In Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, the beekeeper tells her apprentice “the world is really one big bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places: Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and long pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting.” Here’s how we’re going to keep making honey over the summer…
In an article in Paste magazine by Kay Gibbons, one of my favorite Southern writers, she said this: Being a white Southern writer “is a hazardous inheritance that too often reassures us that the world is listening with intent and need for our messages, when it should be our reminder that we’re generally hollering entertainment from the bottom of a well, and getting it right requires sending up water, some force of living that people can use to treat one another better.” I’m going to try to send up some water today that people can use to treat one another better. (Feb/March 2006, Paste : Signs of life in music, film and culture p. 74) My text is from another Southern writer, Sue Monk Kidd, from her book “The Secret Life of Bees.”
It’s 1964 in the South. A sixteen year old white girl named Lily runs away from her abusive father accompanied by Rosaleen, a black woman who helped Lily’s father raise her from the age of four after Lily’s mother was shot — maybe by Lily, maybe by the father. One of the only things Lily has of her mother’s is a piece of paper with a picture of a black Madonna on it. The words “Tiburon, South Carolina” are printed on the paper, so Lily and Rosaleen head for Tiburon. There they find out that the picture is a label from a jar of honey made by a beekeeper named August, who lives in a pink house with her sisters, May and June. The sisters take in the runaways.
Lily is talking:
“I hadn’t been out to the hives before, so to start off [August] gave me a lesson in what she called ‘bee yard etiquette.’ She reminded me that the world was really one big bee yard, and the same rules worked fine in both places: Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and long pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates, while whistling melts a bee’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.” [p. 92]
I think of the church as a hive sometimes. We have all kinds of work to do to make the honey of spiritual growth, intellectual exploration and right relationship. Compassion, love, challenge, clarity. Those things are so sweet, and they take so much effort. In a hive of bees, everyone has a job. Wax making, honey production, the gathering of nectar which pollinates our crops and flowers, the queen who lays all the eggs. There are even nurse bees who feed the babies.
There is a beekeeping project in inner city Chicago. One visitor wrote this: “I stood just a few feet from the hives as the young men jiggled the bees from the supers and extracted the honey. The air around me sizzled. I stood as still as I could, willing myself not to flinch….
Terror and awe were one as I stood in the eye of the swarm, perfectly still. The term “ecstasy” makes some uneasy because of hallucinogenic and sexual connotations. But its root word exstasis means to stand out of yourself. When the air sizzled, it was easy to forget myself, to slip out of my own worries and to realize that I was a small, vulnerable part of something much larger than myself.
It was relief, if only for a few moments. It was like remembering to inhale deeply after a series of shallow breaths. After being so focused on the bees, I could see everything else more clearly. Is this part of the gift the bees give to their keepers Ñ an opportunity to come out of themselves, to turn away from what they’ve done and to remember what they could be? To be, if nothing else, ecstatic.
As I watched the beekeepers work, they would periodically break off small bits of honeycomb that grew along the rims of the supers. After checking for bees, they’d suck they honey from the comb. ‘We do this for energy,’ Micheal Thompson said, ‘But we also do it to remember why we are here.’ I’d read in The Secret Life of Bees that I should continually send love toward the bees and exorcise their own fears. I tried to do these things, but still, I got stung. …
…When I was sitting on the concrete jotting down notes, a bee landed on my knee and dug in.
‘It hurts,’ I said, cringing, as a beekeeper gently brushed the dying bee off of my leg. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘We try to avoid it.’ ” Jenny Schroedel “Eye of the Swarm “Boundless “Webzine
No one can be in community for long without doing the work, tasting the sweetness, and feeling the sting. I used to be scared of bees. I almost jumped out of a moving car when I was a child because of a bee on the window. I still remember a black buzzing splotch on the window, feeling the terror rise, grabbing the door handle in a panic, just wanting to get away from that buzzing threat. How a sting could have been worse than hitting the pavement at 60 mph, I don’t know. That’s not how panic thinks.
The dread of being stung and outrage at having been stung can make us flail around in community when flailing around is the worst choice we could make. August the beekeeper said “: Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and long pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates, while whistling melts a bee’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.”
Don’t be afraid. Most people don’t want to sting you. Some do sting, because they weren’t thinking, or because they were moving too fast, or because they were in pain, or scared. Still, don’t be an idiot. Know that people will sometimes sting, so protect yourself reasonably. If someone is always getting on your last nerve, perhaps it’s because you are wearing your last nerve a little too close to the surface. Wear long sleeves and long pants. Wear a hat. Don’t swat.
Here’s what I take “don’t swat” to mean. If you are in a situation where things are getting scary, try to stand still. Imagine that everyone involved thinks they are doing the right thing, that they have good intentions, or that they soon will. Don’t strike out at one another.
On a web site called “What everyone needs to know about bee stings,” I read: “Bee stings are a normal part of life in the country and a normal part of working with bees. Many people enjoy bees and consider the occasional sting to be the price we pay for the pleasure of their company, for having them pollinate our food crops and for providing us with honey.” This is true about community too. In one that is a good fit for us, the occasional sting is the price we pay for the pleasure of one another’s company.
“Removing the stinger as quickly as possible reduces the amount of the venom injected and reduces the effects.” Yes. When we hold onto the stinger, when we re play the incident in our mind, it gives it more time to inject venom into your system. I can’t think of one healthy reason to let that happen. “Stay calm. Most of the ill effects from normal stinging incidents come from panic in the person being stung and bystanders. Panic and anxiety multiplies the pain, and can result in serious secondary accidents. Panic by the person stung or those around him/her can produce a systemic reaction in itself.” Yes again. Most ill effects of someone saying something hurtful to us or leaving us out of something or ignoring us come from the thoughts we have about what happened. If we can stay calm and interpret what happened in its best possible light, less harm will be done to everyone involved.
This church has been through a lot of change in the past three years. There was pain and sorrow, anger, nobility, difficult conversations, change, joy, renewal…. You all are an amazing group of people, not only surviving but now thriving and moving into the future with hope and peace. That takes intention and hard work, and it demands a lot from everyone. I know you are proud of this congregation. I hope you will keep your heads as you move into the next chapter of your story. It is becoming a good story to tell already, and I imagine it will continue to be. Your job is to stay hospitable to all of the people who want to come be part of what this group is all about. If you feel angry, whistle. And send out love, because every little thing wants to be loved.
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It is often said that our nation’s ethics derive from the Ten Commandments of Moses. If you look closely at them, though, they don’t reflect American values very well at all. Solon the Athenian was born around 638 B.C.E. In 594 B.C.E he was elected to create a constitution for Athens, in the process becoming the founder of Western democracy and an early proponent of equal rights for all citizens.
Call to worship:
Spirit of life, be present with us this hour. Join us today as we gather in a wider search for truth and purpose. In this quest, may we greet one another with open hearts and minds; may we inspire each other to consider new questions and seek deeper meaning; and may we cultivate wisdom and compassion. Let all who enter this sanctuary see a welcome face, hear a kind word, and find comfort in this community. And may all that is done and said here today be in service to love and justice.
Source: 1997 UUMA Worship Materials Collection
Reading:
Morning Poem
by Mary Oliver
Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange
sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again
and fasten themselves to the high branches —
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands
of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails
for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it
the thorn
that is heavier than lead —
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging —
there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted —
each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,
whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.
Sermon
With the election coming up, I know the Christian Right is going to be more in our faces than it is normally, talking about this being a Christian nation, telling us that the framers of the Constitution built it on the morality of the Ten Commandments. I thought you should have some good information about the Ten Commandments. I’ve noticed that we have a big granite monument to the Ten Commandments on the Capitol grounds, and I read about the Supreme Court’s decision in 2005 that this was not unconstitutional. I wonder if the people who fought so hard for that decision could in fact recite all ten.
On his pseudo news show “The Colbert Report,” Steven Colbert, who is from SC, interviewed congressman Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, who was fighting hard for a display in the House and in the Senate.
“You co-sponsored a bill requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Why was that important to you?” “Well, the Ten Commandments is -is not a bad thing , uh, for people to understand and respect.”
“I’m with you,” Colbert responds as the congressman goes on, “Where better place would you have something like that than a judicial building or courthouse?”
“That’s a good question, Colbert says. Can you think of any better building to have the Ten Commandments in than in a public building?”
“No. I think if we were totally without them we may lose a sense of our direction.”
“What are the ten commandments?”
“What are all of them?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to name them?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“Let’s see, don’t murder. Don’t lie, don’t steal-uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh– I can’t name them all.”
In the faith story of the Jews, Christians and Muslims, the Ten Commandments were given to Moses in the Sinai desert; In the Hebrew they are called Aseret ha-Dvar”m, best translated: “the ten statements.” The story is found in both Deuteronomy (5:6-21) and Exodus (20:3-16) The Hebrew people followed Moses out of Egypt and they traveled through the Sinai Peninsula to the land of Canaan, which was promised to them by God. After about three months they came to Mount Horeb, also called Mount Sinai. God told Moses to come up the mountain alone, that he would speak with Moses in a voice the people could hear so they would always trust Moses to lead them. The people were told to wash their clothes, to have a consecration ceremony, to abstain from sex, and they were not allowed to go up the mountain. Moses went up the mountain to talk to God. Smoke came on the mountain, like the smoke from a furnace, because Adonai (one of the Hebrew ways of naming God) descended on the mountain in fire, and there was the sound like a trumpet that grew louder and louder. On the mountain, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, and many more commandments the people were to follow. According to the Talmud, there are 613 laws the Jews must follow. When public reciting of the ten was giving them more weight with the Jewish people than the other 593 commandments, the recitation was discontinued.
It took Moses so long to come down from the mountain that the people grew restless, and Aaron, Moses’ brother, was pressured to make some gods who would go with them to the Promised Land. He asked for all their gold earrings and bracelets; he melted them down and made a statue of a golden calf. The people celebrated with dancing, shouting and revelry. “Revelry’ is Bible translator language for wild partying. Moses heard the noise. The text says it sounded like war. Have you ever been to a party that sounded like a war?
He came down with the tablets, which were carved on both sides (rabbinic tradition holds that they magically had writing that went all the way through, yet read correctly on both sides. The “O” shaped letters still had the circle of stone hanging in the hole, floating there without connection to the surrounding stone.) Moses saw what the people were doing, and became angry and broke the tablets into pieces. He ground up the gold statue, spread it on their water and made the people drink it. Then he went back up the mountain and got two more tablets inscribed by God. Swedenborgian teaching says that the first tablets had the higher law on them, but when the people proved themselves less than highly evolved, the second tablets had a lower form of the law on them.
Here are the ten:
1. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall make no graven image.
3. Do not take the Lord’s name in vain.
4. Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother.
6. Do not kill.
7. Do not commit adultery.
8. Do not steal.
9. Do not bear false witness (do not lie).
10. Do not wish for your neighbor’s wife, nor his donkey, nor anything that is his.
These are time-honored precepts, and they encapsulate more than one ancient culture’s wisdom about how to live a good life. In fact, they borrow heavily, verbatim in parts, from the code of Hammurabi, whose tablets we have in the British Museum. I remember, in seminary, being taken aback to realize how much of Mosaic Law was taken directly from Hammurabi, which argued against it being given directly from God to Moses. Once your mind can let go of literalism, though, you can see that these laws are a good way for a new society to be structured, especially one made up of people who had been slaves, used to being told what to do for four hundred years.
Did we start putting monuments in court houses and capitol buildings in the eighteenth century? The nineteenth century? No. They were a Hollywood marketing scheme. Cecil B DeMille had a movie coming out called “The Ten Commandments.” He heard about a judge in MN who wanted to send framed copies of the Ten Commandments to courthouses all over the nation to stop the moral decline he saw. A Christian organization, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, was helping with the funding.
Eager for publicity, DeMille contacted the judge and suggested that they replace the framed certificates with bronze tablets, but the judge said no way. Moses’ tablets were in granite, so bronze wouldn’t do So, with DeMille’s backing, around 150 granite tablets were made and distributed across the country, with Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner dedicating a few of them in person. After the movie, the Order of Eagles kept giving out the monuments, the last one in 1985. Our monument is one of those made to publicize the movie.
Many courthouses in Utah have chosen to take down their displays because a religious organization called Summum wanted to erect monuments of Summum’s precepts next to the Ten Commandments. The cases were won on the grounds that Summum’s right to freedom of speech was denied and the governments had engaged in discrimination. Instead of allowing Summum to erect its monument, the local governments chose to remove their Ten Commandments.
I can’t resist telling you that Summum is a religion and a philosophy that began in 1975 as a result of a fellow named Claude “Corky” Nowell’s encounter with beings he describes as “Summa Individuals.” I will attempt to speak of this faith with respect, but it challenges my ideals. I hope to become a better person as I live on. Summum’s faith story says these beings presented Nowell with concepts regarding the nature of creation, concepts which are continually re-introduced to humankind by advanced beings who work along the pathways of creation. As a result of his experience, Nowell founded Summum in order to share what he received with others. In 1980, as a reflection of his new found path, he changed his name to Summum Bonum Amen Ra, but apparently he just goes by Corky Ra. Here is what the sign would have said: “The grand principle of creation is: ‘Nothing and possibility come in and out of bond infinite times in a finite moment.'”
Are the Ten Commandments at the foundation of our morality? Well, we teach our children not to lie, cheat, or steal, but we also teach freedom of religion, which goes against “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me,” and our whole advertizing industry is built on coveting, or wishing for, what our neighbors have. . A capitalist, consumer driven, democratic culture is antithetical to the holiness codes of the Hebrew Scriptures. This is why there is such tension between people with the values of our culture and fundamentalists of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) who want to base a culture on the Commandments. Democracy was unknown in Moses’ time. We believe in religious freedom, free speech, and the rights of the individual, disestablishment of a state religion. All of those go against the Ten Commandments, and all were insisted upon by the framers of the Constitution.
Historian Richard Carrier suggests that, if we are looking for the foundation of our democracy we look to the ethical precepts of Solon the Athenian. Solon was born, we believe, around 638 B.C.E., and lived until approximately 558. He was elected to create a constitution for Athens in 594 B.C.E. Solon is the founder of Western democracy and the first man in history to articulate ideas of equal rights for all. Solon was the first man in Western history to publicly record a civil constitution in writing Solon advocated not only the right but even the duty of every citizen to bear arms in the defense of the state, set up laws defending the principles and importance of private property, state encouragement of economic trades and crafts, and a strong middle class. Those ideals lie at the heart of American culture, but none of them is found in the Law of Moses. Do you wonder why those who follow the Bible deeply feel themselves at cross-purposes with American culture?
Diogenes listed the Ten Commandments of Solon (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 1.60):
1. Trust good character more than promises.
2. Do not speak falsely.
3. Do good things.
4. Do not be hasty in making friends, but do not abandon them once made.
5. Learn to obey before you command.
6. When giving advice, do not recommend what is most pleasing, but what is most useful.
7. Make reason your supreme commander.
8. Do not associate with people who do bad things.
9. Honor the gods.
10. Have regard for your parents.
What would your ten be? What are bottom line rules for you? Do they come from experience, from Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” from scripture, from habit? I like Solon’s, but for me, I would add “Don’t be boring.” How about you?
Carl Jung spoke of the “shadow side” of personalities and concepts. In the shadow are all of the elements we would rather not acknowledge. If we believe that pride makes us bad, our pride will be in the shadow side of our personality. If we believe that leisure is lazy, our resting self will be in the despised and hidden shadow. There is much value to be gained by being aware of one’s shadow side.
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Rev. Meg Barnhouse and Barbara Stoddard lead the Flower Communion litany. By bringing and exchanging flowers in this service, participants are part of a particularly Unitarian service created by Rev. Norbert Capek, who believed that each of us is like a flower which is beautiful in its own way. When we gather as a church, we are a festive bouquet of people.
The communion we celebrate has taken place all over the world in Unitarian and UU churches since 1923. Norbert Capek started this ritual to celebrate the worth, value and beauty of all people and celebrate the community of faith. In celebrating the worth of all shapes, sizes, families and colors, Capek saw hope for humanity. He would later die at the hands of the Nazis because this belief was so different from theirs. We remember him and his principles and dreams.
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Audrey Lewis, Max Wethington, Kate Windsor, Jara Stiller, Andrew Young
May 20, 2012
This year’s theme for the Annual Youth Service theme is “Individualism vs the social contract”. The service includes a bridging ceremony for youth who have just completed the 5th, 8th and 12th grades.
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Mama had a particular view of the world, shaped by her strong Christian faith, her love for children, her growing up as a missionary kid in India. Spiders in the house’s windows? No problem. Twelve cats? Fine. Missing a tithe payment to the church? Very Dangerous!
Reading: Joy in Ordinary Time
My Mama was a second grade teacher at the Gladwyne Elementary School in the rich suburbs of Philadelphia. She loved the children, but she was shy with the parents, who were financiers, pro ball players and attorneys, members of the Junior League, cricket clubs, fox- hunting clubs. For Christmas she would get amazing presents. One year she got a bottle of Joy perfume, then 150 dollars an ounce. I don’t know that she ever wore it. She was keeping it for a special occasion. She kept it so long that it finally evaporated.
About other things she was more openhanded. We had grandfather’s china and silver, which she often used. “That’s what they are meant for, to be used, she said. no sense in saving them. you’d never see them at all that way.”
That openhandedness didn’t extend to her own person. She wore sensible clothes, comfortable shoes, white cotton underwear. She had grown up the child of missionaries, and, whether she wanted it or not, that background was deep in her. She looked respectable and kind. She was cute and cheerful and funny.
Joy perfume didn’t fit who she seemed to be. A daughter never sees all the sides of her mother, though. It makes me smile to think that she harbored a hope that there would come an occasion where it could be her, where she might walk into a room smelling rich and sophisticated, cherished and valued, where it would be just the thing for her to wear. She let my sister and me smell it whenever we wanted to. The bottle sat like an honored but intimidating guest on her dresser. Whenever we smelled it we marveled at how much it had cost. I don’t remember it ever occurring to me to wear it.
I want to let his lesson deep into me. Celebrate the body, the trooper of a body that carries you through life, that pleasures you and lets you dance. Celebrate your body now, before you have lost the weight, before you get your muscle definition, before you feel justified by the harsh eyes of your expectations.
Celebrate being alive, drawing breath, celebrate that you are achingly sad today and that it will pass. It is good to be able to feel feelings. Celebrate that there was a love so big and good that it hurts to lose it. That there was a time so sweet that you ache, remembering. Celebrate those things. Honor the flowering of the tomato plants, the opening of the day lilies, the lemon smell of magnolias. Honor the ache of your heart and the tears falling. Life is mostly ordinary time. Ordinary time, shot through with light and pain and love. Lavish joy on ordinary time. Hope is a wonderful thing, but not if it makes you put off splashing yourself with Joy.
Sermon: What I Learned From My Mother
Happy Mother’s Day. I want to talk to you this morning about my mother, Katherine Pressly Hamilton. She grew up in India until the age of 16. Missionary kid. Her parents were missionaries to the Hindus and Muslims who at that time lived mixed together in and around the town of Lahore, now in Pakistan. When she got to high school she hung out with the other international students, as she didn’t fit with the boys and girls who were raised in the States. When I knew her, she remembered a little Hindi, a little Urdu from those years. I heard it when we were washing dishes; she would sing hymns in Urdu. One year in seminary I invited an Ethiopian student and a Pakistani student named Sam home for Thanksgiving and he cried when she spoke to him. He said she had such a village accent it made him terribly homesick. The Ethiopian Marxist priest from Moscow we had invited converted to Capitalism while playing Monopoly, but that’s another story.
When they were children they would come from India on the boat for furlough. Grandfather would preach and the children would sing. They had a good sense of mischief, and they would change the words to: “Please pass the beer.” Their parents’ Hindi and Urdu wasn’t good enough to catch it. Mama said her aunts would always cry when the children got off the boat. It wasn’t until she was grown that one of them finally told her it was because the children all looked so pitiful in their clothes that had come from the “missionary barrel.” The kids didn’t know the clothes were ten years out of style and that not everyone wore things with some little stain or tear. Whenever something I had on had a little spot on the front or had a safety pin holding up the hem or needed ironing, she would always say “Just throw back your shoulders, smile big and no one will notice.” Mama was a believer in smiling. She preferred to stay happy. Part of how she stayed happy was to see things in the most positive possible way. “The say I had you children was the happiest of my life. Every minute of it was wonderful. Wonderful. “Willfully positive” is how I would describe the style she taught me. Even about her marriage. She and my father didn’t live together from the time I was three years old. They stayed married, though. She would say, “Your father is a difficult man. But I love him.” Then I found a survey in a Readers Digest she had left lying on the floor in her bathroom. One question asked “If you had it to do over again, would you get married?” She had checked. “No” I was shocked. He came to supper every night and stayed the evening before going home to his apartment in town. Children get used to how their family does things. If I had thought about it I wouldn’t have been shocked, I just didn’t really have to think about it because she threw her shoulders back and smiled. We all did. Smiled and didn’t think about it. She smiled big about teaching second grade. She said she loved it. Loved it.
She never complained, and she told funny stories at the dinner table about what happened with the children. She had to have a nap when she came home. I used to tease her about that until one day when I was fourteen I went with her to class and came home exhausted after a day of trying to keep up with 24 8 year olds. I had to take a BIG nap. She would tell elephant jokes and knock-knock jokes and we would groan. When we were camping she would lay out the plastic plates, which were in four bright colors, saying, “Purple, green, yellow, red.” “Ma, we know our colors, we’re not in second grade.” She took us camping for six weeks at a time and smiled. Three teenage girls in a VW camper: my sister, me and a friend. I learned adventuring from her. She would just go without a plan, without a clue as to what was going to happen. My little sister and I alternated being able to take a friend with us. We would get an NEA chartered red-eye to Europe and drive our white VW camper bus all over, finding campsites at night. We girls would set up the tent and sleep in it, and she would sleep in the camper. Whenever we got to a campsite she would look for boys for us. The way you find boys is by looking for pup tents. We would drive around until we spotted one with an empty site next door, and then we’d set up in the empty spot. She would put on a pot of spaghetti and then go next door and knock, and ask if we could run a line for laundry from our site to theirs, and by the way, would they like to join us for supper? We’d get out the guitar and sing after supper and flirt and have a wonderful time. If there weren’t any boys we’d have belching contests. Mama was a lady in so many ways, she taught me to drive with admonitions to drive gracefully, moving my hands over the steering wheel with wrists held limply, but she could win any belching contest. I’ve done my best to learn that from her too. Be a lady when you need to be, but don’t take it camping. She always paid a tithe, a tenth of her salary to the church. One summer we broke down crossing the Mohave Desert. The car cost a couple of hundred dollars to repair. “I know God was joking with me,” she said. That was exactly what my tithe was, and I held it back this month because of our trip. He was telling me not to do that.”
She was virtuous in her schedule. She woke up every morning at 5 and prayed until 6. It’s what she did instead of confronting us when she was worried. So she prayed until 6 and then practiced her violin. She wasn’t very good, but she played in the Main Line symphony in the back row. And she kept it up. She practiced. She taught me that a thing worth doing is worth doing badly if it gives you joy. She kept smiling when she got a lump in her breast. First she tried to not confront it. I’m sure she prayed. The lump didn’t go away. She waited a year to go to the doctor. He performed a mastectomy and radiation. Then another mastectomy. She was in and out of the hospital for the next five years. We kept hearing the cancer was gone and then it would come back. I learned not to hope. She always did, though. She said, “Meggie, everything that happens to me is good, because God is good.” I remember arguing with her one time about that, and then deciding that someone’s faith was more important to them in a situation like that than arguing the truth of what they believed. If believing that was comforting to her, then I needed to support her in it. It had already done its harm – kept her from going to the doctor early enough. Let her enjoy its benefits.
She also went to faith healers. They said she wasn’t healed because there was an un-confessed sin in her life. This saintly childlike woman searched her soul for what the sin might be. It infuriated me that she was loving and believing in a god who would sit up with arms crossed and say “I could heal you but I’m not going to because you have an un-confessed sin in your life and I’m not even going to tell you what that is.” That helped make me a Unitarian Universalist, because it was one of the many things that made no sense, and that wasn’t even their worst offense.
Mama was excruciatingly honest in most things. Once we drove all the way out of a drive-in movie because she had paid the under-twelve price for my sister, who had just turned twelve. I came home from school one day to find her crying at the kitchen table. She was feeling horrible because a postcard had come for me and she had read it.
Her cancer made her honest about the rest. She was in Kings Mountain with her sister and her mother, and her mother gave her some advice and she responded, disagreeing. Her mother sighed in a martyred tone, “How sharper then a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful child.” Mama spoke sharply to her mother for the first time and said “Mother, I am NOT your child. I am forty six years old. ” When she was telling me this story she teared up and said, Meggie, I know I have treated you like a child and you’re not one, and I apologize. Well, I was about 21 and I thought I WASN’T a child at that point, so I said something gracious like “Oh, Mom, you’ve never really done that…. but she wasn’t finished. She said “If I had it all to do over again, I believe I’d say “no” to you less when you were little. We said “no, no” all the time. I remembered that when I was raising my boys.
Mama never did tell the truth, though, about dying. She was always claiming that she was really healed this time. Her faith won out over her experience and common sense. She didn’t talk about dying until right at the end. She called where I was in seminary and said “I think the Lord is taking me. ” A kind student drove me the hour and a half home and I got to sleep by her sofa through that last night. She would drift and we would call her name, and she’d say “Just a minute, I’ll be right back.” She died the next morning early. I value all the things I learned from her. I value choosing to be positive. I value music and laughter and wanting to make a difference in people’s lives. I’m glad for what I learned to do from watching her do it and what I learned NOT to do from watching her do it. My values are different from hers, but I carry her with me. I know you all carry your mothers too.
It is my hope that, on this Mothers’ Day, we can all bless our mothers for what they have given us and let go of the things they tried to give us that aren’t workable in our lives. May we forgive them their faults, if we can afford to. May we understand that we don’t have to become just like them if we think about it and live with intention.
It is my hope that those of us who are parents can remember that we have given our children many treasures, and that we also have given them things they will let go of as unworkable for them, and that is how it should be.
Many of us identify as Unitarian Universalists, but do we mean the same or even similar things when we identify as such? Or is our biggest commonality our doubt about having any centralizing religious concept that pulls us to together as a religious movement? Something – or the lack of something – keeps inviting us back to be part of our religious community. This worship service explores what that central theme might be or perhaps what it could be.
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Cutting-edge researchers in psychology and cognitive science increasingly refer to the “two selves” of our in-the-moment self and our reflecting or remembering self. We will explore this abstract dichotomy through the lens of my very personal struggle to find a meaningful relationship with humility.
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The Gaia Psalms are nine pieces written as part of a special Unitarian Universalist Earth Day Service. The concept of this work is to create an interactive multimedia worship experience that is both moving and simple. This work is in the Gebrauchsmusik (Utility Music) tradition. All the music is written with the beginning or amateur musician in mind. Visual artists have created four altars to the four directions and elements. The children and some youth and adults have made masks of different birds, fish and animals, and there are responsive readings in which the congregation participates. A tree planting on the grounds of the church completes the experience. The pieces were also meant to be spoken over. The minimalist, meditative quality is intended to create a spiritual connection in the listener and move the listener to both celebrate and reconnect as a member of the Earth’s community.
“Gaia” (Guy-ah) or “Gaea” most commonly refers to Gaia (of Greek mythology), the primal Greek goddess of the earth. We chose the title, “The Gaia Psalms,” because psalms are songs of praise and engaged lamentation. This work comes out of NASA scientist James Lovelock’s “Gaia Hypothesis,” which states that the Earth can be thought of as a self-preserving, living organism. The work also strives to remove the duality between science and spirituality. Christian monk Thomas Berry said, “You scientists have this stupendous story of the universe. It breaks outside all previous cosmologies. But so long as you persist in understanding it solely from a quantitative mode you fail to appreciate its significance. You fail to hear its music. That’s what the spiritual traditions can provide. Tell the story, but tell it with a feel for its music.”
More info: www.kiyaheartwood.com or www.outlawhillarts.com.
Our seventh principle is that we affirm and promote “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”… What does it mean to respect that web, to be a part of it?
Mary Oliver wrote:
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Since I started preaching here, I’ve been doing a series on our seven UU Principles. Today we are on the seventh and last one, which urges us to promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. There is a description of a web in the Hindu scriptures:
Far away in the heavenly abode of the Great God Indra, there is a wonderful net … stretches out indefinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel at the net’s every node, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like starts of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so the process of reflection is infinite.
Our seventh principle calls us to act as if we are all connected. We are told by all religion that what affects one affects us all. The truth expressed by mystics of every religion is that your life and mine are part of a whole, and our dogs’ and cats’ lives, and the dolphins and the birds and insects, and the life of the trees you see out these windows.
As we walk our seventh principle, we try to be aware that we are in the web, that our carbon footprint is a matter of importance to our walking in faith. For many among us, this sense that we are connected leads to recycling as much as we can, or to swearing off Styrofoam, to building greener homes and churches. For many it leads to asking questions about ethical eating: we may try to buy products from chickens who are not treated cruelly– some don’t eat meat at all. Can we get through life without killing? My friend Ben lives in California. He is a vegan, which means he eats no meat or animal products like eggs or milk. He won’t wear leather shoes. He rides his bike everywhere. He dresses in organic cotton. I would admire him more if he weren’t so self-righteous and evangelical about his lifestyle, but every movement has fundamentalists. Even Ben, though, has to live with insects being killed so the soybeans and wheat and cotton and cherry trees can grow. How do we make our peace with this? A UU entomology professor at the University of Wyoming named Jeffrey Lockwood has written a book called Grasshopper Dreaming. Because he spends time with his students studying the grasshoppers on the ranges of Wyoming in order to discern how better to control their population, i.e. kill them, he has complicated philosophical thoughts about his work. The book is subtitled “Reflections on Loving and Killing.”
Apparently many of his peers take grasshoppers to a lab, spray them with something, and if they die, that’s a successful experiment. He felt called to go to where they live, kneel on the rocky scrub and watch them with the idea that if he got to know the grasshoppers it would make him better able to do his job. He found out enough about them so that, since 1990, he has been able to control the grasshopper population on the grasslands with 90% fewer pesticides, and safer ones.
Watching the hundreds of hours of video they took of the grasshoppers over a summer, the first thing that struck him was how much time the grasshoppers spent doing nothing. Previous theories had supposed that they were in the sun heating up, or in the shade cooling off. Not really. As it turns out they were just doing nothing.
If you use a human filter to interpret their behavior, it makes no sense. They have a high mortality rate: 2 percent a day. They spend only 3 minutes of each hour eating, and are not much interested in reproduction. This is despite their high mortality rate – 2 percent daily – which in the human world might result in a desperate competition for survival.
Lockwood writes, “If we humans were short of resources, we would surely battle for our share. We’d scurry about attempting to vanquish competitors, hoard supplies, mate feverishly, and well, do much of what we seem to do in the modern world. But grasshoppers aren’t humans.” He says the idea of competition for survival is an assumption that is inherent to much ecology and evolution. Yet the grasshoppers sit around. Maybe they are praying for world peace.
When a scientist is allowed to slow down, when that scientist has a philosophical bent, he or she may come up with surprising and helpful shifts in perspective. We’re all familiar with the way the museums of natural history had to rearrange their exhibits of lions when some finally took the risk and the time to actually observe pride behavior. Because of the way American society was structured, with the male going out of the house to work to bring home the bacon, the exhibits had been arranged to show the male lion going out hunting, then bringing back the kill for his family. In real lion life, it’s the females who hunt and bring back the kill. All of the tableaus had to be rearranged. Archeologists used to look at a structure in Crete that contained a small room with an observation hole, so someone could look in, a table freestanding in the middle of the room, with runnels at the end of it as if to catch blood. It was obvious to them that this was a chamber of sacrifice. When more female architects entered the field and looked at the same room, it was obvious to them that this was a room where a mother went to give birth.
We bring our experiences to our interpretations of the things we see. We are all blind to our own blind spots, so you can’t just say “I won’t have any blind spots.” It’s difficult to learn about other people. Mostly just watching, observing, hanging out, talking to different people who think differently – those are methods for overcoming our blindness. Seeing ourselves as the center of the universe is a pretty common blind spot. Michael Pollan wrote a book subtitled “A plants-eye view of the world” (The Botany of Desire) He talks about the onset of agriculture, and how we think of ourselves, central, in charge, as having domesticated plants and animals. This, he says, “leaves the erroneous impression that we’re in charge. We automatically think of domestication as something we do to other species, but it makes just as much sense to think of it as something certain plants and animals have done to us, a clever evolutionary strategy for advancing their own interests.” So one way of describing the introduction of agriculture ten thousand years ago is that some plants “refined their basic put-the-animals-to-work (by sticking to their coats) strategy to take advantage of one particular animal that had evolved not only to move freely around the earth, but to think and trade complicated thoughts. These plants hit on a remarkably clever strategy: getting us to move and think for them. Now came edible grasses (such as wheat and corn)that incited humans to cut down vast forests and make more room for them; flowers whose beauty would transfix whole cultures; plants so compelling and useful and tasty they would inspire human beings to seed, transport, [and] extol … them…. It makes just as much sense to think of agriculture as something the grasses did to people as a way to conquer the trees.”
Lockwood is constantly living in the tension between getting to know these beings intimately and understanding that he is getting to know them in order to kill them. He says he goes away from his students in the field to pray. He talks about his four year old son not understanding pronouns yet, communicating a very spiritual and connected stance in the world by saying “My blanket who I sleep with,” and “the tree who I am looking at.” Philosopher Martin Buber talked about having an “I-Thou” relationship with everything and everyone, which would make a better world than an “I-it” relationship. My spell-check for this sermon didn’t want me to say “the predators who…” or “the chickens who.” It wanted me to say “the predators that.” So Lockwood goes to pray, having developed an “I-thou” relationship with the grasshoppers. He hopes that he can find a way for the killing to be less thoughtless, less destructive. He and his students noticed over the years how widely the grasshoppers wander within the range of their territory. They noticed that they are cannibals; they eat their dead. So he began experimenting with applying the neurotoxins in narrow stripes across the rangeland, instead of blanketing the whole area. In these stripes, the grasshoppers would die, then grasshoppers from the non-treated areas would come eat them, and die. The natural predators who helped keep the grasshopper population down would be left alive in the non-treated strips. Then he switched to less dangerous growth-inhibiting chemicals rather than neuro-toxins, applying them in the same narrow strips. They worked just as well, and more safely for the environment as a whole, including the cattle and the humans who use the rangelands. He admits that he values human lives and human purposes more than grasshopper lives and purposes. He reminds us that the interdependent web of life is predatory. Species eat other species and plants to live. It is natural for us to value our species more highly than others. All life kills in order to live. That’s the way nature is. It’s not smart to be too squeamish to be part of nature. Living is muddy, and we just have to do our best. It does not pay to feel too righteous. May we feel alive instead.
“Quartet For the End of Time,” premiered in Stalag VIII-A in Gorlitz, Germany (currently Zgorzelec, Poland) on Jan. 15, 1941, to an audience of about four hundred fellow prisoners of war and prison guards. Composer Olivier Messiaen, an inmate of the camp, later recalled of the occasion, “Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension.” The story of this music is an inspirational example of freedom and beauty rising in the midst of death and destruction, a fitting story for Easter Sunday.
Messiaen quartet:
clarinet: Vanguel Tangarov
violin: Beth Blackerby
cello: Sara Nelson
piano: Bryan Uecker
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What do UU jokes tell us about ourselves? How true are they? Some sting: a UU family moves into a new neighborhood. Their little girl finds a new playmate, and they are happily getting to know each other. One day, the playmate says, “We’re Episcopalians, what are you?” The UU child thinks for a minute and says, “I’m not sure, but I think we’re League of Women Voters.” Let’s laugh and think together!
In honor of April Fool’s Day I’ve been reading UU jokes. I have to say some of them sting. Like this one:
Q: What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Jehovah’s Witness?
A: Someone who goes around knocking on doors for no apparent reason.
I would have a reason, and I know a lot of you would too. I would want to say “Did you know there is a faith community that doesn’t believe God would send anyone to hell? That there is a tiny bit of the Divine in everyone? That everything is connected, really, everything is one, and what I call God is the connection between one thing and another – that which connects us all, the one soul of all things. I believe that the Bible has some sacred things in it, and so does the Koran and the Vedas and the poetry of Mary Oliver and the lyrics of Townes Van Zandt. We’re here on this earth to learn to love and be loved, and appreciate the earth and the sky and the stars and try to alleviate suffering when we can and add to the joy in the world when we can do that. And that you don’t have to believe things that don’t make sense to you, and that you can believe in God or not, but definitely you should not believe in a God who doesn’t believe in you. And that is just what I believe. What do you believe?
This next one stung too:
A UU family moves into a new neighborhood. Their little girl finds a new playmate, and they are happily getting to know each other. One day, the playmate says, “We’re Episcopalians, what are you?”
The UU child thinks for a minute and says, “I’m not sure, but I think we’re League of Women Voters.”
In this Religious Education program, we’re going to try to teach the kids what it means to be Unitarian Universalist. That this is not a “non-denominational” church. UUism is a denomination with roots in the early church. It is not a church where “you can believe anything you want.” You can’t believe that one skin tone or sexual preference is better or more blessed than another. You can’t believe in hell. You can’t believe that if you’re rich and healthy it means that God loves you more than other people. You can’t believe that it doesn’t matter how we treat immigrants. Well, what you can’t believe and be a UU is another sermon.
We don’t have a creed to recite, though, that is true. That is the main factor making UU confusing to people. In Of Human Bondage, Somerset Maugham said: “A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves in almost everything that anybody else believes, and he has a very lively sustaining faith in he doesn’t quite know what.”
I just don’t recognize that description of Unitarian Universalists. You know, with the hectic flow of life, we sometimes don’t take the time to think about what it is we believe. It is easier, sometimes, to say what we don’t believe. This winter Cyndi Stein kindly offered a ten-week Wednesday night class called “Building Your Own Theology.” The students in that class are given the opportunity and the language to begin to carve out a statement of what they believe. Some of you know a lot about what you believe. For some it’s all about energy and thought and love, for some it’s about believing in a loving God, and for others it’s about doing your best to live ethically with the support of your community. For many of us, a big part of it is about the democratic process, making sure people are heard, making sure everyone has a chance to say their say, making sure the loudest don’t obliterate the quieter souls, talking until the sense of the group is heard. That’s difficult! Democracy is a demanding spiritual path. It’s much easier to shame people into shutting up, to disapprove of them until they subside, to talk over them or accept their silent offer to stay out of the discussion. It’s hard to slow down a process enough to hear the voices that don’t agree with the majority. It’s a big temptation to ride roughshod over objections and pretend that the sense of the group is unanimous. But Democracy is another sermon.
It feels to some people that the UUs believe nothing because most of our talk of believing is done one on one, or in smaller groups. I think part of why we like discussion so much is that we get to feel the presence of people who agree with us. Maybe that explains the old one about the Unitarian Universalist who died, and was off on the great journey. He came to a crossroad in the lane, with three directional signs. One said, “This way to Heaven.” Another said, “This way to Hell.” And the third said, “This way to a discussion about Heaven and Hell.” Of course the Unitarian Universalist went to the discussion. Conversation is one of our sacraments, along with child dedication, marriage, memorial services, coming of age, doing community service and drinking coffee.
In the UU church you don’t get to feel the presence of like-minded people in the experience of a whole congregation reciting a creed together It’s in discussion. that you get to hear people who agree with your views, seeing the heads nodding as you say something can be very validating, if you have felt like a Lone Ranger before that. I like that, but it can be confusing to new folks. One year, a professor of Religion at Wofford College forwarded me a paper one of his students had written. This student came to the service here and enjoyed it, but he said:
“The service was very different than any service I had ever experienced before, mostly because of the absence of any particular deity or central text. Instead, the sources for inspirational readings or authority seem to come from great thinkers or writers in world history, such as Rilke, Thoreau, Dickinson, Martin Luther King, Jr, and even occasionally the Christian Bible. The ideals were somewhat hard for me to wrap my mind around since there was no unifying feature other than feelings of love and acceptance.”
There is this joke:
A visitor to a Unitarian Universalist church sat through the sermon with growing incredulity at the heretical ideas being spouted. After the sermon a UU asked the visitor, “So how did you like it?”
“I can’t believe half the things that minister said!” sputtered the visitor in outrage.
“Oh, good — then you’ll fit right in!”
At the end of the paper the student writes:
“The church celebrates its diversity and the love and bond between its members is cultivated through the services and rituals of the church. Although it is an extremely interesting experience, I felt it difficult to understand what holds the members together religiously, but I appreciated the chance to fit the service into my own religious beliefs and personal spiritual context. The feelings of the members of the church are best expressed in the Affirmation. “Love is the spirit of this church, and service is its law. To dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another, this is our great covenant.””
We do like to support one another’s responsible search for truth and meaning. That’s one of our principles.
Why did the Unitarian-Universalist cross the road? To support the chicken in its search for its own path.
Our principles come closest to unifying us. Only a black-belt UU can recite all seven, but most of us know the first one: “to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” That’s a hard one, because we have to feel our way into whether we need to see as worthy everything about a person or just maybe that teensy spark of the Divine that is in each person. We can have people who seem as rigid and judgmental as the Pharisees themselves about being sensitive in our language and affirming of differences. That leads to the light bulb joke:
How many Unitarian Universalists does it take to change a light bulb?
Three – one to write a solemn statement which will affirm the following:
1. This light bulb is natural, a part of the universe, and evolved over many years by small steps.
2. There must be no discrimination against dark bulbs in any form, and means must be found for all “dark” bulbs to take their place alongside light bulbs on a basis of equality.
3. We affirm the right of all bulbs to screw into the sockets of their choice regardless of the bulb’s illumination preference.
4. UUs seek for each light bulb the fullest opportunity to develop itself to its full electrical potential.
Two to write this one:
We chose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the light bulb. However, if you have found in your own journey that light bulbs work for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your personal relationship with your light bulb and present it next month at our annual l light bulb Sunday service in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, three -way, long-life, and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.
Other UU jokes poke fun at the Biblical illiteracy of some church members. Too true. We’re trying to fix that. Two UUs are having a conversation about it:
UU#1: “UUs don’t know enough about the Bible.
UU#2: “Some of us are self-taught, and know a lot. Like me”
UU#1: “Oh, yeah? I’ll bet you five bucks you can’t recite the Lord’s Prayer.”
UU#2: “You’re on. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
UU#1: “All right, I was wrong, you’re right — you win.”
In The Big Book of Jewish Humor, the authors (Novak and Waldoks) quoted Martin Grotjahn who suggested that part of what Jewish humor is about is telling enemies, “You do not need to attack us. We can do that ourselves – and even better.” Let’s end by singing another ancient folk song together – this one was recorded by a group called the Limelighters. “Zen Gospel Singing.”
How Shall We Live? In the first half of the nineteenth century approximately one hundred utopian societies were established across the United States, several by Unitarians and Universalists. We will look at those UU utopian societies and see what lessons they offer us today.
Times of dramatic and rapid change often lead people to question all aspects of their lives. Such a time in the United States was in the early 19th century. As America entered the early 1800s the country began to take its first major steps toward an industrial society. People no longer stayed on the family farm. The first textile mills were established in New England. Improvements in transportation and printing came at a time when hundreds of thousands of new immigrants from Germany and Ireland flooded the country. The old, traditional patterns of life were altered and individuals looked for new ways to live. Some sought community in utopian societies. Over 100 such communities were established in the United States in the years prior to the Civil War. Some were religious, some were secular, some were entirely economic – all sought a better way of life. A few were established by our Unitarian and Universalist forefathers. Their search for a new life in the 1830s and 1840s still speaks to the way we choose to live our life today.
The most well known of these societies related to our UU ancestors was Brook Farm, established by Unitarian minister George Ripley. Ripley was a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and for 15 years the settled minister at Purchase Street Church in Boston. Increasingly attracted to Transcendentalism, in 1840 he attended a Christian Union Convention where participants were encouraged to follow the words of 2 Corinthians 6:17. “Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord.” Ripley envisioned a Transcendentalist “City of God” and plans for the community were made in the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The preamble to his “Articles of Agreement” state the lofty goals of Brook Farm:
To establish the external relations of life on a basis of wisdom and purity; to apply the principles of justice and love to our social organization In accordance with the laws of Divine Providence; to substitute a system of brotherly cooperation for one of selfish competition; to institute an attractive, efficient, and productive system of industry; to diminish the desire of excessive accumulation; to guarantee to each other forever the means of physical support and of spiritual progress; and thus to impart a greater freedom, simplicity, truthfulness, refinement and moral dignity to our mode of life…”
He organized a joint stock company, raised $11,000 in donations and pledges, bought a 200 acre farm eight miles from Boston in West Roxbury and called it “The Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education.” In March of 1841 he gave his final sermon at the Purchase Street Church and he and his wife moved to Brook Farm. They were soon joined by 13 other adults and within a year the community had 70 residents.
Work was chosen and assigned based on personal affinity and skills. Since all were expected to work and all work was equally honored, all were paid the same. Farmers, carpenters, and laborers were paid the same as teachers, poets, and philosophers. Education, social class, age, and gender made no difference. This plot of land had previously been a dairy farm and the soil was rather poor. Nevertheless, they planted a garden. Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the early residents, seems not to have enjoyed the blend of intellect and labor. He later wrote, “Mr. Ripley put a four-pronged instrument into my hands, which he gave me to understand was called a pitchfork; and he and Mr. Farley being armed with similar weapons we all three commenced a gallant attack upon a heap of manure.” They opened a school where students were taught history, philosophy, literature, music, Greek, Latin, and German. To achieve their goal of balancing manual labor and the intellect, students were required to work two hours a day. Some of Boston’s finest families sent their children there. The school would prove to be Brook Farm’s most successful undertaking.
The intellectual and social life at Brook Farm were stimulating. They had Elizabethan pageants, Shakesperian plays, concerts, operas, costume parties and dances. Works of Beethoven were played on the pianoforte; the choir sang the works of Mozart. The works of Dante were read in Italian. Literary societies and reading groups were popular. One resident later recalled that “the weeds were scratched out of the earth to the music of Tennyson and Browning.” At night Ripley led philosophical discussions, others led star gazing activities. Charles Dana led a group in translating difficult German texts. Many would close their day by joining hands in a circle and repeating “Truth to the cause of God and humanity.” Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane visited Brook Farm in the summer of 1843 and Lane critically wrote that he found “80 or 90 persons playing away their youth and day-time in a miserably joyous frivolous manner.”
From the beginning there had been a shortage of housing, so additional buildings were constructed, increasing their debt. Work also began on a 3 story high main building that would provide more living quarters, reading rooms, assembly hall, and central dining room.
Many of those who had given pledges of support were unable to fulfill their commitment. Struggling financially, in early 1844 the community was reorganized based on the communitarian socialist proposals of French utopian philosopher Charles Fourier. New workers joined Brook Farm, but many of the original Transcendentalist poets and writers left. Various industries were attempted. A sewing department made capes, caps, and collars for sale in Boston stores. Shoe making along with the manufacture of sashes, blinds, pewter lamps and pewter pots generated a little additional revenue. But not enough.
Criticism of Brook Farm began to circulate. Charles Fourier – the utopian writer – had believed that sex should follow the same patterns of work. That is, it should be based on attraction, alternation, and variety. Unfounded rumors of varied and alternating sexual partners began to be spread. Some parents withdrew their children from the school. Some parents opposed the equality or “leveling up” practiced at Brook Farm. One financial backer wrote to Ripley complaining about the presence of what he called “impure children” and called the social mixing of the children an “enormous evil.” In 1845 a student visited relatives in Boston where he was exposed to smallpox. Smallpox soon spread through the community and, although no one died, almost 1/3 of the population was quarantined. More students withdrew from school.
By 1846 about 65 residents and 12 students remained. In March the incomplete and uninsured main building caught fire and burned to the ground in two hours. Within a few months, 30 residents remained and virtually all of the students were gone. The following year bankruptcy proceedings were completed. Brook Farm was no more.
Ripley went to work for Horace Greeley and the New York Tribune. He later published a tremendously successful New American Cyclopedia and paid off all of the debts. Brook Farm lasted from 1841 until 1847, but Ripley’s dream of a Unitarian Transcendentalist utopia had failed.
Shortly after Brook Farm was founded, Adin Ballou established another utopian community, Hopedale. Ballou envisioned a pacifist cooperative community that would incorporate productive farming and industrial activities among a group of committed Christians. Ballou was almost 40 old when he began this enterprise, having served seven years as a Universalist minister and another eleven years in a Unitarian church. He had became a radical reformer, supporting the abolition of slavery, the temperance crusade against alcohol, equal rights for women, and pacifism. He believed in what was labeled “Practical Christianity,” a movement that supported Christian doctrine as closely related to the early, “primitive” church as possible.
In 1841 he organized and became president of “Fraternal Communion Number One,” a society dedicated to Christian living in a community setting. A joint stock company was organized at $50.00 per share, with the promise of a 4% annual return on the investment. The largest investors were Anna and Ebenezer Draper. With the money they raised, they purchased a 600 acre farm just west of Milford, Massachusetts and christened it Hopedale. Members of the Hopedale community agreed to a constitution that stated the following, “I believe in the religion of Jesus Christ as he taught and exemplified it according to the scripture of the New Testament.” They furthermore pledged that they would never assault, injure, slander, envy or hate any human or serve in the armed forces, use liquor, file a suit in court, or vote. Personally, they were committed to never indulge in covetousness, deceit, idleness, or have an unruly tongue. Thirty-two men and women signed this rather strict Christian pledge as they began their life at Hopedale.
In March 1842 twenty-eight individuals – about one-third of whom were children – occupied the Hopedale farm. All 28 moved into the old farm house. They were expected to work 60 hours a week during the summer months, 48 during the winter. And work they did. That first summer they planted 10 acres in potatoes and beans, 4 acres in corn, and 3 acres in other vegetables. They repaired the old buildings, erected a new one, and opened a school for the children. Every two weeks they printed a paper, “The Practical Christian.” They began manufacturing shoes and boots.
On Sundays they had morning and afternoon church services. On Tuesdays they had singing; on Thursdays they had religious discussions and on Saturdays they met to read and discuss public papers and periodicals. Thus, they practiced their Primitive Practical Christianity. Ballou would later write, “I…longed most ardently to see New Testament Christianity actualized.”
Within a few years Hopedale had grown to 170 people and annual business meetings reflected assets of over $50,000. But conflict had crept in. Many of the newer members did not have as firm a commitment to Practical Christianity as the original members. Divergent beliefs such as spiritualism, vegetarianism, and phrenology were practiced by some. Housing had always been inadequate and as new facilities were built, people argued about who would live where. The industries did not produce the revenue expected. As members withdrew, they were paid for their investment and labor, draining Hopedale of valuable financial resources. The end of Ballou’s Christian experiment came in 1856 when the Drapers, the largest investors, withdrew their financial support. The community could no longer be sustained and the Hopedale industries became private companies.
Ballou would write of his experiment. “It will go out to the world and down to coming generations…a laudable but ill-fated experiment entered upon and prosecuted, not to advance any selfish or unworthy interest or course, but rather to show the way of a better, truer life…”
In 1843 Bronson Alcott, the father of writer Louisa May Alcott, established a short-lived vegetarian community called Fruitlands. Prior to this community, Alcott had led a curious life, primarily fashioning himself as a philosopher, educator, and reformer. One historian claims that he was probably the closest personal friend to both Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Born in Connecticut in a large farming family, he had little formal education, but he loved learning.
After traveling to Virginia and failing to secure a job as a teacher, he returned to Connecticut and served as an innovation school master in two townships. He emphasized openness, respect, and self-expression, employing the Socratic method. Educational reformers helped him establish schools in Pennsylvania. Noted Unitarian minister Samuel Joseph May heard of Alcott and secured him a position in Boston. There, Alcott met May’s sister, Abigail, and in 1830 they married. He was attracted to the Unitarian faith of the Mays and for years attended William Ellery Channing’s Federal Street Church. But later, he drifted away from the church.
In 1836 he helped organized the Transcendentalist Club; the first meeting was held in his home. He even provided the name for the Transcendentalist paper, The Dial.
That same year he also published a very controversial book, Conversations on the Gospels. Included in these “Conversations” were discussions of human conception and birth. The book created a storm of protest and many parents withdrew their students from his school. Three years later, when he admitted a young black girl into the school, the remaining students withdrew and the school closed. To make ends meet, he became a day laborer and his wife and young daughters took in sewing. In the meantime, the Alcotts had become vegetarians.
Emerson paid for Alcott to take a trip to England where he met other innovative educators, including Charles Lane. Lane returned with Alcott to Boston and, along with Abigail’s brother Samuel, put up the money to buy a 90 acre farm 30 miles from Boston. During the early summer of 1843, the Alcotts – with their four daughters, age 2 to 12 – along with Lane and his son and five other adults moved to the farm, Fruitlands.
In spite of only having about ten apple trees, they expected to establish an orchard and grow their own food and live according to their radical vegetarian principles. This site had poor soil and was not suitable for a thriving farm. Nevertheless, they spent most of the summer plowing and planting. They planted corn, beans, potatoes, and carrots. They consumed no meat, eggs, milk, butter, coffee, tea, or molasses. The preferred diet was raw fruit and vegetables and water. Later, Alcott would ban the growing of food that grew downward. They felt animals should be as free as humans and so used no wool, honey, manure, or animal labor. In order to not be attracted by money, they tried to grow only as much as they could consume. They had little to worry about, because over production would not be a problem at Fruitlands. Neglecting their farm duties, Alcott and Lane traveled widely to Boston, New York, Rhode Island and Connecticut unsuccessfully recruiting additional members. As a result, when the grain needed to be harvested in the fall, Lane and Alcott were away and so Abigail and the girls led the harvest.
The few adults at Fruitlands were a motley crew. One resident insisted on wearing a long beard in an era when all men shaved. Another was a nudist, believing that clothing was spiritually restrictive. He agreed to practice his nudity only at night. One male believed that cursing and profane language elevated the spirit and regularly greeted people with “Good morning, damn you.” One resident – an elderly female – was caught by Lane eating a piece of fish. Defending herself she said, “I only took a little bit of the tail” to which Lane replied, “Yes, but the whole fish had to be tortured and killed.” She packed her bags and left.
By the fall, only the Alcotts and Lanes remained. When Samuel May refused to make an installment payment on the farm in January of 1844, everyone was forced to leave Fruitlands. Alcott’s dream of a radical vegetarian community was over. It had survived less than a year.
Pre-dating these three communities by a few years was the utopian settlemen Of Abner Kneeland, Salubria, Iowa. Kneeland was ordained as a Universalist minister in 1804 and for 25 years served churches in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York. Throughout his ministry, he continued to shift his theological and societal beliefs and came to support the radical beliefs of socialist reformers Robert Owen and Francis Wright. He supported women’s rights, racial equality, divorce, birth control, and interracial marriage. Theologicallly, he drifted away from Christian doctrine and came to define himself as a pantheist. In 1830 he was declared out of fellowship with the Universalists and no longer recognized as a Universalist minister. He established the First Society of Free Enquirers, and preached to crowds of about 2,000 on Sundays. After 3 years, he was challenged by Universalist minister and editor Thomas Whittemore. In response, Kneeland wrote an article which was published in the “Boston Intelligencer.” Kneeland wrote: “Universalists believe in a god which I do not…Universalists believe in Christ, which I do not…Universalists believe in miracles, which I do not…Universalists believe in the resurrection of the dead… and eternal life, which I do not.” For those statements over a period of five years he underwent five trials for blasphemy. Ultimately, he was convicted and in June of 1838, at the age of 64, served 60 days in jail. Famously, he was the last man in this country jailed for blasphemy. While in jail, Kneeland made plans to move west and establish a new community of free thinkers. He sought a community where no one would be persecuted for their religious or social beliefs. He chose the newly opened territory of Iowa for his project of free thinkers. By the spring of 1839, less than a year after his release from jail, he was in Iowa. He purchased 230 acres, setting aside 80 acres for himself and offering the rest for sale. Friends and supporters bought 200 more acres. Ten other families soon joined him, “united in desire to free inquiry.” He advertised his new community of Salubria in the Boston Intelligencer, describing the new land in glowing terms. He built a large two-story house, the finest in the county. Now in his mid-60s, he had two more children by his fourth wife – the first three having died.
Although Kneeland was busy in his new, small community, new settlers did not arrive and the land did not sell. He had not taken into consideration the Panic of 1837 – a 7 year long depression – the worse that the United States had faced up to that time. If others had planned to move to Salubria, there was now no money. To make ends meet, Kneeland taught school, sold his livestock and his 200 books.
Local citizens had been tolerant of Kneeland and his free thinkers and a group of nearby Mormons. One local resident regarded the settlers at Salubria as a group of people who just read a lot of books. However, young men from the American Home Missionary Society invaded the area and reported there were a “considerable body of men here…who are in various degrees infected with infidelity.” Of course, they were referring to Kneeland and his free thinkers. As a reflection of their mindset, one Kneeland supported named his son Voltaire Paine Twombley.
Kneeland became active in local politics, was elected county chairman of the local Democratic party, but lost in a bid for the territorial legislature. In 1842, although Kneeland was not on the ticket for any office, the Democrats were attacked by their Whig opponents as the “”infidelity ticket.” The entire slate was defeated.
Two years later at the age of 70, Kneeland suffered a stroke and died. Some of his followers stayed and became absorbed in the area. But the free inquiry community of Salubria was over.
Utopia – “a place of ideal perfection, especially in laws, government, and social conditions.” Ultimately, these four communities tied to our UU forefathers failed. What had they sought? They sought communities of free thinkers, Transcendentalists, vegetarians, and practical Christians. They sought economic stability, religious freedom, and intentional communities of like minded individuals. They sought a better, more meaningful way of life. They sought to set an example for others to follow. Although their experiments in living failed, their quest still resounds with us today. The question remains, how shall we live?
On the one hand, I believe that Brook Farm reminds us to be open to our life- long search for truth and meaning – to associate with those who can give us inspiration, guidance, and encouragement. If we accept the principles of George Ripley’s “Articles of Agreement,” then we would strive to “diminish the desire of excessive accumulations.” Yes, we would learn the boundaries of “enoughness,” focus on what is truly important, and in the words of Ripley achieve “a greater freedom, simplicity, truthfulness, refinement, and moral dignity.” Adin Ballou teaches us to be true to our beliefs and to live life accordingly, wherever it may lead. Bronson Alcott should encourage us to live a life of simplicity, not only in our choices of what we eat, but in how we treat others, animals, and the environment. Abner Kneeland teaches us the value of freedom of speech and thought. For me he also gives encouragement to persevere, no matter what your age, circumstances, or obstacles. Shall we establish our own utopia? The First UU Utopia of Austin, Texas? After all, we have 132 acres of Hill Country land at U Bar U. Perhaps we can raise our own chickens and have farm fresh eggs. Perhaps we can have bee hives and have buckets of honey. We do have church members who can help us in those areas, you know. Perhaps we can raise goats and sell goat cheese to the finest restaurants in Austin. Or perhaps we have already addressed this issue. Our church mission statement states that “We gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice.” We will most likely never establish a UU utopia, but perhaps, we can live out our mission, discover meaningful lives, do good works, and have a positive impact on those about us. That in itself would almost be a utopian community.
The Spring Equinox is coming, when the day and night are the same length. It’s a good time to talk about balance, about living gracefully. Do we want to grow deep roots that can hold us steady while all around us things are pushing us one way, then the other? Do we want to learn to be light-footed so we can, as the Zen teacher says, “play ball on running water?” What would good balance look like?
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Dick Pierce is a founding member of the Austin Permaculture Guild, a cofounder, with Brandi Clark of the very successful Austin Citizen Gardener program, and a passionate spokesman for the Environment, for “relocalizing” our food, business, jobs/careers, lives and priorities.
Each of us is doing what we can so that all human creatures – big and small, young and old, here and elsewhere – have enough nutritious food, shelter, clothing, and meaningful work to meet the minimum requirements for survival. Then, and only then, should we in the US and the developed world work toward “seconds” or “thirds” for ourselves.
Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.
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