Bellies With Stars

THE SNEETCHES
by Dr. Suess

Now the Star-bellied Sneetches had bellies with stars.
The Plain-bellied Sneetches had none upon thars.
The stars weren't so big; they were really quite small.
You would think such a thing wouldn't matter at all.
But because they had stars, all the Star-bellied Sneetches
would brag, "We're the best kind of Sneetch on the beaches."

With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they'd snort, "
We'll have nothing to do with the plain-bellied sort."
And whenever they met some, when they were out walking,
they'd hike right on past them without even talking.

When the Star-bellied children went out to play ball,
could the Plain-bellies join in their game? Not at all!
You could only play ball if your bellies had stars,
and the Plain-bellied children had none upon thars.

When the Star-bellied Sneetches had frankfurter roasts,
or picnics or parties or marshmallow toasts,
they never invited the Plain-bellied Sneetches.
Left them out cold in the dark of the beaches.
Kept them away; never let them come near,
and that's how they treated them year after year.

Then one day, it seems, while the Plain-bellied Sneetches
were moping, just moping alone on the beaches,
sitting there, wishing their bellies had stars,
up zipped a stranger in the strangest of cars.

"My friends, " he announced in a voice clear and keen,
"My name is Sylvester McMonkey McBean.
I've heard of your troubles; I've heard you're unhappy.
But I can fix that; I'm the fix-it-up chappie.
I've come here to help you; I have what you need.
My prices are low, and I work with great speed,
and my work is one hundred per cent guaranteed."

Then quickly, Sylvester McMonkey McBean
put together a very peculiar machine.
Then he said, "You want stars like a Star-bellied Sneetch?
My friends, you can have them . . . . for three dollars each.
Just hand me your money and climb on aboard."

They clambered inside and the big machine roared.
It bonked. It clonked. It jerked. It berked.
It bopped them around, but the thing really worked.
When the Plain-bellied Sneetches popped out, they had stars!
They actually did, they had stars upon thars!

Then they yelled at the ones who had stars from the start,
"We're exactly like you; you can't tell us apart.
We're all just the same now, you snooty old smarties.
Now we can come to your frankfurter parties!"

"Good grief!" groaned the one who had stars from the first.
"We're still the best Sneetches, and they are the worst.
But how in the world will we know," they all frowned,
"if which kind is what or the other way 'round?"

Then up stepped McBean with a very sly wink, and he said,
"Things are not quite as bad as you think.
You don't know who's who, that is perfectly true.
But come with me, friends, do you know what I'll do?
I'll make you again the best Sneetches on beaches,
and all it will cost you is ten dollars eaches.

Belly stars are no longer in style, " said McBean.
"What you need is a trip through my stars-off machine.
This wondrous contraption will take off your stars,
so you won't look like Sneetches who have them on thars."

That handy machine, working very precisely,
removed all the stars from their bellies quite nicely.
Then, with snoots in the air, they paraded about.
They opened their beaks and proceeded to shout,
"We now know who's who, and there isn't a doubt,
the best kind of Sneetches are Sneetches without."

Then, of course those with stars all got frightfully mad.
To be wearing a star now was frightfully bad.
Then, of course old Sylvester McMonkey McBean
invited them into his stars-off machine.
Then, of course from then on, you can probably guess,
things really got into a horrible mess.

All the rest of the day on those wild screaming beaches,
the Fix-it-up-Chappie was fixing up Sneetches.
Off again, on again, in again, out again,
through the machine and back round about again,
still paying money, still running through,
changing their stars every minute or two,
until neither the Plain- nor the Star-bellies knew
whether this one was that one or that one was this one
or which one was what one or what one was who!

Then, when every last cent of their money was spent,
the Fix-It-Up-Chappie packed up and he went.
And he laughed as he drove in his car up the beach,
"They never will learn; no, you can't teach a Sneetch!"

But McBean was quite wrong, I'm quite happy to say,
the Sneetches got quite a bit smarter that day.
That day, they decided that Sneetches are Sneetches,
and no kind of Sneetch is the BEST on the beaches.
That day, all the Sneetches forgot about stars,
and whether they had one or not upon thars.

This is a revised version of the first program I presented to the small UU church I attend in Austin. To prepare for one of these programs, I generally spend many hours researching my topic. This time, no research was required; this program is pretty much my personal experience and observations.

The title "Bellies with Stars" refers to exclusivity. The dictionary defines the word "Exclusive" to mean (1) limited to a group of people, especially one considered fashionable or wealthy; (2) only available to or used by one person, group, or organization; (3) also, excluding or intending to exclude many from participation or consideration. Sounds kind of mean, doesn't it? Stingy. Non-Unitarian and definitely non-Universalist.

My pre-UU spiritual past frequently included exclusivity. My mother was raised Catholic and was married in the Catholic Church. My older brother and I were baptized Catholic (so if that religion proves to be The True Religion, that baptism is my ticket to salvation). When my parents divorced when I was three, the Church pretty much turned against my mother. She wasn't excommunicated, but she was shunned. This was devastating to my mother who, at the time, had no place to turn for emotional support except the Church. A woman who tends to hold a grudge, she never entered a church again except for an occasional wedding.

Thirteen years later, my mother married again, a man who came from a family that was Orthodox Jew. His parents intensely distrusted my mother, a former Catholic, divorced, with two grown children, who was eight years older than their son. My mother tried to please. She studied the faith, learned the traditions, kept her dairy products separate from her meat products, and so on. But for years, they refused to accept her. When my mother and stepfather went to visit his parents, his father moved into a hotel so as not to be under the same roof.

My older brother and I were raised Lutheran. The Lutheran Church in Madison, Wisconsin did a creditable job of giving us a basic foundation in Christianity, but I found I was frequently in trouble because of my tendency to ask too many questions about biblical teachings. I was told by the minister that my problem was that I was trying to make sense of God as if He were human, and that it was futile and wrong to question God or the bible. My last time to attend Lutheran Church was about 40 years ago, the day the Black family attended. Nobody asked them to leave. Nobody was overtly rude, but even as a child, I could tell they weren't welcomed in the way visitors usually were. They apparently didn't have stars on their bellies.

One of the most blatant and, I think most cruel examples of exclusion I've ever heard of happened to our own Lea Ann Williams, a frequent speaker here. For those of you who don't know her story, she was raised in the Pentecostal Church. As a child, she was something of a Pentecostal prodigy, a youngster who preached and witnessed with such amazing fervor for one so young that she actually converted quite a few people to the Pentecostal faith. But as she reached adolescence, she too began asking questions. Some things about the religious teachings didn't make sense, so she often went to the preacher for counsel. Finally, unable to satisfy Lea Ann's curiosity, he declared her to be demonized and forbade anyone except her immediate family to have anything to do with her.

I see a pattern here.

I'm sure many, if not all of you have witnessed similar examples of exclusion. I've seen mainstream churches exclude people who were gay, or who had AIDS, or who were poor, or who were homeless, or who were from a different culture, or who had their lips pierced, or who were sprinkled instead of dunked. It was always the same - our bellies have stars. Yours don't.

Back in the 60's, I experienced a good bit of exclusion because of my appearance, my companions, and my politics. I kind of enjoyed it. I didn't much care for the Starbellies back then anyway, and I liked being a member of the counter culture. I suspect some of you may have felt the same way. That's one of the reasons I like the name that was FINALLY chosen for the new, small-but-growing South Austin UU church I often attend. After much discussion, of course, and balloting, the name Wildflower Unitarian Universalist Welcoming Congregation was chosen. I like the name Wildflower. Wildflowers are tough; they're survivors. They're not prissy little, over-pampered, over-rated, cultivated flowers. South Austin, where I live, has a certain wild reputation. It's considered by many to be blue-collar; "we eat our chicken fried and live in double-wides." I've always kind of liked having the reputation of being wild when I really wasn't. I firmly believe that if wildflowers could think, they'd be independent thinkers. If they were human, they'd be Jack Kerouac, and if they were religious, in my heart of hearts I do believe they'd be Unitarian.

The first time I attended a UU church, this UU church actually, I immediately knew it was the church for me. Hadn't even heard the sermon yet. Didn't even know what UUs believed. Before the service started, I was standing around the table with about a dozen other folks, drinking coffee and eating (one of the things I liked about this place was that you eat before and after the service). There was a lesbian couple who'd been joined in a Wiccan handfasting ceremony, unheard of in this part of Texas; there was an interracial couple in charge of the day's program, a Muslim from Iraq and his formerly Baptist wife, one member of the Ethical Society, a Quaker, two Buddhists, a Native American theist, some kind of a transcendental humanist, a pagan, a few Christians, and some Atheists. Except for being overdressed, I fit right in.

When people ask me what Unitarians believe, I always start by saying, "it's a very inclusive religion that is broad enough to allow people of many different beliefs to feel comfortable at its services." When one of my sons wanted to get married some years ago, he didn't know how to handle the service without making someone angry or uncomfortable. He and his fiancée were living in Illinois and wanted to get married in Austin where they'd met. She is Vietnamese; her family is Buddhist. His father's family is Southern Baptist. You already know about his fallen Catholic grandmother, his formerly Orthodox Jew step-grandfather. My brothers and sister are all atheists. There are also quite a few roll-your-own religions represented in our family. He called me for my advice. I suggested the Unitarian Church. He was married in the big First UU Church of Austin in 1994. It was a lovely ceremony that included non-controversial truths about love and relationships that were derived from a number of spiritual sources. Jesus was not mentioned. Nor was God. Nobody was angry or uncomfortable or felt excluded.

I have worked for many years in the field of employment, an area rife with examples of exclusion, prejudice, and discrimination, but it's not always mean-spirited. Sometimes it's even understandable. Most of us feel more relaxed and comfortable among people like ourselves. If you want to go see a movie, do you ever think to ask the teenager down the street with the 15 piercings and the purple hair to go with you? Why not? Is it really because you think he wouldn't enjoy it? Many people don't intend to be exclusive or prejudiced. In the workplace, for example, they just are so used to seeing women as secretaries and men as telephone installers that it's difficult for them to seriously consider the reverse. I had a 40-year old white employer tell me once that the best employee he ever had was a 35-year old white male, and when that employee moved away, he intended to replace him with another 35-ish-year old white male because he wanted someone just as capable. I think we all tend to feel more comfortable and relate better with someone who is basically like we are. We can interact with someone from a different culture or a different gender or a vastly different age, but it takes more effort. We often don't share the same history or the same perspective.

This is a good exclusion story. Years ago, I was conducting a job search seminar. I was about 30 minutes into the first session of a 5-day, 20 hour workshop. Uncharacteristically, the entire class was female, all white, middle-class women who had just introduced themselves and explained they were looking for jobs as secretaries or teacher aides or bookkeepers, etc. Suddenly, the door was flung open and in raced a most amazing person. I remembered her name for years, but it's eluded me now. Picture Whoopie Goldberg. She was dark black with sort of wild hair from running to get to the meeting. She wore a tight blouse, a short skirt, and very high heels. When asked to introduce herself and tell something about herself, she loudly announced, punctuated frequently by cuss words, that she was an unwed mother on welfare, in recovery from a heroin addiction, with 4 children, and said she'd take a job shoveling _____ if it meant she could get off that ______welfare. The other ladies wide-eyed and open-mouthed. I don't think anyone inhaled for a full 10 minutes. I was very concerned about how this "different" person would affect the dynamic of the formerly homogeneous group. I was happily surprised. Within an amazingly short time, the group bonded so completely that on the last day, during mock interviews when our "different" participant was "hired" in a mock interview, her classmates cheered and gave her a standing ovation. They saw her as a person, not a group, and realized there was much more about them that was the same than there was that was different.

One of the Muslim mosques in Austin has hosted two open houses for the same purpose. I wish entire countries could sit down together and relate as individuals. Maybe then we'd quit fearing, hating, and killing each other.

A few years ago, when I was working with people coming out of prison, I took all 240 hours of training required to become a licensed drug and alcohol abuse counselor because so many of my clients were in recovery. The most interesting part of the training for me was when the instructor said that we all had to face up to our prejudices and learn to put them aside because they would hamper our ability to effectively counsel. There were quite a few seriously Christian folks who said it would be difficult for them to counsel people who were atheists or agnostics or Muslims, black or otherwise, without trying to convert them. There were some people who said they had a problem with homosexuals. Others said they would find it difficult to provide only drug counseling to someone who wanted an abortion. I owned up to my personal intense dislike for neo-Nazis or White Supremacists. Even the most liberal and accepting of us sometimes still wants to exclude somebody from something.

As I've stated, most Unitarians are conspicuously non-exclusive. We welcome everybody. Yet, I experienced the feeling of being excluded in the small Wildflower Church in Austin. It was a small incident, hardly memorable, but it bothered me enough that it became the reason for this particular program topic.

Several months ago, the then-unnamed Wildflower Church had a guest speaker named Tom Something, a member of the Live Oak UU Church. One of the things he said about Live Oak was how welcome he felt there. Everybody was so warm and friendly, and he and his family felt totally accepted and wanted in that congregation. While I was speaking with him after the service, we started talking about choosing a name for our new church. I told him there was an election going on and encouraged him to cast a vote. I thought it might be good for somebody associated primarily with another church to indicate an opinion about the name. We were just about to walk over to the voting board when I was told that he couldn't vote because he wasn't a member. Well, neither am I. Neither is anyone else. We don't have members there. Then I was told by the same person that he couldn't vote because this wasn't his primary church. I doubt he would ever want it to be.

It was a trivial incident. I'm sure he hasn't given another thought to the fact that he was excluded in that small way at that church. What surprised me is that I felt excluded as well. Intellectually, I knew it was not intended to wound; still I felt as if I was not valued there. I didn't like that feeling.

Another example of unintended exclusion is that many of us avoid or at least ignore people who are not like us. I honestly don't see much of that in this Fellowship, but I've certainly seen it and done it in other large group gatherings. We see through people. Often, young people don't seek out old people for conversation. And vice versa. Whom do we talk with in large social or business gatherings? People we know? People like ourselves?

The Unitarian Church I love wraps its big, old, hairy, tattooed arms around everyone who walks in the door, whether it's a guy in a dress or a girl with a third eye drawn on her forehead, whether it's a six-year old child or an octogenarian, and says, "You are a unique human being with valuable opinions and interesting thoughts. Come, have a cookie, and let's talk."

With that image in mind, I would like to suggest sort of a game. Everybody take the paper you picked up with your program and write three statements on it about yourself. Only two have to be true. Then pin the paper to your clothes. If you don't want to pin it, you can pick up some tape and tape it on. During the break, I'd like you to see what people have written and talk about it together. See if you can figure out what's true and what's not true, see if you learn anything new about these people you know so well.

 Everybody has a story. Everybody is interesting. I brought cookies.

Kathy Lansford
10/14/01