What does it all mean?

Rev. Marisol Caballero
June 22, 2014

A recent article in the UU World magazine by Doug Muder, entitled, “I Don’t ‘Believe in’ the Seven Principles,” brought up the difference between a belief and a vision. This assertion has the potential to change the way we as UUs respond to the often-asked question, “What do Unitarian Universalists believe?” What about some of the other terms that we use casually to talk about our faith? What might they truly mean to us?

Call to Worship
By Amy Bowden Freedman

Once more, the earth has turned toward the light of the sun.
As we are bathed in the light of a new day,
So may we greet the dawning of fresh possibility.

Once more, we awaken from our slumber.
As our bodies rise
To meet the challenges and pleasures of living,
So may our hearts and minds open with promise.

Once more, we gather for worship.
As we join our voices in word and song,
So may this assembly bring forth wholeness.

Come, let us worship.

Reading
“You Get Used to It” by Barbara Merritt

How many Unitarian Universalists does it take to change a light bulb in our congregation? Answer: none. We don’t change light bulbs. It is easy enough for us to sit in the darkness and remember the light of the past. As we honor the memory of a former brilliance, our task is to live within the confines and limitations of today.

True story. When I arrived in 1983, I was told that the lights under the sanctuary balcony didn’t work, never had worked, and couldn’t be fixed. It was not a big deal.

We have few services in the evenings, and there are plenty of lights in that sacred space that do work.

Only our new sexton, Ron Lundin, did not believe that they were forever broken. He decided to investigate. He took off the glass plate and found a thick, dark coating of dust and dirt.

He thought, “There’s no way it could just be the light bulbs, but I’ll put in a fresh one, just to see what happens.” And then the miracle occurred, “and there was light and it was good.”

Incredulous, he changed the bulbs in the other six fixtures, and light poured forth.

Apparently, the bulbs had burned out in 1939, and no one ever changed them. The dust he removed from the recesses was in place when Hitler invaded Poland and John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath. We don’t know whether the seven bulbs burned out all at once or flickered off one at a time. In either case, someone decided the fixtures didn’t function, and that transmitted wisdom left us in the dark.

Many years ago I faced a similar situation at the parsonage where I lived in Illinois.

For five years, as I had washed dishes, I had stared out of a smudged, streaked, grimy kitchen window. ecause the window had been painted shut for decades, I accustomed myself to looking through the gray film. Then along came a professional painter, and not knowing the limitations of my world, he hit the window rim with a hammer. He “unstuck it” and took out the storm windows. The panes were washed and put back. The task required a total of twenty minutes.

For five years, I resigned myself to the inevitability of blurred vision. Sometimes we settle too quickly for “seeing through a glass darkly.” Sometimes the clarity and illumination we seek is close at hand. Conditions can change. Windows can open.

We just need to stop believing that we already have enough light.

Sermon “What Does it All Mean?”

“A lifelong unchurched man suddenly develops a vague religious urge and decides to join a church – any church. So he sets out to find one.

His first stop is a Roman Catholic church where he asks what he has to do to join.

The priest mentions diligent study and the affirmation of the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds, then – just to see how much the man knows – asks him where Jesus was born.

“Pittsburgh,” he answers. “Get out!” cries the shocked priest.

Next stop is Southern Baptist where the seeker is told he would have to learn Bible verses, swear belief in the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds, swear off booze, and be baptized (“By immersion, not just some sissy sprinklin”). The Baptist preacher then, to see how much this man knows, asks him where Jesus was born. “Philadelphia?” he asks tentatively (once bitten, twice shy). “Get out, you heathen!” yells the preacher.

Our perplexed protagonist finally walks into a Unitarian church where he is told all he has to do is sign a membership card. “You mean I don’t have to renounce anything, swear to anything, or be dunked in anything?” “That’s right. We have no special tests for membership, no dogma. We support total individual freedom of belief.” “Then I’ll join! But tell me – where was Jesus born?” “Why, Bethlehem, of course.” The man’s face lights up. “I knew it was some place in Pennsylvania!”(http://stoney.sb.org/uujokes)

The biggest fallacy in explaining Unitarian Universalism is to say that, as UU’s, we can “believe whatever we want” because we don’t require a creedal test for membership in our churches. While we don’t have a set doctrine or a singular holy book, this is far from true. I remember a colleague telling me years ago about her time spent organizing a campus ministry program at an east coast university. The Campus Crusaders for Christ group had plastered the campus with posters about their meetings that read, “You’ve got questions? We’ve got answers.” So, the fledgling UU student group made posters, too. “You’ve got answers? We’ve got questions!” Certainty of theological belief is not the greatest gift of the religious liberal.

But, we have all found ourselves in this same position: someone who cannot pronounce the name of our church cocks their head to the side and asks with a skeptical tone, “If you don’t all believe in God or Jesus or the Bible, what do you believe in?” Well, here at First UU Church of Austin, we often lean against our mission statement as an explanation, which does say a good deal about what we come here to do, but it doesn’t talk about belief.

I remember explaining UUism to the mother of a teen patient when I was a hospital chaplain in San Francisco, years ago. From our previous conversation, I could tell she had very little experience of the world outside of the small town they had been transported from, and so, to answer her questions, I remember using a less eloquent, less concise version of what we stand for and believe, but with a similar gist of our mission statement we use here. She smiled and nodded and then informed me enthusiastically that the kind of church I am describing is called “born again” and that she had attended one before.

It’s true. I had described to her any other church that endeavors to create loving community and effect positive change in the world, as they see it.

More often, my “UU elevator speech,” or nutshell description of our faith, will include a vague summary of some of our Seven Principles, such as “we believe that everyone is worthy of respect and dignity and should be supported in their search for truth, wherever that journey takes them.”

Of course, this is much too oversimplified and I often leave those sorts of conversations with feelings of inadequacy. I imagine the frustration newbies, who didn’t grow up UU or spend a decade preparing for ministry or who don’t own shelves of books on the subject might feel in a similar situation.

In the most recent issue of the UU World magazine, Doug Muder writes an article entitled, “I Don’t ‘Believe in’ the Seven Principles,” in which he talks about this experience:

” …If you’ve ever tried to present the Principles to creed-seeking newcomers} you’ve probably seen their disappointment. “And?” their expressions seem to ask.

The Principles fail as a creed because they’re too easy. Billions of people who literally would not want to be caught dead in a UU church can nod along with them. Take the Second Principle: ‘Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.” Does some other religion take a bold stand,for injustice in human relations? People may argue what ‘Justice” means, but everybody is for it.

The Principles are littered with feel-good terms like that: “spiritual growth,” “democratic process,” “search for truth and meaning,” “world community,” “peace, “liberty. If all Unitarian Universalism wants you to do is approve of such concepts, it’s not very demanding, is it?

So, taken as a creed, the Principles define a religion just one step up from “Believe whatever you want.” Believe a few really easy things, and beyond that, believe whatever you want.

Now, I love our Principles. Though they lack the ability to comfort me in trying times, I have returned to their poetic language time and time again to draw inspiration. I am proud to be UU every time a read them, and I adore the debate-rich process by which they were lovingly authored over the years.

I had no idea what to expect from Muder’s article, but it acted on me and my difficulty in articulating our core beliefs as the light bulb-changing sexton and the window-cleaning painter did in today’s reading. The missing puzzle piece had been right in front of me the whole time.

Margaret Fuller once said, “Cherish your best hopes as a faith, and abide by them in action.” Muder asserts that in thinking of the Principles as beliefs, we have been getting it all wrong. Instead, we should understand and explain them as visions that can guide our actions. “That’s how the Seven Principles turn into a challenging spiritual path,” he says.

To believe something is to accept it as fact and so, in his admittedly blunt tone, Muder points out that none of what is listed in the Principles actually exists. You can’t take a photo or measure the interdependent web and the inherent worth and dignity of every person is surely not always observable, even within these walls.

Now, where the light shone through was in noticing the huge distinction between “belief” and “vision.” I may not believe that the “right of conscience” already exists everywhere, but I can do my part to envision and act its reality into existence.

I have heard this critique from some whom, though belonging to other faith traditions, are familiar with our faith, “Unitarian Universalism is mainly for folks who like to name drop all of the famous people who were Unitarian or Universalist who did great things, but not really have to engage in doing great things, themselves.” Though I did quote Margaret Filler earlier, this is not a completely fair criticism, considering that, for our relative small numbers, UUs are generally loud and proud when it comes to many social issues. But, I can see how attention paid to our haughtiness over the giants of our past can distract us from a deeper engagement and exploration of such terms as “belief” and “vision.”

This may seem like a bit of nit-picky semantics, but don’t UUs live for this sort of thing? It took over twenty years of drafts and debates before the current version of our Principles and Sources were agreed upon in 1984. But, what we know to be true is that words matter. When the Girl’s School of Austin was renting the church, I noticed that one classroom had a reminder posted, “Before you speak: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it helpful?”

The truth is, as Muder says, “truths can take care of themselves.” If something simply is, no further work is required of us. “On a Sunday morning, I can believe just as well in my pajamas… as I can at a Unitarian Universalist worship service.” This is where the once dim and dingy Principles become illuminated. The UUA bylaws require us to reexamine the language of the Principles every fifteen years, yet they have remained largely unchanged for thirty years. This is because the current language of this sacred, living document already has so much to work with, if we change the way we think and talk about them. Imagine if we were known for envisioning the world we hope for into reality instead of wishy-washy “beliefs.” Imagine if “affirming and promoting” meant to us a charge for our daily lives, rather than (if we’re honest) a self-righteous manifesto that we can nod our heads to.

To change the way we think and speak of our Principles as visions, rather than beliefs, is to shift our reliance from ourselves and our heads- where we can often get stuck – into a more demanding reliance on each other’s hearts and hands, to work toward the world the Principles envision in community. Here at First UU Austin, our Values, Mission, and Ends document (available online and in hard-copy in the mailroom) together with our Covenant of Healthy Relations is practically a how-to manual for envisioning our Principles into reality. Our Covenant is as much a means of keeping ourselves accountable to each other, as it is a means of keeping others accountable to us. In this way, this faith of ours requires more commitment of us than the recitation of any creed could. We don’t have to search long to find more “there there.”

In 1979, then president of the Unitarian Universalist Association said, “The old watchwords of liberalism – freedom, reason, tolerance – worthy though they may be, are simply not catching the imagination of the contemporary world. They describe a process for approaching the religious depths, but they testify to no intimate acquaintance with the depths themselves. If we are ever to speak to a new age, we must supplement our seeking with some profound religious finds.” Personally, I think we may be onto something good.

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