Presented by: Don Neeper

A year ago, Kok Heong McNaughton (the church Administrative Assistant) told me that copies of “The New Male” disappeared rapidly, and she had to repeatedly prepare new copies. I urged her not to do that, claiming that the ideas in that sermon were so outdated that I no longer believed them myself. She then challenged me to produce an updated sermon, and thus today I’m thinking aloud about the male in the ’90s, rather than the male in the ’80s.

Why is that pamphlet entitled “The New Male” so popular? Because those who take it from the rack see only the title, not the contents. It’s the topic, more than the message, that’s attractive. I also presented that sermon at Albuquerque and at the Jefferson church near Denver. At the time, a friend of mine was the intern minister at Jefferson. She had heard some of my presentations on other topics, including a 1973 presentation on the holy war surrounding nuclear-generated electricity–which I still think was my best. But, when I gave the “New Male” talk, my friend observed, “The nuclear holy war was interesting, but when you talk about sex, you have their undivided attention!”

Now that I have your undivided attention, let me confess that I will be talking not about sex, but about men. What I say might apply equally to women. However, I have no experience at being a woman, so I shall confine most of my observations to the gender of which I have some expertise. To set the stage, let me present extracts of two readings from that 1981 sermon:

A car with four young men passed another containing three male occupants. The young men in these two cars had never seen each other before. One of those in the passing car made an obscene gesture …one can easily imagine what went on in the minds of the young men who received this obscene nonverbal communication.

Both cars stopped. There was a fight…a single shot was fired and one fifteen-year-old was shot in the head.

You may think that such explicit macho behavior is limited to teenagers with excess testosterone, but listen to this:

To be strong, the prisoner once wrote, a man “must be able to stand utterly alone, able to meet and deal with life relying solely upon his own inner resources.” To show he was such a man, he once held his hand over a candle flame without flinching.

The prisoner was G. Gordon Liddy, a famous participant of Watergate (and currently a host on hate-radio).

Men historically have behaved in a macho fashion. It is an attempt to establish masculinity–driven by the need to prove oneself. It is an attempt to overwhelm the perceived opposition psychologically with the appearance (not fact) of power. Trouble arises when the appearance is questioned and proof is demanded.

In 1981 I had a passing thought that macho male behavior might be of biological origin. However, because there were non-macho men in world, I concluded that macho behavior was a product of social training, and that life for males could be made gentler and more wholesome if men allowed themselves to be–well–more feminine. A lot of society made that same assumption. In the 1980′s, the more sophisticated segment of society set about breaking the mold with which nice little boys were compressed into successful adult males, each man stamped in the shape of authority and strength.. Both men and women had suffered from a cookie cutter that shaped Pillsbury dough boys into images of Superman. Both men and women therefore gained some freedom from the breaking of gender-defined roles However, breaking the old cookie cutter didn’t work as planned, for the following reasons.

To force anybody into a pre-defined role is to strip them of their authenticity. So, America had a society of strong, dominating, inauthentic adult males who felt internally like frauds. The ’80s provided a new model of a soft, caring, non dominating, non assertive male. But it was another cookie cutter, this time without shape. I remember the expressed frustration of my daughter, who was dating in high school during the ’80s. She said the boys had no direction–they were just lost, without opinion or substance. I have a 1983 newspaper cartoon that describes the situation. In the cartoon, a woman says, “It’s getting so one can’t tell a kind, gentle, sensitive human being from a WIMP!”

Let me paint a simplified historical picture.

’50s

In the ’50s, the man was the titular and spiritual head of an outwardly perfect but inwardly stressed family (although, in reality, mother provided the spiritual direction). This fraudulent situation generated teen-age males who were rebels without a visible cause (as in the James Dean movie). No teen male wanted to be at home. When you were in school, you were supposed to play good football. When you grew out of school, you were supposed to get a job, a wife, a child, and a mortgage. It was called the tender trap. We males feared it and yet walked into it.

’60s

In the sixties, the rebel found his cause. It was the establishment (whatever that was) as represented by the Vietnam war. At that time, anything went, so long as it broke a rule. The slogan was “Women say yes to men who say no.” (Unfortunately, I was born 10 years too soon and thereby missed the opportunities.)

’70s

The women’s movement began in the seventies. It offered genuine growth for women. It also proffered the opinion that men were inherently flawed, but trainable. (Something like the Communist views of all people.)

’80s

In the eighties, men could properly have feelings and be self nurturing–if they supported the women’s movement. Men no longer were required to hold a hand in a candle! It became politically correct for men to support the National Organization of Women (NOW). I know. I joined when the NOW women gave an organizational presentation here in the church. In honesty, I confess I joined because I wanted to meet the attractive woman at the recruiting table. She took my money and never looked up. My interest in NOW died in three minutes. That proves you can drive sexist behavior under cover, but you can’t eliminate it!

’90s

What is a man SUPPOSED to be today? My grown children pointed out to me that it is correct for the woman to be self-assured, knowledgeable, cool, and in command of the situation. The man is supposed to be inept. To see your own culture, you have to view it through its myths and stereotypes–and one way to do that is to examine the TV offerings.

LOOK AT THE SITCOMS.

They’re the opposite of father knows best. The prime-time show called “Home Improvement” features a clumsy carpenter whose kids have more street smarts than he. The central figure is so unaware that in each episode he must receive a little pop-psychology lecture from his unseen neighbor.

The TV show called “The Simpsons” features a pair of males, father and grade-school son, each with a juvenile mentality. The mother displays good sense and culture. She listens to the sermon in church, while father listens to the ball game on the radio. The father suggests that it’s ok for the son to conduct a little manly mischief. After getting in trouble, the son wises up and the father must learn good behavior from the boy.

LOOK AT THE ADVERTISING.

The male is a clown. He gets wet, falls off curbs, bumps into things, or gets his necktie caught in a door while a cool female makes a wise purchase.

Thus, today’s public myths picture a man as bumbling in relationships, clumsy at practical things, and intellectually inferior to a successful woman.

WHERE IS A MAN TODAY–REALLY?

In search of answers, I scanned the covers of popular magazines in grocery store. (There is no place more egalitarian than the grocery store.) On the covers of women’s magazines the most frequently appearing words are SEX, LOVE, AND FAT (or diet) in that order. I found that men’s magazines do not appeal to men as a group. Rather, each men’s magazine is oriented to a single topic of masculine interest. There are magazines devoted to sports, to motorcycles, to cars, to fishing, to guns–but NO magazine devoted to being a man in the sense that McCalls contains articles about being a woman.

FEARS

Our inner being is partly revealed by our fears. To help me discover where men are today, Kok Heong offered to poll her U-U Internet group with the question of what men fear most. I believe she got some 37 responses, from both men and women. I learned that men fear:

being out-earned by women
being homeless
being powerless
being a failure
having life without meaning
being discovered
the anger of women
other men
ridicule groups of fraternity boys
being afraid of asking directions!

Does this list look familiar? It seems that today’s man has the same fears as the macho-male of the fifties–he secretly fears all that stuff that he was supposed to outgrow during the eighties! The magazines and fears indicate that today’s inner man is similar to the inner man of the fifties and before. He likes action above words, he needs to prove himself physically and professionally, he feels the competition from other men, and without the approval of women he is lost.

To some degree, the seventies and the eighties altered the relationship of men to women, but these two decades of evolution have not changed the nature of the man-beast. He still thinks he IS what he DOES–or what he drives. If you insult my girlfriend, I will defer to her reaction, because I know that chivalry is not cool. However, insult my motorcycle and you are in for a fight!

A MAN IS A MAN …

The last three decades brought profound social changes to women and minorities in this country. Why haven’t the changes been equally profound for the anglo-saxon male? What became of the caring, feeling, self-nurturing “New Male” that I anticipated in 1981?

In 1981, I assumed that macho behavior in men is historical and cultural, dating back to the time of Abraham. I thought men were changing because the women’s movement was making us consciously aware of our self-destructive habits. Men DID change–a little. We now relate better to women and children. We have better seat belts in cars and better safety programs at work. We have relationship-oriented men’s groups in which we beat on drums instead of each other. But many of us still want to be Superman, not Clark Kent. It’s in our genes.

Think of the bull elk, clashing antlers in the fall while the cow elk graze quietly nearby, waiting for the winner. Think of the football players, clashing heads in the fall while the scantily clad cheerleaders watch from the sidelines. If you think football is not a genetically programmed mating exercise, then you must think the Dallas Cowboys hire cheerleaders based on their S.A.T. scores!

The fact is, our species is something like pack carnivore. We have a social order based on dominance. We keep strangers out of our tribal territory. A few thousand years ago the man who brought in the mastodon meat was rewarded with a mate in the cave. After all, SHE could not chase mastodons while pregnant or lactating–so she had to lay the tender trap. And our social structure still provides status (significance) and sexual rewards for winners, not losers. But now there are no mastodons to chase. There is no external Hitler to fight, no external Viet Nam to protest, no Soviet Union for competition. It’s difficult to be significant without an enemy. Perhaps that’s one reason for the increase in militia groups. Membership in a militia is a vicarious way of dominating others in a place that can’t be reached by feminist ideas.

It seems that our biological bodies are at odds with our common sense. Actually, the situation is worse than that.

Biological evolution occurs over many generations in response to accidents and stress, and is not cumulative. That is, biological evolution is not necessarily a sequential development of the genes that work best. Cultural evolution occurs over fewer generations, and is somewhat cumulative. Better ideas do get handed down, but slowly–for instance, a legal code of justice has been evolving since the time of Babylon. Technical evolution is rapid and absolutely cumulative. Each successful technical development immediately initiates the next development. Thus, we find ourselves in a situation where our genes are suited for life in Pleistocene caves; our formal religion and social concepts are suitable for patriarchal herdsmen; but our daily living includes test-tube babies, indoctrination by mass media, and intimacy by internet. We are out of tune with ourselves.

The women’s movement was successful. By eliminating artificial and unnecessary social constraints, it enabled women to be more as they are; to less as a dumb blonde. The attempt to make men better at caring, feeling, and relating has been only partly successful. Sure, it has helped. Many men ARE more sensitive today than in 1950. But fundamentally, things haven’t changed a lot. Men’s magazines still appeal to the activity, not to the man. Men still have the old fears. Men still get aggressive when another male driver edges them out in traffic. Men still have old boy networks. Men’s politics are still based on who-can-we-dominate rather than what-can-we-contribute. If you think male politicians are the New Males of the ’80s, I invite you to compare the governmental funding for pork-barrel hardware with the funding for schools.

NATURE VERSUS NURTURE

Nature and Nurture each play a part in male development. Because the macho is in the genes, I suggest the way to nurture men is to appeal to the genes with better role models, rather than to control behavior with rules and punishment. For example, there are rules and punishment at work: make a sexist remark to a female and lose your career. But that doesn’t eliminate sexism–it just confines the comments to the men’s room. Rules and punishment are calls to battle, and that’s what brings out the macho in men. In the ’70s and ’80s society offered freedom and expanding roles to women, and women grew. In contrast, society offered men freedom from nonexistent constraints, and diminished roles that are contrary to their genes. The result was uncertainty and resistance. Both humans and carnivore packs need roles and structure.

WHERE NEXT?

On TV and in real life, little girls see clear roles. They see women being homemakers. They see women in technical or business careers. But young males often lack clear role models, other than the rich drug dealer. The traditional role of husband-father-authority is labeled with incorrectness. The TV role of inept idiot is as unappealing as that of dumb blonde. The male knows instinctively that women may still respond to the man who presents the mastodon meat. Basically, the male wants importance, consensual sexual relations, and secure territorial boundaries. In rap terms, he wants to get paid, get laid, and drink beer in the shade.

I’m saying we–males and females– need defined gender roles. Currently it is not politically correct to have defined gender roles. But we need them. What we DON’T need is to force every individual into defined roles. Defined roles can serve as a set of rules within which the action and response are somewhat predictable. Roles serve as a measure, against which to compare oneself. Roles serve as an anchor, against which one can pull when buffeted by unmanageable forces. Gender roles aren’t bad. The only thing that’s bad is forcing individuals into those roles.

If the roles aren’t socially defined, as they were 50 years ago, how can they be defined? Well, they shouldn’t come from the government. When Congress debates gender roles, reasonable business stops and pompous posturing sets in.

I suggest that gender roles be defined and taught by the churches. The churches should teach more than theology. They should teach how to love, how to parent, how to care for the elderly. In short, how to live. A few churches do this, but their roles don’t fit modern times. Their roles replicate the patriarchy. If there is a way to bring technology, sociology, and theology into harmony, it is up to the churches to find it.

The young male of the ’90s hears Rush Limbaugh and the Christian Coalition (battle language) on the right hand and new-age nonsense (uncritical mysticism) on the left. He needs a solid reference for his own departure, but Mom and Dad are rarely solid anymore. If, 100 years ago, you asked the church how to live, you would hear a definite answer. Now I hear an indefinite answer. I’m suggesting the churches should lead, not follow, in redefining gender roles. What it means to be a male should be defined not by the government, not by the sports stadium, not by Wall Street, but by the church. Some people may regard these statements as heresy, and suggest burning me at the stake. But, having male genes, I prefer to settle philosophical arguments in trial by combat!

Presented by: Christine Robinson at the 1st Unitarian Universalist church of Albuquerque on the 50th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb

I. Today

The Rabbis taught that when the Egyptian armies were drowning in the Red Sea, (during the exodus of the Hebrew people from slavery) the Heavenly Hosts broke out into songs of jubilation. But God silenced them saying, “My creatures are perishing and you sing praises?” –The Passover Haggadah.

It is an uncomfortable day, this fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and the first use of nuclear weapons in war. In a few days we will have a happier celebration; the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War. That day we will celebrate with gusto and with oneness of heart. The end of that war was a blessing for half the world, and not just the victors; an end of privation, fear, killing, and unimaginable destruction. In only a few days we can be unambiguously glad to celebrate the end of horror and the beginning of the world as we know it today.

Today’s commemoration has other overtones. Although the dropping of the Bomb over Hiroshima was a pivotal event in the ending of the war, surely no one can be glad about the suffering and destruction it engendered. Like the Heavenly Hosts, chastised for rejoicing at the deaths of the Egyptian soldiers, we can not be happy, even if we feel justified, at the destruction of Hiroshima.

Nor can we be happy about the era of nuclear terror which ensued with an arms race of ever more weapons of ever more destructive capability. Now the world has stockpiles of tens of thousands of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, many of which are 75 times as powerful as the one that destroyed Hiroshima 50 years ago. For about 30 of the last 50 years, we human beings have had, in our nuclear weapons, the power to destroy life on this planet and the stated strategy to do so to prevent falling into enemy hands; a morality that would be unspeakably horrifying except that it worked until one adversary went bust and gave the world a chance to re-think its strategy.

How one feels about the bombing of Hiroshima, not to mention its unlucky and unsung sister, Nagasaki, is largely a generational thing, in my experience. Simply put, the majority of people who lived during the war remember best their relief that the war would be over and their fury at the Japanese for loosing the war on their lives. They dismiss the suffering of the Bomb as the just desserts of an aggressor nation which lost its bid for world domination. They did not let the horror of the arms race and its possible consequences ruin their post-war lives. This older generation generally supports the bombing of Hiroshima without question, and often seems to take any question of its necessity or morality as an attack on their generation’s accomplishment in winning the war.

Younger people, who don’t remember the war but did grow up with fewer defenses against the horrors of Mutually Assured Destruction have more questions about the bombing. Ironically, considering that they weren’t born, more sense of guilt about it, and, perhaps naturally, more sense of connection with the Japanese people who have been in their lives, allies in the good life rather than enemies of war. Younger people tend to be far more queasy about the bombing of Hiroshima than their elders, and sometimes have the same hardened attitude against it as their parents do for it.

I would like to avoid both extremes this morning, and point us, not to the easy hubris of hindsight nor to the paralyzing pointing of fingers in guilt, but rather in simple commemoration of an event that caused unimaginable suffering and changed the world forever. I want to do this without casting the Japanese as innocent, which they were not, and without negating in any way the triumph or sacrifice of Allied troops. Surely that should be possible; surely those who fought in the war know better even than the rest of us, that War is Hell, and that, while some wars are justified, all are evil.

So I ask you to open your hearts and minds to the horrors of war and the suffering of people like us, as a way of expanding our awareness of our connections and as a way of girding ourselves to assure that it never happens again. We would not forget history lest we be doomed to repeat it.

It is a profoundly religious exercise we embark on this morning, and not an easy one; to walk in another’s shoes, even if they be a former enemy, and to challenge ourselves to the work of peace. It is an exercise in “religion”, in relatedness. It is important.

II. The Bomb over Albuquerque

The size of Hiroshima is disputed, but some say it was a city of about 400,000 people; a city about the size of ours in population, although considerably more compact in land. Like Albuquerque, there is a river running through it, actually six fingers of a river, and there are mountains at one edge. And although, as here, there were very important military installations, Hiroshima was, also as Albuquerque, simply a city; a home to people who worked and played and went to school and grew old…just like here. So perhaps it is not impossible to stand in Hiroshima’s shoes and imagine what happened there by imagining our own city.

Had the bomb exploded over the center of Albuquerque, as it exploded over the center of Hiroshima, it would have immediately and completely incinerated four square miles of city; melted the buildings, exploded the trees, turned the busses into tombs, etched the shadows of vaporized people into the concrete. Four square miles around downtown includes the University and its students, three hospitals with their patients and workers, the civic center, the Menaul School, Old Town, TVI, and the museums and libraries which contain our irreplaceable history. Picture it — gone in an instant, without even the warning of air raid sirens which were not triggered by the one plane which flew over.

At the epicenter, the fireball from the blast was as hot as the surface of the sun, and that high temperature started a fire storm which burned towards the mountains and consumed nearly everything. Your home, mine, this church, our children’s schools, parks, senior centers, Sandia Labs, the military installations, the airport, public buildings; all rubble, fire and ashes, all the way to the mountains. Some of us, our families and friends, managed to pull ourselves out of the ruin of houses and buildings and get away from the fires, but many did not. And the injuries of those who survived the initial blast were horrifying: their skin…our skin…our children’s skin…hung in ribbons, the pattern of clothing burned into flesh, shards of glass, wood splinters and even blades of grass driven by the force of the blast deep into the flesh. We wandered around in pain or shock, towards the rivers, the hospitals, or just aimless.

Soon after the blast, a rainstorm brought the radioactive ash to earth in great, greasy droplets, but did not put out the fires. Since 80% of the fire-fighters were dead or wounded, and most of the water mains melted, there was no real fire-fighting effort. Since only about 10% of the city’s doctors and nurses were available, there was no real medical care. Since virtually all communication from the city had been destroyed, it was long hours before anyone outside of Albuquerque really understood what had happened or began to help. The horribly wounded simply died; 70,000 died within the day, many by drowning in the river that they had sought to cool their burns.

The next day the army moved in and began to pile up the corpses to burn. The ashes were buried without ceremony; there was no time for ceremony, and no will. Everyone was in shock. Another 50,000 died in the next few months of their burns, injuries that could not be treated because there were no hospitals, and of radiation sickness….that is nearly 1 of every three residents of the city, dead. Look around you — one of every three, dead, another of every three injured or ill; all of us fearing that the radiation would kill, eventually, everyone in Albuquerque within three years. Five months later, far too many of the babies born were severely mentally retarded. For miles around, nothing taller than knee-high stood except the occasional shell of a building surrounded by rubble.

Imagine Albuquerque, flattened to knee-high rubble and ashes with only the shell of some uptown building surviving. Imagine all of us, fearing death, or later, as it became clear that some would survive for some years, being afraid to have children because of possible genetic damage.

And we were stigmatized, we Albuquerquians. No one talked about the bomb that ended life as we knew it; it was a taboo reminder of a humiliating loss. But our children were still disfigured by their burns, there was still too much cancer here, and we found that we were considered undesirable marriage partners because of what we had been through.

Imagine.

Still, the human spirit triumphs: there was nothing else to do but pull ourselves together and begin to rebuild our city. Amid and after suffering that even we find hard to remember and impossible to describe, with help from the victors and our own stamina, we rebuild the city. In fear, but in triumph, we have healthy children, and discover that not everyone will die of cancer. Today, our city is a modern one with a reputation for its night life and vacation possibilities. The only reminders of the bomb are the skeleton of one building left standing to remind us, and the riverside Peace Park. There children play and lovers wander through a green belt of beauty, and some stop to pay their respects to the cenotaph, a monument honoring those who died from the bomb. It is simply inscribed: Rest in Peace. The mistake shall not be repeated.”

III. Never Again

We lived forever until 1945.

Children have time to make mistakes,
margin for error. Carthage
could be destroyed and sown with salt.
Everything was always. It would be all right.

Then we turned
(so technically sweet the turning)
the light on.
In the desert of that dividing light we saw
the writing on the walls of the world.
-URSULA LE GUIN

After Hiroshima’s small atomic bomb came ever larger and more deadly thermo-nuclear weapons, and a crippling expensive arms race that eventually destroyed the Soviet Union. But before it did, enough bombs were built to turn the threat of war into the threat of holocaust; the destruction of everything we human beings care about. This was a threat which touched only some people at a conscious level; most of us went about our business in denial. Although the children of the 60′s were frightened by duck and cover drills they knew enough to know it would be utterly useless in case of attack, the fear of the Bomb was soon sublimated in social upheaval, the horrors of a real war in Vietnam, or in the quest for the good life. Most people never thought about the nuclear clock ticking a minute from midnight and the end of life. They could not think the unthinkable. But denial is never free, and it has taken many tolls. Someday social scientists will have enough distance to document what that threat of no tomorrow has done to us. Here are some guesses.

The threat of the Bomb changed the nature of parenting. Once people had children in large part to satisfy their need for a sense of immortality, and children, therefore, could meet deep needs of their parents simply by outliving them. With no future assured, children now can not satisfy that need, but must give pleasure to their parents in much more immediate ways, which stresses their lives. Another possible result of the Bomb Threat is that the “me” decade which we have recently traversed was really a “now” decade; a time when people ate, drank and drove their nation into crippling debt because their future was in jeopardy.

The fear of holocaust and the end of all we hold dear has probably fueled a religious revolution, not only because some people dealt with insecurity by looking to the absolute truths promised by religion, but even in our own church, where Humanism has died a slow death in the face, it seems to me, of evidence that the glorious human nature worshipped in the first part of the century had produced, not only horrors but the possibility that the Divine in the Human would destroy itself and thereby destroy everything of meaning, beauty, and worth. Such a faith is unsatisfying, as a new generation insisted, and rocked the UUA back from Humanist brinks to the generalized spirituality which now forms the center of our movement.

But the fall of the Soviet Union changed all this. The threat of nuclear holocaust is now small since the end of the cold war, although the threat of a nuclear explosion or blackmail somewhere on the globe, by a terrorist or renegade government, is getting larger all the time. Ironically, the fear of Soviet strength has become the fear of Soviet weakness. Will their damaged security system and social controls be able to contain their thousands of nuclear weapons and thousands of pounds of weapons-grade nuclear materials? It seems not. Will we do what we can to help them secure their materials or, better yet, buy them? Even the Democrats lack the will to do the job completely, and the Republicans, in the guise of cutting foreign aid, are cutting that buy-back program as well. Those who remember Hiroshima will do what is necessary to keep nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists and renegades. Even the small stuff can do unimaginable damage and cause unimaginable suffering.

In the face of this new kind of risk to national security, the military seems to be responding with business as usual. Are we worried about something? Build more and bigger weapons. But we already have enough weapons to blast our planet clean and enough vehicles to take them anywhere they would need to go. So what’s the 3.77 billion dollars for new missile sites going to get us besides social misery and an unbalanced budget? For one thing, it’s going to get us in trouble with our own treaties which forbid them, and possibly derail the dismantling of the cold war even further than Russia’s poverty has. It would give the Pentagon more money than they asked for and can use wisely. It is probably in this money that the billion extra dollars for Sandia Labs is placed, and that billion dollars will certainly have a beneficial effect on Albuquerque and even, perhaps, on this church and our people, but at what cost? Those of us who remember Hiroshima should protest.

And we should protest France’s resumption of nuclear testing as the dangerous macho display that it is. We’ve spent 50 years learning ways to solve international problems without the unthinkable all-out war. We’ve been lucky…we’ve been graced, that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the only uses of the Bomb. They were horrible enough. Do we need another lesson? I hope not. I pray not.

In the end, to the horror of Hiroshima’s suffering and of the terror of nuclear proliferation, which has changed kind but not disappeared, there are only three humane responses. The first is sorrow. The second is resolve. The third is invitation. The sorrow can be without apology; it is possible and, to my mind necessary, to say “I’m sorry” without saying “I was wrong,” or “you were innocent”. To say “I’m sorry” in this context means simply, “I can imagine your pain. I can stand in your shoes. This was a horrible thing. As much as I can, I have tried to understand.” And that means everything.

The second response is resolve. Because it was so horrible, because the next time will be even more horrible, it must never happen again. We must do our part to see that it does not. We can not prevent aggressor nations from stalking the earth again; that is out of our control. We can not put the nuclear genie back into its bottle; we will live with it as long as there is civilization. But we can discipline ourselves to see that the materials of the world-shattering weapons stay out of any more hands than they are already in, and we can discipline ourselves to do nothing that will escalate the tension or fear in the world that makes the use of weapons more likely. We can invite the people of good will in the world to join with us in our resolve.

In that context, I can say “I’m sorry” to the Japanese people about the bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I’m sorry so many people died. I’m sorry so many children suffered. I’m sorry so many lives were shortened. I’m sorry that a beautiful city with its unique treasures and history was destroyed. And I will do what I can do to make real my most fervent prayer. It must never happen again. Will you join me?

(sung)
All that I ask is that for peace
We work today, we work today
So that the children of this world
Can live and laugh and grow and play.

Great spirt of life, help us to feel connected to all of the world’s people, even our former enemies and our current ones. Help us to remember that the same sun shines over us all, and the same feelings beat in our hearts. Help us to sing a song of peace in all that we do and are, and work for the time when there will be peace in truth, here, and afar. Amen.