American Roots of Unitarian Universalism

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Luther Elmore, Sermons

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Luther Elmore

August 30, 2009

PRAYER:

Please join me in an attitude of prayer.

On this day at this hour…we pray to remember. We pause to remember those who have led the way for us. We seek to recall their lives…their words…their deeds. We seek to honor their leadership and inspiration.

This day we also pray to remember those in our own lives who have led us to this place… Those teachers…parents…ministers…writers… loved ones… who have safely guided us to be here…now.

We are thankful for their lives and for the path that has led us here.

Today, Let us remember all who have gone before……

Let us remember our past as we look to our future.

Let us remember……

This is our prayer.

Amen.

READINGS:

# 704 by John Murray

# 592 “The Free Mind” by William Ellery Channing

SERMON: American Roots of Unitarian Universalism: William Ellery Channing and John Murray

It is a joy to be here today at the First Unitarian Univeralist Church of Austin.

We are the church of the long and to some confusing name,

We are Unitarian Universalists and one name is not adequate to describe us. The reason for that is, of course, that we spring from 2 religious traditions – Unitarians and Universalists – each having distinctive beliefs, histories, and organizations. The roots for each of these groups began long ago with discussions about the divinity of Jesus, the nature of God, and the afterlife. In America two of our greatest early forefathers along this pathway were John Murray and William Ellery Channing. John Murray brought his universalist theology to the American colonies in the years immediately prior to the American Revolution. Almost 50 years later William Ellery Channing challenged orthodox beliefs regarding the concept of God as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and thereby defined Unitarians.

The direct pathway to modern UUs began with the Protestant Reformation of 1517. Martin Luther, a Catholic monk in Wittenburg, Germany, objected to what he saw as the corrupt practices of the Catholic Church. On October 31, 1517, he posted a list of 95 articles for discussion on his cathedral door. These 95 Theses set off a revolution in theology and church history as great as the revolution set off by Christopher Columbus who had discovered the “New World” only 25 years earlier.

Luther’s search for true Christian belief and practice in the scriptures led others to do the same. Nineteen years later John Calvin, a French lawyer and theologian, published his seminal work The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Differing from Luther, Calvin emphasized original sin, the depravity of mankind, and predestination by God.

Followers of John Calvin’s brand of Christianity would establish the most successful of the early English colonies in America – Massachusetts Bay. They were “Puritans” who wanted to purify the church and rid it of all improper doctrine and practices. They came for their own religious freedom, but they did not allow it in others. Dissenters from established beliefs were banished – some were executed.

These Calvinist doctrines of original sin and predestination remained mainstream theological thought in much of colonial America. Both of these ideas would be shaken in 1770 with the arrival in the colonies of John Murray. John Murray had experienced a tortuous early life. Born in England in 1741 into a devout Calvinist family, as a young man he lived what he called a “life of dissipation.” However, he then fell under the spell of the great evangelical preacher George Whitefield and Murray became a lay Methodist minister.

During the 1760s a serious challenge to mainstream Methodists was a former Methodist minister, James Relly, who had come to adopt a view of universal salvation for all mankind. Relly supported his beliefs with selected passages from the Bible.

For instance, 1 Corinthians 15:22 “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Colossians 1:19-20 “For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of the cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself.” And 1 Timothy 2:3-4 “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who will have all men to be saved.” For Relly the idea of ultimate redemption of all mankind by a loving God was clear. How could a loving Father purposefully condemn the major portion of his creation to eternal damnation in hell?

In the early 1760s Relly had a universalist congregation in London. He was attacked by orthodox ministers as “a man black with crimes; an atrocious offender, both in principle and practice.” John Murray zealously opposed the universalist theology of Relly and once referred to him as a “detestable babbler.”

In order to save a young female follower of Relly from what he saw as the “pernicious errors” of universalism, Murray tried to convince her of the error of her ways. He did not succeed. As a matter of fact, her defense of universalism raised questions in his mind. He later described his feelings at the time as “I myself carefully avoided every universalist and most cordially did I hate them.” Nevertheless, he could not dispel his doubts. Slowly he became that which he had detested – a Universalist. As a result, he was excommunicated from his church. In the meantime he had married, but after about a year his wife gave birth to a son and shortly thereafter both died. Unable to pay his debts, he even spent some time in debtor’s prison. In 1770 at the age of 28 he vowed to never preach again and decided to come to the American colonies for a new start.

Even his voyage to the colonies went amiss. Bound for New York the ship ran aground off the coast of New Jersey. There they waited for high tide to raise the vessel so they could continue the trip. Murray was sent ashore to purchase supplies in the community which was appropriately named Good Luck, New Jersey. He met a local resident, a deeply religious man who had built a chapel of his own and Murray was invited to preach there. On September 30, 1770, John Murray broke his vow to never preach again and delivered his first sermon in America on the theme of Universal salvation. Historian David Bumbaugh – who graced this pulpit last year – referred to this date as “a date which subsequent generations would fix as the beginning of universalism in America.” Shortly after the service ended, Murray was notified that the tide had come in, the ship had been freed and they were preparing to sail to New York. Some have facetiously suggested that this was “perhaps the only miracle in Universalist history.” (Howe)

John Murray then spread his universalist message. For 4 years he was an itinerant preacher, traveling throughout the American colonies, finally settling in Gloucester, Mass. There in 1779, a group of 61 believers in universalism were suspended from the local parish church for failure to attend services. They established a new congregation, the Independent Church of Christ in Gloucester, and called John Murray as their minister. This is recognized as the first universalist church in America. (Howe)

Murray was regularly attacked for his unorthodox beliefs. He was vilified as a “false teacher” who held “corrupt tenets.” Once while preaching in Boston, a rock was thrown through a window, barely missing his head. He responded by picking up the rock and stating, “This is solid and weighty, but it is neither rational nor convincing.” Another time followers of conservative orthodox minister Rev. Bacon pelted him with eggs. He responded to that assault by proclaiming “These are moving arguments, but I must own at the same time, I have never been so fully treated to Bacon and eggs before in all my life.”

In 1793 Murray became minister of the Universalist Society of Boston where he remained for 15 years. His message of universal salvation had great appeal, as you might imagine, among ordinary people, but not among the highly educated or most wealthy. Like Murray, most early Universalist ministers tended to be emotional, poorly educated, and evangelistic. As a Universalist, Murray remained a Bible-believing Christian who accepted wholeheartedly the doctrine of the Trinity.

By 1790 there were at least 17 Universalist ministers preaching their joyous message in America. That year they held a convention in Philadelphia and adopted a statement of beliefs. These “Articles of Faith” included specific clauses affirming belief in one God, Jesus as the mediator between God and man. Their statement on Universalism proclaimed that they believed that God would “finally restore the whole human race to happiness.” Although there would be differences of opinion as to how God would “restore the whole human race to happiness,” this would remain a core belief for all universalists. For his significant role John Murray is sometimes called “The Father of American Universalism.”

Unlike the Universalists who grew among the common people, the Unitarians grew among the highly educated and well-to-do. Rejecting the dour theology of Calvinism, they would use their minds more than their hearts to reject the concept of the Trinity and hold that “God is One.” In the years immediately before and after the American Revolution some liberal New England ministers led their churches to Unitarian positions. These were independent congregations, accepting and following the leadership of their individual ministers.

Conservative, orthodox ministers denounced this drift away from established acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity. Unitarians, on the other hand, felt they had sound Biblical basis for their position. After all, nowhere in the Bible is there an explicit reference or definition of the Trinity. Therefore, Unitarians rejected this description of God as an illogical, unscriptural invention by men. They selected specific Bible references that supported their position and indicated a distinction between God the Father and Jesus. For instance, in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus says “Our Father which are in heaven hallowed by thy name” and “for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory.” (Matthew 6:9) He later is quoted in John 16:32 as stating “I am not alone, but the Father is with me.” At the time of the crucifixion Jesus said “Father if thou be willing remove this cup from me, nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.” (Luke 22:42 and “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:24), finally, “Father into thy hands I commend my spirit.” (Luke 24:46) Using such citations, the Unitarians proclaimed that there were numerous Biblical references which made it clear that God the Father and Jesus were not one in the same. Of course, this use of the Bible was not unique to them and they were neither the first nor the last to employ such tactics to support their position.

This controversy between the liberals and conservatives regarding the Trinity would erupt in 1803 over the choosing of a professor of divinity at Harvard. The Harvard Professor, Dr. David Tappan, passed away. The conservatives backed a thoroughly orthodox minister, Rev. Jesse Appleton, the liberals a suspected Unitarian, Henry Ware. After the governing board and Overseers approved the nomination of suspected Unitarian Ware in a very divided vote of 33 to 23, the conservatives raged, attacking Ware as holding secret Unitarian beliefs and claiming that he did not hold “orthodox principles” as the benefactor of the chair had stipulated. In protest, the conservatives resigned and were replaced with liberals, leaving Harvard clearly in control by liberal theological supporters. Only 5 years later the conservatives would establish their own orthodox seminary at Andover to compete with Harvard for the hearts and minds of new students and ministers. For years churches had a clear choice as they called new ministers. They could choose an orthodox, conservative religious leader from Andover or a questionable liberal and Unitarian from Harvard. This controversy at Harvard shattered the union between Trinitarians and Unitarians in New England churches.

One of the conservative overseers who had resigned, Rev. Jedediah Morse, took the controversy to a new level. Rev. Morse established a conservative religious magazine. In an attempt to highlight the orthodox position and challenge the liberals over their position on the Trinity, Morse published a pamphlet entitled “American Unitarianism.” This pamphlet was a reprint of one chapter from the recently London-published Memoirs of Theophilus Lindsey, an English Unitarian. Lindsay had shown a degree of common belief between English and American Unitarians. Having printed this chapter as a pamphlet, Morse then reviewed his pamphlet in his magazine, trying to show that liberal ministers were indeed Unitarians, that they were trying to hide their true beliefs, and that they should be expelled from their pulpits.

Chosen to reply to Morse was the 35 year old minister of Federal Street Church in Boston, William Ellery Channing. Channing denied that the ministers were Unitarian, but also proclaimed that belief or rejection of the Trinity was irrelevant. Such beliefs, according to Channing, did nothing one way or the other to help ministers inspire people to live Christian lives. Channing appealed for tolerance and acceptance of differing viewpoints. Channing now became the primary spokesperson for the liberals and he was well prepared for the task.

Channing had been born into a prominent and prosperous Rhode Island family. His mother’s father, William Ellery, had signed the Declaration of Independence. His father was Attorney General for the state of Rhode Island. At 18 he graduated from Harvard at the head of his class and later studied for the ministry there. Licensed to preach at the age of 23, Channing was called to be minister at Boston’s Federal Street Church, a position he would hold until his death 40 years later.

Thrown into the controversy surrounding the appointment of Henry Ware at Harvard, Channing was soon the intellectual leader and spokesperson for the liberals. The controversy between the liberals and conservatives, the Trinitarians and the alleged Unitarians, became even more divisive. Conservative ministers in the Boston area began to refuse to allow the liberals to speak in their pulpits. Since colonial times, Boston area ministers had regularly swapped pulpits once a month in a “pulpit exchange.” For conservatives this now meant the introduction of unorthodox, liberal viewpoints, so they stopped the practice.

With this controversy as a background, in 1819 William Ellery Channing would deliver the most famous sermon in UU history, “Unitarian Christianity.” Jared Sparks had just been called as minister to Baltimore’s First Independent Church. Channing was invited to deliver the ordination sermon. This sermon of 1819 defined Unitarians.

As his text for the sermon Channing chose 1 Thessalonians 5:21 “Prove all things hold fast that which is good.” He began by explaining that he was going to depart from the normal sermon and not talk about the nature and duties of a newly ordained minister. Depart he did!! He mounted a defense of Unitarian beliefs. He defended the Bible as God’s revelation to man, but said that “The Bible is a book written for men in the language of men, and…its meaning is to be sought in the same manner as that of other books. We therefore distrust every interpretation which, after deliberate attention seems repugnant to any established truth…God has given has given us a rational nature and will call us to account for it.” He protested against what he called the “irrational and unscriptural doctrine of the Trinity,” declaring “We believe in the doctrine of God’s unity, or that there is one God, and one only. We object to the doctrine of the Trinity.” Jesus’ mission, according to Channing, was to bring about “a moral, or spiritual deliverance of mankind.” He then proclaimed that the true mark of a Christian was a moral life. As he said, “We think that religious warmth is only to be valued when it springs naturally from an improved character…When it is the warmth of a mind which understands God by being like him. We regard the spirit of love, charity, meekness, forgiveness, liberality, and beneficence, as the badge and distinction of Christians, as the highest image we can bear of God, as the best proof of piety.” He closed by admonishing Jared Sparks, “May your life preach more loudly than your lips” and repeated, “Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.” Channing had boldly denounced the Trinity, called for the use of reason in religion, and proclaimed that a moral life was the true mark of religious people.

Before delivering this sermon on “Unitarian Christianity” Channing had prepared 2,000 copies for print. Within 4 months it went through 8 editions. It was the most widely circulated publication in America since Thomas Paine’s Common Sense which in 1776 had urged independence from England. Now the Unitarians were out in the open; there was no hiding their beliefs. Six years later in 1825 they would establish the American Unitarian Association.

For various reasons Unitarians and Universalists did not come together easily. Those early American Univeralists were generally poorly educated evangelicals who continued to appeal to and represent the common people. One historian has described them as “coming from the wrong side of the tracks.” On the other hand, early American Unitarians were generally highly educated, influential philosophers and writers who represented the well connected and wealthy. One historian has said that the Unitarians believed in “the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the neighborhood of Boston.” A later day Unitarian Universalist would explain the difference between the two groups as the Universalists believing that God was too good to condemn them to hell, while the Unitarians believed that they were too good to be condemned to hell.

Over the years both groups would dwindle in numbers and influence, would drift to more liberal humanist positions, and in 1961 would join together to form the American Unitarian Universalist Association.

So, what do we take from these roots? Few of us these days are much concerned about eternal salvation or the Trinity. We no longer argue about universal salvation; we no longer shout that “God is one.” We no longer debate eternal bliss in a Kingdom paved with streets of gold versus eternal damnation in hell fire and brimstone; we no longer debate the oneness of God versus the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. However, I believe there are lessons to be learned. I would suggest that from those old Universalists we take a broad worldview and concern for others. We are all one humankind. We are all one people, inhabiting one planet. We are all in this together. The Universalists point us to a greater love for everyone and an expansive, yes Universal, regard for all. The Unitarians, on the other hand, show us a tolerance for others, an openness for inquiry, and an encouragement to use our reason. We should not sit upon the beliefs and traditions of the past. We should not rest upon the laurels of long ago. We should as William Ellery Channing encouraged his generation seek to free our mind and use our reason. We should as he said, “Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.”

Today that is what we are – Unitarian Universalists. We carry it in our name and we carry it in our beliefs. You need search no further than our Seven Principles to see the presence of Unitarian and Universalist doctrine. The Seven Principles state that we affirm and promote “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”

“The inherent worth and dignity of every person.” That is universal.

The Seven Principles go on to state that we affirm and promote a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”

A “search for truth and meaning”. That strikes at the core of Channing’s Unitarian Christianity to “Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.”

In my own personal journey, I did not regularly participate in church services and activities for over 30 years…until I started attending here about 5 years ago.

However, I had continued to read a great deal. One of the many books I read during those years – and I cannot recall exactly why I chose it – was “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” by Robert Fulghum. I found the book filled with folksy, down-to-earth advice, humor, and religious insight. As far as I recall, it did not make a lasting impression on me that on the jacket of the book Mr. Fulghum was described as a “Unitarian Minister.” I should have known. In the first chapter of the book he listed the important life lessons he had learned in kindergarten. These included such gems of wisdom as: “Clean up your own mess,” “Play Fair,” “Don’t hit people,” “Take a nap every afternoon.” And, of course, “Flush.”

He also included this bit of advice: “When you go out into the world, Watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.” I think that is good advice for five year olds… and for adults, as well.

I think we should continue to hold hands, look out for one another, and stick together.

We are not UUs by chance or accident, many have led the way for us as a religious association and as individuals.

Let us remember John Murray and William Ellery Channing. Let us remember who they were and the rich heritage they have passed down to us. Let us remember who we are…and let us work to make our future as meaningful and relevant as our past.

Amen.

Honest Religion-part 2

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Tom Spencer

August 23, 2009

Thank you for having me back. Today, I am going to present the second part of a sermon on the topic of Honest Religion. More specifically, what does it mean to live honestly as progressive, reasonable, and religious people in the 21st century?

For those of you who were not here – my last sermon started out with a long vamp on why religion makes so many of us nervous and then detoured into speculation about why it really still matters.

I won’t recount the reasons why it makes us nervous – I think it is safe to say that there is plenty of evidence that religion is indeed a very slippery slope… a quick glance through any newspaper usually provides reasonable proof of the abyss that religion can lead to – right?

But, I do want to briefly revisit why I think religion still matters and, more importantly, why I believe an honest religion may actually be our salvation. Now, I know that the word salvation probably makes you nervous too… but let’s all take a few deep breaths and consider the world around us, and what we might need to be saved from…

Let me begin with a brief confession… I am a worrier. I think we live in extraordinarily vulnerable times… I remember watching President Obama step from his limousine on his inauguration day and frankly, I could not catch my breath. At that moment in our history – with an economy in free fall – two wars under way – and a nation deeply divided – I felt as if the world was standing on one foot on top of a steep precipice… all that it would take was one slight shove and the whole edifice of our modern democratic lives could come tumbling down.

Turns out – I am not the only worrier out there… I’m not the only one who frets about what would happen if the “center cannot hold.”

Here are a few verses from a poem that I am sure most of you know… The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats was written in the gloomy aftermath of the First World War:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Yeats goes on to describe an ominous apocalyptic spirit waking and walking in the world and concludes:

The darkness drops again; but now I know that twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Kind of sounds like a health care town meeting, doesn’t it?

All joking aside…

We live in very fragile times – that bond between falcon and falconer has seemed over-taut for a century… things snap, the center cannot hold… wars, economic calamities, climate change, fundamentalism, terrorism, and assassination all threaten our little island of progress and liberalism and relative civility.

Salvation? Yes, I think we need salvation…

Let’s dig a little deeper into Yeat’s poem. In his book, Reverence, Austin professor Paul Woodruff, uses this poem to illustrate the consequences of a lack of reverence in the world – “mere anarchy,” a cacophony of irreverent voices has disrupted the link between falcon and falconer and the center cannot hold.

We’re not talking about talk show and political cartoon irreverence – which, in Woodruff’s view, can often express a very real of reverence for life, reason and truth. No, we are talking about a nihilistic lack of concern for anything – much less life, reason and truth.

The result of this kind of irreverence in our world is indeed a rising tide where “the ceremony of innocence is drowned.” Not innocence itself, though that is sure to follow – but the ceremony of innocence – the reverent ritual of innocence. To my ears, that is beginning to sound like the practice of honest religion.

I do not believe that Yeats is talking about the collapse of religious authority in the way that most people think of it… the kind of authority that issues from literal interpretations of sacred books and religious institutions… No, he is talking about something much deeper and more profound.

The ceremony of innocence is the practice of basic goodness which is informed by and infused with reverence. This reverence may be inspired by ancient texts and religious institutions but it goes well beyond strictures and creeds.

If you were here for my last sermon you will recall that I mentioned that there are two competing theories about the origin of the word religion – one being te Latin “religio” or reverence – the other is “religare” which means to bind together.

Both are essential to the honest religion that I hope for – and that is so beautifully expressed in Yeat’s poem – a reverence that binds and holds us together.

Let’s listen to Yeats again – “the best lack all conviction.”

Where is our conviction? What should we hold in reverence?

In our search is for honest religion – don’t we mean a religion of conviction that we feel in our bones, that makes sense to our heads, and speaks to our hearts?

I certainly think so.

But, even more importantly, and the focus of my sermon today – is that an honest religion needs to move beyond the house of our individual bones, heads and hearts. It needs to live in the world that we share if it is to be our salvation from Yeat’s “blood dimmed tide.”

When I was here last I said that an honest religion must make demands of us – And I believe we must answer those demands with conviction. The ceremonies of innocence those circles of goodness around us, must be widened and become an example to the world.

In my view, there is no certainty in this honest faith except that belief that goodness enacted is God enacted – it means salvation in the here and now – not in some world to come. Though we must act as if that world depends on our every act and breathe, for surely the world of our children and our grandchildren depends on what we do today.

So, here we go – this is the heart of the matter – what does Honest Religion look like when it is enacted? If the ceremonies of innocence are a command performance – how do we perform them?

Here are my ideas- inspired largely by experiences I have had and the deep hunger within me to see the center hold…

First reverence is its essential glue – no ceremony, no belief, no creed, or any other of the human products of honest religion should be our first concern – but cultivating an attitude of reverence should be – only reverence will hold our raging egos and dogmas in check.

Professor Woodruff says it better than I can, “No one owns reverence. It is not cruel or repressive in itself. It does not put down mockery or protect pompous fools. And most important, it cherishes freedom of inquiry. Reverence sets a higher value on truth than on any human product that is supposed to have captured the truth.”

And so reverence also provides that sense of humility that is essential to an honest religion – as I said last time – no certainty that we concoct will ever provide all of the answers – no matter the beauty of our equations or the power of our telescopes, mystery will always – always be with us and so we must be humble – we should never stop inquiring but we should also admit to the limits of our inquiries.

So reverence keeps us humble. But it is also the key to all of the other virtues towards which any honest religion should try to steer us.

Listen to these words from the Analects of Confucious… “Without reverence, courtesy is tiresome; without reverence, prudence is timid; without reverence, bravery is quarrelsome; without reverence, frankness is hurtful.”

Courtesy, prudence, bravery, frankness… to that list let us add compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, humility and dozens more. These virtues are the measure of an honest religion and of human goodness. But only true reverence can counterbalance these human potentials and save us from turning into annoying virtue potentates.

So, honest religion is reverent and humble – it loves inquiry and yet values the limits of what can be known – it sounds like a religion that really values questions and questioning – and yet it demands we move beyond questioning to action – that we embody goodness that we practice the virtues that make goodness and, I would add, God possible.

Because it must be brought off of our book shelves and into the world – an honest religion must also be a communal activity – it is in community that our goodness must be honed, taught, shared, and lived. There is a very real experience of salvation in connection and the bonds of community. That sense of Religare…

Yes, we grow from listening to and learning from one another as well as holding each other accountable, helping each other towards being better people. But perhaps more importantly, and more practically, we need community for survival.

Here is my worrying side again – these are threatening times – terrible things can happen – we need to be bound together in a practical way to support one another through tough times. Think of how quickly things would become uncivilized if, for example, the power went out… after 48 hours without air conditioning I don’t think Texas would be a very civil place.

I often think about the early days of the great religious traditions – the beginnings of both Christianity and Islam. The persecuted Christians of the Roman Empire won many of their converts because of the extraordinary way that they took care of one another in the face of terrible persecution. People learned to admire their charity and their compassion long before they bought into their theology. In the early days of Islam – during Mohammed’s exile in Medina, it was the power of the Islamic community which first attracted the admiration of others, not necessarily the utterances of the prophet.

Today, sadly, there are many Christians, Muslims and others who seem to actively advancing a truly irreverent “end times” theology.

Sad to say it, but I think an honest religion should take them at their word. We should be countering them with our convictions – we need a beginning times mentality that looks at every action as an opportunity to widen the circle of virtue and reverence – Yeat’s ceremonies of innocence.

I think that if we took it seriously – an honest religion born today amid a small group of exiles – could inspire thousands if not millions more to work feverishly for a world that is busy being born – not busy dying.

This can happen by bringing reverence and ritual to the small everyday occurrences of our lives – ritual doesn’t imply spectacle – the earliest ceremony of the new born Christian church was the simple practice of sharing a meal.

You’ve heard me say that an honest religion should make demands of us – well, what if it demanded that we share our meals – not retreat to our separate entertainments. What if is asked that we say grace – or simply give thanks before our meals. Could we bring ourselves to do just that?

I made a new friend recently – a really extraordinary young man. Our conversation was intense and went deep faster than most conversations do – as dinner time approached we went out to a stylish local restaurant, and just as I was about to dig into my genuine interior Mexican tacos, he stopped me and asked if we shouldn’t give thanks.

Shouldn’t we give thanks? In that moment he was doing everything I would hope for from another practitioner of honest religion. He was bringing reverence to our table, he was reminding me that we can be better people through the humblest of acts. Wow… it was so refreshing. A breathe of honest religion between sips of Mexican martini! Talk about your ceremonies of innocence!

Finally, I want to pick up a theme I mentioned in my last sermon. In the year 2009, an honest religion must make sense – common sense. I admit that this boundless universe and the universes beyond are beyond my comprehension – that it is filled with mystery – and unanswered questions. Bu my inability to answer all of the questions shouldn’t empower me to leap to super natural and superstitious conclusions.

When our little corner of our universe is imperiled by our own actions – we do not need to beseech or invoke the supernatural – we need to roll up our sleeves and start doing good.

The only miracle we need to believe in is the one that proclaims that we make God happens when we are kind, when we are patient, when we tell the truth – because anything that lifts up life and virtue and quiets the din of anarchy and nihilism allows the falconers voice to be heard and the ceremonies of innocence to continue.

This is not the God of our fathers. We offer this up as an alternative for a God hungry world whose salvation can only be delivered though one simple act of human goodness at a time.

So, when we stop to give thanks – think of all of those who have preceded us stretching back over the millennia. Be thankful for those who brought reverence and goodness to their work, to their tables, their communities, families, and friends.

Be grateful to those who somehow managed to steer us to this moment in time when we have gathered here to ask questions, to search for honesty, to widen the circles of love and beauty.

When William Butler Yeats wrote the Second Coming, he too sensed a kind of end times. But here we are, ninety years later, having survived so much horror since that time, and we are still heeding the falconers call, still longing for the ceremonies of innocence.

Let us move forward confident in a new beginning – a beginning times illuminated by reverence, humility, community, ritual, and common sense.

May our grandchildren read our words and remember our actions and be thankful that through our conviction we did not surrender to the blood dimmed tide.

 

 

Holy Vision

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Ron Phares, Sermons

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Ron Phares

August 16, 2009

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

A Reading from Mathew 6.19-6.24

19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

Sermon

Being that this is likely the last Sunday I will occupy this pulpit for some time, I thought it only fitting to begin this sermon, not with a confession as has become my habit, but with a word of gratitude. I want to thank you all, and the members of the worship comity in particular, for allowing me to preach so frequently this spring and summer. It has been a blessing to me, a great learning experience and I think a very positive step on my road to ministry. So, thank you.

Truthfully, this has me a little sad and wistful. But I’m also very excited for two reasons. One, it means I can rest. Writing and giving sermons is like any worthwhile exercise: it invigorates and exhausts at the same time. And, especially now that my summer hospital chaplaincy internship has, just this past Friday, come to a close, I am righteously, if I don’t say so myself, exhausted.

The other point by which I am excited for this to be my last time up here for awhile is the reason behind that circumstance. Soon and at long last, we’re going to have a minister again. And that is truly exciting. Given the trauma ensuing during and in the aftermath of Davidson’s dismissal, I have been impressed by the commitment exhibited by the members of this church, committee participants, the staff, the board, workshop leaders and volunteers. In rocky waters, you kept this ship afloat. And for that you all deserve a tremendous amount of praise. So, if I may be so bold, on behalf of…. all of you, I would like to thank… all of you.

However, unlike me personally, we, corporately, cannot rest. In fact, the time is coming to double our efforts, to increase our commitment, to invest our character even more fully into the realization of the potential possessed by this church, which is at last, the aggregate talent, energy and disposition of the people on either side of you, and the people on either side of them and so on, which, of course includes you.

Yet, to this point, all that energy remains potential. All this commitment remains inert.

In the hospital I have come to learn that there are those patients who posses a talent for surviving. Then there are those who posses a talent for thriving. With the later group, the thrivers, it seems like they come to the hospital almost for the sole purpose of teaching me something. Their disposition and perspective are such that I find myself changed for the better without being taxed. They have life in such abundance that it overflows their being and energizes mine.

Now, with the former group, the survivors, yes, they have a sometimes miraculous talent for surviving, but not for thriving. A talent for surviving means that they are frequently sick. To be sure, they are to be admired for surviving some difficult circumstances. But they do not thrive. My friends, we have survived.

How, then, are we to thrive?

When I was a little kid, my parents hung a sign over the toilet in my bathroom. I know that’s a strange segue, but it’ll make sense when I tell you that the sign read, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.” A worthy sentiment. It occurs to me only now how curious that this was hung over the toilet. “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.” I suppose this was my parent’s sense of humor and their way of saying, with a nudge and a wink, “Hey kid, try aiming.” Of course there was a spiritual and existential message here as well. And that was not lost on me. And I think therein is a clue to how we may thrive. It strikes me though that wanting to know where you’re going and knowing where you are going are two different things. Perhaps this is the difference between surviving and thriving. After all, the process of discernment, discovery and decision making can be every bit as arduous as the execution of their conclusion, if not more so. This, among other things, is what our minister is here to help us do, to discern, discover and decide where we are going, and, indeed, who we are.

The leadership is hers. The task is ours. It reminds me of a story I was recently told. As I understand it, this is a true story. Whether or not it actually ever happened is beyond my powers of evaluation. Nonetheless it was an inspiring story in so far as it resonated perfectly with the point to which I am speaking today. As such, it may be that I’ve made most of it up. It’s still a true story.

So, this friend grew up in a family that was not exactly traditional. Nothing radical necessarily, just an atmosphere created by the parental versions of the free-thinking 60’s. The family was as functional as any other, which is to say, not very. It’s my understanding that they had less trauma, but more drama than many families, in the sense that there was no violence per se, but some wildly divergent personalities that were, in some ways, encouraged. But this led to some problems, chiefly embodied and brought to bear by their annual summer vacation.

You see, what they liked to do was pack a bunch of stuff for any and all potential circumstances, pile the five of them in a car and set out for something impressive, if ill defined, like a coast or a region. They reveled in the freedom to stop along the way wherever the interest struck them. And truth be told, they had a lot of interesting experiences going down a few of those rabbit holes.

Unfortunately, it was frequently the case that one of the siblings had to remain behind. Either one had to work off community service or another had to attend summer school. What’s more, invariably, they would find that their publicly vague destination was personally not so obtuse, just un-communicated. For instance, when they determined they were going to hit the west coast, they each had a different idea of what that would ultimately entail. One thought that meant Venice Beach, while the other thought that meant sipping lattes in the rain shadow of the Space needle and another thought it meant Sea World. Thus arguments were inevitable. Once they were resolved, it was frequently the case that they didn’t even have the necessary money to get all of them into the main attraction because they had spent most of their funds chasing passing interests on the way.

Almost invariably these trips would end in hurt feelings and pervasive disappointment. Finally, my friend took the initiative to sit the family down together and pick a particular, if peculiar destination. This was more difficult than he thought, of course, but eventually they hammered out an itinerary that was oriented to a rather more specific target they could all be excited about while still allowing some wiggle room, though not too much, for flights of fancy. But this fancy was normed by the destination, not the other way around. Now, the part that really was interesting to me was, that year, the whole family got to go. The kids stayed out of trouble and were more focused in school because they did not want to be left out this time. The two who were old enough even took part time jobs to contribute to the vacation fund. And since they had determined to go overseas, to really shoot for something grand, the family realized they had to cut back on eating out and give up cable T.V. etc, which in turn had the unforeseen effects of the family eating healthier food while also creating more time for homework, creativity and friends.

In other words, determining a destination had a systemic effect and, of course, the trip went well.

Now, I heard that story and I immediately thought about our Unitarian Universalist tradition in general. I thought of our congregation in particular. And I thought of my own faith.

You see, as effective as our tradition, congregation and faith are, they can be oh so much more so. What we need is vision, a holy vision of who we are and what we do. Recall today’s reading, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.” This is from the Sermon on the Mount as it is described in the book of Mathew. Note here that the eyes are themselves instruments of illumination. They illuminate that which they light on. Vision illuminates. Now in this case the eyes are connected inward, toward the body, so to speak. And, as is the case in much of the Bible, the clause, “so to speak,” is crucial. For here, it is enough to understand that the eyes are essentially instruments of discovery, discernment and empowerment (for they do not merely perceive but themselves illuminate). Meanwhile the body spoken of here could indeed be the biological body or it could be any system of which you are a part. Essentially, I take the passage to be in line with what so much of the modern sciences are currently saying, namely, “What you see, so will you be.”

So, what is your vision?

But beware. Vision alone is not sufficient. In fact, it may be absolutely detrimental if that vision is distorted. The passage reads, “If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.” But it goes on to reveal that, “if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.” We’re talking about spiritual vision here in this passage and here in our church. Distorted vision leads to darkness. It leads to idolatry, a charge that is easily leveled at most of the incarnations of the Abrahamic traditions, that is, at most all monotheists. But idolatry is a charge that can be leveled at each one of us as individuals as well. That is to say, the self can be an idol, can distort our vision, and plunge us into darkness.

Let me give you a personal example from my recently concluded stint as a hospital chaplain. Part of the program was to get together with my fellow interns to try and uncover our blind spots as a way of helping us relate to our patients. As part of this process we read a book by the German neo-Freudian, Karen Horney. As she sees it, a great deal of neurosis can be attributed to the gulf between the idealized self and the actual self. For our purposes today, consider the idealized self a distorted vision of your character, an idol or false god, as it were. Most all of us have this distortion. When the process of life inevitably confronts you with the gap between how you are and how you think you are, you find yourself in the midst of a psychological crisis. The severity of the crisis is variable, depending on any number of factors. But what is assured is that the reaction to the threat, for such an event is always experienced as a threat, the reaction to the threat is entirely out of proportion to the reality of the situation. You are effectively insane and, more to the point, in no small amount of pain.

Consciously exploring this gap for yourself (with the quite necessary help of others or one other) is also initially painful. And here, you’ll just have to take my word for it, it is painful. And yet while the pain is acute and psychologically invasive, it is also corrective and preventative of an equally painful, frightened and chronic way of life. I had the opportunity this summer to be confronted with my own neurosis of the idealized self and am better off for it, if a little bruised yet. This is not to say that I am now perfectly aligned between my actual and idealized self. Rather, I am hoping to illustrate one of the pitfalls and benefits of vision as it applies to the individual. If your eyes, so to speak, are good, your body will be full of light. You will see the idealized self for what it is. If your eyes are bad, your body will be full of darkness and will think you are your idealized self. Pain endures. Thus, discernment is critical.

As I hope I just illustrated, this process of discernment is not merely a challenge to our corporate self, that is, our spiritual home at First UU. It can be and should be a challenge to our most intimate sense of our individual characters. As such, I can guarantee you this: pain lies ahead. For we are about to embark on a journey of self-discovery that will reveal those places where we have been lying to ourselves as a community. And if we have integrity, we will pursue those lies until we find where they are rooted in our individual selves. That action makes this place, truly, a holy place. This then really does become a sacred event. Do not pretend you can bring distortion into this venue without it destroying the event and all the intentions of those who participate in it. That may sound melodramatic. But you come here to feed your soul. What are you feeding on? This place is powerful merely by virtue of our shared attention. On top of that is the intent of that attention. What you bring here is what you find here.

So where do we start? I will offer two possibilities. They are not the only possibilities, but they both attempt to articulate where we are as a community. They are baselines from which we may begin as a global body, a local community and as individuals to envision a particular way of being and thus graduate from merely surviving to the more powerful mode of thriving.

The first possibility is a statement of faith as articulated by one of the modern sages of our tradition, Dr. David Bumbaugh. Some of you had the pleasure of hearing him offer this statement from this very pulpit during his keynote address delivered at the 2008 spring South West District Conference. In the midst of our diversity, Dr. Bumbaugh has noticed that we have a stunning amount in common in terms of our faith. I have only a little time left here. So I will paraphrase.

We believe that the universe is the expression of a process that has evolved from singularity to multiplicity, from disorder to order.

We believe that the earth and all who live upon the earth are products of the same process that swirled the galaxies into being, that we are expressions of that universal process.

We believe that all living things are members of a single community. We hold the life process itself to be sacred. Therefore we affirm that we are called to serve the planetary process upon which life depends. We believe that in this interconnected existence the well-being of one cannot be separated from the well-being of the whole.

We believe that the universe outside of us and the universe within us is one universe. Because that is so, our efforts, our dreams, our hopes, our ambitions are the dreams, hopes and ambitions of the universe itself. We believe that our efforts to understand the world and our place within it are an expression of the universe’s deep drive toward meaning. We believe that the moral impulse that weaves its way through our lives is threaded through the universe itself and it is this universal longing that finds outlet in our best moments.

We believe that our location within the community of living things places upon us inescapable responsibilities. We are commanded to serve life and serve it to the seven times seventieth generation.

We believe that those located on the margins have important contributions to make and that in some curious way, we are all located on the margins.

We believe that all that functions to divide us from each other and from the community of living things is to be resisted in the name of that larger vision of a world everywhere alive, everywhere seeking to incarnate a deep, implicate process that called us into being, that sustains us in being, that transforms us as we cannot transform ourselves, that receives us back to itself when life has used us up. Not knowing the end of that process, nonetheless we trust it, we rest in it, and we serve it.

The second possibility that I offer is from a much less esteemed, though I hope, no less earnest a source. Namely: me. One of the first runs in the pulpit I invited you all to take part in a ritual that I felt embodied our faith. And if you will indulge me, I would like to return to it. It is not only a part of my vision for our movement and our congregation to develop embodied symbolic articulations of our faith, it also seems like coming full circle, that I will leave on a similar note to how I began. So, if you would, please take a moment to move so that you are all sitting next to one another.

When we have completed this ritual, please stand, stretch out, shake hands and say hello and thanks to the folks in your vicinity. These are the people with whom you share your spirit and who will cooperate with you to find a vision that carries us from surviving to thriving. Look on them with good eyes. For what you see, so you are.

For now, if you would, hold out both of your hands, palm up. This is a gesture of openness, of asking and receiving. If this next gesture makes you uncomfortable, it’s okay. Honest religion often takes us out of our comfort zone. Keep your left hand open. But with your right hand, place two or more fingers on the wrist of the neighbor to your right, over here on the side a little and under the thumb. If you are on an aisle or sitting by yourself, hold your hand open and feel the qualities of the air.

You may close your eyes or not. However you are comfortable. Breathe in and exhale slowly, as if you were meditating. And keeping that breath intentional, consider how touch affirms the inherent worth and dignity of every person, how touch embodies acceptance of one another and is a first step towards the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice.

Consider that through your fingerprints, you can feel the pulse of your neighbor. Through your singularity, you touch the life force.

Finally, see if you can coordinate your breathing with the rhythm of your neighbor’s heart beat and let that coordination expand in your imagination to include the rhythms of everyone here as nodes on the interdependent web of all existence and facets of the sum that is greater than all these parts. Listen now to breath and blood and life. At one time, be grounded, be here, transcend.

Amen.

Take a minute and say thanks to the folks around you. This is your church.

Honest Religion

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Tom Spencer

CEO, Austin Area Interreligious Ministries

August 2, 2009

Sermon: Honest Religion Part 1

This is the first of two sermons that I will share with you on the theme of honest religion, a phrase that I have heard in this community and which strikes me as being an essential idea.

Today, I will share some thoughts about why I believe the idea of honest religion is so important, and later this month I will talk a great deal more about what I think an honest religion for the 21st century should look like.

Let me say this strongly right at the outset – I believe that honest religion may be humanity’s best and perhaps last chance of saving itself. More on that in a few moments…

But, speaking of honesty… isn’t it somewhat amazing to many of us that we are still struggling with ideas about faith and religion in the year 2009?

I am taking it for granted that most of us would self-identify as spiritual or religious progressives… and who among us has not wondered to ourselves, honestly, “when will all of that go away?” And when we say “that” we aren’t talking about just old time religion – evangelical, radical, or even reactionary religion – we are talking about religion itself.

Be honest now – How many of you refuse to use the label “religious” when you are talking about yourselves – preferring to use the word “spiritual” instead? Isn’t it more socially acceptable? Doesn’t it just fit more comfortably? I know that in certain circles I have fallen back into that more politically correct stance.

And, don’t we all have secular friends who see religion as the root of all evil and wish it would simply go away now – this very moment?

In fact, there is a small army of newly assertive atheists out there who have turned their disbelief into a cottage industry where they delight in (and profit from) shadow boxing with fundamentalists.

The truth is that each side in that debate is delighted that the other exists… the atheists of the academy with their arch disdain are the perfect foil for the fundamentalists who are only too happy to have atheists banging at the gates. Likewise, the academics relish in the antics of the fundamentalists – it is all so amusing. But what really drives this debate is fear. Fear driven faith needs visible enemies – and fear works as an effective tool in the market and in politics too. All of this sells a lot of books, gets a lot of votes, and fills a lot of pews.

But is there any real honesty in the current atheist / fundamentalist debate? Here is a quote from our fellow Austinite, Dr. Steven Weinberg, the Nobel Prize winning physicist – “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”

Really, Dr. Weinberg – religion is the only thing that makes good people go bad? What about crushing poverty? What about patriotism? What happens when love is betrayed? Or, what happens to good people when someone throws verbal hand grenades at traditions they revere? Seems to me we offer each other all sorts of temptations to shed our goodness. Some actually delight in that sport.

And here is a quote from Jerry Falwell, “If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.” …You know, I won’t even bother with a retort for that one.

On and on it goes:

The fundamentalists keep insisting that there is an intervening God who orders every hair upon our heads and who wrote the demise of the Do-Do bird into history before there even was such a thing as history or Do-Do birds.

And the atheists insist that all religion – even “progressive” religion is a mirror of fearful, primitive minds that demand fairy tales to deal with the terrors of existence. They say that all we need is logic and reason – that if we would only educate ourselves, the long march of progress will someday purge us of every irrational impulse. Love itself, I suppose, will lie dissected on a petri dish – understood by its chemical code.

Is that honest? Really? Do you want that world – really? Good luck with that mathematical equation that solves everything. My hunch is that mystery will never, ever, curl up its toes and expire regardless of the beauty of our equations or the power of our telescopes.

A point of real interest for us is that some of the new atheists, like the author Sam Harris, hold religious “moderates” up for special scorn – they argue that religious moderates provide cover and context for the radicals.

This is one of the points I’ll concede to Harris, I actually think he’s on to something here. For example, nearly every “liberal” Christian I know feels queasy about mouthing the Nicean creed or one of its watered down versions in church – and yet millions of them do it every Sunday… declaring before their children their faith in 3rd century concepts of the divine that fly in the face of reason, science and common sense. What is honest about that?

When we recite ancient creeds with our fingers crossed behind our backs, we are on our way down that slippery slope where moderation winks and nods at fundamentalism.

So, where does all of this leave us, in this place and in our search for honesty? Do we dispense with all beliefs that cannot be proved by physical evidence? Or, do we just go “spiritual” hoping that new age vagueness will provide the balm that the age old certainties can no longer deliver?

In some ways don’t you feel that we are right back where I began – don’t you just wish all of this – all of it – would simply go away?

I have struggled with this question for years and my answer is – NO. I don’t want religion to go away – in part, because I know that it never will go away and wishing it would is just as delusional and yes, just as irrational as believing in the legend of Noah’s flood. Sorry, Dr. Weinberg and Mr. Harris it ain’t going to happen.

We see evidence of the allure of religion – even radical religion all around us. Why? Because it is the fate of mankind to suffer and to look for answers to that suffering – we crave explanation and look for that one-encompassing answer.

Mark Lilla is the author of The Stillborn God, a brilliant book which explores the still prevalent attraction of theocracy – that system which unites the “Kingdom” overhead with the kingdom that collects our taxes. In his book he writes, “When the urge to connect is strong, passions are high and fantasies are vivid, the trinkets of our modern lives are impotent amulets against political intoxication.”

What trinkets was he referring to? You’re not going to like this: he’s not talking about cell phones and i-pods, no, he was talking about the bequest of the enlightenment – liberalism, reason, and our notions of progress. He argues, these are impotent amulets when the scales have been tipped and passion and rage are unleashed. Think about the simmering rage in our own nation – the irrational resentment stoked by the angertainment industry of the reactionary right. How does reason reason with that?

Lilla argues that classical liberalism is the exception to the rule – that our progressive little world is the odd man out, that it is imperiled.

So how could I not want religion – that world of passions and vivid fantasies – to go away?

And so, here is the second part of my answer – I don’t want it to go away because I believe that honest religion is neither an evolutionary dead end or a suicide pact – I believe that honest religion is our last best hope to withstand the ever present threat from that other shore described by Mr. Lilla – where alienation, passion and fantasy are being stoked into a raging fire.

The truth is that honest religion can’t inoculate us from every danger in the world – that is the trouble with all religions that promise ultimate deliverance – ultimately they can’t deliver. But, honest religion can help us help one another through the perils we face – it can help us live our lives more deeply and, hopefully, help us to pass on a better world to our children. And what more should be asked of it?

So, how will this work?

Let’s take just a moment to consider the origins of the word religion itself… there are actually two theories about that. One holds that the word religion comes from the Latin, religare which means to bind together – and the other says that it is more closely related to the word religio – reverence.

I think that what we need is a fusion of these two concepts – that only a reverent bond in the form of honest religion can sustain us and strengthen us for the challenges of the 21st century. We need the binding together – the acute awareness of our interdependence – as well as the tempering and humbling force of reverence.

What does this look like in practice here on the ground, in this place? Well, let me be very clear about this – if religion is to be honest it must make demands of us.

I remember having a conversation some years ago with University of Texas Professor, Paul Woodruff, who wrote a beautiful book about reverence. In this conversation he really opened my eyes to the critical distinction between what most of us call spirituality and religion. I had invited him to participate in a taping about “spirituality” thinking that that word would be more acceptable to an academic than “religion” – but, much to my surprise he bristled and said that he rejected spirituality. Taken aback, I asked him why, and he said he felt it was a “conceit that makes no demands of you.”

This is a powerful insight. Don’t many of us think of spirituality as an adornment or as a commodity? Dr. Woodruff’s rebuff helped me realize why spirituality is so popular – it’s because it is, like so much else in our culture, disposable – you can toss it away when it becomes an inconvenience. And what is more inconvenient that something that demands your attention 24/7.

And shouldn’t an honest religion demand our attention? I certainly think it should – I don’t think honest religion is something you pull from a bookshelf when you’ve got a few moments to spare or are feeling spiritual. But we need to recognize that paying attention is the most counter-cultural thing we can do in 21st century America. We live in the age of distraction – not the age of information. We have made careers and an entire economy out of not paying attention.

However if our’s is to be a religion that really binds our world view, holds us together as a community, awakens reverence within us and helps us to embody it – to live it– then, yes, it should demand our attention. But demand our attention to what end?

First and foremost – the test of honest religion should be whether it actively helps us to become better people – to be kinder, more compassionate, more patient, more generous, and more grateful – in short, more virtuous. Honest religion should have one great purpose and that is nurturing human goodness… a goodness that attracts goodness to it – that inspires reverence and awakens a deep gratitude.

Only through human goodness can we be saved – after all we are the ones who are messing everything up – and now, with our life-giving planet endangered, we need goodness enacted more than ever. This is the real promise of honest religion. My friend Michael Benedikt says that God is the Good We Do. I say Amen. That is honest.

An honest religion should also be humble – because none of us will ever be purely good, there will always be a need for humility as well as a well-developed practice of forgiveness and contrition. It is a difficult balancing act, but an honest religion should remind us of our imperfections and help to sustain our aspirations simultaneously.

An honest religion should also make sense – common sense. While our humility should remind us that there are things that we can never know – there is no reason to embrace supernatural theories that fly in the face of first-hand experience. The following quote from Buddha says it better that I could: “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

Another way to say this might be that honest religion should not require theological trampolines. Sure, it should appeal to our heads and, yes, our hearts, but its real business is in helping us to ask better questions and to live better lives not in making up myths about crystals or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

And, speaking of dancing, I believe that an honest religion should speak to our bodies as well as our heads. Enacting or embodying our reverence is an essential part of honest religion. I recently returned from a long trip to Turkey where the call to prayer echoed across the cities five times a day – imagine that – stopping your busy life five times a day to say thank you. Frankly, I found myself feeling inadequate because I had no way to share my own reverence in that beautiful communal and physical manner.

The most important part of the ritual comes right at the beginning – you stop, stand, clear your head and silently declare your intentions. You then give thanks and praise – wishing peace to those who stand to right and peace to those on your left – you bow, kneel, touch your foreheads to the ground together.

Let me be clear – and honest – about the call I feel in my own heart: I want to stand shoulder to shoulder with brothers and sisters – to bow, kneel, and pray with them – but when I do, I want to speak in words that that reflect the realities of the world as we see it and experience it every day. Here in the 21st century.

Frankly I long for this kind of honest religion. And I believe that if it existed as a living community – a real binding of brothers and sisters who practiced goodness and shared reverence– it could, by example and deed save the world.

I’ll have a great deal more to say about what honest religion might look like in our lives in my next sermon on the 23rd of this month. But for now, I will close with this thought …

The real question for those seeking an honest religion is simply this – would we honor it? How would we respond to it if it were to spring to life right here before us? Would we embrace it, or, inconvenienced by its demands, would we come to wish that it too would simply go away?

The Miracle of Metaphor

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Ron Phares, Sermons

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Ron Phares

July, 26, 2009

Prayer

How strange and heavy that we are here occupying these pews, this place, and this planet, wild minds as the cosmos in process, we are the universe as dream. We are bound by its emptiness and lit by its energy Lit so as to see there are ways of seeing, ways of seeing that emptiness and that energy Ways of seeing the sky above, the earth on which we stand, water. Father. Mother. Child. We are the universe dreaming. Let it be a good dream.

Sermon

I think I’m developing a little ritual. It is self indulgent, I know, so I hope you don’t mind. But I have been, quite naturally and organically, developing a little ritual or habit that I do when I step into the pulpit. You see, the pulpit is like a circuit between the congregation and the better angels of their nature. That makes me the circuit breaker. Sometimes I worry that I might blow. Which brings me back to my ritual. Here it is; I feel like I’ve begun most of my sermons with a confession. Something about preaching makes me want to confess. It’s the same today. I am simply compelled to name my transgression with regards to this role. You see, as I sat down to write this sermon, as I put on my theological space suit, climbed into the ontological rocket chair and hit the ignition switch, I realized that I had no idea where I was going. I had, quite simply, forgotten the topic and title that I had some weeks ago given to the communications wing of this outfit.

Now, in my defense, I did recall that whatever the topic I had given, I had made it intentionally broad so as to be able to fit whichever shape the spirit moved me to take. I remembered that it had something to do with metaphor. And fear not, it most definitely will have something to do with metaphor. So my legal team says I’m in the clear, even if we do take the long way around.

And we will take the long way around, because first I want to talk a little bit about preaching. It’s this compulsion to confession that’s really got me going right now. It goes way beyond the imprecision of my memory. Right? There’s more to my sense of inauthenticity than that because its not just today. This confessional thing happens every damn time. I come up here and offer my inadequacy right off the bat. Maybe I’m just beating you to the punch, just protecting myself and it’s the preacherly equivalent of asking you if this dress makes me look fat. Maybe I am cowed at the immensity of your trust and curiosity in the face of the elusiveness of the spirit. Maybe.

I do think part of my compulsion to confession is some sort of back door approach to authority. I mean the one thing that I am an authority on, is that I am not an authority on anything. And so that is honest or at least a pass at honesty. And so now you think I’m being honest. And it’s through that honesty that you then, in spite of my disclaimer, may grant me authority. Or so I think it goes in my mind. At any rate, it is rhetorical jujitsu. It’s kind of a neat trick.

This doesn’t make it bad. Or untrue. In fact, it is not only true, but necessary in order for me to allow myself to be up here at all. The confession is born only out of the good intention to clear the air, so that you see me, or rather, the message, clearly. So that I see you clearly, so that I see myself clearly and so that I might pursue and communicate those things which I have been charged to pursue and communicate when accepting the invitation to fill this pulpit.

To put it plainly, I come up here and speak to you of things we need to consider, that I do not consider, of things we ought to do, that I do not do, of facts that I present as obvious, if ingenious, but that I had never even heard of until the night before. It’s just a role, or… more like a dream. I am, like this, my own figment. To step into this pulpit is to step into, to inhabit, my dream. It is shocking because it produces in me a feeling of discord that borders on dishonesty. But the beauty is that it forces me to face it. My dream and my being are so divergent here, but inhabit by force of commitment, the same space. Maybe there’s a place in your own life where you feel similarly. At any rate, for me, sometimes this coincidence of divergence feels like atoms splitting.

The energy released from that explosion – it has a sound. And that sound has a shape – in my mouth and in my notebook. And that shape surrounds an idea, rendered, as everything is, by metaphor. And it goes something like this: Religion is a fiction and I am a charlatan.

The word charlatan comes from the Italian word cialare, which means, “to prattle.” Huh! The more full bodied rendering of the word connotes a person, “who is being accused of resorting to pseudoscience in order to swindle his victims.” Well, I admit to not understanding half the science behind the science that I report from the pulpit. Yet, the very medium in which I ply my trade, the very context within which I work, the material of my profession, at its heart, defies evidence. It is, as I said, a fiction. It is a dream. What fact can capture the religious event? What scientific method can empirically measure meaning? What proof can we touch that there is anything beyond machine here? What test is explicit enough to convince me of god or art? There is none. It is all fiction and figment, experience ordered and recast in the storybook of memory. And then, who better to speak of it than a charlatan?

Fiction and figment. Our most basic response to the knowledge that we are alive and that we will someday not be alive… is a fiction. God is a fiction. The big bang is a fiction. History is a fiction. Memory is a fiction. How we relate to one another is a fiction. In fact, in nearly every way, the you that you know – is a fiction. Reality as we understand it and experience it – which does in fact stand as other than or in addition too or sometimes even in contrast with material, chemical fact Ð reality as we understand and experience it is a fiction.

David J. Linden, professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University has written that our brain, “responds to only one particular slice of possible sensory space. Our brains then process this sensory stream to extract certain kinds of information, ignore other kinds of information, and then bind the whole thing together into an ongoing story that is understandable and useful.” To which I might add, “we hope.” We hope it is useful.

Because what is NOT at stake is whether or not it is story or whether or not I am a charlatan or religion is a fiction. That is not at stake at all. It may, I hope, have sounded shocking at first. But shock is a mere parlor trick, a rhetorical slight of hand we charlatan’s use to advance the rubes from A to D without then having to bother with the boring details of B and C.

No, fiction is our reality. So fiction is therefore primary and of the highest esteem, not the other way around. It is because it addresses fundamental fictions via myth and its intersection with experience and logic, that religion occupies the center square of the great game.

And what is a charlatan, preacher, priest or parishioner if not a poet with both hands sunk deep into the ink of this central fiction? So while it may have sounded like I was wallowing self-loathing by calling myself a charlatan, I was doing anything but. In fact, I was not only calling attention to myself, but then paying myself quite the compliment. And I called it confession. What a strange dream.

And it is beautiful. Fiction is beautiful because it is truth unbound to evidence. That is why, for instance, the Bible or say The Grapes of Wrath, are such beautiful works, precisely because they are not evidence. They are truth, not fact. It does not matter, not to me at any rate, if there ever was a King David, Jim Casey, resurrection, or Holy of Holies. They are as true to me as my own name. They are as true to me as my mother, as true to me as my father, as true to me as water, and the sky above, and the earth on which we stand. They are all fictions. They are a dream. And I, as I mentioned before, am also, and especially up here, a dream.

In fact, I had a dream the other day that was similar to this and most peculiar. Have you ever had a dream where you were talking about a dream you had? It’s a strange thing, because you begin to lose track of what you thought was a dream and what you thought was not a dream. See, in this dream I was preaching. Here. Or it looked like it was me preaching. The dream was in the third person, so to speak. I could see what looked like me, dressed in this suit and tie. But even though I could see a person that looked just like me, the only reason I knew it was a dream was because the person that looked like me was not in the pulpit.

He was walking around up here, away from the pulpit. And I do not leave the pulpit. That would terrify me.

And in the dream the preacher was confessing about his inadequacies and how he felt like an atom bomb when his dreams conflicted. He was barking about fiction being a first thing and primary. “It’s like breathing,” he said, and then he took off his coat because walking and talking had made him warm and because he’d seen other preachers and politicians do it repeatedly and at the same time in their talks and so, he supposed, there must be some magic to it. Then the preacher continued pacing, and talking from note cards about dreams and how God is a dream (and he loosened his tie here because he new the stakes were high if he was wrong). The preacher then tried to explain that we are vulnerable in dreams in ways that our culture discourages in waking life, and how that very discouragement winds up creating a nation of neurotics who are out of touch with their inner conflicts. “Dreams,” he said, “are a venue for healing.”

I then saw the preacher roll up his sleeves and for a moment I wondered if this was going to be one of those dreams where the preacher, who looked, really remarkably like me, was going to wind up preaching in his underwear.

“Don’t worry,” said the preacher, “it’s not one of those dreams.” It was weird that he would say that. But dreams are like that.

And in the dream I could tell the preacher was nervous that maybe he wasn’t getting through, maybe he wasn’t communicating as clearly as he had hoped, maybe he wasn’t speaking to the body, to memory, to dreams themselves. He did not know what to do and he began to sweat. And then, I saw the preacher stop preaching and, he seemed pray. He said, “I don’t know that I’m getting through. What do I do?”

And then, in the way dreams do, there came a voice, from everywhere and nowhere. And the voice said, “It’s in the song.”

Well that didn’t make any sense. But that’s okay because dreams often don’t make sense until you analyze them and I wasn’t analyzing just yet. I mean, what the hell is a pulpit, really. And why can’t I leave it? And the voice came again and said, “The truth is in the song.”

The preacher seemed to get it though because he started to lead the congregation in a song, a round, which they sung twice through, where this section started it and then this section came in and then this section over here and they all started singing ROW ROW ROW YOUR BOAT when he said, “One, two, and..”

No, it’s okay. In the dream, the congregation was confused at first, but then they started singing the round when the preacher, for the second time now, said, “One, two, and…”

Hopefully that was memorable. And germinating. Look, dreams are not argument. In keeping with that, I have eschewed presenting much of an argument today, but instead tried to craft into explicitness what is often implicit and ignored: Life is but a dream. The world is but a stage. And Stanislavsky said, “There are no small roles, only small players.” And Ruykeyser said, “The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” So let’s split those stories and play our lives wholly. Holy.

Stories are dreams reigned and harnessed. We are surrounded by them: day dreams, movies, books, advertisements, comics, history, music, dancing, sporting events, reports on science, memory, you, me, everything is rendered in symbols and metaphor. Our lives. Our positions in a room, where we stand in a conversation, who we are in conversation with, our context, colors, where we work and play and how, all mean something and reveal our needs… if we are brave enough to see them as dreams to be harnessed. Truth to be discovered. Now, to make some argument this morning and to throw a bone out to the scientific minds out there, it is compelling that during REM sleep it looks, more or less, from a recording of brain activity, like the person is awake. And see here, its not that dreams and reality are equivalent. I can fly in some of my dreams. And, as of yet, I can not fly in reality. But the meaning we take, the way we form ourselves, how we interact and achieve some kind of happiness, satisfaction and quality of living – the poetics, the fictions are true in similar ways.

And so now we are in the deep end of metaphor. Having stripped reality of its pretense to not pretending, we are left with only metaphor. We are left in a world where meaning is relative, a world drowned in deep symbols. And we can breathe under water, when water is like that. It is here where the speculative art of interpretation can help us live a life more full. It is in dreams where we are forced to confront aspects of our selves we have buried or forgotten. It is in dreams where the genius of our inner artist is allowed free reign and we are reminded, soothed, indulged, lifted and exposed in ways we think are unavailable to us in waking life. But if, as I’ve offered, waking life is a dream, a fiction that can be deconstructed and opened up… well now things get interesting.

I wonder what would happen if we practiced the art of dream interpretation and then applied that art to our waking life. What would happen if, having become somewhat practiced at exploring the metaphors of dream, we turned that metaphorical exploration onto our lives. What institutions, activities, illnesses and relationships that look so necessary as to be taken for granted, suddenly become ripe for personal revelation? What are we really doing? This is what is at stake.

It is a highly, gloriously, subjective mode of being. But it is a way of being that investigates the mode in which we already, subconsciously, bio-chemically live. It is a move away from an oblivious life. Imagine what happens when you bring the subconscious under conscious scrutiny and appreciation or vice versa? We are, after all, myth-makers. We construe our life and the lives of others as beautiful or tragic and that construal IS reality, it is the way the world works. But usually, the myth-making is retrospective. What if we made a practice of making the myth in real-time? What if real-time and dream-time intersect? What depth of meaning and richness of life might we uncover and live into?

How strange and heavy that we are here occupying these pews, this place, and this planet. Wild minds as the cosmos in process, we are the universe as dream. We are bound by its emptiness and lit by its energy, lit so as to see there are ways of seeing, ways of seeing that emptiness and that energy, ways of seeing the sky above, the earth on which we stand, water. Father. Mother. Child. We are the universe dreaming. Let it be a good dream.

For as the bard says, “And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.”

Out of airy nothing. This is how we live. This is life as god’s process, life as art. You are the poet, accidental or otherwise. The question is: what are you saying?

Listening

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Ron Phares, Sermons

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Ron Phares

July 5, 2009

Sermon

Listen.

Listen.

There are depths here. There are depths to listening. And as a metaphor, it is a posture of being, rather than merely the function of one of five senses. In other words, you hear with your ear. You listen with your entire being. I’m here to tell you that our culture does not listen well, and the cost of not listening is usually catastrophic and, at the very least, tragic.

Incidentally, I am fully aware of the irony of talking about listening. It automatically makes me a hypocrite. And where is the integrity in that? The preacher’s supposed to have integrity, right? Well, not today. Not ever, most likely. And I want to talk about that for just a moment because it is related to this notion of listening. Integrity and listening. I hope that relationship becomes clear as I move along. But for now, maybe by way of example, maybe by way of confession, I want to hold up the issue of integrity from my point of view as a future minister. You might think that is just a hazard of the preaching profession. You’d be right. My classmates, my mentors, and I myself wrestle with that particular angel through many, many nights, always begging the question, who am I so low to speak to these people about such high things? Personal and social expectations set a standard that is, frankly, impossible to achieve. And so I, and all my colleagues are doomed from the moment we hear the call. So yes, it is a hazard of the profession.

But then, it’s also a hazard of the species. I take both comfort and caution in the notion that integrity and humanity seem to be metaphysically incongruous. At least I have company.

But, hold on now, preacher. Did I just say you people lack integrity? Yes. Yes, I believe I did. Who says UU’s can’t do fire and brimstone? So you may be thinking, “But, the sermon’s on listening and we’re listening! That’s integrity. Not like the preacher.”

Okay. I’ll let you off the hook. For now. But don’t get comfortable. You see I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently. And my thinking has coincided, happilyÉ or perhaps problematically, with many of the educational experiences I’ve been pursuing of late. In fact, the subtitle of this sermon could well be, “What I’ve learned so far, and what’s missing.” And I’ve learned a lot. And I’m missing still more. For instance, I’ve learned that Christ didn’t so often forgive people of their sins as recognize and pronounce that their sins had already been released through their faith. That’s from reading in Greek. I’ve learned what its like to feel helpless in the face of a hospital patient who has no hope. I’ve learned that any notion of the divine must compromise on either goodness or ultimacy. That is, there can be no god that is both all-powerful and an unconditional lover of humans and creation. I have learned all these things and more. But it should come as no surprise that of all I have learned, what stands out, is that the more I know the more I know how much I don’t know. And that is exciting. And frustrating. And frightening.

And one of the exciting, frustrating and frightening things that I know I don’t know is how to live with integrity. I have not learned how to do this. Okay, practice what you preach. That’s integrity of a kind. But how do I practice? What do I practice? Is there any practice that make me whole, that allows me, compels me, empowers me to live with integrity? This I have not learned. In fact, I have learned, rather, how much I am by birthright compromised, and worse, how much I compromise myself. I have learned that it is impossible to live with integrity. Keep in mind this sermon is about listening.

So let’s talk about integrity and listen to the familiar Hebrew myth of the garden and the fall. It’s resonant here. Listen and know that we are perfected in ideal only. In life, we are bound to make mistakes. But are we bound to our mistakes? That, in the end, is the question. But we aren’t to the end yet and I want to pick at this scab a bit more.

We are, it is said, fallen. And it makes sense mythically. As I’ve already mentioned, humanity’s understanding of the highest and best and most compassionate and powerful, namely God, demonstrates a lack of integrity that is devastating to its conception. And so no surprise, that we, who the ancient poets described as being created in the image of this God, inherit what we attribute. That is, like God, it is impossible for us to be all good and be who we are.

So what do we do with that? Usually we ignore it. We ignore the planet. We ignore each other. We ignore ourselves. We live half lives.

Maybe ignore is not the right word. It’s close but doesn’t necessarily capture the dynamic at play because there is a willfulness to the ignorance that is at work here. Where does this willfulness come from? Where are its roots? That’s actually a fairly easy answer. Basically we are trying to protect ourselves. Deep down we know there is pain in the world, pain in the hearts of our neighbor, pain in our own hearts and, even worse, that we are responsible for it. That we turn from this so instinctively, so resolutely is ignorance, yes, but it is more. It is denial.

What do we deny? I can lay out some statistics. They won’t mean anything, not really, not effectively. Which kind of proves the point, but I can give them to you. One out of every six American women have been the victim of an attempted of completed rape. That’s over 17 million people. Nearly a million children are abused every year. 14.4 percent of men in prison were abused as children. The U.S. is the biggest global warming polluter. Over 350,000 pigs are slaughtered everyday in this country. 1 billion of the 6 billion people on the planet are going hungry.

I could go on and on, mining the internet and my library for figures that demonstrate the damage we’ve done to our planet, our fellow creatures, our families and ourselves. These statistics in turn may lend my argument some credence. But in reality, that would be a smoke screen. The problem with statistics is that they function on a merely intellectual level. It’s as if we think that by digesting the number, digesting the fact, that we have digested the problem.

But in terms of functioning as a healthy creature, capable of the cosmically rare processes of knowledge and emotion and thereby capable, to some extent, of determining the healthfulness of our evolution, we need another order of interface to fully live. We can’t face our demons just by counting them. In other words, because we are spiritual beings as well as intellectual beings, the use of statistics to prove the point of our culpability in the production of pain and in the degradation of our ecological and social communities and indeed of our very selves, just doesn’t cut it.

At any rate, my argument doesn’t need proof. In this case, proof is the lie because proof is somewhere else. Proof is about someone else or something else. It is a vicarious projection of our guilt onto categories and numbers and words. Statistics are scapegoats. In that there is only the veneer of satisfaction. My argument is self-evident to those brave enough to listen. And here, I do not mean by listening to me. But by listening to yourself.

You see, we already know that the planet is dying to us and because of us. We know that children get hurt, that evil persists, that women have been abused, that animals die to feed our appetites, and that people die because they have no food. We know that we have been hurt and have hurt others. We know it. But we don’t face it. We don’t know how to live in it.

In part this sermon was inspired by a book by Derrik Jensen called, “A Language Older than Words.” Jensen is particularly concerned with the disconnect he sees between our culture and the devastation it has wrecked on the land and on the people that proceeded our occupation of the land. But Jensen’s perspective is unique. Or maybe not so unique. What follows is not for the faint of heart of any age. It is in fact, quite brutal. So I want to warn you. You see, Jensen’s perspective has been influenced by the fact that as a child, he was raped by his father. Jensen, his brother and his mother were all repeatedly beaten and raped by his father. It was an episodic assualt. So while it was repeated, it was not necessarily constant. After each episode, life would return somehow to some kind of normal and the family would persist. Until the father’s rage boiled over and trauma ensued once again.

So Jensen looks out at the land, at the loss of land, at the loss of species, beings, animals and character and the loss of clean water and clean air, Jensen looks out at the devastation of the ecosystem and sees himself. Devastated. Abused. Raped. And denied.

Jensen’s father never left the family. And the family, unbelievably, stayed together. And so it is that Jensen has been able to confront the man who visited such unthinkable pain upon him. And here’s the thing; Jensen’s father, now subdued by age, claims to have no memory of his villainy. In the face of testimony from his entire family, he refuses to accept that he played any part in any thing like what they describe him as doing.

Jensen sees himself in the land. In our culture, that is, in us, he sees his father. And if you think that too strong a claim, you essentially prove his point. Denial. Our crimes. Our trespasses. The food on our table. The comfort of our lives. How do we hold these things together? No statistic can make that go away. No proof will alter the mind of Jensen’s father. He is, by his denial, protecting himself from something he knows will convict him. Our history books do the same. We are left living half lives of unresolved consequences and stunted spirits, too afraid to unfurl, to afraid to listen to the universe speaking through our being.

So let me ease off the doom pedal for just a second to present you with a picture of how the universe speaks through us. David Deutsch is an Oxford physicist who has written a book called the Fabric of Reality. I have not read the book. I have heard him speak, however. Deutsch, talks about the relationship between humans and a Quasar, which is an unfathomably explosive stellar phenomenon. He marvels that, “É some bit of chemical scum (by that he means us humans) could accurately describe and model and predict and explain, above all, explain a QuasarÉ The one physical system, the brain, contains an accurate working model of the other, the quasar. Not just a superficial image of it, though it contains that as well, but an explanatory model, embodying the same mathematical relationships and the same causal structure.” So a Quasar, and in theory, the entire cosmos, is mirrored (at least potentially) in us. Deutsch goes on to conclude that, “Éwe are a chemical scum that is different. This chemical scum has universality. Its structure contains, with ever-increasing precision, the structure of everything.”

And so we contain what we observe. But it’s more than just information and mathematical models. After all, hearing and listening are different, right? Hearing is about information. Listening is about being.

Because as lovely as Deutsch’s idea is, his insight, while articulated with new metaphors, is not itself new at all. And you don’t need the tools of science to come to it.

For instance, there is a story told in Islam about a Mullah who traveled to the grand mosque of Mecca, the Kabah. After hours of meditation the Mullah fell asleep with his feet pointing to the Kabah, which enraged some Meccans. They woke him and berated him for his sacrilege. “Very well,” said the Mullah, “Please take my feet and put them in a direction where Allah is not.” The Meccans left him alone. “Everywhere you turn is the Face of Allah,” says the Qur’an.

I see resonances between Deutsch and this story. The mathematical models of all the cosmos is within us, the face of the cosmos is all around us and in fact, these are the same things. Listening brings these things to our living.

Another verse from the Qur’an says, “And in the earth are signs for those whose faith is certain.” Jamal Rahman, a Muslim mystic who penned our reading today, expands on this, writing that, “The mystics, with their heightened consciousness are eloquent in their expressions: the song of birds and the voice of insects are all means of conveying truth to the mind. In flowers and grasses are woven messages; in the rustling of leaves there are specific instructions; at dawn the breeze has secrets to tell.”

I want to own this as speculation on my part, but I see a path to connectivity by learning to see the world as metaphor. Can I identify with the mathematical model of the cosmos, or find story in the flight of dragonflies, watch God? Would listening to the world metaphorically make the heavens and the planet and the soul and the body line up? Because, ultimately listening, be it to quasars or cousins is listening to yourself or you are the cosmos.

But listening and denial are mutually exclusive. That’s the connection here. And denial is pervasive. So it seems there is some work to do before I can listen to the music of the spheres.

This requires four moves. Find your beauty, the moments wherein your soul is singing in tune. Find your blind spots, those personal and cultural places we have covered over and denied. That, by the way, is very difficult and it helps to have help. Next, reconcile your beauty with that experience of sin. For this, the only tool available is forgiveness. It is the key. Lastly, adjust your life accordingly. This is a never ending process, because we are caught, we are human, flawed and beautiful, capable of knowledge and capable of forgiveness.

And how does one forgive? I don’t know. One example already mentioned was Jesus, who, actually, did not forgive. He merely acknowledged forgiveness. So maybe there is a lesson there. Maybe the lesson, if we listen, is the presence he brought to bare. His presence, we are told, was one of grace, peace, mercy and healing. So I might suggest that listening to the world (because you are the world you listen to) with a presence of peace, grace, mercy and healing might be a first step.

I’ll refer again to Jamal Rahman, who writes, “In the East, the lotus flower is a symbol of beauty and spirituality. Notice, teachers tell us, that the flower has a stem that roots it in the mud. The spiritual flower owes its existence to the mud; it is the mud of daily existence that feeds the root of the spiritual flower.”

This gives me courage to face what I deny, what my culture, my family and my experience have buried out of shame. So, I stand here, feeling as though I am on the edge of a precipice. For I have not done what I see needs to be done. I have not been listening. Not as well as I need to. So again, I am in a posture of hypocrisy and speaking out of my depth. But I see where I need to go. And I have some ideas about how to go about it. In this endeavor, I invite you to come with me.

Beginning July 12 and lasting to July 17, I will be organizing an experiment in connective spirituality. It will be the first annual No Kill Week, a week wherein all those who elect to will vow not to kill any living thing, plant or animal, nor eat what has been killed, plant or animal. This is based on the first of the two creation stories in the ancient Hebrew texts wherein we can read, “Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” This was the ideal, before the fall, before we mytho-psychologically had anything to be ashamed of or guilty for. So we will live into that impossible ideal for a week.

Ultimately, No Kill Week is not about food. And in the end we will realize we are still caught, because we are still human. But the week and dietary restrictions form a frame of extra-ordinary compassion which will be focused through spiritual practices, fellowship and discipline. And we will be a graceful and merciful presence. I’ll leave a sign up sheet for those of you courageous, interested or crazy enough to dive in.

In short, we are going to listen. We are going to listen to the parts of our lives and our culture that we are in denial about. We are going to listen to our joy and our wonder too, no doubt. But we will listen to ourselves, look our world and out lack of integrity square in the face and begin the practice of making peace with it. That practice may require of us a change in lifestyle or not. I don’t know. It may enable us to reconnect with God or The Force, or the Tao or ourselves. Or not. I don’t know. But it seems a worthy pursuit and an exciting first step.

Thank you for listening.