil unrest differently than we do the actions of individuals and react to Arvada because we see our children in the deranged perpetrator and his victims.  At Janesville, we are afraid we see our own darker side striking out against the stranger.

The attacks on 9/11 were horrific. It was a relief to have someone to blame and to hit back at.  Few remembered that in Oklahoma City we had at first thought we knew who to strike and were chagrined to find the enemy lived among us and was in fact striking back at an act of violence  unleashed by our own government ignorant of the apocalyptic dimensions of the Branch Davidians.  Janesville seems unique in the US, but is it?

The constant is not that guns are too available, although they may be or that ammunition can be bought too easily.  The constant is that when we are angry we strike out at others  rather than take responsibility for our circumstances and make the effort to turn the other cheek. Sometimes that may be due to illness, but often it is due to other factors.

It would have been political suicide to not strike back after 9/11. It is not cool to be patient when everyone wants action. We all felt better when we went after the Taliban, but ten years later it is hard to find anyone who feels good about how the war has unfolded in Afghanistan. The momentary respite from grief has given way to the reality: How are we going to care for those damaged by the war?

There has been a lot of talk about identifying with the Sikhs in the aftermath of Janesville. I am sympathetic with that notion and applaud the picture of the governor of Wisconsin  head covered at a memorial service. The object himself of anger because of his political initiatives, Governor Walker knows something about being held accountable.

It may be that we are wiser when rather than focusing on guns or anger at strangers, we focus on creating communities where violence is never tolerated or rewarded.  Those seeking their fifteen minutes of fame need to know that we ignore them rather than putting their pictures on the front page of the paper. A ticket to oblivion may be the most appropriate response.

This is work our religious communities can do, but it will take focus and courage. When angered we all respond with clinched fists. Remember how hard it would have been to say in the aftermath of 9/11 that we would send aid to Afghanistan rather than missiles.  More than two thousand Americans have died there and it will be a long lifetime before we see the last of those who are the walking wounded. They are the cost of getting even with our enemies. Today anger is the emotion de jour. May there come a time when peace making has the same cachet.

Robert M. Randolph
Chaplain to the Institute

Johnny Cash Taught Me To Think For Myself

Lately I have been listening to a lot of Johnny Cash. He has been dead for nine years so it may be a bit surprising that I am listening to his music. The reasons are pretty simple. A whole raft of compilations recently appeared in the market and my old/new car has a six CD changer. Oh, and when I was in high school, Johnny Cash changed my life.

Cash was a new voice in the 1950’s. He was not Elvis Presley and he was not Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby. Where I grew up in southern California his voice and style appealed to the Dust Bowl émigrés that later turned Bakersfield into Nashville West.

On the other hand Cash had little or no appeal to the teenagers of the day who were my peers. They were stuck on Elvis or sampling “race music” as it filtered into the mainstream. “Work with Me Annie” had become a hit for Etta James and Georgia Gibbs when it morphed into “Dance with Me Henry.” Groups like The Crows and later The Platters were recording music that you could dance to even if you could not dance.

You didn’t dance to Johnny Cash and I knew only a few others who knew who he was. The new compilations remind that Cash’s range was limited and included lots of gospel music hardly a turn-on for the teen crowd. Some of the semi-pop recordings were drivel even then; “Teen Age Queen” comes to mind. Then there was “I Walk The Line” a hymn to fidelity, which implied that one day you might have some one to walk the line for. And there was the driving beat of Luther Monroe Perkins and the Tennessee Three who backed Cash. By then LM and Cash were sampling drugs of various sorts and for Luther the end was tragic.  Others who came to know Cash reported on the price he paid for his dalliance. But you do not forget their music and a single chord announces their presence even today.

Sometimes Cash sang of loss. “I Still Miss Someone” touched the heartstrings in ways we may forget when we are 50. “Give My Love to Rose” spoke for a dying father who wanted his boy to know “his Daddy was so proud of him.” “Folsom Prison Blues” spoke of the anger that sometimes welled up. Then reminded that some might  “shoot a man just to watch him die”. There was mindless violence in music long before Gangsta Rap came along.  I guess not just white boys ignored their mother’s warnings not to take their guns to town.

In high school we played a potpourri of music each week on Friday at lunch. You had the chance to suggest music to be played and we heard the emerging top 40 hits week after week. I suggested that we might listen to Cash. “Who?” was the reply from the young women who ran the record player. They were so cool, so lovely, and so distant from the world I knew. I nearly said, “Never-mind” but I didn’t and one Friday with a disclaimer blaming me, Johnny Cash broke the sound barrier. Few noticed, fewer commented and I realized that it was ok to break the predictable pattern.  It is a learning that has served me well.

I continued to listen to Cash who along with friends like Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson gave bad behavior a country gloss. Luther Perkins fell asleep with a cigarette in his mouth and set himself on fire and died in August, 1968. The Tennessee Three became the Tennessee Two and the bad behavior continued through most of Cash’s career. The music they made came with a high cost.  But at a safe distance, I learned that taste and tastes in music lie on a spectrum and it is hard to move from one end to the other, but you can do it if you try.

The same is true here at MIT. There are the pressures to please and the desire to be part of the in-group whoever that may be at any given time.  There is also the opportunity to step off the edge and do the unexpected. We value those who go against the tide and sometimes we are honored for breaking new ground. But sometimes we just listen to Johnny Cash and are fed by music that reminds us of where we come from and where we might be going.

Robert M Randolph

Chaplain to the Institute

Remarks for Alumni Memorial Service

The MIT Chapel

June 9, 2012

This service falls between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day by accident, but it is no accident that my mind turned to the nature of families and what MIT means to families.  This is always a bittersweet day because this is sacred space where new families began when parents were married, families grew when children were baptized, and families changed when memorial services were held for departed family members. You may remember as well that yesterday the speaker at graduation spoke of MIT as a family.

I think often about MIT as a family. A few years ago I was stunned to hear a student describe the Institute as “the home we thought we would never find”.  That is why students so jealously guard the MIT they know from changes they do not understand or endorse. Yesterday at lunch members of the Corporation told me that when talking to students about the new President, students told them they wanted a president who would recognize and honor MIT as their home.

I have degrees from five colleges and universities. I have been part of those communities to lesser or greater degrees, but nowhere have I found a community where the institution occupies the place in the hearts of graduates that MIT occupies.

Many of you regard your dormitory or your fraternity as your home of choice.  Your brothers and sisters reach across the globe coming from distant cultures as well as familiar hometowns. So it is not surprising that you come back here to remember and celebrate those you have loved and lost. This is where it all began.

As a result there are a couple of notions I would like to think with you about. In the Judeo-Christian tradition being part of a people, a family if you will, is an important concept. The notion that the Jewish people were called into being as a nation by God is foundational.  “How odd of God/to chose the Jews” was not a compliment when first used by Norman Ewer in 1924, but it passed in common use as wit.

This self-understanding was a mixed blessing. The nation was never able to live up to expectations as the prophets of Israel constantly reminded them. The notion of their choice led to the response: “Not so odd, the Jews chose God.” (Cecil Brown). It led as well to their being the objects of envy and resentment. Tevye’s response in Fiddler on the Roof resonates: “I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But once in a while, can’t You chose someone else?”

Christians redefined the nature of community. Jesus defined his community not by blood but by those who did the will of God. (Mark 3:35) In the Gospel of John (19:26) Jesus spoke to one of his followers, thought to be John, and told him to care for Mary as he would for his own mother and for Mary to regard John as her son. He redefined family and running through later Judaism and Christianity and is the notion of humankind as one great family. It is a notion honored in the breech. We too often treat the other as a stranger.

In our history as a nation we had a chance for a do-over; we could have done things differently. Religious communities were given a level playing field. We talked about a nation of equals and have spent a large portion of our history fleshing out what that might mean.  Sometimes we seem to be doing a good job working out the implications, but often we have more in common with ancient Israel than we do with our ideals.

We put out the welcome mat for those who have come here for the opportunity to better themselves.  America provides lots of such chances but we have not thought clearly about the implications of our welcome. We would do better if we remembered our sacred texts and our political texts parsing what it means to be a chosen people and a people who reflect the desire of the Divine that we bring into being a kingdom where the values of heaven are made real. We are familiar with the notion of being a City set on a Hill, but less familiar with what that image challenges us to be.

To be sure, it is hard work to bring into being an exemplary ethic that treats others as we would like to be treated. We live lives dedicated to the needs of the moment. It may be that today we can acknowledge that one of the reasons we are so lax is that places like MIT often do the hard work for us. At its best MIT has created a family that knows no boundaries of class, gender, race and it is a family that asks only that you use the tools you have been given or the cards you have been dealt (to use a phrase MIT folk especially appreciate) to do your best work.

Even here particularities and needs that come with communities create boundaries and dorms, fraternities, departments make their demands on us.  But the Institute pushes back and the kind of family idealized in our sacred texts, religious and political, becomes real. Note that the first woman to be president of MIT has just passed the baton of leadership to a Latin American immigrant who grew up in a family speaking Yiddish.

So be proud that when we gather to reflect, celebrate and mourn,  the words we sing are true.:

“Thy sons and daughters, MIT, return from far and wide.

 And gather here, once more to be renourished by thy side.” Across years, cultures and talents we know that we are one family, we are all of MIT.

May the God of grace

bless you all and comfort

you as we celebrate

the bonds of family

and the grief we share.

Amen