By Jim Heffernan
This book is a collection of 19 “Civic Saturday” sermons given by Eric Liu in Seattle between November 12, 2016 and August 4, 2018. Like it says on the cover, they are “Civic Sermons on Love, Responsibility, and Democracy”.
I first read the sermons and then decided to get the Audible version which are the 19 sermons read by the author. Most of the sermons run about 30 minutes, but a few last 40 minutes. The first “sermon”, delivered days after Trump’s 2016 victory, was the perfect remedy for the heartbreak I felt this year.
Eric Liu worked in the Clinton White House as an advisor and speechwriter. He’s a very good writer and speaker.
In his Introduction section, he describes the book’s objectives better than I can. Here’s the excerpt.
This volume consists of the sermons I’ve written and delivered at our first nineteen Civic Saturday gatherings, from November 2016 to August 2018. It is organized by date of the gathering. Before each sermon, you’ll find several readings—pieces of American “civic scripture”-selected by me to give shape to the sermon and to be read aloud by community members. Some of these readings are foundational, like Lincoln’s Second Inaugural; others, like Susan B. Anthony’s speech at her trial for attempted voting, are less well known but still at the core of the creed we are meant to steward.
The sermons are all about what it means to live like a citizen in this age of brokenness. What it means to take risks like a citizen, to make art like a citizen, to remember like a citizen, and to forgive like one. What it means, from head, heart, and gut, to heal the body politic.
You can read this book from start to finish, following the chronological progression of sermons and the unfolding of our new political reality over the last two years. Or you can take the sermons in a random sequence and sense for yourself the motifs that recur. The sermons aren’t chapters of a novel or an argument, so you won’t have missed “backstory” or “setup” if you start in the middle. But they do compound.
I’ve woven chords of connection across and within these sermons that echo the chords of connection across and within our country. Listen for them.
They are chords of love, responsibility, and democracy. Chords of pain, fear, hope, and moral courage.
To open this book is to do something countercultural. As I often say to our Civic Saturday community: we are the counterculture now.
In a culture of celebrity worship and consumerism, we stand for service and citizenship. In an age of hyper individualism, we practice collective action and common cause. In a time of fundamentalism and showy sanctimony, we stand for discernment and humility. In the smog of hypocrisy and situational ethics, we still live and breathe the universal timeless values and ideals of the Golden Rule, the Tao, the Declaration, and the Preamble of the Constitution.
That is radical. If we do our jobs right, we will spark a great civic awakening across the land and make today’s crisis of democracy an age of civic rebirth. A renewal of people power and a replenishment of civic character. That’s why we invite you to join us. Share this book. Find a Civic Saturday near you. Apply for our Civic Seminary.
Learn more broadly about our work and other programs at Citizen University. (Visit our website at CitizenUniversity.us.)
Most of all, practice civic spirit. Know your own mind. Plumb the depths of your own heart. Nurture the conscience of a citizen, in yourself first and then in those you encounter. Build the muscle of acting with others for the good of all.
Always open with questions rather
than answers. If you must argue, argue to understand and not to win.
Can we deliver the country we’ve been promising ourselves all our lives? Can we face our history and truly animate words like “equal justice under law” and “E Pluribus Unum”? Can we, at long last, become America?
I believe we can. I believe we are doing it at this very moment. Turn the page and join us.
314 Pages Published May 14, 2019 Available Cloud and Leaf Bookstore and Tillamook Public Library (inter-library)
As always, discussion is welcome at codger817@gmail.com
