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© Jack Harris-Bonham

February 5, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, here we are again sitting in the house that speaks of mystery, but does not define it. May we be glad to be a part of a tradition that allows us to think for ourselves, may we remember that it is the rich tradition of these churches, both Unitarian and Universalist, that came together that each would be stronger and each would survive.

And when we remember let us remember that Christianity was a big part of the Universalist movement. That the universalism spoken about in its name was a universalism of grace – a rebellion against the Calvinistic notion that there were only a select few who would be saved and a statement that grace was for everyone in all places, in all times. And these precursors of our tradition go all the way back to the middle ages when there was a hue and cry for the Holy scriptures to be translated into the vernacular. Yet, those who so protested and changed things did not do so to dissipate faith, but rather to deepen it.

Now we would remember all those who have come here today in search of answers, in search of questions, in search of comfort. Let their very presence in this assembly be the balm they need, let the communal energy of this sanctuary bask them in love, understanding and companionship.

Let us now remember that there is a world much larger than this community. A world so torn by strife, war, famine and disease that it hardly seems fair for us to be in despair over anything.

Yet the human spirit is one that continually strives for better and more. May we, this morning, consider our blessings, consider our wealth – monetary, spiritual and emotional – and let us find the space to rejoice.

Rejoice that we have enough, rejoice that enough is enough and finally rejoice for the sheer sake of rejoicing. We pray all this in the name of everything that is holy and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

The Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, David Mamet, says, (quote) “Only two legitimate national holidays remain. By “legitimate” holidays, I mean this: holidays with a specific, naturally evolved meaning, the celebration of which we find refreshing and correct, and in the celebration of which we, as a people, are united. Those holidays are the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl.”

Our Middle English word, sacred, comes from the Old French, sacer, which means; dedicated, holy, sacred – set apart – pertaining to religious rites or practices – devoted to a single use.”

Dr. Loehr got an email from a colleague shortly before the Rose Bowl. The colleague wrote, “Now let me get this straight, you’re going to show a football game on the large screen at your church?” Dr. Loehr wrote back, “What is it about the sacred that you don’t understand?

I’m seeing similarities between church and football. The mega churches have noticed this already – why do you think that Fellowhip.com in Dallas is built like a stadium and has a large screen that projects the pastor’s face in 30 foot close-ups? What church will never duplicate is the originality and complexity of how football passes the plate. Heck, I’ve watched Super Bowls just to see the commercials. And halfway through the service we have our centering ceremony, but at a Super Bowl game we are likely to see a portion of the anatomy of a vestal virgin, or what passes as one. Perhaps if the stadium churches get big enough they’ll bring back the lions. That was a big hit at the Roman Coliseum.

But I’ll give the evangelicals their due they do play by the rulebook, that is, the game of religion, the game of church that they are playing has rules. If you’re saved, you win. If you’re not saved – you lose. And it’s not just any old game. Here is probably the only place the evangelicals outdo the NFL. The evangelicals are playing the game of eternity. The saying, “It’s only a game!” hardly applies here. You lose this game, – the game of salvation – you lose forever. The logic of the eternity game turns ordinary folks into people who want to save your soul now that they found peace with Jesus. They become bean counters for Christ. When you say you’re saved, when you say you’ve found Jesus, their score increases. And the rules of the game have been written down in a book, the author of whom just happens to be The Lord God Almighty!

Believe me, they know how the game is played and they know who wins and who loses.

But today we, all of us the evangelicals and liberal religious folks alike, get to practice our religious freedom in this country when we gather around our television sets, put out the sacramental chips and salsa, pop open that beer, near-beer, soda or pop the cork on that fine wine. Yes, we celebrate this naturally evolved meaningful game with bread and wine.

And the church – what does the church have to offer? I am cognizant of the fact that number one: you know what cognizant means and number two: I know that I am addressing the refugees of all the world’s great religions, refugees from all of what the great religious traditions have had to offer are gathered right here in this sanctuary.

So – let’s not kid ourselves – I hate to mix my football and baseball analogies, but hey – the churches struck out hundreds of years ago, but they refuse to leave the plate. Bat in hand the church waits for someone – anyone to play her churchy games.

Football is American. I mean by that, that we in the USA know exactly what we mean when we say American. Americans made this sport. From the Knute to the Gipper to the Super athletes of today, we have molded this sport, we have injected this sport to make it bigger, we have dreamed this sport into being. In a world that seems to fight us at every play we needed a concrete model – a game – in which we could choose clearly delineated sides, and then participate either directly, or by watching the two clearly delineated sides fight for the control over and general misuse of a strangely shaped cylindrical ball filled with air and covered originally by the skin of a pig. This sport was definitely not designed by Jews.

And by picking sides, dressing up and showing up we participate in an all out hour battle for control of this pig’s skin!

If your team brings home the bacon more times than theirs – yours wins. Life is good. But if your team loses – it’s the end of the world, as you know it.

David Mamet again, “The Super Bowl, it seems to me, is a celebration of our national love of invidious comparison.” “Invidious comparison? Are you still with me, Unitarian Universalists?

Invidious – tending to cause ill will or animosity; offensive, yes, yes, the Super Bowl is doubly invidious – it is offensive as well as defensive.

When and if you watch the game this evening you will be participating in a celebration of union – yes, union over diversity, but still union – you will be setting aside, making sacred – you will be practicing religion because you will be answering, or trying to answer the two big religious questions; Who am I? And what am I doing here?

I am a Dallas Cowboy’s fan and what I’m doing here is celebrating the quite human and obvious world-weary fact that the more powerful dominate and that sometimes, but only sometimes, wily, sly and creative can substitute for strength – I will celebrate the clear cut delineations of a game and I will see life, mine and yours, reflected there.

And as I look into the game and see our lives mirrored there what do I see? I see conflict, fear, rage, tumult, but also I see strength, fearlessness, hope, camaraderie, the end of fighting, peace, stillness, brother and sisterhood and finally the exaltation of the most high.

Yet – there is more to this game than meets the eye. This game is classic in a purer sense.

Aristotle supposedly wrote two books on drama. The first is the book of Poetics. It is a study of tragedy. The second book dealt with comedy, and it has been subsequently lost.

No wonder it was lost Aristotle himself says of comedy – and I quote – “Its early stages passed unnoticed, because it was not as yet taken up in a serious manner.” Comedy wasn’t taken seriously; I hate that when that happens.

Aristotle turns around and says this about tragedy and he might as well have been talking about football.

“Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents arousing pity and fear.” Listen the next time a good hit is laid upon a player – the crowd expels air involuntarily (make the sound). It isn’t something they rehearse like a cheer, its visceral – it’s a gut reaction (make the sound again). Aristotle continues, “Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly.” A punt returned 80 yards for a touchdown – a tipped pass bobbled and then pull in by our side – Vince Young glibly side stepping his way into the end zone winning the Rose Bowl with 18 seconds left – hook “em horns! Again, Aristotle, “Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly and at the same time in consequence of one another.” First down followed by second down followed by third down followed by touchdown.

The Super Bowl is not only theatrically tragic – it is great theatrical tragedy. Some would like to say that football is comedic since it is, in fact, a celebration of the winners. But this is not the Greek definition of tragedy and certainly not Aristotle’s. In the Poetics Aristotle says “comedy aims at representing men as worse than in real life, and tragedy better than in actual life.” It doesn’t matter that we celebrate the winner, what matters is that these men are bigger, faster, stronger, meaner and more talented than men in actual life. Do yourself a favor the next time you see a football player in person – collegiate or professional – go and stand beside them. Your spouse, those standing around and yourself will automatically make the necessary invidious comparisons.

In some ways it can be said that football surpasses the actual theatre. In a play there is usually only one protagonist.

In a football game we have each team playing the protagonist and the antagonist simultaneously. In a play such as King Lear who ever roots for Goneril or Regan, the gold digging daughters of King Lear? Compared to football the theatre is two-dimensional.

Aristotle again; “the story – must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole.”

In football each action has a direct and irrevocable reaction. Cause is followed neatly by effect and each effect engenders a new cause and subsequent effect – provided there is no indisputable video evidence. Each game is perfect unto itself and taking any play from the game would be tantamount to Emperor Franz Joseph’s suggestion to Mozart that the opera was fine, but there were simply too many notes.

No part of the game is irrelevant which is a perfect segue to the church.

The evangelicals – even with their “game of eternity? cannot out spectacle the tragic theatre of the NFL. But where do we stand in all this invidious comparison? Where are we UU’s?

The evangelicals have a saying, “I need a witness!” Are we their witnesses? Is our part of the religious game nothing more than skeptical, talking mirrors? Are all our put downs both explicit and implicit, all our education and degrees but spiteful pedigrees for the judgment game at hand? Is our game of religion just a game of the superiority of intellect? Are we doing something besides looking at the world of evangelical religion and finding it wanting, not satisfactory for our high intellectual, sarcastic and totally invidious tastes? And I realize all my earlier quips concerning the evangelicals fit into this category.

So – the question boils down to this: Does the Unitarian Universalist Association have a game plan? Does the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin do we have game plan? And if we do have game – what are the rules? How do we win? What would constitute losing this game?

In the Wizard of Oz we were warned, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

As Unitarian Universalists we have paid a great deal of attention to the man behind the screen and some of us have gone behind the curtain into the holy of holies. And what have we found besides our insatiable desire to know?

Dr. Loehr this past Senior Luncheon decried the UUA’s lack of center, their lack of anything that smacks of a truly religious center. As Dr. Loehr is fond of saying, “There is no there, there.” In other words the UUA has no game.

Paradoxically, in the UUA’s efforts to be hip, left of center and politically correct, paradoxically and ironically those who wished to save us by introducing us to ourselves, via the seven principles and a leftist political agenda, ironically and ultimately we have been left in the position of having to define ourselves – who are we? What are we doing here? These are the two great religious questions.

What is holy is the process of life itself. And the process cannot be made into a game because it has no beginning and no perceptible end. Any interruption in the process – any freezing of a stage of the process – any product from the process is itself not holy. One cannot be said to win a process – one can only be two things to the process. We can resist and suffer or we can accept and suffer. Suffering is our lot, but acceptance is like manna from heaven. Acceptance of the ontological process exudes a sacramental value often described as grace. But the question remains how would one, could one, pay homage to a process, celebrate a mystery, participate in the ultimate?

The cathedral is gone and ex cathedra we are free to see all of life as sacred. The task before us is impossible – the tools we have are at best primitive, our swords keep outnumbering our pruning hooks, yet it is we, us – all of us – who are called upon to play the game, to expect grace/manna, to expect nothing else and that gladly, remembering, as Aristotle states in t he Poetics, character may determine the quality of our life but only our actions can prove whether that life is finally happy or wretched.

On my walks with my dogs I often find beautiful shells of varied colors and some with stripes. They were the home of something once – a snail – a slug – life – but that life is no longer occupying that edifice and I can’t help but think of the great cathedrals, temples, synagogues and mosques of the world. The Spirit, the one called Holy, lived there once, or perhaps it was only a magnificent home built to entice the god’s inside?

My father, Jack Sr., felt uncomfortable with the idea of God inside a building – any building.

My father found God in a stubbled field on a crisp November morning with a Browning Over and Under resting easily on his shoulder. No, God didn’t have the Browning that was my dad. There was more grace in Dad’s easy swing to aim and shoot than I’ve ever seen in any preacher. My dad would have liked the cowboy’s prayer.

Lord, I’ve never lived where churches grow,

 I love Creation better as it stood

 That day You finished it so long ago

 And looked upon Your work, and called it good.

 I know that others find You in the light

 That’s sifted down through tinted window panes,

 And yet I seem to feel You near tonight

 In this dim, quiet starlight on the plains.

In the dim, quiet starlight of the hill country we at FUUCA, we refugees from the world’s major religions, are asked to celebrate something that has no perceptible beginning and no perceptible end – we are asked to celebrate the process of life itself – life as something sacred, holy and most high.

We love games, the theatre, movies and novels because limits are set, structure us present and we can hold the magnitude of life in our hand, our head and our hearts.

And yet even refugees must make a camp at the border. And this camp we have chosen to call camp UUA. In order not to be lost in the magnitude we have carved out our corner and declared it a safe zone.

Within this safe zone we are free to believe or not to believe, free to suspend judgment, free to honor life, free to care for those on the margins of society, free to agree to disagree.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Harvard Divinity School Address of 1838 said, “Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit, and not give bread of life.”

So – if you’ve been wondering amidst the football analogies and the laying of Aristotle over the game where the bread of life comes in, or what the good news is, then I will go beyond inductive reasoning, beyond inference and simply tell you.

The game played well within UU campuses like this one is a game of teamwork. The first definition of team is still the harnessing of draft animals to do work. Yes, we can agree to disagree and laugh about it, but at the same time as teammates we must agree to be harnessed to what we see to be the truth. And this truth is not heaven sent. It is rather a truth wrought from life. And this truth that we together as team members, harnessed to one another in a common effort, this truth is nothing more or less than our lives passed through the fires of thought.

We live this game of UUism by never forgetting that what is best gives us to ourselves. The sublime is excited by the great stoical doctrine, know thyself and obey thyself. That, which shows God in us, fortifies us. That, which shows God out of us, makes of us merely receivers of the divine instead of its very source.

Yes, we have game – we are the gamest – we are ready and willing – resolute and brave. We are all children of chance. What we believe may be unexpected, random and unpredictable, but we must never forget that our hearts and minds are open, open to the revelations of life, open to opportunity, open to change, open to life, itself.

There’s only one-way to know process – realize your part in it – that’s what covenant is about – that’s what union is about – that’s what love is about and hopefully, that’s what we at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin are all about.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

© Jack Harris-Bonham

January 1, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, we sit here today at the very beginning of a new year.

Whether you believe in cyclical time or the linear version today is a new beginning for all of us. Perhaps it’s time to set down our burdens and examine them. With the weight off our shoulders let’s take a good look at those indispensables that we’ve carted with us for the past umpteen years.

George Carlen says that wherever we go we need to take a little of our stuff with us. Are the burdens you’re been carrying around just too large to be considered a little of your stuff? That argument you had last year – you know the one I mean – the one that was never resolved – the one that still gets replayed in your head first thing every morning.

Perhaps it’s time to bury the hatchet and call that person up and tell them you don’t care who’s right, you just want your friendship restored to its former luster. I’m thinking now of those rooms at the various concentration camps during the Holocaust – those rooms filled with the detritus of a hurried exit – those rooms filled with things that had no life in and of themselves. Holocaust means a whole burning.

Maybe it’s time to burn all the burdens we’ve been carrying all these years. Ask yourself this question, Who am I without these burdens? You might be surprised to find yourself facing a new you.

It’s a new year and a new time to rub the slate of resentments clean. In a hundred years who will know the score you’re keeping? Better to wipe off that slate and use it for a grocery list – at least that would feed you.

And now let us all promise to honor our feelings this coming year – to honor our pain, our anger, our love, our joy, to honor all the feelings that come our way and to stop imagining that we can control any of this thing we call life.

Make us all non-anxious presences in life – create in us the loving space to simply watch and not judge – prepare us to meet life on its own terms, remembering that how we think things should be and how things are rarely line up together.

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

Amen

(Text of Carolyn Grimminger’s Affirmation of Faith on forgiveness is not available.)

SERMON

“Frankie and Johnny were lovers. O my Gawd how they did love! They swore to be true to each other, As true as the stars above. He was her man but he done her wrong.”

When I was a bad boy – that is – when I was a practicing alcoholic I did a whole bunch of folks wrong! As a consequence I bathed in a font of forgiveness day and night. When you’re a blackout drinker and your nightly activities are related to you by those that you insulted, harassed, and otherwise abused you get used to saying things like, “I’m sorry, I really don’t remember that.” Or “I can’t believe I said, did, or acted in that manner and I sincerely hope you know that it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with my drinking.” Whatever! You get to say, “I’m sorry? a lot, and you know what, people are generally willing to say they forgive you.

The forgiveness factor is directly related to how long people have known you. If it’s an old friend, a close relative, a spouse, brother or sister, then the forgiveness font is fairly plentiful. You can bathe there night and day if you wish – if you can stand the looks of disgust as they say they forgive you, if you can bring yourself to face them one more time, or if simply you can take any more forgiveness.

This a point that a lot of people don’t get, understand, – there comes a point at which you are so full of forgiveness that you can’t take anymore. How many times can you go back to a spouse and hear her say, “I forgive you, but I’ll never forget” – until you’re dreaming of the day when she’ll have Alzheimer’s. And by saying that you’re full of forgiveness doesn’t in this case mean that you’ve been forgiving a lot of folks it means that you have been forgiven umpteen times and the forgiveness of others is beginning to look bad on you – like a cheap suit.

And speaking of cheap suits I can’t help but free associate to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace. And in the end that’s what forgiveness of those multiple transgressions begins to feel like – cheap grace. You’ve gotten away with murder – once again.

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

(Luke 23:24 KJV).

Jesus supposedly said this from the cross while he was hanging there, nailed up so that the weight of his body would slowly suffocate him. His feet nailed to a support with his knees bent so all the weight would be on his arms. In all that pain Jesus said, Forgive them, they know not what they do? Luke’s one of the later Gospels. Lots of additions and traditions got blended into the good doctor’s book.

The earliest gospel, Mark, was written before Luke. And on the cross Jesus is reported to have said only one thing, Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani! Aramaic for “My god, my god, why has thou forsaken me?”

So – Which story do you buy?

In Luke Jesus forgives his murderers as he is being murdered. In Mark Jesus? only voice on the cross is a voice of anger, rage, resentment and hurt!

My thesis for today is simple: If you think forgiveness is a difficult problem – you’re right, but probably not for the right reasons! Forgiveness is a symptom – the real problem is anger! Because we can’t forgive someone without first being angry with them. And not many people want to own their anger!

Traditionally anger is considered to be one of the seven deadly sins – remembering that sin is simply separation from God or from the source of our being. Do you remember your seven deadlies – let me refresh your memory; Pride, Envy, Anger, Avarice, Sadness, Gluttony & Lust.

The American Buddhist Monk, Phillip Kapleau, said “Anger is the means of staving off the fear of the isolation of dying.” The solitariness of death scares the Be-Jesus out of us and that fear inspires anger.

In psychological circles it is believed that anger, pure anger, never happens and that anger is a cluster emotion – secondary to and combined with fear and threat.

The reason we have trouble forgiving is that we have not allowed ourselves the luxury of our anger. Acting out our anger can kill others, stuffing our anger can kill us. We seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place.

If the source of anger is threat or fear, then we must understand what threatens us, what we are truly afraid of. It is rather human-like to defend ourselves when we are being threatened.

Recently a president of a prominent Democratic nation has built his entire regime around being threatened. 

My friend the Buddhist monk, Claude AnShin Thomas, who is also a Vietnam Veteran, said that after 9/11 we had an enormous opportunity to turn the dharma wheel. Turning the dharma wheel is a good thing for Buddhist – it’s sort of like teaching peace. The world post 9/11 was on our side – the world was reaching out to us. What would have happened if when we flew over Afghanistan we had dropped, instead of bombs, food, medicine and supplies? What if the better angles of our natures had responded?

In her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Gilead, Marilynne Robinson, has the old, dying preacher writing a letter to his seven-year-old son. In part of the letter he says, “I would advise you against defensiveness on principle. It precludes the best eventualities along with the worst. At the most basic level it expresses a lack of faith. As I have said, the worst eventualities can have great value as experience. And often enough, when we think we are protecting ourselves, we are struggling against our rescuer.” Another problem – how do we see Osama bin Laden as a rescuer?

Perhaps the heart of this problem surfaces best when we get away from the world of morality and enter the world of aesthetics. John Calvin, pre-eminent among the 16th Century Reformed theologians, says that each of us is an actor on God’s stage and that God is our audience. This gets at the point in a more convenient and expedient manner. For if our actions are not to be judged morally by those who surround us and go to make up our lives, but rather they are to be judged as a performance – then we get closer to the problem. Is an actor forgiven a bad performance? Do we feel a need to forgive a painter for a bad painting? When we hear someone play the violin like it’s a cat being tortured, do we even begin to think that we need to forgive that person their bad playing?

When an actor has a bad performance they are encouraged not to dwell on it. The best way to do this is to be in the moment and the next time the curtain comes up to begin again, to start over as if it were the first time the actor had ever performed that play.

Joel Gregory who used to be the preacher at First Baptist in Dallas calls this beginning again the final stage of forgiveness. Imagine you’ve got a daughter that you’ve disowned and simply telling her one day, “I’d like to be your dad again, and I’d like you to be my daughter again.” Or say you’ve got an old friend that you’ve fallen out with – you’d say to that friend, “Hey, let’s start over, let’s be friends again.” Sure you run the risk of being rebuffed, but is that any worse than waking up every morning with those same tapes of resentment and bitterness running through your heart and mind? Starting over again would be akin to beginning a new chapter in the story of your friendship, a new chapter in the narrative of what it means to be a father who has a daughter.

We all tell ourselves stories – that’s how we make our lives meaningful – everyone does it from childhood to old age. These stories are sometimes known as core narratives. They are no more or less true than the narrative of Jesus itself. The stories we tell ourselves are there to keep us in a comfort zone – whatever makes us happy or strokes us is in. Whatever we don’t like we either keep it out or expand the story to contain the discomfort.

To forgive one must first realize what has scared us into being angry – what has pushed us out of our comfort zone.

Reality has a way of not cooperating with our comfort zones. If you’re angry a lot or feel powerless to forgive those that have dumped upon your dreams then the stories you are telling yourself might sound like this, “This isn’t fair, I’m a good person. Things like this don’t happen to good people. Where is the justice in what has happened to me?” You see the problem doesn’t lie in the events themselves – in reality. The problem lies in your interpretation of the events – how well you have or have not included these threatening events in your core narratives. For in the end the only thing that actually counts is your interpretation of reality.

Feeling anxious, angry, unforgiving – it’s probably time to rewrite your core narrative.

Do you remember the way you felt when the Beatles went from the loving mop heads of The Rubber Soul Album to the freaks of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band?

The Beatles had met the Maha-Rishi, they’d gone to India, George had taken sitar lessons, and oh yeah, they’d dropped Acid.

Their psychological experiences caused them to rewrite, refigure, reformat, reinvent who the Beatles were and if you loved them because, as John said, they were more popular than Jesus Christ, himself, or if you loved them in spite of this statement, then you – who could have been threatened by their change – you changed, too. You and I helped rewrite the core narrative of who the Beatles were. And, of course, it didn’t hurt if you had also dropped acid.

Can’t forgive someone for what they’ve done to you, how they abused you, discarded you, betrayed you. Rewrite your story. Put their actions in perspective, deal with them, their actions, your reactions, detriangulate yourself, redefine yourself so that your understanding of grace and justice is not so narrowly construed.

Try to remember if you’ve allowed someone to stomp on your dream there was a time when you thought that person worthy of your dream. It helps to again give that person as much credit as you can for being a good and worthy human being. Don’t forget the minute community is posited – the second you have an alliance, a love, a relationship you have automatically given the other person the trump card of betrayal. People act out from their fears/threats/hurts. Can we even know why someone chooses to play the trump card of betrayal? Perhaps it would help to remember when we have in times past played such a card?

So – let go of the story that hurts you. Write a story that heals and blesses you.

Frederick Nietzsche once said, “That which does not kill me – makes me stronger.” We must, if we are to survive, optimize the possibilities for survival.

And it’s not as simple as either you see the glass half empty or half full – no!

You’ve told yourself the same stories for so many years – are you happy yet? Do you still have fear? Do you still feel threatened?

You’ve got to expand your repertoire. Write some new material for God’s sake. If you were a comedian you’d be booed off the stage!

Again, Marilynne Robinson in her Pulitzer Prize winning book, Gilead, suggests that looking at our relationship with God in this actor/performer mode, a la John Calvin, is one way to see how God might enjoy us. In other words, God isn’t passing morality judgments on us. The book of life isn’t full of black marks; it’s full of bad reviews.

And what is the difference you might ask? Glad you ask that! We can’t learn anything from a moral judgment – other than the fact that we are in fact wrong! But from a bad review – my god the possibilities are endless.

In the first play I ever wrote, entitled, “The Valley of the Shadow? the reviewer from the Tallahassee Democrat, John Habich, raked me across the coals. At one point in the review he said that my play had more tragic flaws in it than the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. Did I cry over this review? No, I contacted the paper, had a meeting with John and began to learn more about playwriting as a product of that review.

What if we had been taught that God was really a life-coach, that God was on our side and somewhere along the way she had suggested ways in which we could, you know, enhance our performance?

But what if you feel that you are literally caught in a hellish situation – caught in a performance not of your own design? What do you do then?

Concentration camp survival literature consistently shows that even in that environment the way the people in the camps reacted, responded to that horrific environment made all the difference in the world. You’ve got to look for the cracks in the door of fate. You’re the salesperson for your life – you see the door of fate crack open – stick your foot in there. Impose yourself – sing, dance, whatever the situation calls for.

In conclusion I’d like to offer you an easy formula for forgiveness – a way for you to know how to deal with your anger, whom to forgive and how to forgive them – unfortunately no such formula exists. Like much of life, the manner in which we deal with our anger at people, situations and even our anger with inanimate objects brings a great deal to bear on the people that could benefit from our forgiveness, never forgetting that we are one of those people.

I want to reiterate the fact that you are the dealer in your life. I want to remind you as the dealer of your life you can reshuffle the deck any time you like and start a new deal. But you need to keep in mind that no matter how many times you shuffle your deck, once you enter relationship, community or any sort of intimacy the card at the top of the deck, the one you’re about to deal out is always the trump card of betrayal. It looks like a card trick, but it turns out the trick may be on you.

If you simply don’t want to deal with others, then you can play solitaire. Lots of people have done it, some have actually won at that game – Zen Masters and some religious mystics of every order come to mind. But I must warn you there is a danger in playing solitaire. You just might deal the trump card of betrayal to yourself. State institutions are full of people who have dealt themselves this card and I can only conjecture that suicides are holding this card in their hand for years before they actually play it.

Forty-five years ago Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen had a patient who had been lost in a snowstorm during a skiing trip. When they found him he was badly frost bit. It looked like he was going to lose both of his feet. He waited for a world-class vascular surgeon and with this doctor’s help his left foot became better while his right foot took a turn for the worse. This surgeon and a team of other surgeons all recommended the amputation of the right foot. He refused.

Finally when the toxins from that gangrenous foot were surging through his body and he was on the edge of death, the doctors and his finance made one last effort to get his permission to amputate. Again he refused. At which point his finance pulled the brilliant diamond ring from her finger and thrust it upon the black little toe of his right foot. “I hate this damned foot,” she sobbed, “if you want this foot so damned much, why don’t you marry it!” He had the amputation. They are still married.

There’s a parallel between our resentments, our betrayals, our inability to forgive and get on with life and this man’s gangrenous foot. I guess the question boils down to; what are you married to – the baggage of your life, or life itself.

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© Jack R. Harris-Bonham 2005

4 December 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org<

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

Mystery without name and mystery beyond all naming we give thanks this morning in this season of Thanksgiving. We give thanks for roofs over our heads, hot showers and steaming baths, food in our pantries and on our tables, for the air that we breathe and each heart beat as it drums out our life.

In this giving of thanks we trust that we have given enough – of ourselves, our talents, our riches, our dreams. Now help us Great Spirit that is the principal of movement to move ahead into our lives – fully up to the front of our being – exposed and weathered but never weary of what Emerson called the direct, personal and unmediated experiences of our lives. Help us great Mother of necessity to keep inventing our way to see the world, our way to be the world.

Now may that authentic, up front, direct connection to life pull us toward itself and in so pulling carry us close to the source of all being – step by step, hour by hour. In the name of everything that is holy and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one of a kind glory, like father, like son, like mother, like daughter, generous inside and out, true from start to finish.” (John 1:14 [Patterson translation] Italics and bold mine)

Introduction: For those of you who are offended (Gesturing to the clerical collar) by my manner of dress, I take note of your offence, but do not apologize. I ask rather that you honor your feelings of being offended and as intelligent and thoughtful beings that you hold your judgment. On the weekend of November 19th-20th I was involved in a Vigil with 20,000 other people of faith. This Vigil honored all those tortured, killed or disappeared by graduates of the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. When sides are so designated it is important that everyone know that when it comes down to shirts or skins it is immediately apparent which side you’re on!

Turning away now is like seeing the first squiggle in the corner of a painting and deciding that, that painting will never hang in your home. Do me a favor – do yourselves a favor let me paint for you the rest of the painting? A painting of protest and people, a painting of faith and faithfulness, a painting of community and communion, a painting of life and loyalty and finally a painting worth more than these mere words.

And when it’s done, when the final strokes have been placed and I sign it in the corner (gesture the signing of the painting) then we’ll look at what we have done, see clearly what we have outlined.

Now let’s make some broad strokes that will give us an idea of what we may be looking at. The Main Gate at Fort Benning, Georgia is located down a street about 6 blocks long. On one side there are apartments that have been abandoned. These apartments are used by organizers for their different activities.

The Puppetistas use an area between the abandoned apartments for their rehearsal space. The Puppetistas are groups of people who man 30-foot puppets.

In order to maintain a sense of having control over the Vigil the fort in conjunction with the city of Columbus, Georgia have put chain link fencing up the entire length of this street on both sides. There are rules about the size of the sticks you can have on your protest signs and the size of the crosses you can carry. And there’s a rule that no one may wear a mask. Some protestors get around the mask rule by painting their faces, some come dressed as white-faced mimes.

On the right side of the street as you walk toward the Main Gate there are tables of the different organizations that show up for the protest. Everyone is there from the peaceniks that are for total non-violent civil disobedience to the American Communist Party who seem to be in favor of the overthrow of the present form of government. As one communist gentleman explained to me, revolution is the only way that those in power will relinquish their grip on power. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but Martin Luther King, Jr. did say, “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

One thing’s for sure capitalism is alive and well at these tables because every form of memorabilia is on sale there that deals with protests of any kind. Some of the most thoughtful and funny bumper stickers along with some of the most obscene and tacky ones I’ve ever seen are on sale there.

Now we look toward the Main Gate of the Fort. A few years ago the Main Gate was left open with, of course, Military Police on duty just like any other day at the Fort. This changed when Martin Sheen and 4000 protestors walked across the line and entered the Fort.

They were packed onto buses and driven off the Fort. But the city of Columbus and the United States Army figured out that processing 4000 protestors and jailing them was beyond the city’s resources.

Since that time the Main Gate at the Fort has been closed. The gates are locked. The Army put up another temporary fence in front of the Main Gate and the City of Columbus followed suit and put yet another fence in front of that fence. That means to get over into the Fort at this point one would have to cross three fences. Paint these fences like gray hash marks, but do not judge them because by the end of the Vigil they will be transformed.

In 2004 seventeen people still managed to get over all three fences and one of these was a 76-year-old blind man. Where there is a will there’s a way. This year over 40 crossed under or over the fences and became prisoners of conscience.

The word that was made flesh and dwelt among us in Columbus, Georgia was the word, “no.” Paint this “NO!” in giant red capital letters punctuated with a bloody exclamation mark! The word made flesh in any protest is nearly always the word, “no.” It’s one thing to disagree with governmental policies; it’s another thing to embody that disagreement with your flesh and blood.

At the School of the America’s Vigil this year over 20,000 people gave up their individual bodies to embody as a community of protestors the power of the word, “no.” We are saying “no” to oppression, we are saying “no” to the School of the Americas, we are saying “no” to torture, we are saying “no” to death squads, we are saying “no” to tyranny. By the way, this oppression, this torture, these death squads, and various tyrannies have been sponsored since 1984 by Democratic and Republican Presidents and Congresses alike. It’s nice to know that on some level bi-partisanship is alive and well.

Let us make this particular painting a triptych – a three-paneled piece hinged together. Each painting is separate, but each is connected and therefore related to the others. This will be the panel on the right side of the triptych. The center panel will, of course, be the Vigil at the Main Gate. By the way – when a triptych is finished – do you sign all three panels (gesture the signing again) or simply the one in the middle?

The right panel of this triptych is a scene from the Americas south of our border – a time before the horse and the European.

The ancient Incas, Mayans and Aztecs celebrated to their gods by sacrificing human beings! Imagine a religion that must sacrifice a human being to their god!? It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? Simply unbelievable!

Every year in the ancient villages they would gather into the center of the main village all the young men. From all these young men, they would choose one young man. They would choose the most beautiful, the most charming, the most athletic, and the most gifted young man of them all.

They would take him from his family and place him into the royal court. And there he would be stripped and his body would be bathed and perfumed. Then, he would be dressed in a robe of the finest raiment, and offered a meal of the most sumptuous fruits and vegetables of the region, and after supper, the high priest would take him aside and teach him to play tiny clay flutes that would make music that would remind anyone of heaven and the angels. And that’s not all he got. The young ladies of the court, the young girls of the village, none of these young ladies or girls could deny this young man any desire he had, an desire whatsoever. Now, this went on for an entire year. He had everything he wanted, whenever he wanted it, as much as he wanted it.

At the end of a year, at an appointed hour, he would meet a high priest at the base of a pyramid and they would begin ascending the pyramid together. On the first few steps he would take the tiny clay flutes and throw then down and break them because, you see, he no longer had any need of music that would remind him of heaven and the angels. Further up, he would take off his robe and rend it in two, because, you see, he no longer had need of fine raiment. And finally, totally naked he would ascend to the top of the pyramid where a priest would take a knife made of obsidian, thrust it into his chest and pluck from it his still beating heart! Imagine having everything your heart desires taken from you! Imagine a society that calls upon their youth to sacrifice themselves so that order can be maintained, or better yet, so that a form of reality worshipped by the old has no ripples made in it, so that crops could flourish and those with money and power could continue with money and power! It’s unbelievable isn’t it!? Simply unbelievable!

So where does one find the courage to stop things that seem to have been going on forever? I turn now to the left panel of the triptych where I wish to paint a different scene.

When I lived in Japan I was undergoing orthodontic treatment in Tokyo. Every other week I would travel by train into the largest city in the world. I generally did this alone. I was 12 years old and never afraid. This says more about the Japanese than it does about me. Across the river from the Ochanamiso Station was the Orthodontic Teaching Hospital. Across the street from the train station there was the Christian Student Center. The Christian Student Center was operated by Catherine Smith, a Scots/Irish missionary.

When Catherine first came to Japan as a missionary she wasn’t sure what kind of work she would be doing, but when she saw the way the Japanese culture in the 1930’s treated their unmarried pregnant women she knew exactly what she must do. The Japanese as a culture frowned upon these women and generally banished them first from their families, and then from the society.

Sensei started the Sunshine School for Girls as a place where these women could live with dignity while they were pregnant.

So painted here is the Sunshine School for Girls. There’s lots of golden sunlight falling upon the school and a missionary woman stands outside the front door with her arms extended to embrace the world. Her look is so inviting that we, too, wish to go inside and visit with her.

The courage displayed by Sensei Catherine Smith and others is, in fact, the courage to do what is right! It has been said recently that it isn’t a matter of whether we’re right or wrong; it’s how persuasive we are. That to couch arguments in the terms of being right is an incorrect manner of going about things, but I am here today to tell you that it may not matter in the end whether we are right of wrong, but it does matter if it is right or wrong!

And now I want to put the finishing touches on this painting of ours. I want to paint for you the day of the Vigil in which the names of all those disappeared, tortured, or killed by the graduates of the School of the Americas are read over loud speakers. I want to paint the 20,000 of us who processed in a slow circle around this staging area as the names were solemnly read. And as each name was read 20,000 voices responded in Spanish, “Presente!” Como se dice presente en Anglise? How do you say, “presente” in English? Present. I am here. I am present. These people are present there in this ceremony. These people who have been killed, tortured and disappeared have not been forgotten, they have not been lost to us, and as long as we gather and read their names they never will be. Nearly everyone in the crowd of 20,000 is carrying a cross with the name of someone killed, tortured, or disappeared by an SOA graduate. These crosses were raised heavenward as each name was read.

Can you see there in the middle panel of the triptych the long line of mourners their white crosses held skyward? Listen carefully can you hear the sound of 20,000 voices raised in protest? Can you hear the screams of those who were tortured and raped? Can you see the babies ripped from their mother’s breast and impaled upon bayonets affixed to weapons made in this country? Can you feel the desolation of powerlessness, the futility of poverty, the inconsequence of a life so led?

Listen as I read in the manner of the Vigil these few names;

Archbishop Oscar Romero gunned down while celebrating the Mass.

Agustina Vigil, 25 years old and pregnant at the time of her death.

Domingo Claros, 29 year old wood cutter.

Cristino Amaya Claros, 9 year old of son of Domingo Claros.

Maria Dolores Amaya Claros, 5 year old of daughter of Domingo Claros.

Ignacio Ellacuria, Rector of the University of Central America in San Salvador and outspoken critic of the Army.

Ignacio Martin Baro, who studied the effects of the war on the human psyche.

Segundo Montes, a strong advocate for refugees and human rights.

Amano Lopez, a gifted counselor and pastoral worker.

Juan Ramon Moreno, gifted preacher and retreat leader.

Elba Ramos, the Jesuits’ housekeeper and remembered as sensitive and intuitive.

Celina Ramos, Elba’s 14-year-old daughter who worked as a catechist.

As each protestor passed the Main Gate they rid themselves of their crosses. Now that fence has been transformed – it has blossomed with thousands of crosses, flowers and signs. In the middle of all this repression there is a ray of hope – a living memorial.

For most of us, the phrase “and the word was made flesh” is a bizarre metaphysical statement from some other world. We can’t actually PICTURE a mere word becoming skin with blood vessels beneath.

But in our real world, in real time, the word becomes flesh in a more mundane way. Last week, 20,000 people whose word was “No!” got in busses, planes, cars, and trains and traveled to a remote part of Georgia, right near the Alabama border. They assembled in a mass of flesh — over three million pounds of flesh, all together.

And what they were saying — what WE were saying — was “You hear the people say No and you don’t listen because they are only words. But LOOK. WE are people in whom that “No!” became so strong it brought us here, to show you our faces — and our names, if you demand — and to say “NO!” this is not the way civilized humans can treat one another. We are like you. We bleed when we’re cut, we cry when we’re hurt, and when we’re tortured and murdered, we die, and we come to awaken that human part of YOU, that part that also knows this is wrong, this is vile, this is evil, this degrades everything we hold to be holy and high. “No!” we may not kidnap innocent people who stand in the way of our greedy and bloody power. “No!” we may not take them to shameful places, do inhumane and shameful things to them, make them hurt, make them bleed, make they cry out, make them die, “NO!”

We are that “No!” standing before you, as your brothers and sisters, as fellow citizens of a country we love even more than you do. We love it even more than you do because we love it enough to stand against its most shameful actions, to stand against them in person, in the flesh, in your gun sights, and say “Here we are, in the flesh.” We are the word “No!” standing before you in the flesh, asking ‘Can you hear us now? Can you hear us now? No. No! NO!”

(Make the motion of signing the painting.)

It is finished.

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© Jack R. Harris-Bonham 2005

6 November 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names, and Mystery beyond all naming this morning we speak from within ourselves in hopes of seeing the road ahead. We don’t ask for a glimpse of a future, we simply wish to see without clouded vision that which lies before us.

We all come to this enterprise with our own set of blinders on. It’s time to see without the blinders, time to feel without worrying about hurting, time to process what comes our way. We are held back by our inability to imagine ourselves different. Yet, as anyone will attest simply gazing at old photos has the ability to shame us into laughter, envy, remorse. Let us see now that we are perfect in the manner in which we address the world today, right now, this very instant.

Yes, the past was different, yes, the future will be something unexpected, but from deep within each of us let us sigh and give up any notion that we can control any of this nonsense. As mentioned in the responsive reading today help us through the strength that we gather from one another to be able to say with the poet,

“Forward! After the great Companions! And to belong to them! They too are on the road! Onward! To that which is endless, as it was beginningless, to undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights, To see nothing anywhere but what we may reach it and pass it. To look up and down no road but it stretches and waits for us-To know the universe itself as a road – as many roads-as roads for traveling souls.”

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

Amen.

SERMON

I remember the jack-in-the-box I bought my daughter Isabelle. She couldn’t have been more than 6 months old. It played the usual, “All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel” song, and of course at the appropriate line, “Pop goes the weasel” the latch was triggered and the clown jumped out! I couldn’t wait to see her reaction. When I got home I got down on the floor with Izzy (she wasn’t known by that then, but her peers have since so named her) and proudly displayed the box. She liked it. She touched it, pounded on it, licked it, and tried to eat it. Okay, so far, so good. I started turning the crank on the side of the box and the “weasel song” started playing. Oh, she really liked that; she clapped and smiled her best toothless grin, then the moment of truth. When that clown came outta there everything changed. Her smile and glee went to consternation and wailing. I tried to calm her down, show her it was just a silly clown, I even put the clown back in and made it pop out again. Boy, was that dumb. Her mother had to come rescue her, and I was left on the floor with the jack-in-the-box. So, why am I telling you this? Life’s a lot like a jack-in-the-box gift. And excuse me for sounding like Forest Gump, “Life’s a lot like a box of chocolates.” Every once in a while something jumps out at us that we hadn’t expected. We’re confused, hurt, and astonished! What to do? All I can tell you is by her first birthday that jack-in-the-box was her favorite toy, and she couldn’t wait for it to surprise her.

We at First Church Austin recently finished our canvassing campaign. Members Keith Savage and Sean Parham ran a great campaign and it looks like pledges are up – way up!

So – it’s only appropriate since you’ve gotten through giving, that you now think about receiving.

Hurricane Katrina has offered a lot of us all over the country an opportunity to give, and the response from the people has been tremendous even if the Federal government’s was less than auspicious.

Let’s face it giving opens us up. Our hearts widen dramatically – we are the one as P.T. Barnum suggested that is born every moment – when are hearts are opened we gladly play the fool. Why do you think falling in love and finding someone who wants your gifts feels so good, because all you want to do is give and who cares if you look like an idiot while you’re doing it?

I like that Dr. Pepper commercial where the guy does everything for this young lady but when she tries to drink his pop, or maybe she’s simply trying to take it from him, you know, put it somewhere where it doesn’t seem to be a part of his anatomy? Anyway, he runs from her when it looks like his drink might be taken from him. You can raise that commercial up one notch and that soda becomes a beer. But no beer commercial will ever advertise that way because it’s too close to the truth. The message is clear though, beer or soda, don’t get between a drinker and his drink.

Anyway the first time I saw that ad I thought now there’s relationship that’s going to last. You have to draw the line somewhere, right? You’ve got to have some boundaries. My father told me that relationships are 60/40. Sometimes you’re 60, sometimes you’re 40.

Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give then to receive,” but does anybody really believe that? We all know life is a lot of give and take. It’s just that taking has been tainted. And I don’t think it’s because we’d rather give than receive. I think it’s because we want people to think that everything that we are, everything we stand for, everything we’ve fought so hard for – all these things – we’d like it if people thought that, that is somehow self-generated. We did it the old fashioned way – we did it ourselves.

In his letter to the church in Corinth Paul says, “Who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you have not received? And if you have received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?”

In Eugene Peterson’s translation of the New Testament entitled “The Message,” this same passage reads, “For who do you know who really knows you, knows your heart? And even if they did, is there anything they would discover in you that you could take credit for? Isn’t everything you have and everything you are sheer gifts from God?”

When First Church member, Amy Parham, delivered her baby daughter she said in the Austin magazine Parent: Wise that she knew on some level that her child was going to have Down Syndrome. Yet as the article she wrote attests their so-called burden has blossomed and continues to blossom because her daughter, Ava Grace, will never stop giving.

When I worked at Old City Park in Dallas I was the Wagonmaster. My job was to care for two Mammoth Jackstock Donkeys and drive a wagon around that was pulled by them. One day a group of children with Down syndrome visited the park. One boy about ten years old walked right up to me and said, “You look like my granddad.” Then, he threw his arms around me held me close. What I felt at that moment was loved, totally and absolute unconditional love. I was his granddad and he was my grandson.

Dr. Loehr told me after my first sermon that Amy Parham and her husband, Sean, had liked the dog story – where when one dog gets scratched all dogs wag their tails. They told Dr. Loehr that when Ava sees them hugging and kissing her older brother Reid, Ava Grace laughs and claps her hands.

For who do you know who really knows you – knows your heart?

Then there’s “The Gift of the Magi,” the short story about the loving couple who want to give each other something special for Christmas. She cuts off her long hair and sells it to a wig maker so that she can buy him a gold chain for his pocket watch. He sells his gold watch so that he can buy her an ivory comb for her lovely hair. The irony of these gifts and the awkward day they must have had afterwards now occurs to me. . He has a gold watch chain, but no watch. She has a beautiful ivory comb that won’t stay in her short hair.

The point is; sometimes we love so much that we give more than we can afford. And it’s not a matter of money; it’s a matter of realizing that giving up who you are is in a very real sense counterproductive to being in a relationship. I’m thinking now of the woman who perhaps hadn’t cut her hair since she was a child, giving up something so precious, and so much a part of who she was to buy an accoutrement, a gold watch chain for a watch that is no longer owned by her husband. And the husband, the watch could have been an heirloom – his grandfather’s gold watch – something that had been in the family for years. Giving up who you are can come back on us as resentment – we can end up resenting what we have given because what we have given is too much, we’ve stepped over the line, crossed the border between who we are and who the other person is. Boundaries have got to be a part of vital loving relationships.

And even if they did (know you, know your heart) is there anything they would discover in you that you could take credit for?

A sesshin is an intensive period of Zen Buddhist meditation. No speaking for days. I cooked for one such sesshin and my teacher’s wife, Marie, was in charge of reheating what I had precooked and frozen. She was really worried she wasn’t going to repair the meal properly. That’s what my father used to say to my mother when she reheated leftovers, “Darling, you really know how to repair a meal.” During a break I went ahead and took care of what had to be done to the food. As I filed back into the Zendo – the place where we all sit together -Marie was already on her cushion. I slipped her a note. She later told me that, that note should be the motto of the sangha, the community. Without thinking, I had written.

“Don’t worry. It’s all been taken care of.”

Please just for a moment let’s all release the death grip we have on our reality and imagine that everything is fine – everything is free, that there is nothing that needs be done but – yes, there is a “but.”

The reason it’s hard to receive is that gifts are to be used. We must use what we have been given. When we are gifted, when we are talented there remains the question are our talents, our gifts, what matters deeply in our hearts are these things a part of our life, a part of what we do and who we are and if not, then “Who are we?”

Isn’t everything you have and everything you are sheer gifts from blank?

You fill in the blank. Doesn’t matter really who or what gave them – it’s not the giving that’s useful, it’s the gifts that work the miracles. And it all goes in a circle. You give and it creates a vacuum. Your heart expands, making you able to receive and your heart is full and it overflows – so, you give again.

There is a wonderful story from the book entitled Kitchen Table Wisdom by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen. It tells of a young man who was a football star in high school and college until he developed a condition that required his right leg above the knee to be removed. The operation saved his life, but in another sense ended the life he had known. No more girls, and no more stardom. He took to what young men take to when confronted with seemingly impassable situations in life, drink, drugs, depression and fast cars. After his second wreck in one of those fast cars he was referred to Dr. Remen.

He was angry with everyone who was whole, and angry with the doctors who had taken his leg. He didn’t want to talk about his anger and so she encouraged him to draw for her. He took the box of crayons and drew the outline of a vase. Then, down the middle of the vase he drew a huge crack. He emphasized the crack by going over and over it until he had ripped the paper.

On subsequent visits to her office the young man began bringing in newspaper articles about young people who had lost limbs, vision and mobility in tragic accidents. His emphasis was on the fact that no one really knew what these people needed. Finally, after collecting a lot of these articles she asked him if he would like to do something about these people. At first he said no, but before he left the office he had recanted and said yes, he would like to do something. It was no trouble at all getting the teaching hospital she worked at to find people with injuries as life limiting as his, and he began visiting people like himself. He would return from those visits amazed – amazed that he had been able to reach out – reach people that the doctors hadn’t been able to help.

Finally, it became a sort of ministry for him. Then, one day he was sent to the room of a young woman – 21 years of age – who had had a radical mastectomy. She laid on her bed with her eyes closed and refused to either open her eyes or talk to him. He tried just about every way he knew to get to her, even becoming angry at one point and saying things that only someone in his condition could have said to someone in hers. He had worn shorts that day to make it obvious that he had a false leg. Finally, he unstrapped the leg and let it fall to the floor with a loud thud. Her eyes popped open and she saw him for the first time. There was rock and roll music playing in the background, so he began snapping his fingers to the beat, laughing and hopping around the room. She watched in amazement, then burst into laughter herself. Through her laughter she said, “Fella, if you can dance maybe I can sing.”

She began visiting people in the hospital with him, and eventually became his bride. We can’t pick out those that we love; quite unexpectedly they are presented to us.

This is how Dr. Remen ended the story, “Suffering is intimately connected to wholeness. The power in suffering to promote integrity is not only a Christian belief, it has been a part of almost every religious tradition – Suffering shapes the life force, sometimes into anger, sometimes into blame and self-pity. Eventually it may show us the freedom of loving and serving life.”

The last time Dr. Remen saw this young man in her office, she pulled out his file and showed him the drawing he had done of the broken vase. “It’s not finished,” he said. She handed him the drawing and the box of crayons. He took the yellow crayon and made heavy lines of gold streaming and radiating from the blackened and torn crack in the vase, then he added, “This is where the light comes through.”

There are times in life when we offer gifts to people, and we don’t even know that we are doing so. I attended the 9th grade in Japan. Years later I ran into a young woman who was in my 9th grade class. She was glad to see me, and wanted to thank me for encouraging her in her present vocation. She was a veterinarian. She went into great detail about what I had said to her one afternoon that had convinced her that she should work with animals the rest of her life. Honestly, I did not remember that conversation and still don’t remember it.

The Buddhists say that sometimes a single word can be a bridge for someone.

I have after preaching been astonished when people come up to me and tell me what they heard me say. There are times when what they have heard is what they needed to hear, but in no way did it resemble anything I’d said.

The upshot of all this is that knowingly and unknowingly we can be agents of change for people. We can say something that means very little to us, but those words can be the very thing that person needs to hear at that particular moment in time. I think a lot more of this goes on than we realize. It’s not spooky. It’s not supernatural; it simply points to the randomness with which the human mind works.

Conclusion: “You can’t always get what you want – you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might – you just might get what you need.” (Rolling Stones)

Life is a lot like sailing. My apologies for this sounding like, Forest Gump again. My stepfather, a Marine Major, Bob Bonham-Dittmar, a good Unitarian Agnostic, taught me how to sail.

In sailing when you want to get from point A to point B you can’t just point your boat toward point B and push “go.” No, there’s a little thing called the wind, which “blows where it chooses.” You can make all the plans in the world, ask all the questions you want, be seen with all the right people, be where it’s happening whenever it’s happening, chart all the courses you want, but if you ain’t got wind in your sails, you ain’t got nothing.

In sailing using the wind is called tacking. You zigzag against the wind, back and forth, your goal always in mind, but your direction often seemingly away from your destination. To learn to tack in life you have to become mindful of your surroundings – aware of what you have been given and what has been taken away. As the existential philosopher and novelist, Albert Camus once said, “That which blocks my way makes me travel along it.”

Who among us can command the wind, who make happen what they want to happen when they want it to happen, who can change the past, or shape the future? Not a one. But as humans filled with the spirit of being human we have an affinity with the wind. “The wind blows where it chooses,” I said that earlier and here’s the rest of that quote from the Gospel of John, “The wind blows where it chooses and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit,” and that, my friends, is each and every one of us. (John 3:8 NRSV)

And for those humanists in the congregation this Spirit is akin to the soul as defined by the theologian Paul Tillich. Remember I preached on this in October. Tillich says the spirit/soul is a principle of movement – it is the principle of movement which moves the stars, which moves the animals, which moves the world so all these have spirit/soul. There’s nothing otherworldly about this Spirit, it’s as empirically real as the good earth we stand on.

When thinking of the curves that the world can throw us I couldn’t help but think of the psychotherapist, Viktor Frankl.

On September the 3rd 1997 Viktor E. Frankl, author of the landmark book, Man’s Search for Meaning, and one of the last great psychotherapists died at the age of 92.

Frankl survived the Holocaust, even though he was in four Nazi death camps including Auschwitz from 1942-45, but his parents and other members of his family died in the concentration camps – wiped out. During — and partly because of — his suffering, Frankl developed a revolutionary approach to psychotherapy known as logotherapy.

At the core of this therapy is the belief that humanity’s primary motivational force is the search for meaning

I’m going to read four quotes from Man’s Search for Meaning. Think not only about the words, but also about the fact that the man who wrote these words had suffered such agony – the loss of his family, the daily threat of death, living in a place that stunk to high heaven and surely must have resembled hell.

“What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.”

“The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.”

And here’s the last one: “Everything can be taken from a person but the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Speaking of choosing one’s own attitude and way, that reminds me of the Jewish story of a man who was always down on his luck, always doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, and in times past this man would have been called the village idiot. One morning he got up and fixed himself some buttered bread for breakfast. On his way to the table he dropped the bread, and it landed butter side up! He ran to see the Rabbi and told him that he was sure his luck was about to change. The Rabbi said he would consult with the elders of the synagogue. The next morning the man got up and buttered himself another piece of bread and dropped that one on the way to the breakfast table. It also landed butter side up! He ran to the Rabbi’s house and told him of this second auspicious occurrence. The Rabbi called the elders together and they met. The man paced outside the synagogue waiting for word from the elders. Finally, the Rabbi came out. “We’ve decided that you buttered your bread on the wrong side.”

There will always be those in authority who are willing to tell you that you are buttering your bread on the wrong side. Don’t you believe it! For the Jews of the 30’s and 40’s the overall dominant cultural position in Germany was that they were vermin and should be removed from the society. Survivors like Frankl help us remember that no matter what the dominant culture says, no matter what the dominant culture believes, no matter what the dominant culture does – there is a haven known as the right to choose one’s own attitude toward one’s own life.

More recently, in our own culture on December the 1st 1955 Sister Rosa Parks decided that she knew which side of the bread the butter was on when she refused to get up and give her seat on the bus to a white person. As the Neville Brothers sang in their 1989 release entitled, “Yellow Moon,” “Thank you Miss Rosa, you were the spark, That started our freedom movement, Thank you Sister Rosa Parks.” Rosa Parks died this past Monday evening. She was 92.

You and I have the Spirit to move with just about anything that moves, we can go with the flow. We can also go against the flow for we have learned to tack in this life. There are no roadblocks, just scenic detours, and who knows, a detour may take you where you were ultimately headed all along. We’re being taught lessons every day and that which once frightened us may, by and by, when we’ve gotten past the shock of the initial experience, lift our hearts to a place of new meaning.

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Jack R. Harris-Bonham

2 October 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

INVOCATION:

This is the place. This is the time; here and now the Mystery waits to break into our experience:

To change our minds, to change our lives, to change our ways;

To help us see the world and the whole of life in a new light.

This is the place. This is the time.

Here and now let us praise the Mystery by joining together in song.

CENTERING:

At the center of our service and at the center of our lives we take this time to light candles of memory, of hope, or because we feel troubled, blessed, conflicted or simply because we wish to add a little light to this world.

PRAYER:

Most gracious and loving SPIRIT, we gather together this morning as community – community in search of meaning, in search of hope, in search of itself. In these trying times when there exists so much pain and poverty, so many opportunities for us to act responsibly, help us to winnow out the seed of action from the chaff of talk. Help us to bring into focus the things that we need to do, to quiet the cavalier voices of those who see poverty as a part of character, and to raise our own standards when it comes to acting upon what we believe. We believe that those on the borders of life deserve more than existence. We believe that the dominant culture must open its arms and embrace those that stand at the margins looking in. Help us Great Spirit to see our connections to all that exists. To see that where we live is precisely how we live, that the gathering of the wounded, the hungry, and the poor is as much for us as act of redemption as it is for them.

Now, open our hearts and our minds so that the unexpected and unforeseen can find its way into the solutions of our lives. Prepare us for the magnificence of the moment.

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

SERMON:

One afternoon while I was sitting in my garden two dogs came down the path to the place where I was seated. I like dogs, I always have. The shorter of the two dogs sort of broad in the chest and bandy legged came over to me and demanded some attention from me with her nose; the way dogs have a tendency to do. So – I scratched her back. She arched approvingly. My eyes then wandered over to the bigger black dog with the yellow close-set eyes of the wolf. I mean I like dogs, but it pays to be wary. It was then I noticed that the big black dog was wagging her tail. I stopped scratching the little dog’s back and the big dog stopped wagging her tail. I scratched the little dog again and the big dog wagged her tail again. So I did a little experiment. Do you know that each and every time I scratched that little dog’s back the big dog wagged her tail? Finally, the big dog came over and I scratched her back and the little dog took the part of the tail-wagging friend.

And I thought, How wonderful, how absolutely wonderful! Scratch one dog’s back and all dogs wag their tails. If only human beings could learn this trick. Now, the dogs in my back yard weren’t going through some difficult machinations coming to the determination that what was good for one dog was good for all dogs. No! They were connected at a heart level and at a heart level we all know that what is good for one is good for all.

We can learn a lot from our animal friends. The great Jewish thinker, Martin Buber, in his seminal work, I AND THOU, speaks of the intimacy that he one evening experienced with a cat. He writes in this work;

“Sometimes I look into a cat’s eyes – The beginning of this cat’s glance, lighting up under the touch of my glance, indisputably questioned me: “It is possible that you think of me? Do you really not just want me to have fun? Do I concern you? Do I exist in your sight? Do I really exist? What is it that comes from you? What is it that surrounds me? What is it that comes from me? What is it?” The world of It surrounded the animal and myself, for the space of a glance the world of Thou had shone out from the depths.” (Buber, I and Thou, p.97-98)

When was the last time you watched a dog lie down? Sometimes they plop down, but a great deal of the time they turn in circles. I have had this explained to me as the vestiges of their primitive natures. When they lived on the steppes and the savannahs, when they were more jackal, hyena and wolf than dog this circling, pawing and circling was the process by which they pushed down the grass and made a bed for themselves.

In today’s sermon we will be doing a lot of circling. We will be pressing down the tall theological, religious and symbolic grasses of several traditions. The outcome will hopefully be that in the end, when these words have finished being spoken from my lips and received by your open and willing hearts, in the end we will have found the bedrock of a potential religious center, a place to lie down, rest and view the dizzying activities of the world that surrounds us.

When my family lived in Sacramento, California from 1952-1959, we quite often made our way to San Francisco. If you’ve been there you know the tourist stuff to see: Knob Hill, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Trolley cars, Haight-Asbury, Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and Seal Rock. If you were there back in the 50’s and 60’s you’ll remember that there was a restaurant called the Cliff House across from Seal Rock. Up the street from the Cliff House along the ocean there was Suttro’s. Suttro’s was an amazing place with seven stories of exhibits from player pianos to mummies, and all these layers surrounded an arboretum that on the ground floor was an ice-skating rink. Yet, given even this plethora of interesting sights and things to see my favorite place was the Fun House – south from the Cliff House across the street from the ocean.

My favorite attraction at the Fun House was a huge disk that sat on the floor. Everyone who wanted to could sit down on the disk, and when a horn went off the disk would begin slowly to revolve much like a merry-go-round. But this was no merry-go-round because there were no gaily-painted horses upon which to ride, there were no carriages within which to safely sit, in fact, there was absolutely nothing to hold onto except the others who were riding with you. And as the disk revolved faster and faster brothers held onto sisters whom they would in no wise ever be seen touching in public, and estranged wives and husbands clutched onto one another for dear life, but to no avail.

Centripetal force would have its way, and eventually everyone was thrown from the disk, everyone except those who had found their way to the center. It wasn’t hard to find, right there it was from the beginning. Not to sit directly on the center meant that the centripetal force would eventually pull you and little by little until you’d lose the center and be thrown off.

What I am suggesting to you today is this: Finding our religious center isn’t simply something that would be nice to have on Sundays, or when we feel especially religious, no! Finding our religious center is finding that place in our lives from which we can view the rest of the crazy, chaotic, confusing and brutal world flying by. Finding our religious center will allow us to have a new vision. We will no longer clutch at the people, places and things that surround us as if they could support us, stabilize us and give us meaning. Finding our religious center means that the banter of midway will still be heard, but we will be less inclined to find direction there. Finding our religious center means that the sirens of life – all of them – will begin to become an opera of desire, want and lack. We will finally reach that place in ourselves where what the world thinks we need, what Madison Avenue wants so desperately to sell us, what the drug companies want us to ingest – all these maddening monologues of the barkers of life – every one of them change from clamor to simply the musical harmony of the spheres. Think of it this way. If a playwright writes a scene in which all his characters are talking at the same time – no one will be able to understand anything. When a libretto for an opera is written, there are scenes in which all the singers sing at once and there is no problem because harmony takes the place of understanding.

When I worked on my Masters in religion at Florida State University my thesis was on non-verbal communication in Zen Buddhism. I was Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein’s assistant – the Richard L. Rubenstein who wrote the popular book, After Auschwitz. This is what Dr. Rubenstein had to say about Buddhism;

“I first became conscious of my affinity with Buddhism as a result of an encounter with Maseo Abe during a job interview at the University of British Columbia in March 1970. In the Vancouver lectures, I expressed my ideas about the “death of God” explicitly and unambiguously. The next day I met with the religious studies faculty. As was so often the case, the faculty consisted primarily of conservative white Protestant males. Not surprisingly, my ideas made them uncomfortable, especially ideas such as God after the death of God as the Holy Nothingness.

“As the faculty questioned me, I noticed a small, thin Japanese scholar seated on the floor in the corner behind me. He became increasingly agitated as the discussion continued. Finally he stood up and said, “I’ll have you know, what this man is saying is the essence of Mahayana Buddhism.” “That’s strange,” I replied. “I haven’t studied Mahayana Buddhism.” “That proves my point!” was his response.” (Mitchell 184)

Zen Buddhism is often described in this manner –

A special transmission outside scriptures,

Not depending on words or letters,

Directly pointing to the human heart,

Seeing into one’s true nature.

What is true nature? It sounds like it might be a soul. It’s not a thing. Your true nature isn’t rolling around inside you like a marble inside a guitar. Zazen (seated meditation) isn’t turning yourself upside down or inside out till you lose your marbles. For Zen Buddhists to express their true nature they sit. It’s practice.

I like to play tennis and was a good, steady player while attending Yale. I played tennis with older men, women, men my own age, and younger men. On clay, grass, asphalt and cement. There was only one way to get better. Practice.

To be here and now in the here and now seems idiotic and commonplace. Yet, most of us do not live in the here and the now. Coming back to the moment and the breath is the awakening of one’s true nature. There’s nothing special about it. It simply is.

Artists have described this as being in flow. For seven years I sat at my computer and wrote over 30 screenplays. No one forced me to do this. It was a drug. To be in flow with story, with character, with writing. I’ve said it before – so much of my writing is simply stenography. Once you suspend “disbelief” anything is imaginable.

And it is disbelief that we must suspend. It sounds like – to create – we must suspend belief – must make believe, but the truth is, most people disbelieve their ears, eyes, nose, tongue, heart, lungs and body. Most look for clues outside themselves on how to behave.

We must suspend our disbelief.

And as we suspend our disbelief who is it or what is it that we hope to find at this religious center of ourselves?

A great majority of the world’s religions talk about a soul or something like a soul. In the next few moments I am going to discuss what some of these world religions have to say about the soul. The list I will discuss is in no way exhaustive. If I leave out your particular religious flavor I apologize.

“The soul is a “non-material or non-tangible part of a person that is the central location of his/her personality, intellect, emotions and will; the human spirit. Most religions teach that the soul lives on after the death of the body.” That’s from the World Encyclopedia.

From the Dictionary of Buddhism we have the definition of anatman as “the key Buddhist doctrine that both the individual and objects are devoid of any unchanging, eternal, or autonomous substratum.” In other words for Buddhists there is no abiding self, no soul.

However there is a concept known as Buddha-nature.

The Abbot at Zen Mountain Monastery, John Daido Loori says this about Buddha-nature.

“Rather than positing an original defect or sin that needs to be transcended, in Buddhism we begin with the assumption of inherent perfection. Our practice is to return to the inherent perfection that’s originally there. There’s nothing to be transcended. There’s just a lot of baggage that we need to unburden ourselves of.”

You see originally within Buddhist thought there was a lot of discussion about one’s potential for becoming a Buddha – realizing one’s Buddha-nature. Finally, within Mahayana Buddhism we get this notion that there is no distinction between practice and enlightenment. To sit in meditation is to be enlightened. It’s there – this Buddha-nature – this soul with a no return ticket – this thing that we’re born with, but also dies with us.

A present day Zen Master has this to say;

“We usually assume that the world existed long before we were born and that our birth is our entrance onto the stage of an already existing world. At the same time, we often assume that our death means our departure from this world, and that after our death this world continues to exist.”

Now here’s where it gets real interesting.

“My true Self lives in reality, and the world I experience is one I alone can experience, and not one, anyone else, can experience along with me. To express this as precisely as possible, as I am born, I simultaneously give birth to the world I experience: I live out my life along with that world and at my death the world I experience also dies.” So there’s no soul to live on, but more importantly there’s no world left for this soul to be departed from.

The Holy Koran is quick to remind us that everything is a drama that posits only one soul.

“The entire drama of this single soul serves only to express the Divine Attributes of the Hidden Treasure of Love.” (Holy Koran 31:28) So the next time you hear that the Koran teaches hate and separatism you tell them about the single soul that serves only the Divine Attribute of Love! That, my friends is what the Holy Koran teaches.

Within Judaism God breathed the breath of life into the nostrils of man and he (man) became a living soul.

By the Maccabean period in Jewish history the Greek concept of the immortality of the individual soul was incorporated into Jewish thought. Not that everyone thought that way. In fact in Jesus’ time the Pharisees believed in life after death while the Sadducees denied it.

All of Greek neo-Platonist’s thought is an attempt to describe how everything comes from the ONE – much like light from the Sun.

Paul Tillich, arguably the 20th Century’s greatest Protestant theologian, says, “the soul is not primarily an immortal substance, but the principle of movement. It is the principle which moves the stars, so the stars have souls; (it is) the principle which moves the animals and plants, so they also have souls; (it is) the principle which moves our bodies, so we have souls; (it is) the principle which moves the whole universe so there is a world soul.”

The essential thing about the individual soul and the world soul is, according to Tillich, the concept of its being ambiguous, doubtful, uncertain, and capable of multiple interpretations. To me, Paul Tillich begins here to sound a lot like the UUA.

The same present day Zen Master again;

“At it very essence life is contradiction and the flexibility to forbear and assimilate contradiction without being beaten down by it, or attempting to resolve it (that flexible ability) is our life force.”

I think this is good definition of soul – a life force that’s flexible enough not to be beaten down by contradiction, flexible enough to assimilate contradiction without attempting to completely resolve it.

Within the Jewish mystical tradition, the Hasidic myth of the creation says that in the beginning everything was God and then, God exploded. That which was most like God went furthest from God – much as like poles of a magnet repel each other.

The former Rabbi and now death of God theologian, Richard L. Rubenstein, explained that Sigmund Freud stood on the shoulders of these Hasidic Rabbis when he came up with his theory of psychoanalysis. For a person to be whole that person would necessarily have to go deep into the darkness of the unconscious and find that spark of him or herself that when brought to consciousness would make them whole again, make then one again, make them God again.

Conclusion: How do we find our souls, our religious center? Why don’t I tell you what happened to me, how I found my way to this place of grace.

I wanted to be a preacher since I was 10 years old. From the age of ten till eighteen I sat on the front row of church and took notes on what the minister had to say. When I entered college I lost three things; my sobriety, my virginity and my God!

When I graduated in 1969 the war in Vietnam was raging. Catholic Priests and brothers Daniel and Phillip Berrigan were convicted of destroying selective service records; both Woodstock and Altamont happened that year; The United States landed a man on the moon and I had a decision to make – leave for Canada or find a way to avoid the draft.

Just as others are proud that when called they answered the call, so, too, am I proud that when called to serve in what I saw to be a war of genocide that I did not answer the call. I attended Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University – two thirds of the class that year were draft resisters. It was at Perkins that I discovered Zen Buddhism.

Given a high lottery number I jumped from Perkins to the Religion Department at Florida State University, then to Starr King School for the Ministry, Berkeley, California, then to the peace time Army and Military Police School at Fort McClellan, Alabama. I felt like a pinball in a pinball machine. But I finally dropped down into a hole that I couldn’t get out of – the lights were going off and the bells were ringing and I had another decision to make. I had to learn how to manage my drinking.

I went to my first AA meeting in Denver, Colorado in 1977. The first person to speak was a lovely young woman. She was missing an arm. The next person to speak was a successful looking young man. He was missing a leg. I left that meeting and went directly to a liquor store. Obviously I didn’t have a problem with alcohol, I had both my arms and legs.

Two years later, December the 23rd, 1979, I quit for good. I traded my pistol in for a typewriter and I began telling stories on paper instead of in bars.

Ten years after sobering up, in 1989 I entered the Yale School of Drama and got a formal education in telling stories. I graduated from there in 1992 with a Masters of Fine Arts in Playwriting. Twenty years after sobering up in 1999 I got fed up with the Hollywood system and decided I would write a one-man show about Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, the Confederate Civil War general. I taught homeless people Bible Study for one year because Jackson had taught a black Sunday school class when he was a professor at VMI. I became a Presbyterian because he was a Presbyterian. Flooded by childhood memories of what Jesus had meant to me I became a Christian again after 30 years of being a Buddhist.

In 2004 after nearly three years of Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University, I realized who Jesus was – a man who saw that the Kingdom of God was located within the human heart. I found my way to the Maria Kannon Zen Center in Dallas where I became a student of Ruben Habito Sensei.

The path I now walk is no different than the path I have been on my entire life with one exception. I know now where the power lies; I know where God, or whatever you wish to call our ultimate concern, lives. There is only power by living in the present moment. For me to live in the past through regret or wishing I could do it all over again is to put myself in the victim’s seat. To live in hope that things will someday be different is to put myself in a place of fear. Future – Events – Appearing – Real.

What I learned is that we must stop looking outside ourselves for anything – anything at all. How do you know when you’ve reached your religious center? Trust me, you’ll know. No, better than that. TRUST YOURSELF!! You’ll know – it’s that place where you experience a peace that passes all reasoning and understanding.

There are times when looking for our souls and our religious center is a little like wandering the streets as homeless persons all the while being the children of the richest family in town. Once we have found our religious center there is no end to our resources.

So – what I’ve told you about the soul and our religious center is incomplete, ambiguous and perhaps even contradictory, but such is the essence of life.

I want you to do something for me? Place your right hand over your heart.

Now put your left hand on the person’s shoulder to your left. At the end of the rows just figure it out – this ain’t brain surgery. Let us pray.

Great Spirit we come before you today as a group, a community of seekers, questioners, rebels and malcontents. Hollow second-hand answers aren’t for us. We want to know for ourselves. We want a special transmission outside of scripture, not relying on words or letters, pointing directly to the human heart.

We sense that we have been given something that yearns to know exactly what that something is. Some of us call this soul, some call it intellect, some mind, some Big Mind. Some of us have no name for it. As we are connected physically as one community help us to realize that we all have our spiritual questions. Some of those questions were addressed this morning, but some of them were not and, quite honestly, we still question. Yet help us to remember that when one dog is satisfied all dogs wag their tails. At this moment, right now, within the sacred, the boundless, the timeless, let us feel with our right hand our hearts wagging within us. For truly what has been good for even one of us has been good for all of us.

Amen!

BENEDICTION:

May the road rise up to meet your feet,

May the rain fall softly upon your face,

May the wind always be at your back,

And may the peace that passes all understanding rest in your hearts and minds while we are absent one from another.