My Life as a Frog
Part I – Standing Out
The ecology movement has made green a rather popular color.
It was my favorite color long before we discovered global warming.
In fact, I often see myself as being green; that is, being a kind of frog.
It’s not easy being green, being a frog.
A frog is a creature that is betwixt and between - neither a land dweller nor a
sea dweller.A frog can get about on the ground fairly
well but is not as fleet a foot as a horse or even as good at hopping as a rabbit
or a kangaroo.
He compensates for this by being at home
in the water as well as the land, though he is no angel fish. With all his warts,
pretty he is not.
Neither does he have a voice that is anything
to make you swoon over. He is just not very good at anything in particular, doesn't
do anything particularly well and isn't particularly much to admire.
But he does his best. He is very adaptable.
And he will often be just what is needed for a particular task - like catching
flies or sitting on lily pads.
Jim Hensen's Kermit has done wonders for
the frog image. He has made the frog something of a pal, and that is as it should
be, for a frog is a heck of a guy once you understand that being a generalist isn’t
so bad!
I wasn't always a frog.
It is something that I became only gradually.
Yet at every point in my life I felt that
I was somehow different. And I always wanted to be just like everyone else. I yearned
to excel and I yearned to "fit in". If the other kids got bicycles for Christmas
I wanted one too, but my family didn't celebrate Christmas.
If the other kids played baseball I wanted
to also, but I wasn't very good and didn't like being out in the hot sun all day.
If the other children were dancing the twist I just had to do it, even though my
being overweight made dancing something less than graceful for me.
In some ways it became easier during the
Civil Rights -Vietnam era when simply by joining a march one could become part of
a great movement. Chanting together with 100,000 others who agreed with my views
gave me a sense of being one with the universe.
Yet that feeling always went away and
I would again find myself alone. I couldn't help envying the kids who were better
athletes, better students, more popular.
But gradually I discovered other frogs.
I discovered that others had also lived
distinctive, less than perfect lives in silence.
One of my friend’s father had died; another
had moved every year or two throughout her life; another had a hearing difficulty
that wasn't discovered until the second grade and still another had a slight limp
that was the result of a devastating auto accident as an infant.
And almost all of them came from families
where their grandparents or great grandparents had spoken a foreign language. Indeed, it has been calculated that some
40% of Americans have an ancestor who passed through Ellis Island. Many others have
come in the last decade or so.
A PBS Radio program a while back featured
a panel of six people, each from a different ethnic background. They were asked
the question, "What did it mean to you to have grown up as an American?"
Each and every one of them felt that their experience was of being
a hyphenated American and that they had been at a disadvantage. This was not only
true of the Cambodian man who came to America a decade ago but also of the Irish
woman whose great-grandparents arrived during the potato famine, of the black woman
whose ancestors had been slaves in Alabama, of the man whose parents were refugees
from Poland, and, even the Mexican-American whose family had lived in the same part
of Texas for centuries. The descendent of someone who came over on the Mayflower
expressed his feelings of being different because he did not have a non-English
ethnic identity.
When my grandfather passed through Ellis
Island he was escaping from persecution of Czarist Russia.
He saw America as a golden opportunity and he wanted nothing so
much as to be an American. Like many, he changed his name, from Galoon to Gallun,
which he felt was more American. He was only fourteen but because he lived in a
part of Europe which was somewhat of a crossroads he knew seven languages. From
the moment he left Ellis Island he refused to speak any language but English. Unfortunately, English was not one of
the languages he brought with him.
As a result, he was almost a mute for the year that it took him to learn English.
He spoke perfect English by the time I knew him, and without any trace of an accent.
No one ever heard him speak anything else, and he never talked about anything that
occurred before his resurrection as an American.
He wanted to fit in.
My wife, Louise's, grandfather, a dock
builder from Norway, also wanted to fit in when he came to America. But, at the
same time, he wanted to stand out. In Norway he name had been Anus (Ah-noose) Aida
(A-dah), but since almost everyone in his village was named Aida he wanted to have
a new name so that he would stand out. When he had the opportunity to change his
name he chose one that would distinguish him from the others of his village but,
at the same time would maintain his pride of being a Norwegian. He told them it
was Andrew Olsen.
Tip O'Neill tells a story of going to
Harvard. Not enrolled in Harvard, however, since poor immigrant Irish boys couldn't
get in in those days. He relates:
At the age of fourteen, I landed a summer
job as a groundskeeper, cutting the grass and trimming the hedges at Harvard. It
was tough work, and I was paid seventeen cents an hour.
On a beautiful June day, as I was going about my daily grind, the class of
1927 gathered in a huge canvas tent to celebrate commencement. Inside, I could see
hundreds of young men standing around in their white linen suits, laughing and talking.
They were also drinking champagne, which was illegal in 1927 because of Prohibition. I can remember that scene like it was
yesterday and I can still feel the way I felt then, almost sixty years ago as I
write these words. Who the hell do these people think they are, I said to myself,
that the law means nothing to them?
On that commencement day at Harvard, as I watched those privileged, confident Ivy
League Yankees who had everything handed to them in life, I made a resolution. Someday,
I vowed, I would work to make sure my own people could go to places like Harvard,
where they could avail themselves of the same opportunities that these young college
men took for granted.
Man of the House
by Tip
O'Neill
When I was 5 years old the other children
would make fun of me and call me "white cracker", I was puzzled because I loved
crackers and couldn't see why it should be bad to be one.
Of course, I knew that I was different. You see, I was the only
white boy in a black Baptist sea. I did, however, go to Sunday School once with
one of my friends and was fascinated with the Bible story taught at that
Black Holy Roller Church
that day.
Later my family moved to what was a lily
white suburb. Yet my differentness continued. When I was absent, since my family
was Jewish, for Rush Hashanah or Yom Kippur or Hanukkah or Passover I fell behind
in my lessons. When we sang Christmas
carols in class I didn't want to join in. (In
those days the separation of church and state did not include keeping Christmas
out of the schools). Even when we peed
behind the big tree mine was different. I learned early that I was not the same
as other children in many important, easily identifiable ways.
In W. Somerset Maughn's, novel, Of
Human Bondage, the main character was born with a club foot.
At about the age of eight he became depressed and desperate about his being
so different from everyone else and his not being able to play the games that the
other children did. He had come to live with his Uncle who was Priest of a small
parish church where he was taught that God will answer your prayers if you have
sufficient faith. He began to pray every night for his deformity to be healed. Finally
he set a date a month in advance and prayed fervently several times every day such
that his faith could not be doubted. On the morning of the special day he was sure
that he had been healed. Alas, it is only after the miracle fails to occur that
he begins to think less about his deformity and more about other matters that he
has some measure of control over.
Fitting in became one of the most important
things in my life from the second grade when my family moved to the suburbs until
I graduated from High School. But I
knew that it was all a sham. I was still Jewish, I was still pudgy, I was not very
good at sports, I was too shy to ask girls out for dates.
I compromised. I learned to sing the Christmas
carols about Santa Claus but not Jesus, I learned to shoot foul shots with a basketball
so well that I almost never missed, and I went steady all the way through High School
so that I could go to parties and not have to ask a new girl out.
I remember the terror that I felt in about
the 7th grade when I felt the need to know all of the words and singers of all of
the pop songs on the radio for the previous five years. I spent hours trying to
catch up to everyone else who was trying to catch up with everyone else.
And parents, of course, were a problem,
a real road block. They had to do things like insist on buying practical clothing,
setting curfews a half hour too early, and going on family vacations.
It was a full time job to discover what
was necessary to be like everyone else and then accomplish it without letting anyone
else know that it didn't come naturally.
If you're a frog it never comes naturally.
Part II – Fitting In
The tension between fitting in and standing
out, however, is a constant struggle for most of us.
We don't want to be mocked but we do want to be favored.
Even while I tried so desperately to fit in, I wanted to feel that I was
special and welcomed the recognition that came with being special. I had unique
talents and skills and interests that I was proud of. It gave me great pleasure
to win a contest or a game or to be seen as good at something.
I really was different, of course. Rather than
join my friends at the state university or the local junior college I applied to
a college with no football team, where there were no dances, and where, although
I wasn't much of a reader, that is what was required ten hours a day seven days
a week.
When I arrived that September at St. John's
College, the small idiosyncratic, “Great Books” college I discovered that the other
students were very intellectual and had little time for pizza and beer and no time
at all for dating. St. John's is an
unusual academy. Here, where Plato and Aristotle and de Tocqueville are the text
books, I discovered that I was going to a college that closely resembled a medieval
monastery.
Although I enjoyed much of the curriculum,
I again didn't fit in. I had spent my entire teenage years learning to love football,
and dating, and pizza parlors. And the very name, St. John’s was a source of discomfort
for me. It is a secular college but it kept its Christian name – remember I still
considered myself Jewish. And I wasn’t
much of a reader, but in order to fit in, I now had to become a book worm.
Jeremy Wolfe, in his partially autobiographical
novel The Final Club wrote about Princeton University in 1951. The main character
takes refuge in his room and agonizes over the results of "Bickering", the process
by which underclassmen are selected and invited to join the university's Fraternities
and social clubs. During the interview process he invented a story that his father
was a distinguished Yale professor when in reality the old man was a failed businessman
who took his own life. A common theme in this, as in earlier Wolfe novels, is because
we are judged on the most superficial information we sometimes feel compelled to
alter the truth in order to survive.
When I graduated from college I always seemed
to find jobs where I was in a unique position. Rather
than be one of the group I continued to stand out. While I was never the big boss
I was always in a supervisory position such that I had no lateral colleagues.
But I did feel that I fit in at the Fairfax
Unitarian Church. Here was a group of people with whom I felt comfortable and with
whom I seemed to naturally fit in. It was like jumping into a big frog pond with
lily pads for all. I finally decided that here is where I would make my home. It was here that I discovered that I
could make a difference, that each of us can live our lives focused not only on
ourselves and our family but also on others who could benefit by what we have to
offer - I felt that, even though I was a frog, perhaps because I was a frog, I could
understand the concerns and difficulties that others struggle with in their lives
and that, perhaps, I could make a difference.
I decided that I would attend seminary to pursue that calling to become Unitarian
Universalist minister. I enrolled in
Meadville/Lombard, the Unitarian Universalist seminary in Chicago.
There, however, I soon discovered that I was one of the few students
who was married and so had to live a mile away from the dorms where everyone else
lived. While I had assumed that my
home church was just like all of the other Unitarian Universalist churches and that
Unitarian Universalism was primarily a Humanist religion, I discovered that the
seminary was in many ways very much like any other Christian seminary. This Jewish
Humanist Unitarian Universalist soon discovered that he was a frog, even here. Seminary
broadened my perspective and enabled me to comfortably find common ground with many
from religious and social backgrounds quite different from my own.
Then, as a minister, I discovered that
many people, especially Unitarian Universalists, are uncomfortable around ministers.
I still am amazed when someone looks
at me sheepishly and apologizes for using a four letter word.
Ministers, even UU Ministers, are often perceived as judgmental and somehow
a threat and are, at times, shunned and found suspect.
The wonderful Unitarian Universalist pond that was to be "frog
heaven" turned out to be the real world after all.
What we too often forget is that those
who seem to have everything, to have never suffered from being different, also have
their own (excuse the expression) "crosses to bear". I read once about a club for
girls who are so beautiful that they rarely got dates because all the boys were
sure they were not good enough for these girls.
I recently completed reading a biography
of a man who was a U.S. Senator, then the Attorney General, followed by being the
Secretary of War. When the Civil War
started he returned to his home in the south and became Secretary of State of the
Confederacy. He was one of the most brilliant men of the nineteenth century. Before
the War he was acknowledged to be the greatest orator in the history of the U.S.
Senate and, following the collapse of the Confederacy, he stole away to England
where, within two years, he became the most highly sought out and well paid Barrister
in England as well as becoming Barrister to the Crown. Throughout his life, in spite
of his brilliance and elevation to high office he was continually slighted and discriminated
against, however. Benjamin Judah was Jewish.
When Jefferson Davis finished his biography
Jewish scholars searched for references to the man who was so close to Davis that
he was often accepted as "Acting President" when Davis was unavailable. They found
only one brief mention of Benjamin Judah in two thick volumes.
Equally interesting, however, is that
Jefferson Davis, war hero of the Mexican American War and everybody's first choice
for President of the Confederate States of America, had many of the same experiences
and feelings of not fitting in as his loyal assistant.
At the age of eight he was shipped off to a Catholic boarding school
where he was to be the youngest, the smallest, and the only Protestant. He graduated
at the bottom of his class at West Point. His parents were poorer than those of
any of his friends. His first wife died after they had been married only a year
and he spent the next nine years in a severe depression, barely speaking or seeing
anyone. He suffered numerous physical illnesses that made him appear to be near
death for the last thirty years of his life, including the entire time that he headed
the Confederate government. After the defeat he was seized and thrown into jail
to stay for over two years in solitary confinement in a damp dark cellar only to
be let out without ever being tried for any crime.
(Guantanamo Bay and
Abu Ghraibs are only the most recent, hardly the first instances
of American hypocrisy over Human Rights.)
After serving a number of churches as
a UU minister I decided to take some time off and spent a decade working as a computer
programmer before resuming my career in the ministry.
When I sought to return to the ministry it was pointed out that while my
qualifications were still adequate, most churches prefer to call a minister in his
or her forties. Being, at that time
in my late fifties I opted to become an Interim Minister – sort of a frog among
UU ministers.
Perhaps the most important thing for a
frog is to understand that he can't help being a frog. No amount of practice, make-up,
education, wishing or praying can change a frog into a prince. There is a sense
in which I take pride in being different, however.
Whereas, above, I expressed my frustration
at not fitting in at St. John's, I also feel that the uniqueness of my St. John's
education has enriched me. My experience of being the only white boy in a mile radius
as a young child, while not something
that I wished to have my son experience, has
certainly enabled me to better understand aspects of the black culture that would
not have been possible without that experience.
Each and every one of us, looking out
at the world, see others as more alike, more fitting in, than we feel that we ourselves
do. We perceive others as being part of a group, a type, a race, a way of thinking
that is just like others of that group, type, or race. And we often look for ways
that we can be part of some group. We even embrace the notion that our lives are
somehow normal when we read about how common a mid-life crisis is, or that there
is a predictable path that most follow in dealing with a divorce, or coping with
death.
Being a frog turns out not only to be
a badge of honor for me but also something that makes me entirely normal. Every
human being lives a very unique life. All of us in this room are frogs. Being human,
in fact, is being unique, is being, whether we like it or not, nothing but a frog.
I conclude by reading from Unitarian minister,
poet, and literary giant Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote:
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against
. . . everyone of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity; self-reliance
is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. Whosoever
would be [fully human] must be a nonconformist. [One] who would gather immortal
palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.