“The Spirit & Culture of Generosity”
A Mardi Gras & Canvass Kickoff Sermon
by the Rev. Melanie Morel Sullivan
Unitarian Universalist Church in Cherry Hill
Sunday, February 23, 2003

Reading Before Sermon: A FEW MARDI GRAS STORIES

The parade began to roll. Just as the first band swung around the corner, horns blaring, and the crowd pressed gently forward against the police barricade in anticipation, a deep voice from the back boomed out.

“Baby’s first Mardi Gras! Baby’s first Mardi Gras!” An older black man with a small toddler girl sitting on his shoulders was making the announcement, and despite getting there early to stake out the choice spots, despite the way we’d all held our ground, the crowd -- young and old, black and white, New Orleanian and tourist -- parted like the Red Sea. “Baby’s first Mardi Gras” -- without even verbalizing it, we all realized how sacred this was, and made way for the man and his baby granddaughter. As the band went by, I’m sure that little girl, all the way in the front row, was feeling the vibration of the drums in her chest, a sensation she would remember and treasure all her life.

#2:
One Mardi Gras, I was standing with a group of friends and family on Napoleon Avenue as a parade went by. My brother-in-law arrived a bit late, toting a small ice chest. When he got to where we were standing, he called out, “Who wants a beer or a cup of wine?” In true Carnival spirit, not only did those of us in our group answer loudly in the affirmative, but several people we did not know standing around us did as well. Pat good-naturedly began passing around cans of beer and pouring out Mardi Gras cups of wine, not just to us, but to everyone who had said yes around us. The next thing we knew, there were bags of roasted peanuts from a street vendor being passed around, and a big bag of Doritos too. Someone offered us fried chicken wings, and someone else had popcorn. Pretty soon, we all had both drinks and snacks, and were talking and laughing together like old friends.

#3:
One Mardi Gras, I was standing with a group of friends and family watching the biggest parade of the Carnival season, the Bacchus parade, held on the Sunday night before Mardi Gras. We were pretty keyed up, since we had a friend riding in the parade, and true to tradition, he had promised to bombard us with stuff as his float went by. We positioned ourselves carefully around our homemade sign, which said in big letters, “HERE WE ARE, BILL!!” Finally, float 12 rolled by, and we screamed and hollered to our friend Bill and boxes and bags of carnival throws showered down. The people around us went crazy, trying to catch some of our stuff, but we were quick and well-organized. When the band behind the float came past, we sat among our booty, satiated.

Then we methodically began to go through it, dividing it all up, and passing stuff to the strangers around us -- who, just a few minutes before, we had prevented from catching anything.

SERMON

Welcome to our church’s 1st – but hopefully not our last – celebration of Mardi Gras. Since this is an inaugural event, and since most of you have never been to the New Orleans sacred festival of Carnival, I know there’s been a great deal of speculation in the church about how I could possibly connect what most of you have seen in the media as a drunken, licentious, bawdy brawl with liberal religion and our annual canvass drive. Stay with me – I hope to make it all clear as we go on.

Many congregants came "properly" attired. The string band led a parade after the service.

Welcome to our church’s 1st – but hopefully not our last – celebration of Mardi Gras. Since this is an inaugural event, and since most of you have never been to the New Orleans sacred festival of Carnival, I know there’s been a great deal of speculation in the church about how I could possibly connect what most of you have seen in the media as a drunken, licentious, bawdy brawl with liberal religion and our annual canvass drive. Stay with me – I hope to make it all clear as we go on.

I know many of you associate Mardi Gras with bad behavior, but I want you to begin to see it as New Orleanians do, as I do: as a holiday that exemplifies the spirit and culture of generosity. I’m talking about the kind of generosity that gives freely without thought of return, without any notion of quid pro quo, or precisely calibrated tit-for-tat. Carnival is truly a community celebration, reminding us of our need for other people, for it is impossible to celebrate Carnival all by yourself. Mardi Gras shows what can happen when a whole community pulls together across all that usually divides them, to provide good things, not just for themselves, but for thousands of unknown others.

You may not know that Mardi Gras is entirely paid for by private funds, except for the costs of police protection and street cleaning, which is not even remotely covered by the price of the parade permits. You also may not be aware that there are Carnival organizations for every single possible interest group. There are not only white and black krewes (the New Orleans term for Mardi Gras clubs), there are gay and straight ones (different clubs for lesbians and gay men), upper class and working class ones, krewes for doctors, lawyers, men, women, men and women, children, whole families, one for people with their dogs, and even one for people who wear leather (but I can’t tell you much about them during a worship service).

The members of each of these organizations not only pay membership fees to their respective clubs, but they also pay for their own, their own refreshments for the balls, parties, and parades, and chip in to pay for the floats and bands for the parades. These items add up to anywhere from several thousand to around a thousand for every single krewe member. Above all that, each person foots the bill for everything they throw from the floats.

“Throws” from Mardi Gras floats are a tradition dating back more than 120 years (although it must be admitted that the earliest throws were nasty little surprises, like tiny bags of flour that exploded on impact). Today these items include necklaces of plastic beads of varying sizes, colors, and elaboration (referred to in New Orleans as simply “beads”), small plastic toys, krewe mementos, coins known as “dubloons,” mass-produced durable plastic cups called “Mardi Gras cups” decorated in the krewe theme, wrapped snack food items, decorated coconuts, and even underwear. On top of what they shell out for normal krewe expenses, parade riders and marching group members spend another several hundred to a thousand dollars or more on stuff to throw – the vast majority of which they will toss to people they do not know, and who not only do not know them, but can never know them, for all will be wearing masks and disguises.

How does that sound to you, people spending such sums of hard-earned money in order to throw silly gifts to strangers? How do you react, hearing that otherwise sensible and normal people save up all year to buy bags and boxes of stuff that they really like, but that they plan to give away to folks they don’t know and will never know?

Well, how does it sound to you that a group of people would give away large sums of their hard-earned money to support an institution so that strangers can come and get the benefit of it? How does it sound that folks would donate funds above and beyond anything that they themselves expect to “get out of” an organization, in order to see it remain healthy and vibrant into the future?

Carnival and Canvass have that in common – a culture and spirit of generosity that goes well above and beyond the common consumerist mentality of “What am I gonna get out of it?” Nobody connected with Mardi Gras asks themselves that question; we already know the answer – throwing things off a Carnival float to a waiting crowd is a joyous, amazing experience. By being part of it, you’re a part of the spirit of Mardi Gras – that’s what you get out of it. Nobody connected with Mardi Gras asks themselves, “Am I spending too much?” – they are more likely to question, “Do I have enough throws?” (The usual answer is NO and they go out and buy more.)

The same things can be said of Canvass. Supporting your congregation financially should not be a matter of “What am I getting out of it?” or “How little can I give?” but come from a spirit and culture of generosity that is instead concerned with how healthy our church can be, how we can expand our ministries and influence, and how we can better equip more and more people to go out and change the world for the better. By being part of it, you’re a part of the Living Tradition of our liberal faith, which has a joyous, life-giving, life-saving message. That’s what you get out it.

My first 3 stories about Mardi Gras were meant to illustrate the kind of community that springs up on its own during Carnival. The community that is formed at Mardi Gras in New Orleans is an amazing thing; it is spontaneous and exuberant and all-inclusive. Strangers not only speak kindly to one another, but goods are shared in common. Everyone has a place, and it doesn’t matter who or what you are in your other, more real life. It is Mardi Gras, and you are welcome, and cared-for. Want some beer? Have one of ours. Are you hungry, want something to eat? Didja catch anything from that last float, darlin? Here you go.

By the definition of anthropologist Victor Turner, Carnival is the spirit of communitas made flesh. In his view, communitas is a form of spontaneous community that creates bonds between people, bonds that are undifferentiated, egalitarian, direct, non rational, existential, I-Thou, immediate, and concrete. It is not shaped by norms or rules or regulations; it is not institutionalized; it is not abstract. It differs from the camaraderie found in everyday life because it tends to ignore, reverse, or cut across boundaries that separate people.

Carnival defies – or deconstructs – the strict lines of our society, cutting through the boundaries between rich and poor, black and white, us and them. At Mardi Gras, the celebrants make a community of young and old, men and women and children, gay and straight and trans gender, powerful and powerless, native and newcomer. All are welcome – even the ones who refuse to join in. (I think of the playful reaction Mardi Gras participants extend to the fundamentalists who come to New Orleans to preach against the celebration. Holding their doleful signs warning us to repent, these folks get hugged and kissed and draped with beads by passersby, all the while being urged, “Lighten up, darlin’, it’s Carnival!”)

Carnival communitas is a pretty good way of describing what we are trying to build here at our church. Few other institutions in our area are attempting to balance the conflicting needs and desires of diverse individuals with the on-going well-being and stability of institution; few other religious groups in our area would even try to be as open to the diversity of viewpoints and lifestyles that make up our church. Unlike so many other institutions, we are building our community not around a common creed, or a common ethnic history, or a common enemy or fear. Instead, we are building ours around a set of common values and a common vision of a world in which compassion, justice, and peace reign supreme, where each person’s contributions and talents and gifts can be valued in all their glorious diversity.

As an open, accepting community of liberal faith, we not only allow different expressions of religion, we encourage them. You want a Buddhist group? Go ahead. Want a group to discuss current events? Here’s a meeting room. Need a group to celebrate pagan holidays or worship Native American style? We’ve got a place for you. Want to explore different perspectives on God and spirituality? Have at it. Need a space to talk about UU views of Jesus and the Bible? We have a place for you. Want to start an atheists group? Pick a date, and you can do it.

In doing this, in being so open and welcoming to different points of view, we constantly weigh and measure and judge how the specific needs and desires of individuals and small groups fit against the needs and desires of the community as a whole. We ask ourselves the really hard questions: When does unbridled individualism threaten the stability and integrity of the community? When does community threaten to crush individual expression and growth? Who is welcome here? Where do we draw our lines? There are no simple solutions to these questions, only our sacred covenant with one another to keep open the dialog between the demands of diversity and the needs of our church.

There are not many models from which to draw inspiration for this new kind of religious community, this communitas as unity in diversity. We Unitarian Universalists are doing nothing less than attempting to redefine community for the 21st century – and we have to do it, since, much like Carnival, we believe you can’t be a Unitarian Universalist by yourself. Since the kind of community we long for has never really existed before, we will have to draw on some highly unusual models, even Mardi Gras.

Let me tell you a final story about Mardi Gras. One year, a promoter had what he thought was a brilliant idea. He would rent floats and costumes and offer places in a brand-new parade to tourists, so that people from out of town could experience the thrill of riding in a parade. In addition to selling the places on the floats and renting the costumes, he would make money selling the throws. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But it was a complete and utter failure. It seems that the people from outside just didn’t get that Mardi Gras spirit of generosity. The tourists on the floats refused to spend good money on stuff to throw away to strangers; those that did buy throws wouldn’t throw except to those few in the crowds they knew. After that first and only parade was over, I happened to hear one float-rider brag to another, “Look at all the stuff I saved!”

Neither Carnival nor Canvass is about how little you can spend or how much you can save or who can you keep out. There is no joy in the spirit and culture of scarcity and exclusion. But there is joy and wonder and creativity in the spirit and culture of generosity. When the spirit of communitas reigns, you never know what wonders might come into being.

And so on this first Mardi Gras Sunday, I close with these heartfelt words:
May the true spirit of Carnival – the spirit of generosity that gives unstintingly and without thought of return, the spirit of inclusiveness that denies all exclusions, the spirit of love that embraces all, the spirit of justice for all ages, genders, classes, creeds, and conditions, the spirit of hope for a better world – may that spirit be with us now and always.

So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

Copyrighted 2002, Melanie Morel Sullivan. This material may be used by other Unitarian Universalist churches with attribution to the author and the Unitarian Universalist Church in Cherry Hill. Commercial distribution is prohibited.

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