On Friday, September 16, 2005 the world's leaders gathered together in the United Nations General Assembly Hall, and agreed to a document on UN reform that falls disappointingly short of the hopes and expectations of the Secretary General and all of those who worked so diligently on intensively critiquing and reviewing the Organization and its strengths and weaknesses with hopes of significant change.

For most Canadians the glass of the UN will remain at least half full. Canada has a long history of supporting countries working together to find global solutions to intractable challenges: widely supporting the League of Nations before its collapse, and being an early and fervent supporter of the United Nations – through some very difficult challenges. Nothing that happened over a few days of show will change that.

While Canadians are visceral supporters of the UN – who wouldn’t support the pledge to ‘save successive generations from the scourge of war’ or entrenching principles of fairness, democracy, human rights and the rule of law – they are not naïve. Attempting to attain these grand principles carries inherent risk of failure. And the UN will fail again.

But to whom to attribute the failures of the UN? And to whom its successes? Alas, the answer to both is the same: "We the peoples of the United Nations…." For those of us privileged to travel, we can see the UN building in New York with the 191 flags flying proudly, Tuvalu as proudly as China, and we swallow hard at the willingness of leaders to come together for the common good. And the common good is often uncommonly difficult to find. My common good is not necessarily yours. My looking after my family or tribe with jobs is being a good upstanding person. Or, my looking after my family or tribe with jobs is nepotism or cronyism or even corrupt. Reiterating even the grand principles of the UN is not without negotiation.

Canada should be rightly proud of its tireless work in entrenching the Responsibility to Protect into the document signed yesterday. Isn’t it wonderful to say: Canada should be proud. In fact, Canadians should be proud of those leaders, champions, yes, bureaucrats and politicians who worked for years to get this obligation of the UN to intervene – with force if necessary – when countries cannot or will not protect their peoples, accepted.

Our support of the United Nations should never be blind. We should remain vigilant critics of the institution. But we should remind ourselves too, when we mistake the 90% of the UN's work which involves delivering food, water, basic health and sanitation, inoculating against disease, giving hope, succour, aid in disasters and shelter in war, for the sometimes ugly exposure of self-interest in the Security Council.

There are disappointments of course, but for those too young to remember the founding of the United Nations in 1945 after losing millions in a bloody war, peace, even imperfect peace is better than the alternative.

It is an honour and a joy to welcome so many people from Hamilton’s peace community, who are working so hard to make the vision of World Community come true here in our city, and to welcome WomEnchant Choir, who has a Justice Ministry of Music for our city and our world as well. This is a special weekend, celebrating the 60^th Anniversary of the founding of the United Nations and events are planned all over the city today and tomorrow, of which this service is only a small part. But we are honoured to play that part in recognizing both an incredible institution, and the men and women whose labour of love for this world is to try and make the ideals that gave birth to the United Nations 60 years ago become realities here and now.

Many of you will know that our sixth Unitarian Universalist principle – as close to a statement of doctrine as we are ever likely to get, covenants "to affirm and promote the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all" while our first principle affirms the "inherent worth and dignity of every person."

Compare this to the Charter of the United Nations that Simon read for us this morning: "We the Peoples of the United Nations…reaffirm our faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women, and of nations large and small… for these ends to practice tolerance and to live together in peace as good neighbors."

It is, I am sure, no co-incidence that our faith’s goals and the goals of the United Nations are so similar, and if we searched the ideals of our co-religionists across the world, we would find the same values again. For are we not all made of the same stuff, and do we not all want the same things for our children and for all the world’s children? A world of peace and not war; a war of plenty for all instead of excess for some and nothing for most. A world where our best self stands willing to defend against our worst self? A world where might is not right, but human decency lends wisdom to power and brinsg our actions into line with our values. Do we not all want to leave a better world for our children than the one we inherited? Out of recognition of our common humanity, the "one world" which we inhabit, 60 years ago, the United Nations was born.

Just the idea of the United Nations represents the best of which humanity is capable. For those of you who have had the privilege of visiting it, it is an inspiration to arrive in front of the United Nations in New York with its over 190 flags flying out front – every nation, large and small, from all parts of the world. It is amazing to see the hundreds of people listening to and translating different languages and dialects, into the hundreds of sets of headphones simultaneously – in an effort to have us all speak with one voice and listen with one heart. It is moving to pray in the chapel there, a simple darkened room that tries to create a place for the hopes and prayers of all humanity.

It is an awesome, daunting task. Visiting the chapel, I am struck that even the challenge of designing a worship space that would be suitable to all faiths - and no faith – is no easy undertaking. Then I thought of the brilliant architecture of First Unitarian Church in Chicago, which between the portals of birth and death – the face of a baby and of old age - has an empty niche over the altar, into which you can place your own image of God or Goddess, unimpeded by another’s preconception. Perhaps our faith does have something to offer the UN – in chapel design at least!

Watching the gallery of UN members listening to the words of a fellow member translated in their ear – I am reminded of the simple miscommunication that can happen when we all speak the same language! I’ve often thought that between what I mean, what I say, what you hear and what you think I meant – there’s an awful lot of room for misunderstanding! I’ve found myself wishing from time to time that we ALL had those UN headsets on at all times, so that we would have automatic translations of what each other was actually trying to say! And most of us speak the same language.

Can you imagine the challenge of all those cultures, religious beliefs, governments, countries and languages trying in one place, to find solutions to humanity’s most difficult problems? How amazing is it that we would even try to create a world body where such a diversity of language, culture, religion, politics and nation would be honoured, and we would still try to communicate with one another and come to consensus on decisions of huge import for our world?

The United Nations is a vision of who we could be that must deal with who we are. It is

led by ideals but lived in realities. And therein lies the eternal human challenge. It is a human institution beset by human failings and flaws. As Bob Rae said in a special essay on the future of the UN "our own flaws are its downfall." And we are quite flawed as creatures go. And so in September, people from around the world met to try and talk reform, restructuring, renewal of the United Nations. And as our reading this morning pointed out, some but not all things were accomplished. Canada should be proud of the "Responsibility to Protect" clause that it authored, a bulwark against the genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity that have characterized the UN’s greatest failings. Yet there were crushing disappointments in the areas of what has been termed the "gender apartheid" of women’s rights, in the creation of a Human Rights Council, the Peacebuilding Commission, support for disarmament and non-proliferation,

lack of universal support for the International Criminal Court, including a request for impunity from the United States of America – who we know, of course, would never do anything against the wishes of the international community or counter to the United Nations. We have made little progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals 5 years into the millennium and only 10 before the deadline…There is much still to be done that was left undone.

But it seems self-evident to me that you can’t refuse to support an organization and then claim it is ineffective because it lacks support. You can’t claim that an International Court of Justice doesn’t apply to you, and then refuse to recognize it as embodying Universal Rule of Law that applies to everyone!

You can’t stand outside the door and then criticize what’s going on inside! I am not inclined to listen to the opinion of George W. Bush, who before he became President of the most powerful nation on earth, had never been outside North America – through lack of interest, not lack of means! I am not inclined to listen to Bush-appointed UN Ambassador John Bolton who has gone on record saying that the UN should be a mere instrument of American policy, and who tabled over 700 last minute amendments to the recent efforts at reform at the meeting in September, delaying and greatly diminishing both the process and resulting agreement..

I much more willing to listen to suggestions for reform from people like our former UN Ambassador and AIDS Activist Stephen Lewis, or High Commissioner for Human Rights Justice Madame Louise Arbour who presided over the International Criminal Tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and knows whereof she speaks, or Lieutenant–General Romeo Dallaire who lived whereof she speaks – and has seen first hand the impact of both the UN’s successes and of its failures.

It seems obvious to me that for the United Nations to be and to become effective in realizing the very ambitious goals that "We the Peoples" have set for ourselves, it must have universal, absolute commitment and support from all the nations of the world. Not unequivocal or unquestioning support; we must as a world body always be able to hold the United Nations accountable to its lofty ideals. We must be aware that like all human institutions, which are after all, only composed of us, flawed and fallible human beings - it is vulnerable to the least ideal and least noble sides of human nature as well as the best – to self-interest, greed and fear as well as altruism, generosity and hope.

Although I am very interested in the subject and read as much as I can, I feel I do not know enough to speak authoritatively about the deep and complex challenges faced by the UN in its present governance and restructuring, the make up of its present security council, its present wars and humanitarian disasters. I listen to those who know more than I do, and hear diverse suggestions, different points of view about where change is needed, different emphasis based on their own particular experience.

But I believe it cannot function without our absolute commitment to the ideals that it represents and our absolute support of its efforts (which are of course, our efforts). And by support I mean: Our money and resources, our manpower and womenpower, our leadership and advocacy, our political and economic pressure upon those countries that do not comply, whatever their size or power, our censure and our judgment where people’s lives and rights are at risk – even from their own governments, our passion and compassion for our fellow human beings all around the world.

The U.N is certainly not perfect. But knowing a little bit about human nature, I imagine that you could change the cast of characters, develop a different structure and solve some of the world’s present problems – and its challenges would remain exactly the same, but in different form. 60 years from now there will still be countries at war, humanitarian disasters and imperfect people trying to envision a more perfect world.

We will always need a body like the United Nations, and it will always be less than completely successful in creating heaven here on earth. As Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. said "This organization is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn’t created to take you to heaven." (An interesting fact is that it was primarily his Grandfather, Henry Cabot Lodge, who kept the U.S. out of the UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations!)

I know as a student of history what the world was like before the notion of a League of Nations, or a United Nations. I know humanity has a bloody heritage of war and greed, of self-interest and tribalism that threatened our very existence, and still does. I know that the League of Nations was born when humanity horrified itself over the destruction of which it was capable – the First World War which was unprecedented in its loss of life.

Listen to the words of Arthur Henderson, British labour leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1934, from his Nobel acceptance speech entitled: Essential Elements of a Universal and Enduring Peace. It could have been written yesterday.

"Men and women everywhere are once more asking the old question - is (peace really possible?) They are asking it with anxiety and fear; for, on the one hand, there has never been such a longing for peace and dread of war as there is today. On the other hand, there have never been such awful means of spreading destruction and death as those that are now being prepared in well-nigh every country.

To a visitor from another planet the world would present a spectacle as melancholy as it is bewildering. He would see civilization in danger of perishing under the oppression of a gigantic paradox: he would see multitudes of people starving in the midst of plenty, and nations (and peoples) preparing for war although pledged to peace

Perhaps the grimmest aspect of this great paradox is that the very nations that are chiefly responsible for starting and for maintaining (disarmament) are also the nations that have begun an arms race! That is what a visitor from another planet would see.

But we are not visitors from another world. This is our world, and we must make the best of it. We cannot give up hope for the future of humanity because it is our destiny to shape that future for good or ill. Whatever we do, or fail to do will influence the course of history.

We who are here belong to nations that are in the vanguard of civilization. Those nations have a very great responsibility at this juncture of the world's affairs. By throwing their joint weight into the scales of history on the right side, they may tip the balance decisively in favour of peace (and prosperity for all.)"

Whatever change is needed, despair is not an option. As activist Dorothy Day Dorothy Day once said, "No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do."

Lester Pearson, another Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and the grandfather of our meditation leader this morning, said:

"We are now emerging into an age when different civilizations will have to learn to live side by side in peaceful interchange, learning from each other, studying each other's history and ideals, art and culture, mutually enriching each other's lives. The only alternative in this overcrowded little world is misunderstanding, tension, clash, and – catastrophe… and in our day the penalty for failure - or for serious blundering - is far greater than ever before. (We) can no longer afford error… The best defence of peace is not power, but the removal of the causes of war, and international agreements which will put peace on a stronger foundation, than the terror of destruction." 

It’s hard not to war with your neighbour when he’s taking what you need – whether it’s water, oil, land, food or human rights. The genius of the United Nations is that it holds a vision of One World out in front of our fractured, divisive planet and says "This is our goal." It sees each country and all peoples inextricably linked; it sees ecomomic justice and peace as inextricably linked, it sees that peace begins with prosperity; and prosperity begins with justice, and justice begins with equity, and equity begins with seeing each person and all peoples as equally worthy. The "fruit upon the tree of humility" as our beautiful meditation said this morning – is to realize that our realities will ever fall short of our dreams – and that means we should dream harder, reach higher, as Martin Luther King Junior said " hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope."

We are urged by Rene Rene Dubos to "Think globally. Act locally." And so in our own world, Hamilton’s Culture of Peace Committee has been trying to bring these values to life – and they are here today to share their vision with you in coffee hour. Just a few of the projects they have envisioned and embraced include the Manifesto 2000 for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence, participation in Hiroshima Day, the Gandhi Peace Walk, MLK Day, McMaster Peace conference and other community events; It sells PEACE DOLLARS as a way to raise money for peace and social justice activities, and has created the Citizen Protection Project and SAFE HAVENS in Government offices, churches, and private businesses for people harassed for racial cultural or religious reasons, and provides awareness and training about cultural diversity, anti-racism and anti-oppression, throughout the Hamilton community.

Every large movement began with an idea and a dream and a probably unrealizable one at that, everyone that changed the world began by believing it was possible, and going forward one step at a time. You must believe in the best, while looking the worst straight in the eye.

I’ll close with the words of the Dalai Lama, penned at the start of this millennium:

"If we really want the next millennium to be happier, more peaceful and more

harmonious for humankind we will have to make the effort to make it so. This is in our hands, but especially in the hands of the younger generation. We have had many experiences during this century - constructive as well as extremely destructive ones. We must learn from these experiences. We need to approach the next millennium more holistically, with more openness and farsightedness."

May this hope carry us forward until all the nations of the world are truly united. So May It Be.