A Most Unlikely Unitarian

8 July 2001

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

It’s the summer time, and when we are young, anyway, it is a time of simple play. And yet, when I think about being Unitarian, “simple” and “play” are two words which don’t really jump out at me to define who we are. In one of those wonderfully irrational moments of clarity that happen from time to time, I recognized in a rather famous character a cartoon-like mirror of us – or at least the more parochial us – and just knew I had discovered the jumping-off point for a service. So this Sunday, in hopefully a lighthearted way befitting the season, we will explore ourselves through the example of this most unlikely of Unitarians, a veritable self-proclaimed super- genius, whose very essence, and lifelong behavior, more than qualify for admission to our denomination.

I love comic books and cartoons. Reading comics and watching cartoons is a pleasure I have not – and hope I never will – grow out of. When I was young, I had a paper route which supplied me with more than enough money to indulge my comic book passions. There was a place on Main Street in Passaic, New Jersey, called the Passaic Book Center. In the late-sixties I was there at least once a week buying primarily comic books, science fiction paperbacks, and various cinema and monster magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland. Those were some of the happiest days of my life.

In those days of stone knives and bear skins, we didn’t have cable TV with channels like Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network. TV was broadcast and even just outside of New York City in New Jersey where I grew up, we only had the three networks and a few independents. Neither did we have videotapes or DVDs or the Internet. So there were basically only two ways to watch cartoons: either on TV, and there mostly on Saturday and Sunday mornings, or sometimes at the movie theater on the weekend before a feature film. I cherished my cartoon time and actually seeing a cartoon at the movies was a real thrill.

In case you can’t tell, I was then, and still am, an animation junkie. With our computer technology, today’s animation technically far outstrips that of the past. But I still have a deep fondness for the old cartoons. And among my all time favorite cartoons was the Road Runner with his perpetual antagonist, Wile E. Coyote.

Wile E. Coyote is one of my two or three favorite cartoon characters of all time. He has been chasing after the Road Runner for decades. The set-up for the cartoons was always the same: Wile E. would try his best to capture the speedy, elusive, and almost mystically lucky Road Runner. But no matter how hard he tried, no matter how clever the trap he set or sophisticated and complicated the devices he used, Wile E. always failed. Always. And yet, I, and millions of others, fell in love with Wile E Coyote. And although we may not have ever wanted him to actually catch the Road Runner (well maybe just once!), we certainly did not want to see him fail. But fail he did, gloriously, constantly, and in ways that simply astonished and delighted us.

I had no idea then that Wile E. would someday inspire me to do a church service focused on him and his escapades with the Road Runner. But one day recently, I had this odd revelation that Wile E. Coyote, self-proclaimed super genius and absolutely, hands-down, the world’s worst predator, would be my candidate as the most unlikely of Unitarians. In that moment I saw in Wile E. so much that I see in myself and many of us in our denomination and decided it was too good a vision to pass up. Because as amusing as my thesis may be, I hope today to show you that there is also something equally profound.

Wile E. was always plotting behind Road Runner’s back, but I prefer to talk about him as if he were here with us today. So here we have Mr. Wile E. Coyote, or at least a bean bag version of him. The Latin name for coyote is Canis latrans, but for today, and for our purposes, we will refer to Wile E. as Toomuchus Intellectualis, although we could just as easily refer to him as Pitifulis Predatorus, because both his high IQ and his abysmal record as a predator provide us with insights into ourselves and our lives.

And although the focus today is on Wile E., we must not ignore the Road Runner. I couldn’t find a bean-bag Road Runner, so my daughter, Kathleen, kindly painted his picture for me. He’s just a little guy, but is fast as lightning. His Latin name is Geococcyx californianus, but for today, and for our purposes, we will refer to him as Veritas Elusivaris, that is, the elusive Truth. Road Runner has eluded Wile E. for over fifty years often through sheer speed, but also through a good luck streak that borders on the supernatural. Like any good symbol of Truth, Road Runner doesn’t say much except “Beep Beep,” and is in most ways totally inscrutable. And although the notion of the Road Runner as mystic will have to wait for another day, for today, at least, I want you to bear with me and view our friend Wile E. here as a most unlikely Unitarian in search of that most elusive of prey, the Truth.

By the Truth, I mean that which resonates with our souls and provides us with meaning in our lives and makes us feel like it is worth getting up in the morning and worth living. We all have different truths – today I am talking about the one you seek.

Now you might be asking yourself, what credentials does Wile E. have that gives him credence as a Unitarian? Well, first of all, we have no idea what Wile E. Coyote believes – which makes him perfect for Unitarian Universalism. That really wasn’t fair, I guess, but the fact is that we are a creedless church and what each one of us believes is a matter of personal conscience. Yes, we have our principles, and they are printed each week in our order of service. But those principles do not dictate that we believe that X or Y is or is not true.

But even more importantly, we know that Wile E. is most proud of his amazing intellect and places rational intellect over emotion and other ways of dealing with the world, and isn’t that at the heart of the Unitarian movement? Aren’t we famous for being the great religious rationalists? We differ from traditional religion with the latter’s emphasis on revealed truth and the necessity to have faith and belief in that truth no matter how far removed it may be from our empirical understandings of the world and our place in it. If we believed in revealed truth then we wouldn’t have to be running around like Wile E. Coyote trying to capture it – it would be served up to us on a silver platter. But on some level, I think, our love affair with the rational intellect goes beyond our demand that our religious truth be consistent – and perhaps more than that – with scientific truth.

I have been going to Unitarian churches for twenty-five years and it has always seemed to me that we claim every smart person who has ever lived as Unitarian. And if we’re not sure, then at the least we claim they were “closet Unitarians.” I went on the Internet and found – within minutes – several Unitarian sites which provided list after list of famous Unitarian Universalists. Politicians, scientists, philosophers, social workers, you name it. And I had a revelation: We brag on the famous in our ranks in much the same way that other religions brag on their version of revealed truth. So I think I am within my rights to claim Wile E. Coyote for the ranks of Unitarianism. He is, after all, a self-proclaimed super genius, is quite famous, and his beliefs are, to be kind, unclear to us. I would say he is perfect for the position.

But wait a minute. If Wile E. is so smart, how come he has never caught the Road Runner? This is a good question, a seminal question, and the one that brought me here before you today.

The simple answer is that Wile E. makes everything complicated and in the process thinks himself out of a meal. Wile E. is incapable of merely catching the Road Runner. He has to use some intellectual artifice, some Rube Goldberg contraption, to catch his prey. So instead of just grabbing the Road Runner when he is standing out on the road, Wile E. uses his Acme Rocket Sled to try to cut the Road Runner off at the pass. He devises complicated traps which depend on magnetic bird seed and quick opening Star Trek-like steel doors. He constructs or purchases complicated devices that would make any Aggie engineer proud. And then he fails. Time and again.

And he doesn’t just fail. He fails miserably. Who can ever forget the image of Wile E. Coyote suspended in mid-air, a look of sad resignation on his face as he pitifully waves good-bye, and then with a high pitch whistle, falls to the desert floor and crashes with a muffled but sickening thud? Whether flattened like a pancake, scorched and burned to a golden black crisp, or squished like an accordion, our resident genius Mr. Coyote is left scratching his head – assuming he can still move his arms – wondering what went wrong.

Unitarians – and many others – believe that if we are smarter, then we will get to the Truth faster. I have nothing against being smart. It’s a good thing. But don’t we sometimes, like Wile E., tend to construct complicated intellectual paradigms or buy into far out or marginal theories in our such for Truth? Honestly, when we look back over our lives and the methods and fruits of our spiritual quests, how often do we discover we believed we could find the Truth using the equivalent of an Acme Rocket Belt only to end up, like Wile E., crashed into the side of a mesa? I want to suggest that like Wile E., we sometimes lose ourselves in our complicated intellectualisms and paradigms and in the process, we miss the Truth. You know, we laugh today at mediaeval philosophers who argued about such arcane topics as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or whether God – all powerful and omnipotent creator – can make a four sided triangle. But are we much different than they were when we rely on intellectual artifice or extreme and complicated theories to capture the Truth?

Over seven hundred years ago, William of Ockham wondered about these same issues within the context of a medieval culture caught in the thrall of the sometimes wildly weird pronouncements of the Roman Catholic Church. His law of parsimony, also known as Ockham’s Razor, became a cannon in the development of science and even today exercises great influence on scientists as they grapple with explanations for the workings of the universe. But Ockham’s Razor is much more than a rule to apply to scientific theories. The notion that all things being equal, the simplest answer is usually the best, if not the right, answer is one that comes into play in almost everything we do – including the quest for Truth. I think you would agree with me that Wile E. Coyote can use a little razoring in his approach to catching the Road Runner. It is a lesson I know I need to remind myself of all the time in my own life.

I don’t mean to pick on Wile E. and just focus on the negative. Indeed, one of the things that Wile E. teaches us is that what matters, ultimately, at least as much as success, is the character of the attempt. One of the reasons Wile E. is beloved is that he is sincere in his quest, never gives up, and despite his boasts that he is a super-genius, suffers the humiliations of the universe (and the Road Runner) with equanimity and grace – if you can call walking into the sunset with an accordion body waving in the breezes graceful. It is precisely because we identify with Wile E. and his quest, and recognize his sincerity, that we love him. Is there a better lesson to learn in life than to persevere in the face of persistent failure, to remain at peace with yourself and the universe, and to try your best, despite the odds?

And yet, while we may admire Wile E. for his perseverance and character, we wonder about his methods. It has been said that the very definition of neurosis is to repeat the same behavior over and over again, each time expecting a different result. Wile E. qualifies under this definition as he tries one after another of his contraptions, each time with the same result, and yet each time believing that the next attempt will succeed. If we acknowledge that Wile E. is smart – and we do – then we have to wonder what is going on here. Because as easy as it is to conclude that Wile E. has simply gotten caught up in his own complexity, it is puzzling to see him rely on the same methods, the same behavior, the same misplaced hopes, time and time again. It’s not like the universe hasn’t been sending him the message that the bombs, the rocket sleds, and the spring powered shoes, aren’t working. It has. But he is stuck repeating familiar behavior, hoping for a different outcome – a condition I suspect many of us today can identify with.

I think it is difficult to try something new, whether you are Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner, or you are an ordinary person trying to make sense of the world. Wile E. is so committed to his intellect as the path to his salvation, that it never even occurs to him that maybe there is another way. His search for the right device, the right tool, causes him to escalate his attempts, both in terms of complexity and creativity – for Wile E. is nothing if not creative. But he either never sees – or never has the courage – to try another way. Because it takes courage to seek our own Truth, and to try new behavior in hopes of a different outcome.

Don’t we all sometimes do the same thing? Whether it is being stuck in a job we hate or the habits we bring to a relationship or even the way we find pleasure in our lives, how often do we repeat the same behavior, thinking that if this time we can just fix this or that little thing, or make

this or that a little better, then everything will be different only to discover, once again, that it is the same?

My favorite anecdotal example of this behavior is our diets. We try diet after diet, many of them as funny and complicated in their own way as Acme Rocket Sleds, remote controlled aerial bombs, and spring loaded shoes. We convince ourselves that if we eat nothing but cabbage soup, or substitute pickles for ice cream, or don’t eat any carbohydrates, or eat nothing but carbohydrates, except on alternate Tuesdays when the moon is full, we will lose weight and look just like the beautiful people in the ads. But it never works. And yet there we are, going from diet to diet each time expecting a different result. William of Ockham would tell us that we simply need to eat less and exercise more. But no, not us. We have to complicate things with multicolored cards and counting systems that would make a Las Vegas gambler squeal. I sometimes think we Unitarians tend to do the same thing with our search for meaning and spiritual truth that we do with diets and other aspects of our lives.

And then what does Wile E. finally do when all his grandiose plans fail? According to Ian Frazier, like any good red-blooded modern American, Wile E. puts the blame for the failure of his complex intellectual plan to capture Road Runner not on himself, but on Acme.

I mean, what could be more American, more rational, than for Wile E. to sue Acme for damages? And he has good reason, doesn’t he? After all, no Acme product purchased by Wile E. Coyote has worked as advertised in more than half a century. But although those devices were defective, I for one have little sympathy for anybody who would actually strap on a pair of Acme Rocket Skates and blast through the dessert at 200 miles per hour thinking everything will turn out roses. Sounds to me sort of like putting scalding hot coffee between your legs as you drive.

Although Acme may have sold Wile E. defective products, I am of the belief that Acme is not responsible for Wile E.’s failure to catch the Road Runner. There is another, more interesting, possibility that I want to explore. I think it is possible that Wile E.’at some subconscious level – really doesn’t want to catch the Road Runner. I think it is possible that he is actually sabotaging himself. Now I am not trying to impugn Wile E.’s integrity. Not at all. But think about it: in 50-odd years, he has never caught the Road Runner? Come on. Talk about being a pitiful predator. I happen to think there is more here than just defective rocket belts and catapults. I think this goes much deeper than that.

I think the reason Wile E. Coyote has become such a poor predator is the quest has become the meaning in his life and if he actually caught the Road Runner, that meaning would be lost. What I mean here is that the quest, the search, the attempt, is what gets Wile E. up in the morning, it is what drives his spirit and his intellect, it is the very essence of his life. The accomplishment of the goal – getting a good meal – has long ago taken a back seat to the quest itself.

It’s easy to see how this might happen. Just imagine you are Wile E. Coyote and you feel deep in your bones that if you actually catch this Road Runner creature, fulfill your avowed quest, then the cartoon will be over. The world as you knew it would be gone and your life would be transformed in ways you could scarcely imagine. What might you do with this internal conflict? Even if only subconsciously, might you not invest the quest with your emotional energy, with your intellectual energy, and find in it the meaning and substance for your life and in the process make sure you never caught the Road Runner?

I believe that a similar dilemma often faces us in our own search for understanding and truth. I think it is sometimes tremendously difficult and takes a lot of courage to truly put yourself on the line when it come to embracing and being engaged with issues of the spirit, the Truth as I have been referring to it. Because actually facing and embracing the Truth can be a dangerous thing. Any real encounter with Truth will transform us, sometimes in ways we neither understand nor are able to anticipate. That prospect of transformation, even though we may say we want it on an intellectual level, requires us to change and often to give up some part of ourselves – in some real sense allow a part of us to die – and to then leave our comfort zones and change the way we behave. And what is more scary than that?

We often hear that the journey is more important than the destination. I agree that sometimes it is – but only so long as it is the journey that is transforming. But what I am talking about here is not transforming at all and actually allows us to maintain the status quo and keep the transformative power we say we are searching for at least at arms length. When the quest becomes a way to provide meaning in our lives without ever really opening the door to the possibility of true change by actually finding, embracing, and believing in something we find to be true and real, it has become our shield, our suit of armor against change, the ever elusive notion of Truth always just outside our grasp or down the next path.

These notions have special meaning for Unitarians because we have no creed and what we believe is really up to us and our personal consciences. While this is one of the fundamental reasons I am a Unitarian, this circumstance does place each of us in a much more uncertain and difficult place than having a set of beliefs mandated by the church. So thinking about Wile E. and his quest for the Road Runner got me to wondering whether any of us Unitarians ever use the phrase ‘I am searching after Truth,’ as a code for the notion that so long as we are engaged in the search, then we don’t need to actually risk believing in something, we don’t have to make a choice. We can revel in the excitement and safety of the quest forever.

There is something deep and universal here that defies articulation in mere words. Yet these examples at least suggest that our motives are not always what they may appear to be on the surface. We would all do well perhaps to take time to examine our lives, to try to discover what gives them meaning. Do we have a Road Runner that gives meaning to our lives simply by remaining forever outside our grasp? Is our quest a real one or are we simply window shopping for truth, the quest itself becoming a shield or armor within which we actually protect ourselves from a real encounter with Truth and all the transformation and uncertainty that comes with it? Is our habit of using intellectual artifice and engaging over and over again in the same behaviors just another way we avoid having to deal with the big issues of life, be they spiritual or practical? Do we actual want to find and believe in something? I cannot, of course, answer these questions. But they need answering and I am delighted that a simple cartoon like Road Runner could act as the catalyst for our exploration of such important issues.

I will close by saying this. If we pay attention, and remember Ockham’s rule of simplicity and economy, then maybe when we become like Wile E. Coyote and begin to go down the path of creating every more complex intellectual artifices, of repeating past behaviors, and seeking along distant paths, we will recognize that something is wrong just by the complexity of what we have wrought, and seek a simpler path. For not only are we sometimes too intensely committed to our intellects, and clothed in the protective shielding of our quest, the fact is that the world around us, and more importantly, the world inside of us, is more often than not amenable to a different approach – a quieter, simpler approach that lies within our grasp, but often just outside our finely constructed frameworks of reason and logic. Because when reason and logic are at wits end, when all the equations, rocket belts, and nuclear powered catapults have failed, oftentimes the best hope for finding our answers is to take a walk around the pond, where we can lose all those artifices, become quite, and listen.

It is one of the great challenges of life to sense when that time has come, and in the spirit of adventure, and keeping our friend Wile E. Coyote in mind, have the courage to let go of our toys, our shields, our crate loads of weapons, and just let it be.

Amen and Amen.

Presented July 8, 2001

First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin

Austin, Texas

Revised for Print