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Davidson Loehr

Don Smith, Worship Associate

22 May 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Don Smith

Money, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is (1) a current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes, and (2) property, wealth, possessions, resources, etc. viewed as convertible into coin or banknotes or having value expressible in terms of these.

That definition describes our natural tendency to think of money in terms of what it will purchase, but I’ve come to think more and more about money in terms of what it costs. For most of us, the money we have was obtained through an exchange of our time, talent, energy, and ideas. I think it’s worthwhile to pause and take account of the exchanges we’re making; to be sure that they are fair exchanges, and that they serve us well.

When I was an architecture student living and studying in a small town in France-and being exposed, for the first time, to a totally different culture than my own-I came to an awareness of how hurried life is in our country. I was surprised to see how leisurely life can be, and how rich an experience an unhurried life can be. I remembered the carefree days of my childhood, and I made a promise to myself that I would never allow having things to take precedence over doing things; that I would not put material possessions above free time, and the enjoyment of life. How well have I done? Not so well, I’m afraid. In the end analysis, I’m very much a product of my cultutre. And my culture is one of consumption. I don’t know when, where, or how our culture became what it is, but I struggle against it daily.

I was raised by loving parents who, like most parents, wanted for my sisters and me a better life than they had had. They told us as much. By this they meant that we should have more, and work less. Having grown up on farms in depression-era America, they spent a good deal of their youth working on the farm and having little in the way of material possessions. My sisters and I were not expected to do a lot beyond the chores that we were assigned for the purpose of teaching us to be responsible. My parents didn’t talk to us about money. They didn’t want us to be burdened, as they had been in their childhood, with concerns about money. It was my grandparents who talked to us about money.

Papa Smith, my paternal grandfather, told me that as long as one spends less than one makes all is well. Like Thoreau, he chose to make do with little, allowing himself plenty of time for fishing, playing dominoes, visiting with family and friends, and reading his Bible. He spent a lot of time reading his Bible. I’d be surprised to learn that he had any money when he died.

Daddy Kennemer, my maternal grandfather, told me that if I watched my pennies my dollars would take care of themselves. He watched his pennies very carefully and had a lot of money in the bank when he died, but he didn’t enjoy life very much.

The best advice I got came from Mother Kennemer, my maternal grandmother, who always said that money is a good servant, but a poor master. You should probably write that one down. Money is a good servant, but a poor master.

For me, the daily challenge is trying to strike a balance between having the money needed to do the things I want to do, and living free from worry about money; from being enslaved by a need for money.

I enjoy my work. I have the extreme good fortune to have found a profession that suits my bifarious nature-that involves both science and art, with each informing the other. I’m thankful to be so lucky. But I would almost always be happier sitting with good friends–discussing ideas, laughing, and getting lost in the flow of time–than meeting the demands of schedules and (sometimes unreasonable) clients. On a beautiful day I’d rather be hiking along Barton Creek or working in the garden, than sitting at a desk. I’d rather practice architecture for fun than for money, and I’d wear proudly the title of dilettante if I could make my vocation and avocation one, and thereby claim every moment of my life as my own.

I don’t have children, but if I did I’d want things to be better for them than they have been for me. Just like my parents, I’d want them to work less and have more. More time to enjoy and appreciate the best things life has to offer. More time to relax with friends and family, to discuss ideas, to read great books, to express themselves through art and artful living, and fully develop their talents. More time to work on the things that build community and make life better for everyone. I’d want to teach them that life is a wonderful journey; a mystery to be experienced to the fullest. And I’d want them to understand that journeys are best when the luggage is light.

PRAYER:

Let us be grateful for all the parents in this room. They have taken on the responsibility for lives in addition to their own. They are the stewards of our collective future, and we are grateful for their work and their sacrifices.

Let us be aware of and grateful for the work and the sacrifices each of us make, as we try to steer our way through life by serving those things most worth serving. And let us have gods worth serving with our lives. Let us have meaningful work toward positive ends, so we can all feel like stewards of our collective future.

Let us work to establish relative relationships with relative ends, but absolute relationships with absolute ends, and let us learn how to tell the difference between the two. The problem with the world is seldom with its people. We are overwhelmingly good people, doing the best we know how to do. Let us remember that. The problem with the world is that far too often, we serve gods not worth serving.

Let us be more aware of the gods we are serving, and let us be sure they are worth serving with the days and years of our lives. Let us attend to the gods we are serving with our lives.

Amen.

SERMON: The Cost of Money

This is a tough topic, because you already know all the things churches are expected to say about the subject. “Love of money is the root of all evil,” “You can either serve God or money but not both,” “Don’t you be worshiping those golden calves!” – that sort of stuff.

Besides, the US economy is so bad in so many ways that many of you are working your tails off to pay the bills and get the things you want for yourselves and your families. And getting assaulted for wanting money when you come to church is too much like piling on. After all, we want to have some nice things, and most nice things cost money. So talking against money is a little like telling a fish it shouldn’t be so attached to water: it’s just too much a part of almost everything we do.

And every time I say money isn’t as important as we make it out to be, somebody tells me that if money’s not important, maybe we don’t need their pledge. And we do want your pledges. I ask and expect you to pledge 5% or more of your pre-tax income to this church or any other church you think is worth supporting. Good churches offering honest religion are about the only place in our society where we routinely question the gods we’re serving – including the god of money – and ask whether it’s worth serving. As many have said, money makes a good servant, but a bad master.

Don has already done a nice job of talking about the ways money intersects with our personal lives, so I’ll go in a different direction, bring you some thoughts about money and share a couple stories.

The stories are two of the best ever written about wanting money too much or letting work take over your life. Both stories are from the Greeks.

The first one is the most famous, and one you all know: the story of King Midas, who couldn’t get enough money. Since he was a king, he didn’t have to earn the money, but he still wished it were easier to convert the world around him into gold. So he made the famous wish that everything he touched would turn to gold. This made it tough to eat anything. But the story’s tragedy came when he touched his beloved daughter, immediately turning her into a golden statue.

Like all good myths, there are a lot of ways to go with the old Midas story. There are a lot of ways to turn people into statues, to take the life out of their lives, by acting as though their only purpose were to make money. Because then if they can’t make money, they’re useless.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I read a report estimating that 18,000 Americans die each year because of inadequate health insurance. They haven’t got the money for the insurance, and if they can’t pay their own way, they’re not worth saving, according to our priorities. Seventy years ago, Hitler’s Nazis coined a horrible name for people like this. They were called “useless eaters.” Useless eaters. You only have a use if you can produce something, and your worth is measured by how much you can earn for others. Only 3,000 people died in the attacks on 9-11, and that has bothered us enough to spend $300 billion a year or so attacking a country that had nothing at all to do with the attacks of 9-11, but whose oil and strategic position we used 9-11 as an excuse to take. And somehow, just mentioning the 3,000 killed on 9-11 still seems to end most objections. Three thousand people is a lot. But the deaths of 18,000 Americans a year due to inadequate health care do not make the front pages. That’s coming dangerously close to treating them like useless eaters, don’t you think?

It may not feel quite like the King Midas story, but it’s closer than you think. Midas’s daughter was no longer seen as warm, loving, worth being around, because she had been converted into the lowest form of currency.

Maybe it sounds backwards to think of money as the lowest form of currency – after all, our national currency is based on the gold standard. But it’s not the currency in which human worth can really be measured. I’ve read that if you collected all the raw materials in our bodies, you’d be lucky to sell the whole pile for five bucks. We’re just not worth much money. So money can’t be the right currency for measuring human worth. Yet when we are valued and our lives are valued primarily by how much money we can make, the chief way in which we’re different from Midas’s daughter is that we’re probably worth a lot less money on the open market than a golden statue.

The Midas story doesn’t dwell too much on the other side of the equation, which is that if you want to value people primarily as people, then you probably won’t make as much money off of them. They may make more money for themselves, but you won’t be able to use them like things.

The story of Midas today isn’t often about individuals. It’s about attitudes of a whole society, like our society. The performance of our economy has been measured by how well the stock market is doing for so long it may seem that’s just how economies are always measured. But they’re not. It’s quite a drastic change from forty years ago. Then, the health of the economy was measured by how well the majority of Americans were doing. The country took pride in the fact that most people in most jobs could earn enough to buy a house and a car, on just one paycheck, and that almost anyone who wanted to go to college could afford to go without mortgaging an arm and a leg. The health of the economy was measured by how well the middle class was doing.

Now it’s measured by how much profit those who own stocks can earn every quarter. And once you do that – think about this – then people are defined in the currency of money. If workers are fired, whether you call it downsizing, rightsizing or firing, the stock prices usually go up. The money that would have gone to pay raises, health insurance and benefits for workers, workers’ pensions, that money that would have bought houses and cars and college educations for them and their children – that money is now funneled instead to other people. Not those who earned it, but those who own the stocks. We’ve lived so long in that world it might seem odd to question it. But you can value people for their humanity or for their earning potential, and when push comes to shove, one of those will shove the other.

Our challenge, and I think it’s a religious challenge, is to learn how to establish relative relationships with relative things, and absolute relationships with absolute things, and to know how to tell the difference. Which should be ranked higher: the profits of a few, or the livelihoods of many? Stock dividends, or health insurance and job security for workers? Earning more money, or having richer and more satisfying relationships?

These are religious questions because you cannot separate money from other areas of life. For example, I have read that the leading cause of divorce in our country is not having enough money, and the frustrations, guilt, blame and arguments that come from that. So one cost of valuing profits above people is that we soon diminish the humanity of most of the people around us, probably including ourselves. And that’s pretty close to a modern version of the King Midas story.

The other Greek story isn’t as well known, but it’s at least as good. It is the story about Hephaestos, whom the Romans called Vulcan. He was one of the Olympian gods – the only god who worked. But he didn’t just work. Work was his life. Work absorbed his passion, his love, his spirit. And in the ironic style of Greek wit, they had Hephaestos married to Aphrodite. Well, that’s not likely to work! She bore him no children, was never faithful to him, was never even seen with him. He had no passion left for relationships – even a relationship with the most passionate of the goddesses.

Hephaestos didn’t work to live, he lived to work. And when we live to work, it’s very hard to make room for another human being in our life. It isn’t quite like turning them to gold, but the old Greek story comes pretty close. It said that Hephaestos created golden servants to wait on him – robots.

What some interpreters have done with this is to say that this is what happens to those around people who just live to work. Without any energy or interest left for personal relationships, their mates and sometimes children are assigned roles much like the roles of golden servants: doing chores, cleaning, cooking, converting life into a series of duties. I suspect we’ve all experienced this at one time or other – or that we’ve done it.

Now this is a hard lesson to go very heavy on today when both the adults in many families must work to pay the bills, and some people have to take more than one job. This can make it feel like we’ve all been turned into robots, but it isn’t fair to throw blame around when people are doing the best they know how to do. The blame isn’t on those trying to make ends meet. The blame is on the economic priorities we as a society have adopted, that has taken so much money away from the majority of Americans that 18,000 of us die each year from inadequate health care, marriages end in divorce over the awful fights brought about by not having enough money, laws are changed and politicians and judges are bought to change the laws so those who control the money (and the politicians and media) can simply take it from those who work for it. It isn’t a healthy economy. It’s a greedy economy rewarding thieves like Kenneth Lay over fourth-grade teachers. But does anyone really want to argue that Ken Lay gave more to our society than an honest fourth-grade teacher?

Where we choose to spend money brings costs that are usually unseen. For example, there is a website you should all check out. It’s http://www.costofwar.com/. And the cost of our war in Iraq runs by as you watch, climbing hundreds and thousands of dollars each second. And you can select a city to see how much of the war’s prorated cost will come out of the incomes of that city’s residents. That’s the cost of money spent on war. In Austin, the war has cost us about half a billion dollars so far. Half a billion dollars spent there that can not be spent anywhere else. Not on education, not on health care, not on art or roads or anything else. Half a billion dollars: nearly $400 for every man, woman and child in greater metropolitan Austin (2000 census put the population at about 1.3 million). The cost of that money is measured in all the other things we can’t do with that money, and won’t be able to do for years to come.

But as a nation we aren’t valuing those things. And the things we value take value away from most of the people in our country and in the world. That isn’t just leftist rhetoric; it’s simple truth. The cost of our economic priorities is paid in devaluing the common humanity of all the common humans around us, including us. I wonder if you haven’t felt some of this in your own lives?

When we exalt profits over people, it means we don’t value people as much as we value profits. And if this doesn’t sound religious, I don’t know what is religious! It is exactly the meaning of the cry from the prophet Amos 2500 years ago that his people were “selling the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes.” How different does our world sound from that? It sounds very, very different than the America I grew up in, forty and fifty years ago.

There is another dimension to the story of Hephaestos and his golden robots that is worth considering. When Hephaestos decided to devote his whole life to work, the other gods rejected his choice. Nobody followed such a silly lead, because they all saw a lot of other options. But a generation later, those in the household of Hephaestos don’t know any other way of life, any other set of choices. So they went about their work robotically, they lived to work rather than working to live, because they didn’t know there was a choice. And that too feels like it has a lot to say to us today, doesn’t it?

For me, this whole subject raises a lot of questions more profound than answers – and more frustrating, too.

Does the money we spend enrich our lives, help us have more fertile experiences, more nuanced appreciation of life, more creative engagement with others, richer relationships where we can truly know and be known? Or does our money buy distractions from human interaction? Do we spend money on distractions to avoid relationships that aren’t very rich because we don’t know how to relate to others richly?

Money can be a good servant, but it’s always a bad master. When you think of the amount of time and energy and passion you spend earning money, do you think it is more like your servant or your master?

This is dangerous territory. We have a word for people who sell themselves for money, and it isn’t a nice word. And when people are simply owned by money – I think of some of the Asian workers who are reportedly chained to their work stations, but also of people here in Austin working two jobs to make ends meet – when people’s lives are nearly defined by the need to work in order to survive, isn’t that a kind of slavery? Is that the cost of valuing profits over people? The enslavement and prostitution of our bodies, our spirits, and far too much of our lives?

I don’t have your answers. I struggle with these issues too, not always successfully. But I can offer you some questions that might be useful.

What’s the cost of the money you’re earning?

What’s the cost of the money you’re spending? What aren’t you spending it on?

Are you working to live, or living to work?

What are you serving with the days and years of your lives? Does it serve the best parts of you?

Or put it this way: If you were to die this month and in your eulogy you were defined by what you have spent the major energies of your life pursuing, would you be proud of having lived that life?

What would you like to do about it?

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© Davidson Loehr 2005

Hillary Hutchinson

May 1, 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Hillary Hutchinson

May 1st is also Labor Day, hence the topic of today’s talks.

Good morning. My name is Hillary Hutchinson, and most of you know that I have been a member of this church since 1987. This is my third Affirmation of Faith. Pretty soon you are all going to know the story of my life, like it or not!

Today’s sermon topic is “The Myth of the American Dream.” This is a scary topic for me, because it hits a little too close to home. I was raised in a family that believed very strongly that if you worked hard, acted responsibly by going to a regular job, and took your vices in moderation, you would eventually get ahead. Promotions would come, raises would come, and retirement would be possible at age 65. No one talked to me about institutional or social barriers. No one told me I would get laid off twice through no fault of my own, once with a three month old baby. No one mentioned how difficult it was going to be to save any money while putting a husband through graduate school and raising two daughters. No one told me that being female and pregnant means a lot of employers are just not going to invest in you. No one told me that, from time to time, I would actually be working two jobs to pay expenses. Finally, no one told me that I would find myself stuck in a series of dead-end jobs just to pay the childcare and the mortgage. (A mortgage, I should add, that I would not have even been possible, except that my husband and I inherited some money in 1985. It’s not like we were able to earn the down payment.)

So, we bought a 900 square foot house with one bathroom and no air conditioning in the barrios of South Austin. Counting Phred the cat who came with the house, there were five us living in this small space within two years. Through it all I came to this church, looking for answers about how to live my life.

Davidson is going to talk to you about the problems with our American myths, but I see myself as one of the lucky ones: We did in fact succeed in living principally on one income. I had a series of jobs with insurance (indeed, I stayed in some horrible jobs because we needed the health insurance benefits). The Eva St. house was a big and terrifying investment, but it did appreciate. If Jon had not died in 1997, we might now be living quite comfortably on two incomes. White, well-educated, employed, and with a solid net worth based on my own income and assets, I have been able to begin pursuing my own dreams. I no longer wonder with Langston Hughes, “What happens to a dream deferred?” I am working toward a PhD in higher education administration because despite everything, I still believe in the value of a meritocracy. I still believe in the power of education. And I want to be in a position where I can help other people access education, and learn to think critically about the current state of human affairs.

Now that I no longer have to ask myself, “Is there enough money for food and shelter until the next payday?” I find my questions are more nuanced. I am more focused on whether I am doing the right thing, (a question Spike Lee left open for interpretation in his movie of the same name). I am more interested, like Martin Buber, in whether I am in “right relationship” with my fellow human beings. I look at my beautiful daughters, and I hope that they like me as well as love me. I hope that I am doing right by them in the choices I make moment to moment. I try to honor that by treating them with respect, listening to their opinions of the world, and laughing with them about the absurdity of some of our human actions. Teenage hormones are horrible and confusing (I remember it only too well!), so some rules for living are needed for guidance. In finding my own spiritual path at this church, I crafted a golden rule to teach my daughters when searching for guidance: “if your action adds love to the world, then its probably right; if your action adds hate to the world, then it is probably wrong.” Being good Unitarian Universalists, Kate and Clare tell me this is just another way of framing Buddhist compassion.

I think there is one other important element to compassion, and that is the capacity to imagine. This is where Davidson’s discussion of great literature comes in. To act compassionately we must first be able to imagine what it feels like to be someone else on the planet. Secondly, we must be able to imagine different outcomes than the ones we may have been taught. Karen Armstrong was just in town as part of the KLRU Distinguished Speakers series, and one of her comments was, “It’s quite possible to practice bad religion just like its possible to practice bad cooking.” So, since I haven’t the time or the skill to write a great novel with morality subtly built into the text, I’ll leave you with instead with this pragmatic ethics test, compliments of the Rotary International business club. It’s a great little shorthand piece to determine the next right thing to do. Ask yourself:

Is it true?

Is it fair?

Does it foster friendship and create goodwill?

Is it beneficial to all concerned?

How you answer these questions will help you to act with integrity at the next moment of choice. And maybe if enough of us practice this kind of faith, we can create a new American dream that truly does not leave anyone behind.

PRAYER:

Let us pray that we live within stories that can make us more whole.Let us have gods worth serving, rather than the flashier idols that use us until we are used up and gone.

Let us measure our lives and our worth in the right kind of currencies – currencies of compassion rather than control, empathy rather than empire, connection rather that separation, relating with people rather than using them for our own ends.

For there is something precious in the world that wants our attention – something sacred. If only we would serve those things most precious and sacred, they would return the favor, and might bless us.

We know those things. We are moved by them and warmed by their glow in the hearts where they live.

We pray that our hearts will be among the hearts in which the tender mercies dwell. We pray that our lives and our relationships might have that glow and that warmth. And we pray that our world may be the ally of these precious but fragile forces, rather than their enemy.

For these things we pray. But not only pray, not only pray.

Amen.

SERMON: American Myths

In one of the shortest sermons ever delivered, and one of the most famous, the Buddha said “All I do is sit by the river, selling river water.”

I think it’s one of the most profound revelations of the secret of nearly all wisdom: that nothing is hidden, that we just need to be reminded of things we already knew, so that perhaps this time we will awaken, and act.

We had two fairly large memorial services here this week. Both of them filled this room. And in both of them, I said something I say at almost every memorial service. I say I wish more people came to memorial services. Because if they did, and if they heard the memories and stories people get up to tell about the person who has died, they would realize that we know exactly what is right and wrong, good and bad. We know exactly how a noble life is to be judged. Not by might, arrogance, wealth or intimidation, but by the kinds of things every religion has always preached: compassion, understanding, peace, love. We don’t really fool people. That’s the river water, and every good preacher makes their living by selling it.

So as we’re going to talk a little about the American myths this morning, I need to say that we can talk about them, but you already know what’s wrong with them, and how life would look if we were living it more wisely. That’s the river water, and all I’m going to do here is bottle some for you to take with you. So let’s begin.

Every society has basic stories that define it, and it isn’t hard to list some of the deepest myths of America. I think there are four basic myths.

First is our fascination with newness. We have been the “New World” since at least 1492, but “newness” is a central part of who we are. To Americans, it has always symbolized an improved version of what came before. They called this the New World, and named their settlements New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New England. When they went west two centuries later, they named a patch of desert New Mexico.

If you read studies of traditional cultures, you find that all of them would regard this idea that “new” means “improved” as completely insane. Most societies look to the wisdom of the ages, the wisdom of their elders, in a way Americans haven’t for a long time. If new means better, than old begins to mean outmoded and irrelevant. And if you don’t think old means irrelevant, ask a dozen people over seventy how they feel our society regards them. We don’t have elders to whom we routinely look for wisdom that surpasses our own.

The second part of the American story is about Success and Capitalism; and in America they are also tied to Salvation, for one of the most fundamental equations of American mythology is the simple formula that “wealth = worth.”

Our myth of success is probably the most important myth in American history. It was given its most powerful expression during the 19th century through the many stories written by Horatio Alger (1832-1898), the chief prophet of our American Success myth. Take just one of his stories, a story called “Struggling Upward or Luke Larkins’ Luck.” You have probably never heard of it. But a century ago, it sold fifty million copies in paperback and was read by millions more. That means that almost all of the adult population of the United States a hundred and thirty years ago bought or read that one little book. And Alger wrote over 134 books. I don’t think you can overstate the influence of a book read by virtually every adult in America, and don’t think we have had any book to match it since then.

Horatio Alger was a Unitarian minister in the 1860s. He was also a pedophile who took street children with him on his travels as sexual toys.

A third part of our American myth is our radical individualism. This is the country of Lone Rangers. The myth of the lone cowboy is one of our most powerful myths. We could talk about this for hours, but this is a point that hardly needs reinforcing in Texas.

The fourth part of our American myth that I want to consider is our imperialism.

From the start, the Pilgrims saw themselves as God’s chosen people, the faithful remnant come to the New Eden to create the New Jerusalem, with a mandate from God to extend the kingdom of Christ, to extend it across the whole new world, to bring civilization to this wilderness. In the 19th century, mythic heroes including Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, Mike Fink, Calamity Jane, even Custer and Buffalo Bill saw themselves as God’s agents appointed to civilize the west. Buffalo Bill believed he stood between civilization and savagery.

Officially, our imperialism goes back at least to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which was quickly and repeatedly interpreted to mean that we could advance our economic interests aggressively in this hemisphere, which we have done ever since.

These parts of our script have been with us for a very long time. But things have not been good for the American Dream for quite awhile, at any of these four levels.

First, our addiction to the new has been frustrated at many points. We no longer have any new frontiers, no wildernesses left to take over or move on to. Forty years ago, the TV series “Star Trek” tried to satisfy our wanderlust by defining “Space” as “the final frontier,” sending our Lone Rangers off in space ships. But the frontier metaphor had already worn thin when we settled California over a century ago. And now the last of the Star Trek programs is being cancelled, and the last installment of the “Star Wars” movies has been finished – another series of cowboys on the space frontier.

Here’s an example of how completely we have adopted an imperialistic attitude toward the rest of the world. Think about this, if you will. Fifteen years ago, we essentially kidnapped the president of another country and brought him to this country to stand trial in a drug deal which had also involved agencies of our own government connected with the Iran-Contra affairs. We arrested him after a coup attempt we supported failed to kill him.

If you Google Noriega’s name, the third entry shows a mug shot of him after we arrested him. The caption underneath reads, “Manuel Noriega, former president of Panama, rescued by American marines for incarceration in the United States.” Now think about this. If Iraqis invaded the United States, kidnapped our president and took him back to put in an Iraqi prison for causing the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqis in the past few years, how would you look at a caption of his mugshot that read, “George W. Bush, former president of the United States, rescued by Iraqi soldiers for incarceration in Iraq”? We have an attitude toward all other nations that we would find arrogant and criminal if they expressed it toward us. As almost anyone from other countries can tell you – even Canadians – this attitude is 100% American.

We have presumed the right to meddle in Middle Eastern oil pricing for eighty years, and assume that our actions must be justified because we want cheap oil. But think about this. Imagine Saudi Arabia or Russia sending troops into Kansas to regulate the price of wheat because they want cheap food. We have invaded half a dozen tiny countries in the past decade, taking armed forces there as though we had a divine right to do so. We have no such divine right. We never have.

Further, our imperialism is embarrassed by the growing awareness that we are not even the best at very many things any more, or anywhere near it. Our education is near the bottom of the industrialized countries. Our infant mortality rate is the highest in the developed world, our illiteracy rates are soaring, our cars are second-rate, we are barely in the running in televisions, stereos, and a dozen other items. Our family structures seem ineffective, and both in politics and in religion we have seen the norm moving steadily away from honesty and toward hypocrisy.

We murder fifty times as many of our fellow citizens as either the Swedes or the British do. We are a superficially religious society, but in 1989 a special edition of LIFE magazine conducted a survey showing that 70% of our citizens believed in an active spirit of evil they called the devil, and only 40% of them believed in a God. I’m betting that’s a far more honest and accurate poll than all the happy-face polls insisting that 90% of Americans “believe in God” (without ever asking people what they mean by the word ‘God’). The national mood increasingly favors not empowered citizens, but obedient ones. Well, this list can and will go on, but you can continue it on your own.

A third level of our American Dream has involved our radical individualism, which has led us into another blind alley, as our Lone Rangers have become mostly lonely rangers. There is an interesting medical syndrome that can serve as a metaphor for our predicament today. It is the syndrome in human babies known as the “failure to thrive” syndrome. It means that babies who are left alone without being picked up, held, and touched by others can die. They cannot live as isolated individuals, and neither can we. Our emphasis on individualism and our accompanying dismissal of the responsibilities we owe the larger society are way out of touch with the reality of human life, and we are paying the price for it. Psychological depression is ten times as common now as it was before WWII, and since the 1960s our dominant psychological problems have been narcissistic personality disorders. We too are failing to thrive, both as individuals and as a society.

In the fourth part of the American myth, our equation of financial success with personal value, of wealth and worth, there is really nothing new at all. The American philosopher William James spoke of Success as our “bitch goddess” a hundred years ago. But even then this was not a new observation. The ancient Hebrews worshipped the golden calf, and were scolded for it by their prophets. The prophet Amos accused his contemporaries of making people secondary to profits: of selling the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes. Jesus was clear in his own teachings that you can either worship God or money, but not both, and that it would be easier to get a rope through the eye of a needle than to get a rich man into heaven.

As individuals, we all know this. It isn’t news. And talking about it is like sitting by the river, selling river water. Most of that selling river water business has been done by our poets, artists and professional storytellers. When you look back into the first few decades of the 20th century, it is surprising just how accurately the failings of the American Dream were named, and in very famous books, all of which also became movies.

When Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in 1949, he focused on the fact that capitalism is about selling both things and people: that to be a successful salesman you must sell not only your product but also yourself. That is what his character Willie Loman did. He sold himself in pursuit of the American Dream, but on a deeper level he had put his faith in the American Dream to give his life meaning, to make him whole-or, in religious jargon, to grant him salvation. It could not do it, and Willy Loman’s suicide was the death of a lost and hopeless soul, abandoned by its god. In the end, at a funeral hardly anybody came to, his eulogy was really summed up in just two phrases: “He was the best-liked,” and “He never knew who he was.” I am reminded of Jesus’s asking what a man gained if he gained the whole world and lost his soul. Poor Willy never even gained the world.

A decade earlier, John Steinbeck wrote his powerful book The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck’s variation on the theme of critiquing the American Dream was different from Arthur Miller’s, but no less devastating: it is a capitalistic dream achievable by only a tiny percentage of people, he said, whose power and greed will impoverish the overwhelming majority of the rest.

This is even more true today than it was in the late 1930s. During the past dozen years, the gap between the rich and the poor has become a chasm, as we have become a two-tiered society in which the richest 10% of our people control well over 90% of our wealth, a proportion more lopsided than at any time in the history of this nation. The salvation offered by the American Dream is increasingly a salvation available only to the priests and priestesses of capitalism, carried on the backs of an immense number of the masses.

At the end of his book, Steinbeck offered his solution in a form so graphic and powerful it may always fill theaters with sobbing, as it did when I saw it. Here are poor and desperate people who were merely used as dupes by those few who controlled the American Dream, who have been driven against the wall with nothing and no one to care for them but each other. And so the final scene has a young mother whose baby was born dead, now offering her milk to a starving man: a man she did not even know, except to know him as another human being in need.

Here is the “milk of human kindness” in its most elemental and heart-wrenching form. Steinbeck is saying that the kind of salvation we most dearly need cannot come from the American Dream or from economic success. It comes only from reaching out to the strangers around us and offering them what we have to share. This is river water. Every religion has sold it.

And a decade before John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald offered an even more fundamental criticism of this American Dream in his book The Great Gatsby, which many have called the greatest American novel of the 20th century. As Steinbeck saw that the salvation held out by the American Dream is an illusion for all but a very few, Fitzgerald saw that even for the very few, it is still an illusion, for it can not save anyone.

Gatsby had it all, and he had nothing of value because he had lost his soul: he had lost his integrity, his authenticity. That is the reward for worshiping false idols, as it has always been. That is the reward for spending a human life in the service of values and ideals that cannot grant life. As Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman ended with a death and a funeral, as Grapes of Wrath ended after the death of both a baby and the dream that the baby had symbolized, so The Great Gatsby ended with a death and a funeral – a funeral to which nobody came.

The novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote a short story called “Two Old Men” about salvation, about wholeness, about where the sacred dimension of life is to be found, about the way in which life is given its most enduring meaning. Tolstoy’s story is not well known, but it is full of river water.

In this story, two old men decide to go on a pilgrimage to worship God at Jerusalem. On the way they meet a poor family near starvation. One of the old men goes on to the Holy Land the next morning, the other stays to do what he can to help the family. Emergency help becomes long-term aid, as he stays with them for months. He helps them plant crops, cooks meals for them, and spends all his money buying them what they need. Finally, months later, the family has recovered and the old man, his money gone, returns home.

The first man, now back from the Holy Land, swears he saw the other man in Jerusalem, surrounded by a halo-like glow and crowds of admirers. The second man, whose money and energy were spent helping the poor family and who never made it to Jerusalem, just changed the subject. The first old man, you could say, visited the Holy Land as a tourist; the second man had become holy. The first sought the sacred as a separate thing, the second reached out to others, gave of himself, and turned the place in which he found himself into holy ground.

This is like the last scene in The Grapes of Wrath: someone reaching out to offer the milk of human kindness to a stranger. Like the two old men in Tolstoy’s story, Steinbeck’s characters found nothing at the end of their journey but people like themselves: alone and in need, with little to share but their humanity. And so they reached out and turned a small spot on this earth into a momentary shrine where kindness overflowed and strangers were nourished. Jesus could not have said it any more clearly, nor could the prophet Amos, nor Mohammad.

This has been the message of the best prophets in all times: that we are the agents of salvation on this earth. And the measure of the gods we serve, the measure of our own spirits, is the measure to which we have overflowed, have reached out to strangers outside of our family, outside of our religion, outside of our race, to share with them the milk of our own human kindness.

This is the river water that is sold by every religion on earth that’s worthy of the name. It isn’t news. You don’t really come here to learn this; you come here to be reminded of it. Perhaps what we come to church for is not the river water. Perhaps, instead, we come to church hoping once more to learn how to be thirsty for it.

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© Davidson Loehr 2005

10 April 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Prayer

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 and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s 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.

Nelson Mandela, 1994 Inaugural Speech – words taken from Marianne Williamson

HOMILY: Life Shrinks and Expands in Proportion to One’s Courage

A thousand sermons have been written on the sentiment in that saying from Anais Nin, that “Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one’s courage.” And one of our most persistent dreams in life is finding the right kind of courage needed to help our life expand in the right ways. It isn’t easy.

There are a couple Buddhist stories about this. In one, there was once a mouse who went to God to ask for a favor. “What is it?” asked God. “I am only a mouse,” came the answer, and I live in constant fear of cats. Can’t you do something about my fear?”

There was a loud “Poof!,” a puff of smoke, and the mouse was turned into a cat. For awhile, this sufficed, but before long the cat was back to ask another favor of God. “And now what?” asked the Almighty.

“I’m still afraid,” came the answer. “Perhaps I’m still not big enough. Maybe if I were a very large dog . . .”

Again the “Poof!” and the cloud of smoke, and the cat had become something that looked like a cross between an Irish Wolfhound and a Saint Bernard, weighing in at 250 pounds.

In a week, the dog was scratching at God’s door.

“Now what?” said God – who, though he had infinite power, did not have infinite patience.

“I’m still afraid. Perhaps if I were an elephant,” said the dog. “Or a lion. Yes, that’s it, a lion, the king of the jungle! Let’s try that.”

A loud “Poof!” and a cloud of smoke. And when the smoke cleared, there stood, again, a mouse – who, realizing that it was again a mouse, began squealing for God.

“It is no use,” said God, “there is nothing I can do for you, for you have the heart of a mouse, and as long as you have the heart of a mouse, you might as well be a mouse.”

I’ve been thinking about this subject because courage is in right now, as you know. Arnold Schwarzenegger has informed us that men who would rather talk, negotiate and understand than take premature action are “girly men.” By this measure, some of history’s great girly men would include Jesus and the Buddha, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Our invasion of Iraq, whatever else you say about it, involves some kind of courage. We have killed over 100,000 Iraqis, and more than 1,500 of our soldiers have died there so far, plus another 20,000 or so who have been wounded. That is some kind of courage.

But there are different kinds of courage, and not all of them are admirable. It depends on where the courage is coming from, what it is serving.

That word “courage” comes from an old French word for “heart.” You could say that life shrinks and expands in proportion to one’s heart. I would define courage as a heart’s effort to make the world in its image. So if it is a good heart, the courage can serve good ends. And if it is a bad heart, the courage – no less courageous – is likely to serve bad ends. It takes courage, after all, to strap a bomb under your shirt, board a crowded bus and kill yourself along with as many others as you can. But a heart that reduces innocent people to pawns in your own deadly chess game – that’s a bad heart, no matter how courageous.

One of the confusing things today is that some of the worst hearts, some of the voices calling for the worst kind of courage, are coming from the fundamentalist versions of our major religions. Some Israelis say God gave them their land, and reclaiming it is doing God’s will, no matter how many Arabs they kill.

Fundamentalist Muslims give their religion a bad name by urging them to kill Americans in the name of Allah. And in this country, far too many conservative ministers have preached war and justified violence, even if they haven’t gone as far as Jerry Falwell’s saying we should hunt down terrorists and blow them away in the name of the Lord. These are voices pleading for courage. But they are pleading from bad hearts, so the courage serves bad ends. And when you serve a bad heart, life expands in unhealthy, deadly ways, like a cancer.

In your own life, you can think of stands you have taken that served both good places and selfish places, can’t you? And you can remember the effects that taking those stands had – on you and your relationships. But sometimes it’s easier to see these patterns in areas where we can paint with broader strokes. So you can also tell the quality of our heart by looking at the form life is taking in our society.

Last week, I read an article by a local man, an editor at the Austin Chronicle named Michael Ventura. I know Michael; he’s spoken here at least once. I want to read you a little from the picture of America he paints. And remember, we reap what we sow; bad effects come from actions serving a bad heart. So listen to these things – some of which you probably know – and ask what kind of a heart our country seems to be serving, and if it is the kind of heart you want. All of these conditions are the direct result of the priorities we are serving. And our priorities come from the active heart of our society:

The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).

“The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens” (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a “developed” country? Anyway, that’s the company we’re keeping.

Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That’s six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)

“U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower” (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look “developed” to you? Yet it’s the only “developed” country to score lower in childhood poverty.

Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).

The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).

“Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the [past 25 years] (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.

“In a recent survey of the world’s 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European” (The European Dream, p.69).

Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).

One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).

“Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined” (The European Dream, p.28). It’s the only hope many see of ever realizing the American Dream.

Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).

“Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available” (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-01-21/cols_ventura.html

The bold actions that produced these figures took courage, skill, determination and a kind of leadership. But behind the courage, I believe that we have been serving a bad heart. We could add to the sorrow of figures like these by going down a similar list showing the number of killed, wounded and reduced to poverty in the more than one hundred countries where our country has soldiers stationed.

But I would rather tell you the second Buddhist story about courage. It’s one some of you have heard before here, because it is one of my favorites.

A notorious bandit came to the Buddha one day and informed him that he was the most fierce and brave bandit in all the world, and was going to demonstrate it by killing the Buddha. “Ah,” said the Buddha. “If you are that powerful, you can grant me two wishes before I die.”

“All right,” said the bandit, “but be quick. Time is short, and I have many more people to kill.”

The Buddha pointed to a young sapling tree growing nearby, and said “Cut off the smallest branch on that young tree.” The bandit laughed, and with one quick swipe of his sword, it was done and the tiny branch fell to the ground. The Buddha picked it up.

“Now, old fool,” said the bandit, “what is your final wish?”

The Buddha handed the tiny branch to the bandit, pointed to the tree, and said, “Now put it back on.”

Legend has it that the bandit achieved enlightenment in that instant.

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© Davidson Loehr 2005

Victoria Shepherd Rao, Ministerial Intern

27 March 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

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PRAYER: Victoria Shepherd Rao

May we understand redemption and self-sacrifice in life-enhancing ways.

Maybe it is not by the death on the cross that we are saved but by the death of our need to always be right, or to have the last word, to always have our own way. Perhaps we may be afraid that if we do not strive to be heard our voice will be drowned out by a thousand different noises, that if we do not stand up for ourselves, we will be overlooked by others. These are real fears.

May we redeem them for trust. May we trade our worries for ourselves for broader, more expansive concerns and by them feel the universality of human need. Need for enough food, for clean water, for shelter, for personal acknowledgement, for enough love. May we be moved by such universal needs – the needs we all share.

Our needs may be met or maybe some of our personal needs are not being met. May we have the honesty to accept ourselves just as we are and the strength of character to do what is necessary to take care of ourselves, so that we may each, in turn, care for others.

Easter is the high holiday, the day when Christians celebrate the supreme self-sacrifice of the one who called the Creator God so familiarly as “Dad.” Christians believe the whole world of possibilities changed in that sad act. Let us also seek to appreciate the unimaginable possibilities an attitude of self-sacrifice ushers into our world.

Let us recall the little parrot in the Jataka tale the children heard*. She shows us how the heart can be powerfully stubborn when it sets itself on the well-being of others. The promise which motivates the one who is self-sacrificing is not only the well-being of others but the possibility of an ultimate kind of satisfaction not with the self but within the self, the sense that there is truth in the statement, “I did everything I could.”

May we here today grow in our capacities to act and be with others in a spirit of self-sacrifice, and may we learn a new meaning for redemption, trading the confines of our self-interest for the expansive realms where concern for the well-being of all humanity, even all beings can bring meaning into our lives abundantly, hope into our outlook irrationally, and joy into our hearts unexpectedly.

* The story of “The Brave Little Parrot” is part of the Buddhist tradition of Jataka Tales, or stories of the Buddha’s previous lives. In this particular story, a parrot does everything she possibly can to put out a fire which is destroying the forest home she shares with many other creatures, regardless of the danger and the seeming hopelessness of the task. Her efforts move a god to tears and his tears become a saving and restorative shower that puts out the flames.

SERMON: Eastering

Religion is a funny thing. On the one hand, we insist that our religion is about dealing with our deepest and most important questions: matters of morals, ethics, even life and death. Nothing in the world is outside the reach of religious concerns and questions.

On the other hand, we expect all our worship services to be rated “G.” There are animated children’s cartoons more risqué than the average sermon. This makes it hard to tell the truth, if the truth is too challenging, unorthodox, or just plain disturbing. And nowhere is this more true than in Christmas and Easter sermons! I have Christian colleagues who say these are often their least favorite sermons, because there is so much pressure to offer nothing more challenging than a Hallmark card with a Happy Face on it.

I’m not a Christian. But if I were a Christian minister and this were Christmas, the first words in my Christmas sermon would be “You know there was never a virgin birth, don’t you?” And for Easter, I’d begin by saying “You know that no corpse ever walked, don’t you?”

There is a saying that the first word in religion must always be NO – NO to the nonsense, so there is room to say YES to the more profound insights of the best religions. But it’s hardest to say No to the two central myths of Christianity – that there was something supernatural about either the birth or the death of the man Jesus.

There wasn’t anything supernatural – not because I said so, but because the world isn’t built that way, either now or then. Christianity was born in the first century, couched in the first century scientific picture of the world. They believed the universe was a local affair, with three levels. It’s the view of the world you can still see by going outside on a clear day; it was one of the most intuitive and common-sense pictures of the world we’ve ever had, even if it wasn’t within a billion light years of being true.

In the middle was the earth, which was flat sort of like a big pizza. The sky above was a dome made of rock – they called it the “firmament,” and the Greeks had their strongest god, Atlas, charged with holding the heavy thing up. Good gods and angels came from up there – either above the cloud layer around Mt. Olympus, or above the higher clouds in Christianity. And below the earth was the place of fire and brimstone, as you could see by looking at what volcanoes brought up from beneath. This was the home of the bad gods and demons.

That’s the first century scientific world picture you have to have in mind to make sense of a lot in the Christian scriptures. When the gospel writers say that the heavens opened and a voice shouted down “Behold, this is my beloved son in whom I am much pleased,” it demands that old picture of the world, where the top of the sky just wasn’t that far away. Or when they say that Jesus descended into hell or ascended into heaven, you need that same ancient picture to make sense of it.

That’s the way the world has to be built in order to have gods mating with humans, corpses ascending to heaven, descending to hell or going anywhere at all. And the world isn’t built that way, either now or then.

But it takes some courage for ministers to tell the truth on Christmas Sunday, or Easter, because in the opinions of most people, Christianity is about supernaturalism.

That’s because for two thousand years there has been this awful contradiction between the religion of Jesus and the religion about Jesus. The religion of Jesus is found in the things he taught people about how to live, how to treat one another. The religion about Jesus is the magical religion of the baby and the cross, in which the teachings of the man Jesus are often completely overlooked.

The religion about Jesus has always been the religion of literalistic and fundamentalist Christianity. It is about believing a certain story that few people would even know how to believe, with the promise that if you do, you’ll be saved some day after you die. Jesus would have hated that story. But then, Jesus never heard of either Christmas or Easter. They weren’t created until long after he had died.

The religion of Jesus is not supernatural at all. It is about how you can be saved, be made more whole, here and now, and how you can help make the world more whole here and now.

The message of Jesus was a message of liberation and empowerment; the messages from the religion about Jesus are too often aimed at frightening people into obedience to agendas like hating gays or independent women, or sanctioning a war against people in Iraq that look a whole lot more like Jesus than they look like most of us. These are political and military agendas that Jesus would have seen as wrong or hateful.

And the religion of Jesus isn’t about Easter. It isn’t a noun. It’s a verb; it’s about Eastering. It’s about the miracle of new life coming from old, life out of death, right here and now. Nothing supernatural, though it feels so magical when it happens, you know? “Do you have a light?” Jesus asked; “Don’t hide it under a basket.” Have you been given a gift of life? Don’t hide that, either. Share it, give it to others. Life is about honoring that spirit of life that comes and goes as it likes, but when it comes our way it can make all the difference between feeling dead and feeling alive, you know?

Literalistic religion promises a Garden of Eden, which would be an awful place. A place where only obedient, unquestioning, uncurious people are welcome, a garden where no one is allowed to grow into their full humanity. It is not a garden at all, but a trap. It’s a trap in which your spirit can die, because living spirits, like living people, always question, always grow and change. In less than three days, the Garden of Eden would just bore you to death.

Literalistic religions say you can’t save yourself, it can’t happen now, and it can’t happen here. Liberal religions say “If not now, when? If not here, where? If not you, who?” And we answer, “New life can come to you. Here and now.”

If this were Christmas, I’d say that honest religion is a manger made ready for the birth of the sacred within our midst. The Easter Bunny doesn’t need a manger – actually, I’ve never really wanted to know how or why that rabbit lays colored eggs and foil-wrapped chocolates.

Liberal religion – and the religion of Jesus was a liberal religion, not a literal one – offers not a Garden of Eden, but a Garden of Eastering. A fertile place where new life is welcome because we trust the future more than the past.

That’s how I think of this church: as a garden of Eastering. A couple years ago, I overheard our current Board vice-president tell someone that this church was a “Do-ocracy,” where those who choose to do something give the place its character and direction. That’s a Garden of Eastering, a place giving birth to the future.

Before you leave today, we’re going to give you a gift, a symbol of this Eastering spirit, to take home as a reminder. But more about that later.

When you think about it, our annual budget is really just paying the costs of providing that Garden and the staff to tend it, but not the new life that grows in it. We never know what or where that new life will be, because it comes through you. For instance:

I’ve never seen another church with the range of high quality music we have here. Think of the weekly offerings from Brent, Bryan, John, our choir and our many guest musicians. Almost every imaginable style of music is here, from a choir singing Bach to a soloist singing a song by Joni Mitchell or the Beatles, or the wonderful music from “Pieces of East” we have this morning. There’s almost nothing we won’t try, as long as it can carry a spirit that can move us – that’s the key. And that’s why the music program is great: it’s a garden in which the Spirit can grow and flourish. That’s a garden of Eastering.

Or think back a few months and ask why we had such a super Christmas Eve pageant. Why was it so nice? Well, because Vicki Rao, our ministerial intern, took charge of it. Because a few members who had experience in set design and theater direction offered to lend their talents. Because a lot of parents drove a lot of kids to rehearsals, and four or five hundred of you came to be here for it. Eastering doesn’t have a season; it can even happen at Christmas.

Have you walked through the lovely landscaped garden we have in back? Five years ago, it was a playground filled with dangerous junk that had been condemned. Then a few members decided we deserved and needed something beautiful instead. They talked with me and the board, consulted with landscapers, researched top-quality playground equipment, had professional plans drawn, raised money, put in a lot of work, and now a condemned dump has been transformed into a place of beauty for all ages.

And this church has been designated a Natural Habitat by the State of Texas, and a Green Sanctuary by the Unitarian Universalist Association. It’s the only church in Texas with that designation. Why? Because a handful of members who were more sensitive to the grounds than the rest of us felt called to transform it, worked at it and did it. That’s how Eastering works.

Very soon, out in the foyer, we will have a huge twelve-foot long credenza, custom designed and built for us. Why? It wasn’t in the budget. But one member got so sick of the look of the foyer he decided to do something, got some others to help him, talked with me and the board, collected money, and soon there will be a new locus of beauty in our foyer, born of the imagination and care of ordinary people right here in this room. Eastering.

And our new Friday Movie Nights. Several months ago, I thought we needed more opportunities for community that had nothing to do with fundraising, and thought that well-chosen movies might be a way to do it. I solicited donations from several members, who generously contributed a total of over two thousand dollars, and we bought a projector and eight-foot screen. Then some members came forward who wanted to help, decided we should have soda and popcorn for a more complete movie experience, and put it together. We had our very first movie night two days ago, this past Friday night. The members who had put it together told me that if we ever had forty people show up for one of these, they’d call it a success. Friday night, we had eighty-five here. That’s Eastering. New life, appearing where before there had been nothing but a big room, a big garden waiting for something new to be born in it.

This summer, some of our high school kids will be taking part in a Freedom Ride organized by the UUA: a long bus ride retracing some of the steps of the freedom marches in the civil rights movements of forty and fifty years ago. Why? Because one member thought it would be neat to have some such trip, and after more heads got involved, this trip emerged, money was donated, and our kids will have a trip this summer they will never forget, to reconnect them with some terribly important parts of what it means to be an American who cares enough about freedom to make personal sacrifices for it. Eastering.

The church budget, as essential as it is, can’t create the magic that brings new life to this place. All it can do is pay for the garden and hire the staff to tend it. But whether the garden will give rise to new shoots of life – that is really up to you, to the spirit that dwells in you, that makes you aware of little things about this place that need new life, and that moves you to help with the miracle.

And if you think about it, life is like this too. You work to pay the bills, to provide a garden where Eastering might happen, and you work to create a relationship that can give life to you.

Because besides the kinds of institutional Eastering that help make this church so alive and healthy, there are those more down-to-earth, personal gifts of life and grace that come to us.

Last year, a member of this church was diagnosed with a form of pancreatic cancer. The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually awful. She went through tests and the ordeals of treatments. This week, she sent me an e-mail saying there are no signs whatever of any cancer cells, and her prognosis is now for a normal life of another few decades. That’s Eastering.

And just last night, I received an e-mail from Cathy Harrington I want to share with you. Many of you know that Cathy was our ministerial intern two years ago, who is now the settled minister in Ludington, Michigan. And many of you also know that last November, her 26-year-old daughter and youngest of three children was murdered in California. It was about as devastating as anything a parent can ever go through, and it devastated Cathy. Her church gave her time to heal, and even arranged all the Sunday services in December. She spent time with her family, went to Nicaragua for ten days – a place that had some magical healing powers for her. And last week, she went to San Francisco to take part in a four-day street retreat, living, eating and sleeping with some of San Francisco’s homeless people in the Tenderloin area.

Here is her Easter e-mail:

Davidson:

I just returned from a week on the streets of the Tenderloin with the Faithful Fools. I went in search of God and much to my surprise found Her.

I ran into a homeless man named Will, who I met last year. He said the Lord put it into his heart to give me a gift. It was a magnificent silver cross [that had belonged to his mother], a gift of grace that has moved me from despair to the realm of healing and wholeness. It was one of many glimpses of the divine this past week. Finally, grief has released its deadly grip on me and I am able to breathe again. I think I can actually walk through the valley [of the shadow of death now], instead of staying forever in the shadow.

Happy Easter, Cathy.

We all live in the valley of the shadow of death: that valley where death, disease and despair can rear their ugly heads at any time, without rhyme or reason. It can be scary in that valley; it’s no wonder so many people live in fear rather than trust and hope.

But there are more than shadows in this valley of life. There are also gardens: amazing gardens in which new life can and does grow. For us. Here. Now. It may not be supernatural, but it surely feels miraculous. Let us go seeking those miracles, and seeking to be part of those miracles for the world around us.

Happy Eastering!

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© Davidson Loehr

Sally Miculek

20 March 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Sally Miculek

Ten days from now, I’m going to turn 27. Most people would say that 26 isn’t really a major year, as far as growing up goes. It’s not 18, and “adulthood,” or 21. It’s not a decade change. It’s just 26. But, for me, 26 has been a big year. I’ve gone through three important life events, coming-of-age kinds of events, if you will. And their varied nature just reinforces the notion that you never know when or where some new growing up experience is going to come from.

The first event was the most recent – Sunday, January 16, of this year. With two new friends, I signed up to run a 12 mile leg on a relay team for a 50 mile ultrarun through Big Bend National Park. I’m sure many of you have completed marathons or ultramarathons, or had equivalent achievements in other sports, but I hope you will not scoff at me too much. My first 5k, or 3.1 mile race was in April of last year. By November, I was able to run six miles at a go, and that’s when I decided to sign up for the Big Bend run. I put myself on a training regimen more grueling than any exercise plan I’d ever tried before, and within eight weeks of deciding to make the run, I was ready and able to conquer this task I’d set for myself, and I had a great time doing so.

The second event was my wedding. On June 5 of last year, I met my fiance in my parents’ garden, and there we said our vows in the company of many of our friends and our families. The day was the perfect culmination of months of plans, preparations, negotiations, and stress, and I feel lucky to enter the married phase of my life with such an amazing fellow.

The first event was of a more sobering nature. As it happened, the day I was sending my wedding invitations, my OB-GYN called me. He had confirmed that, after follow-up tests, some unwanted cells had returned to my cervix after a procedure 18 months before that had been intended to eradicate the problem. Though he told me many times that this was not cancer, he did refer me to an oncologist, and that fact, coupled with the word “carcinoma,” which was used to describe the wayward, was enough for me. I am happy to report that, after a day surgery a few weeks later, and after many follow up visits throughout this year, the cells have not yet returned. Still, cancer remains a specter for me, and I cannot hear a woman say she is overdue for a routine exam without feeling obliged to tell her some part of my story and then urging her to see her doctor.

So here I am, at the end of my 26th year, embarking on a still new phase in my life. I have a new husband and a new fitness hobby that I hope to keep for a long time, and an ongoing medical concern that will forever color my attitude towards women’s health, and that I hope will never become more than a mere concern for me. As I prepare for my next birthday, I feel confident that whatever growing up experiences 27 brings, I’ll be able to handle them. I’ve got some stuff at the core of my being that I can hold onto when I need it, and that offers comfort, solace, and jubilation through all of my triumphs and challenges. First, I have a family that loves me, and that I love in return. I know I can always go to this group of people to share all of my growing up experiences, for the good or the bad. Also, I have always held the belief that I am a lucky person. To this, I owe my good fortune in having a family I love, finding a mate I love, having a good job, and being able to relish the highs in life, and recover my happiness and joy after things go wrong. No matter what challenges I face, what good or bad decisions I make, I know that I’m lucky enough to be able to come through these growing up experiences stronger. Now I ask you two questions: what have your growing up experiences been this year? I think, if you examine it, you’ll find that maybe you’ve had a more important year than you might have expected. Second, what is at your core that will help you overcome the challenges and embrace the triumphs? I think I did pretty well with the stuff at my core, and I hope that the stuff at your core is just as strong.

PRAYER:

Let us remember who we love and who loves us. for those invisible threads are the ties that bind us together, that help to weave the web of our larger and better selves.

Let us remember and honor those high ideals we have served, and which have served us. They are a part of the image of our greater selves, the image of God.

And let us remember, and draw into our hearts, those most tender mercies that help make us blessings to ourselves and others.

As we make our way through life and life makes its way through us, it is these invisible, slender threads of connection that make up our greatest strength and our most heartfelt hope.

We are not alone. We are never alone, if we can remember those few invisible and precious things that live within us.

And so let us remember who we love and who loves us. Let us remember and honor the high ideals that give us our most noble profiles. And let us remember and pass on to others those most tender mercies that help make us most fully human, and most fully divine.

If we can remember and honor just these few invisible things, these things that form the bedrock of our character, we will be all right. We will be all right.

Amen.

SERMON:

This morning’s service is really about how to deal with change, and the role played for us by those “still, small voices” I was talking with you about last week. When we speak of change, we are usually talking about disposing of something: changing clothes, jobs, cities, partners. Change is usually a kind of “out with the old and in with the new” sort of thing. So it usually means to drop one thing and get a new thing. We speak of it as though we stay unchanged, but just change some of our accessories.

But even with that simple kind of change, we have in mind some image of ourselves, of what doesn’t change. So we change clothes because we are going to a party or a wedding, and want to be dressed right to honor the people and the occasion, because that’s the kind of person we want to be. We change what’s visible to serve what’s invisible.

In the Christian scriptures, there is this famous sentence that says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) “The evidence of things not seen.” Invisible stuff. Important stuff. And Roman Catholics have defined a sacrament as an outward manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s presence. That invisible holy presence is one of the most important things about us, especially when we have to go through hard changes.

With every physical change we make, there is an invisible thing that usually directs or guides the change.

Konrad Lorenz, the great Austrian who created the discipline of comparative animal behavior – humans and other animals, that is – once said that there is one time in our lives when we are so receptive to our environment that it could almost be compared with “imprinting” in young geese. That is that time in our late teens and twenties when we’re struggling to find an adult identity to replace the one assigned to us by our parents. We are so oversensitive to stimuli at that time, he said, that the music that is most powerful for us at that time usually remains the most powerful music for the rest of our lives.

And we may change a whole slew of things in this search, depending on the fads of the day. We want to mark ourselves as individuals, but we want to look like the right kind of individuals – like all those others in the group we run with.

When I was a teen-ager, boys who wanted to look a little wild combed their hair with a duck tail in back. Boy, does that ever not sound wild any more! And I’ve never understood just why we wanted the back of our head to look like a duck’s behind, anyway.

Today, young people get more dramatic changes done: piercings, tattoos, theatrical things done with their hair. Those are the visible changes. but they are driven by the invisible desire to look the part of someone trying to declare independence from an old role, looking for a new one.

Or think of people getting married, and putting wedding rings on. That’s an outward and visible sign of something inward and spiritual. Though most people who get tattoos will tell you they are also an outward and visible sign of an inward movement.

Almost all of our actions are outward signs of inward dispositions, beliefs or concerns. This is true of social movements as well as individual ones. Something like the civil rights movement or the women’s movement created a lot of outward signs: parades, protests, banners, petitions and the rest. But what gave these movements their power were the invisible and inward changes in attitude that they symbolized.

What’s the point of all this? It is to draw your attention to an irony. And that is the fact that in life, most of our visible actions are really acting out invisible inner or spiritual states that are more important.

This may sound kind of obvious, but it’s one of the most important things in religion and life. I’ve thought for a long time that the biggest reason that religious literalists seem so frightened of change, or those who are different, is because they’re stuck in the visible world, and can’t find that deeper faith that the holy spirit is present everywhere, in everyone.

I’ve had a brief, if strange, e-mail correspondence with a professor from Bob Jones University recently. At one point, I tried to engage him by raising some good scholarly questions that anyone teaching religion should know about. But his response was simply to say that we probably couldn’t communicate, because he was convinced of the absolute depravity of humankind. You know, you can’t say something like that about other people: you don’t know them. But he and many other literalists say that these are confessional statements, they know they are true by looking within. And I don’t think you can argue with that.

But my god, what a sad, miserable kind of faith! Of course we have some original sins – taking our beliefs too seriously is one of them. But we also have many original blessings that are with us still. And we tilt toward the good, not the evil. How dreary to go through life with fear driving you to such horrid beliefs that you miss the gift of so much that makes life rich and good. I think one of the ironies of people stuck in literal religions is that their only answer would be to find a better kind of religion: one with a healthier and more whole picture of our human condition.

This is the kind of thing Sally was talking about with that “stuff” at her core: that invisible center that has sustained her through some of her recent big changes. Things like knowing that your family is stuck with you and you can count on them, or counting on the fact that you’ve always been lucky enough to be able to frame changes in hopeful ways rather than frightening ways.

The supremacy of these invisible things – these still, small voices – has been seen by the greatest thinkers in all times and places. I want to introduce you, or reacquaint you, with a few of them, a few people saying the same thing in different ways.

1. Aristotle wrote, “There is a life which is higher than the measure of humanity: [we] will live it not by virtue of [our] humanity, but by virtue of something in [us] that is divine. [and] small though it be, in power and worth it is far above the rest.” All this talk of invisible powers and voices sounds kind of spooky or supernatural. But it isn’t supernatural. It’s natural, and super.

2. In the Bible, when the ancient Hebrews left Egypt and wandered through the wilderness for forty years, all the outward and visible signs were just awful. Those with the shallowest faith even wanted to return to Egyptian slavery because at least it was familiar. But they carried something with them on their wanderings, that gave them a kind of center, a center that moved with them. They called it the Ark of the Covenant. It was a box about three feet long by two feet square, and the Hebrews carried it with them everywhere. It was thought to have great power – you may remember the movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark”? That was the outward and visible thing.

But its real power came from the fact that it was a sign to them that their God was with them, that everything holy that gave them significance and purpose was with them, always, even as they wandered through the wilderness. Now don’t just think of this as an old story about people who have been dead for over thirty centuries; it is, as all good myths are, also about us, about a dimension of ourselves we usually haven’t learned to see.

3. There is a stronger version of this business of carrying your god with you, in ancient Greek mythology. It’s one I find both more profound and more useful. It comes from a little-known myth of a little-known god named Proteus. If you read Greek mythology, you won’t find many lines devoted to this god. His chief claim to fame was his ability to change shape.

Sometimes he was a tree, sometimes sea foam, or anything at all. A lot of Western thinkers have attacked this as a sign of people with no soul, no core: “protean” people. But they have missed the point. The god Proteus should be seen as the patron saint of change. Because, while he changed form quite often, he was always a god. Think about this. What was most important, most sacred, about him, had nothing to do with the form he happened to be in at the moment. He was always holy, always a god. You understand that in the language of mythology, this is a story about us, don’t you? It is a story telling us that for us too, when we change form, place, change almost everything, there is still that invisible something about us that is sacred. If there is one single truth I wish more people really believed, it is this. It’s both natural, and super.

4. And a beautiful expression of this same insight comes from the Qu’ran from the religion of Islam, where one of its most famous sayings is that Allah is closer to you than your own jugular vein. Now what can be closer to you than your own jugular vein? Only something that is an inherent part of you. God inside of you: the holy spirit as an invisible but essential part of you that goes with you wherever you go.

5. One last image comes from an old story the Greeks used to tell about Socrates. He was this wonderful and very irritating old philosopher who taught Plato, who in turn taught Aristotle. He was a stonemason by trade, and all the stories about him indicate that he was, that his face was – well, ugly. And this was in a Greek culture that idolized beauty.

Sometimes in the plays the Greeks would put on, an actor would portray Socrates – usually to make fun of him – by wearing a big mask he held up in front of his face, a mask made to look like the face of Socrates. Now the face was so ugly that people laughed, sometimes because they didn’t believe anybody could actually look like that. And when Socrates was in the audience and this happened, he used to stand up and turn around so everyone could see that yes, by golly, someone really can look like that! His heart, his soul, weren’t owned by the visible world, but by something inside of him no one but Socrates could really see.

That may have been the source of the story that compared Socrates to some common little wooden statues Greeks would make that were plain on the outside, but when you opened them they were filled with gods. How else could Socrates be so unconcerned with his looks, unless there was something inside, invisible, that was more powerful than his misshapen face? Plain on the outside, with gods inside. You see, that too is a story about us, if we’ll hear it.

Sally called it the stuff at her core. When I hear a story like Sally’s, I don’t much care what you call this invisible and holy part of you, as long as you can call it forth. Aristotle called it forth by one name, the old Greek mythmakers called it forth by another, the ancient Hebrews called it forth by still another. And for Socrates, like Proteus, it was closer to him than his own jugular vein. But can you see they were all talking about the same thing, the fact that there is something about us that is incorruptible, that is always there, always with us, and that it is the strongest ally we have as we go through the changes that life brings to us.

This invisible, natural, super thing at our core: what is it? I think it’s an ability to frame life as trustworthy, because you know you are supported by a core, anchored in a soil, deep and fertile enough to ground you as you grow through the changes life brings.

This invisible thing, this faith that believes the evidence of things not seen, that believes there is a holy spirit within us, within our core – this is what determines whether in our lives time will bless us, or will just pass; whether we’ll grow up, come of age again and again, or just get older.

You know there’s a story about this, too: about someone who never got it, who was never transformed by life, who never came of age, and whom time simply passed by. It is the story of Rip van Winkle, who fell asleep under a tree for twenty years, and woke up with nothing to show for it but a long beard. We can miss it. Life really can pass us by.

St. Paul once wrote that when he was a child he thought like a child, but when he became a man he put away childish things. That’s what we need to do when things change and we become afraid. We need to put away childish things – like believing that we’re alone, or that our meaning and purpose were tied to a certain form, job, or identity, or that there is nothing we can count on to carry us through. Those things are childish, and are not true. They are profoundly faithless.

For we are not alone. We may look plain on the outside, but we are filled with gods, filled with the holy spirit. The evidence is closer to us than our own jugular vein. You just have to have the eyes to see it, and the faith to believe it. It is not supernatural. It’s natural, and it’s super. It is the truth that can set us free. Try it, for a lifetime, and see.

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© Davidson Loehr 2005

Cuileann McKenzie

13 March 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Cuileann McKenzie

We participate in an unending chain of conversations. But despite all this practice talking, I think most of us have trouble finding our true voice, let alone using it. We chatter, but are we really reflected in our words? Often not. Sometimes for necessary reasons – like portraying a particular image for an employer at a conference, or not telling the bride how much you dislike her gown on her wedding day. But holding back or changing our comments to suit the expectations of another can be taken too far. Like too many of us, I have had times in my life when I’ve allowed my true voice to erode to nearly nothing, completely following another’s lead, and all the while continuing to “talk” like there was nothing wrong. It’s a costly trap, for as the voice fades so does the spirit. But I can assure you, from experience, it’s possible to get your voice back.

What about those of us who haven’t found our voices yet, or those who have been categorically dismissed as not having much of value to say? I loved working with one of these groups, high school students, particularly those in alternative education. After some classroom teaching experience, in one of my teacher’s college assignments, I asserted that we should give high school English students an opportunity to write down their personal thoughts and feelings and allow them either to keep the notes or to use a shredder at the end of the class. The intent was to give them a private and safe space to explore their minds, to vent, to ponder, to hope or pray, and through the writing process, to start to find their own unique voices. The idea was received well by the professor, but that was pre-Columbine, pre-911. Things are different now. Today, I doubt there’d be much support for such a suggestion, and I’m not sure I’d chance voicing it. In the current climate of fear, I think we’ve really lost something – without a sense of safety, voices become quieter.

When I first thought of the shredder, I identified more with students and less with adults in the trenches of career and family. But time has a way of shifting perspective. Indeed, it now seems to me that age can bring more restrictions on voice rather than fewer. Before we speak, we consider partners’ feelings, company cultures, and the little ears of children. Perhaps we’re the ones that need some paper and a shredder. Maybe instead of feeding that machine our bank statements, using it to protect our identity, we can use it to help us find one. Writing to purge the mind and heart can be seen as healthy for the spirit as well, for the Dalai Lama ritually writes his concerns down on a sheet of paper each evening and throws it into a fire. Hey, if it’s good enough for him, maybe we should all try it!

A great way not only to begin to find your voice but also practice using it can be found right here at the church. I’ve had the opportunity to be both a participant and a leader of Evensong, and I’ve benefited greatly. I tend to be reserved when it comes to discussing personal matters. That might seem odd since I’m a writer and am also up here speaking right now, but when I’m writing fiction, I get to don a mask and have great fun, and when I’m up here, I fulfill a clearly defined role and follow my script. When on my own, though, in the everyday world, I often become quite shy. In the welcoming atmosphere of Evensong, however, my reservations soon faded away.

The series of eight weekly gatherings is a wonderful place to learn not only how to speak, but how to listen. After having a week to ponder a topic, you are given the chance to set your true voice free and talk without interruptions, without questions, in an accepting atmosphere. Each person has a chance to speak, while the rest of the group silently and supportively listens. And truly listening to another person is valuable — not only is the speaker’s voice strengthened by the acceptance and validation, while listening, we learn that we’re not alone. THE PRECEDING HAS BEEN A PAID PROMOTIONAL MESSAGE FOR EVENSONG AND RELATED just kidding, I’m just a big fan! But seriously, consider joining Evensong. A new group begins on March 23, and you can sign-up in the Gallery after the service.

Of course expressing our voice is not limited to speaking or writing. People caring for those who need their help are saying so much. And expression through music is wonderful – as we hear each Sunday. Some people also show their regard for others by cooking a beautiful meal. Related to that, to the friends I met last fall in Evensong – at our holiday potluck, I swear that my store-bought frozen lasagna was not saying anything! In whatever form of communication we choose, each one of us has the potential to speak with our own unique and valuable voice. Let’s take the time to find it and then, Speak Up!

PRAYER:

Let us listen for voices that bless us, and call us toward a higher kind of humanity.

There are so many voices we do not want to hear. Voices that belittle and demean us. May we let those bitter voices go by like echoes of bad ideas.

Voices that say we can never be enough, or that we are damned, or too sinful ever to be acceptable – these are usually the voices of tormented people. Let us move out of their way, as we move toward the light.

The light has voices, but they bless us, and call us into our fullest humanity. They help us become human religiously rather than fearfully.

The voices coming from the light bless us, because they know we are children of God, children of the universe, the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself, and that we are precious.

Let us know that we are precious: that we are precious people called to share our gifts of life with a world that desperately needs to hear life-blessing, life-giving voices. Let us hear those voices, and let us be those voices of life and love, of challenge and encouragement.

If we must hear voices – and we must – let us listen for the good ones. And let us strive to become some of the voices of blessing, affirmation, challenge and empowerment so that we too, as we pass through life, may bless the world with our own gifts of life and of love.

Amen.

SERMON: Finding Your Own Voice

I have a kind of confession to make: I hear voices. Don’t worry; the voices I hear are a comfort to me. And striving to be in their company gives my life much of its meaning and purpose.

Cuileann spoke of finding your individual voice, and when we talked about this service, I told her I was going to use the old Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus to frame it. Now if you haven’t been coming here for long, you might think a “myth” is just an untrue story. But that’s not right. A myth is something that never happened, but always is. The good myths have insights into the human condition that seem relevant even two or three thousand years after the myth was first told. So the truths contained in myths aren’t like those in science. They’re deeper; they last a lot longer, and they’re always symbolic and metaphorical, never literal.

Little Echo was a nymph who was very pretty but couldn’t shut up. And once after talking to Zeus’s wife Hera to distract her while her husband Zeus escaped from another of his many local affairs, Hera got so angry she put a curse on Echo, and said that from then on she could never have a voice of her own, but could only repeat what others said to her. That story is the source of our word “echo.”

Now Narcissus was a beautiful young man who was unkind and indifferent to all the women who loved him. So one of the avenging goddesses put him under a curse. She decreed that he too would have the experience of deeply loving someone who would never return his love.

So Narcissus and Echo will make an interesting match. Echo sees him lying by a stream, but can’t call out to him. He, in the meantime, has seen his own reflection in the stream, fallen madly in love with it, and cries out “I love you!” “Love you” calls back little Echo. But Narcissus loved no one but himself, and gazed narcissistically at his own reflection until he finally wasted completely away. And little Echo also wasted away, with neither a love nor a voice of her own, until nothing was left of her but her voice, still repeating back whatever is said to her.

Boy, there are a lot of keen psychological insights in that story! Narcissists who, no matter how attractive they may be to others, are capable of loving only themselves. And their partners, who are only permitted to echo back whatever Narcissus says until they too waste away.

We really can lose ourselves if we never find our voice. Haven’t we all experienced this at least once? Not having a voice, playing the role of Echo to someone who really didn’t care?

The role of Echo is one with which a lot of women identify, but it isn’t always the woman who is the echo. Family counselors tell me they’ve seen it both ways, including couples where the woman is the narcissist and the man is assigned the role of echoing back whatever she says.

But however the roles are cast, it’s a plot in which nobody can win. Echo and Narcissus each had half the answer, but only half. Echo could only love others from a distance. But she couldn’t love herself, and wasted away without having a voice of her own. Narcissus could love no one but himself, and wasted away because that’s not enough.

Today we probably wouldn’t call her Echo. Maybe we’d say she’s just doing Karaoke: singing words to somebody else’s tune. But spiritual Karaoke is not satisfying, as you know if you’ve tried it. And when we see someone doing it, we always want to say “Oh, just be yourself, will you!”

But you know it isn’t that simple, either for women or for men. There can be something scary about speaking in our own voice, being known. What if it isn’t enough?

This reminds me of a short comedy skit I saw on television probably twenty years ago. It starred Rich Little, the gifted impersonator. It was sort of the opposite of the Echo and Narcissus story. He played a husband, whose wife was angry because he would never show her his true self. He kept talking to her like Humphrey Bogart. And after doing Bogey, he’d be John Wayne or Sean Connery. Finally, she got so frustrated she said if he didn’t start being himself, she’d leave. Then suddenly this whiney, wimpy, snivelling little voice came out of him. She stopped, looked, and said “Is that the real you?” “Yes,” he whined. She thought about it, then said “Do Bogey again.”

So part of finding our own voice lies in believing that we have a voice that’s worth finding, and that anybody even wants to hear it.

One of the problems is that we all have more than just one voice, and sometimes have to choose which of our voices to use. The Greeks really made it easier for us to understand that we have many voices. They had all these gods and goddesses, and Greeks understood that several of them resided within them, often giving them conflicting advice. Several years ago, I read a book by Arianna Huffington on The Greek Gods, and learned that she also grew up thinking of her competing voices as the voices of goddesses. She has said that her adult life has been a balancing act between following the voice of Demeter the mother to her two daughters, and Artemis, the ambitious and driven woman.

Maybe you think it’s odd, talking about having several voices. But everyone in this room has done it. You’re on a first date, or cruising a bar or party, and meet someone you want to impress. A woman might decide whether she wants to come across as strong Artemis, sexy Aphrodite, mother Demeter or Hera, the archetypal wife. Meanwhile, the man is choosing between being sexy Dionysus, cool and competent Apollo, tricky little Hermes, or Big Daddy Zeus.

We all hear voices. Sometimes our voice needs to be a blend of the several things that are most important to us, and we gain our integrity through integrating our different voices into complementary expressions of our core, or soul. So finding our voice is less like a discovery and more like an achievement.

It is so important for us to do this work, to find our voice and offer it to others, to our world. Because we are the only ones who can do it. And what a shame it would be if the world never got to hear our voice because we forgot about them while we were singing spiritual Karaoke. Finding and using our own best voice is how we are born into our adult roles.

Now let’s take it up a level. Once we find our voice, it’s clear that what really matters is what our voice is serving, what it represents. You know if it’s a whiney sniveling voice, nobody will want to hear it. And if we can only focus on ourselves, nobody wants to hear that, either.

One point of religion is to help us find voices worth serving with our own; to help us find ideals worth following with our lives. That’s what I meant when I said that I hear voices, that they are a comfort to me, and striving to be in their company gives my life much of its meaning and purpose.

You know some of this. In fact, you make judgments on it every week. You don’t really come here to hear me. You come because you hope I’ll be a voice for something beyond me, beyond us, for a perspective big enough to give you something to take home, something you can use in your own life. If you think back on it, I’m betting you have judged every preacher you’ve ever heard on what they served with their voice. Did their words just draw attention to themselves, or were they serving a perspective and a spirit big enough to give some life to you?

Christians say – and I do love this saying – that it isn’t so much who we are that counts, but whose we are. That’s what they mean: what are we serving? What gods are we incarnating, what spirits? Are they spirits that bless our world, or bore it, or even curse it?

Abraham Lincoln once said that we seek “the better angels of our nature.” The word “angel” means “messenger,” a messenger from the “gods.” Any Greek would understand that he means we want to serve the better gods. And like the Greeks, Lincoln knew we have many angels in our nature, both good and bad, and that they all come calling on us from time to time – as you know, too. But we should just listen for the better angels of our nature. They need to be the tune our voice is singing, if we’re to have a voice that blesses us and our world, a voice the world needs to hear.

So spiritual Karaoke is using your voice to sing someone else’s tune, like little Echo. And religion is using it to sing God’s song, to put it poetically. It’s the voice of God we’re seeking. Or if you’d like that put into other words, it’s the voice of wisdom, insight, compassion, love, and connection. That’s what the symbol “God” stands for. That’s the tune we want to sing, the tune that gives our voices the power to give life to us and to others.

Where do you find that voice? The voice that can give grounding to your own voice: the good gods, the better angels – where do you find them? From politicians? Beer ads? Movies? Soap operas? They’re all trying to sell us voices and roles to play, you know. Do you listen for the strongest voice, the loudest voice, the scariest voice? Where do you find the voice that’s most likely to be coming from those better angels of our nature?

This is like asking where do you find the voice of God, isn’t it? So where do you find this “voice of God”? Do you find it in the shouting bible-thumping preachers or the self-righteous politicians or arrogant friends who have made God so simple that they have him all locked up and want to tell you what to believe? No. No, I don’t think you ever find the voice you need in the loud and arrogant places. Listen to this wonderful poetic passage from the Hebrew scriptures:

“And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.” (1 Kings 19:11-12)

A “still, small voice.” That’s the kind of voice our better angels have, I think.

I had an experience like this that always comes to mind when I read this passage, and which you might find useful too. I have never liked public spectacles much, and have avoided almost every graduation ceremony of mine that I could. I didn’t attend the ceremony for my undergraduate degree, or for the Master’s Degree, and had no intention of going to the ceremony to get my Ph.D., either.

But a classmate told me I must go. “Why?” I asked him. He just said there was a line there that would be spoken by the president of the university, that I must hear it and would never forget it. All right, that’s pretty seductive.

So for the first time, I rented a gown and hood and bought the hat, and took part in the graduation ceremony. I was sitting right next to my classmate, and kept wondering when and what this great line was. It came near the end.

After all the undergraduate degrees and Master’s degrees had been granted, she called up onto the stage all of us who were receiving our Ph.D.’s. After some brief introductory remarks, she turned to face us, and said – this still chokes me up! – “I welcome you into the ancient and honorable community of scholars.” I’ve never heard such empowering and intimidating words in my life. We weren’t just students who finally got through the grueling degree program. No, we were now and forevermore members of an “ancient and honorable community of scholars.”

I hadn’t even realized that such a community existed. I’ve spoken with others who got their doctorates at the same university, and the line has kept its power for all of us. One woman told me that sometimes, when she’s preparing a lecture, she want sto cut corners because the class is only for freshmen.

Then she’ll hear voices. At least that one voice, reminding her of the ancient and honorable community of which she is a part. And she says it feels like Aristotle is there looking at her, saying “You don’t really intend to cut corners on this lecture, do you?” Like me, she hears voices, and those voices are a comfort to her. And striving to be in their company gives her life, as it gives mine, meaning and purpose. You realize that this is the same message religions give in their different ways. It is like saying “You are a child of God, and God loves you,” or that your soul is part of the whole universe’s soul, or that you are made of stardust.

So when you serve a transcendent ideal, can you really say it’s your voice you have found? Yes, it’s just a voice that you cared enough about to educate, to let it rub up against others who aspired to high ideals. And the ideals we serve with our lives – those ideals bless us. And people around us can tell. They may not know just what inspired us, but they know we are trying to be true to something important, something enduring, perhaps even something eternal. And it makes all the difference.

For we have heard the voices of the better angels of our nature, and they always bless us, by initiating us into that ancient and honorable community of people trying to come into their full humanity. And there is no higher or more ennobling aspiration.

I don’t mean only for us as individuals, but also for groups of people. This was what happened with black people in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s: they found their voice and claimed their place at the table of humanity.

It is what happened in the women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and the gay rights movements since gays fought back against police harassment at the Stonewall bar in 1969.

These moments were among the miracles of the past half century: miracles, because new life was born, as new groups of people found their voices, connected those voices with timeless tunes of freedom, equality and justice, and raised their voices to bless both themselves and the world around them, whether the world was ready for that blessing or not.

Those people heard voices. Not the voices of the loud bigots around them, not the loud voices of abusive policemen, not the voices of everyone telling them to get back in their place and be little Echoes again. They heard the “still, small voice” that contained the voice of God, the voice of the better angels of their and our nature.

This is a sermon that can’t really end, because it’s a sermon about beginning to take ourselves seriously, trying to become fully human, religiously. So here’s how I want to begin. I want to begin by welcoming you, all of you, into the ancient and honorable community of people seeking their full humanity. You are all part of it, and I hope when you leave here, you hear voices too: voices that know your name, know your soul, voices that give you the power to speak, to bless yourselves and to bless your world, our world.

Perhaps nothing in all of life is more sacred than hearing those voices, and knowing how to answer them.