What the world needs from Liberal Religion- Rev. David E. Bumbaugh

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KEYNOTE ADDRESS – SWUU DISTRICT ANNUAL MEETING

AUSTIN, TEXAS

David Bumbaugh

APRIL 26, 2008

“What the world needs from Liberal Religion.” That is a sweeping topic and one that is daunting to say the least. Who among us is qualified to speak for the world? For that matter, who among us is qualified to speak for liberal religion? Unitarians and Universalists have long been part of what is generally known as liberal religion, but the scope of liberal religion is far larger than our movement. Liberal Religion is a context in which we exist, but it is neither defined by nor exhausted by our particular history, institutional structures and visions. Nonetheless, that is the topic we have been called to address, and a long career as a preacher has equipped me fully to speak with great authority on vast subjects about which I know precious little.

In May of 1961, I stood on the floor of the General Assembly, waiting for the Moderator to announce the result of the vote that would bring the Unitarian Universalist Association into formal existence, a vote that would end the separate histories of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America. When the formal announcement came, it was a surprise to no one. The assembly had reaffirmed the will of the constituent congregations–an overwhelming vote for consolidation. The delegates responded with a standing ovation.

This was a moment I had worked for since I began my ministry to Universalist congregations in April of 1957. I had preached, written editorials, and debated about the promise inherent in the consolidation of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America. I had attended the meeting in Syracuse that had hammered out the details of the consolidation process.

The congregation I was serving had voted for consolidation, even though the members of that small rural church confessed to feeling profoundly outclassed by and inferior to every Unitarian they had ever met. I should have been among those applauding. Instead, I stood off to one side of the hall, weeping.

I was overwhelmed by the sense that something important had just died, that I had just voted away my religious home, that I had just witnessed the end of the Universalist movement, in the words of the historian, Whitney Cross, a church whose impact …on reform movements and upon the growth of modern religious attitudes might prove to be greater than that of either the Unitarians or the freethinkers. [A movement whose] warfare upon the forces fettering the American mind might be demonstrated to have equaled the influence of the transcendentalist philosophers.

Over the nearly half century that has passed, I have devoted my life to the movement we brought into being in Boston on that day in May of 1961. In parish ministry, and now, teaching in one of our two remaining seminaries, my life has been trammelled up in Unitarian Universalism. But, truth be told, I have never felt quite at home in this movement. I have felt like an orphan who has been taken in by a kindly family, but who never has mastered the skills necessary to be fully a part of that family. Somewhere, deep in my soul, there is a sense of loss that never quite goes away. In odd moments, I have tried to plumb that deep loss.

Over time, it has occurred to me that the loss, which often seemed so personal, is, in truth, much more corporate and institutional. Somewhere, over the years following consolidation, we have lost an important insight into the essential nature of religion, and the role it plays in the life of the human community. The process by which that loss occurred, is rooted deep in the history of the two movements that came together in May of 1961.

In the first third of the twentieth century, Unitarianism and Universalism both were confronting serious losses. The catastrophe of the Great War, that war to end all wars, had made a mockery of the easy optimism that had characterized much of liberal religion. The debacle of the Great Depression had only deepened the sense of pessimism and despair.

By the middle of the 1930’s the condition of the Unitarian movement was so desperate that the American Unitarian Association was forced to appoint a Commission of Appraisal. The central charge given that Commission consisted of a series of questions: Has Unitarianism any real function in the modern world?…How far does Unitarianism in America measure up to the requirements of the new age? What must be done to bring it reasonably close to that ideal? Is the expenditure of effort necessary to bring about that change justified by the promise of success?

The report of that commission addressed a number of topics, ranging from a sketchy effort to define areas of doctrinal agreement and disagreement to a concern for restructuring religious education and providing adequate training for leaders. But the elements in the report that received most of the attention, centered upon restructuring and reorganizing and streamlining the institutional processes of the Association itself. The effect of the report was to give short shrift to questions of faith, and to focus much more attention on questions of structure and process.

The Commission of Appraisal is widely believed to have saved the American Unitarian Association and to have ushered in a period of renewal and growth. In my reading of the history, it did so by simply assuming Unitarianism has a function in the modern world, even if that function is difficult to define, by finessing any serious conversation about theological concerns and by focusing instead on the question of how to reorganize the national Association so it might be more effective in attracting and retaining members. Out of the work of the commission came a series of initiatives, ranging from the New Beacon Series in Religious Education, to the famous Laymen’s League advertising initiatives based on the question, “Are You a Unitarian Without Knowing It?”, and ultimately the Fellowship Movement.

During this same, period, Universalism was experiencing an even more catastrophic decline in numbers. Once having been described as “the reigning heresy of the day” and credited with being the sixth largest denomination in the country, Universalism had declined to fewer than 50,000 adherents, was closing one rural or small town church after another all over the country, and was watching as one urban church after another either went out of business or merged with its Unitarian counterpart. Universalism responded to that challenge in quite a different way.

Universalists sought to confront the loss of members and the threat to their continued existence by theological exploration. Under the leadership of men like Robert Cummins and Brainard Gibbons, Universalists began to explore their relationship to the Christian tradition out of which they had come. They asked, “What is the essential message of Universalism, given the fact that mainline Protestants are no longer proclaiming doctrines of hellfire and damnation?” They asked, “Does Universalism have anything distinctive to offer to the larger theological conversation?” They asked, “What does Universal Salvation mean in a pluralistic world grown ever more integrated and ever more interconnected?” Cummins, General Superintendent of the Universalist Church, began to address those questions when he told a Universalist General Assembly that: Universalism cannot be limited either to Protestantism or to Christianity, not without denying its very name. Ours is a world fellowship, not just a Christian sect…..A circumscribed Universalism is unthinkable.

Subsequently, Tracy Pullman of Detroit called for a new understanding of Universalism that would be greater than Christianity. Cummin’s successor as General Superintendent, Brainard Gibbons insisted that Christianity and the larger Universalism were simply incompatible.

These observations led a group of younger ministers to engage the challenge to define a new theological base for the Universalist Church. They advocated what they called a New Universalism–one that sought to define a religion adequate to a global community. They did not seek to create a new world religion, but they dreamed of creating a religion that would be adequate to one world. This led them to engage virtually all the theological categories that had structured their tradition, and seek to determine how to reform that tradition for a new time and a new context. This process continued throughout the years leading up to consolidation.

The point to this long excursion into history is to suggest that Unitarians and Universalists brought quite different agendas to the consolidation. Those differences were reflected in much of the debate surrounding the proposal to consolidate. As I remember those years, I am struck by the fact that much of the Universalist opposition to consolidation was theological in nature– traditionalists like Ellsworth Reamon fearing that the new movement would strengthen the hands of those who sought to move Universalism to an enlarged and non-Christian theological base. On the other hand, much of the Unitarian opposition was institutionally focused–a fear, as A. Powell Davies suggested, that consolidation with the Universalists would slow or halt the numerical growth that had allowed Unitarians to claim to be the fastest growing denomination in American in the 1950’s. I have sometimes summarized the two agendas by suggesting that Universalists brought to merger an important, but unfinished theological concern, while Unitarians brought to merger a set of highly questionable marketing plans.

I would suggest to you that in the years after consolidation, the concern for marketing has triumphed. The overriding concerns have centered upon the need to identify our market niche, and to devise programs and strategies that will attract and keep the clients. Increasingly, much of our social justice effort can be defined as expressionist politics, less intended to change the world than to serve our own egos, to present a profile to the world and attract and expand the client base. Our efforts at self-definition–notably the all-but-deified purposes and principles–are grounded in no deep confession of faith, no significant meta-narrative. They simply hang there as unanchored assertion– not a covenant, but a temporal agreement–and because that is so, they betray the fact that a primary motivating force in their construction was to offend none of our stake holders, while being so general that likely recruits will not find us too challenging.

Our programmatic focus has been upon growth, both in the size and the number of churches. At all levels, programs are initiated and justified on the basis that they will produce numerical growth. Congregations and individuals who question whether growth is an adequate mission are regarded as bordering on the heretical. Education programs are designed specifically to counter and inhibit the essential developmental tasks of young people and to bind them effectively to the church. We have toyed with creating mega-churches by offering something called “theology light seeker services.” We have devised advertising programs structured around slogans like “The Uncommon Denomination” and “The Church That Puts Its Faith In You,” slogans that pretend to communicate but that avoid any careful definition. Most recently, the triumph of marketing can be seen in the process by which the flaming chalice has been transformed from religious symbol into marketing logo.

Missing in all of this is any coherent theological foundation. Over and over, we hear each other and officials of the Association proclaim the conviction that we have a moral obligation to grow, to spread our word because we possess a vital message, one that is of central importance to the world and to the crises in which the world is entangled. When, however, we are challenged to say what that message is, what our faith consists of, what defines us as a religious people, often we are driven to an embarrassed silence, or we smile smuggly and confess that no one can speak for all Unitarian Universalists, or we stutter and stammer and mutter some half digested truisms about the worth of every person or the importance of embracing each person’s freedom to follow his or her own spiritual path.

Those are not wrong affirmations but they provide an incredibly weak foundation for a religious movement and a wholly inadequate program for saving the world. They offer an unexamined piety rather than a solid faith. The unfinished task Universalists brought to consolidation–the effort to redefine the faith tradition in light of contemporary challenges–has been swept away by the fear that if we define ourselves too clearly, someone may be offended.

Nor are we the only example of Liberal Religion trying to survive by fudging uncomfortable self-definitions. In Chicago, and perhaps elsewhere across the country, the United Methodist Church observed Lent, this year, by broadcasting a series of television spots in which people who are lonely, people who are burdened with grief, people who are engulfed by sorrow, are told that they do not have to walk this painful path alone. They will find support and companionship at the United Methodist Church. Except for that last word, “church,” it is hard to tell that the welcome is from a religious community. It sounds very much like an institution offering therapy rather than faith, comfort rather than challenge, sanctuary rather than adventure.

In his book, American Religious Traditions, Richard Wentz suggests that religion “is the dialectic of the sacred and profane,” the way in which the sacred and the mundane are held in “dynamic tension.” He claims that religion “provides the ideas and actions that enable us to maintain the significance of the sacred in circumstances that deny it.” This suggests that a movement that is unwilling or unable to define what it holds sacred has surrendered both its claim to religious significance and its ability to respond meaningfully to the larger world. If we are to respond to the needs of the world from a liberal religious basis, it is critical that we be able to address and answer three central questions: What do we believe? Whom do we serve? To whom or what are we responsible? Several years ago, I was asked to deliver a lecture on the title “Beyond the Seven Principles: The Core of Our Faith.” In that lecture, I suggested that the question of what do we believe cannot be answered adequately until we have struggled with the question, “Whom do we serve?” I am increasingly convinced, now, however, that given the make up of our movement–a movement comprised of people who value education, a movement that reflects a tradition of accommodation to science and embraces concern for creating a tolerant, moral society, a movement that is socially located with access to the levers of power, it is important that the question of what it is we believe, what it is that provides a foundation for a vital religious vision be given priority over the other two.

That first and foundational question, “What do we believe?” is simple, but profoundly challenging for a post modern people. It drives us to consider what are the boundaries of our religious community? What is so central to our identity that we must proclaim it, even at the risk of offending someone? This is the question Universalists were struggling to answer in the years prior to consolidation–the question we have struggled ever since to evade in the interests of more effective marketing. It is in answering that first question that we may discover effective responses to the other two: “Whom do we serve and to whom or what are we responsible?” Ignoring that first question, our institutions are easily seduced by the consumerist imperatives that dominate our times and our response to the world tends to be shallow-rooted, short-lived, self-serving and episodic.

Strange as it may seem to us, the fear of defining ourselves has not always dominated Unitarianism or Universalism. The founding document of American Unitarianism was Channing’s 1819 Baltimore Sermon, “Unitarian Christianity” in which he laid out a clear platform that not only rallied Unitarians, but influenced large numbers of non-Unitarians as well. Later in the same century, when Unitarianism was grappling with the dissent generated by the radicalism of Theodore Parker and his followers, William Channing Gannett offered a statement of “Things Commonly Believed Among Us.” Gannett boldly began his statement by affirming “We believe.” That statement of a central faith helped to heal the divisions within Unitarianism. In 1935 the Universalists, struggling to redefine the movement, adopted a statement that, while not a creed, unashamedly began with these words: “We Avow our Faith.”

Let me suggest to you that what the world needs from Liberal Religion, or at least from our version of Liberal Religion is clarity about who we are and what matters to us; clarity about what vision has called us into being, and what promise we serve. Nor is this such an impossible challenge. While we proudly proclaim the great diversity among us, every study I have seen of Unitarian Universalists suggests that our diversity rests in a powerfully homogeneous core of shared beliefs and attitudes. Indeed, the studies suggest that at the core we are far less diverse than many other religious groups. Let me suggest to you some of the content of that core:

We believe that the universe in which we live and move and have our being is the expression of an inexorable process that began in eons past, ages beyond our comprehension and has evolved from singularity to multiplicity, from simplicity to complexity, 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 ignited the stars and orbited the planets through the night sky, that we are expressions of that universal process which has created and formed us out of recycled star dust.

We believe that all living things are members of a single community, all expressions of a planetary process that produced life and sustains it in intricate ways beyond our knowing. We hold the life process itself to be sacred.

We believe that the health of the human venture is inextricably dependent upon the integrity of the rest of the community of living things and upon the integrity of those processes by which life is bodied forth and sustained. 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, that ultimately we all spring from the same source and all journey to the same ultimate destiny.

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. In us, and perhaps elsewhere, the Universe is reaching toward self-awareness, toward self consciousness.

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. In us, and perhaps elsewhere, the Universe dreams dreams and reaches toward unknown possibilities. We hold as sacred the unquenchable drive to know and to understand.

We believe that the moral impulse that weaves its way through our lives, luring us to practices of justice and mercy and compassion, 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. Life is more than our understanding of it, but the level of our comprehension demands that we act out of conscious concern for the broadest vision of community of we can command and that we seek not our welfare alone, but the welfare of the whole. We are commanded to serve life and serve it to the seven times seventieth generation.

We believe that those least like us, those located on the margins have important contributions to make the rest of the community of life 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.

This faith statement is not a creed. (Perhaps we might attach to it the historic Universalist Freedom Clause: Neither this nor any other form of words will be used among us as a creedal test.) Nor can it be easily reduced to an elevator speech. Nonetheless this faith statement attempts to achieve several things.

First of all, it seeks to avoid the morass of hyphenated Unitarian Universalism. Secondly, it seeks to avoid the dreary debate between humanists and theists, between spirituality and rationality, by offering a kind of godless theism–an affirmation that we are not sui generis, that we are products of a natural process we did not create, cannot command and do not understand, but a process to which we are responsible, a process that is grounded in a vision of a dynamic universe, constantly incarnating emergent possibilities and larger alternatives.

It offers a vision that is consistent with our history, our tradition, responsive to the people we serve and to the challenges of our time–a vision grounded in three central enlightment commitments, defined by Susan Neiman as reason, reverence and hope. And, most importantly, it seeks to define a religious position that provides us a distinct location within the spectrum of religious alternatives available to the world.

Perhaps this statement will not prove adequate or acceptable to most of us, but the times demand some kind of formulation of the basis of our faith if we are to be serious about the world and if we are to be taken seriously by the world. Out of this kind of faith statement, imperatives for action emerge that are deeper than a political program or a class or ethnic loyalty. Such a faith statement reminds us that we are called to serve the largest vision of community we can imagine and that all our lesser loyalties stand under the judgment of that great affirmation. In serving the party, the cause, the national or ethnic identity, am I serving the largest community I can envision? In failing the weak, the lost, the marginalized, have I failed my deepest defining obligations? Such a faith statement allows us to recognize that ultimately we are responsible to the larger, sacred context out of which we have come and in terms of which we live. It provides a compass by which to steer amidst the uncertainties of a chaotic world.

This particular statement may not capture adequately the immagination of Unitarian Universalists. I am quite certain that some statement of faith is required if our brand of liberal religion is to address the needs of our world. Why we prefer to focus on our disagreements rather than on a core faith that might define us and might offer a religious alternative, I am not certain. Perhaps it is something deep in our institutional DNA that is at work here. In his two volume history of Unitarianism, Earl Morse Wilbur argued that for most of our history, Unitarians have resisted any real theological definition. Only when faced with some great threat to the continued existence of the movement could Unitarians could brought to define who they were and what vision they served.

I would suggest to you that we face such a threat at this moment in our history. To be sure, the threat does not seem to take the form of repression, persecution, or proscription. Despite the occasional thrust from religious extremists, we are scarcely important enough to justify the effort that repression and persecution would require. The threat to our existence is more subtle and therefore more dangerous. Liberal Religion faces the possibility that it may be overwhelmed by a kind of ambient spirituality that resists definition or institutional form, but functions to use the human longing for meaning to serve other purposes, an ambient spirituality that has no outward focus but slides easily into the therapeutic mode, offering an endless journey of infinite regression into the self. Look around you and you will see everywhere evidence of the manner in which spiritual longing has been commodified, offered on the open market, used to sell everything from soap, to self improvement, to political platforms. Over and over, and over again, the sacred is stripped of its deepest meanings and chained to the chariot wheels of a triumphant consumerism.

By refusing to define itself, Liberal Religion surrenders its ability to stand in judgment on the idolatries of our time. Worse than that, fearing that it will not be taken seriously, Liberal Religion is tempted to try to turn the commercial spirit of the age to its own uses. Oz Guiness has remarked that it used to be the case that religion looked for an audience for its message, but more recently, he suggests, religion looks for a message that will hold the audience.

There is a world of difference between those two approaches. To the degree that Liberal Religion in general, and Unitarian Universalism, in particular, have succumbed to this kind of marketing ploy they have betrayed their own traditions, they have failed the world, they have become captive to the very processes that threaten to destroy our best hope for the future. If we are to serve our people, and the world in which we find ourselves, it is critical that we now take up the unfinished project that Universalism brought to the consolidation in 1961, that we have the courage to define ourselves in ways that offer a clear alternative both to the dangerous and divisive orthodoxies that seem to have capture the religious venture, and the refusal to embrace a clear identity, that threatens to sweep liberal religion into commodified, thumbsucking irrelevance. It is time for liberal religion to declare clearly the faith we hold. The world has a right to expect that of us.

Learning to Die

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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First UU Austin, TX

March 30, 2008

Sermons from the Third Act

Nathan L. Stone, Ph.D., minister

Invocation

Here we sit ————- waiting for what?

Waiting for some divine inspiration?

Waiting for a sense of calm to wash over us?

Waiting for church to be over so we can get on to lunch or watch Houston and San Antonio play basketball on television?

Here we sing ———– singing for what?

Singing for a moment of inspiration?

Singing because it’s good therapy?

Here we hope ———– hoping for what?

Hoping to learn some new thing that will make life easier?

Hoping that something magical will take away that resentment that is devouring us?

Hoping to find a key to that elusive happiness?

Hoping to make a connection and to find some genuine expression of love to carry us through another week?

Spirit of Life and Love?

Sit with us.

Sing with us.

Hope with us.

Amen.

Morning Prayer

And now we pray. Not because we must — but because we may.

We pray as a way of thinking out loud.

We pray as a way of organizing our thoughts.

We pray — hoping that something beyond us and other — just might be listening.

We pray — hoping that if enough people are thinking out loud at the same time and longing for the same things — maybe — some things could possibly begin to change for the better.

We pray — hoping that maybe such a bizarre ritual might make some changes inside of ME.

We pray — hoping that such an act might widen and stretch our worldview to make us visionaries of some sort.

We pray — having no clue as to why we’re doing it — in fact, feeling a bit foolish for doing it.

But — at least when we pray we’re not fighting or arguing or harming one another. At least when we pray we’re doing something together in harmony — and that IS a good thing.

Some of us refuse to pray — believing that prayer is an archaic practice of magical thinking and superstition.

Most of us pray — just to play it safe.

But whatever it is we’re doing — at least we’re trying.

AMEN.

The Sermon

In my time (over 40 years of parish ministry) — I’ve seen my share of dying. It goes with the job and it is never, ever easy to be with or to watch.

In an earlier and different life — when I was the senior pastor of the Manor Baptist Church in San Antonio . . . in a single year (1986) . . . I did 53 funerals. One per week. That’s when I decided to try being a full-time counselor for awhile . . . and take a sabbatical from being a parish minister. I had been the minister there for 13 years. I needed a break. Too much death.

When I was the chaplain for Family Hospice in Temple in 1996 all I did everyday was to help people to die. It was during that time that I began to realize that everybody needs to somehow learn how to die.

Believe it or not there is actually a book that describes what it’s like to die of a particular illness. Sherwin B. Nuland is the author of a book, ?How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter? (Alfred A. Knopf: New York; 1993). Dr. Nuland, who teaches surgery and the history of medicine at Yale, explains the process of dying of heart disease, AIDS, stroke, drowning, suicide, and by euthanasia. Maybe more information than most people want!

What I want to talk about has nothing to do with Dr. Nuland’s approach. It is my contention that we learn how to die by learning how to live — and live well.

The same thing applies to getting old. I don’t think you learn how to be old. I am convinced that you get old just like you’re getting old. Grouchy people now are grouch-ier in the nursing home. People who are negative now are even more so in old age. Gentle, engaged, interested people now are gentle, engaging, and interesting even in the nursing home.

And, by the way, I know that sometimes dementia and Alzheimer’s can set in and literally change personalities, but that is a different story. That is always a sad and painful story. (Recommend ?Away From Her? – Canadian film: about a couple married for about 40 years as they deal with the progressive arrival of Alzheimer’s; a tender but powerful movie.)

You learn to be old by learning to live well when you’re younger.

You learn to die by learning how to live — and live well.

There’s a Hasidic story that explains this quite well. A rabbi is dying and his wife sits at his bedside crying. ?But why are you crying?? he says. ?My whole life was only that I might learn how to die. This is a time to applaud my good work!?

I could swear that the late, great, Johnny Cash sang these words but I can’t get the web or anybody else to confirm it for me. Doesn’t matter who sang or wrote it — the words are still so true: ?When I’m old enough to really live I’ll be old enough to die.?

It has been said that everybody ought to ask at least 3 questions when it’s time to die. Three questions that should be routinely asked as we move toward that inevitable adventure of dying.

[I am indebted to my UU colleague, Fred Muir, who has been the minister of the UU Church of Annapolis since 1984 — for introducing me to these 3 vital questions. (see Heretics’ Faith: Vocabulary for Religious Liberals; 2001; pp.46ff)]

Question #1 – Will people know what I meant by my life?

That is, when you die would people know how you would want to be remembered? And, of course, the answer to that is that you have to live what you mean. Albert Schweitzer said — make your life your argument: ?My life — my argument.?

For many, many years now — whenever I am asked to do a funeral — it is my custom (whether I know the dead person or not) — it is my custom to ask the family to write the eulogy. That is, write down how it is this person will be remembered. Tell me stories. Just write and I will edit. I like this because the eulogy then belongs to the family not the minister. It ends up being the center of what I do — funeral-wise. It is very real and very personal.

Usually I get more that I could ever use. People send pages and pages of information and inevitably there is one person who shoves about six pages in my face just at the moment of the service.

Occasionally I will get very little. One family wrote on a little shred of torn paper: ?Mama loved to party. It was nice that we were able to sneak in a Budweiser to her hospital room before she died!? ?Is there any more you’d like to say?? I asked. ?Nope! That says it all! That was mama!?

I had to get real creative with that eulogy talking about how mama really loved life and on and on.

Party on, Budweiser. If that’s what she meant by her life then that was a good life.

And maybe it was. Maybe that’s exactly what she meant by her life.

Isn’t it an odd thing to think that everyday you live and all that you do is a statement about the meaning of life for you?

Think of everyday as an entry into the diary of your life. And someday . . . somebody will read that diary out loud. Think of every day of your living as another entry into your own eulogy.

Wanna learn how to die? Then learn how to live your meaning.

Suicide is tough at any age. My stepson hung himself at age 19 — he would have been 21 earlier this month. And so — his suicide (on Mother’s Day!) haunts us with questions, not so much about the way he chose to die — but what, in fact, did he mean by his life? So we’re left scouring every word he wrote, every doodle he made, looking for any note he may have left in a book he was reading. What in the world did Alex mean by his life?

Question #2 – Did my life make a difference in this world?

Now I know that some will write books and some will build buildings, invent stuff, create some memorable piece of art or write a popular song. I think we all dream that somehow we might do some visible, lasting thing.

But the older I get and the more I watch people come and go and live and die the more I think that the real difference is made in the seemingly little and ordinary ways.

I know that I am always thinking that I will write a famous book or craft some incredible and unforgettable sermon. But some time ago I got a reality check. I was talking to a couple I was about to marry. She was 12-years-old when she first met me. I was a youth camp speaker. She said to me, ?I’ll never forget something you said.? And I was waiting to hear some great and profound thing that I had said. ?All the campers were watching a sunset in Colorado. And you got up to do the sermon. And, silently, you looked at the sunset with us for awhile and then you said . . . ?Wow!? And then you sat down. ?That was the sermon,? you told us later. ?Never compete with a sunset,? you told us later.

She went on to say that now she has twin girls who are 12-years-old. ?Recently,? she said, ?they were griping and arguing over something very trivial and I said to them, ?Do either of you guys know how to say ‘Wow!’ to a sunset??

?You taught me that, Nathan,? she said.

Tears came to my eyes. What a humbling moment that was for me.

I say it again. The older I get and the more I watch people come and go and live and die the more I think that the real difference is made in the seemingly little and ordinary ways.

I still love the saying that I have taped to the lamp on my desk. The more I read it the more right it sounds:

People won’t remember what you say.

They won’t even remember what you do.

They will remember how you made them feel.

Richard Sutton was only 4-years-old when he died. His liver was broken and no transplants were available. And when one finally came it was too little too late.

Did Richard Sutton make a difference? Oh man, you better believe it. He had a smile that wouldn’t quit . . . and incredible courage. Rarely do I see a 4-year-old but that I don’t think of Richard. Awhile back, I went to my four-year-old grandson’s birthday party and I thought of Richard. Did he make a difference? Absolutely. Just by being. And by being real. He lived only four short years but he persistently smiled his way into my heart . . . and brought his parents, Eric and Sharon, into my life. They are among my very best friends. Thanks, Richard!

Only 4 years to make a difference!

Harold Kushner tells this story that speaks volumes to me:

I was sitting on a beach one summer day, watching two children, a boy and a girl, playing in the sand. They were hard at work building an elaborate sand castle by the water’s edge, with gates and towers and moats and internal passages. Just when they had nearly finished their project, a big wave came along and knocked it down, reducing it to a heap of wet sand. I expected the children to burst into tears, devastated by what had happened to all their hard work. But they surprised me. Instead, they ran up the shore away from the water, laughing and holding hands, and sat down to build another castle. I realized that they had taught me an important lesson. All the things in our lives, all the complicated structures we spend so much time and energy creating, are built on sand. Only our relationships with other people endure. Sooner or later, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up. When that happens, only the person who has somebody’s hand to hold will be able to laugh. (?When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough? in ?Heretics’ Faith? by F.J. Muir; p.48)

Really making a difference is about touching people and connecting with people: holding hands, laughing, crying, singing, drinking, eating, touching, and dancing together.

Making a difference is about being rich in people.

When my mother was actively dying in 1990 she made us laugh and she made us think. Hospice was giving her morphine to keep her comfortable which made her even more unpredictable. When she was alert she’d tell us — are you ready for this? — funeral jokes in her weak and scratchy voice. Think of it: the dying lady telling funeral jokes. ?Don’t you kids get it?? she would say. ?FUN as in funeral — get it?? she would say.

?Did you hear the one about the Jewish man that died and as he lay in his casket it was their family custom for people to place money in the casket as a sign of their love — money that would be buried with the loved one — a little something to get him started in the next life. Toward the end of the service when there was quite a bit of cash in place a stranger walked in and began to take the money, count it, and put it in his pockets. The funeral director was aghast and asked him what he was doing. ?All this money seems like so much trouble,? the man said. ?I’m getting ready to add a little bit and then write a check for the full amount!?

Oh she thought that was so funny.

?Why do you tell us that story, Mom?? we would say. ?Don’t you get it?? she said. ?Life is not about money. It’s about people. And she’d reach out and hold our hands. Then she’d nod off. And in a little while, in a weak voice she’d whisper, ?I’m poor in stuff — but I’m rich in people.?

Margaret Elizabeth Woolsey Stone lived a life that made a huge difference. And that made all the difference in her dying.

Question #3 – Did I leave things in order?

Of course part of that really does mean leaving clear instructions, an up-to-date will, estate arrangements, and burial requests. As a hospice chaplain and a minister I cannot begin to tell you how many people will die without any of this in place. For some dying persons and/or their families it’s like if they don’t make plans then death won’t happen or it’ll hold off until you get organized. Not a good way of thinking.

And, of course, it doesn’t work that way.

Here’s the deal — when people die it usually invites chaos — in the best of circumstances. And — worst of all — if there is any tension or unfinished business in the family . . . it all rears its ugly head when death comes. I swear I’ve seen more nastiness at funerals and weddings: a time and a place where everybody is forced to be together and all the closet skeletons come out and will walk around — and all the things you never wanted to talk about now get talked about.

As much as possible leave things in order: paperwork and legal stuff.

But more importantly — live your life in such a way that relationships and connections are clean and in order. AA and Al-Anon have it right. And, yes, I am a friend of Bill W.

Step 8 – ?Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.? Step 9 – ?Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.? Step 10 – ?Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.?

Keeping the slate clean!

Wanna die well? Live well by tending to unfinished business.

My father and I had a strained relationship at best. He was physically and emotionally abusive and I took it. Then I took it into myself and went off to college and seminary. And he took it and stayed in Hawaii . . . and then dropped dead at a young age in what appeared to be a very healthy body.

It took me many long years of therapy to repair our relationship. It takes that long when you’ve allowed resentment and fear and hatred to get into your bones. It takes even longer when that other person is dead.

Wanna die well? Live well by tending to unfinished business.

I encourage you and me and us to take a long walk in the woods and ask ourselves these three questions about life that will help us to die — well:

  • Will people know what I meant by my life?
  • Did my life make a difference in this world?
  • Did I leave things in order?

Not long ago the computer gods or fairies (not sure who to blame!) sent me these perfect words that seem to say it all:

When you were born you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die — you’re the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying!

Or, I’d say — maybe even applauding for your good life!

Amen and may it be so.

Benediction

Hear now the benediction — the bene diction — the good word:

As you go back out into your world full of babies being born and obituaries.

As you go back out into your world full of love songs and reports of war.

May you and I be good students — open to learning to live AND learning to die.

AND — until the time comes when we really MUST die — may we cling to the words of that modern prophet, Woody Allen:

I don’t mind dying — I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

GO IN PEACE.

AMEN.

Foster Child

by Posted in Audio available, Former Ministers, Guest Speakers, Jack Harris-Bonham, Sermons

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© Jack Harris-Bonham

July 15, 2007

Guest speakers:

Lawrence Foster, Sr., Lloyd Foster,

Kenneth Foster, Sr., and Nydesha Foster

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Prayer

Mystery of many names, mystery beyond all naming, anyone can be happy when things are going right, when blue skies and broad horizons lay before them. But it takes a special kind of person, a special kind of people to stay focused and on task in spite of the storm that looms on the horizon, in spite of the threats that bear down upon them, in spite of daily reminders that their lives are scheduled to end.

I received a letter recently from Kenneth Foster, Jr. The tone of the letter was confident and upbeat. I received a letter from Kenneth Foster, Jr., a man who is scheduled to die of lethal injection on the 30th of August. In this letter Kenneth thanked me for my concern about his case, he told me how blessed he felt that there are those on the outside of the machinery of death who care and are responding to his cause. He also explained about the bureaucracy behind the death machine to me, ten years of experience has taught him well. He blessed me in his letter not so much by the things he said but more by the tone in which they were said. Even though I am an older man than he in years, his years of being condemned have lent him a mantle of experience and age that comes from so many dark nights of the soul – one right after the other, after the other, after the other.

Kenneth and I will meet next month when the letter from our Board of Trustees of this church reaches the Warden, and I am given clearance. The meeting will be as all those meetings are between death row inmates and visitors. Kenneth will be behind glass like some specimen that has been separated from society so as not to increase the risk of infection. We will have all the visuals of people who meet, people who meet on opposite sides of thick glass, people who are forbidden to greet each other with a touch or even a holy kiss. We will meet and when we do, Kenneth says, “I hope that we can meet, so that you can hear my testimony personally – and I don’t mean legal wise. I mean me as the person I am.”

And this kind of talk just makes me think of the old time religion in which someone from the pulpit shouts, “Can I have a witness!?”

You see the death that Kenneth Foster, Jr. faces isn’t what he fears, the past ten years has been a mighty teacher – as Martin Luther wrote so many years ago “a mighty fortress is our God,” no, the death that Kenneth Foster, Jr. fears is the death of recognition. He doesn’t mind going down, but he does mind going down with no one paying attention. Can I have a witness?

The bread and circuses that this country has created in its out of control consumerism – the bread and circuses that keeps us occupied, but distracted, the 150 cable channels, the I-pods, and I-phones, personal computers, the gadgetry of modernity has kept us all informed, updated, and in the grove, but ultimately hanging out with ourselves. The community of humankind has been diminished in the process of our being entertained. The community of humankind cries out for more than food and juggling. The community of humankind awaits the new awakening of the human heart, the time when as Kenneth told me in his letter; people can look each other in the eyes and see that the other is ultimately themselves. Yes, as Kenneth says this looking does weigh heavily upon the human heart, but it springs from a place of truth and as Kenneth’s Master said 2000 years ago, ye shall know the truth and that truth shall make you free.

Kenneth may be locked behind the intricacies of multiple locks, sealed hermetically behind thick glass, family and friends may not be able to physically touch him, but there are Kenneth’s eyes into which we may gaze, and entering there we come away with only one feeling. Although the state may be about to murder this man, this man knows a truth and that truth is that from within him has sprung a fountainhead – he has bread that we do not know of, he has water from the living spring, he knows the truth of the Master’s words, lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.

At the beginning of this prayer I said that it takes a special kind of person, a special kind of people to stay focused and on task in spite of the storm that looms on the horizon, in spite of the threats that bear down upon them, in spite of daily reminders that their lives are scheduled to end. I would remind us all that we, too, are under such a sentence of death – the only difference between Kenneth and ourselves is that within our deaths the method and time are unknown – the certainty, however, is still there.

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

Amen.

Foster Child

Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had a notorious prisoner, called Barabbas. So when they had gathered Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?” – And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified.” And he said, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified.” So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”

(Matthew 27:15-17;21-26)

The Hanging of the Mouse

An allegory by Elizabeth Bishop

Early, early in the morning, even before five o’clock, the mouse was led in by two enormous brown beetles in the traditional picturesque armor of an earlier day. They came onto the square through the small black door and marched between the lines of soldiers standing at attention: straight ahead, to the right, around two sides of the hollow square, to the left, and out into the middle where the gallows stood.

Before each turn the beetle on the right glanced quickly at the beetle on the left; their traditional long, long antennae swerved sharply in the direction they were to turn and they did it to perfection. The mouse, of course, who had had no military training and who, at the moment, was crying so hard he could scarcely see where he was going, rather spoiled the precision and snap of the beetles. At each corner he fell slightly forward, and when he was jerked in the right direction his feet became tangled together. The beetles, however, without even looking at him, each time lifted him quickly into the air for a second until his feet were untangled.

A large praying mantis was in charge of the religious ceremonies. He hurried up on t he stage after the mouse and his escorts but once there a fit of nerves seemed to seize him. He seemed to feel ill at ease with the low characters around him: the beetles, the hangman, and the criminal mouse. At last he made a great effort to pull himself together and, approaching the mouse, said a few words in a high, incomprehensible voice. The mouse jumped from nervousness, and cried harder than ever.

A raccoon, wearing the traditional mask, was the executioner. He was very fastidious and did everything just so. One of his young sons, also wearing a black mask, waited on him with a small basin and a pitcher of water. First he washed his hands and rinsed them carefully, then he washed the rope and rinsed it. At the last minute he again washed his hands and drew on a pair of elegant black kid gloves.

With the help of some pushes and pinches from the beetles, the executioner got the mouse into position. The rope was tied exquisitely behind one of his little round ears. The mouse raised a hand and wiped his nose with it, and most of the crowd interpreted this gesture as a farewell wave and spoke of it for weeks afterwards. The hangman’s young son, at a signal from his father, sprang the trap.

“Squee-eek! Squee-eek!” went the mouse. His whiskers rowed hopelessly round and round in the air a few times and his feet flew up and curled into little balls like young fern plants.

It was all so touching that a cat, who had brought her child in her mouth, shed several large tears. They rolled down on to the child’s back and he began to squirm and shriek, so that the mother thought that the sight of the hanging had perhaps been too much for him, but an excellent moral lesson, nevertheless.

Introduction:

In Cormac McCarthy’s novel in dramatic form, The Sunset Limited he has the black man say, You want to help people that’s in trouble, you pretty much got to go where the trouble is at. You ain’t got a lot of choice.

The trouble seems to be everywhere. Pick up the newspaper, turn on the news. If it bleeds it leads. But sometimes you don’t have to go to where the trouble is at; sometimes the trouble comes to you. Such is the case today.

Consider, if you will, Kenneth Foster, Jr. who, ten years ago at the age of 19, was driving around with his friends. They were holding up people on the street and taking their handbags and wallets. There were three others in the car with Kenneth. He knew they were robbing people, but what he didn’t know was that one Mauricio Brown would exit Kenneth’s parked car walk eighty feet to talk to a woman who was seemingly flagging them down, and within a few minutes Mauricio Brown would kill the woman’s white boyfriend in what he claimed to be self-defense.

Consider now that Mauricio Brown has already been executed by the state of Texas – something the state of Texas has little trouble doing in these troubled times, but also, now consider that Kenneth Foster awaits a similar execution at the end of August.

Kenneth’s been prosecuted under the Law of Parties rule which means that Kenneth would have to have had prior knowledge that Mauricio Brown was about to commit Capital Murder when Mauricio Brown approached a woman standing by a car and even Mauricio Brown had no prior knowledge of that the woman’s boyfriend, one Michael LaHood, a prominent San Antonio lawyer’s only son, was even in the car.

Yes, it does seem like something from the Twilight Zone, a bizarre tale of medieval justice right here in 21st Century America. But it’s not a new pilot about a condemned man that continually escapes from jail, nor is it some farfetched novel about justice gone awry.

Kenneth Foster is 29 years old. He came from parents who neglected him as they both had their own drug habits to deal with. Kenneth’s father readily admitted that he was in jail when he found out that his son had been arrested for murder. Kenneth Jr.’s grandparents raised him, but Kenneth fell in with the wrong crowd. He lived outside the law, and now he is caught in the mechanism of the law itself as it inexorably keeps time on his deathwatch.

I’m not here today to convince you that Kenneth Foster is innocent of anything. For after all like 80% of those on death row Kenneth Foster, Jr. is guilty of being black. But, I’m here today to say that I’ve picked up many a hitch hiker, and I’d hate to think that I was somehow responsible for what they’d done before they got into my car. If that same misuse of the Law of Parties that was applied to Kenneth Foster was applied to us we would be responsible for whatever anyone, hitchhiker or friend, had done before they entered our cars.

Yes, Kenneth Foster drove the car that was riding around robbing people. But when that shot was fired it was Kenneth who started to pull away, and it was Kenneth that had to be convinced by one of the other riders to stay and wait for Mauricio Brown.

The moratorium on the death penalty was instigated by the ruling of Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that ruled the practice of capital punishment was unconstitutional. Three men condemned to death by the states of Georgia and Texas appealed their sentences, arguing that their 8th Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment had been violated. The Court voted 5/4 to invalidate their sentences, ruling that the death penalty not only violated the 8th Amendment but the 14th as well, since it was meted out unequally to the “poor and despised.”

But that moratorium vanished when the Supreme Court overturned its ruling in Furman and executions resumed in the state of Florida in 1976 under Governor Bob Graham. Old Bloody Bob as we called him signed the death warrant for John Spenkelink. Spenkelink became the first person to be executed under the new statutes. There’s a bumper sticker that are the last words of John Spenkelink as he was strapped into the electric chair. “Capital Punishment – Those without the capital get the punishment.”

I was living in Tallahassee, Florida in 1979, and my then wife and I marched in the protest march around the state capital. I remember the end of the moratorium, and was up and awake on May 25th 1979 when they pulled the switch on Old Sparkie. That’s what they call the electric chair down Florida way – Old Sparkie. Inmates made it of Live Oak in 1923 and it belongs back in those horse and buggy times. It’s as appropriate today as carrying extra horse shoes in the trunk of your car in case you get a flat.

Cleaning up after an execution is something that’s rarely thought about. Those being electrocuted lose whatever control they had over their bodies. After Spenkelink’s execution it was revealed that guards had stuffed wads of cotton up John Spenkelink’s rectum to keep the inevitable from happening in the presence of Old Sparkie. I mean what’s more important keeping the execution chamber clean or maintaining the dignity of a condemned man”

The truth is the varying states administer the death penalty in a racially biased manner. There are a disproportionate numbers of African Americans on death row. In fact, the race of the victim provides a statistically clear indicator of whether or not a defendant receives a sentence of death or imprisonment. Thus, although nearly 50 percent of all murder victims in the

United States are nonwhite, 80 percent of all death sentences are imposed for the murders of whites.

In Albert Camus’ book, Reflections on the Guillotine he boils Capital Punishment down to this. People murder other people – true. But how many murderers tell their victims exactly when they will murder them” Even after the first announced date of their murder has passed and it looks like these folks have escaped their fate, they get yet another call from the murderer advising them of a new date of death. Finally, the day arrives and the murderer is escorted to the victim’s house where no one tries to stop them, and everyone watches as they take the victim to a place where they have always committed these crimes, and there in the light of day, in full knowledge of the informed public they put their victims to death. There is only one murderer who does it this way and that is the state. The same state within which we live, move and have our being.

Albert Camus was born and raised in French Algiers. His father was French and his mother was Algerian. Shortly before the First World War there was a particularly gruesome crime in Algeria in which a man had killed a farmer and his entire family – even the children. Camus’ father was extremely upset by the killing of the children. He followed the trial and when the day of execution came, Albert Camus’ father got up extra early because the place of execution was across town. But when he arrived back home he said nothing to anyone about the execution, and went immediately to bed where he vomited. The thoughts of the murdered children had been displaced by the sight of the murderer’s quivering body as it was placed upon the killing board and slid into position on the guillotine.

Camus argues that if revulsion is the response of a good citizen at the execution of a notorious murderer, then how is this act of execution supposed to bring more peace and order into the fabric of a society that needs healing?

There does seem however to be an argument here for using this repulsive act of stately murder to repel future murderers from taking up the ax, the poison or the gun. Yet, executions are no longer public. They are now secret affairs in which you have to have an invitation. How is an act committed in privacy supposed to make an example if, in fact, this example cannot be seen? Yes, we get stories in the newspapers, and the 10 o’clock news might say someone is to be executed shortly, but what the people are really waiting for is the latest weather update for the weekend.

In the narratives we have about Jesus – in the four Gospels – we have the story of a man who was conscious of the fact that the way in which he lived, moved and had his being was in direct contradiction to the Roman State. Eventually, charges were brought against him. They were fabricated, but witnesses were called and enough lying was done, sufficient at least, to get him the death penalty – crucifixion – essentially death by suffocation and a common form of capital punishment between the 6th century BC and 4th century AD.

I’m thinking now about the traditional verses in Second Isaiah that Christians say are prophecies that point to the coming death of Jesus on the cross. You’ve probably heard them a thousand times, but listen now and think not of prophesy concerning Jesus, but rather think how these lines could refer to any condemned person.

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. How many people here hold Kenneth Foster Jr. in high esteem, how many people here before this morning even knew who Kenneth Foster Jr. is?

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did not esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

We must think now of the ancient practice of scapegoating. A tribe would take a goat and all the sins of that tribe would be placed upon the goat and that goat driven into the wilderness to die. This is the way ancient cultures cleansed their societies.

But are we any different from them? Ask yourself, What is the difference between what we are doing to those on death row, and especially Kenneth Foster, Jr. when we put them to death? Are we really punishing them for the wrongs that they have done, or are we using them as scapegoats for a society that is plagued with remorse, full of regret, and simply not living up to the standards that we have set ourselves?

We put other people to death so that we may keep alive the idea that we are without sin, without wrongs, without judgment ourselves. But this is the 21st Century, and surely no one would think that a goat could take away the sins of a society, so why is it that we continue with this ancient practice of scapegoating by using human beings? How can the death of Kenneth Foster, Jr. bring peace to any one? How does a democratic society, which purports to believe in the inalienable rights of all humans, believe that killing someone can even a score, heal a wound, or bring about peace?

My reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s allegory, The Hanging of the Mouse, might have disturbed some people. An allegory is a work in which the characters and events are to be understood as representing other things and symbolically expressing a deeper spiritual, moral, or political meaning. I think all three are there in Bishop’s allegory.Elizabeth Bishop is using mice, insects, raccoons and cats to cast the events of capital punishment in a new and startling light.

The precision of the military beetles seems ludicrous when compared to the sniveling mouse and his entangled legs. The scene approaches comic absurdity at several points – the praying mantis, lost for words, and made uncomfortable by being with the condemned. Yet, the absurdity hits home when it’s the cat – the natural enemy of the mouse – who cries as the mouse is hung. Yes, it is ludicrous what the animals and insects are doing to the poor mouse, but no more ludicrous than what we are doing to Kenneth Foster, Jr.

I was told the story of a tribe in Africa that literally puts the condemned person in the same boat as the family of the murdered person. They row out into the middle of the lake where weights are placed on the legs of the murderer. The murderer is then pushed overboard, but as he struggles to live if one of the family of the murder victim wants to jump in and save him they can, and – they often do. Once the humanity of the murderer is witnessed thoughts of revenge are replaced with thoughts of compassion.

The following is from Justice Harry A. Blackmun’s Dissent on the death penalty. From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death – I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed – The basic question “does the system accurately and consistently determine which defendants ‘deserve’ to die?” cannot be answered in the affirmative. The problem is that the inevitability of factual, legal, and moral error gives us a system that we know must wrongly kill some defendants, a system that fails to deliver the fair, consistent, and reliable sentences of death required by the Constitution.

On the 21st of July – this coming Saturday – at 5PM on the front steps of the Texas State Capital there will be a rally for Kenneth Foster, Jr. and his family. Perhaps this will change nothing, but when thousands upon thousands of people show up who knows what effect this will have on the heart of Governor Rick Perry.

And now on behalf of the family of Kenneth Foster Jr., I’d like to thank you for being here, for listening with open minds and open hearts, for being the good people you are. Today you witnessed the suffering of his father, Kenneth Foster, Sr., his daughter, Nydesha Foster, his grandfather, Lawrence Foster and his great uncle, Lloyd Foster. Seeing that suffering I know that you will do what you can to alleviate it. This UU tribe is in the habit of suiting up and showing up, and sometimes that’s all that’s needed. Let us along with Justice Blackmun say that From this day forward, (we) no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

In one of today’s readings Pilate solved the problem of what to do with the condemned man, Jesus. He was a great believer in symbolism – Pilate. He had a basin of water brought out to the judgment seat and in front of the crowd he washed his hands. The executioner Raccoon likewise washed his hands.

There’s a washbasin and towel down front. Right there. What’s it doing there? That’s a question that you should be asking yourself. And rightfully, that’s a question that you should also be answering.

Asking the Next Question by Jim Checkley

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Jim Checkley, Sermons

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Asking the Next Question by Jim Checkley

I have always been a big science fiction fan. I even wrote and published some short stories way back in the dark ages of the 1970s when I lived up in New Jersey and was attending school at Montclair State College. I was, I think, in my last year at Montclair State when a friend of mine from school named Karl asked me if I wanted to go to a big science fiction and fantasy convention up in Great Gorge, New Jersey, a ski resort in the Pocono Mountains. I loved going to science fiction conventions and this one looked fantastic with lots of big name writers, a terrific program, and a fantastic dealers’ room. This science fiction convention had it all. And what was more, it was going to be held at the Playboy Club. What better place for a science fiction and fantasy convention?

Anyway, I told Karl that it would be great to go to the convention. So we made arrangements to drive up together and waited for the big day.

It was the middle of winter, back when we still had winter, and the night before the convention, it snowed something like three feet. I’m not kidding. The drifts were up over the parked cars on my street. But, I was a really big science fiction and fantasy fan, so I dug out my car and drove up to the college to meet Karl. I didn’t for one second doubt that Karl would be there, and so I was not surprised when he was—although his was the only car in sight. He, however, had been a little more practical than me and had called ahead to the Playboy Club to see if the convention was still going to be held. And, of course, it was or he would not have been there.

It was still snowing a little and standing there in the snow drifts, we had a momentary lapse of faith, but then decided, what the heck, what’s the worst thing that could happen—we fall off a mountain road in a blizzard. But we are all immortal when we are young, so away we went—driving, I might add, a Ford Pinto.

When we arrived at the convention, the place was deserted. I mean, there was nobody around. But we went into the club—it was very impressive—and found our way to the auditoriums where the main events of the convention were to take place. When we went inside we saw no more than a dozen fans and a handful of science fiction writers sitting around in conversation. Most of the people present had come in the night before and had stayed in the resort hotels. I think Karl and I were the only lunatics who had driven all the way up from the suburbs of New York City.

Anyway, the organizers saw no point to actually conducting the program—many of the guests of honor hadn’t arrived in any event. So, we spent the day hanging out in the mostly empty club, talking about science fiction, fantasy, and whatever else was of interest.

That was one of my favorite days ever. Yes, I was a geek, and on that day I was one very happy geek. Imagine being 21 years old and spending a day with a group of famous science fiction writers and some kindred spirits at a Playboy Club.

And this is how I met Theodore Sturgeon. How many of you know who Theodore Sturgeon was? Theodore Sturgeon was one of the great science fiction writers of the Golden Age of science fiction. His most famous novel is “More Than Human,” which won many awards, and he wrote two of my more favorite Star Trek episodes from the original series, “Amok Time” and “Shore Leave.”

But on this day, we spent hours talking, had lunch together—and yes, we had several bunnies as our waitresses (the first and only time that ever happened to me)—and we got to know each other pretty well. At some point in the afternoon, he signed the books I had brought up with me and in the process introduced me to his personal symbol that over the years I have taken on as my own. You see, Theodore Sturgeon signed all his books with his name and then he added a capital Q with an arrow going through it. Here’s what it looked like:

askingnextquestion

He asked me if I knew what that meant. I said I did not. He then said, “It means, ‘ask the next question.’ Ask the next question, and the one that follows that, and the one that follows that. And never stop asking questions.”

I immediately loved this symbol and what it stood for. After the convention, I asked a friend who was an art major to make me a stylized Q with an arrow going through it and I kept it framed on my desk for decades. I have tried to live my life in accordance with the attitude and vision engendered by always being ready and willing to ask the next question and being prepared to accept the answers wherever they may lead. That hasn’t always been easy, and there is more to it, actually, than meets the eye.

Asking the next question probably seems to you to be a natural state of affairs. After all, you—we—are Unitarian Universalists. But asking the next question is not a universally embraced attitude about life. There is a distinction between simply asking questions, which is a natural part of being human, and asking the next question. I don’t think that asking the next question, and the question after that, is actually an inherent part of being human. This is because, and this does make a difference, what most people want is answers. We hate uncertainty, ambiguity, and doubt. Human beings want answers so much that we will make them up if we need to—everything from the great myths that explain the world and our place in it, to the guy who says, “I don’t know,” but then gives you an answer anyway. And once people have those answers, and find them psychologically satisfying, they tend to stop looking.

You see, Unitarians always seem to be on the search for truth. And when you are searching, it makes sense to ask questions. But what happens when you have found the truth? The natural tendency is to accept what you’ve found, stop asking questions, and settle into a comfortable and satisfying place. Once you have found the truth, people who are still looking, who are still questioning, have a tendency to annoy you. So—on the bright side—we can all take some solace that we might annoy them as much as they annoy us. Be that as it may, however, once you’ve gotten to a place where you are satisfied, it’s entirely too easy to stop questioning.

And that attitude is understandable. I get it. We all get into our comfort zones with what we know and believe and we want to stay there. Having certainty, having answers, provides that comfort and lets us relax in a world that is terribly uncertain and is becoming more so all the time.

Many years ago, I had a secretary who would always interrupt me when we were talking about controversial issues such as evolution, global warming, or abortion. She’d tell me that she had her beliefs, that she was satisfied with them, and she was not interested in questioning them. She was saying, “Just leave me alone.”

The attitude displayed by my secretary can actually be kicked up a notch or two to the point where there is an active ban on asking questions. If you think about the way human beings lived for many centuries in Europe, free inquiry into the way the world worked, how to best live life, and so many other questions that confronted people was not just discouraged, it was punished. Thus, for a long time people were told that all they needed to know was Aristotle and the Bible and any deviation from that script was not just a sin, it was a crime.

This sort of attitude is still with us today, of course. The most obvious examples are the fundamentalists of Christianity, Islam, and other religions. But there’s more to it than that. At a mundane level, how often do we hear somebody say “TMI” meaning they are getting too much information about an uncomfortable or embarrassing subject and they want the speaker to stop? That’s a trivial thing, I admit, but TMI isn’t limited just to colonoscopies and locker room stories. TMI is symbolic of a strong current in our society that discourages inquiry into certain matters and areas of life. From the Frankenstein notion that there are things we simply were not meant to know, to the censorship and burning of books, a la Fahrenheit 451, to modern debates about recombinant DNA, stem cells, and cloning, there is a strong current of caution, indeed fear, about asking the next question and pushing the boundaries of knowledge, comfort, and our place in the world.

I, and I suspect many of you, reject these notions. You see, for me, asking the next question isn’t simply a matter of curiosity. For me, asking the next question is a way of life, it is an approach to the world and how we live in that world that for me is the only way to go.

Of course many—and I mean billions of people—have decided to live their lives and create their futures based on the authority of one of the mainstream religions, and in so doing accept as true and unchanging the values, laws, prescriptions, and choices found in sacred texts as interpreted by priests, rabbis, and mullahs. Those people have their framework of reality, their vision of life and how to live it, and they are done. They will each tell you sincerely and confidently that their accepted framework is the correct one, be it Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or some other. Reason and logic tell us that all of them cannot possibly be correct—but that doesn’t seem to matter. After all, they will say they have faith.

Faith is supposed to provide answers, and with them, certainty. It’s a kind of forced certainty—although that’s rarely acknowledged—because people of faith simply choose to accept something as true—that’s the very definition of having faith—accepting as true those things that otherwise cannot be proved to be true. Faith works, of course, because, it provides a safe, certain, framework of reality, morality, right, and wrong that people can and do rely upon. And it doesn’t seem to matter much what kind of faith we are talking about. Whether it’s faith in one of the many religions or faith in a Twelve Step Program, that faith will provide a level of certainty, which will itself provide for the comfort, safety, and sense of place and belonging that people seem to require to feel at peace with themselves and their place in the world.

This reminds me of a study I read about years ago concerning young children and how they respond to their environment. It turns out that if you provide a child with firm and certain boundaries, that child will actually venture out farther in exploring his or her environment than one that has been given total freedom to do as he or she wishes. This may seem counter-intuitive, but there is an explanation that makes sense to me.

The first child—the one with the boundaries and the framework—comes from a place of comfort and familiarity, a place of safety and certainty, which provides it with the confidence and ability to take some risks and venture out a little into the world knowing that if something happens, he or she can always come back to a known and safe place. The second child, the one with complete freedom, however, has no such certainty or safety and experiences what an adult might think of as unlimited free choice as a frightening chaos. That child must always decide for him or herself what is safe and unsafe, what is good or bad, and how far to go before going too far. This tends to make most children more cautious and anxious about things and as a result, they tend to hold back more. What applies to children also applies to adults.

Now everybody, whether they have traditional religious faith or not, everybody has a view of the world and their place in it. I have one, Hillary has one, we all have one. That view of the world is one that we trust, that we act upon, and gives to us the same thing that boundaries gave to the young children: a sense of comfort, place, and security in the world. And if we are asking the next question, then we are challenging that view on an almost daily basis, something I think is really difficult to do, but is also necessary.

In this respect, asking the next question symbolizes to me living the responsible, conscious, and intentional life. It is a life with as much responsibility as freedom and a life marked by having the courage and the will to confront, accept, and address the important questions that challenge us both as individuals and communities.

Asking the next question is not so much doubting as it is realizing that most knowledge and most truths are incomplete or inadequate to deal with every situation, especially in our incredibly complex and every changing modern world. Yes, it is important to believe in something, to be invested in each of our world views to the point where we trust and act upon them, but it is also important to know that they could be wrong and that we may need to change our minds, and, in the process, change ourselves. Said another way, not only should you not believe everything you hear, but you must be prepared on a moment’s notice to not believe everything you think.

This is the key to it then: If we create a framework of life that is full of certainty, full of absolute answers, whether from god or from science or some other place, then we will become stuck, we will not grow, will not evolve, will not expand. There may be some comfort there, perhaps even a lot of comfort, but to me it is a sterile, cold, and lifeless place to be. On the other hand, if we choose not to believe anything, if we choose not to invest ourselves emotionally, psychologically, and intellectually in a vision of what life should be, and constantly doubt ourselves and our understanding, then we end up in a shallow place, a place of impermanence, of total ambiguity, with little comfort, little to rely upon, little safety, and little fun. We must somehow be totally committed to our view of life today, but be willing to change tomorrow.

We are creating ourselves and our futures every day. This requires us to act consciously and with intentionality. That’s difficult to do for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that we have to actually pay attention and steer ourselves and our lives rather than simply letting ourselves follow the path of least resistance or some preordained path chosen by others or the path that our brains urge us to take as a result of evolution and our desire for comfort, certainty, and security.

In this regard, asking the next question is a symbol of our ability to rise above the animals that we are, that jumble of instincts, desires, fears, and other programs that evolution has provided to human beings for our survival. Those programs have worked remarkably well and we have not only survived, we have thrived. But now it’s time to change. Those survival techniques, including our incredible propensity for violence and war, as well as our ability to hate and denigrate based on irrational or meaningless distinctions, those tendencies simply are not serving us well any more and we need to do all in our power to lose them, both personally and as communities and nations.

Our ancient myths and mainstream religions contain the strong notion that humans were created by God at the top of the pyramid of life, that God has given people dominion over the Earth, and therefore, whatever we do is OK. This is a dangerous attitude, and one that needs to be lost, along with so much else from our old myths and religions. We need to instead accept that we are a natural part of the natural world, on a par with all life, and that for better or worse, we are the stewards of this planet and need to husband our resources and our home rather than believing that we have permission from God to do whatever we want.

There are two photographs that have been taken in the last 40 years that symbolize for me the new horizons and understandings that we all need to incorporate into our vision of the world and our place in it. The first was taken on Christmas Eve 1968 by the astronauts in the Apollo VIII spacecraft as it orbited around the moon. They turned their TV camera back on the Earth and for the first time in history, the people of Earth saw their home as a small cloud covered globe hanging in space—a jewel in an infinite ocean of black. That picture taught us in an instant that we are all one on this world, our only world, a tiny, fragile world, for which we, and we alone on this planet, are the caretakers.

There was no crystal dome over the Earth separating our world from heaven, as those who wrote the Bible believed; there was no heaven in the blackness of the total vacuum of space. On hundreds of millions of television screens around the globe all that the people saw was a fragile and altogether tiny world, a world put into perspective by the second photograph, I mentioned. Called the Hubble Deep Field, this photograph taken a few years ago by the Hubble Space Telescope and it provides the deepest, most awesome view of the sky ever recorded. The Hubble Deep Field revealed thousands of galaxies and trillions of stars existing in an area of the sky no bigger than a grain of sand held at arms length. The poet William Blake challenged us to imagine the world in a grain of sand: well here are trillions of them—an image so vast it is literally incomprehensible.

When the Apollo VIII astronauts read from the Book of Genesis on that Christmas Eve, it marked for me an important transition, a transition from the old myths, the old comforts, and the incredibly self-centered vision of humans and our planet, to the new vision with its very different place for us in the world, a natural place that was nonetheless fraught with responsibility and will require us to fearlessly, fairly, and honestly confront our future and the future of every living thing on this planet. But my youthful optimism has not been vindicated—at least not yet. I am a part of this church community and do these services in large part because I think that this transition—from the old myths to the new reality—is possibly the most important intellectual and spiritual transition a person can undergo and it is going to take lots of us to change the world.

And that, ultimately, is what asking the next question is about. It is about changing ourselves, our communities, and our world to make a better life for everyone. But before we can make changes, whether they are to ourselves as individuals or our communities, we need to be able to envision those changes and then make them so. To do this we must first and foremost change ourselves.

I therefore agree wholeheartedly with the notion of self-work and trying to make ourselves better than we are and to increase our understanding of ourselves, our relationships, and our place in the world. In that sense, I am a firm believer in what is called positive psychology. Most psychology you hear about is concerned with “fixing” something, be it a phobia, a neurosis, or some other metal ailment. But there is so much more possible in evolving and becoming a better, more understanding, more complete human being than just correcting problems. Positive psychology is about finding ways for us to grow, to become more than we are, and to simply be better people. And one need not be lying on a couch for positive psychology to be a force in one’s life: it can and does happen in the pews of this and other, kindred, churches and many other places as well.

I will conclude by noting that virtually all choices we make about how to live our lives, and what provides meaning and purpose, are uncertain in the sense that we cannot be sure that this path or that path will lead to the best result or have any meaning except to ourselves. There are no certain paths to specific outcomes like happiness, success, meaning and purpose. There is only our own path and the courage to go down it.

My path has been the path of asking the next question, and the question after that, and never stop asking questions. I am grateful to Theodore Sturgeon for introducing me to his Q with an arrow going through it on that snowy winter day so long ago. I chose that path, and it has made all the difference.

Presented June 24, 2007

First Unitarian Universalist Church

Austin, Texas

Revised for Print

Copyright © 2007 by Jim Checkley

Covenant – The UU Glue – Mark Skrabacz

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Mark Skrabacz, Sermons

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© Mark Skrabacz

June 10, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

In December, our choir was invited to sing in a showcase of choral groups at a large Catholic Church in north Austin. The church was brimming with holiday decorations and a packed sanctuary of well over a thousand dressed in colorful Christmas regalia. In attendance were 15 church choirs, each presenting two holiday songs. The choirs sang traditional and non-traditional Christmas carols, mostly in English, accompanied by piano or organ.

Being our different selves, assembled under the leadership of our creative and talented Director of Music, we chose to sing an a cappella chorale in German from a JS Bach cantata with a segue into a Nigerian folk song accompanied by djembe drum and rattles. On the way back to our seats after our performance, I heard several people in the audience remarking about our unique pieces. By the way, they WERE beautiful!

After the concert, a choir member from one of the Episcopal churches struck up a conversation, saying: “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve never really understood just what it is that Unitarian Universalists believe. Since you are part of this Christmas event, are you Christians?”

I replied: “Not exactly. We were – and some still are, yet most of us are not.”

He replied: “How does that work? Do you believe in Jesus or not?”

I said: “Not in an orthodox way. Many of us value his teachings, but few, if any, believe in the orthodox view that he is the only begotten Son of God and of the resurrection on the third day.”

He asked: “Well, if you don’t believe in the resurrection, what about your own immortality.”

I replied: “You’d have to say we’re pretty diverse on that one, too.”

Finally, he said: “Y’all believe in God, right?”

Again I replied, “Not exactly. Many of us do, each in his or her way. Others of us don’t find the concept of God a useful one.”

This kind of conversation stirs up in me curiosity about what UUs present to the world. And not only WHAT, but HOW we present it to the world.

Along the lines of the WHAT, let’s look briefly at Unitarian Universalism: It’s a fact that we do not believe that any religious precept or doctrine must be accepted as true simply because some religious organization, tradition or authority says it is. Neither do we believe that all UUs should have identical beliefs.

The fact is UUs have different beliefs. Since individual freedom of belief is one of our basic principles, it follows that there will be differing beliefs among us. Found in today’s churches are humanism, agnosticism, atheism, theism, liberal Christianity, neo-paganism and earth spiritualism, to name a few. Interestingly, these beliefs are not mutually exclusive. It’s possible to hold more than one. While we are bound by a set of common principles, we leave it to the individual to decide what particular beliefs lead to these principles.

There’s a perception among many, that Unitarian Universalism has no beliefs, especially none in a God. It is much more accurate to say that we do not have a single, defined concept of God in which all UUs are expected to believe. Each member is free to explore and develop an understanding of God that is meaningful to him or her. They’re also free to reject the term or concept altogether.

Diversity in a system is a sign of life. Rich eco-systems, for example, are not monocultures. The multiplicity of expressions found in UUs is a healthy sign. Unlike diversity, divisiveness is a real issue that separates many religious adherents, like the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam. There’s divisiveness among Jewish and Christian sects as well. This issue may be fueled by beliefs, especially those reduced and codified into creeds. The way most people state “I believe in” creates a position that must be defended or expanded at the expense of others. Creedal religions suggest that humankind’s spiritual and religious growth have reached a conclusion. Creeds, rather than encouraging more searching and curiosity, can tend to freeze and halt one’s pilgrimage of faith. Creedal religions forego much of the process and the celebration of new insights, which have been referred to theologically as “continuous revelation”. Creedal worship, as many of us have experienced, is akin to saying: here’s the answer, let’s affirm it in unison.

Unitarian Universalists find comfort in a creedless religion. Although many question that UUs have no center, and without a significant unifying element, some are concerned that we, too, will simply become more fragmented and individualized like our society. To those who are anxious about too much diversity, I say, relax, no one needs to ask whether the forest of many trees has a center. It’s a zone of life to be entered. Just be here, breathe and pay attention. Center or no center, I propose that there IS something that binds us together. As I visit many UU congregations, I have discovered that what keeps participants interested, curious and coming to church is the community, fellowship, each other. That’s a description of our covenant, the commitments and promises that we voluntarily make to each other. For UUs, it’s our covenantal relationship, not creeds, that binds us together.

Being a covenantal faith also has to do with the primacy of freedom, especially a free mind and the freedom of religious belief. For centuries, freethinking religious liberals have been persecuted, ostracized and put in harm’s way because they wouldn’t relinquish their free mind to the prevailing view. So, to protect, celebrate, support and nurture the free mind and the freedom of religious belief, our faith remains a covenantal and creedless religion.

Without professing a creed, it IS more challenging to express who we are and how we interact. Perhaps that’s part of a public relations and marketing issue UUs face.

Today I am drawing attention to something that UUs share, something unique in the vast play of religious expression on our planet, in our quest for an effective faith here and now, and that is our covenantal relationship. In the study of theology, much is made of the covenant between God and humankind. The way UUs covenant makes us unique. Sure it may involve an active relationship to Divine Mystery, and again, it may not. It is, however, a promise we make with each other.

Covenant is the commitment that empowers our mission and vision, and it fuels an extraordinary bond, a solidarity, which makes our experiences Unitarian Universalist, expressing itself in creative Sunday worship, religious education, the annual pledge drive, mindfulness meditation, social action, earth-centered ritual, landscaping or building maintenance, volunteering on the board or singing in the choir. Everything we do is grounded in covenant. We are a covenantal faith.

What does this mean? It means that our individualized searches for a theological center need to be understood as a search for the solidarity and mutuality that can carry us through an increasingly individualized lifestyle, energizing our devoted action as a smaller committed community on behalf of the larger global community.

How can we mature in our individualized and collective search to new levels of effective faith? How about by re-imagining the way we speak of religious individualism and dissent. We are right to extol the lone, courageous voice that holds out against the follies of groupthink. We celebrate the dissenter who begs to differ when the crowd is gung ho for a course of action that will cause untold harm to life. Behind the lone prophet who speaks up, there is a group ? WE celebrate the lone prophet because there is a WE here ? there is a whole movement of us who hold to values that are fragile, dissident, and life-giving.

Theologians suggest that it is always a mistake to imagine that lone prophets are really alone. Take Martin Luther King, Jr., for example. He galvanized a movement ? yes ? but his power did not come from the singularity of his vision, or a mere exercise of individual conscience. He voiced the conscience of a whole body of people, a community that shared the experience of racism and had a long legacy of resistance and hope. He wasn’t singing solo. He was singing from the midst of the choir.

It might be helpful to think of Jesus this way, as well. It is a mistake to see him as an isolated, heroic individual. It is more accurate to see him as the crest of a wave, the sparkling foam breaking brightly from the force of a whole ocean moving and swelling up from underneath. I sense among Unitarian Universalists these days a deep desire to affirm the ocean, and our covenantal community, that is welling up within the voices of individual conscience that we celebrate.

As meaningful as our mission, principles and purposes are, these are only as good as our covenant to embody them. They’ll only be seen and make an impact as we gather together in “covenant to affirm and promote them”. We also make another commitment (and I quote again) “We enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support.” Our community is grounded in covenant. We rise and fall together.

One deeply radical implication of this is that it is impossible to be a Unitarian Universalist alone. In the Men’s work I’ve been doing for many years, we have a saying: “You have to do your work, but you can’t do it alone.” This holds true for UUs, too. We must do our work in relationship with other Unitarian Universalists! The only way to be a UU is to be part of a UU congregation and to make and receive promises and commitments to our collective vision, mission, principles, purposes and, yes, most importantly, to each other.

About the HOW that Unitarian Universalism shows up in the world – it is an issue of intent. How does the congregation intend to grow and respond to the of influx new members? What are the agreements and boundaries? What are the action steps? How do we do this as UUs? Unitarian Universalists do have a very contemporary and timely message, yet how safe do we feel in our own container of mutual trust and support to step up and shine our lights from the hilltop?We must integrate our diversity as a covenant people, addressing our deepest concerns in an atmosphere of acceptance, love and commitment. Then getting the word out will happen naturally. We must mature to a deep, real and believable level of community that naturally overflows into and communicates with the vast ocean of life.

Cultural trends indicate suspicion of religious communities. So most people opt for the admission of being spiritual rather than religious, because of the implied institutional aspects of religions. Many people today in Austin choose to follow their own unique and individualistic path instead of a community one. Many of these people might find a supportive community among us.

Individually, we, as UUs, are each finding our own way. Yet this message is designed to call our attention to the little wonders created for us to find together as a covenant community ? as diversity in unity. Are we undervaluing or dismissing the opportunities provided in the corporate and collective contexts,

like our church, as a shared experience of curiosity, grace and presence?

For me, and maybe this is why I do what I do, I have experienced my most empowering and grace-filled moments as an individual in community, in congregational worship, in sharing as a covenant group, on weekend retreats or week-long social action projects, where we are gifted with the opportunity to work side-by-side, to cooperate, to collaborate, to bond.

Our covenant community is bound by common principles and promises that empower us to share lives together in the promise of mutual trust and support. How are you participating? What talents and concerns do you bring to our table? How are you serving and being served?

We can be devoted to a specific religious practice – Christian prayer, Buddhist meditation, or pagan ritual (to name a few) – but as UUs we do not hold the view that there is one religion that encompasses the exclusive, final truth for all times and places, not even Unitarian Universalism. UU-ism is confident that revelation is a continuous process and is not sealed for all time.

The sacred impulse towards justice, compassion and equity moves in us, like an ocean, in many times and places, in myriad ways that call to us and teach us. We can see this world as tragically flawed, wondrously gifted, or both of the above, but we cannot hold the view that salvation is to be found solely beyond this world – in some life after death or a world other than this world.

While remaining open to mysteries that may be revealed beyond the grave or in realms beyond what we know at present, Unitarian Universalism is clear that the Ultimate is present here and now, and can be experienced, even if only partially, within the frame of our mortal existence. This means we do not hold to a hope that is only attained in the sweet by and by. We hold that this world, this life, these bodies are the dwelling place of the Sacred. This is the essence of our covenantal bond. Now is the time. Here is the place for our action, for our interaction.

Here’s a vision for us, an image of expanding the continual growing process of our covenant, the continuous revelation of our calling as divine-humans. We might describe our current level of maturation as a congregation as a pool of water. As we continue to affirm our trusting and supporting covenant among ourselves, and we endeavor to reach out to others and connect with all beings, welcoming them into our hearts and lives, we expand the boundaries of our pool so that it becomes a lake.

As we choose to honor life, especially as it is most challengingly revealed in all our familiar circumstances, and to live fully with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength ? as we do everything in our power to assure that our covenant embraces life and matures in practice and depth, our lake begins to flow like a river. And as we together seek our life of curious faith, we will find naturally that the flow of our river reaches the magnificence of a grand collective of all beings as great as an ocean, diverse, expansive and vast in its influence for good, for ourselves, for all, for Life.

Amen.

Acknowledgments to Heretics’ Faith by Frederic John Muir, The Unitarians and the Universalists by David Robinson, and One Hundred Questions by Steve Edington.

A Liberal Reclamation of Natural Law – Eric Hepburn

by Posted in Audio available, Eric Hepburn, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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© Eric Hepburn

June 3, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

Invocation

I’d like to open this morning with a passage from the Martin Luther King Jr. sermon Rediscovering Lost Values:

“The first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations.” In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws. I’m not so sure we all believe that.

We never doubt that there are physical laws of the universe that we must obey. We never doubt that. And so we just don’t jump out of airplanes or jump off of high buildings for the fun of it – we don’t do that. Because we unconsciously know that there is a final law of gravitation, and if you disobey it you’ll suffer the consequences – we know that. Even if we don’t know it in its Newtonian formulation, we know it intuitively, and so we just don’t jump off the highest building in (Austin) for the fun of it – we don’t do that. Because we know that there is a law of gravitation which is final in the universe. If we disobey it we’ll suffer the consequences.

But I’m not so sure if we know that there are moral laws just as abiding as the physical law. I’m not so sure about that. I’m not so sure if we really believe that there is a law of love in this universe, and that if you disobey it you’ll suffer the consequences.”

Prayer:

Please join me in an attitude of prayer, as we share this reading from Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking

so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,

we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,

our presence automatically liberates others.

Sermon : A liberal reclamation of natural law

When Dr. King argued in our opening reading that there are moral laws that are just as abiding as the physical laws, what laws is he referring to? In order to be clear in our consideration of an answer to this question, we must start by being clear about the nature of morality. Morality is the distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil. So, what Dr. King is arguing is that just as there is a law of gravity that describes the inevitable relationship of attraction between two masses, there are laws of morality that describe the inevitable relationships between right and wrong, between good and evil.

Classical natural law was the first systematic attempt to explore these relationships. It was based on the idea that there is a human nature and a human essence which defines how human beings must live in order to have a good life. Aristotle’s formulation of the first principle of natural law was that one should do good and avoid evil. However, if we survey the history of natural law, we can’t help but notice some of the dogmatic and inhumane positions that have been taken in its name. We can look back to Aristotle and read of natural law used in defense of slavery. We can survey contemporary natural law thinkers and read of opposition to abortion, opposition to gay rights, and support for economic disparity. When we view this checkered history, we might reasonably assume that the idea of natural law is simply one more archaic holdover from a bygone past when humankind had little understanding of the world and relied on inflexible and absolutist proscriptions to govern social life. We might reject the very idea of natural law and embrace the relativistic ethics of postmodern academia. But I suggest to you, that tossing out the idea of natural law along with its substantial historical baggage is a case of tossing out the baby with the bathwater, because, perhaps more than ever, a reclaimed version of natural law could provide the very anchor that liberalism seems to be so badly in need of.

So, let’s start with a fresh look at the core concepts of natural law in light of our current religious and scientific knowledge. The basis for our revised concept of natural law is simply the idea that there are rules or laws which govern the operation of the universe. This proposition is generally accepted when we are dealing with the analytical categories of the hard sciences; with laws of gravity, laws of inertia, laws of ecology, laws of genetics, or laws of biology. But when we attempt to formulate what natural laws govern humanity, this is when things have tended to become more controversial. If there is natural law that applies to all living things or natural law that applies specifically to humanity, perhaps these constitute moral law as Dr. King spoke about. The question is: how can we discern these laws? It is true that we are not exempt from the laws of gravity, or inertia, or relativity, which effect all matter in our universe. It is also true that we are not exempt from the laws of ecology or genetics which govern all forms of life as we know it. But human natural law, moral law which applies exclusively to our species, must itself be rooted in those aspects that are uniquely yet universally human.

Aristotle’s analysis identified reason as the key human virtue that distinguishes us from other animals. Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and the other major figures in natural law thinking have all followed suit. So, if it is reason, if it is our advanced capacity for logical and speculative thought, that differentiates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom, then it is here that we will find the core of a human natural law.

Our contemporary understanding of human biology and cognitive science, as well as the contextual issues of biological and social evolution, provide us with important insights that were unavailable to the classical thinkers. For instance, it is quite clear to us now that the human ability to reason does not develop much beyond the level of our primate cousins without the acquisition of human language and symbol systems. Language is the cognitive toolkit required for human level reasoning and we are not born with it, we must acquire it through learning. What makes us human is that we learn, and what and how we learn determines our humanity. The evolution of human knowledge and culture has become much more critical to our survival than our biological evolution.

Research in developmental psychology indicates that our worldview and moral development proceed in relatively linear stages, for example from pre-conventional, to conventional, to post-conventional. In addition, there is strong evidence that the average mode of moral development of a population is strongly associated with the types of social structures, institutions, and cultures that the population will have. Along these related arcs of individual development over a lifetime and social evolution over recorded human history, we find opportunities for a new take on natural law and a new story arc for humanity.

Just as most classical natural law has been rooted in the Christian theology of the Fall, in the presumption that humanity is imperfect and flawed, in the assumption that we are incapable of overcoming the taint of original sin without divine intervention; so our reclaimed natural law must be rooted in the ideology that humanity has awakened to an amazing capacity to learn, to understand, to act, and to create. We are here to learn about our universe and about ourselves, and as we learn, as we understand, as we act, and as we create, we are perfected. The ancient Hebrew understanding of the word perfect was not a state, it was not a condition, it was a process. It is this dynamic process of continually learning, understanding, acting, and creating that I believe is the fundamental human natural law.

The first corollary to this law is humility. Humility is the recognition that there is no end to this process of learning, no end to this process of perfection. Our perception of our place within this process may be accurate or it may be wishful thinking. We must be assertive about acting on our beliefs, but open about the ultimate rightness of those beliefs. Like good scientists we must remember that our understandings are only theories and that they may need editing or be disproved as we continue to learn and as our understanding grows. Developmental stagnation often occurs when we forget humility, when we cherish our current theories more than we cherish learning, when we believe we have already learned something, or don’t need to learn any more. These failures of humility happen when we forget that it is our essence to keep learning, when we forget that what we already know is just tentative, just a bridge to the next realization.

The second corollary to the fundamental human law is compassion. If humility is the recognition that we never stop learning, compassion is the recognition that the same is true for our brothers and sisters. Compassion, in this context, is remembering that it is more important to be peaceful than to be right. A focus on being right produces an emphasis on the other person being wrong, it short-circuits the possibility of constructive dialogue, where people can share their understandings and potentially reconcile their disagreements. It is failures of compassion that produce most developmental stagnation at the social scale. When groups and individuals in society become convinced that they are right, that others are wrong, that they have learned all there is, or all that they need to know, then they stop producing open and honest dialogue with one another. While this critique applies to much of the religious right in this country, it also applies to the dogmatic left. Dogmatism is, by definition, both a failure in humility and a failure in compassion.

As we engage successfully in this process of perfection, of learning and acting, then we progress toward enlightenment. These elements of learning, understanding, acting, and creating make up an iterative process of human engagement. In order to work effectively we must learn through observation, understand through abstraction, and apply what we have learned through action, thereby creating our best version of reality. Our moral development stagnates when this process becomes broken, when we fail to learn, when we fail to understand what we have learned, when we fail to act on our understandings, when we have these failures, we fail to create the best world of which we are capable. Because we are not powerless, our greatest fear has come true, we are powerful beyond measure.

Those who have realized their power, who have let their light shine out to the world, they are the prophets in our human story. They are the beacons of moral development who blaze ahead into uncharted territories, showing us the way. They taught us myths when we knew only of the hunt and the cave. They taught us to love all our human brothers and sisters when we knew only of the love of kinship or the love of the tribe. They taught us science when we had turned our myths into facts. They taught us compassion when our hearts were filled with greed. They taught us humility when we knew that we were right. Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed- Martin Luther King Jr., Tenzin Gyatso the fourteenth Dalai Lama, Mohandas K. Gandhi- and how many others whose names are lost in the past, and how many more who will bless us in the future? They are out there among us as we speak, waiting to teach us the next lessons. They are the outliers on the bell-curve of moral development, those who have managed to evolve further than their peers, the bodhisattvas of humanity, hoping for the chance to lend us a helping hand as we labor to live up to our status as the radiant children of god.

If we reject the story of the Fall and its implication of our inherent imperfection, if we embrace the idea of awakening, if we embrace the idea of our perfectibility, then we must embrace the open ended nature of our own story. Once again we have the benefit of knowledge and insights of which the classical thinkers were unaware, we know, even though it is very difficult to understand, that our universe is old beyond imagining, that it is vast beyond our comprehension, that countless species of life have come into being and passed into extinction on this very planet we call home, that the timescales of our human civilizations are but blinks of the eye in the history of life on this planet. We have learned these things together, we struggle to understand them, and one day we must act on this understanding to continue the creation of our story. Right now our story is but a tiny chapter in the tale of this universe. How large a part we will ultimately play is up to us, for we are powerful beyond measure.

We learn, we apply what we learn to our universe, to our societies, and to ourselves, we recreate the universe as we go. This is the nature of our gift, the nature of our humanity. When we apply this gift to the betterment of ourselves, to the betterment of our brothers and sisters, to the betterment of our environments and ecologies, to the betterment of our governments and institutions, then we do good. We promote the fullest version of humanity that is possible in that moment. Then, we are powerful beyond measure. Then, we are the radiant children of god.