Hermits or Husbands

© Jack Harris-Bonham

June 17, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Prayer

Mystery of many names and Mystery beyond all naming, this morning we are here in celebration of among other things – fathers. Some of us have negative images of what fathers can be because some of us have had lousy fathers. Others see fatherhood in a positive light because their personal experiences are positive ones. In some sense many of us wish, as my wife, Viv, does that we had Atticus Finch as our father. Harper Lee’s image of fatherhood as portrayed by Gregory Peck in the Oscar winning Christmas Day 1962 release still brings pangs of envy – if only we could have been that way with our kids.

But more than simply parenting we are talking this morning about husbanding – the ability to spend or use economically, or simply the ability to live gracefully without a lot of fuss.

This world and the harbingers of news don’t want us to imagine that anything is easy. The world speaks in the language of labor. Count, if you will, how many times people tell you how hard something is going to be, or with what difficulty something may be accomplished. There’s a bit of self-fulfilling negativity there.

Think instead of the watercourse way – the fact that water effortlessly finds its own level. Lao-Tzu’s Tao Te Ching suggests that we take the watercourse way that we flow into life, giving where giving seems appropriate and receiving when things come our way.

I’m thinking of the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird where Atticus Finch finds the town drunk harassing Atticus’ children who are waiting in the car. Atticus comes out of the house where he’s been visiting and simply approaches the car. The town drunk spews vitriolic profanities at Atticus, but Atticus never responds, never lashes out at the man. Atticus knows that it is his presence alone that is making the statement that needs to be made. He is his children’s father, and his economy causes the drunk to slither off away from them.

We pray for the good sense and certitude to know when we are doing what needs to be done by simply suiting up and showing up. There’s an art to life that isn’t often taught, and isn’t often recognized. Give us the insight to see those artists of life that don’t fit the mold of society, those pushed toward the periphery because they don’t match definitions of success and worldly honor.

Mostly, this morning we search for an economy of being. May we forgive ourselves when we use a hammer when a thumbtack would have done the trick. Great Spirit give us the power to know that more often than not we know, from the inside, what needs to be done, and what needs to be ignored.

Minding the breath, minding our heartbeats let us move through this life like the guests that we are, honoring the earth and all sentient beings that inhabit it.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen

Affirmation of Faith

Monty Newton

Reading:

(From Cormac McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper

He came out on a high bald knoll that looked over the valley and he stopped here and studied it as a man might cresting a hill and seeing a strange landscape for the first time. Pines and cedars in a swatch of dark green piled down the mountain to the left and ceased again where the road cut through. Beyond that a field and a log hogpen, the shakes spilling down the broken roof, looking like some diminutive settler’s cabin in ruins.

Through the leaves of the hardwoods he could see the zinc-colored roof of the church faintly coruscant and a patch of boarded siding weathered the paper-gray of a waspnest. And far in the distance the long purple welts of the Great Smokies. If I was a younger man, he told himself, I would move to them mountains. I would find me a clearwater branch and build me a log house with a fireplace. And my bees would make black mountain honey. And I wouldn’t care for no man. He started down the steep incline – Then I wouldn’t be unneighborly neither, he added.

Sermon: Hermits or Husbands

Introduction:

We heard from Monty Newton our Worship Associate. You may be asking yourself, “What does a seemingly misanthropic old black man have to do with Father’s Day?” Good question. By the end of this sermon that question should be laid to rest.

Something I’ve noticed through the years. Men tend to isolate. You ever notice that? Yes, it’s true, men do have friends, but how many men do you know who have kept in touch with those friends throughout the years? And even if they have what do men have friends for? Do men call each other and complain about their kids? Do men commiserate when they aren’t getting along with their wives? What exactly is the role of friends when it comes to men? I’m not pretending to know the answers to these and other questions about men. After all, I’m a man, and it goes without saying, almost, that I’m writing this sermon in order to learn something about myself and other men.

Recently, I got a questionnaire from a parishioner of this church and the questions concerned my role as a father. The questions were good, but to tell the truth all I could write back to this parishioner was that I felt that I had been a failure as a father. When my son was three years old I left he and his mother, and when the papers came for my son to be adopted by another man, I went down to the lawyer’s office and I signed the papers without thinking twice. When my daughter was ten years old I left her and her mother, my second wife. True, a few years later I had my daughter for a couple of summers, but when the third summer rolled around, my daughter chose a new set of tires for her car rather than coming out to Dallas and spending time with me, and my third wife.

How did I feel about that? First, I thought it was a choice that my daughter shouldn’t have had to make. It was my summer and whether my daughter needed tires on her car or not, she owed me that summer, right? In the end I did nothing more than complain. Viv and I didn’t see Isabelle that summer, and in a way, it was a relief. The first summer Isabelle had come to visit us; I’d spent half the summer running between Viv and Isabelle asking them if everything was all right. Finally, Viv and Isabelle came to me one day and told me to stop trying to fix something that wasn’t broken. Who knew? Certainly not me.

I’m sixty years old and to me women might as well be a different species. Yes, I get along with my wife, my sister and her friends, the female parishioners in this church, but the concerns of women are not the concerns of men. Women are from Venus and Men are from Mars as the book title reads. I haven’t read the book, but the title seems perfectly clear to me.

Lawrence Durrell, the British Novelist and Poet, once said concerning the Mona Lisa that “She has the look of a woman who has just dined off her husband.” Even when reading that quote I’m not sure, “Could that be a good thing?”

Eric Berne the Psychiatrist is reported to have said, “No husband is a hero to his wife’s psychiatrist.”

Since husbands are more often times than not, men, perhaps it would behoove us to take a look at some famous quotes about men.

Mark Twain wrote, “The noblest work of God? Man. Who found this out? Man.”

Twain again, “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”

And finally, Twain during his Letters From the Earth phase, “Man is a museum of diseases, a home of impurities; he comes today and is gone tomorrow, he begins as dirt and departs as stench.”

Perhaps you think the last a bit too harsh, that perhaps Mark Twain’s closeness to the subject has made it impossible to be objective, after all, familiarity does breed contempt. But Twain added to that old adage; “Familiarity breeds contempt – and children!”

But it’s another definition of husband that I would like us to look at today. We’ve been dealing with the meaning of husband as in a woman’s spouse, the man to whom a woman is married.

But there’s also the transitive verb, to husband. The meaning of that verb is to be thrifty with something: to use something economically and sensibly.

What would it mean in the wedding ceremony if when I pronounced a couple husband and wife, it was this definition of husband that was being thought through? What would marriages be if the job of one of the two partners was the job of making sure that what was used by the couple was used in an economic, sensible and thrifty manner?

And it is these ideas of thrift, sensibility and economy that lead quite easily into our discussion of the hermit.

When we become overwhelmed by the world and our lives seem to be nothing more than one continuous activity, it might just be that it’s time for a retreat. Sometimes these retreats are religious or spiritual in nature.

Gautama Buddha abandoned his family and went on a spiritual quest. His wife didn’t send the county sheriff after him for non- payment of child support. The nature of this quest was the discovery that outside the walls of Buddha’s father’s castle the rest of the world was lost in suffering. In truth, the very foundation of Buddhism is the fact that suffering is universal and that if human kind is to persevere in this life then they must deal with suffering. Suffering is unavoidable and to live this life one must not ignore it, push it out of consciousness, nor pretend that it is not the ultimate fate of all who live.

The solution to this problem is in the very nature of how the Buddha saw the self. If it is true that we all suffer, then who is it that is suffering? Buddha discovered that there is no permanent self, and this discovery led him inexorably to the conclusion that even though suffering happens, it is made worse when this suffering happens to somebody. If, in fact, the lights are on, but nobody’s home, then suffering is still present, but the self that keeps score, the self that knows it’s being wronged, the self that holds grudges, the self that wants revenge this self is an illusion. Suffering is just what is – take note of it and move on. This taking note and moving on is called enlightenment. If there is no self, then scores aren’t kept, wrongs don’t need to be righted, grudges become mote and revenge becomes the boomerang that won’t come back.

The Chinese Book of Changes, the I-Ching, counsels us thusly; The wise person rises above the inferior man. The wise person is like the sky above the mountain. No matter how high the mountain is, it can never touch the sky. The wise person keeps their distance because the mountain can never reach them, neither in a psychological nor physical sense. The wise person’s retreat is not motivated by hatred or anger but by dignity.

The image of the lake is often used in Asian philosophy. Everything is reflected in the lake, but nothing is held there. The moon in the lake is perfectly reflected, but to jump into the lake in order to get to the moon would gain us nothing but a bath. The forest fire is reflected in the lake, but the water is not burning.

Now we seem to be returning to Monty Newton’s story of Roosevelt the man with a mirror for a front door. Those who live in Abilene might think that it’s quaint for Roosevelt to have a mirror for a front door, and perhaps even Roosevelt thinks nothing more than it’s convenient. But on a deeper philosophical level the person who approaches Roosevelt’s house will see themselves reflected in the entrance to that house.

In much the same way Roosevelt himself is nothing more than a calm lake, a clean mirror. If you approach him with fear and trembling, then it is fear and trembling that you will see reflected there. If, like Monty, you approach him as a man among men, and talk to him like you would anybody else, then miraculously, he responds in kind. Imagine that?

Perhaps then it isn’t a question of either being a husband or a hermit? Perhaps the real deal is in being a husband in the sense of someone who is cautious and economical in their dealings with the world, then it follows quite naturally that drawing back, retreating, abandoning the fight when, and if, it’s really nothing more than a fight between entities that don’t exist, then perhaps the paradox between either being a husband or a hermit is resolved, or held in a state of suspended animation?

The Tarot deck has as one of its Major Arcana the card known as The Hermit. The manner in which this card is displayed in the Waite-Rider deck is much like the manner in which saints are portrayed. He is wearing a monk’s robe. He carries with him a staff and a lantern. He is not a beggar, nor one who seeks only isolation. His long white beard, staff and lantern suggest that he is out and about in the world, not lost in idleness, nor seeking only isolation. The lantern is the light of the world shed precisely for the enlightenment of others. This hermit is a sage, not simply searching for truth and justice but bringing truth and justice to the people. He’s like The Fool in the Major Arcana, he will go to all lengths, walk to the edge, but unlike the Fool he knows his boundaries, will not step over the precipice, is not on an adventure, but rather walking about the world in hope of spreading light to those who need it.

The hermit is an unsettling image for us in Western society. This hermit is outside the context of daily living – he’s not worried about the kids and their soccer game – and he is not subordinated to the authority of the age. He is, in fact, modeling for the rest of the world, and this modeling can lead to his being ostracized and scapegoated by the culture within which he lives, but quite amicably refuses to take part in.

Hence the image of Roosevelt, the black man who lives off the fat of the land, the man who shows the rest of Abilene that the rules and constrictors of the society in which they live may not be as solid as they would like to believe.

On some level we all wish to be comforted by the societal rules by which we play, but the truth is, these rules are arbitrary and potentially meaningless. We are reminded of that when there lives one among us who ignores the rules but not only gets by, but in a deeper sense flourishes.

The morality of the wandering hermit tells us that what is right and what is wrong knows no place and time.

We wish there were answers to life’s big questions. Are men hermits or husbands? What is the truth of our being?

The poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote “Try to love the questions themselves – Live the questions now. Perhaps, then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing, live your way into the answers.”

And yet we should not expect the world to always understand what we are up to. Even with the best of intentions we who would be husbands – persons who would use judicially those things with which we are entrusted – we husbands must not expect the world or those in it to realize what we may be up to, or accept what we think we have to offer.

I will close with a story that illustrates this perfectly.

There was once a farmer – a man who husbanded the land – who kept his fields completely to himself. His crops were his main interest and he prided himself in keeping the birds and animals away. He built fences around about, and didn’t even like the idea that when he harvested he might be leaving even the least little bit in the fields for the mice or other scavengers. Then, one day he got sick and almost died. When he recovered he was changed. He realized now that he was lonely. He’d been so successful in his efforts to keep those at bay – that he wanted at bay – that although he was a rich man, his riches did not fill the space in the middle of his chest. In a flash he realized he needed other beings. Immediately he when out and took down the fences that surrounded his fields. He walked into the fields and stood there with his arms outstretched to receive in loving kindness all who would now visit him. He stood there night and day his arms opened in love. Much to his surprise no animals came to eat his crops, no birds landed to enjoy his grains. The truth was they were all terrified of the farmer’s new scarecrow.

Covenant – The UU Glue – Mark Skrabacz

© Mark Skrabacz

June 10, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

In December, our choir was invited to sing in a showcase of choral groups at a large Catholic Church in north Austin. The church was brimming with holiday decorations and a packed sanctuary of well over a thousand dressed in colorful Christmas regalia. In attendance were 15 church choirs, each presenting two holiday songs. The choirs sang traditional and non-traditional Christmas carols, mostly in English, accompanied by piano or organ.

Being our different selves, assembled under the leadership of our creative and talented Director of Music, we chose to sing an a cappella chorale in German from a JS Bach cantata with a segue into a Nigerian folk song accompanied by djembe drum and rattles. On the way back to our seats after our performance, I heard several people in the audience remarking about our unique pieces. By the way, they WERE beautiful!

After the concert, a choir member from one of the Episcopal churches struck up a conversation, saying: “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve never really understood just what it is that Unitarian Universalists believe. Since you are part of this Christmas event, are you Christians?”

I replied: “Not exactly. We were – and some still are, yet most of us are not.”

He replied: “How does that work? Do you believe in Jesus or not?”

I said: “Not in an orthodox way. Many of us value his teachings, but few, if any, believe in the orthodox view that he is the only begotten Son of God and of the resurrection on the third day.”

He asked: “Well, if you don’t believe in the resurrection, what about your own immortality.”

I replied: “You’d have to say we’re pretty diverse on that one, too.”

Finally, he said: “Y’all believe in God, right?”

Again I replied, “Not exactly. Many of us do, each in his or her way. Others of us don’t find the concept of God a useful one.”

This kind of conversation stirs up in me curiosity about what UUs present to the world. And not only WHAT, but HOW we present it to the world.

Along the lines of the WHAT, let’s look briefly at Unitarian Universalism: It’s a fact that we do not believe that any religious precept or doctrine must be accepted as true simply because some religious organization, tradition or authority says it is. Neither do we believe that all UUs should have identical beliefs.

The fact is UUs have different beliefs. Since individual freedom of belief is one of our basic principles, it follows that there will be differing beliefs among us. Found in today’s churches are humanism, agnosticism, atheism, theism, liberal Christianity, neo-paganism and earth spiritualism, to name a few. Interestingly, these beliefs are not mutually exclusive. It’s possible to hold more than one. While we are bound by a set of common principles, we leave it to the individual to decide what particular beliefs lead to these principles.

There’s a perception among many, that Unitarian Universalism has no beliefs, especially none in a God. It is much more accurate to say that we do not have a single, defined concept of God in which all UUs are expected to believe. Each member is free to explore and develop an understanding of God that is meaningful to him or her. They’re also free to reject the term or concept altogether.

Diversity in a system is a sign of life. Rich eco-systems, for example, are not monocultures. The multiplicity of expressions found in UUs is a healthy sign. Unlike diversity, divisiveness is a real issue that separates many religious adherents, like the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam. There’s divisiveness among Jewish and Christian sects as well. This issue may be fueled by beliefs, especially those reduced and codified into creeds. The way most people state “I believe in” creates a position that must be defended or expanded at the expense of others. Creedal religions suggest that humankind’s spiritual and religious growth have reached a conclusion. Creeds, rather than encouraging more searching and curiosity, can tend to freeze and halt one’s pilgrimage of faith. Creedal religions forego much of the process and the celebration of new insights, which have been referred to theologically as “continuous revelation”. Creedal worship, as many of us have experienced, is akin to saying: here’s the answer, let’s affirm it in unison.

Unitarian Universalists find comfort in a creedless religion. Although many question that UUs have no center, and without a significant unifying element, some are concerned that we, too, will simply become more fragmented and individualized like our society. To those who are anxious about too much diversity, I say, relax, no one needs to ask whether the forest of many trees has a center. It’s a zone of life to be entered. Just be here, breathe and pay attention. Center or no center, I propose that there IS something that binds us together. As I visit many UU congregations, I have discovered that what keeps participants interested, curious and coming to church is the community, fellowship, each other. That’s a description of our covenant, the commitments and promises that we voluntarily make to each other. For UUs, it’s our covenantal relationship, not creeds, that binds us together.

Being a covenantal faith also has to do with the primacy of freedom, especially a free mind and the freedom of religious belief. For centuries, freethinking religious liberals have been persecuted, ostracized and put in harm’s way because they wouldn’t relinquish their free mind to the prevailing view. So, to protect, celebrate, support and nurture the free mind and the freedom of religious belief, our faith remains a covenantal and creedless religion.

Without professing a creed, it IS more challenging to express who we are and how we interact. Perhaps that’s part of a public relations and marketing issue UUs face.

Today I am drawing attention to something that UUs share, something unique in the vast play of religious expression on our planet, in our quest for an effective faith here and now, and that is our covenantal relationship. In the study of theology, much is made of the covenant between God and humankind. The way UUs covenant makes us unique. Sure it may involve an active relationship to Divine Mystery, and again, it may not. It is, however, a promise we make with each other.

Covenant is the commitment that empowers our mission and vision, and it fuels an extraordinary bond, a solidarity, which makes our experiences Unitarian Universalist, expressing itself in creative Sunday worship, religious education, the annual pledge drive, mindfulness meditation, social action, earth-centered ritual, landscaping or building maintenance, volunteering on the board or singing in the choir. Everything we do is grounded in covenant. We are a covenantal faith.

What does this mean? It means that our individualized searches for a theological center need to be understood as a search for the solidarity and mutuality that can carry us through an increasingly individualized lifestyle, energizing our devoted action as a smaller committed community on behalf of the larger global community.

How can we mature in our individualized and collective search to new levels of effective faith? How about by re-imagining the way we speak of religious individualism and dissent. We are right to extol the lone, courageous voice that holds out against the follies of groupthink. We celebrate the dissenter who begs to differ when the crowd is gung ho for a course of action that will cause untold harm to life. Behind the lone prophet who speaks up, there is a group ? WE celebrate the lone prophet because there is a WE here ? there is a whole movement of us who hold to values that are fragile, dissident, and life-giving.

Theologians suggest that it is always a mistake to imagine that lone prophets are really alone. Take Martin Luther King, Jr., for example. He galvanized a movement ? yes ? but his power did not come from the singularity of his vision, or a mere exercise of individual conscience. He voiced the conscience of a whole body of people, a community that shared the experience of racism and had a long legacy of resistance and hope. He wasn’t singing solo. He was singing from the midst of the choir.

It might be helpful to think of Jesus this way, as well. It is a mistake to see him as an isolated, heroic individual. It is more accurate to see him as the crest of a wave, the sparkling foam breaking brightly from the force of a whole ocean moving and swelling up from underneath. I sense among Unitarian Universalists these days a deep desire to affirm the ocean, and our covenantal community, that is welling up within the voices of individual conscience that we celebrate.

As meaningful as our mission, principles and purposes are, these are only as good as our covenant to embody them. They’ll only be seen and make an impact as we gather together in “covenant to affirm and promote them”. We also make another commitment (and I quote again) “We enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support.” Our community is grounded in covenant. We rise and fall together.

One deeply radical implication of this is that it is impossible to be a Unitarian Universalist alone. In the Men’s work I’ve been doing for many years, we have a saying: “You have to do your work, but you can’t do it alone.” This holds true for UUs, too. We must do our work in relationship with other Unitarian Universalists! The only way to be a UU is to be part of a UU congregation and to make and receive promises and commitments to our collective vision, mission, principles, purposes and, yes, most importantly, to each other.

About the HOW that Unitarian Universalism shows up in the world – it is an issue of intent. How does the congregation intend to grow and respond to the of influx new members? What are the agreements and boundaries? What are the action steps? How do we do this as UUs? Unitarian Universalists do have a very contemporary and timely message, yet how safe do we feel in our own container of mutual trust and support to step up and shine our lights from the hilltop?We must integrate our diversity as a covenant people, addressing our deepest concerns in an atmosphere of acceptance, love and commitment. Then getting the word out will happen naturally. We must mature to a deep, real and believable level of community that naturally overflows into and communicates with the vast ocean of life.

Cultural trends indicate suspicion of religious communities. So most people opt for the admission of being spiritual rather than religious, because of the implied institutional aspects of religions. Many people today in Austin choose to follow their own unique and individualistic path instead of a community one. Many of these people might find a supportive community among us.

Individually, we, as UUs, are each finding our own way. Yet this message is designed to call our attention to the little wonders created for us to find together as a covenant community ? as diversity in unity. Are we undervaluing or dismissing the opportunities provided in the corporate and collective contexts,

like our church, as a shared experience of curiosity, grace and presence?

For me, and maybe this is why I do what I do, I have experienced my most empowering and grace-filled moments as an individual in community, in congregational worship, in sharing as a covenant group, on weekend retreats or week-long social action projects, where we are gifted with the opportunity to work side-by-side, to cooperate, to collaborate, to bond.

Our covenant community is bound by common principles and promises that empower us to share lives together in the promise of mutual trust and support. How are you participating? What talents and concerns do you bring to our table? How are you serving and being served?

We can be devoted to a specific religious practice – Christian prayer, Buddhist meditation, or pagan ritual (to name a few) – but as UUs we do not hold the view that there is one religion that encompasses the exclusive, final truth for all times and places, not even Unitarian Universalism. UU-ism is confident that revelation is a continuous process and is not sealed for all time.

The sacred impulse towards justice, compassion and equity moves in us, like an ocean, in many times and places, in myriad ways that call to us and teach us. We can see this world as tragically flawed, wondrously gifted, or both of the above, but we cannot hold the view that salvation is to be found solely beyond this world – in some life after death or a world other than this world.

While remaining open to mysteries that may be revealed beyond the grave or in realms beyond what we know at present, Unitarian Universalism is clear that the Ultimate is present here and now, and can be experienced, even if only partially, within the frame of our mortal existence. This means we do not hold to a hope that is only attained in the sweet by and by. We hold that this world, this life, these bodies are the dwelling place of the Sacred. This is the essence of our covenantal bond. Now is the time. Here is the place for our action, for our interaction.

Here’s a vision for us, an image of expanding the continual growing process of our covenant, the continuous revelation of our calling as divine-humans. We might describe our current level of maturation as a congregation as a pool of water. As we continue to affirm our trusting and supporting covenant among ourselves, and we endeavor to reach out to others and connect with all beings, welcoming them into our hearts and lives, we expand the boundaries of our pool so that it becomes a lake.

As we choose to honor life, especially as it is most challengingly revealed in all our familiar circumstances, and to live fully with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength ? as we do everything in our power to assure that our covenant embraces life and matures in practice and depth, our lake begins to flow like a river. And as we together seek our life of curious faith, we will find naturally that the flow of our river reaches the magnificence of a grand collective of all beings as great as an ocean, diverse, expansive and vast in its influence for good, for ourselves, for all, for Life.

Amen.


Acknowledgments to Heretics’ Faith by Frederic John Muir, The Unitarians and the Universalists by David Robinson, and One Hundred Questions by Steve Edington.

A Liberal Reclamation of Natural Law – Eric Hepburn

© Eric Hepburn

June 3, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

Invocation

I’d like to open this morning with a passage from the Martin Luther King Jr. sermon Rediscovering Lost Values:

“The first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations.” In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws. I’m not so sure we all believe that.

We never doubt that there are physical laws of the universe that we must obey. We never doubt that. And so we just don’t jump out of airplanes or jump off of high buildings for the fun of it – we don’t do that. Because we unconsciously know that there is a final law of gravitation, and if you disobey it you’ll suffer the consequences – we know that. Even if we don’t know it in its Newtonian formulation, we know it intuitively, and so we just don’t jump off the highest building in (Austin) for the fun of it – we don’t do that. Because we know that there is a law of gravitation which is final in the universe. If we disobey it we’ll suffer the consequences.

But I’m not so sure if we know that there are moral laws just as abiding as the physical law. I’m not so sure about that. I’m not so sure if we really believe that there is a law of love in this universe, and that if you disobey it you’ll suffer the consequences.”

Prayer:

Please join me in an attitude of prayer, as we share this reading from Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking

so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,

we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,

our presence automatically liberates others.

Sermon : A liberal reclamation of natural law

When Dr. King argued in our opening reading that there are moral laws that are just as abiding as the physical laws, what laws is he referring to? In order to be clear in our consideration of an answer to this question, we must start by being clear about the nature of morality. Morality is the distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil. So, what Dr. King is arguing is that just as there is a law of gravity that describes the inevitable relationship of attraction between two masses, there are laws of morality that describe the inevitable relationships between right and wrong, between good and evil.

Classical natural law was the first systematic attempt to explore these relationships. It was based on the idea that there is a human nature and a human essence which defines how human beings must live in order to have a good life. Aristotle’s formulation of the first principle of natural law was that one should do good and avoid evil. However, if we survey the history of natural law, we can’t help but notice some of the dogmatic and inhumane positions that have been taken in its name. We can look back to Aristotle and read of natural law used in defense of slavery. We can survey contemporary natural law thinkers and read of opposition to abortion, opposition to gay rights, and support for economic disparity. When we view this checkered history, we might reasonably assume that the idea of natural law is simply one more archaic holdover from a bygone past when humankind had little understanding of the world and relied on inflexible and absolutist proscriptions to govern social life. We might reject the very idea of natural law and embrace the relativistic ethics of postmodern academia. But I suggest to you, that tossing out the idea of natural law along with its substantial historical baggage is a case of tossing out the baby with the bathwater, because, perhaps more than ever, a reclaimed version of natural law could provide the very anchor that liberalism seems to be so badly in need of.

So, let’s start with a fresh look at the core concepts of natural law in light of our current religious and scientific knowledge. The basis for our revised concept of natural law is simply the idea that there are rules or laws which govern the operation of the universe. This proposition is generally accepted when we are dealing with the analytical categories of the hard sciences; with laws of gravity, laws of inertia, laws of ecology, laws of genetics, or laws of biology. But when we attempt to formulate what natural laws govern humanity, this is when things have tended to become more controversial. If there is natural law that applies to all living things or natural law that applies specifically to humanity, perhaps these constitute moral law as Dr. King spoke about. The question is: how can we discern these laws? It is true that we are not exempt from the laws of gravity, or inertia, or relativity, which effect all matter in our universe. It is also true that we are not exempt from the laws of ecology or genetics which govern all forms of life as we know it. But human natural law, moral law which applies exclusively to our species, must itself be rooted in those aspects that are uniquely yet universally human.

Aristotle’s analysis identified reason as the key human virtue that distinguishes us from other animals. Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and the other major figures in natural law thinking have all followed suit. So, if it is reason, if it is our advanced capacity for logical and speculative thought, that differentiates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom, then it is here that we will find the core of a human natural law.

Our contemporary understanding of human biology and cognitive science, as well as the contextual issues of biological and social evolution, provide us with important insights that were unavailable to the classical thinkers. For instance, it is quite clear to us now that the human ability to reason does not develop much beyond the level of our primate cousins without the acquisition of human language and symbol systems. Language is the cognitive toolkit required for human level reasoning and we are not born with it, we must acquire it through learning. What makes us human is that we learn, and what and how we learn determines our humanity. The evolution of human knowledge and culture has become much more critical to our survival than our biological evolution.

Research in developmental psychology indicates that our worldview and moral development proceed in relatively linear stages, for example from pre-conventional, to conventional, to post-conventional. In addition, there is strong evidence that the average mode of moral development of a population is strongly associated with the types of social structures, institutions, and cultures that the population will have. Along these related arcs of individual development over a lifetime and social evolution over recorded human history, we find opportunities for a new take on natural law and a new story arc for humanity.

Just as most classical natural law has been rooted in the Christian theology of the Fall, in the presumption that humanity is imperfect and flawed, in the assumption that we are incapable of overcoming the taint of original sin without divine intervention; so our reclaimed natural law must be rooted in the ideology that humanity has awakened to an amazing capacity to learn, to understand, to act, and to create. We are here to learn about our universe and about ourselves, and as we learn, as we understand, as we act, and as we create, we are perfected. The ancient Hebrew understanding of the word perfect was not a state, it was not a condition, it was a process. It is this dynamic process of continually learning, understanding, acting, and creating that I believe is the fundamental human natural law.

The first corollary to this law is humility. Humility is the recognition that there is no end to this process of learning, no end to this process of perfection. Our perception of our place within this process may be accurate or it may be wishful thinking. We must be assertive about acting on our beliefs, but open about the ultimate rightness of those beliefs. Like good scientists we must remember that our understandings are only theories and that they may need editing or be disproved as we continue to learn and as our understanding grows. Developmental stagnation often occurs when we forget humility, when we cherish our current theories more than we cherish learning, when we believe we have already learned something, or don’t need to learn any more. These failures of humility happen when we forget that it is our essence to keep learning, when we forget that what we already know is just tentative, just a bridge to the next realization.

The second corollary to the fundamental human law is compassion. If humility is the recognition that we never stop learning, compassion is the recognition that the same is true for our brothers and sisters. Compassion, in this context, is remembering that it is more important to be peaceful than to be right. A focus on being right produces an emphasis on the other person being wrong, it short-circuits the possibility of constructive dialogue, where people can share their understandings and potentially reconcile their disagreements. It is failures of compassion that produce most developmental stagnation at the social scale. When groups and individuals in society become convinced that they are right, that others are wrong, that they have learned all there is, or all that they need to know, then they stop producing open and honest dialogue with one another. While this critique applies to much of the religious right in this country, it also applies to the dogmatic left. Dogmatism is, by definition, both a failure in humility and a failure in compassion.

As we engage successfully in this process of perfection, of learning and acting, then we progress toward enlightenment. These elements of learning, understanding, acting, and creating make up an iterative process of human engagement. In order to work effectively we must learn through observation, understand through abstraction, and apply what we have learned through action, thereby creating our best version of reality. Our moral development stagnates when this process becomes broken, when we fail to learn, when we fail to understand what we have learned, when we fail to act on our understandings, when we have these failures, we fail to create the best world of which we are capable. Because we are not powerless, our greatest fear has come true, we are powerful beyond measure.

Those who have realized their power, who have let their light shine out to the world, they are the prophets in our human story. They are the beacons of moral development who blaze ahead into uncharted territories, showing us the way. They taught us myths when we knew only of the hunt and the cave. They taught us to love all our human brothers and sisters when we knew only of the love of kinship or the love of the tribe. They taught us science when we had turned our myths into facts. They taught us compassion when our hearts were filled with greed. They taught us humility when we knew that we were right. Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed- Martin Luther King Jr., Tenzin Gyatso the fourteenth Dalai Lama, Mohandas K. Gandhi- and how many others whose names are lost in the past, and how many more who will bless us in the future? They are out there among us as we speak, waiting to teach us the next lessons. They are the outliers on the bell-curve of moral development, those who have managed to evolve further than their peers, the bodhisattvas of humanity, hoping for the chance to lend us a helping hand as we labor to live up to our status as the radiant children of god.

If we reject the story of the Fall and its implication of our inherent imperfection, if we embrace the idea of awakening, if we embrace the idea of our perfectibility, then we must embrace the open ended nature of our own story. Once again we have the benefit of knowledge and insights of which the classical thinkers were unaware, we know, even though it is very difficult to understand, that our universe is old beyond imagining, that it is vast beyond our comprehension, that countless species of life have come into being and passed into extinction on this very planet we call home, that the timescales of our human civilizations are but blinks of the eye in the history of life on this planet. We have learned these things together, we struggle to understand them, and one day we must act on this understanding to continue the creation of our story. Right now our story is but a tiny chapter in the tale of this universe. How large a part we will ultimately play is up to us, for we are powerful beyond measure.

We learn, we apply what we learn to our universe, to our societies, and to ourselves, we recreate the universe as we go. This is the nature of our gift, the nature of our humanity. When we apply this gift to the betterment of ourselves, to the betterment of our brothers and sisters, to the betterment of our environments and ecologies, to the betterment of our governments and institutions, then we do good. We promote the fullest version of humanity that is possible in that moment. Then, we are powerful beyond measure. Then, we are the radiant children of god.

One Inch at a Time – Emily Tietz

© Emily Tietz

May 27, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

Prayer

There are voices that would call us to remember to see what is valuable in each other and ourselves. To act in ways which add life to life. This takes more courage and more consciousness than one might expect.

And there are voices that would call us to take the easier and less conscious path. The one on which we don’t take care to notice or acknowledge value in whomever or whatever is before us.

The voices are within us and without.

Let us listen to the higher ones.

Because when we don’t it is all too easy to imprint another with fear. It is all too easy to be the heavy foot that silences another’s hope. And it is very easy to live out of whatever fear we ourselves have been imprinted with.

But life doesn’t have to be like that.

Let us create a world in which even the smallest of us can trust that our words will be heard and welcomed. Let us create a world in which no one around us – not even us – has to be afraid even in silence.

Let us listen to the voices of our higher selves.

Amen.

Sermon: One Inch at a Time

A few months ago Davidson told a Hindu story about the god, Krishna as a boy?

One day his teacher saw him chewing in class and asked what he was chewing. Kids weren’t allowed to chew gum in class. “Nothing,” he replied, and kept chewing.

You can imagine this made the teacher a bit irritated. It was very clear that he was chewing. She marched to his desk, commanded him to stand up, then said, “Now open your mouth and let me look inside!” The boy opened his mouth and when she looked in she saw a thousand million galaxies. That got me to thinking, what would life be like if we remembered to see the thousand million galaxies inside of each other.

When I was in college I took a class that dealt with domestic violence. One afternoon, the professor cited a study that really stuck with me. The purpose of the study was to determine what factors made a difference in how the life of a person who was abused as a child played out.

The researchers interviewed two groups of adults. One group was adults who had been abused as children and who continued destructive patterns in their adult lives – self-destructive or otherwise. The other group was adults who had been abused as children and were able to step outside of destructive patterns.

After interviewing all of the participants, the researchers found that it wasn’t the severity of the abuse, or the kind, or the duration that noticeably made a difference in the trajectory of the individuals’ lives. What made a difference was this: the people who had been able to move beyond destructive patterns could all point to at least one person whom they believed – really believed – in them. The individuals in the other group could not.

It could have been a teacher, best friend, a neighbor, or even just a one-time and brief encounter. It didn’t matter who the person was or how long they knew each other. It simply mattered that someone had shown them that they were whole and valuable.

That’s powerful stuff.

What would this world be like if we remembered to see the thousand million galaxies in each other?How we choose to live in relationship either adds life to life, or diminishes it. Throughout human history we’ve explored questions of how to see each other and how to see ourselves; how to treat each other and how to treat ourselves. We call the endeavor sacred. We attribute holiness to whatever is at the core of the quest. On our innermost level we recognize that recognizing the holy brings life to a higher level. So we incorporate into our religions codes for higher living. To be admittedly simplistic, we say that if we get it right, we spend eternity in heaven; if we get it right, we achieve nirvana; the more we get it right, the higher a being we come back as in the next life.

It’s powerful stuff.

What would this world be like if we remembered to see the thousand million galaxies in each other?

Robert Fulghum offers some thoughts in his book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

He writes “In the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific some villagers practice a unique form of logging. If a tree is too large to be felled with an ax, the natives cut it down by yelling at it. (Can’t lay my hands on the article, but I swear I read it.) Woodsmen with special powers creep up on a tree just at dawn and suddenly scream at it at the top of their lungs. They continue this for thirty days. The tree dies and falls over. The theory is that the hollering kills the spirit of the tree. According to the villagers, it always works.”

Ah, those poor naive innocents. Such quaintly charming habits of the jungle. Screaming at trees, indeed. How primitive. Too bad they don’t have the advantages of modern technology and the scientific mind.

Me? I yell at my wife. And yell at the telephone and the lawn mower. And yell at the TV and the newspaper and my children. I’ve even been known to shake my fist and yell at the sky at times.

Man next door yells at his car a lot. And this summer I heard him yell at a stepladder for most of an afternoon. We modern, urban, educated folks yell at traffic and umpires and bills and banks and machines – especially machines. Machines and relatives get most of the yelling.

Don’t know what good it does. Machines and things just sit there. Even kicking doesn’t always help. As for people, well, the Solomon Islanders may have a point. Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.

There is a saying that goes, “We give ourselves away one inch at time.” I think it’s also true that we chip another’s spirit away one inch at a time.

What would life be like if we remembered to see the thousand million galaxies in each other?

One night I was flipping through television station and landed on PBS for a while. The motivational speaker whom they were featuring, and whose name I didn’t catch, told a story about a certain tribe somewhere in Africa. When a person commits a crime, large or small, they bring the person to the center of the village. Then all the rest of the villagers surround the person. One by one, they begin to tell the person things they love or admire about them. The session is not over until everyone says at least one thing. This can go on for a long time. When they are finished, the person is welcomed back to the community. The speaker finished by noting that the need for such interventions is rare.

Notice that this is not a practice of “turning the other cheek” or letting destructive behavior go. The tribe takes immediate action. They directly acknowledge what the person has done and that it must not continue. They then address it by calling the individual back to his or her higher self.

And the need for such interventions is rare.

We may chip another’s spirit away one inch at a time. I think we also help restore it one inch at a time.

What would this world be like if we remembered to see the thousand million galaxies in each other? I’d like to find that out.

Patient Warrior, Passionate Artist Tai Chi and a Spiritual Journey

Nell Newton

May 20, 2007

The text of this sermon is unavailable but you can listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Portions of this service have been abridged. During the service Tai Chi exercises were performed by Nell Newton, Jerry Moore and Phil Joffrain.

Funny Church Store

© Jack Harris-Bonham

May 13, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 7875

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names, mystery beyond all naming, today we wish to speak of misunderstandings. Today we bring before the congregation here gathered the idea that listening may be more of a passive activity than we imagined. When we’re listening there are times in which what we wish to hear stands in the way of what is being said. Empty us, Great Spirit, leech from us the agendas, hidden and open, as we gather here this morning. Make of each of us a receptacle of peace. If we try to put iced tea in our favorite pitcher, it will not fit if the pitcher is already filled with beer. The use of the receptacle is in the vacuity of its space. Make us empty Great Spirit as we gather here this morning. Our monkey minds keep chattering in the background, but we will in this worship space pull away from the distracting voices in our heads, we will gather our minds in the intervals between the noises, between the conflicting voices that call for us to react in a world that’s already rife with reactions. Also in this hour help us examine our intentions on which our road to hell is paved. Help us be aware enough to see that holding out for what seemingly benefits us, excludes us from participating in a salvation that may be disguised as something that we secretly despise, secretly wish would simply go away.

Mothers and fathers gather with their children this day. May they realize that who they are has nothing to do with where they came from or what has come from them. Mothers and fathers, your children are not you, and their actions are their actions. Having a child who is a brain surgeon doesn’t make you a brain surgeon, nor does it reflect well on you. Their glory and honor is theirs not yours. Likewise having a jailbird as a son throws no aspersions in your direction. Their crimes are not your crimes. Yes, we are all connected, but the fruits of one’s actions are one’s own even when pride and shame declare otherwise.

Bring us now to a point of stillness in which we can feel our hearts beating within us, feel our breath as it revolves in and out of us. In the space between the breaths let us pause and ask ourselves who is it that is breathing, since in fact, this breath started without our conscious intervention and continues when we slip into sleep and unconsciousness. As we rely on that hidden source to keep us alive, let us lean back on that hidden source and relax into the hereness of our existence. We are not in control. Hallelujah and Amen. We pray this in the name of everything that is holy and that is exactly everything.

Amen

SERMON-Funny Church Store

Introduction:

When I moved to New Haven to attend the Yale School of Drama in 1989, I rented a truck and car dolly and moved myself. I saved a bundle. Viv followed me in her 2002 BMW when we went to return the truck. We couldn’t find the place. We kept driving up and down this same stretch of New England back road, but the rental place was nowhere in sight. I stopped at a minit mart and went in to ask directions. The man behind the counter was from somewhere in Asia. I explained my predicament and his eyes lit up. “Yes, Yes, I know where that is. You go this way down the road, and turn right at the Funny Church Store.” He smiled glad that he’d been able to help. “The Funny Church Store?” I asked with a puzzled look on my face. “Yes, the Funny Church Store, you’ll see it on your right, it’s right behind there.” “Behind the Funny Church Store?” “That’s right!” I walked back to the truck and Viv yelled at me from her car window, “Do you know where it is?”

I walked over to her car smiling. “I know exactly, where it is.”

Driving toward the funny church store I was imagining a church whose Pastor would look and sound something like this – Jesus and Moses were playing golf. Moses approached the ball, and Jesus said, “What iron are you using on this shot?” “The four iron,” said Moses. “Well,” said Jesus, “Tiger Woods would use the five iron.” Moses stepped up to the ball and gave it a whack. The ball went pretty far, but then dropped into the lake. Jesus took his five iron and approached his ball. “I told you, Tiger Woods would use the five iron!” Jesus hit the ball well, it went further than Moses’ ball, but also dropped into the lake. Jesus went over and was walking on the water looking for both balls when a group of golfers played through. One of the golfers turned to Moses and asked, “Say, who does that guy think he is, Jesus Christ?” “Well,” said Moses, “he is Jesus Christ, but he thinks he’s Tiger Woods.”

After driving up and down the same stretch of highway I finally saw the Budget Rent a Car Sign. The rental place was directly behind a furniture store. A Funny Church Store.

Every time I retell this story about the funny church store I am reminded of my mother. You’ll get the connection later.

When my mother graduated from teacher’s college in Bluefield West Virginia, she thought her father might help her get a job – he was President of the local School Board. Daddy Jack was, if anything, a fair man who practiced his business like it was his church. He didn’t even want a hint of scandal around his family and to prove that he hadn’t influenced my mother’s position he appointed her to one of the schools in the middle of a coal-mining town. It was literally a one-room schoolhouse with one of the fifth graders that was 15 years old and out weighed my mother by a hundred pounds. My mother was terrified, but since she was her father’s favorite, he called her Queenie; she was determined not to leave this job until it was well done.

By recess, she felt she just about got a hold of the group, but was afraid of the energy that would be infused in the malicious assembly once they went outside to play. She gave them a stern warning before they recessed, “If I see you misbehaving on the playground, I’m gonna tap on the window, and when I do that you’d better get in here immediately or you’ll be late for your whipping.”

It was winter and the janitor of the school had built a fire in an old trash-burning barrel on the playground. The kids who got cold could go over there and stand by the fire. My mother looked up just in time to see the 15 year old 5th grader holding a cat’s face to the fire. She jumped up and tapped angrily on the glass. Retrieving the paddle she walked out into the front of the classroom to await the culprit’s arrival. She waited, but then realized the door to cloakroom was closed and he was probably waiting outside the closed door. When she opened the door, much to her dismay, there was a line of some 16 students, nearly half the class, that was lined up and ready to be paddled. They had all heard the angry tapping, and all were guilty of something. My mother took them on one by one, paddling each until her arm ached and she was nearly laughing. You’d have to know mother to understand that, when she fell and hurt herself, she always laughed. It was her way of dealing with the pain.

Today, my mother’s actions would raise more than eyebrows, she would lose her job, and probably be banded from teaching forever. But then again those that would condemn her today were not back in the coal fields teaching fifth graders who outweighed and towered over them. Mother went on to teach for nearly thirty years, winning award after award. She was tough, she demanded authority and attention and she got it, or else.

Mother’s background and upbringing stayed with her, along with her West Virginia twang, throughout a lifetime of travel when my father who was in the Air Force.

There’s a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 play The Rivals named Mrs. Malaprop. Mrs. Malaprop is known for saying the wrong thing at the funniest times. The word malapropos entered English usage around 1660, derived from the French phrase mal a propos (literally “ill suited to the purpose”).

Here are two examples of malaprops the first from Mrs. Malaprop, “She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile” and the second from Curly of Three Stooges fame after he’s been insulted by Mo, “Hey, I resemble that remark!”

There is a sense in which my mother was the West Virginia version of Mrs. Malaprop.

One summer evening after my freshman year at the University of Florida I’d brought some friends home. Late one night these about to be college sophomores, were drinking beer and eagerly talking about the Vietnam War, black power, the hippies, marijuana, free love, we were getting loaded and feeling the power of youth; always young, always strong and with our entire lives before us.

My mother had stayed up after dad had gone to bed, and she was sitting in the dining room with us, listening, and laughing at our jokes. My friends always loved my mother. Finally, she’d had enough white wine that she decided she would chime in when the black power issue came up.

“I read his autobiography, you know. It was fascinating.”

“Whose biography?” one of my friends wanted to know.

Mother was proud, this was her moment. She wasn’t in Bluefield any more, and her hillbilly friends were all forgotten as she smiled and said, “Why, the Autobiography of Moslem X!”

Everyone laughed.

My girlfriend at the time saw my mother leave hurriedly, her head down and embarrassed.

“Is she all right?” she asked concerned.

“She’s fine,” I said knowing I would hear about this later.

It’s weird. You see, the moment my mother had become the bell of the ball, Cinderella with the shoe that fits, the minute she had finally graduated from Hicksville, she took it personally, and declined the honor.

Had she thrown back her head and laughed with the rest of us, she would have risen in our eyes to the heights of Maureen O’Sullivan or Katherine Hepburn.

But she misunderstood; she thought her moment of triumph was her moment of defeat. She thought our laughter was a club to which she could not belong, when in reality she had built that club and christen it with mirth.

Speaking of mothers?

People in different parts of the world celebrate Mother’s Day on different days of the year because that day has different meanings. The ancient Greeks had a festival to Cybele, a great mother of gods, and it was celebrated around the Vernal Equinox. In Rome another holiday, Matronalia, that was dedicated to Juno, a male god, though mothers were usually given gifts on his day.

After the Civil War social activist Julia Ward Howe borrowed Mother’s Day from the English. Julia Ward Howe is best known for her “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which was set to already-existing music, and first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862 and quickly became one of the most popular songs of the Union during the Civil War.

Originally Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day was a call to unite women against war. For that first Mother’s Day in 1870 she wrote this Mother’s Day Proclamation.

Arise, then, women of this day!

 Arise, all women who have breasts,

 Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn

All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.

It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,

Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means

Whereby the great human family can live in peace,

Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,

But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask

That a general congress of women without limit of nationality

May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient

And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,

 To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,

The amicable settlement of international questions,

The great and general interests of peace.

So how was that message turned/deflected from mother’s concerns about their children’s deaths and mutilations – to concern for the mothers themselves? Can you see a parallel between what Jesus came to proclaim – the kingdom, right here, right now – and how they (the church) have taken his message away and made the church about the messenger. As Rudolf Bultmann asked, “How did the Proclaimer become the Proclaimed?”

The Greeks used to have a saying, don’t kill the messenger – well, the church went one step further, not only did they kill the messenger, but they perverted the message. The kingdom is someplace else; the reward is later – this is invaluable propaganda for fat cat churches, and fat cat ministers and priests.

You came here with an anticipation of what you want. Some want serenity, some advice, some spirituality, some the celebration of the human, some reassurance that things will be okay. But when will you understand that these expectations are born from the same desire that changed the original care of mothers for their children into what the National Restaurant Association calls the biggest sales day of the year? And when will you understand that these expectations are born from the same desire that changed the Jesus of Love One Another into the Inquisition?

You come to the funny church store looking for that painting to go with that sofa. You decide in advance exactly what you need, but hey, you’re keeping that a secret – you imagine in your heart of hearts that the funny church store can guess, that I can guess, that a person of the cloth can guess what you refuse to admit even to yourselves.

There is a line in the play, Medicine Men toward the end of the play the black servant of Albert Schweitzer, Paul Subira says, “We can’t pick out those we love “quite unexpectedly they are presented to us.”

It’s time you stepped aside and let your life live itself. It’s time you stop interfering, it’s time to look and see exactly what’s being offered you. This is your life.

My job, Dr. Loehr’s job, it’s not to lead you anywhere – into what – spirituality – a sabe world view – the one-upmanship of liberalism? God? We’re here for one reason and one reason only to define ourselves in public – to articulate existentially what we feel about our lives, our spiritual journeys – why?

It’s an old maxim of good writing. The more specific you get the more general it becomes. The hope is that if you witness this individuation, then you will accept the challenge and articulate who you are. And here’s the “Funny” as in odd/paradoxical part of the funny church store. The more we settle into the real life we are leading, the life we are being offered, the more we speak from within – the more we resonate with one another and the cosmos.

Recently, physicists have become aware of what are called fractals.

The basic concept of fractals is that they contain a large degree of self-similarity. This means that they usually contain little copies of themselves buried deep within the original. (Online source:

http://www.jracademy.com/~jtucek/math/fractals.html)

This notion has often been alluded to in poetry and fiction. But now it seems, it is physically demonstrable.

And that is why somas are, fundamentally, recreations of the organic model of the cosmos itself. (Hanna, 7)

If, we are models of the cosmos itself, according to the recent discoveries of fractals, then it follows that to be created in the image of God is to be created in the image of the cosmos. What exactly is the cosmos?

The cosmos is a continuous explosion of joy. It is sheer release and letting-go of an immense compression and, in a sense, depression. It is a 20 billion-year orgasm. (Hanna, 9)

Awareness is what allowed us to differentiate in the first place. We were a part of a family, but we moved away from home. Then we were part of a college, but we graduated. Then, we were part of a country, but our awareness took us beyond that to the point where we could and can identify with the pain that is suffered by other countries, other peoples.

We need to forget about trying to fix ourselves. There’s nothing to fix. Our lives … the ones we so desperately want to change can only be lived from the inside. First we’ve got to live the life we’re offered, then, and only then, can we possibly think of navigating elsewhere.

Congregational Meeting Minutes

First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin
Congregational Meeting Minutes
May 6, 2007

The Spring Congregational meeting was held on May 6, 2007. The meeting was duly posted with notices sent in the newsletter and by mail to all members of the congregation, all in accordance with the bylaws. A quorum was present.

President Don Smith called the meeting to order at 1:32 p.m. Smith lit the chalice and provided opening words. He introduced members of the Board of Trustees, and timekeeper Gary Bennett.

Adoption of Congregational Rules

Don Smith presented the Congregational meeting Rules of Procedure. Upon a motion duly made by Sam Roberts, seconded and passed as follows:

RESOLVED, that the congregational rules are adopted as presented. (Exhibit A)

Minutes

President Don Smith presented the minutes of the December 3, 2006 congregational meeting. Upon a duly made motion by Sam Roberts and seconded and the minutes were approved. (Exhibit B)

President Don Smith presented the minutes of the May 6, 2007 congregational meeting. Upon a duly made motion by Bill Reid and seconded and the minutes were approved. (Exhibit C)

Reports

President Don Smith asked if there were any questions on the reports. There were none.

President?s Report is attached as (Exhibit D).

Interim Preacher?s Report is attached as (Exhibit E).

Acting Director of Religious Education Report is attached as (Exhibit F).

Treasurer?s Report is attached as (Exhibit G).

Business

FAMP

Henry Hug presented proposed changes to the Financial Asset Management Policy. The changes clarify distributions from the Memorial/Endowment Fund. This document must be presented and approved at two consecutive congregational meetings prior to implementation.

A motion was duly made by Finance Committee Chair, Henry Hug to approve the proposed changes to the FAMP (2nd vote). The motion passed. (Exhibit H)

Nominating Committee Recommendation

President Don Smith introduced the officers, trustees and Nominating Committee member recommended by the Nominating Committee. (Exhibit I)

President Mark Kilpatrick
Vice-President Sheila Gladstone
Secretary Beverly Donoghue
Treasurer Mary Jane Ford
Trustee 2007-2008 Cindy Raab
Trustee 2007-2010 Derek Howard
Trustee 2007-2008 Nancy Groblewski
Nominating Committee Jean Davison

Upon a motion duly made by Becky Moon, seconded and passed as follows:

RESOLVED, that the slate is approved as presented.

Bylaw Amendment

President Don Smith presented the proposed Bylaw amendment.

The six-year limitation for serving on the Board of Trustees, contained in the Constitution and Bylaws, Article VI, Section 3: Vacancies and Term Limits, applies only to the time spent serving on elected, full terms as officer or other Board member. Time spent finishing out another individual?s uncompleted term does not count toward the six-year limit.

Upon a motion duly made by Ed Nichols, seconded and passed as follows:

RESOLVED, that the Bylaw amendment is approved as presented.

Questions and Concerns

Issues presented include:

  • Ron Turner requested that Cindy Raab?s term as a trustee recorded as 2007-2010. She has agreed to serve for one year however the term is for three years.
  • Henry Hug objected to the Treasurer’s use of the term “Board Discretionary” to describe the Long Range Fund.  He said the fund is to be used for long-range projects and seed money for a capital fund campaign. Treasurer Mary Jane Ford explained the word “discretionary” indicates that the Board of Trustees may use money from the fund if necessary without a congregational vote.
  • Ron Turner said that the church board is not allowed to spend over $10,000 in a year in excess of the annual budget for any purpose, from any fund without a congregational vote.  Mary Jane Ford explained that the church policies and Bylaws are not clear on this issue and should be reviewed and revised for consistency.
  • Margaret Roberts thanked President Don Smith for his service on the Board of Trustees.
  • Barbara Denney thanked Margaret Roberts and Cindy Raab for all their work on the Sparkle Plenty Fundraiser.
  • Vice President Nancy Groblewski announced the volunteer recognition party she will host at the church on May 20th.
The meeting adjourned at 2:02 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
_______________________
Doris M. Hug, Secretary

These minutes are not official until approved at the December 2007 Congregational Meeting

Exhibits

The reports listed as exhibits to these minutes are currently available in the church office during normal business hours.

That's How the Light Gets In

© Jack Harris-Bonham

May 6, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names, mystery beyond all naming we come to you this morning with the songs and melodies of one of your chosen people, Leonard Cohen. In that spirit I pray today the lyrics of one of his poems:

Don’t really have the courage to stand where I must stand,

Don’t really have the temperament to lend a helping hand.

Don’t really know who sent me to raise my voice and say:

May the lights in the land of plenty shine on the truth some day.

I don’t know why I come here, knowing as I do what you really think of me, what I really think of you.

For the millions in the prison that wealth has set apart, for the Christ who has not risen from the caverns of the heart, For the innermost decision that we cannot but obey, for what’s left of our religion I lift my voice and pray.

May the lights in the land of plenty shine on the truth some day.

We pray this in the name of everything that’s holy, and that is, precisely everything.

Amen.

Affirmation of Faith by Don Smith

SERMON

In traditional Christianity sin is seen as a determent, a flaw, the fly in the ointment. My now deceased second father-in-law, Linus Hernandez used to say, “Everyone loves Elizabeth’s Taylor’s hair, but nobody wants it in their soup.”

Talking about sin as a determent is counterproductive.

There’s a better way.

In alcoholics anonymous, of which I am a proud anonymous member, it’s common to hear people say that they don’t regret or want to take back any drink or drinking that they did. The idea is simple. Whatever they did, however much they drank, the wreckage of lives that trails behind them – none of this can be regretted for two reasons – first, the guilt itself would kill us, or drive us to drink – poor me, poor me, pour me another drink! And secondly if that drinking got us to AA and we’re sober, and the promises are coming true, then, baby, all that suffering is exactly what it took!

Think of it as a trip in your family car. Yeah, okay, the radiator hose blew the third day, you had two flat tires the next day, and the water pump eventually went out. Regardless, you’re at your vacation spot thanks to the old soccer mom car! It’s hard to hate what’s brought you to a state of grace. It’s hard to hate what’s brought you to a state of grace.

There’s a tradition in some synagogues when members of the synagogue are invited to stand and tell a bad story on themselves. After the first story ends, someone stands and tells a worse than the first. Then another and another. The idea is – the parishioner with the worst story, wins!

And the prize isn’t shame – it’s solidarity! When the last confessor stands and tops all the other stories, then there’s a moment of silence and it that silence, there is a bonding, the human, oh so human, sigh of relief as all in that community know that they are blemished, imperfect. The moral high ground has been relinquished, and in the words of Second Isaiah, the high has been made low, and the crooked places made straight.

Martin Marty, Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago tells the story of one of his grandchildren who when Marty had stepped down from the University, turned to Marty and said, “Grandpa, now that you’re retarded?” At first Marty winced because retardation is never a subject for jest, but then Dr. Marty remembered that to be retarded also means to be caused to move or proceed slowly; delayed or impeded. And that’s not always a bad thing. What would music be like if there were no variance in tempo – besides sounding like Philip Glass?

There is a form of enlightenment within Zen Buddhism that’s called a life of one continuous mistake. How can this be, you might ask? Being conscious of who you are, and what you’re capable of, knowing that your feet aren’t on a pedestal, but clay like everyone else’s – these are the things that actually raise all of life up.

When I was eighteen I fell in love with a blond tennis player who played for the University of Florida Gators. Joan and I were deeply in love. I drove up to see her during summer school, and convinced her that we needed to drive into the woods in my father’s Mercury Monterey, with a 357 engine, and four on the floor – to do watercolors of the woods. She either bought that story or wanted exactly what I wanted. We water colored for a bit, we did! Then we fell asleep like the children we were. An hour later lightning awakened us. The rain was coming down so hard that we couldn’t see out. I thought maybe I should move my dad’s car.

I’d driven off the Farm Maintenance Road and into the woods – where the trees were prettier, you understand? Twilight had slipped us on us, too. When I found what I thought was the Farm Maintenance Road it was covered in water. I turned onto it; I was shocked to discover that I’d driven into a stream. The Mercury Monterey sunk down to the axles, and it looked like if it kept raining, the water would be at window height in no time. I got Joan out of the car, but she’d left her shoes behind. I took off my brogans and insisted she walk in them. I went barefoot. We walked through many a tilled field before we caught sight of the lights of passing traffic.

By the time we gotten to the Interstate my brogans had rubbed terrible blisters on her feet while my feet were unscathed from walking through the fields. I thumbed down a semi and worried that this old truck driver would try something with my beautiful Joan, so I got in first and sat right beside him. He was a very nice black man, and without asking a whole lot of questions drove us into town.

My Beta Theta Pi Fraternity Brothers pulled my dad’s car from the river the next day.

The point is, what was then an awful experience is now emblazoned in my memory, and quite frankly it was better than sex.

Reynolds Price, who teaches writing at the University of North Carolina, developed a cancer on his spine. It crippled him.

Two things are important about Reynolds Price’s story. First, the disease and the loss of the use of his legs have actually improved his writing. And the second reason is striking – Price is in pain all the time, but he says that he made of his pain a bonfire and slowly over the years he’s been able to move away from the heat of the fire. He can still see the flames licking into the night air, but now, instead of burning in pain, he’s able to look at himself and his life by the light of that same fire.

We’ll never put out the flames of our critical thinking. Judge not lest ye be judged! What does that mean? The judging will always be there – we’re human beings, and we are suspicious creatures. So, if it’s not going away, and it’s unpleasant to be around, perhaps we should take a walk and expand our horizons. Yes, the jabbering, the crazy monkey mind as the Buddhist call it, it will keep right on jabbering, but maybe if we get enough distance, the rhythm of the unceasing chatter will become a white noise that doesn’t hook us, doesn’t drive us, doesn’t work.

The things you’ve done wrong. Tell someone who loves you what you’ve done. Unload. Unburden. Release yourself from the bondage of self. Uncover the cracks that line you like a raku pot. Open yourself to the idea that reaching out may, in fact, be letting in.

Buckminster Fuller once said that today’s society was too specialized. We have a tendency to want to focus our energies, put the heat on where we think the heat needs to be applied, to push forward in the direction we intend.

Fuller suggests, instead, that we should take our light and defocus – place it in the middle of a field and let that light shine out in all 365 degrees of the circle, then wait to see what’s attracted to that light.

Yes, there is a crack in everything, and yes, that is how the light gets in, but it’s also how the light gets out. Let’s drop our guard. Let’s shine out to those who walk among us. Perhaps if we all shine together the path of a common life will be uncovered.

Amen.

Enemy Combatants

© Jack Harris-Bonham

April 22, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names, and mystery beyond all naming, we contemplate this past week and our hearts are heavy. We are frightened, worried, anxious, and uneasy. We find ourselves echoing the words of the character played by Sir Lawrence Olivier in Marathon Man, “Is it safe?” That maddening question was asked over and over again to Dustin Hoffman’s character as he was strapped in a dental chair and tortured with a high speed drill. Is it safe? Is it safe?

It used to be said that there was safety in numbers, but the Holocaust, the Gulags, Pol Pot’s Killing Fields, and bucolic rolling hills surrounding Virginia Tech seems to nullify such naive notions. It is not safe. It will never be safe, and we’d best get used to it. In the late 1940’s I was taught a prayer that I said each night as I kneeled beside my bed, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep and if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” I used to think that, that was a terrible thing to teach a child to say right before turning out the lights, but now, I’m not so sure. Perhaps, there was some wisdom in that prayer. Perhaps, it let me in on the adult secret that I hadn’t always been here, and there’d come a time when I’d be here no more. Perhaps, just perhaps, that was a good thing for me to know at the age of 4.

This past week’s massacre holds for me a bright and shining moment. Holocaust survivor Dr. Librescu stood in the doorway to his classroom, Room #204, Norris Hall and was shot five times as he yelled for his students to escape out the windows. The image of this man who had survived the worst that Nazi Germany could throw at him, the image of this man staving off death as his young pupils jumped to their freedom, this is the image that I wish to hold in my heart when I think of Virginia Tech. There was a massacre that day, but there was also an active demonstration of the power of love.

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention once recorded a song entitled, It Can’t Happen Here. It was a parody and ironic because Zappa, whose favorite vegetable was tobacco, knew anything can happen anywhere, and more precisely, whenever something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us.

May we in the coming weeks not demonize the young Korean man who perpetrated those acts of violence. All efforts to scapegoat and marginalize him now are beside the point. He is one of us, and whatever his crimes we ourselves are capable of the same. To deny this is to invite disaster upon ourselves. Yes, it’s good to remember the noble acts, those done by the better angels of our natures, but we must never forget that other angels attend us and those lesser angels of our natures will, if ignored, act out when we least expect it.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON: Gangster State (Enemy Combatants All)

“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out.

Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out.

Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out.

And they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”

(Martin Niemoeller)

Fear can make people do odd things, and it is the fear generated by the events of 9/11 and the events following that which have created an atmosphere of terror in this country. In this atmosphere the present regime has co-opted the rights of the people and is going about the business of greedy business in the name of our country. I don’t much like that. And I’m not alone in that dislike.

In an article copyrighted by the New York Times in 2004 Anthony Lewis has this to say;

“Fear of terrorism – a quite understandable fear after 9/11 – has led to harsh departures from normal legal practice at home. Aliens swept off the streets by the Justice Department as possible terrorists after 9/11 were subjected to physical abuse and humiliation by prison guards. Then, Attorney General, John Ashcroft, did not apologize – a posture that sent a message”

Anthony Lewis continues, “Inside the United States, the most radical departure from law, as we have know it, is President Bush’s claim that he can designate any American citizen as an “enemy combatant” – thereupon detain that person in solitary confinement indefinitely, without charges, without a trial, with a right to counsel. There was a stunning moment in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address when he said that more than 3,000 suspected terrorists (quote) have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let’s put it this way: They are no longer a problem for the United States.” (End quote)

In all these matters, there is a pervasive attitude: that to follow the law is to be weak in the face of terrorism. But commitment to law is not weakness. It has been the great strength of the United States from the beginning. Our leaders depart from that commitment at their peril, and ours, for a reason that Justice Louis D. Brandeis expressed 75 years ago.

“Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes lawbreakers, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself.”

Senator Edward Kennedy just this past month on the 29th of March 2007 stated at an event organized by the Alliance for Justice, “At the heart of many of the serious challenges we face is the Bush Administration’s lack of respect for the rule of law.”

What I present to you today is not meant to convince you that the political right is wrong, or that the political left is correct. All I really want to do is pull back from this lawless situation that we find ourselves in, and ruminate upon what others have done in similar situations. And within that rumination I hope that we can find the room to understand what is happening to us as a people and a nation. The murder rate in big cities in this country has gone up since the inception of the war in Iraq, and need I mention the events at Virginia Tech this past Monday? Perhaps if we can get a perspective upon what is happening, then we can more readily go out and act, and stop simply reacting.

If you think that there is no chance that you are in danger from this government and that there is no way in hell that you would ever be considered an enemy combatant then I’m afraid that you are in the gravest danger.

The trouble starts with a State that wants all the attention. They’re jealous of life and as an institution, just like a cooperation, it, the government, the state, really has no life. As the former Yale Chaplain, William Sloane Coffin, remarked, “To die for one’s own country is on the same level as dying for the Post Office.”

During the initial stages of the Iraqi War the New York Times had a picture of an Iraqi man carrying the wrapped body of his sixth month old son. He’s walking into a cemetery where the article says the gravediggers have all run away because of the bombing. Down from where the man digs a hole for his little boy, another man stands waist deep in a grave. The black flies are everywhere. They cover the ground before he thrusts the blade of the shovel in. He is standing among the remains of his brother who died in the last Gulf War. There isn’t much there. In a hefty garbage bag hanging over an adjacent headstone are what remains of his sister-in-law and her two daughters. Remains is so apt a word here. I turn the page quickly I simply can’t read any more of this. Staring back at me is a young Iraqi who has bandaged leg stumps holding him upright in his bed. I can see the Broadway billboards now, “Collateral damage does Porgy and Bess.”

This, from my former teacher and head of the philosophy department at the University of Florida from 1965-1971:

Authoritarianism is the long shadow which the human species has dragged after itself during its historical pilgrimage toward the light. No one knows whether, during our immensely long trek, we have made any lasting advance in the direction of that light; but everyone knows that the only way of having a direction in which to advance is by facing toward that light and intending that direction. (Dr. Thomas Hanna, End of Tyranny 35)

Now let’s consider the long shadows of political leadership and what those shadows can cover up, and where eventually we end up when so led.

The 20th Century theologian Karl Barth says this about Pontius Pilate:

He was bound to act according to strict law, but does not do so and lets himself be determined by “political considerations.” (Barth, Dogmatics in Outline 108)

Pontius Pilate, a man who essentially disappears from history, evaporating like the water that dripped on the floor after he washed his hands of the whole ordeal, broke a covenant that existed between himself and Rome. As an administrator and agent of the Roman Emperor, Pilate was expected to carry out the Roman law. But, Pontius Pilate did what was expedient. Expedient – politic though perhaps unprincipled.

Karl Barth gives me the title to my sermon here:

In the person of Pilate the state withdraws from the basis of its own existence and becomes a den of robbers, a gangster state, the ordering of an irresponsible clique. (Barth, Dogmatics in Outline 111)

And what does this mean that Pilate broke the Roman covenant – what does it mean that he would not uphold the Roman law?

Covenant is relationship and relationship presumes personhood. As long as Pilate acts according to what he knows to be Roman Law he occupies the personhood of his life. Yet, when he breaks covenant, even the pagan covenant of Roman law – he breaks with relationship, personhood and becomes a loose cannon.

What does Pilate do? He does what politicians have more or less always done and what has always belonged to the actual achievement of politics in all times: he attempts to rescue and maintain order in Jerusalem and thereby at the same time to preserve his own position of power, by surrendering the clear law, for the protection of which he was actually installed. Remarkable contradiction! (Barth, Dogmatics in Outline 111)

What I’m saying is this; in a post-modern world where we have lost the myth of reason’s ability to explain the universe or God, when the metanarrative seems to have lost its foothold, where ambiguity reins downs upon us until we are soaked in the showers of impotency, perhaps it is time to rejoice! Rejoice that we live in a time when the State is a negative format. Rejoice that we live in a time in which we can understand the developing scenarios. Rejoice that we live in a time when we can see in the dark room of our souls that the polarities have been reversed. Everything we know to be light is seen now by the state as darkness and everything that shines forth from the state is nothing but bright midnight.

Are you confused as to what to believe, what to act upon, what next to do – take a look at this country under its present regime and go ye therefore in the opposite direction.

Yet, unfortunately, the imagination of the people in this country is produced, coddled and prodded by sound bites & wars that look like super-bowls. Smart bombs, and shock and awe are Reality Television at its ultimate destination – we sit and watch as other people die.

As Rome degenerated and eventually fell the emperors gave the people bread and circuses to fill their stomachs and amuse their spirits. We watch as the covenant is being broken and we cheer as the pieces fall down around us. We fail to see that those maimed, starved and blown up are, in fact, ourselves.

In the immortal and unforgettable words of the cartoon character Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

The reason we are the enemy is we are out of covenant and communion – even with ourselves.

As Thomas Paine expressed it – “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives (in) to a superficial appearance of (its) being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.” (Hanna, The End of Tyranny 13)

As time goes by and more and more original wrongs slide into the category of the right we begin to be able to witness horror and turn away with a shrug. How long will it be before Virginia Tech becomes a documentary, is given an award, and we forget about it? But even though these meteorites of injustice do not annihilate us they do alienate us.

Susan Sontag recently wrote in The Nation;

It will always be unpopular – it will always be deemed unpatriotic – to say that the lives of the members of the other tribe are as valuable as one’s own tribe. (Sontag, The Nation 11)

If freedom cannot be found in the Gangster State, then there’s even less hope for the dominant culture’s churches. Since the time of the early Levites when the high temple positions were up for the highest bid, churches have been tainted by the State. There have always been and always will be gangster churches mirroring gangster states. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his feelings about the German Church’s actions during World War Two would be a good witness here.

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Cassius says, “And why should Caesar be a tyrant then? Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf, but that he sees the Romans are but sheep.”

The truth be told we are not comfortable in this society with the gray areas of life. Reason and its metanarrative have brought us to a place that appears to be a crossroads. One road leads to truth, life and justice – the other to destruction. Unfortunately, the roads are marked with a sign that spins freely in the ground at one moment announcing the road to the right being the road to perdition, then a change in the wind declares it to be the road to the left.

Left or right, it simply makes little difference at this point in our country’s history. “For nearly 800 years since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, our laws have insisted that every single human being is entitled to some kind of judicial process before he or she can be thrown into jail – We have gone back to a pre-Magna Carta medieval system, not a system of laws, but of executive fiat, where the king – or in this case the president simply decides, on any particular day, I’m going to throw you into prison.”

And that prison is a small “Devil’s Island” comprising 45 square miles at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Guantanamo is, in fact, at this point in time, an interrogation camp – the kind outlawed after the Nazi Holocaust in the Geneva Convention of 1949. It is an interrogation camp that is totally and flatly illegal. During the 17th Century the English Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act to keep political prisoners from being sent to remote islands and never seen again. This practice is precisely what the Bush Regime has revived.

George W. Bush mirroring Pontius Pilate has broken covenant with the law of our land. Covenant is relationship and relationship presumes personhood. As long as George W. Bush follows the law of the United States and the Magna Carta he can be said to occupy the personhood of his life. Yet when George W. Bush breaks that covenant as he has done by ruling by presidential fiat, then he breaks relationship with the law of the land, he breaks relationship with the personhood of his life, and be becomes nothing more than a loose cannon, a man beyond the law – there is a name for this. George W. Bush is, in fact, in sheer opposition to; the Constitution of the United States, the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the will of the people and the Kingdom of God whatever you perceive that Kingdom to be.

We can blame it on 9/11. We can blame it on the President. The President can blame it on Osama Ben Laden and the terrorists can blame it on fate, but “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

Love Makes You Do The Wacky

© Jim Checkley

April 15, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

I wish I could take credit for the title of the sermon. But I can’t. The title comes from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show I liked so much I did a service on it a few years ago. What’s going on is that Buffy is in love with somebody and is complaining that he is acting all jealous, but won’t admit it. Buffy is talking to her friend Willow and when Buffy complains to Willow that her boyfriend is being totally irrational Willow says, “Love makes you to the wacky.” To which Buffy responds: “That’s the truth.”

I agree with Buffy. Love does make you do the wacky. I’ll bet everybody in this sanctuary has at least one story of wacky behavior caused by being in love. Which begs the question, why? Why does love make us do the wacky? Why do we risk our jobs, our friends, our futures, our very lives in the name of love? What is it about romantic love that not only does it have its own holiday, but it provides both the greatest joys and the worst agonies imaginable, because truly, what can be better or worse than the total agony of being in love?

I was looking for a definition of love and found several I want to share with you. The first is from Ambrose Bierce and states that love is a type of insanity curable by marriage. You laugh now, but file this one away for later.

How about this one. It’s from a conference of sociologists back in 1977. Listen carefully:

Love is the cognitive-affective state characterized by intrusive and obsessive fantasizing concerning reciprocity of amorant feeling by the object of the amorance.

I dare you to try to turn that into a poem. In fact, I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable with the person who came up with that one dating my daughter. There are, of course, long dictionary definitions, but I think part of the problem we have in defining love is that in our culture, love is required to be all things to all people all of the time.

We love our spouse or our partner, certainly. But we also love our cars, our kids, our favorite colors, our food, our jokes, our art, and on and on. The word “love” has as many meanings and covers as much ground as the word “God.” Eskimos have 20 words for snow and we have one word for love. At least the Greeks had four words for love: Eros, or romantic love; agape or spiritual love; philia or Platonic love; and storge or natural affection, like that of a parent to a child. But we English speaking people, with a language that has by far the biggest, most encompassing vocabulary, we only have one word for love. Why is that? I think part of it is that our culture is very schizophrenic about love and there are enormous sensitivities around it, especially romantic love,

For example, you may have heard of the late Leo Buscaglia who once taught a course on love at UCLA called Love 1-A and wrote many books on the subject. Dr. Buscaglia taught that love is something we need to learn about and that understanding and dealing with love isn’t something that just comes to us by osmosis. As a matter of culture and social behavior, I think we can all agree with that. As you might imagine, however, Professor Buscaglia’s course created some controversy as people complained that university is no place to teach about love – seriously – university should be reserved for important stuff like history, language, science, and engineering. Besides, love is, well, a delicate subject, one that should be kept in a brown paper wrapper and only spoken about in hushed whispers behind closed doors or on the streets or under the covers.

I don’t know about you, but I think all of that is just ridiculous. I agree with, of all people, Benjamin Disraeli, who said “We are all born to love. It is the principle of existence and its only end.” Disraeli was right on at least two counts: first, as I’ll explain in a minute, we are born to love. The mechanisms of romantic love are hard wired and we are bound to that drive, those desires, like nothing else in life except eating and drinking. And second, I believe that romantic love, sex, and reproduction are the very purpose of our natural existence, the focus of life, and the only inherently meaningful thing about life itself beyond simply being.

I have a book called Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice for All Creation by Olivia Judson. It is a very clever book written as if Dr. Tatiana were answering letters about sex, reproduction, and other related issues from a wide variety of members of the animal kingdom. Talk about wacky. I’m telling you, insect reproduction in particular is bizarre and often deadly. Males in several species literally die for the opportunity to mate and pass on their genes. If life on this planet is the design of some intelligent creator, then he or she was on serious drugs when they came up with the myriad methods of sexual reproduction extant in the animal kingdom. If you want to get educated and blown away at the same time, I highly recommend reading Dr. Tatiana.

Now, insects don’t have the capacity for rational thought. At least we don’t think they do. Their behavior is thus controlled by their genetic code and is hard wired into their very being. How else can you explain the sometimes suicidal and often dangerous behavior indulged in by a whole host of critters in the animal kingdom? For a long time people believed that humans were immune to that sort of hard wiring, that our big brains removed us from the ranks of creatures who were programmed for certain responses and behaviors in the world of romantic love sex, and reproduction.

It is becoming crystal clear that we were very wrong about that. Very wrong indeed. Study after study has shown that desire and what we call romantic love is the result of chemical processes in the brain that are not only hard wired, but result in brain activity that is virtually indistinguishable from being on hard drugs, and in particular, drugs like cocaine. Now think about that for a second. Being head over heels in love results in or from, take your pick, brain activity that is indistinguishable from being on hard drugs. Robert Palmer was right: we are addicted to love. Is it any wonder that people routinely behave insanely when they are in that stomach wrenching, sleep deprived, dramatic phase of love? The poets who wrote about love didn’t know the half of it.

It turns out that the brain is, in fact, the most important organ related to love, sex, and reproduction. At every turn, genetic programs, working through the brain, guide humans in their dances of love. And, I know it’s not exactly politically correct to say this, but the scientific truth is that men’s and women’s brains are significantly different in the programs they run, the systems they create, and the desires they generate when it comes to romantic love. This is true about almost every aspect of romantic love and reproduction, including sexual orientation, desire, and how the sexes view their role in the courtship dance. And the most recent studies show that socio-cultural influences are less important on these very fundamentally hard wired programs than anybody suspected. Thus, while it is true to there is a large variation in what signals and stimuli people respond to in actualizing romantic love impulses, those impulses and the genetic programming underlying them are resistant to socio-cultural influences.

Here are a few specific (and I think amusing) results to ponder:

In a study of the effect of pictures of beautiful women on the brains of men, researchers found that the pictures activated the same reward circuits in the brains of heterosexual men as did food and cocaine. Here is proof – as if we needed it – that men truly are visually stimulated. As co-author of the study, Dan Ariely of MIT, said, “This is hard-core circuitry. Beauty is working similar to a drug.”

Another study showed men a slide show of random women, each being projected for several seconds; but the men could extend the viewing time for each picture by pressing keys on a keypad. You can guess the result. The men worked frantically to keep the beautiful women on the screen, on average pressing the keyboard more than 4,700 times over a 40 minute span, prompting one researcher to observe that “these guys look like rodents bar-pressing for cocaine.” As far as women are concerned, studies have demonstrated, for instance, that a woman’s choice of which men she says she finds “sexy” changes depending on how close she is to ovulation.

When close to ovulation, women tend to prefer the almost stereotypical tall, dark, rough-hewn guys, while selecting more round faced “nice guys” at other times. Women are also thousands of times more sensitive to musk-like odors than are men, which makes perfect sense when you think about it.

When it comes to studying romantic love, there is one person who stands out beyond all the rest. She is Helen Fisher of Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Dr. Fisher is a leader among the army of scientists who are studying the biological bases for romantic love.

Dr. Fisher has written two popular books on the subject, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love and The Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray. And in 2002, she published a landmark study on what is happening in the brains of people who claim they are head-over-heels in love. I cannot possibly do justice to her work here, but let me talk about Dr. Fisher’s theories on how human beings fall in love.

Dr. Fisher has proposed that human beings fall in love in three stages.

Stage one consists of simple and generic lust – that undifferentiated general sense of desire. Studies show that lust is mediated in the brain by the hormones testosterone and estrogen, with testosterone having been shown to play a large role in women. These hormones appear to function to get people out looking, so to speak.

The second stage is attraction to a specific person. This is that truly love-struck phase where each instant apart is a lifetime, where you call each other 20 times a day, and where you can’t eat, can’t sleep, and can think of nothing else. In the attraction phase, a group of neuro-transmitters called “monoamines” play an important role. These include dopamine; adrenalin’the chemical of fight or flight; and serotonin, which plays a role both in romantic love and depression – big surprise there, right?

Dopamine is the “reward” chemical and its production is what we are after when we desperately need to be with our beloved. It’s also the chemical that is made in bucket-loads when are brains are exposed to cocaine. Serotonin is the tricky one in that it can actually induce temporary insanity. Thus, many of the millions of people who do crazy things for love, who swim rivers naked, jump out of airplanes with friends to hold up gigantic signs of proposal while they parachute into a lover’s back yard, and all the other stuff you’ve ever heard about, many of those people may actually qualify as temporarily insane.

The third phase in Dr. Fisher’s scheme is called attachment and it involves becoming bonded with and attached to a specific person. It is marked by the sense of calm, peace, and stability one feels with a long-term partner and is driven by the brain chemicals oxytocin and vasopressin. Crazily enough, oxytocin and vasopressin seem to interfere with the production of dopamine and adrenalin, which is why the madness of the head-over-heels attraction phase fades as the attachment phase progresses – a finding that actually provides a basis for the otherwise cynical definition of love I quoted earlier as a type of insanity curable by marriage.

In fact, studies have shown that vasopressin is responsible for monogamy in a critter called the prairie vol. Once vasopressin is triggered in the brain of the prairie vol, that vol is faithful to its mate for life. Block the vasopressin and that very same vol becomes promiscuous. These are very powerful chemicals. Things are obviously much more complicated in humans – history teaches us that vasopressin does not work nearly as well in people as it does in prairie vols – but, Dr. Fisher nonetheless cautions that you should never mess around with somebody you do not want to fall in love with, because if you generate enough oxytocin and vasopressin, you very well might fall in love despite yourself.

As a result of her’s and others’ studies, Dr. Fisher has drawn the remarkable conclusion that romantic love is not actually an emotion like joy or sadness. Instead, she claims it is a motivation system, a drive, a need that compels people to go out and find a partner and is more akin to the need to eat than being happy or sad. Romantic love, the attraction phase, says Dr. Fisher, is an even stronger desire than simple lust. “People don’t kill themselves just because they don’t get sex,” she says. But they will and do kill themselves over failed romantic love adventures.

There is so much more going on in evolutionary biology, but I don’t have the time to go into even a fraction of it. What I will say is the discoveries of how deeply hard wired we are for lust, attraction, romantic love, and attachment are not a surprise to me. Put simply, reproduction is much too important to leave to the whims of consciousness and culture.

And it makes sense that humans would be subject to the same forces that other higher animals are since we share common ancestors and evolved together on this planet. Said another way, before there was consciousness, there was reproduction and all the drives and hard wiring that nature provided to insure the continuation of life. For the last handful of millennia perhaps, humans have been able to cogitate about love and sex and reproduction. But a million years ago, those things just had to happen for the species to continue and nature had to insure that they would by hard wiring in the proper mechanisms. And nature was obviously successful since we are all here today. Science has and continues to confirm that we have inherited those mechanisms and we call them romantic love.

My point in telling you all this is not to pretend to be able to fully explain

why or how we fall in love, or even the biological basis for romantic love. It’s much more complicated than this, of course. Rather, my point is to simply suggest that there is in fact a powerful biological basis for romantic love, that it matters, and we should openly and fearlessly take account of it in our lives.

But these revelations do not sit well with many people, who bristle at the

thought that humans might be subject to instincts, hard wired instructions, and that something as sacred in our culture as romantic love and all the trappings of courtship, marriage, and the like that go with it, might be the product of brain chemicals that mimic the actions of drugs. As unsettling as the scientific discoveries may be, I think the truth is that we humans are a natural part of the natural world and are certainly a product of evolutionary biology. But we are also conscious beings with the ability to make choices that either compliment or reject the signals, motivations, and desires that our DNA has made part of our experience of life.

This is why it is useful to think of ourselves as both a “what” and a “who”.

The what is the primate creature that Mother Nature created out of the raw materials of life and that is subject to the same laws, the same forces, and the same desires as the other higher level creatures on the planet.

The who is a relatively new entity, a conscious being who seemingly at least,

can make choices about how to proceed with existence and at present, seems to be a little bit confused about what life, the universe, and everything is supposed to mean. These two aspects of humanity coexist in one body. Both matter.

This is also the reason I think people are often confused when they ask the

question, “What is the meaning of life?” Life is a process that goes on all around us, has been going on for millions upon millions of years. Humans are included in the process of life, but so is a snail darter or an elephant or a wasp. So when we think of life in the broadest sense, it is clear that the purpose and meaning of life is survival, reproduction and all that goes with it.

But when they ask the question,”What is the meaning of life?”, many people use

the word “life” to substitute for consciousness and sentience. And that, as they say, is a very different question and not one I have any desire to tackle today. Well, actually, I will say this. Whatever purpose or meaning there is to human existence, as opposed to life generally, has to been created, invented as it were, which is the role of culture, religion, and other philosophical enterprises that seek to imbue our conscious existence with meaning. But the meaning of life itself, the purpose of life, that is clear: it is to survive, today, tomorrow, and always.

Up until thirty to fifty years ago, most educated people saw a human baby as a

tabula rasa, a clean slate upon which anything could be written without the pesky influences of instincts and other hard wired instructions, or drives. Virtually nobody who studies these things today thinks of a baby as a tabula rasa. That concept has been relegated to the same graveyard as phlogiston and the ether.

Having said that, I must emphasize that just how much has been pre-programmed

or hard wired and how powerfully is subject to debate, some of it fierce. Still, it is clear that we are born with hard wired drives, call them instincts, call them predispositions, call them an inborn style, but they are there. And probably the most powerful, the one that dominates so much of our lives, is the need for romantic love. Like every other creature on the planet, human beings modify their behaviors to accommodate those incredibly powerful desires – or as Willow says, “we all do the wacky.”

Can these drives and desires be overcome by the who that we are – our conscious

selves? Of course they can. People routinely choose to do behaviors that conflict with the urges and desires brought about by romantic love and its chemical addictions to a person. It happens all the time. It’s one of the things that distinguish us from insects and the rest of the animal world. A praying mantis will go ahead and get its head bitten off in exchange for the opportunity to mate. Even the most testosterone and dopamine driven man, however, is most likely to decline that offer.

But does the fact that we can control our behaviors mean we should not acknowledge the drives and desires that are making our lives both wonderful and miserable? Shall we pretend that we have conscious control of who -and what gender – we find attractive and that any feelings we experience that are not sanctioned by the dominant culture are to be labeled as sinful and wrong?

My answer is an emphatic no. I think it is time we looked at these feelings,

these desires, without embarrassment, without shame, without feeling defensive that we are, after all, the product of evolution and are children of the Earth as much as children of our conscious souls.

While the idea that romantic love is a hard wired mechanism might spoil some of our notions of romance, it is also liberating. I suggest that if people would let go of the notion of the tabula rasa, would let go of the notion that falling down the rabbit hole of romantic love is a conscious choice, and realize that all those powerful feelings and urges are perfectly natural and are deeply imbedded into the essence of our natural being, perhaps we could all relax a little and not be so harsh with each other and ourselves.

Moreover, once that admission is made and the feelings themselves brought out into the open without embarrassment, they are much easier to deal with. Suppressed feelings and desires have a way of growing in the dark, just like mushrooms, but tend to lose their almost preternatural hold on us once we put them in the light of day.

Preachers routinely, and for thousands of years, have taken nature to be sinful. Western culture definitely assigns passion to the dark side, the night side, the female side of life, the side that is opposed by the light of reason, the cold hard facts of rationality that is ruled by the day and the male sky god. But when you pull all of nature over into the side of sin, you degrade the deepest and most fundamental parts of what we are as living creatures and deny the

importance of millions of years of evolutionary biology.

Our behavior matters, of course, and I am not advocating or justifying rampant

infidelity and wackiness just because we are hard wired for romantic love and all the feelings and desires that go with it. But I do think our ancestors and our Western religions got it totally wrong. I think that the world being split into male and female with romantic love and sexual reproduction, however those drives and desires may manifest in any individual, creates most of the pure joy

and happiness we experience in life.

In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that when we accuse a young man or woman of being “superficial” because they are attracted to somebody because that person is beautiful or sexy, we’ve got it backwards. There’s nothing superficial about it; rather such attraction is one of the most deeply rooted aspects of our natural existence. It is not only not sinful, it is part of the very essence of the inherent meaning of life.

Let me conclude by reaffirming that Willow was absolutely right when she told Buffy “Love makes you do the wacky.” We understand why that is so just a little better now than our mothers and fathers and their mothers and fathers did, but the feelings, the desires, the power of love remain undiluted and are eternally ours. No matter the cultural spin we put on them, love, sex and reproduction are simply fundamental to us and our beings. We truly are born to love. It is our birthright, our purpose, our meaning, and our glory.


 Presented April 15, 2007

Revised for print

Copyright – 2007 by Jim Checkley

Your Heart Will Live Forever

© Jack Harris-Bonham

April 8, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and Mystery beyond all naming, we gather here today to celebrate the resurrection of life. What this resurrection means can be, and is, as varied as the people who go to make up this community. But encompassing them all is the notion that what was dead and useless has been sloughed off and a rebirth has begun. Let us be gentle with ourselves when we are rebirthing, bringing forth that which is new and different from ourselves. Let us find the wisdom to treat ourselves in these moments as we would treat a newborn child. Holding our newness gently let us rock back and forth and sing lullabies – songs that sooth the soul. And help us, Great Spirit within, to recognize when others are so engaged, when others are bringing forth from themselves a new way of being, a new way to amplify the glory of the Light that surrounds us all.

Some of us have figuratively been entombed in the rock hardness of our hearts. May that hardness melt away and may we emerge from our self-made tombs renewed with no sense of remorse, or regret. The harden-hearts of our past are past. We are new creatures in this moment and in this moment we celebrate the quite human ability to take to flights of fancy and return to earth changed creatures.

Bless all those here with the ability to see themselves new again. Give us all the willingness to let go of others so that they may change and grow, and above all forgive us for thinking that we’ve had it figured out years ago.

In the name of everything that is holy and that is, precisely, everything. Amen.

SERMON: Your Heart Will Live Forever

A Resurrection Twist

There is a Shinto temple in the southern end of Honshu Island – the biggest of the islands that go to make up Japan. Legend has it that it was first built in 4 BC, but probably the 7th Century is more like it. I say “first” built because when ever it was first built over 2000 years ago, or 1400 years ago it has been rebuilt every 20 years since that time. They don’t tear down the 20 year old shrine and build another one, they ritualistically dismantle it, then on an adjacent site it is rebuilt from entirely new materials, but following exactly the same ancient plans.

Is it the same shrine – the Ise Shrine or more commonly know in Japan as Jingu – “The Shrine” – is it the same shrine that exists today first built in the 7th Century? Or is it only a reproduction of the long-lost original building – oh, an exact reproduction no doubt – last rebuilt in 1993 – but still a reproduction?

In a similar manner each and every cell in our bodies is replaced every seven years. If you’re 49 years old – you’ve inhabited 7 totally different bodies, oh, each was an exact reproduction, but each was still a reproduction.

If at the age of 49 you’re fortunate enough to have your grandmother around like my wife, Viv, did when she was 49, then what exactly is it about you that your grandmother loves? In other words, what is it that’s stayed constant during those seven reproductions?

For the people of Japan the soul of the Ise Shrine centers around the fact that each time the Shrine is rebuilt it is built and used as a Shinto Shrine, the Shrine – Jingu!

No rich person bought it and lived in it, held dinner parties in it, raised children in it, died in it.

It was never used as a stable for a nobleman’s horses.

It was never used as an amusement park centering on the quaint past.

It is a shrine, a holy temple, and it always has been.

And what makes it a shrine is that Shinto priests maintain it, hold Shinto rites in it, clean it, protect it, and every 20 years lovingly dismantle it and build it anew; fresh, raw, pristine. Trees grown in the generation of its parent temple – trees nourished on rain that fell on the former temple, nourished by sunshine that also graced the former temple – these trees are used to rebuild the shrine. And then, somewhere between the dismantling and the completed reconstruction the soul of Ise, Jingu, is passed on.

So – what is it that your grandmother loved in you? What is it that makes you lovable? It’s probably not because you tripped grandma at the escalator, or took the biggest piece of her birthday cake, or kicked her cat.

Yes, you were grandma’s little girl, but even genes can’t force someone to love a brat!

You were grandma’s nice little girl.

When I was Pastor at the First Christian Church in Big Sandy, Texas for two years I attended a spring birthday party at the city park.

Lois Davis was there. She was my eldest parishioner at 86. When I was leaving the party she was sitting at a picnic table with a young lady in her mid-twenties. Lois introduced me to this young lady like she was the Queen of England – the young lady, not Lois. I could see the love that Lois held for her granddaughter and I could see the concern, love and affection that were coming from the granddaughter.

Buddhists do no believe in a permanent self. They see the apparition we call self as the mere resemblance of outward form recognized by memory.

The Buddhists see themselves as the Ise Shrine, rebuilt moment to moment.

Each time we identify with the appearance of self and turn inward as if there were a boundary between us and them – each occurrence of that diminishes our opportunities to join the stream of life that never ceases to flow and change around us.

Our clutching is like the desperate flailing of a drowning victim – demonstration of self – true!, but totally ineffective.

For the Buddhists making a splash is not what it’s all about. What matters is noiselessly entering the stream and being in flow.

This reminds me of a story that is told by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen in her book, Kitchen Table Wisdom. This is the story.

As an adolescent, I had a summer job working as a volunteer companion in a nursing home for the aged. The job began with a two-week intensive training about communication with the elderly. There seemed to be a great deal to remember and what had begun as a rather heartfelt way to spend a teenage summer quickly became a regimented set of techniques and skills for which I would be evaluated by the nursing staff. By the first day of actual contact, I was very anxious.

My first assignment was to visit a ninety-six-year-old woman who had not spoken for more than a year. A psychiatrist had diagnosed her as having senile dementia, but she had not responded to medication. The nurses doubted that she would talk to me, but hoped I could engage her in a mutual activity. I was given a large basket with glass beads of every imaginable size and color. We would string beads together. I was to report back to the nursing station in an hour.

I did not want to see this patient. Her great age frightened me and the words “senile dementia” suggested that not only was she older by far than anyone I had ever met, she was crazy, too. Filled with foreboding, I knocked on the closed door of her room. There was no answer. Opening the door, I found myself in a small room lit by a single window, which faced the morning sun. Two chairs had been placed in front of the window; in one sat a very old lady, looking out. The other was empty. I stood just inside the door for a time, but she did not acknowledge my presence in any way. Uncertain of what to do next, I went to the empty chair and sat down, the basket of beads on my lap. She did not seem to notice that I had come.

For a while I tried to find some way to open a conversation. I was painfully shy at this time, which was one of the reasons my parents had suggested I take this job, and I would have had a hard time even in less difficult circumstances. The silence in the room was absolute. Somehow it almost seemed rude to speak; yet I desperately wanted to succeed in my task. I considered and discarded all the ways of making conversation suggested in the training. None of them seemed possible. The old woman continued to look toward the window, her face half hidden from me, barely breathing. Finally, I simply gave up and sat with the basket of glass beads in my lap for the full hour. It was quite peaceful.

The silence was broken at last by the little bell, which signified the end of the morning activity. Taking hold of the basket again, I prepared to leave. But I was only fourteen and curiosity overcame me. Turning to the old woman, I asked, “What are you looking at?” I immediately flushed. Prying into the lives of the residents was strictly forbidden. Perhaps she had not heard. But she had. Slowly she turned toward me and I could see her face for the first time. It was radiant. In a voice filled with joy she said, “Why, child, I am looking at the Light.”

Many years later, as a pediatrician, I would watch newborns look at the light with that same rapt expression, almost as if they were listening for something.

A ninety-six-year-old woman may stop speaking because arterioscloerosius has damaged her brain, or she has become psychotic and she is not longer able to speak. But she may also have withdrawn into a space between the worlds, to contemplate what is next, to spread her sails and patiently wait to catch the light.

The heart that can catch the Light and live forever is equal to the soul of the Ise Shrine.

But it must be practiced. The shrine never stops being a shrine because it is filled with shrine activities.

The heart that never dies is the heart that is turned outward not towards the other as opposed to one’s self, but toward the other as one’s self.

In the 2nd Century AD the Catholic Church almost elected Valentinus as Pope. He came in second. Too bad, the Catholic Church and perhaps the face of Christianity itself would have been changed forever if the Gnostic Valentinus had filled the shoes of the fisherman.

Valentinus believed in resurrection from the dead, but it was a resurrection from the death of self-interest, selfishness, egoism. Those grasping around us – thieves, robbers, politicians, generals, presidents – they are the dead. They gather around themselves wealth, power and imagine that, that will keep death or anonymity at arm’s length or ease somehow the pain of their eventual disappearance.

How much better would it be to simply disappear each moment – disappear into breath, disappear into watchfulness, disappear into the non-anxious presence, disappear and be reborn as passers-by, reborn with the heart that never dies.

How can one fear a thing that will change nothing? How can death take from us that which we have already surrendered?

In the movie, The Last Samurai, Ken Watanabe plays a samurai who teaches a Union Officer, played by Tom Cruise, what Bushido – the way of the samurai warrior – is all about.

The movie is worth the ending of the film alone.

Watanabe is mortally wounded and dying on the battlefield. As he slumps into Tom Cruise’s arms he sees his life as one perfect moment after another perfect moment, fully lived, fully realized – the scene switches to cherry blossoms blowing from an orchard and the dying samurai whispers, “Each moment perfect – it’s – all – perfect.”

The 20th Century’s greatest Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich, summed up all his theology in one statement, “Ultimately, everything’s okay.”

The apostle Paul echoes similar thoughts when he says,

I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me – (Galatians 2:20a)

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? (1st Corinthians 15:55 KJV)

So why did your grandmother love you? Yeah, she saw a nice kid there, but also she saw herself there in you – the rebuilt temple – the home of the heart that never dies.

The Great Escape

© Jack Harris Bonham

April 1, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

Prayer

Mystery of many names, and mystery beyond all naming, today we’re going to talk about you – the mystery. Wanting to speak about profound secrets, and enigmas – things beyond human comprehension puts us in the rather embarrassing spot of having to wing it! May our wings be sturdy enough to buffet the winds of doubt, may we journey over the sea of profound inexplicability, and resting upon the mast of a fishing boat may we watch as odd forms are brought from the depths. May our spirits be like those in dreams as we watch, marvel, and do not fear that which is beyond reason.

It’s not knowledge that we seek this morning. We have knowledge, and ways of getting more. But rather it is an understanding of our place in the scheme of things that we intuit this morning. Give us the wisdom that goes beyond mere knowledge to that place in our hearts where we comprehend a peace that passes all understanding. It is that peace we look for, it is that peace that we desire, it is that peace that lures us into the unknown.

May we forgive ourselves for not being totally human. May our compassion override our sense and may we reach out even when we fear to do so. Franklin Delanor Roosevelt once said that all we have to fear is fear itself. But we fear love, we fear acceptance and rejection, we fear poverty, we fear the shame of growing old and out of control – the real question is what is it that we do not fear?

Sitting quietly, and letting our breath slow down may we land in a spot where the good and the bad are but names for preferences, may we sit as the rocks, immovable, constant, and always present. May our hearts grow to accept whatever it is that comes our way, and may we see in each instance a chance to simply be there.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

The Great Escape: The Baptism of Jesus

as Seen From the Viewpoint of Jesus, Himself

Matthew 4:1-11(NIV) Gospel of Judas 2:16-20

(Jesus said) “Let whoever is strong among you humans bring forth the perfect human and stand up and face me.” And they said, “We are strong!” But their spirits did not have the courage to stand up to face him – except Judas Iscariot. He was able to stand up to face him, even though he was not able to look him in the eyes, but turned his face aside.

(Translated by Karen L. King)

Introduction:

(Go out into the congregation and walk up and down looking at as many who will let you – return to the pulpit.)

I’m very happy to be here today.

I saw many things as I walked among you. The eyes are, after all, the windows of the soul.

My name is Judas Iscariot – and no, I am not the warm up act for Jesus. Jesus chose not to come here today. More of that later. Why, you might be wondering, am I here? Good question! I’m here because I was the favorite disciple, and I remain the favorite. It’s a long story.

Jesus knew and he still knows that he can count on me to tell the story, set the record straight, lay it out for you so that – perhaps – you’ll understand? There’s always the chance that you will not understand, or choose not to want to understand. That’s okay, many have not understood, many have gotten it wrong.

I know that I am expected to speak of Jesus? Baptism. Jesus, and I, we have spoken of this event many times. Each time, we seem to learn more. It’s as if the baptism itself were still going on, in some bizarre and timeless way. Like the baptism was a marriage and funeral of sorts, a ceremony of union with death and life that has lasted to this very day, this very hour, this very moment.

I’m very happy to be here today!

Once Jesus said to me, “Come and I will teach you about the things that no human will see. For there exists a great realm and a boundlessness whose measure no angelic race has comprehended.” [Jesus loved to speak in hyperbole.) He continued, “In it (the boundlessness) is the great invisible Spirit – the one whom no angelic eye has seen nor any inner thought of heart contained, nor has anyone called it by any name.”

(Gospel of Judas 10:1-4)

It’s like a Koan. The Great Invisible Spirit that no angelic eye has seen, so obviously, it’s not in heaven. The Great Invisible Spirit that no one’s heart has been able to imagine, so that it’s not of human origins. The Great Invisible Spirit that is beyond naming – mystery of many names, mystery beyond all naming.

I’m very, very happy to be here today!

When I was a boy, my friends and I used to play near the dunes where the Goat Lady lived. The Goat Lady was old, real old. There was a wrecked chariot in those dunes, and we boys imagined that the Goat Lady had once been the lover of the Roman Centurion who had wrecked the chariot and lost his life. She stayed now in the dunes, because it was the only place that had anything that still could remind the old woman of her lover, when he was in his prime, healthy, strong, vibrant, tanned and delicious. We, too, dreamed of a time when the Goat Lady had been young and beautiful.

Now, she herded a scrawny bunch of goats over these dunes, drank their milk and occasionally they said when a goat would meet with an accident and die, she’d cook its meat and eat its strength. Yet – no one could remember ever smelling the smoke of a goat meal. We boys knew why! She lived off the bodies of boys who had disappeared from their villages, and we were thrilled that in those dunes, we faced more than simply an old woman. We faced a fierce enemy – an old, evil one who lived off the flesh of young boys.

One afternoon we took some apples out into the dunes and ate them there. I grew sleepy and napped. I was awakened by the sound of laugher. Opening my eyes I expected to join in the fun, but instead I couldn’t move. I’d been buried up to my neck in the sand. My friends circled me chanting, “The Goat Lady’s coming! The Goat Lady’s coming!”

One of the boys keeping watch came running from the top of the dunes. His expression told everyone that what they chanted was true. She – was – coming.

They were gone before I could beg them to stay. I could hear the belled lead goat as it made its way toward me. I squirmed, I wriggled, nothing. My bowels moved and – I passed out.

When I awakened the sun was setting. I had been pulled from my grave. I had been cleaned up and was wearing a rough white robe. I remember wondering if I had died and gone to heaven, yet the hole was still beside me – the empty tomb!

I want you to know – from that day till this one – I have never been afraid – ever – well, almost never! I had been reborn, recast, remolded into something very much like me, but not quite me. It was as if I was this big energy – The Great Invisible Spirit – that now simply went by the name of Judas Iscariot.

The feeling didn’t last. You notice that. You feel great and think, this is the way it will always be – in love, fully invested, made in the shade, got your swerve on – but no, things change.

The mind that stops is the mind that dies. Latching onto something in our life, in our presence – stopping the mind to rest in the shade of good feeling – these are the things that rob us of our ability to simply – keep – going.

I’m so very happy to be here today!

Jesus, now, he had the mind of someone who could simply keep going. They stood around him, and they all had stones. There was that beautiful woman, still smelling of the bedchamber, and the eyes of the men – those eyes. They were looking for a victim, hell, they had found a victim, but they were feeling generous, hey, let’s share this adulterer with the new prophet – that weird one from Galilee – he won’t know what to do!

What would you do? The leaders of your community standing against a law breaker – an outsider – wanting you to light them up so that the disenfranchised can get what they deserve. It’s a lot of pressure.

But that Jesus, hey, man, what can I say? Never knew a man who knew human nature like that man. There they were with all those – rocks! The sheer enormity of them – a crowd full of rocks and strong arms, working arms, killing arms.

You know that saying “Can’t see the forest for the trees!” Well, they got it backwards; it’s really “Can’t see the tree for the forest.”

Jesus wasn’t worried about an arsenal of rocks, no; he was just worried about that first rock. Yeah. He knew, that’s the one that would be the hardest to throw, that first rock was more than simply a rock – that was a modeling rock, an expression of a throwing behavior and my friends, that’s all a mob wants is a model, give ’em a model – Sieg Heil! – and you can get them to do anything.

The blood of the genocides of every generation scream now from the rocks themselves, “We are innocent! We are innocent!”

Jesus? mind didn’t stop, you see, he bent down and drew on the ground. He doodled!

The fate of a young, healthy, sexy woman was at stake – she was so close he could smell her – and he doodled on the ground! You can’t fake that. That’s the stuff of legend. I was there, and I was armed and ready. Jesus, what a party pooper!

(Mocking voice) Let he who is without sin throw the first stone! Man, this guy could mess up a wet dream!

That one little sentence – Let he would is without sin throw the first stone – and all of a sudden it’s a rock dropping contest!

When I was a boy I used to pester the blacksmith in my village. Well, all we boys did. Fire and smoke – name me a boy who doesn’t want to play with fire and smoke. The blacksmith was always warning us, “You’re going to burn yourself. Be careful!”

One day I saw the most beautiful horseshoe, pretty and new, I picked it and dropped it.

“Burned yourself, didn’t you!?” came the blacksmith’s laughing retort.

“No,” I said, “it just don’t take me long to look at a horseshoe.”

Yeah, my mind bounces, too. Maybe that’s what attracted us to one another in the first place. Jesus and me.

He gave me power over the purse cause I could figure things in my head, and was good at business. He mocked me sometimes for thinking too much about money, and then that jerk Michael Angelo paints me clutching my purse and spilling the salt. Salt and money they were equals back then – one as precious as the other.

But Jesus knew. When the chips were down, when there was no one else to turn to, then he could turn to me. My mind could follow his, we could move together and I could see what he was driving at – at least part of it.

I did stand up to him. True, I couldn’t always look him in the eye, but I stood up when he needed someone to stand up. “Stand up, stand up, for Jesus you soldiers of the cross, lift high his royal banner, it must not suffer loss.”

He told me I’d be cursed for all time, and jokingly referred to me as, “The Thirteenth God of the Thirteenth Realm.” What a sense of humor, what a weird sense of humor. Jesus would have liked Austin – probably lived south of the river.

“Keep Jesus Weird!” That’s the bumper sticker I’m waiting to see.

I am so very, very happy to be here today.

Jesus knew the holy books and the holy stories. We didn’t call him Rabbi for nothing, ya know!

He talked of Ezekiel and the contest he had with the priest of Baal. Ezekiel challenged the priest of Baal to a sacrificing contest. The priests of Baal went first and to tell you the truth, I can’t remember how good their sacrifice was, cause no matter how good theirs was, that wasn’t the point.

The point was old Ezekiel was the man when it came to sacrifice and he had a deep and abiding faith in the one whose name we do not speak.

When the priests of Baal had finished with their meager sacrifice Ezekiel – what a showman! Ezekiel has buckets and buckets of water poured on the wood of the sacrifice, drenches it! Then, he calls down fire from heaven and wham-o! The altar is burned so completely, that there is nothing left of the sacrifice. Nothing! The crowd went wild! (Cheer into microphone)

But old Ezekiel he was just getting warmed up. He showed the crowd that there was absolutely nothing up his sleeves, and then – he called down fire upon the 400 priests of Baal – wham-o! – and it was like Hiroshima.

You’d think that Ezekiel would be pretty happy at this point – sort of like Evil Kenevil jumping the Grand Canyon and not getting hurt.

But no, Ezekiel went away by himself right after that. He went into the wilderness and hid in a cave, and didn’t eat for days. He sat there listening for the voice of the one whose name we do not speak, waiting for a comforting word from his Lord and Master.

The wind blew mightily outside the cave and at first Ezekiel thought he heard the voice of Lord in the wind, but then realized you could hear whatever you wanted to hear in the wind. A storm came along, and there was lightning and thunder and Ezekiel listened carefully for the voice of the Lord. But the voice of the Lord was not in the wind; not in the storm. But after the storm, when the quietness of evening settled on the cave and the dancing firelight images made their way across the cave walls that’s when Ezekiel heard the voice of the Lord. The still small voice.

The still small voice – is still small. It’s not in the stock market – not on the World Wide Web – not on your cell phone. It’s in the quiet. It’s in the silence. It’s in the gaps.

Jesus heard the voice of the wind, but it wasn’t the voice of God. Satan has been called the Prince of the Power of the Air. The Prince of the Power of the Air what a nice way to call someone a bullshitter!

And what did Satan say? “Hungry Jesus, well, you’re the son of God, command these stones to become bread!” But the voice of the Lord was not in the wind, not in the air, not in the prince of the power of the air. Jesus said, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Then Satan took Jesus up to the highest point of the temple in Jerusalem – now Jesus swears he didn’t eat for forty days, but it sound to me like he might have stumbled onto some mushrooms! What do you think? So there he is with Satan standing on the pinnacle of the Temple, and Satan says, “Throw yourself down, for it is written he will give his angels charge over him, and will not allow him to strike his foot against a stone.”

Jesus felt the adrenaline. Sure. Standing way up there his feet itching, he could feel the wind tugging at his clothes, as he did a swan dive into the hands of God.

But the Lord wasn’t in the adrenaline, and Jesus said, “Do not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”

So now Satan took Jesus to door number three; the highest mountain in all the world and showed him all the storming activity of mankind, the hustle and the bustle, the moving and the shaking, the glitter and the gold, Jesus could have it all for a simple nod in Satan’s direction.

But the voice of the one whose name we do not speak – the Great Invisible Spirit – was not in the storming of humankind

And Jesus said, “You don’t hook me, Satan. My mind sees you, acknowledges the power of evil in the world, and moves on. I’m not stuck in evil.” We are here to serve the still small voice. If you can’t hear it, how can you serve it?

Listen. (pause) The still small voice is still small.

I am so very happy to be here today.

The Romans were getting tired of the trouble Jesus was causing. They and the Jewish leaders. It was Passover and they just wanted the festivals to go on without a hitch. Tempers were high and the crowd was involved.

They hallelujahed when Jesus entered Jerusalem and now their voices were vicious, rapacious, sanguine.

Pilate offered Barbaras, but the crowd would have none of that. They had raised him up and they could take him down.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Jesus knew that if he weren’t careful, the group he’d gathered about him, those called his disciples, would be dispersed before he could show them his best prophetic trick. We all need our audience – his twelve and the others who are rarely mentioned. Perhaps they gathered for the last time there in Jerusalem?

He pulled me aside. He told me what to do. I was to tell them – the authorities – where he would be that night – in the Garden – surrounded by sleeping followers.

He told me, he said, “As for you, you will surpass them all. For you will sacrifice the human being who bears me. Already your horn is raised up, your anger is full, your star has passed by, and your heart has prevailed.”

(Judas 15: 4-8)

I turned him in. It was a betrayal – of sorts. Without me, there would have been no Road to Emmaus. Without me, there would have been no surprises in the Upper Room! Without me he couldn’t have shown them the trick – the secret behind it all. “Pay no attention to the Spirit behind the curtain.”

Conclusion:

You know my reward. It has been written that I hanged myself, but the truth is, they stoned me. And I don’t mean they took me behind the stable and shared a Doobie with me. No, they picked up stones – maybe the same ones that had been dropped earlier, ya think? And the modeling came easy. They’d run off and not seen Jesus crucified, but they’d seen others crucified. The modeling came compliments of the state, and their anger turned those stones into a which stone can be thrown first contest. They sent me into the Spirit world.

And it is from the Spirit world with the breath of Spirit that I speak today.

Jesus has left the building!

In other words?

“You can kill the protestors, but you can’t kill the protest!”

I’m so very glad to be here today.

As I walked around among you this morning I found what I was looking for. I saw it there in the meeting of our eyes. Spirit recognizing Spirit. And the still small voice though still small, has many listening and some even understanding.

You don’t need to believe this. It’s not demanded. Really nothing is demanded. It’s all quite all right, just like it is.

Some day the human being who bears you will be sacrificed. It’s true. Already your horn has been raised up, your anger full, your star has passed by, and your heart – your heart will prevail. I just know it.

Amen, and again, I say, Amen.

Animal Stories, Part 8- Our Subversive Streak of Hope

© Davidson Loehr

March 18, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER:

We pray not to something,

but from something,

to which we must give voice;

not to escape from our life, but to focus it;

not to relinquish our mind, but to replenish our soul.

We pray that we may live with honesty:

that we can accept who we are, and admit who we are not;

that we don’t become so deafened by pride and fear

that we ignore the still small voices within us,

that could lead us out of darkness. We pray that we can live with trust and openness:

to those people,

those experiences,

and those transformations that can save us from narrowness and despair.

And we pray on behalf of these hopes with an open heart, an honest soul,

and a grateful reverence for the life which has been given to us.

AMEN.

SERMON: Animal Stories, Part 8: Our Subversive Streak of Hope

The abiding religious questions are Who am I really? and How should I live? All religions have tried to express profound answers to these two questions that define us in grand, even mythic, terms. We have a Buddha-seed within us that wants to grow. We are children of God, the latest reincarnation of Life’s longing for itself, the sons and daughters of the universe, made of stardust, and so on. In other words, we are fundamentally precious, part of an infinite reality, embraced by symbols like the Buddha, God, Life and the universe.

And the way we should live follows from that. Religions teach that we should live in ways that are worthy of our most deep and noble identity. We should see ourselves as integral parts of all life, and walk in paths of compassion, love for all, gratitude for being here, and all the rest of the lovely poetry long used to welcome us into a larger identity, into the hopefully useful and even necessary story of whatever religious community we have claimed.

The argument behind this series of sermons on “animal stories” is that in some ways, religions are just too new to offer many deep or accurate pictures of who we really are or how we should live. The gods involved in today’s world religions were only created a few thousand years ago. The deeper story is the story of life itself, the life that produced us along with millions of other species, the life that links us biologically, genetically, and emotionally.

And we are deeply related to other life. We share traits like our territoriality, desire for dominance and sexual jealousy with snakes, separated from us by 150 million years of evolution. We share the tender care of our young with crocodiles, who were here 200 million years ago – over 125 million years before mammals even evolved. And we show other fundamental traits like empathy, compassion, and a sense of fairness with other species covering over a hundred million years of evolutionary time in the story of life.

That reverence for life, that gentleness with the vulnerable ones for whom we feel responsible – these things are older than the gods. We are on an evolutionary continuum with other animals, and they share so many of our most fundamental traits.

Like us, for example, other animals express joy in play. One author writes of how he once saw a young elk in Rocky Mountain National Park running across a snow field, jumping and twisting, stopping to catch his breath, then repeating the whole exercise with boundless energy. And buffaloes have been known to rush onto ice fields and slide, like children on icy sidewalks, bellowing with the simple fun of it. (Mark Bekoff, The Smile of a Dolphin, p. 114) Others have observed ravens flying to the top of a snowy hill, sliding down it on their bellies, then flying up and doing it again. And penguins have been filmed sliding down snowy hills on their bellies, then waddling up to the top, and standing in line to wait their turn to slide down again.

Even rats love to be tickled at the nape of their neck, and become especially fond of hands that tickled them, but not particularly interested in hands that just pet them. (Mark Bekoff, The Smile of a Dolphin, p. 146) Running, leaping, wrestling, chasing objects or one another or their own tails, animals at play are the very symbols of the unfettered joy of life. (Mark Bekoff, The Smile of a Dolphin, p. 114)

Those studying animals have said for many years that chimpanzees are our closest relative, and the most like us. When it comes to how they practice politics, that’s true, as I tried to show last week.

But recently, scientists who study the behavior of animals including us have said that we are equally closely related to the lesser-known ape the bonobo. And we may be closer than that. It has now been found that a particular piece of DNA that is involved in social affiliation and bonding is present in humans, and is present in bonobos, but it’s absent in the chimpanzee. So we share a particularly important piece of DNA with the bonobo that the chimp doesn’t have, which may indicate the bonobo is more similar to the common ancestor we share with both chimpanzees and bonobos, six to eight million years ago. (Frans de Waal, “The Last Great Ape,” PBS airdate 13 February 2007)

While bonobos and chimps look a lot alike to those unfamiliar with them, they are also deeply different.

As Frans de Waal, one of the foremost experts on chimps and bonobos, has said, “I do not wish to offend any chimpanzees, but bonobos do have more style.” (Frans de Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates, p. 175)

In everything they do, they resemble us. A complaining youngster will pout his lips like an unhappy child or stretch out an open hand to beg for food. In the midst of their lovemaking, a female may squeal with pleasure. And at play, bonobos utter coarse laughs when their partners tickle their bellies or armpits. “There is no escape, we are looking at an animal so akin to ourselves that the dividing line is seriously blurred.” (Frans de Waal, Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape, p. 1)

In some ways, they even seem more advanced. Among bonobos, there’s no deadly warfare, little hunting, no male dominance, and enormous amounts of sex. If the chimpanzee is our demonic face, the bonobo must be our angelic one. Bonobos make love, not war. They’re the hippies of the primate world. (Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape, p. 30) The French call them “Left Bank Chimps.” And some scientists who work with them have been overheard leaving work on Friday saying, “we’re gonna bonobo tonight!”

While male chimpanzees sometimes inflict serious or even fatal injuries on a female, for a male bonobo to bite a female is just not done. (Bonobo, p. 41) When the alpha male charges at the alpha female, she usually completely ignores him. (Frans de Waal, Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape, p. 60) This could be unthinkably dangerous or suicidal in chimpanzees. And she is dominant when it comes to food. They even fight differently than chimps. Whereas chimps fight by pulling an opponent close and biting him, bonobos tend to fight with well-placed kicks. Kung fu apes.

Chimpanzees would not hesitate to tear monkeys apart and eat them. Bonobos have actually been groomed by monkeys, and bonobos don’t consider them prey – though they do sometimes treat them as toys, tossing them. (Frans de Waal, Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape, p. 65)

Whereas male chimpanzees will sometimes kill the infants of other chimpanzee males and even eat them, there is no recorded infanticide or cannibalism in bonobos. (Frans de Waal, Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape, p. 121)

If there is such a thing as bonobo politics, it more than likely revolves as much around females as around males. (Frans de Waal, Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape, p. 74)

Bonobos don’t even kiss like chimps. A new zookeeper, unfamiliar with sexual encounters of the bonobo kind, once accepted a kiss from a bonobo male named Kevin. (Chimpanzees will often give you lip smacks on your face.) Suddenly, he felt Kevin’s tongue in his mouth! The habit of French-kissing is one of the striking differences between the bonobo’s impassioned eroticism and the somewhat boring, functional sex of the chimpanzee. Chimpanzees show few variations in the act, and most of their adult sex is connected with reproduction. Bonobos perform every conceivable variation with both the same and opposite sex, as if following the Kama Sutra. Their sex life is mostly for pleasure and bonding, largely divorced from reproduction. (Frans de Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates, p. 199)

To oversimplify, chimpanzees and bonobos are like the two wolves I talked about earlier. We have these two wolves inside of us, both fighting to control us. One says, “Fight, Hurt, Take!” The other wolf says, “Help, Care, Love!” Both the tendencies of chimpanzees and bonobos are inside of us, part of our deep evolutionary heritage. They are like the angels of our better and worse natures, or the picture of an angel standing by one ear and a devil standing by the other, each – like the two wolves – trying to control us. And the one that wins is the one we feed, the one we listen to.

There are ways in which bonobos embody some of our highest ideals of egalitarianism, peace and an unfettered enjoyment of life’s pleasures better than any human society in history has ever done. One of the traits present in chimpanzees that bonobos have raised to a very high level is social expectations.

This business of social expectations is one of our most subversive and hopeful streaks, and you can trace its growth very neatly through rhesus monkeys, chimpanzees, bonobos, and our own species.

With rhesus monkeys, there is an absolute rigid hierarchy. When there is food, the alpha male feeds first, and no one else eats until he approves. There are almost no social expectations that can subvert the powerful hierarchy – though again, rhesus monkeys are considered the nastiest of all 200 species of primates. In chimpanzees, the alpha male also controls food, but nowhere nearly as well because many others expect a fair share. And in bonobos, the females control the food, and share with everyone – except, sometimes, the alpha males.

Scientists measure dominance through access to food, because food is the “currency” of most animals, what matters most. In our species, food has been replaced by money, the symbolic paper we use to store the potential for buying food and other things.

Human history shows that we’re like the chimps, and in bad times more like the rhesus monkeys, in the selfishness and ruthlessness with which our alpha people – usually males – control access to money and food. Unlike the rhesus and chimps who use physical violence, we enslave our most powerless people through measures like tax breaks for the rich, laws preventing relief of debts through bankruptcy, U.S. workers made to compete with 3rd world workers, corporate lobbyists owning shares in politicians, and so forth.

This isn’t evolution; it’s devolution, with a selfishness more like rhesus monkeys than even chimpanzees. Our use of language and mass media have let the strong and clever disempower and control the weak on a far greater scale than in any ape species, as I tried to show a few weeks ago in the story of “My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean.”

I could go on with this picture, fleshing it out in a dozen directions, but you see the general outlines, and can flesh it out for yourselves. we’re a mixed bag, born with all it takes to become either good or evil, free, enslaving or enslaved. So really, just what can we do?

First, we need to be realistic. We need to stop mesmerizing ourselves with words like peace and justice, as though we will ever live in a world defined by them. Both human history and animal biology teach us that politics are controlled by the power and alliances that characterize both chimpanzee politics and our own. Words like peace and justice are the anesthetic lullabies sung by politicians the world over to numb us to the way the world is really being run. If real peace is to exist, it must exist along with our ambitions, greed, pride, and our hatreds. (Frans de Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates, p. 22) There won’t be peace until a power structure is established, and it will only last until new alliances can challenge that power structure. Carrying ourselves away with utopian visions of perfect peace and justice can make the “perfect” the enemy of the possible. And the possible states of peace and justice, always imperfect and transient, can happen only through having the skill to form alliances with enough power to subvert whatever alpha structure happens to be in place.

And while some people love the vague idea of ‘speaking truth to power,” it seems clear from the study of both chimpanzee and human politics that those with power simply believe that power can trump truth, as it also trumps fairness and justice. we’re better off speaking our truths to the powerless, in the hope they can make a foundation our of them on which to stand and act.

But what can we hope for, in our lives and in our world, and why?

This list could also be very long, but I’ll limit it to just a few ideas.

Framing ourselves in an evolutionary context is helpful because we’re now at a stage where our cultural changes happen far too fast for evolution to react to. From here on out, we will have to help complete our evolution from apes to truly wise and humane people through the education of our minds and – especially – our hearts. The real bases of empathy, compassion, justice and peace are primarily emotional, not rational.

We can do this as we always have, through educating ourselves through the high ideals we have exalted in the best myths, fairy tales, admonitory stories, religions, or some of the animal stories I’ve shared with you. These teachings are the means by which we complete our evolution. We are such a transitional creature. we’re not a very good ape, and not terribly humane or wise either. If a truly sapient and humane species is to evolve from us, we will have to help it through shaping our education, behavior and culture in ways that honor the best of our animal history and our human aspirations.

But can education really reshape who we are and how we behave? Can thinking differently change the brain? It sounds like really foofy New Age hokum. But here’s where animal stories and modern neuroscience may be joining hands to say, Yes: foofy or not, it looks scientifically true.

Frans de Waal tells of an experiment he did where he put a community of stump-tail monkeys in with a community of rhesus monkeys.

Not only are stump-tails a slightly larger species, they are very tough beneath their gentle temperament; the rhesus must have sensed this fact. So, with the rhesus clinging in a fearful huddle to the ceiling of the room, the stump-tails calmly inspected their new environment. After a couple of minutes some rhesus dared to threaten the stump-tails with harsh grunts. If it was a test, they were in for a surprise. Whereas a rhesus would have fought or fled, the stump-tails simply ignored them. They did not even look up. For the rhesus, this was perhaps their first experience with dominant companions who did not react with physical threats or violence. In the course of the experiment the rhesus learned this lesson a thousand times over. Whereas mild aggression was common, physical violence and injuries were virtually absent; friendly contact and play soon became the dominant activities in this mixed group of monkeys. Not only that; after having lived with stump-tails, the rhesus reconciled more easily. Initially, they made up after fights as seldom as is typical of their species; but gradually they approached the high rate of their tutors, until they reconciled exactly as often as the stump-tails. Even after the stump-tails had been removed and the rhesus were left to interact among themselves, they maintained this newly acquired pacifism. [And they taught it to the next generation of their offspring.] Like chemists altering the properties of a solution, we had infused a group of monkeys of one species with the ‘social culture” of another. (Frans de Waal, Good-Natured, pp. 179-180)

Rather than a blind process, primate reconciliation is a learned social skill, sensitive to the social setting, and used as an instrument to preserve precious ties. (Frans de Waal, Good-Natured, p. 181)

This is a remarkable experiment, using monkey culture to change natural and innate behavior.

And another recent series of experiments seem to offer even stronger hope. These were done both with monkeys and monks. Buddhist monks.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an essay by Sharon Begley, condensed from her new book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (2007). Thirty years ago, what she is saying would really have been considered the flakiest of New Age hooey. But now some of the sciences have caught up, and it can be presented as cutting-edge neuroscience.

The gist of this is that there are some well-controlled scientific experiments to show that learning to think differently changes some structures and active circuits in our brain.

First, she cites an experiment with monkeys in 1993. “Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, rigged up a device that tapped monkeys” fingers 100 minutes a day every day. As this bizarre dance was playing on their fingers, the monkeys heard sounds through headphones. Some of the monkeys were taught: to Ignore the sounds and pay attention to what you feel on your fingers, because when you tell us it changes we’ll reward you with a sip of juice. Other monkeys were taught: Pay attention to the sound, and if you indicate when it changes you’ll get juice.

“After six weeks, the scientists compared the monkeys” brains. Usually, when a spot on the skin receives unusual amounts of stimulation, the amount of cortex that processes touch expands. That was what the scientists found in the monkeys that paid attention to the taps: The somatosensory region that processes information from the fingers doubled or tripled. But when the monkeys paid attention to the sounds, there was no such expansion. Instead, the region of their auditory cortex that processes the frequency they heard increased.

“Through attention, UCSF’s Michael Merzenich and a colleague wrote, “We choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work, we choose who we will be the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form on our material selves.””

“The discovery that neuroplasticity cannot occur without attention has important implications. If a skill becomes so routine you can do it on autopilot, practicing it will no longer change the brain. And if you take up mental exercises to keep your brain young, they will not be as effective if you become able to do them without paying much attention. (Sharon Begley, Wall Street Journal, Jan 19, 2007: p. B1)

The experiments with monks were even more interesting. The Dalai Lama, who has been interested in their area for over fifteen years, provided eight Buddhist monks who each had done over 10,000 hours of meditation, and a group of novices who had had just a crash course in meditating. One by one, they went to the laboratory set up at the University of Wisconsin, got their heads wired up to record all the different brain waves they were generating, and they began a form of meditation where they focused on unlimited compassion and loving kindness toward all living beings.

As they began meditating, the level of gamma waves rose. These are associated with perception, problem-solving and an inclusive kind of consciousness: in a word, compassion. The monks” gamma waves were much stronger than those of the beginners, as you might expect.

But the surprise came when they stopped meditating. Among the monks, there was no drop in the gamma waves. Their brains remained attuned to inclusive and compassionate attitudes toward all living things. And the more hours of meditation a monk had had, the stronger and more enduring were the gamma waves.

Thinking can change the structure and circuitry of the brain.

A lot of this is saying what liberals have been saying for a long time: that educating ourselves with high ideals can shape or reshape our character. That’s what the Greeks said 2500 years ago, and their insights founded the whole history of humanities and liberal arts education in Western civilization. What biology adds is that we’re not swimming upstream. These nobler traits of empathy, compassion and justice are also hard-wired in us, and we share them with apes, wolves, dolphins, elephants and a thousand other species. Our nature is or can be fundamentally good, and some of its roots go a hundred million or more years deep.

That’s what we have always used our best myths, folk tales and religious teachings for. Today, when just over 20% of our society attends any religious services regularly, a growing number of people don’t have the time or interest to get a deep education in the best of the world’s mythology. But without using any myths at all, simply understanding our place in the animal stories that are part of the story of life can educate us to our larger identity and larger responsibility, probably better than any religion ever has.

So one real-world answer to what we can do comes from remembering what the liberal style of Western civilization has been saying for 2500 years, since the Greeks first taught that to make noble people we must mold them in the form of our very highest, most inclusive and empathic values – much like the monks have done.

We find them in religions of deeds, not creeds, behavior, not belief. And the quality of our vision is to be judged by how we treat “the least among us,” as Jesus said. I could end with those words attributed to Jesus, but when he said that, he only meant humans, and that is not a big enough vision any more. We need a bigger connection to a bigger and more inclusive picture of life.

So instead I’ll end with the much larger vision of Hinduism’s Mahabharata. The Mahabharata, which may have been composed as early as 2,500 to 3,000 years ago, is about twelve times as long as the bible. It, combined with another book called the Ramayana, contains the stories that are at the core of Hinduism.

And the final story, the very last words of the giant Mahabharata, is a story about a dog, which seems a fitting end to a sermon series on animal stories.

A great emperor, at the end of his reign, has set off on a final trek north, toward the Himalayas. He is accompanied by four people. A small pariah dog attaches himself to the group as well. Slowly, every member of this royal troupe dies along the way. The emperor and the dog continue their journey alone. Eventually they reach the end of their voyage, and are at the gates of heaven. Indra, the King of the Gods, comes to greet the emperor in a golden chariot. He invites him to climb into the chariot and accompany him in regal and godly splendor into heaven.

The emperor replies: “This dog, O Lord of the Past and the Present, has been a constant and faithful companion to me. He should go with me. My heart is full of compassion for him.”

The King of Gods says to him: “Immortality equal to mine, O King, prosperity extending over all the earth, renown and all the joys of heaven have you won today. Leave the dog. There is nothing cruel in this.”

The emperor says: “O God of a thousand eyes, O you of righteous behavior, I have always behaved righteously. It is hard now to perpetrate an act that is unrighteous. I do not wish for wealth for whose sake I must abandon one that is devoted to me.”

Indra says: “There is no place in heaven for persons with dogs. Besides, the gods take away all the merits of such persons. Think about this, O King of the righteous. Abandon the dog. It is not cruelty.” (205)

The emperor tells the King of the Gods: “I will in no circumstances abandon this dog now to achieve happiness for myself.”

The King of the Gods tries to convince him one last time: “If you give up the dog, you will acquire the world of heaven. You have obtained heaven through your very own deeds. You have already abandoned everything else. How can you be so confused as not to give up a mere dog?”

The emperor still refuses, saying he will not abandon this dog, this mutt, this pariah mongrel who has remained faithful to him.

At that point, the dog reveals himself to be none other than the God of Righteousness himself, an incarnation of the great god Vishnu. At last, the emperor has passed the final test and is admitted into the company of the gods. (Jeffrey M. Masson, Dogs Never Lie About Love, p. 206-207)

He was admitted into the company of the gods, which means he achieved his own most divine nature, by hearing the voices of the angels of his better nature, brought alive in him by a dog, by feeding the right wolf, by rising to the heights of human nature rather than sinking into its depths.

The point of all these animal stories is the same as the point of the best religious myths and folk tales: that we are inherently good enough to become the kind of people and create the kind of world of which we and the people we most admire can be proud. We don’t need anything added to us to do this. We have what we need within us, if we will be open to being transformed by it.

Once in awhile, this truth even comes through in Western religion, as in this passage from the book of Deuteronomy:

“Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, New Revised Standard Version)

The words are in our hearts as they are in the heart of a gorilla who saves a 3-year-old boy who fell into her enclosure; or a bonobo who saved a bird, a hippo who saved a small antelope or all the other animal stories we”ve heard. The message to love one another, to reach out and make a positive difference in the world around us, is almost infinitely older than the gods. It is a call that comes from the heart of life itself, and from the yearnings of our own hearts.

We have a call waiting. It’s our move.

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This version has been expanded by about 1400 words from the version delivered in the sermon on 18 March 2007, including an extra story or two, and longer more detailed versions of other stories.