The impulse to save, to fix things, to make a better world is a good impulse. We must be aware, however, that it can turn abstract, distant, and dark. A utopian vision of how a perfect world would be ordered and sustained cannot be our grounding. For one thing, the disappointments and failures to see progress toward such a vision will leave us burned out and bitter.
For another thing, future visions can lead us into the trap of thinking the end justifies the means. Our hearts can harden against the people we see as enemies of progress, and we can begin to be cruel to get them out of the way. “You’ve gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet,” we can find ourselves saying. After all, as James Luther Adams pointedly reminded us, the Nazis, too, thought they were purging the world to make way for their vision of a glorious and better future.
It's natural to ask, "what is this supposed to lead to? What is the ultimate endpoint goal?" It works best to keep concrete goals in the short-term, while, at the same time being mindful of possible adverse effects of our actions "yea unto the seventh generation."
For example, LoraKim and I are vegetarians. People who aren't vegetarians, we have found, don't really want to talk about it, and people who are vegetarians assume that we vegetarians are all on the same page. Every once in a while, though, the question does get raised: what is the ultimate goal? If the whole world became vegetarian, what would become of domesticated cows, pigs, and chickens? Do we want the domesticated breeds to become extinct? Do we want a remnant surviving in petting zoos -- or set free in the wild to go feral and make it if they can? What's the ultimate vision here?
I try to resist the urge to explore answers to these questions. Not within my lifetime or my children's or grandchildren's lifetimes are these questions going to need an answer. The generation that does face that question will be better equipped than we can be to form a good answer. Our task is to bring love and compassion to the present reality. Our question is, "What is the next step?" -- not, "What is the last step?" Right now, factory farms -- Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) -- are a clear and present evil. They are extreme ongoing suffering on a massive scale. I say that as a person who does not regard a cow's suffering as equal to an ape's suffering. Fine. Divide by two. Divide by three, if you like. CAFOs are still extreme ongoing suffering on a massive scale. Factory farms are evil, if anything is. I want to confront that evil as best I can -- or at least minimize my participation in it. That's the immediate calling. The details of a far-distant future that my grandchildren will never see would only get in the way of what love calls me to right now.
It's not our job to imagine what liberal religion will be like in 200 years. We cannot do that any more than the Unitarians and Universalists 200 years ago could have imagined Unitarian Universalism today. But it is our job to discover together what the transforming power of love can make of us in our lifetime.
No, we cannot dictate to the transforming power of love the details of what we want ourselves and our world transformed into. We can only open ourselves to the calling to love right here, right now, and let love decide how to transform us. The transforming power of love opens us to discover in each others’ faces and stories – in each others’ words and each others’ hearts -- who we are.
Then we’ll know what we’re here for.
* * * * *
6th and last part of "Transformning Power"
Previous: Part 5: "Only Love Is Big Enough to Hold All the Pain of This World"
Beginning: Part 1: "Our Unitarian Universalist Story: James Luther Adams"
"The Chalice near Lake Alice" in Gainesville, Florida.
Where people of different beliefs worship together as one faith.
Committed to lifelong spiritual growth and compassionate service to each other, our community, and the earth.
Showing posts with label Transforming Power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Transforming Power. Show all posts
2012-02-29
Only Love Is Big Enough to Hold All the Pain of This World
Sharon Salzberg tells a story of going to India in 1970. She says:
“The most shocking experience I had was when I found myself walking down a street in Mumbai where young women were displayed in zoolike cages to be sold as prostitutes. May of them were children who had been sold by their relatives to the criminal organizations who control the sex trade in India, so that the children’s families would not starve.”They were consigned to lives of misery, shortened, perhaps mercifully, by sexually transmitted disease or abuse or malnutrition.
“The powerlessness of women in the culture means that prostitutes who ask men to use condoms might well starve, and wives who do so might be beaten or simply put out on the street.”We know that putting it out of our minds only ensures the suffering continues. Yet we also find that putting it IN our minds can be overwhelming. And what good is helpless despair?
“In order to do anything about the world, we first must have the strength to face it without turning away…. By opening to the pain we see around us with wisdom and compassion, we start to experience the intimate connection of our relationship with all beings...”Sharon Salzberg discovered, she says, that,
“in some subtle but very real way, my own suffering and freedom from suffering are clearly interwoven with being willing to face the pain of those caged children in Mumbai, as well as facing my own disquiet in becoming aware of their situation. The shift in my worldview to include them – rather than ignore them or reject them as not having anything to do with me – is the same shift in perspective that dispels our deeply held mirage of isolation…. It is only by not denying reality that we move into a knowledge of our interconnection with the whole of life.When we relate with wisdom and compassion, there we find true shelter in a community of all beings. Opening to the suffering of others may bring us uneasiness, but we, and potentially the world, are transformed by that opening. We become empowered to respond to the suffering with an unfathomable love, rather than with fear or aversion. Only love is big enough to hold all the pain of this world."Opening to the suffering opens us to love, and brings a surprising joy. I don’t mean to say that other people’s suffering is a tool for your happiness – because the equally vital other half of the story is that your connection and peace is a tool for easing others’ suffering. Both halves of the story are true: true when it comes to large-scale social injustice; true, also, when it comes to one-on-one care. A son tending to his dying father writes:
“For the remaining months of his life we were totally at peace and comfortable together. No more self-consciousness. No unfinished business. I usually seemed to know just what was needed. I could feed him, shave him, bathe him, hold him up to fix the pillows – all these very intimate things that had been so hard for me earlier. In a way, this was my father’s final gift to me: the chance to see him as something more than my father; the chance to see the common identity of spirit we both shared; the chance to see just how much that makes possible in the way of love and comfort. And I feel I can call on it now with anyone else.” (from Ram Dass, How Can I Help?)The transforming power of his love transformed the son.
* * * * *
Part 5 of "Transforming Power"
Next: Part 5: "Then We Will Know What We're Here For"
Previous: Part 4: "Flip Sides of the Same Coin"
Beginning: Part 1: "Our Unitarian Universalist Story: James Luther Adams"
2012-02-27
Flip Sides of the Same Coin
At a recent installment of that conversation about who we are, where we're going, and what is ours to do, we were talking about evil.
Liberals are also called progressives – we believe in the progress. We have an optimistic view of human capacity. As liberal religionists, we stand against John Calvin’s idea of “total depravity” – that basic human nature is depraved, corrupt, utterly unable to do anything good on its own, and thus utterly dependent on unearned and unearnable grace from God. Instead, we view our ourselves as capable of learning and moral improvement.
The danger is that a rosy assessment of humanity’s goodness might blind us to the harm we do. James Luther Adams, that great 20th-century Unitarian theologian, went to Germany in 1935. As a result of what he saw, he gave us powerful teachings about evil -- the human capacity to do harm. He helped us understand better than we ever had before, that the way to respond to Calvin’s doctrine of total depravity is not to turn our backs on the ways we are doing harm, but to turn our faces toward the ways we are doing harm; not to deny the powers and structures of evil; but to confront them with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.
I asked the group whether they thought the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville had enough awareness of the wrongs going on. There seemed to be a general consensus that we don’t. There was also the sense that what we need from each other – when we gather for Worship and in various smaller groups – is not a deadening litany of details of human awfulness, but a message of hope and uplift.
So. Are we here to comfort the afflicted, or afflict the comfortable? Are we here to save the world, or to savor the world? Peace, beauty, joy? Or: confronting evil, toiling to ease suffering, sounding the alarm to let others know about the awful and preventable harms being inflicted? Inner peace – or outer justice? Both, of course – and they are flip sides of the same coin. There it is, in that final phrase of the second source: the transforming power of love.
When you first read that – "confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love" -- maybe you were thinking like this:
While the strategy of loving them into submission is arguably an improvement over shooting them, the whole “us” and “them” thing is simply a recapitulation of the very oppression we like to think we are resisting. When I am able to bring love to a situation, it is I who is transformed. Whether this transforming power transforms the other is a big maybe – and isn’t up to us. Love transforms those who love.
And we thus arrive at the comfort by facing full-on the affliction. We savor the world by saving it.
* * * * *
Part 4 of "Transforming Power"
Next: Part 5: "Only Love Is Big Enough to Hold All the Pain of This World"
Previous: Part 3: "Why Did Channing Go to Baltimore?"
Beginning: Part 1: "Our Unitarian Universalist Story: James Luther Adams"
Liberals are also called progressives – we believe in the progress. We have an optimistic view of human capacity. As liberal religionists, we stand against John Calvin’s idea of “total depravity” – that basic human nature is depraved, corrupt, utterly unable to do anything good on its own, and thus utterly dependent on unearned and unearnable grace from God. Instead, we view our ourselves as capable of learning and moral improvement.
The danger is that a rosy assessment of humanity’s goodness might blind us to the harm we do. James Luther Adams, that great 20th-century Unitarian theologian, went to Germany in 1935. As a result of what he saw, he gave us powerful teachings about evil -- the human capacity to do harm. He helped us understand better than we ever had before, that the way to respond to Calvin’s doctrine of total depravity is not to turn our backs on the ways we are doing harm, but to turn our faces toward the ways we are doing harm; not to deny the powers and structures of evil; but to confront them with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.
I asked the group whether they thought the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville had enough awareness of the wrongs going on. There seemed to be a general consensus that we don’t. There was also the sense that what we need from each other – when we gather for Worship and in various smaller groups – is not a deadening litany of details of human awfulness, but a message of hope and uplift.
So. Are we here to comfort the afflicted, or afflict the comfortable? Are we here to save the world, or to savor the world? Peace, beauty, joy? Or: confronting evil, toiling to ease suffering, sounding the alarm to let others know about the awful and preventable harms being inflicted? Inner peace – or outer justice? Both, of course – and they are flip sides of the same coin. There it is, in that final phrase of the second source: the transforming power of love.
When you first read that – "confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love" -- maybe you were thinking like this:
"There’s us: the good people, the right-thinking ones, and then there’s those evil oppressors. We good guys have to confront the bad guys. Instead of drawing our six-shooters, though, let us confront them with love and transform them."Uh. No.
While the strategy of loving them into submission is arguably an improvement over shooting them, the whole “us” and “them” thing is simply a recapitulation of the very oppression we like to think we are resisting. When I am able to bring love to a situation, it is I who is transformed. Whether this transforming power transforms the other is a big maybe – and isn’t up to us. Love transforms those who love.
And we thus arrive at the comfort by facing full-on the affliction. We savor the world by saving it.
* * * * *
Part 4 of "Transforming Power"
Next: Part 5: "Only Love Is Big Enough to Hold All the Pain of This World"
Previous: Part 3: "Why Did Channing Go to Baltimore?"
Beginning: Part 1: "Our Unitarian Universalist Story: James Luther Adams"
2012-02-26
Why Did Channing Go To Baltimore?
The living tradition we share includes words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love. We’re having an important conversation in the “Engaged Spirituality” class that meets once a month on the second Tuesday evening. (The next one will be Tuesday March 13, 6:00pm). We’re talking about what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist, what is the nature of liberal religion. It’s our own version of, "Why did Bodhidharma come from the west?" Why did William Ellery Channing go to Baltimore?
Channing was a Boston minister. In 1819, we went down to Baltimore to deliver the manifesto of a new denomination, and thus the Unitarian church in America was born. Why? What if he hadn’t? What is it for? What difference does it make?
Two centuries later, we are the inheritors of this liberal religious movement. It has evolved a bit since Channing’s time. It comes to us in its present form: what are we supposed to do with it? What does liberal religion ask of us?
We gather here in Gainesville, and in about 1,000 other rooms across the continent every Sunday morning. We are Unitarian Universalism today. So what? What do we do with this tradition bequeathed to us? What is ours to do? We need to have that conversation.
You might say it’s an ongoing conversation that is never finished, and you'd be right. It’s a conversation that has periods of intensity, creativity, and discovery, and periods of settling in. We need to be having the more intense version of that conversation for about a year or two. We need to hear each other, develop a deeper familiarity with where the people sitting around you on Sunday morning are coming from – and coming for -- when they come to liberal religion.
We need to hear the sometimes surprising things we find our own selves saying in that conversation. There is no book that can tell us who we are, what we’re here for. There are some wonderful books, and they’ll give us the information to think about, and tools to think with, but we have to get together ourselves and arrive at what all this means for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville, Florida, established 1952.
We are the word made flesh. Clarity about our meaning and our mission is no simple matter of amalgamating our opinions. It’s a matter of creating an understanding together that none of us has, or could form, alone. We don’t need a good wordsmith to draft us a mission statement. We need to discover in each others’ faces and stories – in each others’ words and each others’ hearts -- who we are. Then we’ll know what we’re here for.
When we know it viscerally, beyond words, then we’ll be able to find some words that will remind us of that deeper, nonlinguistic awareness.
* * * * *
Part 3 of "Transforming Power"
Next: Part 4: "Flip Sides of the Same Coin"
Previous: Part 2: "Buddhism, The New Buddhism, and Unitarian Universalism"
Beginning: Part 1: "Our Unitarian Universalist Story: James Luther Adams"
 |
| William Ellery Channing, 1780 - 1842 |
Two centuries later, we are the inheritors of this liberal religious movement. It has evolved a bit since Channing’s time. It comes to us in its present form: what are we supposed to do with it? What does liberal religion ask of us?
We gather here in Gainesville, and in about 1,000 other rooms across the continent every Sunday morning. We are Unitarian Universalism today. So what? What do we do with this tradition bequeathed to us? What is ours to do? We need to have that conversation.
You might say it’s an ongoing conversation that is never finished, and you'd be right. It’s a conversation that has periods of intensity, creativity, and discovery, and periods of settling in. We need to be having the more intense version of that conversation for about a year or two. We need to hear each other, develop a deeper familiarity with where the people sitting around you on Sunday morning are coming from – and coming for -- when they come to liberal religion.
We need to hear the sometimes surprising things we find our own selves saying in that conversation. There is no book that can tell us who we are, what we’re here for. There are some wonderful books, and they’ll give us the information to think about, and tools to think with, but we have to get together ourselves and arrive at what all this means for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville, Florida, established 1952.
We are the word made flesh. Clarity about our meaning and our mission is no simple matter of amalgamating our opinions. It’s a matter of creating an understanding together that none of us has, or could form, alone. We don’t need a good wordsmith to draft us a mission statement. We need to discover in each others’ faces and stories – in each others’ words and each others’ hearts -- who we are. Then we’ll know what we’re here for.
When we know it viscerally, beyond words, then we’ll be able to find some words that will remind us of that deeper, nonlinguistic awareness.
* * * * *
Part 3 of "Transforming Power"
Next: Part 4: "Flip Sides of the Same Coin"
Previous: Part 2: "Buddhism, The New Buddhism, and Unitarian Universalism"
Beginning: Part 1: "Our Unitarian Universalist Story: James Luther Adams"
2012-02-25
Buddhism, The New Buddhism, and Unitarian Universalism
The living tradition we share draws on many sources, [including] words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with compassion, justice, and the transforming power of love.
One of the sources of the living tradition we share as religious liberals is this tradition of the prophets – those who called attention to harm, to our failures to live by the ideals we espouse. Whether you are Jewish, or identify as Christian or not, we Unitarian Universalists are a branch of the tree that springs from the prophetic tradition in Hebrew Scripture. Justice is integral to Unitarian Universalist faith. James Luther Adams’ “prophethood of all members,” was but an extension of the prophetic tradition going back 3,000 years in Western spirituality.
It’s not in Eastern religions. Thousands of years of Taoist sages and Hindu gurus and Buddhist monks: hardly a word of anything recognizable as social critique. A lot on compassion. Not much on justice. Thousands upon thousands of pages of writings and hardly a drop of ink about systemic oppression and the moral as well as spiritual imperative to resist structures of social injustice.
There are a number of Zen Koans in which a student asks a teacher, "Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?" Bodhidharma, according to legend came from India, west to China, where he is credited with founding Zen. The students are asking: "Would life really be any different if he hadn’t? What does it mean that we have this set of practices and customs called Zen? What was Bodhidharma doing in coming from the West and establishing this thing? What’s it all for?"
Monks wrestled with that question through the centuries. They’d ask their teacher: "Why did Bodhidharma come from the west?"
Master Zhoazhou answered: "The oak tree in the yard."
Master Xianglin answered: "From sitting a long time, I am tired."
Master Linji said, “Pass me that cushion” – and he then hit the student with it.
The question is why Bodhidharma came from the west. They’re not asking, "Why are there poor?" They’re not asking, "What principles of fairness apply even to the emperor?"
Many of you know, I identify as a Zen Buddhist. I was born and raised Unitarian Universalist, and now I’m a Unitarian Universalist Buddhist. Meditation, and chanting, and reading the sutras and trying to take them to heart – these are important parts of my spiritual life. For me, they are necessary. They are not sufficient. My faith also needs that prophetic tradition: the tradition of social critique that includes Amos and Jeremiah and also Socrates and Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Karl Marx, and thousands of muckraking journalists exposing corruption. My faith needs our prophetic tradition reminding me that nothing less than the sacred ground of being, the source of healing and wholeness that we call by many names, the creativity and aliveness of reality, calls out for social justice. I need a community of shared understanding that justice work is not merely good work. It is holy work.
I'm attracted to something called "the New Buddhism." It's the Western Buddhism emerging as an Eastern tradition meets Western habits and assumptions. The traditional Buddhism as practiced in Asia for millennia, by itself, doesn’t grab me all that much. When that wisdom and those practices are combined with the West’s prophetic tradition -- when, that is, the Western spirit and the Eastern spirit meet in a synergistic merger greater than the sum of its parts, something very real and very hopeful is born.
More and more people are seeing how inner peace and social justice support each other.
Inner peace has always been a grounding for compassion. The application of peace and compassion, nurtured in contemplative practice, to working for social change is a development within my life time.
Social justice has always felt righteous. But the idea that signing a petition or camping out in Zuccotti park to occupy Wall Street might flow from – and toward – a deepening sense of union with all things, is fairly new.
The New Buddhism looks a lot like Unitarian Universalism – just a bit more of the sitting still and being quiet thing. The lessons from the East can help us be better Unitarian Universalists because, as we are coming to better understand, inner peace supports outer justice.
* * * * *
Part 2 of "Transforming Power"
Next: Part 3: "Why Did Channing Go to Baltimore?"
Previous: Part 1: "Our Unitarian Universalist Story: James Luther Adams"
One of the sources of the living tradition we share as religious liberals is this tradition of the prophets – those who called attention to harm, to our failures to live by the ideals we espouse. Whether you are Jewish, or identify as Christian or not, we Unitarian Universalists are a branch of the tree that springs from the prophetic tradition in Hebrew Scripture. Justice is integral to Unitarian Universalist faith. James Luther Adams’ “prophethood of all members,” was but an extension of the prophetic tradition going back 3,000 years in Western spirituality.
It’s not in Eastern religions. Thousands of years of Taoist sages and Hindu gurus and Buddhist monks: hardly a word of anything recognizable as social critique. A lot on compassion. Not much on justice. Thousands upon thousands of pages of writings and hardly a drop of ink about systemic oppression and the moral as well as spiritual imperative to resist structures of social injustice.
There are a number of Zen Koans in which a student asks a teacher, "Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?" Bodhidharma, according to legend came from India, west to China, where he is credited with founding Zen. The students are asking: "Would life really be any different if he hadn’t? What does it mean that we have this set of practices and customs called Zen? What was Bodhidharma doing in coming from the West and establishing this thing? What’s it all for?"
Monks wrestled with that question through the centuries. They’d ask their teacher: "Why did Bodhidharma come from the west?"
Master Zhoazhou answered: "The oak tree in the yard."
Master Xianglin answered: "From sitting a long time, I am tired."
Master Linji said, “Pass me that cushion” – and he then hit the student with it.
The question is why Bodhidharma came from the west. They’re not asking, "Why are there poor?" They’re not asking, "What principles of fairness apply even to the emperor?"
Many of you know, I identify as a Zen Buddhist. I was born and raised Unitarian Universalist, and now I’m a Unitarian Universalist Buddhist. Meditation, and chanting, and reading the sutras and trying to take them to heart – these are important parts of my spiritual life. For me, they are necessary. They are not sufficient. My faith also needs that prophetic tradition: the tradition of social critique that includes Amos and Jeremiah and also Socrates and Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Karl Marx, and thousands of muckraking journalists exposing corruption. My faith needs our prophetic tradition reminding me that nothing less than the sacred ground of being, the source of healing and wholeness that we call by many names, the creativity and aliveness of reality, calls out for social justice. I need a community of shared understanding that justice work is not merely good work. It is holy work.
I'm attracted to something called "the New Buddhism." It's the Western Buddhism emerging as an Eastern tradition meets Western habits and assumptions. The traditional Buddhism as practiced in Asia for millennia, by itself, doesn’t grab me all that much. When that wisdom and those practices are combined with the West’s prophetic tradition -- when, that is, the Western spirit and the Eastern spirit meet in a synergistic merger greater than the sum of its parts, something very real and very hopeful is born.
More and more people are seeing how inner peace and social justice support each other.
Inner peace has always been a grounding for compassion. The application of peace and compassion, nurtured in contemplative practice, to working for social change is a development within my life time.
Social justice has always felt righteous. But the idea that signing a petition or camping out in Zuccotti park to occupy Wall Street might flow from – and toward – a deepening sense of union with all things, is fairly new.
The New Buddhism looks a lot like Unitarian Universalism – just a bit more of the sitting still and being quiet thing. The lessons from the East can help us be better Unitarian Universalists because, as we are coming to better understand, inner peace supports outer justice.
* * * * *
Part 2 of "Transforming Power"
Next: Part 3: "Why Did Channing Go to Baltimore?"
Previous: Part 1: "Our Unitarian Universalist Story: James Luther Adams"
2012-02-22
Our Unitarian Universalist Story: James Luther Adams
The Protestant Reformation: Priesthood of All Believers
Our Unitarian Universalist story is the tale of our emergence from within Protestant Christianity. Protestant Christianity got started about 500 years ago when the German, Martin Luther, sought a remedy for the abuses he saw occurring in the church of his time. “The Priesthood of all believers,” proclaimed Luther.
The church of 500 years ago had become corrupt, with priests claiming special access to God, and therefore enjoying special privileges. The priests lived in relative luxury and believed they were entitled to. They were out of touch with suffering, concerned only to preserve their positions of privilege, which they justified in their own minds by their position as the mediators between heaven and earth. Luther countered with this doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. We all have the same access to God, and confront the same ineffable mystery.
It was a great step toward equality. We’re all priests – the one standing in the pulpit no more so than the ones in the pews. The new word for the guy in the pulpit became “minister” – meaning servant.
The Unitarian Reformation: Prophethood of All Believers
 |
| James Luther Adams 1901 - 1994 |
The prophets of old – Hebrew Scripture figures such as Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Amos -- traditionally, had been those possessed by God – maybe against their will – and compelled to speak a message from God calling for justice, repentance from wrongdoing, a more fair and equitable social order. James Luther Adams told us that, just as we are all priests and all have access to the divine mystery, we are all prophets, and all of us have the ability to see and engage injustice, and all of us bear the burden of the responsibility to do so.
Chris Walton, UUWorld, 2005:
When James Luther Adams, a young Unitarian minister and newly appointed professor of theology at Meadville Lombard Theological School, went to Germany in 1935 to study with some of the greatest theologians of the time, he confronted a deeply unsettling fact: Germany's churches were not effectively resisting the rise of Nazism. A convert to Unitarianism from Baptist fundamentalism, Adams had high expectations for Germany's long tradition of liberal theology. But German liberalism hadn't foreseen the Nazi threat--nor did it seem to offer adequate resources for resistance. Adams came to admire the German "confessing church" movement, whose members did actively oppose Hitler at great personal risk.He later described the impact of his experience:
In Nazi Germany I soon came to the question, "What is it in my preaching and my political action that would stop this?" It is a liberal attitude to say that we keep ourselves informed and read the best papers on these matters, and perhaps join a voluntary association now and then. But to be involved with other people so that it costs and so that one exposes the evils of society...requires something like conversion, something more than an attitude. It requires a sense that there's something wrong and I must be different from the way I have been.
Transforming Power, Transforming Liberalism
Adams was concerned that liberal religion could become complacent – that our broad acceptance too easily slides into being accommodating to certain cultural trends when resistance is what is called for. Transformation was Adams's great theme – the transformation of ourselves and of our world. His direct experience of Nazism taught him to be less optimistic about human progress – yet through the more-than-90 years of his life, much of it as a leader and hugely influential teacher in our movement, his faith in the transforming power of love grew steadily deeper.
* * * * *
Part 1 of "Transforming Power."
Next: Part 2: "Buddhism, The New Buddhism, and Unitarian Universalism"
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