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Davidson Loehr
Victoria Shepherd Rao
19 June 2005
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
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Prayer
We are all the caretakers of sacred treasures. It isn’t something dramatic, not a prop from an action movie. It’s about our souls, our spirits and the spirits of others. Those are our sacred treasures.
The German poet Rilke wrote that the vision that calls us forward blesses us, even if we do not reach it. It’s like saying that if we can learn to live life in the right key, we’re blessed even if we don’t get the melody just right.
It’s saying that we need a certain kind of seriousness about life, that life deserves, demands that we take seriously the question of how we are to live our lives.
Theists would say that we must stand before God, but that God has mercy. The Romans used to say that we should always live as though all the noblest people of history were watching us, then only do those things we would do in front of that audience: very challenging, not much mercy. These sound and feel nearly impossible, and quite intimidating.
Then we remember Rilke’s insight, that these visions that call out our true names, that call us forth into lives of such high ideals, such high integrity – that if we take them seriously, these visions will bless us whether we reach them or not.
Honest religion is life-giving, even as it is intimidating. Yet there are two kinds of people in the world: those who are alive, and those who are afraid. Let us not be afraid to be alive.
Amen.
HOMILY: Spiritual Autobiography of an Intern
By Victoria Shepherd Rao
It was the end of November 2003, when I thought I better start looking for an internship. I had already graduated from a Baptist seminary five years earlier. I had also worked as a chaplain in a big teaching hospital for about a year after that. The next thing I wanted for my education in ministry was the chance to explore the role of a minister in a church. I had relatively little personal experience with such a role because of not growing up in a church.
First thing I did was to check out the Unitarian Universalist Association’s website, finding the “Internship Clearing House,” basically a list of all the congregations in the association who would be willing to host an intern for a set period of time. The list I downloaded was maybe of fifty or sixty different churches. How should I narrow this field I wondered and then I took the rational Indian approach to all things career – I looked for the best paying internships. That quickly narrowed the field to two churches, First Parish UU of Concord, or you all. I shot off email inquiries to both churches. We would be coming from India, so it hardly mattered where the church was, east coast, west coast, heart of Texas.
With the Concord church, the only other church which paid their intern $1500 stipend per month for a forty hour work week (which works out to $8.75 an hour for those of you who’ll be figuring it out anyway), there began a predictable process of emailing a contact person who sent me a list of required materials to be forwarded. But with this church, little did I know that my initial inquiry would be going straight to the head honcho. And thus began the whirlwind.
Now I was in India, where your day is their night and where your night is their day. When Texans go to bed, Indians are waking up. It is almost exactly halfway ’round the world. Which is how I came to learn very early on that Davidson is an insomniac who answers emails throughout the night. From the very first, Davidson gave me the treatment. He wanted to know where I was at spiritually, what I meant when I talked about Unitarian Universalism as a religion. If Uuism is a religion, what were its beliefs? And what was I wanting to get from an internship? Right off the bat, he made clear what it was he had to offer to an intern and that was clarity. He said, “I want interns to learn what (if anything) they really believe and then to be able to say it in ordinary language, with no jargon. “This is hard,” he warned, “and liberating.”
He told me he was a tough teacher but that his loyalty was fierce too, if you could earn it. And if I have learned anything it is that Davidson is true to his word. And I have loved that about him and that has helped me cope with his sky high standards for preaching. He introduced this bias from his second emailed note to me when he said, “Sermons are an art, a momentary intimacy, a conduit for insights, a reconnection with ultimate concerns. It’s our main art form and we should be good at it.”
Now, I probably should have turned around and run away when I heard all this but instead, I was totally snagged. In the time I had between our emails for the next ten days which followed I lived and breathed his questions. I could barely concentrate on anything else. Davidson started educating me about what he saw as liberal religion – good, honest religion that understands “all people and creatures as related and of value, not just some by some definition.” He kept up with the questions and I tried to field them as honestly as I could. But they are not easy questions to answer. Where are you at spiritually? Is there some kind of multiple choice answer to that, like you’d find in a woman’s magazine? Spiritually, where I am at is: a) saved by Jesus, or b) liberated from the church and doing okay, or c) exploring meditation and vegetarianism, or d) not sure. How would you answer such a question? Davidson invited me here in the end I think, because I had the guts to say, not sure.
For me at the time, I was pretty confused, especially after seminary, about what spirituality meant. Before I had had much contact with Christians, and the God they confessed, the spiritual dimension of an individual had to do with their character, their propensity to tell truth, to think and reflect about the consequences of their actions on others, about their propensity to see the humor in situations, to dance or clown or frown. This kind of spirit did not survive death except in the memories of others. This kind of spirit was not limited to human beings but most certainly included the individual natures of animals. This kind of spirit showed up in expressive forms. You could sense it in the observations of writers, you could see it in paintings and in faces. You could feel it in an embrace.
When I got to seminary, it was the first time in my life that I was surrounded by people who shared a belief that there was a clearly articulated plan for human existence. I knew that I did not share their basic worldview but I did believe that our beliefs are fundamental to what we are and what we can become and so I was curious and eager to be among them, to try to understand their worldview and to see how it affected them. And this openness to learning I had was described by folks at the seminary, spiritually, as “seeking.”
My academic advisor had me ask Jesus to come into my heart. I wasn’t sure what that would do but the idea of the importance of our willingness to do good and be aligned with the good in no uncertain terms made sense to me. In similar ways, I came to believe in many new spiritual possibilities at seminary. I came to believe in the power of prayer to give voice to our heart’s yearnings and to give ear to the hearts’ yearnings of others. I came to believe in the power of confession and absolution, that it is within us to be witness to the frailty and brokenness in one another and to become an agent of healing in the process, not by what we do as much as by our mere presence and the truth we treasure. I came to believe in grace, not that the Creator God answered our individual needs but that sometimes, through no effort of our own, our needs are met in the unfolding of the cosmos. I chose to focus on the universalism which emerged out of the Baptist tradition in America, understanding that however mysterious a God-force might be, surely it flowed throughout the Creation. I never believed in the ideas of a chosen people or the damned but I resonated with the idea of living in right relationship to everything else. This was the possibility I was committed to, this is still what I am seeking after.
Davidson questioned me about what I thought my religious center was. He wanted to know what ministry meant for me. Why I would do it. These particular questions came five days after our conversations began and they are still alive between us in our relationship and I hope they always will be.
Being unable to answer what my religious centre is definitively, I have at least come to a better appreciation of what Davidson means by such a term. It is about “the most authentic center of your being where your head and your heart connect.” Liberal religion is all about allowing that center to be different for each of us. The liberal religious path then is one that does not take its direction from the doctrines put forth by one branch of a church or another, but it takes its path from our seeking to understand ourselves and our connection to everything else and to live out of that, striving to express our real values in ways that serve the good.
Now, I came here this year with a whole lot of learning goals about parish ministry, about pastoral leadership and about preaching. I did not list among them ‘getting religion.’ But as I reflect back on the time here and the struggles I have had in seeking out a worthy message to each sermon I have written, I realize that the responsibility which comes with being a religious liberal is none other than the responsibility to be challenged and to develop positive, constructive and grounded (and with Davidson, defendable) understandings of what you really believe and how your beliefs can help make you a better person and the world a better place. It was this same challenge Davidson posed to me when he offered me the chance to learn here with him and all of you. And it is a challenge for everyone of us.
So, picture this, I have spent the last ten months rushing into Davidson’s office breathlessly giving voice to what I have figured must be my religious core only to have him sit back and consider my discovery for a moment and ask some pointed questions that busted my bubble every time. It has been a discouraging and disappointing process for the two of us at times. And I have struggled with what motivates me to write a sermon. But I do have some strong beliefs and whether they articulate my religious core adequately or not I will just have to see.
I believe that empathy is the highest of human capacities and that loving kindness is the highest calling. I value human ingenuity and original thinking, especially when they serve to better the world. I believe in the path of non-violence and that we can learn ways to resolve conflicts without resorting to coercion or excluding the interests of minorities or the unrepresented. I believe living things are sacred, and worthy of my care and time and protection if need be and I feel called to give voice to that sacredness in the way I live and in the opportunities I am given to minister to others.
Davidson has converted me in many respects to his thinking about the Unitarian Universalist principles, namely that they are not religious affirmations but social and political values. And I stand by them as social and political values – I am willing to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of people, the democratic model, equity in relations, the interdependent web. I don’t find it too hard to turn them into religious values either, for instance I believe in the inherent worth of all living beings, and that we gain dignity or nobility in acknowledging and serving that inherent worth in all living beings. I believe there is an interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part and that this is nowhere more true than on the surface of our planet and that every time I ignore this connectedness, and the potential impact of the lifestyle choices I make, I not only diminish myself and the significance of my beliefs, but I also commit the sin of willfully adding to the forces which threaten the continuation of the web of life.
These religious beliefs transcend the interests and needs of my own being but reflect my unique being. They call me to live according to self-transcending interests and that is why I am glad that they help me to join with a wider religious community of people like you. So, thank you. Thank you for having me here, for offering your corporate self up as a teacher. And thank you Davidson. Thank you for sticking with me. I have learned a lot about the parish ministry and my own capacities for the ministry these last ten months. In the end, as at the beginning, I am committed to serve liberal religious communities like this one where the causes of life, truth, peace and pluralism enliven and unite us, one to another.
HOMILY: Behind the Scenes
Davidson Loehr
There are so many ways to approach the question of what liberal religion is about, I wasn’t sure whether to start with the Bible, the ancient Greeks, or Batman. So I’ll start with Batman. I saw the new movie “Batman Begins” this week, and liked it. 95% of it was fast-paced techno-geek stuff, and I would have been as happy if they had left all that out. But what there was of a story was pretty good. And the movie even had a message, which they repeated three or four times so you’d be sure to get it. The message of this movie is, “It’s not who you are deep down; it’s what you do that defines you.”
That message could be the message of liberal religion, too. It isn’t about creeds, and the center of religion isn’t just thinking. It’s finally what you do that defines you.
There’s a passage in the Bible that says the same thing in fewer words: “Faith without works is dead,” it says.
And the ancient Greeks, who I like even better than Batman and the Bible, had a famous saying that broadens the picture. It’s been one of my central beliefs for over thirty years. Google lists this as coming from Confucius, though I think I first read it in Aristotle (not sure):
Plant a thought, reap a deed.
Plant a deed, reap a habit
Plant a habit, reap a character.
Plant a character, reap a destiny.
Thinking right, believing the right things, mattered a lot to the Greeks, because they saw that if you had bad or unhealthy beliefs, you would logically be led to bad or unhealthy actions, habits, character, and destiny. I believe that too. Just as – children really do what we do, not what we say. Just as – if you want to know what someone believes, you don’t have to ask them – just watch them.
Beliefs and actions and character are woven together so fine I don’t think they can be separated. That’s why I think the idea of the priesthood of all believers that we talked about last week is so important in religion. Our lives will be run by something, and if we don’t know what we believe, they will be run by things we’re not aware of. That’s one meaning of saying someone is demon-possessed. It isn’t supernatural. That kind of a demon is a deep, maybe primitive, psychological script that can run your life for years without your even being aware that you are dangling like a puppet.
I have a story about this from about fifteen years ago, when I was the theme speaker at a summer camp for about six hundred adults. I didn’t know anyone there, but since I was the most visible “official minister” type, people were coming up all week sharing all kinds of personal stories and confessions.
In mid-week, a woman in her mid-forties came up – looking quite desperate and pained, I thought – and asked if I had a few minutes. We walked over to a bench beneath a large tree and sat. She was just seething with anger, hatred, and bile. It was about her husband who had dumped her. She must have talked for five full minutes, with hateful and painful invectives you seldom hear all strung together like that. She was so raw she almost bled when she talked. When she finished, I wasn’t sure what to say, so asked “When did this happen?” “Ten years ago,” she said. That’s a demon-possession!
The goal – and this is where most Western religions have got it dead wrong, I think – is not to be pure or perfect. – God knows, we can’t do that! It’s to be integrated and authentic. To integrate your fears, shadows and demons into your personality. You may not be able to get rid of them, but if you’re aware of them it can make all the difference. So much psychotherapy is based on this idea, as is a lot of Eastern religion – especially Buddhism.
Another image I use for our religious task comes again from the Greeks. You know of the old Olympian gods: Zeus, Hera, Demeter, Artemis, Ares, Apollo, Hermes and the rest of them. They were all very different, and taken alone some of them could be very destructive. But they’re gods, meaning they’re enduring parts of who we seem to be, so you can’t wish them away. However, you can combine their energies into an integrated personality. That was Zeus’s job: to negotiate the conflicting demands of the gods and try to make the best kind of harmony. That’s our job, too.
I hate to keep quoting cartoons for authority, but this was also the point of the Batman movie. Bruce Wayne was absolutely terrified of bats, because as a boy he had fallen down a shaft and had a million bats fly around him trying to get out. All his life he was terrified of bats. In one sense, that fear led to the death of his parents. And the lesson he had to learn – from a Darth Vader kind of character played wonderfully by Liam Nieson – was not only to face his fears, but to incorporate them, to use their power instead of being abused by it.
I think this is one of the most important teachings of existential psychology and good religion, too. If we can learn what we believe, what we fear, what we love, and integrate all of those forces into a character focused on high moral and ethical aspirations, we have access to nearly all of our power.
Many years ago I read a book by Karl Menninger, founder of the Menninger Clinic, which has remained one of the most important books of my life. The title was Love Against Hate, and the message that I remember seeing as a revelation when I was 21 was that love and hate are the same energy. In love, the energy is directed outward creatively. In hate, it is turned inward destructively. That woman at the summer camp – the love for her husband had turned to hate. But the hate didn’t hurt him at all. It just ate out her own insides, and ran her life like a demonic puppeteer.
And all of this is involved in what I think religion is about here. So an internship, I believe, should be tough. Psychotherapists need to go through psychotherapy themselves so they can be aware of their own driving forces.
Chaplains who work with dying patients need to do the personal work of dealing with their own fears of death and integrating them, or they will communicate that fear to the people with whom they’re working.
And ministerial interns need to do more and harder work at trying to understand what they believe, what spirits and demons really drive them, than those who will one day trust them to have done this work.
Behind the scenes of Roman Catholicism, priests learn the sacraments, the rituals, the meaning and use of the costumes in that religion of such rich ritual traditions.
Behind the scenes in a fundamentalist church, ministers must master the creeds and particular bible passages their tradition uses. They learn many ways of saying that we are born sinful, that we can’t be trusted, that we must learn to be obedient in order to be saved, and that we can only be saved by Jesus. There was a hint of this in the story Vicki told of her seminary professor saying she should ask Jesus to come into her heart.
But behind the scenes in a Unitarian church we do a different kind of work. I think it’s harder, and a lot more empowering. It’s taking the priesthood and prophethood of all believers as seriously as we know how to take it.
And you can’t do it in your head. Real religion isn’t intellectual. It’s much more. As a wise voice coming from a very weird costume said recently, “It’s not who you are deep down; it’s what you do that defines you.”
That’s good, but there was an even wiser voice, from the German poet Rilke, who said that the spirit that calls us forward blesses us, even if we do not reach it. The spirit that calls us forward blesses us, even if we do not reach it. Think about it: that’s even better than Batman.
