First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Five days ago, we were all swept up into the swirling joyous madness that is Mardi Gras, and many of us were a part of the show, by wearing masks – some plastic, some fabric, some with sequins and glitter, some with feathers, some plain, some beautiful, some fantastic, some scary. I bought a plain classic purple satin mask at Jefferson Variety, and decorated it myself with hot glue, sequin braid, and hot pink ostrich feathers. I had fun wearing it last weekend, but it was a relief to take it off. Note to self: long ostrich plumes are NOT a good idea during a windy Mardi Gras.)
Masks have long been associated with the city’s celebration of Carnival, and indeed, have become a kind of emblem of New Orleans herself. We New Orleanians seemingly wear masks at the drop of a hat. Masks and New Orleans are essentially linked in the public mind, what with Mardi Gras, Halloween, and the Day of Decadence. Masks may be the #1 souvenir taken home by tourists. The association between the city and masks goes back centuries. Back when Louisiana was under the control of Spain in the late 1700s, the authorities tried to ban the wearing of masks. It may not surprise you to learn that it didn’t work.
But the Spanish governor did have a point – masks act as a disguise, hiding what lies behind. It’s easier to get away with something when you are wearing a mask; it’s easier to conceal what’s really going on. To discover someone’s identity, to learn the truth, you have to go behind the mask. This principle applies not only to people in costume – but also to many other situations.
What folks think they know about New Orleans can function as a kind of mask. Example: New Orleans has been noted in the national media both as one of the fastest growing cities in the United States, and as a dying city. (It seems to me you really can't be both.) It sounds great to be “one of the fastest growing cities in the United States” -- but it is a mask. Look behind it and you see a city where a significant portion of our original population has still not been able to return after the forced evacuation 5 years ago. In reality, ours is a city depleted of its original citizens, some of whom are prevented from coming back, even as more affluent outsiders stream in.
Another mask New Orleans wears is her old nickname of The City That Care Forgot – the party town, Sin City. Sure, we’re comfortable wearing that mask; we’ve worn it for generations. We still have our celebrations and our festivals; we still eat the best and most diverse local food in the country. We still know how to laissez les bon temps roulez, cher. If visitors stroll the French Quarter or ride the St. Charles streetcar, they might believe the mask is our real face. Despite everything that has happened, we are still an incredibly beautiful and culturally rich city.
But go behind the mask, go to the 7th Ward or the Lower 9th Ward or Gentilly or Lakeview, and it’s clear that even now, 5 years after the Storm, vast areas of the city remain vacant, lost, destroyed. Neighborhoods that never had a vacant lot before Katrina show empty acres; some formerly prosperous middle-class neighborhoods exhibit only “jack o’lantern” progress, a few renovated houses standing out on devastated blocks. And some former working class neighborhoods sprout Mac-mansions, further depleting the stock of affordable housing in the city.
Even many of those abandoned homes are masks – some of them are actually occupied. With housing projects torn down, the term “affordable housing” itself a mask for what the city no longer has, and with many low-income home owners unable to access programs that rehab houses, some New Orleanians have come home only to have no homes. According to UNITY, some people – numbering in the thousands – are squatting in their own destroyed house, or one that belongs to someone else. Some are squeezed into the homes of friends or relatives as they struggle to rebuild or find a new home. They are, in affect, homeless in their own home.
In the cluster of UU churches that make up Greater New Orleans UUs, the mask might be how well we seem to outsiders – we hold worship, our Sanctuary looks gorgeous, we teach our children and youth, we gather for fellowship events and we work on social justice projects. We’ve jointly taught two interns. We host volunteers from around the country, and we do our best to show them all sides, the good and the bad, the fun and the devastated. But despite the new members and our active ministries and our visibility in the wider community, it is still a struggle. First Church lacks a permanent certificate of occupancy, and electricity to our Sanctuary comes from a tangle of extension cords. A few parishioners in all 3 churches are still without a proper home; a few still camp out in homes not yet completely renovated. We may look fine, especially with a casual look, but we’re all still in the struggle. Looking fine is our mask.
We especially need to get behind the mask when we try to engage in social justice. A mask that is often hard to shake off in justice work is our own privileged sense that we already know what’s best for someone else. When Katrina happened, I was astounded at the number of people outside of New Orleans – even UUs! – who told me that the city should not be rebuilt, or if it were, to be rebuilt “somewhere else.” (They never did say where exactly.) After Katrina, lots of good-hearted volunteers from around the country insisted they knew best where and how to direct their labor.
In doing social justice work as a UU congregation, it is necessary to go behind all kinds of masks, masks that keep us from seeing the true depth of a situation, masks that prevent us from realizing root causes in the issues we face, masks that hamper our effectiveness. One mask is is assuming we already know what ought to be done; another is the so-called conventional wisdom. While even the lowest level of charity is preferable to doing nothing, UU churches that want to have the greatest impact should go behind the mask and employ a clear-headed analysis in order to make true and lasting positive change, and in order to build right relations in the wider community. Social analysis requires going back to basics, looking behind the received wisdom about a situation, asking hard questions of ourselves and others to learn what we don’t already know about a given issue.
We UUs often say in our stewardship campaigns that folks should give to their church “till it feels good” and we often promote doing social justice work in our communities by saying how good it makes you feel. Donating money and time and effort to our congregations and to causes we believe in does indeed feel good, and that is a valid reason for doing them. But an even better reason is because we are all in this together. People who belong to a Unitarian Universalist church need to stand together with other folks in UU churches because we are all sisters and brothers in faith. We stand together with people in need in our city because we are all New Orleanians. We stand with people who have survived hardship in our country because we are all Americans. We stand with the people of Japan and New Zealand in the aftermath of the earthquakes because we are all human beings. When we take off our masks of difference, we find we are all the same. As hymn #134 proclaims, “Our world is one world/what touches one affects us all.”
Many of us wear invisible, personal masks that TV’s Dr. Phil McGraw calls our “social mask.” We hide things about ourselves that make us uncomfortable or afraid or ashamed, things that differentiate us from those around us, things that we feel will make other people dislike us, or get us fired, or bring down violence on our heads. The process of learning to wear such a mask starts very early on. In “The ‘me’ behind the mask,” a paper on the developmental challenges of gifted children, Miraca Gross tells this sad little story from several years ago:
S
eventh-grade Emma was deeply moved by a television program about the Czechoslovakian struggle for freedom from the USSR. The next morning she started to describe to some of the other girls in her class the pain of the Czechoslovakian people. The other girls looked her up and down, raised their eyebrows, and ostentatiously walked away. Emma realized her mistake, and the next day she engaged the girls in a conversation about clothes and make-up. They accepted her back, with relief. She was wearing the right mask.
http://www.sengifted.org/articles_social/Gross_TheMeBehindTheMask.shtml
Under pressure that is both internal and external, we wear masks to try to cover our original social class, our education or lack of it, our sexual orientation, our political opinions, our religion. We hide behind our social mask, afraid someone will find out we are not as we appear. We are silent when we ought to speak, fearing to give our true selves away. We spend money we do not have to live a life that we think we ought to have. We pretend to feelings we do not have and cover up feelings we do have. These are not the glittering and beautiful masks of Carnival, but are destructive and harmful. These masks are killing us.
When we go behind the mask and discern what is really going on in ourselves, in our communities and in our world, we are better able to do what must be done. We face the world as our authentic selves, able and willing to make common cause with justice-loving peoples everywhere, and make lasting contributions to the spread of freedom and justice and equality. So might this be for all of us! AMEN – ASHÉ – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTÉ – BLESSED BE!
