Rev. Nell Newton
June 11, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org
How did you get into this mess? Whatever your particular mess might be, and we all have at least one. We reflect on the work of our community as growers of both roots and wings.
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Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.
Rev. Nell Newton
June 26, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
So much around us seems fragmented and unsustainable, like the world around us seems broken. But is it? We will look at theology and possible responses to the idea that our world is a broken mess.
Reading:
The Truth About Stories; A Native Narrative pages 21-22 by Thomas King
Reading: Adrienne Rich
My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
So much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
Who, age after age,
Perversely, with no extraordinary
Power, reconstitute the world.
Sermon
One of my favorite bumper stickers asks “Where are we going? And why are we in this hand basket?!” To some it would seem like everything is falling apart and changing for the worse at every turn. The alarmists in our midst assure us that we are facing End Times.
The revolution will NOT be televised, but Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo.
Even for us Universalists, this hand basket seems to be heading someplace hot. But what everything is not falling apart? What if this is just business as usual and it’s up to us to reframe our response?
In some religious circles, people have expressed a desire to “heal our broken world”. This sentiment is usually couched as part of a mission statement – along the lines of what the Salvation Army has as its mission: “The Salvation Army – a growing, loving community of people dynamically living God’s mission in a broken world.”
This language is pretty popular among justice-seeking Christians. You can find it in colleges, mission trip groups, and from folks who are working to improve the lives of the poor. It generally can be summed up as “Together we share a quest for justice, peace, reconciliation and healing in a broken world.”
(Honestly, they lifted the term from the Judaic concept of “tikkun olam” which translates as “world repair” but they took some liberties in the translation and theology.)
So there are people who see our world as broken. These are good and loving people, and they want to make things better. But something about it just sticks in my craw…
What is it? Why does that language make me itchy? That’s what’s happening… I’m getting itchy.
I really don’t have a problem with people who are motivated by their understanding of the holy to go out and do some good work. I deeply respect people of any faith tradition who are called to address injustice.
So why the itch over this language? Our Broken World…
What’s wrong with recognizing that things are messed up and we can become a blessing to our world by walking humbly and doing justice?
It’s the “broken” that sets me on edge. Casting our world as “broken” irks me.
I find myself growling – that’s how I know something is serious – growling: “It ain’t broke! It was built this way!”
Built this way – in our natural world and our human society.
Rockslides and typhoons are part of the entire system of Nature. They cause disruption of human activities – even death and illness – but they are how this whole system works. It’s not broken. It’s complex but not broken.
But scientists are pretty much in agreement that global climate change is directly caused by human activity. Wouldn’t that show that we’ve broken our world? Yes and no. Yes, our activities have changed the system. But it’s not broken, just different. Not very comfortable for us and many other species, but still a full system. No missing pieces, nothing removed, just all of the interlinked parts responding to the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels. The natural world is not broken… it’s working quite well. And with or without us it will continue following its deep, old laws.
So, if anything, it’s not that we need to fix anything but we do need to get things back into balance if we, and all of the bears and bees and beavers are going to survive.
So what about our human society? What do I mean by “It’s not broken – it’s built that way?”
Well, our brains are hardwired for xenophobia. As a species we are inherently mistrustful of people outside of our immediate clan. We’re built that way.
But when it becomes institutionalized and rationalized, it moves from being a residual part of our lizard brain, to becoming racism that prevents us all from accessing the richness of life. Both the oppressor and the oppressed are limited by institutionalized racism. And our laws and financial practices have been built to hold groups of othered people away from resources like education, work, or medical care.
Why did so many people of color wind up in foreclosure during the Great Recession? Because of a complex system of practices, all legal, that kept them hemmed into certain neighborhoods and then made a lot of money off of them through predatory lending. It wasn’t that anyone said “How can we engineer a system to perfectly oppress people we are uncomfortable with?” But that’s pretty much what happened.
It’s what happens when we don’t examine prejudice or the way our brains work. Nothing was broken. The system worked quite well. In fact some systems work better when they are unexamined.
And that’s how evil moves about in this world, buried so deep into our normal that we don’t notice it until a person close to us cries out.
Many of the worst parts of our human society are not really broken, just unexamined prejudice. Any fixing to be done is the hard work of unpacking and naming and trying to do it better it over and over until there’s less unexamined stuff around to trip us up.
Okay… deep breath…
So that’s what I mean when I say “It ain’t broken.”
Now, here’s another reason why the phrase “broken world” just irks me: It implies that there is a more perfect, more preferred state that has been broken. It presumes that there is a norm that is better than a variation. Which is okay as long as you fit the norm….
And, here’s the real reason I get itchy: it is based upon an underlying theology that is problematic.
That theology – the one where our world is “broken”. It comes from an interpretation of the Judeo-Christian creation story. You know this one:
In the beginning there was perfection…
(Except that actually, if you read Genesis you find two beginnings…)
In The Beginning There Was Perfection in a Garden.
And eventually two humans, who were somehow too human, not perfect, despite having been made in God’s image…
(Do you sense a set up here?)
The two humans transgressed a rule…
(Really, this was a set up – eat anything and everything except THAT.)
And perfection was broken.
Because humans were not perfectly obedient.
Because they were too human.
Despite having made their god in their own image…
This break, this rupture, this banishment and punishment… this is the underpinning of what many Christians interpret as Our Broken World. Inherent human sinfulness broke God’s perfect world. And it continues to break this world.
This suggests that they have some assumptions about what Perfection would look like. They are trying to fix something they perceive is broken, and restore it to what they would consider whole or mended.
So, the problem with presuming that our world is broken is that it is based upon a theology that casts us as inherently bad children who broke something, and now we’re trying to fix it, but, of course, we can’t because there is an omnipotent god who is really in charge but seems to be waiting for us to live up or down to his expectations.
Can you see why I get itchy here?
So… here’s where a different kind of theology might change our response.
What if, instead of a single omnipotent, omniscient, judging sky god, what if there was a theology that accepted that perfection includes things that are outside the norms, things that appear imperfect? We’ve all seen leaves that simply grew asymmetrically or trees that have been misshapen by terrain or weather and yet they still grow and photosynthesize and bring beauty.
We’ve all seen imperfection and loved it more dearly because of its uniqueness. Think of a beloved – is it their perfection, their adherence to a norm that you love? Or is it their crooked smile – the way the left eye crinkles more than the right eye when they grin and laugh?
So, what if our understanding of perfection included some things that appear broken, or imperfect? And what if our understanding of the divine included our having to help create and recreate this perfect imperfection? Rather than always failing at restoring Eden, what if we are actually tasked with joining in as a part of Nature to create with wild diversity? Our job becomes less about fixing and more about participating!
Whew!
Okay, now I’m going to recognize that brokenness is real. There really is brokenness in our world. More specifically, covenants can be broken, and people can be broken.
You’ve known people who were broken. Most families have someone who isn’t quite okay. Maybe it was trauma or odd neurological wiring, or both, but there’s someone in the family who wound up broken. And that old judging sky god doesn’t seem interested in helping.
How we respond to broken people is how I’ll measure our gods.
Here’s an example – Cousin Guido. In one branch of my extended family one of our broken ones was Cousin Guido. He wasn’t really my cousin. He was my step grandfather’s second cousin but in an Italian American family, for better or worse, everyone is family.
When I was a little kid I really couldn’t tell how old Guido was. He seemed like a young man right up until the moment he became an old man. That was because when he was a young man, he was sent over to fight in World War II. He was a poor Italian American kid who was probably a little neurologically vulnerable but had no one to speak up for him or assign him to non-combat work. So, like too many poor young men, he was issued a pair of boots and a gun and sent to fight. And, when the bombs started exploding and guns firing all around him, his mind snapped. It was all over. It was what used to be called “shell shocked.” He got stuck in the middle of that terror and stayed there for the rest of his life.
Guido’s father finally found him in a hospital. Back then there was no real treatment for that kind of trauma, so his father simply brought him home and resigned to care for his son. In fact, Guido’s father married a young woman with the understanding that she would care for his son after he died. And she did. And the rest of the family cared for him too. My step grandparents always included Guido in the big family dinners and took him places. They’d include him exactly as he was – not leaving him in a back room, not waiting for him to get better, not expecting him to change – just including him and loving him as the rocking, moaning, terrified person that he was.
Have you ever seen that kind of love? The love that keeps loving someone even in their brokenness?
What makes it astonishing is because it means finding the holy in the spaces God seems to have deserted.
If we’re going to live and love brokenness, it’s going to take a different kind of theology that asks us to just live into what is, not in guilt or as punishment, but in a steady renewal, over and over again of what family and love and connection can look like.
It took the rest of Guido’s life, and he did have tranquility and kindness in his later years. He knew he belonged. It became the work of a family to hold his brokenness, his fragility. It showed us, the younger members of the family, that we didn’t have to be perfect to be loved; we simply had to be present.
This is the work of creative people who take what is imperfect and add to it with their love. Not to fix it, but to simply keep creating alongside their god.
And such is a god that I will measure us by.
Rev. Nell Newton was ordained by the San Marcos Unitarian Universalist Fellowship this past June. A lifelong Unitarian Universalist, she lives in Central Austin with her husband, assorted teenagers, too many cats, a mess of chickens, and one sweet dog.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.
Rev. Chris Jimmerson and Rev. Nell Newton
December 27, 2015
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
“Community: To connect with joy, sorrow, and service with those whose lives we touch.” In this second in our sermons series on our church’s religious values, former First UU member Rev. Nell Newton joins Rev. Chris in exploring the foundations for building religious community.
Call to Worship
Now let us worship together.
Now let us celebrate our highest values.
Transcendence
To connect with wonder and awe of the unity of life
Community
To connect with joy, sorrow, and service with those whose lives we touch
Compassion
To treat ourselves and others with love
Courage
To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty
Transformation
To pursue the growth that changes our lives and heals our world
Now we raise up that which we hold as ultimate and larger than ourselves.
Now we worship, together.
Sermon
Rev. Nell Newton
“We Gather In Community”
When people chose those words – and it was a collaborative effort – this congregation was at a terribly beautiful moment. It was terrible because many people were still mad and hurt and angry and sitting far out on the edges. And beautiful because other people were crowding in close to see what they could do to be of help, how they could make things better. But let’s back up to what was going on before these words were chosen. Let’s start with a story….
Once upon a time there was a congregation that went looking for a minister. But not just any minister – no, they wanted a wonderful minister. They wanted a minister who would be bold and preach the paint off the walls. They wanted someone who would stick around and not just use them as a lower rung on his or her career ladder. They wanted someone who would challenge them! And that is exactly the kind of minister they got. It was wonderful and terrible. It was wonderful because the minster could preach the paint off the walls, but then terrible because it was hard to keep the walls painted. It was wonderful because the minister settled in and showed no inclination to leave them to better his or her own self-interests. But it was terrible because the minister didn’t show any inclination to leave for the congregation’s best interests either. It was wonderful because the minister challenged them. And it was terrible because, well, sometimes people need to be comforted too.
Ministers! But there was something else that was happening that the congregation had not experienced in a while. The minister drew people in – lots of people. Standing room only crowds of people who came to hear the minister. It was very exciting! But after the services, many of those people just got back in their cars and left. They were happy enough to hear the great sermons and watch the paint peel off the walls. They didn’t stay around afterwards to help repaint the walls or read stories to the kids or wash dishes after potlucks.
Now, in all fairness, those people were probably feeling pretty good about everything. They probably were feeling happy that they’d finally found a minister to listen to, so they could say that they had found a church. But what they hadn’t yet figured out is that sermons are not church.
Really. Church – if you do it right – is a verb, not a noun. And the folks who were just showing up for the sermons were missing the really hard, challenging, transformative part of church.
So, when things finally went “kaboom”, which happens if church is a verb, all of a sudden, the minister was gone! And the people who were there to watch the minister’s show, well, a lot of them just left. And that’s probably okay. It was a little sad to see the empty spaces where they had been sitting.
But, some of them didn’t leave. As the dust swirled and settled, they blinked, and as if waking from a magic spell, an illusion, and they began to notice that even though there was no minister, CHURCH continued.
And some of them began to recognize that the underlying, the foundational ministry in the church was the congregation. Those people they’d been sitting next to? They were all ministers. And good ones too.
It was during this time that the congregation – everyone who was still showing up – got to really see church as a verb – a process of creating and becoming together. It was pretty cool.
And when they set out to identify their mission, the reason for doing this church stuff, they all agreed that the most important part of what they were doing was simply coming together, gathering in community. Because while individuals are amazing and powerful, there are some things that you can only build where two or more are gathered.
I used to think of church as a wonderful banquet with welcoming tables, deeply satisfying food, and genial company. In this analogy the minister helps people find their place and points out good things to eat while the congregants take turns serving, eating and washing the dishes. The covenant serves as the house rules and there is a place for everyone at the table.
That’s a pleasant image, but it doesn’t include all of what really happens at church. It doesn’t include that radical bit about change.
These days I think of church more as a laboratory – a place where people can come and learn new ways of seeing and being. We’re building a new way and as we work sometimes there is a flash of light and a puff of smoke!
In this vision of church I see us conducting experiments with such titles as “Being Well Together” and “Walking and Talking”. Higher level experiments are also being conducted in “Not Walking and Not Talking”, and “Letting Go”. Church then becomes the place where we work at becoming a people so bold — a place where we change ourselves in order to change the world!
This version of church is explicitly a challenge to the people who identify as “SBNR” –“spiritual but not religious”. That’s how a lot of folks will explain why they don’t do church. They are just fine with their spirituality, no need to complicate things with institutions, or really, other people. Not even other SBNR people. Because, well, people. They can be so people-y. They can be so challenging.
And, there’s the problem with trying to do spiritual but not religious: if you’re off doing it all alone, there’s no one around to call you on your nonsense or useless abstractions, or self-indulgences that don’t ask you to look closer, work a little harder and become the best version of yourself. And there’s no one around to point out other versions of the holy, or new ways of giving thanks. Sometimes you need a near perfect stranger to point out the gaps in your theology.
So, come into this community of love and learning and falling down and getting up and starting over. It’s how we are doing our theology. Gathered in community.
Rev. Chris Jimmerson
Community – to connect with joy, sorrow and service with those whose lives we touch.
That’s our topic for today’s second in a series of sermons on this church’s religious values. Values that are at the core of this religious community and out of which our mission that we say together every Sunday arose.
I’d like to start by talking about what we mean by community – how we create and sustain religious community within the church, because I think sometimes when we talk about community we kind of have this Hallmark view of community where we’re all going to love each other all the time, and we’re only going to have joy and hugs and fun together, sipping coffee, munching on delicious bonbons and singing Kumbaya together.
And, no, we are not singing that today. Or ever; at least when I am leading worship.
Anyway, I think all of that is part of it. One of the things that I love about serving this church is that we do have fun – that we do demonstrate physical affection with one another – that we share a great sense of humor and joy.
Like, with a lasting marriage though, I think there’s more to it than that. I think that we also have to be aware that there will be struggles – that we will disagree – that we will have conflict from time to time, and in fact I would be wary of a religious community that never had conflict because it could signal that perhaps what we had actually created is a club of like minds, not a true religious community.
We have to be committed to and willing to do the work of maintaining relationship – of sustaining an ever-evolving, ever-changing religious community.
In fact there is a theology that says that God or the divine emerges out of the messiness of creating community. Now leaving aside for a moment that this theology envisions a supernatural version of the divine, which I don’t, I will say that I was fortunate enough to see exactly the process this theology tries to capture occur here in this very church after, what Meg refers to as the time of trouble had occurred. At a specially called congregational meeting, the congregation had voted by a fairly narrow margin to dismiss the person who was then senior minister.
It was messy. We had disagreements. We had hurt feelings. And yet leadership emerged that was wise enough to bring in outside help and to provide opportunities for members of the community to begin to speak with each other, both on and intellectual and an emotional level.
This community began the long process of forming a covenant of healthy relations that describes how we will be with each other – what promises we make to each other within the religious community. This community began to discern our values and to create our mission that gives us common purpose.
Out of the messiness and disagreement and hurt feelings, because some folks this religious community stayed in the struggle with each other and did the work of building and rebuilding relationship, this became a church even stronger than it had been before – a church that is providing a religious and spiritual home for more and more people -a church that is making real differences in our larger community and in our world – a church that I am so proud to serve.
Now, that’s an example from an extraordinarily challenging and thankfully rare situation. However, I think this willingness to stay in the struggle with each other – this willingness to embrace that true community will sometimes involve messiness – is necessary even during times such as the one that this church is undergoing right now, when things are going well, when there is joy and goodwill within our membership.
Because smaller but potentially destructive disagreements and conflicts will still happen that if left unattended and unspoken can fester and grow into larger problems. Because we are all human, and we will sometimes unintentionally fail one another.
And so, even during times such as this, religious community demands of us that we abide by our covenant with one another – that we ask for help when we need it -that we speak with one another directly and from the heart even over our smaller hurts and disagreements. Here at first UU church of Austin, we are fortunate enough to have a healthy relations ministry team that can help when doing so seems difficult.
It can be difficult. It can feel very vulnerable.
And perhaps that’s the key point. Without vulnerability, there can be no real religious community.
Only through being vulnerable with each other, can we create that true sense of religious community – can the divine emerge from among us.
Earlier, I talked a little about Community within our church walls. Now I’d like to talk about living this value Beyond them.
As many of you know this past summer, our church provided sanctuary to Sulma Franco, who had sought asylum in the U.S. because she feared persecution for having spoken out and organized on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in her home country of Guatamala. Due largely to her immigration lawyer making a mistake and the systemic injustice of our immigration system, she had been held 9 months in a detention center and was facing an imminent order of removal or deportation.
Working with a coalition of local immigration and human rights groups, other churches and faith leaders, we engaged in a campaign to pressure Immigration and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) to do grant Sulma a stay of removal so that she could remain in the U.S. while her immigration legal case could proceed. In August, the ICE office in San Antonio told Sulma’s new lawyer that they would grant the stay, but that Sulma would have to accompany her lawyer inside the ICE offices to sign the required paperwork. Not surprisingly, Sulma was afraid that if she went in the ICE offices, they might put her back into detention and deport her instead.
After much planning with our allies, and after our Senior Minister, Meg, received assurances from the officer in Charge of the ICE Office that Sulma would not be detained, we made plans for a whole entourage of folks to go to the San Antonio, where were joined by more folks from San Antonio outside the ICE building and several members of the press, whom we had invited.
We hit a snag when the ICE officer told us over the phone that by ICE policy he could not come outside and state in front of the press, that they would not detain her, so Sulma had to decide if she would still go in, with only the private assurances he had made to Meg. She decided that if Meg and I would lock arms with her, one of us on each side of her like this, and go in with her and her lawyer, then she would do it.
The ICE officer met us as we entered the building. Sulma was trembling. I could actually feel her shaking with fear. I only hope that if I ever had to, I could summon the courage it took her to walk in that building.
She was too terrified to let go of either Meg or me for any reason. To go any further, there was one of those metal detectors and X-ray belts you have to put your cell phones and bags and such on. The ICE officer took mercy on us as we fumbled around trying to figure out how to get things out of pockets and onto the conveyor belt while still locked arm and arm. He told us we could just go around but the space between the screening area and the wall though was very narrow so to get through still connected with Sulma, we had to kind of do this sideways shuffle.
I looked around, and there were these long lines of folks, almost all of whom where people of color, waiting and waiting to see someone about their immigration status. I thought, they must wonder who this woman is being escorted right past the lines and into a private office area, locked arm in arm with two white people one of them wearing some strange, bright yellow scarf. I thought, many of them must be terrified too.
After what felt like hours, ICE provided Sulma with the paperwork legally stating they would not deport her, and we left the office, Sulma holding her documents of freedom high in the air as her supporters cheered and celebrated her.
I think that on that day what Martin Luther King called “Beloved Community” had arisen. Now, I think that’s a term that gets overused, but as King used it, it involves a community of radical love, justice, compassion and interdependence. And to make the beloved community, we needed others. Our individual efforts to do justice are wonderful and needed AND our mission says that we gather in community to do justice. We have so much more power to do justice when we act together. We have so much more power to create the beloved community when we act with our interfaith partners and our larger denomination and a broad coalition of folks, some of them religious and some not, like we did that day in San Antonio.
Because we do these things not just to save one person, though that is vital and important, but to shine a light on our broken and inherently racist and LGBT oppressive immigration system, so that one day, if can build larger and larger coalitions, we might bring the change that will free all of those other terrified folks we passed by in that ICE office that day.
Building the beloved community requires, in the words of our great UU theologian James Luther Adams, the organization of power and power of organization. That’s why we gather in community to do justice.
That’s how we create the conditions for the divine to emerge in this world – in this time – here and now.
Benediction
As you go back out into the world now, know that there is a love that you carry with you beyond these church walls.
Know that our interconnectedness contains seeds of hope for justice and compassion to be made manifest.
Know that together, with one another and the many others who would join us to create a world wherein each is truly beloved, together, almost unlimited possibilities are still ours to create.
Go in peace. Go in love. Go knowing that this religious community awaits you and holds you until we are together again.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 15 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.
We’ll sing that we need to “Do when the Spirit says Do,” but what about all those other moments in life when spirit or Spirit is not a big factor in our decision making or dinner making? This Sunday we’ll take a short tour of the history of our concept of “spirit” and examine the ambivalent ways that spirit might move or remain inert in our daily living.
Sermon: Spiritual Ambivalence
Spiritual Ambivalence… How’s that for a provocative sermon title? As I remember it, I had previously committed to writing about spirituality and there was a newsletter deadline looming but I was feeling tired or cranky, and groused to a colleague that at that moment I didn’t really care one way or the other about Spirituality. “Oh, so you’re experiencing Spiritual Ambivalence?” he asked. And really that was a better title than something like “Spiritual Indifference” or “Spiritual Apathy” because those sermons would get too grim too quickly. So let’s give thanks that he offered Ambivalence.
Valence has several different usages, all rooted back to the same Latin root as “value”. Ambivalence has both antique and contemporary uses. The “ambi” refers to being able to go in at least two different directions. So being ambivalent don’t mean simply not really caring one way or the other, it’s more about being able to consider the value of two different things or ideas. So, as I talk about Ambivalence, it’s not to say that I don’t really have much interest in something, it’s that I am willing to consider the value, the upside and downsides of multiple competing, and exclusive ideas.
So, what am I ambivalent over? Spirit. Spiritual. Eternal and everlasting spirit. Soul. Unseen and unmeasurable. Maybe that spark of the divine that animates us and connects us to something. And, when it comes time to really consider the concept, I wind up ambivalent. I suppose, compared to some folks, I’m a fairly spiritual person. At times it seems like a very important aspect of my life, well worth placing at the center of things. But other times, I really figure that my spirit probably knows what it’s up to and to just to trust that it’s fine wherever it is or isn’t without my mind trying to micro-manage and scrutinize and fuss over what or where or if spirit is a valid construct to work with.
So what do I mean when I’m talking about “spirit”? We’ve all heard the term and we probably share some common assumptions of what we all mean with the concept. The word we use is rooted in the Latin for “breath”, but the concept itself needs a little unpacking.
The concepts of spirit go back well before Socrates and Plato, but we’ll start with the Greek’s take on an unseen human soul and the notion of a world of the eternal spirit – separate from the physical world. Plato was explicit in his dualism – the body is of the physical world, material, and finite, while the soul is on loan from the unseen spirit world, to which it returns upon death to face judgment. So, according to Plato, in one person is the temporary flesh and the eternal spirit. And, as he saw it, education involved coming to recognize that the spirit was superior to the flesh and that this fleshy life should be spent preparing the soul for its eternal destiny.
Yes. If all that sounds familiar, Jesus and his followers picked up that construct, merged it with some of the Jewish theology and ran with it – partly to make their ideas easier for the average Greek to recognize and adopt. Because, thanks to Alexander the Great, common Greek was the lingua franca of the early Christian era, so if you wanted to spread the word you did it in Greek.
Now, to contrast Plato’s notion of spirit, we should look at another Greek who came along shortly after Plato. Epicurus modified the whole dualistic view of humans and took the stance that flesh AND soul were physical and both ended with death – and both body and soul dissolved back into nothingness upon death. Life was for living; it wasn’t just a preamble to eternity.
It was this dissolving into nothingness that fit nicely with the atomic theory of the philosopher Democritus. He was the first who theorized that all things are made up of tiny particles that bounce around temporarily forming things, disintegrating, and reforming things. When you mashed together Democritus and Epicurus, you wind up with a universe where humans are merely a chance collection of atoms, destined to arrange, dissolve, and rearrange. Because human life and souls were temporary, Epicurus felt that reason should be used to live well and lie low and not draw too much stress into one’s life. It wasn’t so much that he felt you should eat dessert first, but he would have recommended that you avoid politics and heated arguments that could turn nasty.
Perhaps folks didn’t like the idea of dissolving into nothingness, or perhaps the Christians really got some traction with their emphasis on souls, but either way, we all have a shared understanding of spirit and/or soul and it generally is understood to be ongoing, eternal, not-of-this world. We’ve all heard of your everlasting soul, and some of us have even picked up on the Hindu notion of a soul that is reincarnated over and over before finally being reunited with the eternal. But very few of us have a common, shared idea of soul or spirit as something compostable, something that might degrade and have its bits rearranged. And Epicurus is now known more for his appreciation of a good meal rather than for his finite soul.
Is it ego or the love of self that makes us prefer the idea that some part of us will go on indefinitely? Perhaps. In any case, one version of “spirit” is more popular, than the other. When people say they don’t really believe in souls, they typically are referring to Plato’s and not Epicurus’.
And plenty of folks have rejected Plato’s separate, unseen, and eternal version of soul. Because why would a universe have two sets of books with two sets of physics- one for the material and physical and one unseen and unmeasurable? Just to keep us on our toes? That’s the kind confounding that prompts some of us to just quit worrying about spirit, souls, and anything else that is unmeasurable. It’s hard to fix dinner while contemplating the eternal. Water gets burnt that way. It’s just easier to get like Epicurus and focus on the living of the here and now and live fully and well. Avoid politics and loud arguments. Just fix a nice simple supper and eat it slowly and with appreciation for the way your body takes those atoms and rearranges them into energy and tenderness.
But, perhaps you have had a moment where you could sense the largeness and interconnectedness of all things. Maybe you’ve had a sense of transcendence – that which transcends time and body and even the laws of physics. Those are the moments when the spirit seems to be saying Pay Attention. And when the spirit says “do”…. It’s hard to ignore such a commandment.
So where does that leave us? Well… if you’re ambivalent, or uncertain which approach to follow, let me assure you that it’s okay. Our religious tradition doesn’t insist on a belief in an unseen soul or eternal spirit, and even when we do recognize a soul or spirit, we aren’t asked to make it the most important part of ourselves. We’re cool with bodies here. Some of my best friends have bodies…
I’ll even offer that this ambivalence towards spirit is actually a legitimate theological response, steeped in history, and reflective of our values.
If we are ambivalent on spirit, it’s because we refuse to be certain. We know that with certainty comes complacency and a tendency to be smug. When it comes to the most vital details, like if we have an eternal soul or are simply a random collection of atoms, we’d rather be uncertain and open to see new truths, than to be stubbornly fixed and unresponsive. If we are ambivalent, it means that we feel that revelation is not sealed, it is ongoing.
Can you see how that is a different theology from one that tells us that everything is fixed and predetermined? We’d rather have a messy uncertainty that might bring us to something new than a certainty that will keep us pinned in place, unable to respond to change.
To wrap all this up, what is my advice to the Spiritually Ambivalent and those of us who tend more towards certainty?
Well if you truly don’t hold with notion of soul or spirit, please know that you have plenty of company. But I would invite you to do some honest examination of what you’ve thought about spirit, spirituality, soul, and anything eternal, and figure out where you learned to think like that, and be able to state clearly what it is that you might be uninterested in.
And, if you’ve had a sense of soul, a presence of spirit, here’s what I’ll invite you to consider: look at what you know verrrry closely. Are you keeping the idea of an eternal spirit as simply an extension of the self through eternity, or are you willing to consider that it might follow the same laws as atoms and redistribute over time? What if the soul is not about the self, not about your acts or actions, not about judgement, but entirely about your letting go and reuniting with the All That Is? What I’m asking you to consider is a totally non-self version of spirit. No ego, no personality, no person at all. Quite simply, what if it is a spark of the divine that is returned to the source when you’re done with it? That follows closer to the laws of physics AND the teachings of the mystics.
This is a tough order because really, right now we’re pretty busy just living and learning and loving and leaving in these bodies. It’s a full-time job – this being alive. So, it’s hard to think about not being alive, even if it is trying to contemplate something eternal.
But, perhaps after you’ve had a simple supper, you can reflect on the eternal Now of a life well-lived.
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Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 15 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.
The process of building a minister includes a certain amount of disassembling the person who wanted to become a minister. There are many ways this is done -countless personal essays, stacks of reading, somber committees that decide one’s fitness -but one of the most discombobulating assignments is Chaplaincy work. The experience is expected to upend a student’s certainty. And afterwards, they usually write at least one sermon about the experience. This is be one of those sermons! My CPE Sermon
Reading
Untitled Poem by Theresa Ines Soto posted on Facebook – used with permission
Jesus. Never had to go to seminary.
He was wunderkind.
He never had cerebral palsy; He died
Once though. Jesus never had a broken
scooter, but over and over, he had a
broken heart. Me too, once or twice.
Sometimes I think I won’t
Make it, can’t do it. About that, Jesus said:
It takes more than bread
to stay alive. It takes a steady stream
of words from God’s mouth.”
God’s words for me are:
the sunset, the boats on the lake,
the perfection of all the ways God
is reflected in Beloved Community.
Jesus. Did the work that fell to Him
Until It Was Finished. I don’t even
Have to die to complete my work,
But maybe I can hold on for one
More day. Maybe that would be good.
Theresa Ines Soto is 41, a Latina, a 3rd-wave feminist, a lawyer, a seminarian, and a woman who has cerebral palsy. She walks with a cane and uses a scooter to get around. The scooter she uses now is a cheap one that goes slowly and is prone to tipping. She had a really great, really expensive scooter, but it was stolen last year.
She was born prematurely and her parents were told she wouldn’t live. Then they were told that she would live, but she’d never walk or talk. Then they were told that she might talk or walk, but that she’d never have the mental capacity to be independent. Each time they heard this information, her parents said “Okay”. She appreciates their willingness to love their daughter no matter what.
For me, spending time with Theresa means slowing myself down a bit. I slow my pace to match her scooter as its battery drains during the day. It means that I slow my ears down to the cadence of her voice which is quite clear and articulate, but slower. It means that I have to slow down my brain to make it work more carefully to notice how it would automatically presume that because her body is different, that her mind must be different too. I am better for having slowed down with Theresa. She’s going to make a difference in our denomination.
When she prays, it is with a relaxed forthrightness that is startling to my ears.
Sermon
UU Minister – Some Dis-Assembly Required
In the few years that I’ve been paying attention, I’ve noticed that seminary students who are entrusted with a pulpit will inevitably trot out some predictable sermons. There will be a ponderous sermon on Unitarian history – complete with footnotes – it’s really just a summary of a recent research paper. There will also be a sermon or two on The Seven Principles, or The Five Smooth Stones. There will usually be a chirpy sermon along the lines of “Let’s not forget the Universalists!” And, there will be, should be, a sermon where the student talks about their chaplaincy internship. It’s in these internships where we get our heads out of the books and throw our bodies into the front lines of pastoral work, generally in a hospital setting. And this, dear kind people, this is my chaplaincy sermon….
I was warned by others who had already completed their chaplaincy programs: “You’ll get what you need to learn about from chaplaincy.” One friend told about a student who had been uncomfortable with death and dying and, naturally, while on call, he got lots of experience with death and dying patients. He had waaay more than any of the other students. And, by the end of their program he was much better equipped to deal with death and dying.
During chaplaincy, non-theists start feeling connected to something larger and theists start arguing with a god who allows so much suffering… Yep. Whatever you need to work on, it will find you during chaplaincy training. I knew this when I was assigned to work at Brackenridge hospital last fall.
What did I need to learn about? The chill of dread rose up as I contemplated where I might be harboring unspoken resistance or denial. Would I be faced with blood, trauma, sick kids, sick parents, or something so un-doing that I couldn’t imagine being able to handle it??? Each time I started an overnight or weekend shift, I was gripped with a quiet worry that THIS time I would be forced to confront my deepest fears. And, each time, I simply found myself going about the work that was asked of me – listening, crying, hugging, joking, praying, and filling out the paperwork afterwards. I never came home completely undone or unable to speak my own name.
Here’s the work we were doing – most of the time it was just visiting with patients who were otherwise bored, or lonesome, but often we were called to show up during times where people needed spiritual or emotional support. It seemed like the other students in my program had it much harder – their shifts were filled with fighting families, multiple trauma victims, and worse. My shifts weren’t exactly picnics – no sooner than I’d lie down to rest then my pager would go off. But I seemed to get easier nights, simpler problems, less complicated paperwork… What awful undoing was waiting for me?
Among the hospital workers you were never supposed to wish them a “quiet” night – that would jinx it for sure. So, instead I would wish folks a “boring” night. And, then, I found myself saying a small and private prayer. A friend of mine sends his prayers to the Great To Whom It May Concern, but I found myself asking a Great Mother to hold the entirety of the hospital with compassion and to support the caregivers as well as those needing care. I’ve never thought of myself as a Goddess worshipping sort, and I wasn’t trying to make a theological point, but it seemed like the right thing to do. The Great Mother just seemed to be closer at hand in the hospital.
You see, despite all of the training we went through to prepare for the work, once we were let loose onto the hospital floors and into patient’s rooms, we all reverted to instinct and improvisation. And each of us found that the only way we could serve was to be exactly who we already were. The title “chaplain” just gave us a bit more authority to do it well! We simply lived into what was expected and asked of us.
A nurse called late one evening. A patient needed surgery, but was nervous. Could I come? Sure. Outside his room the nurse pulled me aside – the patient was a young man whose leg was mangled in a wreck. He was all alone and scared. In the nurse’s opinion, he needed some Mama energy. Well… as luck should have it… He was only a couple years older than my own son — handsome, pale, and frightened. He had never had surgery before and was afraid that he wouldn’t wake up from the anesthesia. I held his hand, smoothed his hair, listened, and placed a blessing upon him. The tears that he had been fighting back spilled out easily and he finally relaxed enough to agree to go ahead. I walked alongside his bed as he was wheeled down to surgery. I gave his hand a little squeeze and promised him that I’d be up to see him later. Then as they rolled him into the surgery area, I placed another silent blessing upon him, the surgeons, the nurses, and the man who was cleaning the hall floor at 11:00 at night. Later on I stopped by his room. He was bleary from the anesthesia, but he recognized me and grinned when I congratulated him on surviving.
And that was the Great Mother at work. I obeyed her imperative to soothe the children no matter what their age.
On another occasion I was called to visit a mother who was unraveling. She was almost vibrating with worry over her toddler whose head was wrapped with yards of tape to hold monitor wires in place. I helped him start a Thomas the Tank Engine video and then sat down to visit. The mom was exhausted not just with the worry over her son’s seizures, but with the dread of dealing with other family members who were emotionally more reserved. She felt like wailing and weeping, and felt judged and self-conscious. As we chatted I praised her beautiful child’s curiosity and appetite and listened to her fears and bravery. Finally I offered her the blessing that every parent needs to hear: “You are a wonderful mother and you are doing a good job raising this child.” She took a deep breath, nodded gratefully, and went back to patting her son to sleep.
And that was the Great Mother at work. I gave voice to her deep compassion for the terrifying work of parenting.
Caring for humans is messy, stinky, and funny. These bodies are the stuff of dirt and humor. Indeed, the word “humor” is rooted in the Latin for bodily fluids… And, often, what I brought with me into patient rooms was not just a readiness to witness the divine, but to also witness the absurdity and silliness of our selves.
One day I found myself offering a completely improvised prayer – actually all of my better prayers were spontaneous, jazz riffs created with whatever we had handy – and this prayer was with a woman who was stuck in bed, unable to walk because of pain in her hips, or, as she put it more delicately, her “backside”. The prayer included a desire to see her become unstuck and able to move easily into her future days. Our prayer was light and hopeful and not very serious. Two days later I visited and she had been up and done a lap around the nurses’ station! “It was that prayer!” She laughed, “I told my kids that you prayed for my BUTT and anyone who would do that is someone I can get along with!” I demurred, “Well… I figured that your butt is part of you, and you are part of all that is holy, so it made sense to me….” We laughed and the healing continued.
And that was the Great Mother at work. She is delighted by our laughter, as it bubbles up and lifts us into our creative moments!
So what was it that finally came undone during my chaplaincy work? What was that dark place that I had to look at and accept? Well… I had to accept that that elegant theologies only get you so far. After a point it’s your bodily presence and being that counts. And, more humbling, I realized that my mother was right all along.
And how was my mother right all along? My mother is a classic UU Church Lady. She wears sensible shoes, brings bean salads and an angel food cake to potlucks, and, yes she drives a Prius. My mother was the one who first tried to teach me about The Goddess. But, back then I smiled and nodded. Like so many daughters when their mother tries to pass along good advice, I dismissed it as simply a romantic personification. Perhaps that worked for her theology, but it wasn’t part of mine. Meanwhile, as I read the 18th Century German Liberal Theologians, and Lives of the Great Humanists, I bogged down. My eyeballs wearied and I felt as if there was really no place for me in this work of ministry. I should just go back into the kitchen and give up. How will I ever sound like someone who knows their stuff? As it turns out, I never will with any certainty. And, that’s okay. As a chaplain, I learned that it’s more important to show up than to be certain. The Great Mother showed this to me over and over. Does this make me a full-on Goddess Worshipper? I’m not sure.
“I hate this!” a man moaned. “I feel so bad that everyone has to work so hard to take care of me. I don’t want to be a burden to my family. They have better things to do!” How many times did I hear this from people who were ashamed of their vulnerability, pinned down by the weight of their infirmities, and feeling guilty of taking more than they feel that they deserve. In this world, in this culture, we are supposed to be upright individuals who create our own destinies as full agents. And when we wind up in a hospital bed, all of that is thrown upside down. We become needful and our agency is narrowed by the margins of pain. And, yes, we must depend upon others to care, and clean up, and help us to survive. We must turn to one another for support in walking and guiding the spoonful of food. And, often, those other people are complete strangers wearing drab uniforms.
When I heard that moan, I would assure a patient that this was their time to rest and receive. When it seemed appropriate, I would remind a patient that she is a child of god, and that god’s love guided all of the hands caring for her and to open herself to this love. And, for people who chafed at the indignity of the situation, or felt unworthy, or wondered why they should even bother to survive, I suggested that, truly, our highest purpose is to be with one another. That spilled out of my mouth one day, when tears were running down my own cheeks. It was completely unplanned, spun out of the thin air of that room. The work we are here to do is to simply be with one another. That’s all.
Now, if you also find time to fully and truly love your god and love your neighbor as yourself, then you might even have struck upon a religion worthy of attention! But in the meantime, take this simple observation, based upon experience: The work we are here to do is to simply be with one another. We are given instinct and intellect, and we will make use of whatever resources are at hand. We will find silliness and tears make it all easier, but how well we do that work – how well we be with one another — is how our lives will be measured. How do I know this? My mother, and the Great Mother, told me so!
We have a lovely mission for our church and it is the result of a tremendous amount of work! Now that we’ve had it on our walls for a couple of years, let’s take a deeper look at what these words say about who we are and what we believe.
“We gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice.” The mission of First UU Church of Austin, TX
Such fine words! When our leadership set out to create this mission two years ago we listened to the whole congregation. We gathered hundreds of ideas and thousands of words that people gave as their dreams for the work of our church. And then we sifted, sorted, and winnowed out the most salient ones and worked them into our mission. They are a powerful vision of what we believe, and who we hope to become. And, if we look carefully they reveal some important ideas that we might not otherwise articulate.
And articulating is the whole point of a mission. Here’s a little bit of the back-story. A few years back it was determined that no one was clear about the mission of our church – the reason we all keep showing up here. And, without a shared mission some folks were unclear of what was helpful and was distracting us from our larger purpose.
Larger purpose – a reason bigger than, but inclusive of, each one of us.
Yes, there was a wonderful mission statement that had been drafted almost a decade earlier, but after the initial work it was lovingly placed in a secure location and never looked at again. That is how mission statements don’t work. Some wondered if we could just take the old one and dust it off, but wiser folks explained that it’s not like sourdough and it’s better to start from scratch each time. So, that is how we wound up conducting a series of workshops and exercises that resulted in page after page of beautiful words to work with.
Then one fine spring day the church board, our interim minister, and a wonderful consultant all holed up in a room with these pages and began the process of finding out what was important. What were we doing that was bigger than, but inclusive of, each one of us? We looked at examples from other churches. Some were really, really detailed, but we decided to keep ours short enough to fit into one sentence. Something you could carry around easily. There were many, many drafts, but it wasn’t a sausage-making process of argument and compromise. It was something far sweeter and exciting. And, once these words coalesced we collectively stopped and I think a few of us gasped. I know I got tears in my eyes because when I saw them all together, I saw us, this congregation. It was cool.
These words are powerful. And this time we were not going to let them out of our sight! We made sure that they would be in common usage, and someone saw fit to put them up on the walls. Now, let’s see what they say.
First off — we are agreeing to be in community. Even if we believe that each person is tasked with creating a personal theology we are still coming together in community. In Community is where the richness our many voices form a chorus of experience. In Community is how a potluck feeds a multitude. In Community, we can hold one another in times of joy and sorrow and hold one another accountable to our highest aspirations. There are some things that you just can’t do by yourself, no matter how beautiful your theology. Despite assorted statistics that suggest church membership is a quaint old habit on the decline in the US, we are bucking the trend and coming together as a church community!
Now, let me jump ahead and look at the middle part. We have charged ourselves with the work of “transforming lives”. This indicates that we feel that change is possible within a human life. We are not predestined, fixed, beyond help, or already perfect. Lives can be transformed. Maybe even our lives. Granted, we didn’t specify if we will transform lives for the better or worse! But I suspect that we aim to improve.
This speaks of an optimism that presumes progress is possible and that things can get better with intentional work. And we are indicating that this is work that WE will do — instead of waiting for a force outside us or above us to sprinkle transformation powder down upon us. And notice that we’re not doing this work in the aim of redemption or connecting ourselves to something from which we were disconnected by sin or failure or simply birth.
However, note that we stop with just the lives — we are not offering to help with any afterlife activity one might engage in. This is straight up, classically optimistic Humanism with no need for anything supernatural. We have the power and, some would say, the duty to transform lives
Now, let me go back to where we announce that we intend to nourish souls. Two words. Big Ideas. We are being bold here in stating that there are such things as souls and they require nourishment — AND that we will attempt to provide this nourishment! Now, let’s skirt around a few fiddly details about souls and any afterlife (again, we’ll stick to this life) — and acknowledge that if we use the word “soul” it is setting us apart from strict Humanists, who would place the use of reason and development of the human personality above all else. We are saying that we will feed something more than just our minds. And we believe that our community can be a source for this nourishment. It won’t just fall out of the sky upon a deserving few. From what I’ve seen around here, nourishing souls seems to be an active process using poetry, music, and ritual to feed and comfort in times of celebration and crisis.
Nourishing souls! This kind of talk can still get you tossed out of plenty of UU pulpits! In making this statement, we place ourselves among the contemporary UU’s who are reclaiming spiritual language and creating a place for such discussions in our church. We are still a little new at this and I suspect that we don’t have a good working definition of “soul” that everyone agrees on. But the fact that we are ready to use this word and do this work is a big step into a broader theology. Really. It’s big. Y’all are brave and bold.
We will “Do Justice”. This is biblical talk here! Straight from Micah 6:8. But I suspect we were just channeling that unconsciously —
He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?.”
Yeah… we’re probably not ready to go that far… And, yet, there is electricity in these words! “Do Justice!” They indicate that we are aware of injustice, and intend to do something about it. We won’t wait for an afterlife for fairness to be meted out, or wait for Karma to tidy up this mess. Instead, we will strive to discern just from unjust — it’s not always as easy as it sounds — and then attempt to be part of the weight that bends the arc of time towards justice.
Nourish souls, transform lives, do justice. Great words. There were some good words that wound up on the cutting room floor — sacred, beauty, love, nature. They were sprinkled in among all the words we received from folks, but they didn’t show up with the frequency of the others.
Here’s a word that didn’t make it up there: TRUTH. I think it did show up a couple of times – generally in the familiar phrase “free and responsible search for truth and meaning” that is one of our UU principles. But for the most part “truth” did not feature heavily. Why is that? I don’t know for sure, but I have my personal favorite theory. It goes like this – and, I’m sorry, but I have to bring up Postmodernism to get there – but here goes.
I suspect that many of us have let go of the notion that there is such a thing as a pure, unchanging, universal Truth. Even the idea that one-plus-one-equals-two really only works if you are measuring discrete objects. You already know that one drop of water plus another drop of water makes one fatter drop of water! So, I suspect that we are no longer in pursuit of a solid, lovely, singular and fixed, capital “T”, Truth.
But, we’re also probably not falling into the nihilism or relativism that is the dark side of Post-modern thought. That would be the idea that since there is no single Truth, that there is no truth at all. That doesn’t feel quite right either. Instead, I suspect that we are wandering into the Alter-modernist (oh yeah… I’m in grad school) the Alter-modernist understanding of Truth as a multi-faceted, shimmering thing that can only be appreciated from many angles and through many voices. And this gets us back to why we are gathering in community!
And there were some words that never showed up in the first place because they simply are not part of our collective theologies. Those were words like suffering, mercy, repentance, or judgment. We don’t find redemption in suffering or feel the need to repent in order to live our lives fully.
Oh, and there was one other word that made a couple of appearances, but not enough to register. It’s BODY. We didn’t think to include our bodies up there. That’s probably okay for now. I suspect they are implied. But I can’t be sure… Just in case, I’m bringing mine along…
It’s the simplest stitch of all. Tie a knot in one end of the thread, and slip the other end through the eye of a needle. Hold the fabric taut between your fingers, and pierce the fabric – not your fingers! – with the needle. Draw the thread up and through, and then, catch the fabric up on the tip of the needle, one, two, three, four times, and pull the thread through. Smooth it all out and there is your clear running stitch. It is the Paleolithic stitch that first pulled together two pieces of hide, two pieces of matted wool, two pieces of handspun cotton, or two pieces of the lightest woven silk to make something useful. Ecclesiates tells us there is a time to rend, and a time to sew. This is a time to at least consider sewing.
A few years back I offered to teach a group of Camp Fire kids how to sew some simple garments. Most of the parents agreed to help their kids, but one girl’s mom wasn’t able to help. No problem. Eleven-year-old Mary was well behaved and smart enough that I knew she would be fine just following along with me. I told her to show up with a couple of yards of fabric and we’d go from there. When they came to my house, instead of just dropping Mary off, the mom hung around to talk. I was polite, but turned my attention to the matter of fabric, choosing a pattern, etc. The fabric they brought was a sensible, solid blue. It was the blue of those coverall jumpsuits my great uncles used to wear when they worked on engines. And, given the navy pants and plain white blouse Mary was wearing, I guessed that vanity was discouraged in their home. But that blue fabric was just too ugly to mess with. Instead, I told Mary to dig through my stash of fabrics – that’s what it’s called – a “stash”. She found a nice piece of calico with a light blue background, sprigged with tiny white flowers. It would be perfect for her skirt.
Meanwhile, her mother was explaining why she would not be able to help us. You see, she explained, her mother had never taught her to sew, never wanted her to sew because her mother wanted her to be an engineer, or a scientist. She didn’t want her to be limited to girl’s work, or be tied down by domestic drudgery. I listened politely while quietly showing Mary how to find the fabric’s grain so the garment would hang right, and how to lay and pin the delicate tissue paper pattern correctly. I listened to the mom tell me that it was her mother’s insistence that she never learn to cook or sew because she presumed that she would be earning so much money that someone else would always be doing that work for her. So that is why she never learned to sew and why she got a professional degree… Finally, I’d had enough. I turned to Mary who was carefully pinning and cutting out the pieces, and said “If you think about it, sewing is really a type of construction based upon engineering. And it’s a bit tricky because you are working with a flexible material with the goal of covering a moving body. It takes a fair amount of math and planning, and you have to understand the properties of the material and how bodies move if you want to have something worth wearing. Badly sewn clothes are really quite uncomfortable.” Eventually the mom ran out of excuses and left us in peace.
Mary learned how to make a loose running stitch and pull the thread to gather up the fabric, how to fit differently sized pieces together, how to create a waistband tunnel to run elastic through, and how to hem the bottom evenly. Within a couple of hours she had finished a lovely three-tier skirt. She knew every thing about that garment. There was no mystery to it because she had sewn it herself. And, when she finally slipped it on to her delicate waist, she looked down at her work and did what any young girl would do – she twirled around to see the skirt flare out and swing around. It was a magical moment. Even if she never sews another thing in her entire life, she understands the basics and when she looks at the inside, the underside, the lining, or the back – she will see how something was put together.
I want you to do something here – just a moment. I want you to look at the inside of your sleeve, or the hem of your shirt or pants. Look at the threads holding that fabric in place. You will probably see an even line of stitching. Maybe there is a complex web of threads to bind the fabric and keep it from fraying. Maybe the thread is a contrasting color, or maybe it matches the fabric so well that you can barely see it on the right side of the garment.
Someone’s hands did that work. Every thing we are wearing was sewn by another human being. Every pillow case, sleeping bag, backpack, and tent was sewn by someone. Every sofa cushion, slip cover, and seat belt was guided through a sewing machine by a skilled worker. The suits the astronauts wore were assembled by expert seamstresses who had never sewn such a thing before, but they put their minds and machines to work, and sewed suits to protect fragile human bodies from the cold of space.
Even in this era of astonishing technology, there is still no machine where you stuff a bale of cotton in one end and remove a pair of pants from the other. We are still doing pretty much what our ancestors did – cutting a flat cloth into pieces, and sewing the pieces together to cover our shivering naked selves.
Maybe your mother sewed clothes for you when you were younger? If you came in with a tear on your sleeve or a rip in your britches, did your mom work some kind of mundane miracle of mending? Along with my 10″ chef’s knife and my pen, my sewing basket is one of my most powerful weapons against chaos. Like many women, I sewed clothes for my children when they were young simply because they were so beautiful and store bought clothes were so unimaginative. My kids got to pick out the fabrics so that instead of the same old football, soccer ball, baseball, or truck, my son’s pants had penguins and frogs and feathers and fish! Unless you look closely, you might not see the places where I’ve patched and repaired the rips and three-cornered tears where one of us snagged on a fence, or caught on a nail.
A woman I spoke with explained that when she is sewing a quilt it might mean assembling 35 blocks of pieced fabrics. She cuts, and stitches, and presses the same thing 35 times. It becomes a meditative time and as her hands work, her mind travels out into its quiet fascinating places. If it will be a gift, she might be thinking of the people who will receive the quilt. It’s impossible to put a prayer into every stitch, but she takes care to choose fabrics that will bring a smile to the person who snuggles under that quilt at night.
A man who quilts simply says “it’s my safe place”. His quilts are dazzlingly intricate – each one is made up of thousands of small pieces of bright cloth. He listens to audio books while he works and has listened to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and other great writers whose books we all mean to get around to reading, if only we had the time. And while he listens, his hands cut, and piece, and pin and sew artwork of kaleidoscopic brilliance. This world would be a calmer place if all of us had such safe places for our creativity.
Choosing fabric takes practice and it requires a sort of Buddhist lack of attachment off-set by a hoarder’s mania. Choosing a color is only part of it. You also have to feel fabric to determine the quality, the drape, any stretch or texture to it. When we are searching for fabric, we move through the store shopping with our hands — touching, rubbing, tugging, and even just waving it to watch how it moves. It’s getting harder to find high quality fabrics so there is a certain amount of scowling when I shop. And the goddess will just laugh at you if you think that you simply MUST have a certain fabric because you will not find it. Or you will find the Perfect Fabric but not the Perfect Pattern. Or vice versa. We learn to buy up the fabric when we find it and then wait for the pattern to show up. Or vice versa. This is how fabric stashes grow rather large.
I was lucky to learn to sew from my mom – who taught me the 4-H correct way – and from my stepmother who taught me all the ways to adapt a pattern, be creative, and have fun. My mother’s fabulous dresses sewn from Indonesian batiks fit her beautifully because she sized them to her petite frame. My stepmother opened up her own business doing everything from simple alternations up to designing and sewing gorgeous wedding dresses. Both of them drew upon deep patience to teach me. And, while I don’t have the time to sew as much as I’d like, when I spread out the fabric and pick up my shears, I have them both, and all of my grandmothers, along with me for every stitch.
Another woman I know was like many of us – forced to learn sewing in school. Girls learned sewing, boys learned woodshop. You know — the natural order of things… But she resisted sewing and hated it for the sexist holdover it was! She made her damn skirt moaning and groaning the whole time and was done with it. But then… as an adult, one day she picked up a book on quilting and was stunned – it was the most beautiful thing she had seen. The book pulled her in and in time she taught herself everything about quilting from the ground up – how to use a sewing machine – how to BUY a sewing machine. She found delight in all the odd doo-dads that someone, some where (probably a woman, probably in a snit) had invented to solve a specific sewing problem. Did you know, there really is such a thing as a bodkin? It’s very useful when you’re turning something skinny inside out. A fat safety pin works well too. As my friend learned to make quilts, she developed a respect for the ingenuity and engineering that paved the way for her. She loves choosing the colors, and that moment when she drops in a little piece of lavender or orange and the whole thing turns spectacular. And, when she sews a quilt – she is verrry selective of who receives them. Each one is more than a blanket, it is a gift of her precious time.
Sewing these days is anachronistic. It takes patience to learn how to sew and practice to learn to sew well enough to make something you’d want to wear out in public. Why bother? Someone else can do it better, cheaper, faster. And they are probably happy to have the work. I mean, it’s not like we really have slavery any more. Those people are skilled laborers who get paid. Right? Well… I don’t want to depress you with details, but if you pay $5 for a tee shirt, you can be pretty sure that the person who sewed it did not even make fifty cents for their work. And even if you pay $50 for a shirt, you still can’t be sure that the person in Vietnam, or the North Marianas, or Nicaragua was paid a fair wage. If you are vigilant, you can research your clothing choices, but there’s not a lot of “fair trade” garments on the market right now. Unless you sew your own. When I wear something I’ve sewn, I know the only person who was unfairly compensated or exploited was ME!
So what else can you do? How can you stand in opposition to a global economy that treats workers and their products as disposable commodities? It’s unrealistic for all of us to learn to sew clothing. But here’s a suggestion – treat every piece of clothing you own as if it were hand made especially for you. It might not have been hand-stitched, but hands guided the fabric through the cutting, stitching, and pressing. When you put on your shirt, consider the hands that carefully spaced the buttons and made sure they were secure. Think of the hands that folded it and wrapped it up for you. Wear it well. If the button falls off, catch it quick and sew it back on. And, when it is worn beyond repair, snip off the buttons – they might come in handy some day — and use the fabric as a rag to wipe your windows clean. Do you have a garment you love but that doesn’t fit quite right? Take it to a local seamstress for alterations or repairs so that it fits you – as you are right now, not when you’ve lost or gained or have an interview. And, when you pay that person and you’ll keep a few dollars in our local economy.
And, here’s my last recommendation: If someone gives you something they sewed, please don’t say “Oh! It’s so pretty. I’ll save it for sometime special” and then never use it. That would be missing the point. Put it on! Spread it out! Let the baby spit up on it! Hang it up where you will grab for it when you are in a rush. Wrap yourself up in it! And then twirl around slowly and see if the love swirls about you.
You can listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.
“Laughter is also a form of prayer.” Kierkegaard
Sermon: When We Pray
I am here to report back to you all that prayer has been discovered to exist among Unitarian Universalists! Back at the end of November I was up here and mused a bit on what prayer might look like for us. After dispensing with the juvenile aspects of prayer (oh lord, won’t you buy me a mercedez benz?) I asked you all to consider the possible uses of prayer, and to tell me about your experiences with prayer. Many of you kindly responded with wonderful stories. And yes, despite your stern and sensible exteriors, many of you have private rituals and words that, if looked at out of the corner of the eye, would bear strong resemblance to prayer.
This might be unexpected to those who don’t know us well. We do not have a fixed liturgy of prayer in our denomination. The rituals and words we have here at this church are not necessarily shared in other UU churches. You cannot walk into any UU church on a given Sunday and hear the same words spoken in the same way at the same time in the service. Our congregational roots give us the freedom to construct our worship as we see fit. Sometimes we include prayer and sometimes we don’t. While we treasure this freedom, some have pointed out that we might actually have a hollow space, a place otherwise filled by a shared and powerful practice of prayer. We have no common words to carry us through the rough parts of the journey — no call and response that wraps everyone together. Honestly, it is my guess that we would not trust any attempt at a one-size-fits all common prayer. But, while Unitarian Universalists are expected to build our own theologies, we often are not given the tools or formal instruction in how to build any prayers. In some ways, this is an underdeveloped part of our denominational psyche. We’re all over social action and the more cerebral bits of spirituality, but too often we don’t do the basics of grief and loss very well. And when we hit these terrifying transitions in life, we have no vocabulary to help us see ourselves as part of something larger, and we feel uncomfortable with our human need to ask for assurance in the face of self doubt or crisis.
Some have identified this as a “shadow” issue for Unitarian Universalists. “Shadow” because prayer was often rejected when we migrated out of mainstream churches. It was left behind or pushed away as a superstitious vehicle of dogma. But so often, that which we reject is exactly that which we need to be whole. And just as we are slowly reclaiming god-talk and other aspects of spirituality, the necessary re-examination of prayer will provoke anxiety until we learn to put prayer into a UU framework.
The good news is that when we do pray, we are inclusive and expansive. And, as a lifelong UU I see this empty spot as open and beckoning, a blank book that each of us is expected to fill in. But how do we begin?
Many of us started with prayers from our source traditions and, like careful seamstresses, let out places that were too tight and added in ease with amended words. Several people shared fresh translations of the Christian Lord’s Prayer which they use to serve as a grounding point in their days. Try this version and see if it fits better:
Great Spirit of all the universe, father and mother to us all We stand here in gratitude for all that is given to us. Please guide us to an awareness of the profound peace, wholeness, growth, and bounty that is possible. Teach us to recognize grace and forgiveness and to practice this in our lives. Bring us what we need each day and guide us to the contributions we can make that give our lives meaning. Thank you! Amen. Blessed Be.
Others among us left our home traditions and struck out into wilder woods. We learned to pray or meditate from other teachers, foreign and domestic. And even though we eventually made our way into this sanctuary, we brought along some interesting souvenirs from our experiences. Handy bits of Buddhism or calming affirmations — struck and stuck with us, and are touchstones we reach for in moments of crisis or joy.
And there are also the homemade prayers – made from durable materials we find laying about, or custom cast. Here are some tips to guide you in this process:
Remember that “God” is not god’s name! How you address your prayer must only make sense to you.
Whether you choose to focus on the holy outside or to connect more closely with the divine residing inside your own skin is again, your choice.
Prayer need not have anything to do with the supernatural! It can be a humanistic, naturalistic, or an ecstatic grounding of the self in the moment.
Retired UU minister Annie Foerster has pointed out that the traditional prayers were once new. And that the Psalms in the Hebrew bible were created by poets and lovers. She instructs us to think like poets and lovers as we set out to create our own prayers.
When I sit in prayer here at church, I close myself in to more closely feel the warmth and pulse of my palms pressed together. I feel my own breath close by. I find my center, where my universe spins, and I breathe. I find my bones and my blood and I breathe. I find my skin and my nerves and I breathe. Then I still myself just enough to become aware of the Everpresent. And that is when the tears of astonishment begin.
In my earlier sermon I spoke of prayers of intercession as a more juvenile form – but I have since changed my mind. Mature prayers of petition are not self-serving wishing and whining. Truly mature prayers that ask for something beyond oneself can be powerful and healing. One man explained that he had never been taught to pray, but now that he is older, he finds himself praying frequently. After surviving cancer, heart attack, and stroke, I think he’s entitled to whatever keeps him strong. But, here’s what struck me about his prayer – its simplicity and selflessness. The prayer he utters during times of stress or suffering consists of this simple sentence: “Oh God, help this go well.” “Oh God, help this go well.” He admits that he doesn’t know what “going well” might mean, but he’s seen so many ways that things can go bad. And, note that he’s not asking for “the best”, just “well”. He’ll be grateful for that.
Now, let’s think of the children… How or even should we teach our children to pray? Must we ask that they give thanks for what they already know is their birthright? And I doubt that many of us have laid them down to sleep, their souls offered up for god to keep. But what prayers might we weave above their heads so that they might feel loved and protected throughout the night? I’ll admit, when our son was born we filled his nursery with a Korean grandma spirit face, a St. Anthony medal, a Sri Lankan tiger mask, a Turkish glass eye amulet, and a dream catcher his grandmother made to keep him safe from evil spirits. And, for the record, he’s always been a good sleeper!
After listening to my first sermon, a fellow shared one prayer memory. He remembered being a little kid out shopping with his Mom. They were at the shoe-store, and he saw one of those sit-in metal cars that usually had pedals. But this one was battery powered and was on display as the prize in a drawing. That car totally captivated him. He was filled with utter desire, became obsessed with it, and probably annoyed his parents over it. He prayed to win that car. Prayed hard. But, for some reason he gave god an out: “Let me win that car or let me forget about it.” It was twenty years before he thought of that car again. He’s still not sure why he gave god an option. And he’s still not sure why the event came back up to the surface decades later but he recognizes that it reflects Kierkegaard’s insight that “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
My 12 year old daughter recently reported with some bitterness that she’s done with prayer because she’s tried it and it doesn’t work. Thinking back to my own trip through the maelstrom that is the world of the 12 year old girl, I had to agree with her prayer is pretty useless here. But this is because, I suspect that if there is a god, like so many fathers, he prefers to jam his fingers in his ears and hum loudly when faced with his daughter’s demand that he referee adolescent disputes. And, I also suspect that if there is a goddess, like the wisest of mothers, she simply smiles with compassion at her daughter’s despair and says “there, there” but leaves her to learn on her own.
Nonetheless if we are to be our children’s spiritual guides, we’d better start modeling the behaviors we want them to consider normal and useful. We’d better show them how we give thanks and what prayer looks like when it’s more than just wishful thinking.
When our children were little our bedtime ritual included a soothing inversion of counting one’s blessings. Instead of praying to god to take care of folks, we would calm down by bestowing blessings. “Blessings on Grandma Gerry, blessings on Cousin Bella, blessings on the kitties, blessings on the baby chicks, blessings on our neighbor Helen…. Our lists were exhaustive – exhaustion was part of the goal here – but more importantly the ritual was one where we called for and implicitly co-created the blessings. I did not teach them that blessings were the sole labor of a god – blessings are our work as well. By spooling through our friends, family, and pets each night we closed down one day and laid out our work for the next.
And now, what about those of us for whom prayer has no use? There are many of us for whom prayer feels like a hollow chanting into emptiness. I will acknowledge that prayer is not essential to happiness. However, for those of us who do not feel a need to connect to an eternal presence, may I invite you to connect to the essential parts of the human experience that are best expressed in poetry? For, there are times in our lives when ordinary conversation will not suffice and we want the finest of words available to carry us through the moment. And this is where poetry serves and saves us. Go find a poem – long, short, old, or new. Dig it out of a dusty anthology on your bookshelf. Poets.org will send you a fresh poem every day if you like! But find a poem, and carry it around in your pocket or your head for a while. Read it in your spare moments. Find another one and hold that one for a while. Write your own. Gather a handful of poems that you can hold onto for those times when you are sick at heart, or when joy erupts and spills out as tears.
My father retains the last few lines of the poem April Inventory by his friend W.D. Snodgrass: Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives, We shall afford our costly seasons; There is a gentleness survives That will outspeak and has its reasons. There is a loveliness exists, Preserves us, not for specialists
The one line “there is a loveliness exists” is his favorite. It encompasses and affirms the grace he has found in life, and has carried those words around for some fifty years.
There are some of us who still pull up short and feel the scarred places — for whom prayer is still linked too tightly to a previous church experience that hurt or denied our whole selves. I think of this as spiritual “Sauce-Bearnaise” syndrome. That is the term used in psychology for conditioned taste aversion to explain the quirk of our brains and palates that associates the last thing you ate right before becoming nauseated, with the illness – regardless of its actual influence. What this means, is that if you had a meal with sauce Bearnaise and shortly thereafter become ill, you are likely to find sauce Bearnaise unappealing for sometime thereafter – even if the sauce had nothing to do with your illness. This is a useful adaptation for omnivores – a good way to learn to avoid bad foods. However, too many of us who will have nothing to do with prayer because of the indigestible theologies that it was mixed with, and that left us feeling clammy and unwell. For those of us who might still be made queasy when presented with prayer, try this soothing mint tea in the form of words from the English mystic Julian of Norwich: All shall be well, And all shall be well And all manner of things shall be well.”
Now, here’s a challenge for the really bold among us – going public with our prayer! What would it be like to offer a prayer as a greeting or farewell? What if you could sincerely and unselfconsciously offer “Bless your heart” and not have it taken the wrong way? Would you take a moment before you tear into the basket of chips and salsa you are sharing with friends and be brazen enough to look them all straight on and say, “I am so glad to be here with you all” and mean it as a blessing? Would you share a ritual of parting with a dear person? Remember my pragmatic Aunt Ruth? The one who didn’t want folks praying for her? I’ll tell you something she does every time a precious friend prepares to leaves her house – she simply says “Go well”, and those of us who know and love her answer “Stay well”. It is a blessing that flows both ways, and makes the moment of parting sacred. For our taciturn Midwestern clan, that is some pretty heartfelt stuff.
What would your days be like if you were to invoke the holy into ordinary moments? Not as a superstitious warding off of evil spirits, but to call awareness to the slippery rocks we are treading upon. So many things can go wrong in a moment — what would it be like if you could simply ask “may this go well”. For, truly, it is the pure heart and pure intention that turns simple words into prayer, and simple rituals into holy time.
Ours is an empty book to fill. We are creative people, with the courage to be changed. Keep me posted.
Is there “something” you do – almost automatically – in certain situations?
I mean, outside of the times, when midway through our service we are invited to “join in an attitude of prayer” and someone reads something worthy of pondering. Do you really pray? Or do you just adopt an attitude?
If you do pray, would you admit it to anyone else — to the person sitting next to you in these pews? Would you tell me?
Our practice has no fixed liturgy of prayer. We have no cannon, no formal recitation of holy words to use in times of turmoil to calm our hearts, or focus our thoughts. If you walk into any Unitarian or Universalist church in North America, you will not hear the same words spoken in the same way at the same part of a service. We have no shared doxology for giving thanks or acknowledging blessings. We have freed ourselves from any requirements that would dictate how and when, or even IF we should pray. And, for the most part we seem to be getting along okay.
In fact, some of us are probably pretty glad to be done with certain prayers. (Our father who art in heaven… hmmmm…, lift up his countenance… uh hunh… , and it is in dying that we…. hmmmm….) It well might have been in the middle of a standard prayer that you stumbled, and were caught up short when you realized I Cannot Say That And Mean It.
So what DO we say?
Maybe we don’t. Maybe prayer isn’t a part of your life. Maybe, you are a pragmatic person like my Aunt Ruth. Ruth lives outside a small town in southern Michigan. While her family is not particularly religious, plenty of her neighbors attend the many Christian churches. One day, while fixing supper for her family, Ruth collapsed on the kitchen floor in an epileptic seizure. It was a one-time thing, it never happened again. But it meant countless trips to medical specialists, and the inconvenience of losing her drivers license for a whole year. After the initial scare, she heard from too many members of the community “Oh Ruth, we’re praying for you.” It wore on her patience. She told me “I don’t want their damn prayers – I want someone to help me pick up my kids from school and take me grocery shopping!” Like I said, she is a pragmatic woman.
At its worst, “We’re praying for you” carries a whiff of condescension. As if the speaker can plainly see from your sorry condition, that your own prayers have been insufficient, so they’ll lend you some of theirs.
Perhaps that is why UU’s tend to shy away from that particular exchange.
From the get-go, that type of prayer is beseeching and calling upon a god for intervention or intercession. Could you lend me a hand down here? In its most immature, prayer is wishing – wishing for a puppy, a sparkly pony, a good grade on the test. Up one level comes the bargaining – “I’ll give up cussing and taking your name in vain if only you’ll…” And many of the wordiest of prayers amount to flattery: “Oh all powerful and merciful god…” The speaker is but a humble servant buttering up a vain and capricious deity. I’ve had some bosses like that, and, for me, such a character is not a god worth serving.
So we’ve grown up and we’re past the wheedling and pleading prayers. We’re not waiting for god to bring about changes we’re not ready to make for ourselves. We know better than to bargain with the universe. If we are going to make a personal connection to a greater power, it better be one we respect. And for several of us, god simply does not fit into a deity-box. And that’s where it gets a little complicated… To what address should we send such messages?
And what do we say – almost reflexively, after the first gasp of sadness follows bad news? What do we say when someone has had a loss – a death – and there is nothing one can do. And yet there is the wish to affirm for that person’s well-being and the longing to offer healing. These are the times when prayer would be a traditional response. What do we say when our heart is pained with sympathy? Do you have prayers to offer? Would you consider them of any value to offer?
I’ll stop asking you questions and quickly tell you straight up. I do pray. And it is a physical and quiet practice with almost no words – only names. Each day I pray specifically for a family I know. Earlier this year Jim died from a brain tumor. He left behind his wife and teenage sons who now must reconstruct their lives without him. Each day I still my body, clear my head, and think of each one of them completely, and open my heart to hold them all. Do they know about this? No. Should they? No. Do my prayers have any effect upon them? Honestly, that’s not the point. But this action keeps them present in my life, and makes it easier for me to pick up the phone, invite them over to dinner, offer to pick the kids up from music lessons, and be of some real use.
Frankly, the efficacy of prayer has yet to be proven definitively. There have been assorted studies that mostly show the placebo effect is alive and well. Many have tried to measure change in patient outcome following intercessionary prayer, and when the double-blind data is reviewed, prayer does not seem to improve the sick people who are prayed for.
But like so many studies, I wonder if the researchers were measuring the right part of the process. Perhaps, rather than measure the outcome of the people prayed for, perhaps we should measure the outcome of the people who are praying for someone else. Or we might examine the outcome of the family members who know their loved one received prayers.
Reverend Ed Brock told me how upon the death of his wife’s mother their family received many kindnesses from friends. The most unusual was a special gift made by two nuns they know professionally. They sent a card that said, in effect, we have made a gift to a convent in upstate New York and for a year the sisters in this convent will give payers for your family.
There was nothing in the note suggesting a wish for conversion, or that the prayers would produce any specific outcome. But to Ed and Alphise it seemed like and felt like an act of love. The idea that out there, amid the crazy frenzy of society, a group of people somewhere were simply mentioning her name daily — that idea was powerful. It wasn’t the potential supernatural dimension, but the caring dimension that touched them.
There is the other type of common prayer – the act of giving thanks. As Meister Eckhart explained “If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you,” that would suffice.”
My favorite instruction came from my Korean martial arts master who was raised in a Buddhist temple. In his broken English, he scolded us: “Before you eat the pig, thank the pig! Because, if they could, the pig’s family would sue you!!”
As UU’s we’re a bit more comfortable here. Giving thanks doesn’t presume that we’re flawed, or helpless, just appreciative and observant. And we can be munificent in our thanks to the animal, the farmer, the cook!
In stopping to give thanks, we allow ourselves a moment to experience beauty and bounty more fully. Who wouldn’t want to spend time in this type of prayer? But do we – other than for formal occasions? Do you offer thanks over the morning’s oatmeal or the leftovers eaten at your desk? Have your kids ever seen you pause at breakfast on Tuesday and say “thank you” before the fork touches the food? What would that be like? Are you really up for three-squares of thankfulness every day?
Years ago, I worked as the Kitchen Manager and cook at a Quaker residential house on Beacon Hill in Boston. It was the Quaker custom of that community to have a good solid minute of silence before we ate our evening meal. There was nothing structured and no one led us with instructions or guidance through that silence. As the cook, it was generally the first time I had sat down in 6 hours and the first few times, if god spoke to me it was through bone-deep fatigue and if I gave thanks it was for the chair under my butt. But in time, I found myself placing a final blessing upon the food. It had passed through my hands, and was about to be received by people (who were grateful that they had not had to cook), and who would use the energy it gave them to study medicine, choreograph new dances, arrange flowers, build houses, and change their world. Eventually I found whole afternoons of chopping onions, crimping pie crusts, washing pots became an extended action of prayer. Living in an intentional community can do that sort of thing to an impressionable young person.
However, these days, I’m like most folks, hurrying to fix dinner, with NPR telling me about the horrible state of the world. I snap off the radio and fling the food at my tired and surly family who generally do not bother to thank me, the pig, the farmer, or anyone else. It is not ideal, but at least we have a place to work up from…
Just as many UUs have started to reclaim the language of god-talk, some of us are starting to reclaim prayer on our own terms. Perhaps there was a baby in that bathwater. But to rescue it we’ll have to do more than simply deconstruct or demythologize the practice. In short, to understand it, we’ll have to do it.
One splendid Unitarian Universalist woman I know set out to develop her own ritual of prayer and tied it to her every day. She turned some of her daily actions into sacred rituals. Each morning, first thing, she scoops up a handful of birdseed and steps out onto her patio. She scatters the seed in a small mandala marking the four directions and recites a scrap of a Navajo prayer “There is beauty before me, there is beauty behind me.” She fills in her circle with peanuts for the blue jays, and pauses just long enough to feel connected with nature. Then, every evening, after the dishes are done, and the dog is walked, she stops and simply gives thanks for her guardians who have helped her that day. She calls for blessings on her children and grandchildren. She calls for blessings upon her animal companions and asks that the presence of love be with people she knows who are having troubles in their lives. This is simply what she does.
I came to prayer sideways – through meditation. They aren’t the same thing, but they improve one another. In meditation, a person looks inward to consider their actions and find where they might be wanting. Once the internal landscape has been surveyed, then the individual is ready to connect to the outer in prayer. Many time I found that I might dive down into meditation only to rise up in prayer — prayers of resolve and prayers of remembrance — prayers of thanks and prayers of acceptance. Sometimes a deity is referenced, and sometimes not. And that last detail, so far, has not proven injurious to my health, or limited the usefulness of the practice.
When I pray, I am not asking for anything, I am not expecting any change in the world, only a change in myself. If I surrender anything, I offer up my ego and selfishness, and invite Grace to enter and fill that space. And afterwards, I take my changed self forward, with that small spark of the divine inside me, burning just a bit brighter.
So, how do you pray? How might you take old words and blow new breath into them? Have you created a ritual and observed any changes within you? When faced with a crisis, would you have the humility and trust to open up and allow a caring person to pray with you, to help fan your divine spark so that it might burn a little brighter as you go forward to face what you must?
Now, I have an assignment for us here. You see, this topic is too big for one sermon and I need your help.
Honestly, I suspect that many of you do pray, in your own fashion, and for your own purposes. Being the humble and private people you are, I’ll predict yours are humble, private, prayers. But, if you could, please tell me about them. Tell me how you might have retained or reclaimed prayer. Where it fits in your day, and what you say when life rises up and threatens to overwhelm you. Tell me about it. And in another couple of months, I’d like to be back up here, and I’d like to share some of your stories about prayer.
Until then, if prayer isn’t in your life, be a diligent UU and at least question why. And then question “why” again. For those who would consider “why not?” may I invite you to bring along your god, your breath, and your willingness to be changed.
