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© Jack Harris-Bonham

July 29, 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, this morning we wish to think about and discuss the possibility that we are whole and complete right now, right this moment.

This morning we wish to let go of the burden of self-improvement, realizing that all that self-help minutia is but an attempt for authority to tell us once again, that we’re not right, we’ve never been right, and we’d better get with the program to get right.

Hogwash! There isn’t a thing we need that we don’t have right now. Thinking that we lack something is simply the ability of our own minds to imagine that there’s something out there that will be better than whatever it is inside here. The grass is always greener is in fact propaganda of the advertising moguls. The truth is the grass is always grass. Our lives look different to us because we are into judgment and we see in others the chance that their lives are not tangled skeins, but the truth is if we were able to walk in their shoes and really be them, we would be looking back at ourselves thinking how together we seem now that we’re the other.

The problem is we’re looking to be served when in truth we need to be looking for opportunities to serve. Monty Newton traveled to Nicaragua this past week as a birthday present to himself.

No, he did not travel to a remote resort where he sat in wicker rockers with tall drinks garnished with umbrellas. No, Monty traveled to a small village where with a group of other spiritually minded people they dug a well for a village. And the emails that he sent back to Nell, Lulu and Henry although garbled by the non-familiarity of the Spanish keyboards were, none the less, filled with a renewal of spirit that is taking place in Monty because he knows what Gandhi knew to serve is to rule.

Forgive us, Great Spirit, as we seem to spend the majority of our time worried about who’s going to give us our next jolly. Forgive us for stopping at the traffic light and NOT giving that dollar to that homeless person – “Oh, they’re just going to spend it on alcohol,” we think, but what we’re really saying is that if we were homeless we’d take the opportunity to lose ourselves in booze.

Now lift us up Great Spirit and help us realize that the majority of problems in our lives are self-created and can be self-cured. In truth the self that we hope to improve is non-existent. We are all simply witnesses of this life, and all the trauma and drama of our lives, is nothing more than adult temper tantrums that we’re not being pleased, not being fed what we think we need. Wake up! We’ve got it all and always have.

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

Amen.

Reading

James Agee, A Death in the Family

On the rough wet grass of the backyard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there. First we were sitting up, then one of us lay down, and then we all lay down, on our stomachs, or on our sides, or on our backs, and they have kept on talking. They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than me, quiet, with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds.

By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of night. May god bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.

After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me to her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.

Sermon:

Introduction:

I have been married a total of three times. I jokingly say that my first marriage was a started marriage, but the truth is there is a part of me that still loves, very dearly, the mother of my only son, Ian.The first marriage lasted 5 years, and the second one lasted 12 – six drunken and six sober. The sober ones were great. I have been married a third, and hopefully final time for twenty years so far.

There is a sense in which I have wanted the women I lived with to tell me who I am – but (they) will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but (they) will not ever tell me who I am.

The notion of romantic love that suffuses this culture and many other cultures, clouds our vision when it comes to what love is, what it can be, and who exactly it is that is playing this love game. We are encouraged to imagine that we will find a partner in this life who is a soul mate, someone who will be the other half of us, someone who will complete us in some mystical manner.

I see this in the faces of the young couples who come to talk to me about getting married. I hear this in the vows they write each other, and again I hear it repeated openly to relatives and friends at the ceremony. Yet, I don’t have the heart to even attempt to tell them something that rightfully they can only learn by living it.

Romantic love is not an aberration, it is merely the species guaranteed way to get us to reproduce and keep the species going. Romantic love is part of growing up, and those who don’t get past it, often fall victim to its seductive lure, it’s ability to make us think that the right man, the right woman is right around the next corner, and that we can’t give up on the chance that we will be fulfilled.

Between my second and third marriages I was actually single for a whole two years – hey it beats the two weeks I was single between the first and second marriages! I had moved from Tallahassee, Florida to Dallas, Texas when my plays started being done at Theatre Three in Dallas. I spent the first year in Dallas taking the Greyhound bus back and forth between Dallas and Tallahassee a total of seven times. During the first summer of our divorce I went back to Tallahassee and spent time with my daughter, Isabelle. I was staying with her mother and her girlfriend sleeping on the couch of a very big homemade home at the Tallahassee Land Coop. The founder of Mad Dog Builders had built the home and it was a wood frame that had three stories and a large screen-in porch on the front. Out in the woods west of town, it was serene and beautiful with the Spanish moss hanging from the Live Oaks and small dirt roads that wound around the beginning of the Hippie Culture as it began to acquire money.

One night sleeping on that couch I dreamed that I met my Anima. I’d been reading a lot of Carl Justav Jung and was intrigued by the idea that we each have the male and female parts of the psyche; it’s just that most of us never realize it. I don’t remember what she looked like, but her name was Amanda.

In the morning I found one of those baby-naming books and looked up Amanda. “Worthy of Love,” it said, so that’s what Amanda meant – “worthy of love.”

I thought it was interesting that in a house dominated by women – my second wife’s girlfriend had three daughters and then there was my own daughter Isabelle. I was the only male there in a house of juveniles and lesbians. I imagined on some level that it had been some sort of defense to actually have identified and met my feminine side in such an unbalanced situation. I thought that she had come to the surface of my consciousness to introduce herself, then simply to slip back below into the waters of oblivion. How very mistaken I was.

An irresistible force is a force that impinges upon us without us even being aware of it. Such was the case with Amanda. She had surfaced and she wasn’t going away.

It wasn’t that I changed immediately, that would have brought my attention to her presence, it was more like she insinuated herself into the place where Jack had stood, and now there were two of us, Amanda and Jack – both comfortable in the same body, both with their own agendas, and only so many hours in the day.

Jung said, “The discussion of the sexual problem is the somewhat crude beginning of a far deeper question, namely, that of the psyche of human relationships between the sexes.” It just might be that the relationship between the sexes is something that happens right inside of us.

In Chinese philosophy and especially the I-Ching we have the possibility of representing this relationship between the sexes with the yin/yang principle. Within the Yin/yang design the large part of the yang is supported by the thinner yin element, and the larger part of the yin is being intruded upon by the thin probing line of the yang. Each blending into the other so that the greatest strength of one is actually the beginning of the next. Go too far in the yang direction and you end up in yin territory, too far yin and you’re right back into the yang.

In Jung’s Foreword to the Richard Wilhelm translation of the I-Ching he reminds us that “The Chinese mind – seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspects of events. What we call coincidence seems to be the chief concern of this peculiar mind, and what we worship as causality passes almost unnoticed. We must admit that there is something to be said for the immense importance of chance. An incalculable amount of human effort is directed to combating and restricting the nuisance or danger represented by chance.”

In a dream I chanced upon a meeting with a hypothetical part of myself known in Jungian terms as the Anima.To sleep, per chance to dream – aye, there lies the rub.

In Italian “anima” means ‘soul’, in musical notation it appears in the phrase ‘con anima,’ meaning that the music should be played ‘with soul.’

It’s a chance occurrence that I should find the meaning of this Italian word, but it would seem to suggest that a man who lives without acknowledging his “anima” or feminine side would, in fact, be a man who was without a soul and what would a life sans anima be, but a life played without soul.

It’s possible that the whole romantic love thing is really the acting out in public of a drama that should be happening on the inside. Men and women are looking for their other halves out there, in the world the very place where their other half only exists in projections of the inner other halves. In the song, Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell sings, “I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down and still somehow its clouds illusions I recall, I really don’t know clouds at all.”

I’m thinking now of the James Agee piece that I read at the beginning of this sermon. I see the family lying on their backs with the summer clouds billowing overhead. Anyone who’s ever done this knows that the next step is seeing the configurations of the clouds as they resemble different animals, objects and shapes. But the shapes are in motion, moving, roiling up there at 30,000 feet and as fast as we can name them they morph into another shape, and yet another.

Believing in romantic love is like having a picture of a cloud that at one point in time assumed a shape that we named “soul mate.” The picture will always resemble the shape we named because within the picture we have stopped the process of the clouds changing, we have frozen time and decided that this is what love always looks like.

In her book, Everyday Zen, Charlotte Joko Beck writes the nonsense of emotion-thought dominates our lives. Particularly in romantic love, emotion-thought gets really out of hand. I expect of my partner that he should fulfill my idealized picture of myself. And when he ceases to do that (as he will before long) then I say, “The honeymoon’s over. What’s wrong with him? He’s doing all the things I can’t stand.”

And I wonder why I am so miserable. My partner no longer suits me, he doesn’t reflect my dream picture of myself, he doesn’t promote my comfort and pleasure. None of that emotional demand has anything to do with love. As the pictures break down – and they always will in a close relationship – such “love” turns into hostility and arguments.

So if we’re in a close relationship, from time to time we’re going to be in pain, because no relationship will ever suit us completely. There’s no one we will ever live with who will please us in all the ways we want to be pleased. So how can we deal with this disappointment? Always we must practice getting close to experiencing our pain, our disappointment, our shattered hopes, our broken pictures. We must observe the thought content until it is neutral enough that we can enter the direct and nonverbal experience of disappointment and suffering. When we experience suffering directly, the melting of the false emotion can begin, and true compassion can emerge.

The way to true love and compassion is through endurance and suffering. We can long for that soul mate, or grieve their passing, but staying stuck in that loop in which we’re sure if we keep looking then we can have all those hyped up feelings that love is supposed to be all about just keeps us in a neurotic cycle. Jung again, Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

“I’ve looked at love from both sides now, from up and down and still somehow its love illusions I recall, I really don’t know love at all.”

LOVE IS PATIENT, LOVE IS KIND. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Loves does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

If that doesn’t sound like the love we’ve been dealing with, then maybe we’ve taken a picture of what we thought love should be, maybe we’re involved in idol worship, maybe, just maybe, we don’t know what the hell love is.

When I was a child, I talked like a child; I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man/ woman I put childish ways behind me.

Perhaps now is the time to begin wooing your real soul mate that half of you that you’ve refused to cultivate.

Shadow selves are called shadow selves not because they are evil or bad and lurk in the dark, but because we have kept them in the shadows and refused to acknowledge them.

“Tear and fears and feeling proud to say I love you right out loud.”

Perhaps the “I love yous” need to be said to the other half of our psyches.”

Sigmund Freud stood on the shoulders of the Hasidic Jews when he suggested that to become whole we must rescue from the darkness that spark of divinity, which lies buried within us.

Sometimes to become whole we must dig a hole and unearth what we find, resurrect that part of us that we have been projecting into the world. Amanda, my dear, I want to say right out loud that I love you and that together Jack and Amanda are truly worthy of love.

Thank you, Amanda, for helping me to stop projecting onto those females about me the mantles of Madonna and whore. Thank you for helping me see that to become whole I must not only be strong, but also supportive and nurturing, that I must not always be aggressive, but that there is time for retreat and regrouping. But mostly thank you for helping me see that the true birth of anything takes a period of gestation – a period in which that which is incumbent and unformed must grow inside me till the moment of its birth and once birthed I must let go and let grow the seeds and plans that I have left behind.

And now I will sit down from this pulpit a last time. From the bottom of both of our hearts which happens to be the same heart Amanda and I thank you for a journey well spent, we give thanks for your gifts of compassion and love and pray that in the years to come this congregation will continue to grow as it has in the past into a loving and nurturing body wherein those so covenanted find solace and grace. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be “congregation without end.”

Amen.

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© Jack Harris-Bonham

July 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:

Heavenly Father, Mother God, this morning we name you and hope that those listening are entertained by the metaphor and not caught by it. Language is an odd thing; it seems the more education that someone has the more often they are snagged by the very words that would serve them. Saying precisely what we mean has its place in science and architecture, but the vagueness of metaphor may allow us to journey places that would not be journeyed to if, in fact, we were drawing plans or writing formulae.

The Mystery to which I usually pray is not served by preciseness. The mystery of metaphor is the same as the mystery of story. Suspending disbelief is the crux of journeying into the story of the divine. As we suspend disbelief – and who of us does not have some disbelief – we are then able to engage the right side of our brains and enter into relationship with the character of our imaginations. This morning we imagine a world that does not operate by greed, we imagine a world in which those with power and money search for those in need, this morning we imagine a world in which honor is spread among all peoples, a world in which the hungry are only so because they have not been discovered by those who have more to eat than necessary.

Yes, this is fanciful, and dream-like, but remember now that everything that we see that is made by humans and human culture was at first an intention and an idea. We speak of the naturalness of nature while deriding those things made by humans, but how different is the wasp nest from the home. Both are containers in which those living there find meaning.

If the human species is to continue upon this earth, then the human species must begin to dream dreams that do not include gluttony of greed. The human species must begin to dream dreams that recoil in revulsion at the idea that we would kill one of our own because they had killed. We must begin to dream dreams that spark in us the better angels of our natures, as those better angels turn from the horror, the horror of the world that we now live in.

In 500 million years the sun will go out. In this sense all is for naught. In 500 millions years earth will be like Venus varying in temperature from equator to poles by only 7 degrees and the mean temperature hovering around 690 degrees Fahrenheit. At that point the greatest of what we have created, Shakespearian drama, modern medicine, acupuncture, philosophy, theology, the beauties and wonders of this planet Earth will be gone and forgotten. But is this any more reason for despair than the simple fact that whatever we do personally for our significant others and those children that we raise together, all those things are for naught in the light of our eventual demise?

Death does not erase the love that we share, any more than the red giant of our sun will erase what has transpired on this thin layer of life, our beloved earth, our mother and sustainer. We would and do recoil in horror when we see that there are those who would give their mothers up for a profit, yet we allow the soulless corporations of this our beloved planet to treat our mother as if she were a whore. There will come a time when the heads of major corporations will stand trial as greed criminals, as murderers of our mother.

My prayer today is that these proceedings will occur before mother lies on her deathbed and before we have let our own greed and culpability run rampant just in order for us to get a final slice of the greed pie. We must realize now that any money siphoned from the soulless corporations that now rape the earth is blood money. Help us to see, Divine Spirit that the money that is made from this blood is money that is made from the blood of our own children. In ravaging the earth we are, in essence incesting our own children and their futures.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy and sometimes this goes by the name of Jesus, sometimes Buddha, sometimes Allah, sometimes the Great Spirit, sometimes Pan, sometimes I AM THAT I AM, but always the name of everything that is holy is, precisely, everything.

Amen

Sermon:

 Boomers and Stickers-the sustainability of life on planet earth

Wallace Stegner knew, both from his personal experience and from his long study of his region, that the two cultures of the American West are not those of the sciences and arts, but rather those of the two human kinds that he called “boomers” and “stickers,” the boomers being “those who pillage and run,” and the stickers” “those who settle, and love the life they have made and the place they have made it in” (Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, p. xxii).

This applies to our country as a whole, and maybe to all of Western civilization in modern times. The first boomers were the oceanic navigators of the European Renaissance. They were gold seekers. All boomers have been gold seekers. They are would-be Midases who want to turn all things into gold: plants and animals, trees, food and drink, soil and water and air, life itself, even the future.

The sticker theme has so far managed to survive, and to preserve in memory and even in practice the ancient human gifts of reverence, fidelity, neighborliness, and stewardship. But unquestionably the dominant theme of modern history has been that of the boomer. It is no surprise that the predominant arts and sciences of the modern era have been boomer arts and boomer sciences.

The collaboration of boomer science with the boomer mentality of the industrial corporations has imposed upon us a state of virtually total economy in which it is the destiny of every creature (humans not excluded) to have a price and to be sold. In a total economy, all materialism creatures, and ideas become commodities interchangeable and disposable. People become commodities along with everything else.

Only such an economy could seek to impose upon the world’s abounding geographic and creaturely diversity the tyranny of technological and genetic monoculture. Only in such an economy could “life forms” be patented, or the renewability of nature and culture be destroyed. Monsanto’s aptly named “terminator gene” – which implanted in seed sold by Monsanto, would cause the next generation of seed to be sterile – is as grave an indicator of totalitarian purpose as a concentration camp.

The second reading is from Henry N. Weiman’s book, The Source of Human Good.

Jesus engaged in intercommunication with a little group of disciples with such depth and potency that the organization of their several personalities was broken down and they were remade. They became new men, and the thought and feeling of each got across to the others. It was not merely the thought and feeling of Jesus that got across. That was not the most important thing. The important thing was that the thought and feeling of the least and lowliest got across to the others and the others to him. Not something handed down to them from Jesus but something rising up out of their midst in creative power was the important thing.

It was not something Jesus did. It was something that happened when he was present like a catalytic agent. It was as if he was a neutron that started a chain reaction of creative transformation. Something about this man Jesus broke the atomic exclusiveness of those individuals so that they were deeply and freely receptive and responsive each to the other. He split the atom of human egoism, not by psychological tricks, not by intelligent understanding, but simply by being the kind of person he was. Thus there arose in this group of disciples a miraculous mutual awareness and responsiveness toward the needs and interests of one another.

But this was not all; Something else followed from it. The thought and feeling, let us say the meanings, thus derived by each from the other, were integrated with what each had previously acquired. Thus each was transformed, lifted to a higher level of human fulfillment. Each became more of a mind and a person, with more capacity to understand to appreciate, to act with power and insight; for this is the way human personality is generated and magnified and life rendered more nobly human.

Introduction:

Perhaps you think that this sort of being lifted to a higher level of human fulfillment by Jesus was something that might have been possible if you lived in the time of Jesus and had been one of his disciples.

Well, let me take you back to October the 2nd of 2006, a Monday to the town of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania.

At 9:51AM Eastern Standard Time Charles Carl Roberts IV, entered the West Nickel Mines School, a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Roberts ordered the teacher and three female friends and their children out of the classroom. Then he ordered the male students out. Nine-year-old Emma Fisher, who had just started to learn English hadn’t understood the gunman’s orders and she followed her brother out when he left. He tied the girls up with flexible plastic ties and shot all ten girls – five of them died, and five lived. All of this we know and are accustomed to, in a sense, in this society of senseless violence, but what we were not prepared for, and what points to the fact that the transformation that Henry N. Weiman speaks about in his book, The Source of Human Good, is still with us is what happened next.

When the Amish made their way in one of their funeral processions past the home of the family of Charles Carl Roberts IV, they waved friendly like to the relatives and family of the man that had killed their children.

And then the food started coming. The Amish were taking food to the family, the wife and three children of the man who had killed members of their community.

How can this be explained?

An Amish midwife who had delivered several of the girls who had been murdered and who had taken food herself to the family of the murderer put it this way; “This is possible if you have Christ in your heart.”

In his book, Sustainability and Spirituality, Dr. John Carroll argues that sustainability of necessity is a conversion experience. It can’t be something as simple as recycling; it would have to change not only how we do things, but also why we do things. In order to find models of how this might be accomplished we must look, Dr. Carroll says, “to places, locations, people who put their faith in places other than within the dominant value system.” The Amish in this instance seem to be a perfect example.

This past Wednesday at Noon I was invited to be on KOOP Radio. Along with Host, David Kobierowski, I was on with Diane Miller Of Envision Central Texas, Rosie Salinas of the Austin Police Department and our own First Church member and civil rights lawyer, Tim Mahoney. The topic of discussion was how do you get community out of their air-conditioned homes, away from their computers, televisions and I-pods and into the streets to either protest or celebrate.

For an issue to force of out of ourselves into the public arena it mean that, that issue must touch us vitally. One of the reasons protests against the war in

Iraq haven’t been as effective as they were during the Vietnam War is there is no draft. Most of the people of this country haven’t been affected at all by this war. After all we have a President who after 9/11 advised the nation to do what – go shopping!

I’m about to celebrate 28 years of sobriety. I wouldn’t have quit drinking if I hadn’t finally got to on a cellular level that my life was in the balance. And what was the most startling portion of the experience of getting sober? Seeing that I wasn’t alone in my suffering. Seeing that there was a community of others who suffered just as I did. Alcohol brought me to my knees, but it was the community of sober – once drunk alcoholic sisters and brothers – that lifted me back up to my feet again.

It is my opinion that modern technology, ipods, iphones, the Internet, 150 cable channels these all help to atomize society driving us into our own private world from which we text message and email other islands of existence. Technology in this worldview is supportive of ego and ego is suspicious of community. In John Carroll’s book, Spirituality and Sustainability he says that any talk of sustainability is merely superficial when our society and that of every major industrialized nation in the world is based upon fossil fuels. To become sustainable a conversion experience is needed.

The kind of conversion experience we’re talking about here – basically to change the way the world is run – any and all efforts in such a revolutionary conversion would mean that everything we did, thought, wrote about and planned would, of necessity, be counter-cultural. Find out where the culture is headed and go ye therefore in the opposite direction.

Jesus was a revolutionary catalyst. It wasn’t what Jesus did that was amazing, it’s how he affected the small band of disciples that surrounded him. He listened to them, he heard them with his heart and the least of these got just as much attention as the greatest. From the doubts of Thomas to the rock of Peter they had all been heard. And then an odd thing happened. They started listening to one another. They grew from a band of separate atomized individuals to the Disciple of Jesus. And amazingly their concern for the twelve turned out onto the world. Jesus sent them out into the world to announce the coming of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is here, now, and the vehicle for realizing this is love. The answer to where is the Kingdom of God is in loving, caring and reaching past yourself to those around you. Not waiting for your life to begin, but beginning the life you’ve already been given.

We’ll get back out onto the streets with our joys and concerns when we realize that as the ad once admonished us “to reach out and touch someone” we must, in fact, be standing beside them.

There are a lot of “right” opinions in this church. Many people are on, in my opinion the correct side of many issues. Much talk is done about issues and everyone -well, nearly everyone in Austin knows, that if there’s something radical that’s to be discussed in Austin, the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin might just be the place to hold such a meeting. That’s great!

What I don’t see in this church is the church as a body of believers, worshippers, people of faith moving together to do things as a community in this community. I’m sorry if this sounds nebulous, but community acting together builds community. The motto of this church is one church many beliefs. The stress seems to be on the many beliefs, and again, great, but community gets enacted when those who believe many different things work together toward a common goal or goals.

Fellowship isn’t something that can be conjured up on Sunday mornings, and neither is spirituality. Fellowship is something that grows from working together on common goals.

What’s wrong with this church may be exactly what’s wrong with the UUA itself. Ralph Waldo Emerson traded the miracles of the Bible for the miracles of green pastures and falling rain. But subsequent generations of Unitarians and Universalist stepped away completely from any sacred scriptures – be they Hebrew, Pagan or Christian. That stepping away from a center – rather, that center that was stepped away from has not been replaced.

Political agendas can’t replace it; social action can’t replace it, voting for the most liberal candidate can’t replace it.

Dr. Davidson Loehr has been addressing this lack of spiritual center in his efforts to take religion back even further than our Judeo-Christian underpinnings, and I think his efforts to think mythically – as it says on the door to his office – are commendable and laudatory. His derision concerning the seven principles can and must be seen in this light. Prophets decry the present situation in hopes of pointing to something that might be more worthwhile.

Davidson Loehr is pointing in the right direction. First, he’s showing all of us that there is no religious center in the UUA and secondly he’s offering more ancient substitutes. His idea of paideia – the Greek idea that what we do we do with the idea that the ancients are watching. As they watch the better angels of our natures will be more inclined to act so that when we are dead and gone we can be the ancients who look on the present with the hope that the behaviors that are happening in the present would both please us and make admirable those living in the present.

I think this church is strong, and I don’t mean Davidson, or Lara or anyone else who works for this church – I mean the members of this church and the feelings I get when I think of them individually or as a corporate body. This church has a lot to offer Austin, Texas.

Without Spirituality can there be sustainability? Around what do you rally people when you want to talk of how to treat this earth, what to buy, what not to buy, where to shop, where not to shop, how important is recycling – all of these questions and more are difficult in and of themselves, but when they are divorced from a religious/spiritual center they are almost impossible to answer as a community. Once again, if there is no religious/spiritual center to this community it might explain the failure on the part of this community to step up to the plate and make a definitive difference in the city of Austin.

I go back now to a meeting I had when I first got to Austin. Dr. Loehr and I attended a meeting of all churches in the Austin area to deal with the survivors of hurricane Katrina. The Christian Churches in the area were ready and willing to take people into their homes, fed them, clothe them and treat them like family that very night.

Dr. Loehr was amazed at this, but I felt differently. I knew the Scripture. I had had a Christian upbringing, and I remembered this passage in Matthew. “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?” The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did for me.” Of course the King is Jesus – so naturally the Christians had made room for the “least of these” because they KNEW that when they helped those people they were helping Jesus. You don’t have to believe in any of this to see the power and empowerment that this kind of Holy Scripture gives those who follow such teachings. And it follows quite naturally that the Unitarian Universalist had not prepared a room for Him or anyone else.

I don’t pretend to know how to circle the wagons in the UUA, but I do know that if they are not circled we will be studying them like to study the Shakers. “An interesting group, we will say, so why didn’t they grow and thrive?” The answer for the Shakers is obvious; they forsook carnal relations and quite naturally died out. The answer for the UUA is yet to be written, but it may be something as simple as they forsook relationship with something greater than themselves. But it’s not too late! It’s never too late!

Rabbi Shoni Labowitz in her book, Miraculous Living says: “Each time you stray from the path, you have the flexibility and courage to return. Return, known in Hebrew as teshuvah, was built into the foundational structure of the universe. The ability to return, to turn around and turn about, existed before you were created and is programmed into your being. It is available for you to choose when it is needed and you so desire. The teshuvah also implies a response: as you select to return or turn about, you need to know what it is you are returning to. You need to respond to the inner call with an intention and focus. As you let go of mistakes, you return to your divine nature, to the uniqueness of who you are, and above all, to reunion with an unconditionally loving God. In returning, you access memory of the void from which you emanated, with a clearer sense of freedom in moving toward the destiny you were born to fulfill.”

The point is this, if someone came into this church and killed a bunch of our members and then killed themselves, would we be willing to take food to the home of that murderer? Would we be willing to feed their family? And if we were able to do that, what would be in our hearts that would allow us to do so? When you find the answer to that question, then you’ll find a religious and spiritual center that is worthy of having the wagons circled about it.

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© 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.

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© 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.