Getting Personal

What is reality? And is the word "God" a useful way to talk about it? "God" has taken on so many different and even contradictory meanings that I sympathize with the impulse to drop the word entirely. In the end, I retain "God" in my vocabulary. So what do I take the word to mean?

"God" refers to reality as a whole. The concept of an entity within, and therefore less than, reality as a whole, is inadequate. Central to the conception of God in the monotheistic traditions as well as in pantheism and panentheism is that nothing is outside of God. The entirety of the universe may be the whole of God, or may be just a part of God. In either case, "reality as a whole" refers to all of it -- including the whole of God, howsoever infinite, extending beyond the universe or not.

Reality as a whole. Surely there must be more to "God" than merely "reality as a whole" -- for that definition makes atheism nihilistic and theism trivial (The atheist says, "There is no God," which would be saying, "There is no reality, taken as a whole," which is nihilism. The theist says, "There is a God," which would be saying, "There is reality," which is trivial.) Anyone who takes the atheist/theist distinction to be different from the nihilist/nonnihilist distinction, whether she self-identifies as "atheist" or "theist," will rightly insist that certain additional attributes beyond "reality as a whole" are essential to a definition of "God." The atheist then adds that those attributes are not instantiated in or by reality, while the theist maintains they are. My task, then, and yours, too, if you'll take it, is to articulate answers to two questions: (1) Which of the qualities that have at one time or another been identified as qualities of God are indeed qualities of reality as a whole? (2) May reality thus described reasonably be called "God"?

Taking up the first question, it might seem important to address whether reality as a whole is supernatural, contains supernatural elements or occasional supernatural events -- or, on the other hand, is reality entirely natural? However, as part 1 argued, the natural/supernatural distinction is one we cannot make. Trying to draw the line between "supernatural" and "natural" on the basis of explainability by natural laws fails.

Today I take up the more promising distinction between a "personal" and an "impersonal" God. When theologians speak of "Personal God," they mean a God that "can be related to as a person" (Wikipedia, "Personal God"). They don't mean "personal" in the sense of "just for me." A personal God isn't like a personal pan pizza. For clarity, I shall speak of a God who is "like a person" or "person-like" rather than "personal."

The key attributes of a person are having beliefs and desires. A person-like God would be one who believes and desires. Since God's beliefs would naturally be true, we may say a person-like God knows. A person-like God knows things and wants things.

The question, then, is: Does reality as a whole have knowledge? Does it want events to unfold in some ways and not in others? These are the keys to the broader question of whether reality as a whole can be related to as a person, for belief and desire do not reduce to each other, and from the combination of them come other person-like qualities, such as intention, disappointment, approval.

Can reality be related to as a person? Certainly it can. Sometimes it's even healthy to do so. Our relation with reality is impoverished if it doesn't also include poetic play.

- I have stood by my window during a thunderstorm, and, when the thunder crashed, found myself responding, "Well, you're angry this evening!"

- Bette Midler sings of a seed below the snow that "with the sun's love, in the spring, becomes the rose."

When we are doing science, we may set aside such notions as that storms express anger or that the sun expresses love, yet lives entirely without a capacity for a creative metaphorical relation with our world are severely attenuated (moreover, such a capacity is ultimately crucial even to science.)

Brains built like ours look for the signs of belief and desire. We interpret our fellow humans as having their own beliefs and desires, and this is crucial for interpreting their behavior and getting along with them. To become the fantastically social species that we humans are, we had to have brains adept at understanding each other's actions, what beliefs and what desires motivated those actions. With brains built, by genes and by social training, to interpret events as manifestations of belief and desire, we quite naturally look for beliefs and desires in the universe itself, in the weather and in trees, rivers, mountains, and the sky. We are built to anthropomorphize: to relate to things as if they were person-like, as if they had beliefs and desires. Our science and our religion both may have outgrown these animist conceptions of gods, but we still have the brains that find something satisfying and whole in relating to nature as if it were a person. To come joyfully into the fullness of our humanity, we shall not reject or scourge any part of who we are. There is a place for play, for creative metaphor, for poetry in our lives and in our relation to reality. In our "literal" fields of discourse today -- such as science journals and criminal trial courts -- it won't do to speak of the sun's radiation as love. But if there are not times in our lives when we craft and submit to poetic accounts of person-like qualities in nature, we are the worse for it.

The poetic is essential. It is not an obfuscation or a handicapping holdover. Rather, poetry clarifies experience, and is the ground of meaning-making. The comparison of the sun's radiation with love illuminates human experience of hope and springtime. It doesn't obfuscate. Quite the contrary, it makes clearer what was cloudy.

In the "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," T. S. Eliot writes:

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

It's certainly a challenging line, but it wouldn't be fair to say that it obfuscates. Obfuscates what? There is nothing that could more clearly say what this says -- indeed, that's why it's difficult to explain (to re-say in different words) what it says. There's loneliness, isolation, the burdens of responsibilities, and a certain irony (including an irony about the irony). At the same time there's a kind of celebration: of the lowly, the ragged, and of silence. There's the rhythm of the words -- and the hard sounds of G and D and C turning into the sibilant S's at the end. Nothing can say what it says except itself. Anything else would be at best an obfuscation of what the line directly and immediately presents.

We can -- and a full human life occasionally will -- relate to reality as if it were person-like. We do so creatively, playfully, and metaphorically. We also sometimes do the work that requires literalness. Every fresh new metaphor is a candidate for ossification, for becoming "literal" -- like a mouth of a river, neck of a bottle, or hands of a clock. Such discourses as physics or law are shot through with metaphors that have ossified into literality, and this is crucial, for they could not otherwise do the work they do.

Is reality person-like? Does God know things and want things? The answer must depend on what sort of conversation we are having. Are we playing? Are we reaching for words that will convey the experience of our hearts as we grapple with the death of a loved one, or hear the cardinal's song in early light of day?

Or are we trying to put together an account that will best facilitate prediction and control? Such an account is the aim of our sciences. Are we trying to put together an account of "what happened" that will facilitate the human enterprise of regulating our conduct together? Such an account is the aim of a criminal trial. In such accounts, the more ossified our metaphors, the better.

What I come to, then, is the conclusion that the "personal God" actually is, after all, "personal" in the sense of intimate, idiosyncratic, subjective, as well as in the sense of person-like. I may draw upon, as it seems helpful and personally meaningful, the traditions that speak of God knowing and wanting. When it's time to do work in the more literal areas of discourse and culture (such as administration, business, medicine, economics, politics, as well as science and law), I set aside personal conceptions of God. In those areas, I do not relate to reality as having knowledge or wants.

I recognize the role of playfulness, of creative and poetic play, in my own and others' spiritual lives. There are times to throw ourselves wholly into pretending that nature believes and desires. Such play helps align the deeper parts of our psyche with our world in a relationship of care, mutuality, growth, and joy. Such play reveals and embodies truths the literal mind cannot grasp or express.

Playfulness can also help us lighten the heaviness of an encrusted theology, preparing the way toward a more authentic -- and truly personal rather than merely received -- relation with our world.

Theological play and imaginative projections of personhood are legitimate and important. With that acknowledgment, I turn now to consider possibilities for "God" as neither supernatural nor person-like.

* * *
This is part 2 of 4 of "Science, God, and the Universe."
Next: Part 3: "Saganic Verses"
Beginning: Part 1: "Not Supernatural"

Not Supernatural

I wrestle with what to make of life and this world. One of the words that sometimes comes to mind as I grope to articulate something that will make sense and be helpful – and maybe even true – is “supernatural.” I have, from time to time, said such things as, "I don't conceive of God as supernatural." I say this to try to clarify. The word "God” seems too slippery, so I reach for "supernatural” to make my meaning clearer. This doesn't work. "Supernatural" fails to add meaning.

"Supernatural” (or "not supernatural") is also too slippery. How, exactly, are we to draw the line between natural and supernatural? My Random House Unabridged offers that “supernatural” is “unexplainable by natural law or phenomena.” Does that help? Alas, no.

Explainability is also too slippery. Have you noticed, for instance, that Newton was thin – nonexistent, really – on the explanation for his laws? Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, says Newton. And why do they stay in motion? We have no explanation. “That’s just the way things are,” says Newton. My sixth-grade science teacher said the same thing when I asked her. (Actually, Newton had a fancy Latin way of saying it: “Hypothesis non fingo” – meaning, “I make no guess about that.”) Inertia and gravity may be “natural laws”, but they are not explained by natural law. Are we then to conclude that they are supernatural forces? Perhaps we should call them “supernatural laws."

Inertia and gravity are so ordinary that it may strike you as bizarre or perverse to suggest that they are inexplicable. Very well, let us call them “explained” just by virtue of the widely shared subjective sense that no explanation feels called for. What shall we make of the weirder end of physics: wormholes and dark matter and quantum indeterminacy? We explain X by positing Y – and eventually arrive at a Y that we have no explanation for. Why, oh, Y? Not only that, but the principles of quantum indeterminacy tell us that some things not only are unexplained, but never could be. (Oddly, physicists have a good explanation for this permanent inexplicability.)

We are surrounded by and submerged in weirdness. Driven by an urge to feel we have some grasp on things, we seek explanations. And what is "an explanation"? If any story gives us a sense (illusion?) of having a grasp on something, we call it an “explanation.” We don’t have nonsubjective standards for what counts as an explanation.

Which means that we can’t tell what is “unexplainable” (by natural law or phenomena).

Which means that we can’t tell what is “supernatural” and what isn’t.

Which means that “supernatural” (and “not supernatural”) isn’t available for careful thinking about our conceptions of “God” or “reality.”

Which means . . . ?

It’s not so much that I’m back to the drawing board. It’s more like I never left it. I stand forever before this drawing board, erasing as fast as I draw on it.

And living in wonder.

* * *
This is part 1 of 4 of "Science, God, and the Universe"
Next: Part 2: "Getting Personal"
Part 3: "Saganic Verses"
Part 4: "Which Is To Be Master?"

Blogarhithmic Expressions: What Do Christians Know?

Blogarhithmic Expressions: What Do Christians Know?

Thoughtful Christian blogger Lyn Robbins (who I knew when he was an undergrad on the Baylor debate team while I was a graduate assistant on the Baylor debate coaching staff -- though I won't say I coached him since I learned more from him than he from me) is right to suggest that we sometimes interpret the gap between "believe" and "know" in a way that unduly mutes advocacy. To have a belief is to believe that it is true. In general, with few exceptions, to have a belief is also to believe it is justified. If it is justified and true and a belief, then it's knowledge. (This is Plato's long-standing definition of knowledge: justified true belief.) So if you believe it, then you think you know it: you think it's knowledge. If you don't think you know it, you don't believe it.

Of course, you could be wrong about what you believe (what you think you know) -- and this is true in any area of human belief. We could be wrong about a scientific belief (turns out Newton was wrong about some of what he believed about motion, and Einstein was wrong about quantum mechanics). We could be wrong about a belief in a defendant's guilt (preponderance of evidence at trial may establish "proof" in some sense, but it isn't infallible proof -- as we have been recently reminded by reports of new DNA evidence exonerating prisoners convicted before DNA testing was available). We could also be wrong about our faith assertions. We can even be wrong about highly poetical assertions. (Imagine T.S. Eliot, toward the end of his life, saying, "I was wrong. It is not now and never was the case that I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas." It might be an interesting exercise to imagine a rationale by which Eliot would reach that conclusion. My point here is just that such a conclusion is comprehensible and possible.) We could be wrong about any of our beliefs -- and since "proof" is inherently fallible in any field of inquiry -- then proveability (or lack thereof) is irrelevant.

Lyn writes: "We are too quick to retreat to a position that says something like this: 'Faith is inherently unproveable. If it were a scientific formula, it would not be faith. Therefore, since we cannot prove matters of our faith in a laboratory or a courtroom, it would be presumptuous of us to say that we know them."

If "proof" means "infallibly establishes certainty" then there's no such thing -- not in laboratories, not in court rooms, and not in faith professions. And if "proof" means that we have some evidence and reasoning we can draw on in support of our claim, then there is proof in faith claims as well as in science and criminal law.

Acknowledgment that we could be wrong -- about ANYTHING -- is appropriate humility. It's not just, as Lyn says, that "It is impolitic to be certain of anything that smells religious." Rather, it is ultimately life-denying (for life means growth and change) to be too rigidly closed-minded on any subject, regardless of its smell. The practical realities of life, the overwhelming size of libraries and other sources of information, the smallness of our brains and the largeness of the number of our beliefs combine to mean that we will always have to take many of our beliefs "for granted": we haven't the world enough and time to investigate more than a small percentage of them in any detail. Still, there's a big difference between "practically off limits to revision for now, given my life's projects, purposes, and commitments" and "necessarily off limits to revision forever."

We don't have certainty. We do, however, have knowledge. I can believe something without certainty, but if I don't think I know it, then I don't believe it. How shall we conceive of knowledge in a way that doesn't imply certainty? The American Pragmatists (William James, John Dewey, et al) offer an epistemology that allows for having knowledge yet also allows for our knowledge to grow and change and that recognizes that nothing is exempt from the possibility of revision. Knowing is intimately tied to doing: knowing is effective doing. Ignorance, then, cashes out as ineffective doing. We act, and our action's effectiveness is the embodiment of what we know. One's knowledge is displayed in all one's doing. Religious knowledge, in particular, is manifest in a way of living, community connections, participation in rituals, values, an ethic, and the cultivation of such qualities as care, lovingkindness, compassion, justice, peace, and equanimity.

Still, there are two ways that we draw a distinction between "belief" and "knowledge" -- though the second is dubious.

(1) In talking about other people's beliefs. I meaningfully distinguish between what "Jo believes" and what "Jo knows" to reflect the distinction between "what Jo and I disagree on" and "what Jo and I agree on."

(2) In talking about my own beliefs when my uncertainty about them is particularly high -- that is, when I am hesitant to act on that belief except insofar as I might want to be taking the gamble.

In the second sort of case, what is at issue is more a pretend belief than a real belief. For example, I might say, "I believe that OJ killed Nicole, but I don't know it." I might say it, but I don't say it often. I live my life, as much as possible, in a 'no opinion' sort of way on that question, and will venture a belief-without-knowledge-claim only if pressed for my guess. It's more a pretend belief than a real one. In a similar way, Pascal's Wager asks us to believe there's a God without believing that we know there is a God -- thus drawing a divide between one's own belief and one's own (believed) knowledge. And that's why the argument of Pascal's wager is so unsatisfying: What we want in matters of faith (as in matters of science, criminal law, etc.) are beliefs that are real beliefs (that are believed to be justified and true and therefore constitute knowledge) rather than the sort of "pretend beliefs" that Pascal's argument recommends.

Hope.

I also appreciate Lyn's distinction between hope and wishing. His favorite quote, he says, is Peter Kuzmic:

"Hope is the ability to hear the music of the future; faith is the courage to dance to it today." 

Nice. What hope is NOT is the ego's desire for the world to be different from how it is. That's what Lyn calls "wishing." My own favorite quote on the subject of hope is from Vaclav Havel: "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the understanding that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."

In sum. Christians have knowledge-claims and truth-claims to make. I think some forms of some of the claims of some self-identified Christians are false -- but Lyn's right that Christians might as well be willing to say that they're claiming knowledge and truth. He's also right to remind them to be polite about so claiming.

What the World Needs

I was chatting over the December holidays break with one of the less-than-immediate relatives that I encounter only around the holidays, and that I have a certain difficulty understanding and feeling understood by. Perhaps you have some folks like that in your extended family. As she told me about her new job, which was going well, I said, “It sounds like you’ve found that place where your deep joy and the world’s deep need meet.”

“Joy has nothing to do with it,” she shot back. She added that she did feel joy on occasions when her children, now grown, visit, but that the rest of life was simply about doing one’s duty. She concluded with a rebuke: “Pursuit of personal joy is one of the most selfish acts known.”

I do believe in cultivating joy, or else we won't be able to bring it to others. At the same time, she may be right about the "pursuit" bit. Dogged chasing after it only makes joy run away from us even faster. So I think in terms of cultivating joy rather than pursuing it – nurturing gratitude for life just as it is rather than being consumed with the pursuit of more, better, different. Cultivating joy means cultivating a capacity to be present to each situation without thinking "how do I get out of this situation what I want?" and instead approaching the situation with the deep knowledge of being well provided for, ego defenses able to stand down, and the ego's fears not inhibiting the natural flow of compassion. Joy, after all, doesn't come from getting what we want. It comes from wanting what we've got.

Howard Thurman said: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Thurman recognizes that different people are called to different roles. Yes, there are duties. There are universal virtues -- patience, courage, kindness, prudence, wisdom, reverence, etc. -- that all of us do well to exercise and strengthen. There’s also your uniqueness: the particular gifts (and shadows) that you and no one else are called to bring to the world: the enterprises that make you come alive.

The early Hasidic sage Rabbi Zusya once said: "When I am called before the almighty to account for my life, God will not ask me, 'Why were you not Moses? Why were you not Abraham? Why were you not David?' He will ask, 'Why were you not Zusya?'" Some duties we all have; others are unique to you becoming you. Meeting both brings joy, and joy, in turn, fuels your further blossoming into who you are, your further coming alive – which is, indeed, what our world – and you – most need.

Gratitude and Faith

Religion begins in gratitude, it has been said. It is the first and most basic spiritual practice and spiritual virtue. What separates a purely secular view – of life, of the universe – from a religious view is the infusion of sentiments of thankfulness. The difference between a secular and a religious orientation is not about what entities or supernatural powers do or do not exist – it’s about the attitude we have toward what exists, whatever it is.

Psychology professor at the University of California at Davis, Robert Emmons has conducted a study in which he asked people to make journal entries once a week. He randomly assigned subjects to one of three groups. The first group he asked to list in their journal five things they were grateful for that had occurred in the last week. The second group he asked to describe five hassles or annoyances that week. The third group, the neutral group, was asked to list five events or circumstances that affected them, and they were not told to accentuate the positive or negative aspects of those circumstances.

In the first group, typical samples of things for which people were grateful were: The generosity of friends; The right to vote; The God-given gift of determination; That I have learned all that I have learned; Sunset through the clouds; The chance to be alive; My in-laws live only ten minutes away.

In the second group, typical samples of things which people found to be hassles or annoyances included: Hard to find parking; Messy kitchen no one will clean; Finances depleting quickly; No money for gas; Our house smells like manure; Burned my macaroni and cheese; Did favor for friend who didn’t appreciate it; My in-laws live only ten minutes away.

In addition to this journal listing, he also asked subject to give an answer each week to two questions: one about how they felt about their life as a whole during the week, on a -3 to +3 scale, with -3 being “terrible,” and +3 being “delighted.” Second, he asked participants to rate their expectations for the upcoming week on a scale from -3 (“pessimistic, expect the worst”) to +3 (“optimistic, expect the best”).

At the beginning of the ten-week study period, the three groups were about the same in terms of how they felt about their life as a whole and what they expected for the upcoming week: about the same range of responses and about the same average response. That’s because the groups were random, and there were people of various temperament and life situation in each group. By the end of the ten weeks, however, the gratitude group was scoring much higher on both how they felt about their life as a whole and on what they expected out of the upcoming week than either the hassles group or the neutral group.

It was remarkable, reports Emmons, how much difference it made to take just a couple minutes once a week to list five things one is grateful for. In a follow-up study, Emmons asked subjects to journal every day about what they were grateful for that day, or what annoyed them that day, or, neutrally, five events that affected them. He found that the differences were even more pronounced, that the gratitude practice made even more of a difference to people’s perception of the quality of their life.

Gratitude takes practice. The gratitude muscle, to become strong, requires regular exercising. And the people around you can tell. Emmons writes:

“Remarkably, not only did the reports of participants in the gratitude condition indicate increased positive feelings and life satisfaction, but so did the reports of their significant others. Spouses of participants in the gratitude condition reported that the participants appeared to have higher subjective well-being than did the spouses of participants in the control condition.”

My own daily gratitude list extends beyond five items, and every day it includes Unitarian Universalism. Well, almost every day. I’m grateful that there is such a thing in this world as us. I feel the spirit of Thanksgiving in this fellowship whenever we gather. There is this amazing fact. There exist people – over 220,000 thousand of them in the world and about 200 or so of them, counting the kids and teachers in the classrooms, right here today – people who, for historical reasons stretching back many generations, go by the name Unitarian Universalist – and who gather together into groups that, for more historical reasons, go by various names: fellowship, church, congregation, community, society. Every service we have washes us in the wonder and joy of that fact. It does me, anyway.

I have spent, it seems, a large portion of my life in transition. From womb to world – oh, that was a biggie. Starting school, starting high school, starting college, starting graduate school, starting another graduate school. Starting a family, entering parenthood. Starting a career as a professor. Starting divinity school. Starting a second marriage. Starting ministry. Starting, with LoraKim, as a co-minister in Gainesville in 2006. Starting in 2010 as the full-time and now senior minister. A lot of challenges came along the way – and they were not always nobly met, I'm sorry to say. That I managed as well as I did was because I had a lot of crucial help and support from certain people who happen to identify with that name Unitarian Universalist, and from certain communities that went by the name fellowship or church.

The Lord of the Rings, which I first read in seventh-grade, has been one of my sources for wisdom through the years. Gandalf the wizard said to Frodo the hobbit: “There will be dangers we cannot foresee, but also help will come unlooked for.” And so it has, for me: from Unitarian Universalist places much like this one – congregations in Atlanta, Georgia, in Waco, Texas, in Charlottesville, Virginia, in Nashville, Tennessee. Those were places where I was a lay member, places that saved my life during difficult transitions, by . . . having me, and by not offering any easy answers. They are the places where I learned what ministry was long before starting divinity school, and I learned it from the lay folks in the pews more than from the minister in the pulpit. They are the places where I learned religion and the foundation of the religious orientation: gratitude. They are the places where my heart found itself born by a tide of thankfulness.

When work is going well, we can neglect the need for faith community. I did. During the years I was a professor, I was a very sporadic church-goer. Yes, I’ve been a Unitarian Universalist all my life; I’ve been more-or-less continuous in my attendance only since about 1997. When I showed up for worship one Sunday in January 1997, it had been more than two years since I'd been to any UU gathering. I always knew where to go when things got obviously rough. What I started to learn, or remember, over the subsequent months is how much richer life is with this community than without it even when things aren't obviously rough.

So I have a lot of gratitude. I want to express it where appropriate, and carry it with me silently everywhere else, as private gladness of knowing that my world has, after all, such goodness in it.

I came of age in the 70s, when Unitarian Universalism was more rationalistically oriented than it is today. If someone had told me then that a UU church was really a secular humanist social club, I would have just shrugged. Of course, I was a teenager, so I shrugged a lot. We've come a long way as a denomination in the last forty years. We still cherish the Unitarian trinity: reason, freedom, acceptance of one another. But reason doesn't quite mean the same thing as it used to. Back then, many of us assumed there was some method, which, if properly followed, guaranteed arrival at truth. Now we understand reason more as not being unreasonable, and about the only thing that is unreasonable is blocking the path of inquiry, shutting out different voices, rigidly refusing to hear. Reason has become redundant with freedom and acceptance of one another. Including reason in our trinity, along with freedom and acceptance, adds only emphasis.

Once in Nashville, in the late 1990s, during one of her sermons, Reverend Mary Katherin Morn said, “I love being a religious liberal.” It was not an instant revelation for me. It was one of those things that doesn’t seem particularly meaningful or important at the time, but stays with you. It stayed with me. And I began to notice how much I love it too. And how thankful I am for Unitarian Universalists, and for this faith and this community that we have built, this path we travel together, the principles we share, this fellowship.

“There is no one but us. There never has been,” says Annie Dillard. But then she also says, “Nothing could more surely convince me of God’s unending mercy than the continued existence on earth of the church.” No one but us. But that’s all that's needed to have a congregation. And a congregation is all that's needed to have God’s unending mercy -- for we ourselves become that mercy when we become a fellowship constituted around such principles as these.

I talk a lot about our seven principles. At the various congregations I have been a part of or have served, when I talk with newcomers who were thinking about signing the membership book, might I ask for their impression of what it was they were getting into. Often they indicated these principles – speaking almost with a tone of awe. I’m so used to these words:

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:
The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

The danger is we’ll become inured to their power.
"Inherent worth and dignity" (right, right).
"justice, equity, compassion," (uh huh).
"acceptance of one another," "search for truth" (gotcha -- and to the Republic for which it stands).

But see the faces of certain people for whom these words are sinking in for the first time, and you will be reminded how powerful the ideas are. Our shared lives around these principles -- and our denomination had similar implicit principles long before approving these particular explicit principles -- offer a community of faith, a community of friends, of mutual support, of laughter and love, warmth and acceptance, sharing the faith that life is good, that justice is attainable, that caring redeems us, and that joy is one another’s company. We worship: in the sense of acknowledgment of that which is of highest worth, worship, as the active process of renewing and strengthening our connection to that which is of highest worth; worship as the quiet centering of our selves wherein we find peace. We are not, after all, a secular humanist social club. We are a religion, with rituals and principles and a spiritual path that leads us toward greater and greater depth in our capacity for gratitude. These things are possible: Worship, religion, a community of faith. And you don’t have to give up your freedom to have them, you don’t have to turn over the authority of your individual conscience to the priest at the door, you don’t have to turn off your brain when the sermon starts, you don’t have to suppress the impulse to ask discomfiting questions, you don’t have to shut up and believe what you’re told. You can have your cake of freedom, and reason, and acceptance, and also eat of the cake of faith community, and worship, and religion. The dilemma of having to choose between church and conscience, between faith and freedom, is a false dilemma. It really is possible to have both revelation and reason. No one need feel forced to choose between salvation without tolerance and tolerance without salvation. We can have religion, worship, and the spiritual support a faith community affords without having to swallow the horsepill of dogma and accept the undemocratic rule of the clergy on matters of theology as well as church policy and practice. We can think and believe what our lived experience directs that we should believe without having to stay away from churches, and forego the worship services, forgo the loving fellowship, maybe even forego having religion at all.

And more than that: as the Unitarian theologian Francis David said in the 16th century, 'We need not think alike to love alike.' You can be in religious community with lots of people who have very different outlooks. Not only are you free to believe as your heart, mind, and conscience dictates, but the wonderful thing is, so are all the people sitting around you. Our gospel – our “good news” -- is the model that we embody of living together, enjoying the stimulation of diversity, the strength of diversity, the impetus to personal and institutional growth of diversity – and magnifying the advantages of diversity through our democratic commitments that allow those diverse voices to all be heard -- while at the same time living together in harmonious community. OK, so the harmony isn't perfect, but we do about as well as denominations with a lot less diversity of belief.

These principles, we strive to exemplify. I say these words, and I mean them. But aside from their meaning as words, to me they mean faces. They mean ideals to live by, and they also mean: the people who live by them. The sounds of these words conjure up faces from my childhood. (These specific principles were not adopted until the mid-1980s, some time after the end of my childhood. But the principles have been a part of me for long enough now that they remind me of my whole life in our denomination’s congregations.) Faces of my R.E. teachers, and classmates. Faces of guests from church my parents had over to dinner. Faces of ministers I’ve had, of congregation presidents and committee chairs and leaders and friends. Gazing at the paper with these principles written, if I let it come, my eyes go blurry and I can hear, swirling around the typeface, the sounds of their laughter. Behind and between the words, I see faces of the people that I knew then and there and that I know here and now, flitting from one to another or fading slowly in and out, jumping backward and forward in time. And in those faces as they go by, I see thoughtfulness. I see passion. I see pensive concern. I see smiling warmth. I see there the love that is our capacity to unify the fragmented, to strengthen with quiet hope, to sustain one another. My profound thanks for all of those along the way whom I have known as one Unitarian Universalist can know another: "Thank you for having me. Thank you for letting me have you."

Then We Will Know How to Live

As the year passes away, it's a good time to remember that our lives are no less transient.

Consider the well-known passage from Psalm 90:

The days of our life are threescore and ten years,
Or perhaps four-score, if we are strong;
Even then their span is only toil and trouble,
They are soon gone, and we fly away.

Threescore and ten: this is the Biblically allotted lifespan (Methusaleh and other pre-Abraham characters notwithstanding). Thus British poet, A. E. Housman (1859-1936), at the young age of 20, looked forward to an estimated 50 more years.

Now, of my three score years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

If we would celebrate the fullness of all of life, we will view with relief and gratitude that the separate identity that ego so ardently clings to does not have countless ages. What is ours to do is only this brief span: our three score years and ten, more or less. Our mortality reminded Housman that we have only this moment. He chose, therefore, to walk about the woodlands, to be present to the beauty that is right now.

Louise Erdrich (b. 1954) said:

Your life feels different on you, once you greet death and understand your heart's position. You wear your life like a garment from the mission bundle sale ever after—lightly because you realize you never paid nothing for it, cherishing because you know you won't ever come by such a bargain again.

Remembering death, keeping it always in mind, makes us more present to life.

“What a puzzle it is,” as Mary Oliver (b. 1935) said, “that such brevity . . . makes the world so full, so good.”

Scottish novelist, Dame Muriel Spark (1918-2006), wrote:

If I had to live my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death, life is insipid. You might was well live on the whites of eggs.

We know that "this too shall pass." This transience of all things is so clear, so undeniable, so obvious. If you publicly declare, “All things are temporary,” no one will argue with you. It’s a platitude, not profound, something we all know.

What would it be like to hear those words -- "all things are temporary" -- and hear them as revelatory? While we all know that all things are temporary, we don’t act like we know it. We keep going after achievements: if it’s not a house or a car, it's a job, or a promotion, or a contract, or a publication or a grant. Or we go after a prospective partner and hope to get married, and then we go after the vicarious achievement of having our kids achieve.

If "a belief" is, as American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) said, "a habit of action," then the habits of our actions suggest that, whatever we may say, we believe in permanence. We go after things with a desperate graspiness that says louder than words that whatever it is we're pursuing is real, valuable, permanent, and not just one more thing that arises, hangs out for a little while, then passes away. What would it be like live the truth of impermanence rather than merely know it?

Because all things are temporary, and constantly changing, then death is constantly occurring. The you that you were last year, or yesterday, or 5 minutes ago, has ceased to be: that person has died.

The original Star Trek TV show in the 1960s introduced us to an imaginary technology called a "transporter beam." "Beam me up, Scottie," became a familiar part of our culture. How does the transporter work? Supposedly, it takes your molecules apart and reassembles the molecules down on the planet surface: water molecule here, protein molecule there, and so on. This is done with literally fantastic rapidity. So, OK, now, think about this. If we had a device that could do that, then there’s no reason it wouldn’t also be able to take the pattern of you and assemble all the molecules for you twice. It could make two of you, or three, or four, or a thousand.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, in the episode "Second Chances" originally aired in 1993 May, that's just what happens. In the episode, we learn that eight years previously then-Lieutenant Riker, while serving on the starship Potemkin had "beamed" down to a planet. While beaming back up, some fluke space phenomenon, undetected at the time, had split the transporter beam. The split beam creates two Rikers: one appears on the Potemkin and proceeds with the career that leads to promotion to Commander and transfer to the Enterprise; the other rematerializes on the planet below where he manages to survive the next years outside of Federation contact. Eight years later, the Enterprise visits that planet and discovers the Riker that was left behind. Geordi Laforge investigates the Potemkin logs and pieces together the explanation. He concludes that both Rikers are equally real, for "both were materialized from a complete pattern."

So, if that’s what the transporter is doing -- following a pattern to make a “you” -- then isn’t the transporter beam, when it works in the normal way, killing you? It kills you in one place, and then makes a replica of you somewhere else.

Suppose I were to make an exact and perfect replica of you. Suppose I then I said, "Look, here’s a replica that will live on, so is it OK to kill you now?" Would you agree that it was OK? Of course, with a transporter beam, the replica is made a few seconds after you’ve been killed. But if the fact that I have made a replica of you doesn’t make it OK to kill you, then how could the fact that I’m going to make a replica of you make it OK to kill you?

Those are interesting philosophical questions, which I will not here explore. I mention this hypothetical Star Trek technology to call attention to a not-at-all-hypothetical fact of our lives: through the technology of merely being alive, we are continually being killed and replaced by replicas of ourselves. At every moment, you are killed and replaced with a replica that has most of your memories, most of your skills and habits, looks mostly like you, etc. The replica is not exactly the same because all these aspects of you are, after all, constantly changing. To be alive is to change, and change means the death of what was.

I often hear that death is a normal and natural part of life. Part? No. Death is the whole of life, the constant fact of every moment.

Every instant is another death. It is also true that there will come an instant not followed by a replacement replica. One day, the succession of replicas stops.

What shall we do about that?

Others have seen this intricate linkage -- a linkage that amounts to identity -- between life and death. They have experienced the liberation that comes with thoroughgoing awareness of death and impermanence. Grasping the fullness of death brings us to the fullness of life. German Philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) found:

If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.

Centuries earlier, French essayist Montaigne (1533-1592) urged:

Let us deprive death of its strangeness. Let us frequent it; let us get used to it; Let us have nothing more often in mind than death . . . We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom.

In that freedom that comes from constant awareness of death, we finally dissolve those boundaries we construct between self and “other.” Dwelling there we realize the beauty, wonder, and oneness of all things. By looking squarely at death and embracing it, we learn how to live. As American Buddhist Larry Rosenberg (b. 1932) put it:

We know in our heads that we will die. But we have to know it in our hearts. We have to let this fact penetrate our bones. Then we will know how to live. To do that, we need to be able to look at the fact of death with steadiness. We can’t just glance at it casually. [Living in the Light of Death, 2000, p. 82.]

Finally, in Judith Lief's words:

The best preparation is working with our state of mind now rather than thinking about exotic things we might do later when we are looking death in the eyes. It is better to learn to relate to death now, when we still have the strength and ability. In that way, when we face difficult circumstances, or at the time of death, we can rely on what we already know. [Making Friends with Death, 2001, p. 26.]

I think it helps us "relate to death now," to keep in mind that life is constituted by death. Maybe the transporter beam called Time will reconstitute your pattern in the next moment, and maybe it won't. Either way, the being you experience as yourself this second is gone the next second. Why wrap so much anxiety around whether or not a very-nearly-identical replica will supersede you? Why have any anxiety whatsoever about that?

When all that anxiety is cleared away, seen through, recognized as stemming from delusion and dropped, then, indeed, we will know how to live.

Christmas Message

"Scrooge." "Grinch." The very words are wrinkly, shriveled, hard-edged – like the fictional characters they name. Grinch. Scrooge. The words and the characters are lonely, disconnected from community and nature, wrapped up in their forlorn pursuits of security and undisturbed quiet. They stand, or imagine they do, alone – alienated from the very Earth on which they stand.

I’m also thinking about what happens to Scrooge and Grinch. They who were asleep to the free treasures around them have an awakening experience. They wake up to a spirit of generosity.

Ebenezer Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning, astonished that he hasn’t missed it. He is “fluttered and glowing. . . . laughing and crying in the same breath.” Alone in his room he cries out:

“I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody. A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo there! Whoop! Hallo!”

He opens his window, puts his head out, calls to a boy below in the street, tells him to run to the poulterer's and have the biggest turkey at the shop delivered to Bob Cratchit’s. Scrooge has awakened to generosity. He is laughing, and shouting ‘Merry Christmas’ in the street. He’s giving large contributions to charity. People think he's gone mad -- and a kind of divine madness it is. As Dickens tells it:

“He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure.  He had never dreamed that any walk -- that anything -- could give him so much happiness.”

Scrooge has awakened indeed, and he is swept up in a crazy, joyous energy.

The Grinch, for his part, experiences, we can infer, dramatic physical bodily sensations with his awakening. His chest is so full it feels it would burst. It feels to him as though his heart itself is growing three sizes. With his awakening, he wants to give:

“And the minute his heart didn’t feel quite so tight, He whizzed with his load through the bright morning light. And he brought back the toys! And the food for the feast! And he – he himself, the Grinch – carved the roast beast.”

So I think about Scrooge and Grinch. And I remember that for most of the history of Christmas, there weren’t gifts. Gift-giving was not a part of Christmas. When some of the early Puritans in New England began exchanging a small token of regard, the church authorities scowled and discouraged it.

The spirit of generosity may sleep for a millennium or two, but it must awaken eventually.

Maybe there’s something about this winter season of long and cold nights that pulls at us with a tug that can be resisted for a long time but not forever – calls to us to respond with generosity of heart.

Or maybe there is something about the teachings of that young prophet from Nazareth that eventually, after many generations, compels us to give. “The kingdom of God is within you,” he said. (Or did he say “among you”? New Testament Greek has only one word where English has two: “within” and “among.” So we are left with the delightful ambiguity of whether our full and whole greatness and joy is centered within each of us individually or whether it blooms forth from community – among us -- when we gather together. Both, beloveds! Surely both!)

Or maybe it’s the story we keep re-telling about that prophet’s birth, about love being made flesh and dwelling among us. Maybe that’s what finally directs us into practices of giving.

For Scrooge and the Grinch, a dramatic awakening happens and it manifests in giving. The rest of us learn as best we can from their experience and from such examples, in life or in story, as we encounter.

The 1988 movie, Scrooged, puts the Scrooge story in a modern setting. Bill Murray plays Frank Cross (another wonderfully hard-edged-sounding name, less wrinkly but sharper), the mean, lonely, self-absorbed president of a TV network. In the course of the film, Cross is brought to an awakening, and, here again we see the manic ebullience that bursts forth when a heart that’s been long encrusted first breaks open. Cross walks onto the set where a live production of "A Christmas Carol" is being broadcast, and gives a wild, impassioned speech to the cast, crew, and everyone watching on TV.

“Christmas Eve: it’s the one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we smile a little easier, we, we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year we are the people that we always hoped we would be. It’s a miracle, it’s really a sort of a miracle because it happens every Christmas Eve. And if you waste that miracle, you’re gonna burn for it – I know what I’m talking about. You have to do something, you have to take a chance, you do have to get involved. There are people that are having, having trouble making their miracle happen. There are people that don’t have enough to eat -- people that are cold. You can go out and say hello to these people. You can take an old blanket out of the closet and say, ‘here,’ You can make ‘em a sandwich and say, ‘Oh, by the way, HERE!’ I get it now. And if you give, then you, then it can happen, then the miracle can happen to you. It’s not just the poor and the hungry – it’s everybody who’s gotta have this miracle. And it can happen tonight for all you. If you believe in this spirit thing, you, then the miracle’ll happen and then you’ll want it to happen again tomorrow. You won’t be one of these bastards who says ‘Christmas is once a year and it’s a fraud.’ It’s not! It can happen every day, you’ve just gotta want that feeling. And if you like it and you want it, you’ll get greedy for it. You’ll want it every day of your life, and it can happen to you. I believe in it now. I believe it’s going to happen to me now. I’m ready for it. Ah. It’s great. It’s a good feeling. It’s really better than I’ve felt in a long time.”

The monologue above begins 5:53 into this clip:



Have you ever felt an imperative of giving of such clarity and ecstasy? You might have. Christmas can happen every day – a life of generosity and giving can be a part of all our days and years. But that kind of crazy energy must necessarily level out. That manic peak can’t be maintained. It’s not that the joy or the generosity has to go away or fade, just that it takes on a quality of abiding peace. For Scrooge, Dickens says, for the rest of his life “it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any many alive possessed the knowledge.” He always ever-after had the spirit of giving, but, if the fictional character is to be true to life, Scrooge must have settled into a calm lovingkindness in contrast to his  fluttery and giddy first day (or first week or first several monthes) after the ghosts visited. The Bill Murray character in Scrooged must eventually chill out a bit.

It’s like first love. When we first fall in romantic love the blood is fired with hormones and endorphins and adrenaline, and we can’t think of anything but the beloved, can’t sleep, can’t concentrate. That passion feels great. It doesn’t last, and that’s a good thing because even greater is the sustained and sustaining ongoing and slow ever-deepening love that exists between a couple, long married, simply enjoying together the morning newspaper and cups of coffee.

Are you at one of those ecstatic peaks? Have you been there and have moved through it? Have you settled down into a constant and abiding, peaceful and calm Christmas spirit that just rolls like a river: coursing unspectacularly through your life, and through you to those around you?

Or are you waiting, not sure whether to believe in what might happen?

Wherever you might be, you don’t have to sit around waiting for ghosts to show up in the night. Just give.

Maybe you don’t fully comprehend what that’s about – you don’t have to. If waking up doesn’t come to you as a sudden startling grace, then let it come gradually. Just give.

If you’re not convinced of the miraculous power of generosity, that’s OK. Fake it. Fake it ‘till you make it. Just give, and the miracle happens.

Howard Thurman has written:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.

Scrooge had an ecstatic transformation. For him, it followed from visions of ghosts in the night. For others, it might accompany singing angels, or a clear star illuminating the interconnection and holiness of all things. As wonderful and transformative as such experiences can be, what really matters is coming down from that mountain peak to engage in the year-round daily "work of Christmas." It takes sustained equanimity and abiding compassion for the long haul to do that work, day after day with enduring love: finding those lost, healing those broken, feeding those hungry. An episode of hysterical joy at the aching beauty of each moment sometimes -- not always -- permanently changes a person. Scrooge, Dickens tells us, was among those for whom such an episode did effect a permanent change. He settled, it seems, into an abiding joy in a life of doing "the work of Christmas." Not all who have had such episodes get there -- and some people get there without any sudden profound awakening. Some people awaken very gradually and find one day that, although they cannot say when it happened exactly, peace, wisdom, and compassion shifted from "occasional visitor" to "frequent visitor" to "resident" qualities of experience, action, being. Such qualities increasingly visit and finally move in with hosts who simply do "the work of Christmas" day in and day out, as best they can, over the course of many years. The slow awakenings don't make for as riveting a story as the sudden transformations of Scrooge and Grinch, but the beauty and grace of the reshaped lives is as complete.

Repealing "Don't Ask Don't Tell"

Moving and important words from our Vice-President and President today.

You can read the remarks here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/22/remarks-president-and-vice-president-signing-dont-ask-dont-tell-repeal-a

Or watch the video:


http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/12/22/president-signs-repeal-dont-ask-dont-tell-out-many-we-are-one

I'm very happy about this development -- even though it is tinged with just a hint of ambivalence. The ambivalence most comes to the fore, in my mind, when the President said:

"As one special operations warfighter said . . . .'We have a gay guy in the unit.  He’s big, he’s mean, he kills lots of bad guys.'  (Laughter.) 'No one cared that he was gay.'  (Laughter.) And I think that sums up perfectly the situation. (Applause.)"

Yes, this is a good day.  Yes, it is an important step toward justice, fairness, consideration, and cooperation.

An even better day will be the day that we stop dividing humans into "good guys" and "bad guys."An even better day will be the day we stop imagining that killing lots of anybody is a commendable thing.

The real "dawn of eternal peace" to which Biden (quoting Eishenhower) refers will come when we don't have militaries at all: when neither gay men nor lesbians nor straight men nor straight women serve -- openly or otherwise -- in the armed forces.

"Force can protect in emergency," said Eisenhower, re-echoed by Biden. Yes, it can. But real peace, just as Eisenhower went on to say, requires justice, and, as Eisenhower did not go on to say, real justice requires all of us to develop the skillful means ("upaya," as the Buddhists say) for tending with care and concern to all human needs so that those "emergencies" that require violent self-protection never arise.

Some part of human aggression -- I don't know how large or small a part -- does seem connected with ultimately unhealthy notions about masculinity and sex roles and sexuality. Insofar as we now allow straight women, gay men, and lesbians to fight next to the straight men, maybe those old unhealthy notions about masculinity, etc., are eroding. And with that erosion, maybe we are becoming a people less eager to fight wars. That would be nice.

Is allowing gays to serve openly in state-sanctioned violence a step toward fairness? Yes. Is it a step toward eventually ending such violence? I don't know, but I would like to hope so.

I would dearly love to hope so.

Armistice Day

It's November 11, it's 1918, it's Armistice Day, and I,

I would have no arms.

I would have no legs.

I would live in Europe, Asia, America, south and north, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, and all the wide deep blacken blue oceans.

I would have no Western front.

I would name myself Peace Among the Nations.

Finally undisappointable,

Hanging over the beleaguered of nations like a happy gracious fog, I would

Penetrate everywhere.

I would weigh you down with uplifting serenity.

I would double you four times, Woodrow Wilson World War.

All ate of you, consumed by love, would have a thousand arms each reaching and embracing every dying soldier every wailing mother every broken-legged horse, enfolding them in doesn't-change-a-thing compassion.

I would have no arms.

A Religion for Our Time

Sunday Service, 2010 October 17

SPOKEN PREPARATION

Let us prepare to worship: to ascribe worth; to shape with our presence, to embody in this community what has value. For we gather again, as we do -- again and again, week after week --to re-do, to re-set ourselves: for our hearts forget, and our minds succumb to distraction.

And so we gather this hour, to rediscover, renew, reaffirm, rekindle, and reclaim. “To rediscover the wondrous gift of free religious community; To renew our faith in the holiness, goodness, and beauty of life; To reaffirm the way of the open mind and full heart; To rekindle the flame of memory and hope; and To reclaim the vision of an earth made fair, and all her people one.” (David C. Pohl, SLT #436). For if we do not, no one will do it for us. If we do not, the vision will fade.

PULPIT EDITORIAL

The pulpit editorial lifts up one aspect of our congregational life each week. This week, I lift up an aspect of our shared congregational and Gainesville life. No, I don’t mean all the head shaking and muttering about three losses in a row. It is pride week here in Gainesville this week: the annual time when GLBT – that’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender – folk and their allies join together to celebrate diversity – to celebrate all the forms that healthy love can take, and to celebrate the different ways that gender identity manifests in different people. The symbol is the rainbow, and that is appropriate, for the difference of color are natural, and they are beautiful, by themselves, as well as taken all together.

 This congregation is a Welcoming Congregation. In 1994, we underwent a process of training and reflection to deepen our understanding of GLBT people and issues, to learn better how to understand and therefore to welcome them. That process led to our certification by the national Unitarian Universalist Association as a Welcoming Congregation. This Gainesville Congregation was the first Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Florida to receive that designation.

Ours is a denomination that proclaims that civil marriage is a civil right, and religious marriage a religious choice. I will marry you – in a religious wedding – if you and your partner are ready for it -- even if the state of Florida will not recognize any legal status of the marriage.

Full acceptance is the requirement of the time. A religion for our time must be one that stands on the side of love, that stands for fairness and equality. This is our tradition as Unitarian Universalists – it is our calling to be in the world a voice for acceptance and justice.

Therefore, many members of this congregation will be marching in the Pride parade next Saturday, October 23.

These are times of anger and confusion for many of us, as the news in recent weeks of bullying of GLBT youth – harassment so sever that it leads some of them to take their own life.

Let us remember and hold in our hearts the names:

-Tyler Clementi, a freshman at Rutgers University in New Jersey, jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his sexual encounter with another man was broadcast online. 

-Billy Lucas, a 15-year-old from Greensburg, Ind., hanged himself after being harassed at school. 

-Asher Brown, a 13-year-old from the Houston suburbs, shot himself after coming out. 

-And 13-year-old Seth Walsh from Tehachapi, Calif., died a week after he hanged himself in his parents' back yard following a barrage of taunting and bullying.

Our support for GLBT people matters – by standing up for them, and standing on the side of love, we may save lives. The tide of hate and contempt must turn – and we must assume that it we who must turn it. Look for other UUs at the Ayers Medical Plaza, 720 West University.

The parade starts at 1:00pm and we’ll walk together 8 blocks down to the Bo Diddley plaza.

Please come and walk with us and stand together with us on the side of love, and be lights unto the nations.

STORY FOR ALL AGES

This story is called “Daddy’s Roommate,” by Michael Willhoite. (If you have kids, buy a copy – you’ll want to have it with its full-page illustrations).

My Mommy and Daddy got a divorce last year. Now there’s somebody new at Daddy’s house. Daddy and his roommate Frank live together. Work together on the house and the yard. Eat together.  Sleep together.  Shave together. Sometimes even fight together. But they always make up. Frank likes me too. We play ball. Just like Daddy, he tells me jokes and riddles; Helps me catch bugs for show-and-tell; Reads to me; Makes great peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches; And chases nightmares away. When weekends come, we do all sorts of things together. We go to ball games; visit the zoo; go to the beach; Work in the yard; go shopping; and in the evenings we sing at the piano. Mommy says Daddy and Frank are gay. At first I didn’t know what that meant. So she explained it. Being gay is just one more kind of love. And love is the best kind of happiness. Daddy and his roommate are very happy together. And I’m happy too!

OFFERTORY

The phrase, “A religion for our time” is the slogan of President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Peter Morales. I introduce our offertory this morning with this reading from Rev. Morales:

“A religion for our time must be about wholeness, integrity, and engagement.  It must promote the spiritual practices that give us depth and insight: meditation, prayer, small groups, and music. 

It must touch our hearts as well as our heads. Our new religion must promote deep reflection, but it must never, never, become an escape from life or descend into navel gazing narcissism. 

A religion for our time must be prophetic. It must speak truth to power. It must raise a powerful voice against violence, injustice, racism, economic exploitation, and the destruction of life on our planet. A religion for our time is not afraid of power. It uses power. A religion for our time must strive to transform the world. Beyond this, our new religion must have a vision of a multiracial and multicultural future. It must invite people to come together in love to help create new world—a world of peace, justice, equity, compassion and stewardship of the environment. It must draw upon ancient and undying human longing for harmony, for beloved community, for bringing the kingdom of God to earth. You are called to be a place of healing and support. We are all called to be voices for compassion, voices calling our culture back to a sense of the common good. We must be moral beacons in a dark time—a time in which out of control individual acquisitiveness has wreaked havoc on our economy and on our environment.

“What are we called to be? I believe we are called to transform lives. We are called to be a force for compassion, understanding, sustainability and peace. We are called to feed the spiritually hungry and open our home to the religiously homeless. We are called to heal and empower people so that they can in turn help transform our world. We are called to teach our children compassion, understanding and respect. We live in dark times, times filled with hatred, injustice, prejudice, ignorance. Sadly, obsolete religions created for another time contribute to the darkness. We can be the religion for our time. We can lead. We can help transcend the religious tribalism that is killing people every day. You and I are called to shine the light of compassion, the light of openness, the light of acceptance, the light of justice, the light of truth. We can do this. We must do it. If we let the love in our hearts and our ideals of freedom and justice guide us, we can revitalize our faith, we can touch lives, we can change the world.”

That revitalization begins with you – your heart, your passion, your love and understanding  – and your financial support. Please: give generously.

READING

The reading that Ruth and I will share is a poem by Maria Carter. In strong words, the poet gives voice to the energy of anger, that that energy may turn toward building justice – justice for all, regardless of who they love.

“Protest Song” by Maria Carter.

Meredith:

This is a protest song.

For my brothers who mourned Matthew Shepard song

a watch your boy’s back in this our free country song 

he could be beaten and left to die in agony,

his blood on the hands of animals in Laramie

because the fear of love runs deep.

Love, stand up and protest

song for my brothers who fight like Brandon Teena, 

questioned about the contents of his boxer shorts at knifepoint, 

murdered by the sons of the fathers of the patriarchy 

in a surreptitious act of negligent police brutality

because the fear of the other runs deeper.

But not than this Love, 

stand up and hear this, 

love song,

Ruth:

Song for my sisters in Richmond, California

Last year in a parking lot, the community was informed of a

rainbow sticker on a car with a driver’s seat

With a female body dragged out onto the concrete

By a gang of young men who knew she was a lesbian

the fear of a love that turns to face that fear again

and stands up, love

I said, hear this, 

love song

Meredith:

song for my sisters who remember Gwen Araujo, 

a daughter and a lover and a woman, no matter who 

thought what about her anatomy at that tragedy 

of a trial, both of them, where four men again nearly went free

how clearly society can speak 

if you don’t fit in a box, you’ll end up in one. 

Ruth:

When I came out to my mother at 19

She said, thinking of you being with a woman

Makes me sick.

It turns my stomach

Like seeing something cut open on TV.

I said, Mom, my life is not televised

And what’s cut open here is my chest, see the way these truths nest 

together, sex, love, family, career, 

God, sex, love, politics, justice

sex, love, lungs, blood, tissue, muscle, heart

Meredith:

When have I chosen 

Ruth:

the arrangement of my bones and

the alignment of my organs?

Meredith:

When did I capitulate 

Ruth:

to an agreement in which you would dictate

The shape and propriety of my expression? 

I Protest.

Meredith:

I protest every injustice that is inflicted

Every heart that is restricted

Should make the apathy to which we are addicted

A little more conflicted, right?

I’ve been biding my time

And waiting on this rhyme to 

come out, come out

Ruth:

Like I did that day when I confessed to my mother, 

Meredith:

No, this is not going away

Ruth:

So look at me and tell me that I make you sick

When the love I’m asking for is the same you want for your clique 

Meredith:

And I don’t want to hear any practical advice

About how to talk to The Man, about how to shuck and jive

If I deserve equal protection and my rights are being shanghaied

Then why do I have to ask nicely, why do I have to apologize

For making someone else uncomfortable?

Ruth:

The discomfort we have felt looms

Every moment we consider that hospital room

Where we are not allowed to sleep by our partners’ sides

Where drug-riddled mothers give birth to unwanted children

While the adoption rights of two loving parents are denied

And I can spend the rest of my life with you

Meredith:

But no court in my state will recognize the truth

Ruth:

Of our union, without that little piece of paper.

So don’t tell me we can’t march on our capitol without a permit.

I’ve permitted this commitment to practicality to submit

My constitutionally guaranteed pursuit of happiness 

to an infantile fear of authority

For far too long. 

So I will be there on Sunday, with my partner and my sign

Meredith:

Because Love is the thing that my God had in mind

When she designed this time for the reckoning of these crimes

Ruth:

And the change we ache to find at the end of this 40-year climb

Don’t tell me you won’t see my marriage in your lifetime

See that little piece of paper 

rock the foundations of the dispossessed. 

You’ll see it

Meredith:

You’ll see it

Ruth:

Stand up with me

Meredith:

With me

Ruth:

And protest.

SERMON

Religion is getting a bad name. The historic conflict between Muslims and Jews continues unabated. Sunnis and Shiites show no signs of liking each other; Catholics and Protestants face off in Northern Ireland. Fundamentalist forms of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam foster intolerance and ultimately violence. The ongoing genocide in Darfur has a religious dimension. Religious violence is part of our daily lives. The Buddhists have the best record of peace of the four largest world religions, yet in Sri Lanka even the Buddhists have wreaked inexcusable and racist violence upon the Hindu Tamils. 

Religious violence should not be surprising if we look at where religion came from. In early human life, competition between groups was intense. A raid from the group on the other side of the hill would threaten your food supply, destroy your shelter, and make off with the women. Competition fuels cooperation: that is, competition BETWEEN groups put a premium on cooperation WITHIN groups. If your group had good cooperation together, you could defend yourselves, and mount successful raids on your neighbors. 

That level of cooperation required strong emotional bonding. And that’s what religion is originally all about. Sharing together in rituals, enhances bonding and interconnection. Having shared stories about the origin of people – understood as your tribe – enhances bonding and interconnection. Sharing stories about the origin of your moral code bolstered its legitimacy and a shared behavioral code further helped bonding and connection. Rituals, origin myths, moral code, interconnection – that’s religion. 

We have religion because we needed it – a tribe that couldn’t generate deep tribal cohesion would not survive the violent competition of other tribes. So it’s no surprise that our human world continues to be beset by religious violence. From its beginnings, religion was all about group bonding of a good sized tribe, so that tribe could defend better and attack better. Yes, the world religions all teach peace, and the historical – or, rather, prehistorical, evolutionary -- roots of that are in the need to make peace with the others within our tribe so that we could better defend against or attack another tribe. 

Evolution, however, is a continual story of something evolving for one purpose and then being put to another purpose. Example #1: Back before there were land animals, there was an early form of what we call a lung-fish. It had a sac that held air. It was to give the fish buoyancy in the water -- it had nothing to do with respiration. Since the sac was there, it could be appropriated for respiration purposes, and it gradually evolved into a lung, allowing the first land animals. Building upon its inheritance, it transcended it and became a new thing on this earth. 

Example #2: The early ancestors of the bat could not fly. They had a little webbing between the fingers in order to catch flies better. The webbing’s original purpose had nothing to do with what then happened: that webbing allowed the animal to take flight. Building upon its inheritance, it transcended it and became a new thing on this earth. 

And here we are: homo religioso – hardwired to be religious. We inherit this brain that evolution has built to respond to rituals and stories, shared moral understanding – this brain that uses those rituals, stories, and morality to form fierce loyalty to our tribe. We can try to cut that out of ourselves. We can try to suppress and excise the religious impulse, attempt to destroy a part of who we are. It’s not rational, we might say. Music isn’t either. You could suppress and deny and try to eliminate the part of you gets any pleasure from music. You might even succeed, if you worked at it long enough. But you would have diminished life, not enhanced it. 

The brain circuitry that orients us to bond with one another through religion, that orients us to live in peace within our group: that circuitry is available for being universalized beyond our group. The sense of interconnection that evolved to unite our tribe is available to unite our planet. Building upon our inheritance, we can transcend it and become a new thing on this earth. 

Our spiritual perception can plumb more deeply, can see more than just what selective pressures once needed our ancestors to see. We can train awareness to know, more thoroughly, fully, richly, than cognition alone can know, that all humans are us, all sentient beings are us; all bugs and plants, all amoebas, paramecia, bacteria, and fungi are us; all rocks and dirt, rivers and oceans; air and fire; sun, moon, and stars are us. 

Such a religion – a religion of tolerance, of acceptance, of welcome – a religion of empathy and understanding even for people with religions that remain narrowly tribal – this is the religion for our time. This is Unitarian Universalism. It is the faith that we have been practicing and living, increasingly so over the last century. 

I see that professor Harvey Cox’s new book, The Future of Faith, predicts that Fundamentalism will die off. He says religious movements in the future will abandon creeds, seek justice, support democracy, cultivate small groups, and become less regional, less parochial, less dogmatic, and less patriarchal. That would be nice. I’m not holding my breath, but where professor Cox and I do agree is that this is, indeed, the kind of religion we most need today. Whether we as a species are really headed that way within the lifespan of a baby born today . . . that’s up to us. We are the religion for our time: it’s up to us to bring it to the world. 

The religion for our time must no longer be belief-centric, putting beliefs – creeds, dogma, doctrine – at the center. The religion for our time understands that what religion is about is three things:

(1) Religion is about how you live, the ethics and values that guide your life. 

(2) It’s about coming together with others and sharing in rituals that bond us together. 

(3) It’s about the experiences of awe, and wonder, and beauty; about those moments when the ego defenses fall away and the fundamental oneness of all things is suddenly so clear. 

And a congregation, a denomination, a faith tradition is for bringing those three things together in such a way that each one reinforces the other two. 

The religion for our time is us: open to the great spiritual gifts of other traditions, yet having a clear tradition of our own from William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, Hosea Ballou, and courageous and thoughtful women and men who have kept alive through the centuries this conversation that constitutes us. 

Our lives are enriched by spiritual experience in they same way that they are enriched by poetry, and by music. A religion for our time cannot conflict with science, but incorporates scientific findings into our story of wider and fuller meaning – and does not treat metaphor and poetry as if it were history and science.

Ethics and values have always been a function of religion. The sexual energy from which life comes can be misused to hurt others and ourselves. That energy that can add depth and connection to relationships of intimacy can also disrupt relationships, break up households, harm children. A religion for our time will not flinch from the ancient role of religion in distinguishing appropriate from inappropriate sexual conduct. Ecstatic and connecting physical experience is an aspect of the spiritual. Some of us are in committed relationships right now, and some of us are not. What all of us wish for those who are in such relationships is that they are a ground for growth of joy, for we understand that a sexual relationship that is sustainable and nonexploitive and mutually respectful helps support and is supported by nonsexual relationships of community that are also a ground for the growth of joy. Relationships at all those levels also deepen our connection with nature, with our world, with the awakening of wonder and oneness that I call spiritual. Inappropriate use of sexuality tears apart families and rends community, and distances us from spiritual experience and spiritual growth. So, yes, religion has a role to play in helping to guide us toward sexual expression that enhances rather than harms our spiritual health. A religion for our time recognizes that. 

Yet we see today a religious landscape that widely and profoundly gets it wrong on sexual mores. The kind of intimate relationships that provide for personal and emotional stability so that spiritual maturity can begin to flourish have everything to do with commitment, sustainability, nonexploitation, mutual respect and mutual consent and nothing to do with whether or not your partner is the same sex as you, or whether your gender identity is the same as your biological sex. A religion for our time recognizes that if, for instance, you were born biologically male, it is not necessary either that you be male nor that your partner not be. A religion for our time respects humanity’s diverse traditions – diverse spiritual expressions – and likewise respects diverse sexual expressions. 

All people matter. People of all racial backgrounds matter. Poor people matter as much as rich people. Uneducated people matter as much as scholars. Children matter. The aged matter. Lesbians matter as much as straight women. Gay men matter as much as straight men. Bisexual people matter as much as people with a unidirectional sexual orientation. Transgender people matter as much as people whose gender identity has always more or less matched their apparent biological sex at birth. A religion for our time does not merely tolerate human diversity, it celebrates it. A religion for our time stands on the side of love.

Rebecca Parker, the president of our Unitarian Universalist seminary, the Starr King School for the Ministry, is one of the most humane and wise people I have ever read and heard speak. She tells the story of her cousin Megan. A few years back, Megan was going through a period of despair after an unexpected and painful break-up. Then one day, Megan invited her cousin Rebecca to lunch, bursting with good news. 

“I have been born again!” she announced. Rebecca, President of a Unitarian seminary, felt her heart sink. Who had gotten to Cousin Megan, she wondered. 

“No, no, it’s OK,” said Megan. And she told about how she was listening to her car radio and heard a radio preacher with a message unusual for radio preachers. He said everyone is a child of God, and everyone can be like Christ. Megan was so excited she talked back to the radio: “That’s what I believe. I believe everyone can be a savior and we can save the world by loving it and each other.” 

Megan felt such a love and warmth and joy come over her in that moment. And she was still feeling it the next morning. She got up and began a meditation practice, built a home altar, and began the earnest work of strengthening and deepening this peace and love she felt. In her practice Megan did become peaceful and centered and focused – but then, she says, as soon as I’d begin my daily routine that would all fall apart. As soon as there were real people to deal with, they were annoying – and Megan couldn’t hold onto, couldn’t live what she knew: that those people are also, everyone of them, children of God, saviors. 

“I realized,” said Megan, “that I just couldn’t do this alone. I needed to find some other people who were trying to put love into practice. Then it hit me. Church! That’s what church is for!” Megan, unchurched, began to look for a faith community. 

She went to a liberal congregation: the sermon was intellectually stimulating and addressed racial justice – certainly an important topic. But the atmosphere was cold, the congregation all white, the music staid. 

Megan tried a progressive, multiracial, historically black Baptist church. The music rocked, the people were warm, the place was energetic and alive. But the sermon rehashed the appalling theology that had kept Megan out of church for so many years: that Jesus died to save us from our sins. 

So Megan went to a New Age church, multiracial congregation, and small covenant groups supporting each other and carrying out service projects. They did right, but the theology was pabulum. “We memorized affirmation about the power of mind over matter,” reported Megan. “You can’t just think poverty, and war, and the environmental crisis away. That’s nonsense.” 

Megan needed a congregation of intellectual depth, social ethics, and also of warm connection with other people; racial and cultural diversity; lively, rocking music; small groups and committed service. And what Megan needed is what more and more people are coming to consciously recognize they want and need – and it’s what many times more people need but don’t consciously know it . . . yet. That’s what the religion for our time must provide. 

There’s a challenge there for us: as we go down the list of what Megan needed, how are we doing? Had Megan visited the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville, we would have fallen short, most obviously in the diversity area, and maybe in some other ways too. 

We are mostly there – we have a lot to celebrate, and taking joy in each other and this wonderful community we have together is an essential grounding for us if we are to take the next step. And take the next step we must – if we are to truly be the religion that our world needs now. 

Megan, by the way, did find what she was looking for, and that was the good news she was bursting to share with her cousin Rebecca. She found it in a progressive Jewish synagogue that emphasized the value of silence, meditation, and spiritual practice -- that had beautiful chanting, and Torah study that was intellectually rich with layers of meaning – and the people were warm and welcoming. 

We don’t have a monopoly on being the religion of out time. We are on the right track, but we still have some work to do. We always have, and we always will: as the times keep changing, so also must the religion of our time. 

So may it be, and Amen.

BENEDICTION

(Words of Rev. Peter Morales, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association): 

We are called to feed the spiritually hungry and open our home to the religiously homeless. 

We are called to heal and empower people so that they can in turn help transform our world. 

We are called to teach our children compassion, understanding and respect. 

We are called to shine the light of compassion, the light of openness, the light of acceptance, the light of justice, the light of truth. 

Let it shine! Let it shine! Let it shine!