Watertight Integrity

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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© Matt Tittle

22 February 2004

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

READING

As we embark on the subject of integrity this morning, I’d like to start with a reading from early 19th century Universalist minister Hosea Ballou, which I believe, illustrates a liberal religious understanding of integrity:

“I know it is frequently contended that we ought to love God for what God is, and not for what we receive from God; that we ought to love holiness for holiness’s sake, and not for any advantage such a principle is to us. This is what I have often been told, but what I never could see any reason for, or propriety in. I am asked if I love an orange; I answer I never tasted of one; but then I am told I must love the orange for what it is! Now I ask, is it possible for me either to like or dislike the orange, in reality, until I taste it? Well, I taste of it and I like it. Do you like it? says my friend. Yes I reply, its flavor is exquisitely agreeable. But that will not do, says my friend; you must not like it because its taste is agreeable, but you must like it because it is an orange. If there be any propriety in what my friend says, it is out of my sight.”

SERMON

This subject of integrity is a complex one, but at the same time, quite simple. Everyone is FOR integrity, everyone wants to HAVE integrity, everyone demands integrity from others.

When something big is at stake or of ultimate importance, then we insist on integrity. We want our leaders to have impeccable character, we want corporations, and government, and schools, and the church to be institutions that are beyond reproach. But when it comes to the small things, well, then it might be ok to stretch the rules. We learn to fib rather than hold fast to our principles if we believe their might be some benefit, or we don’t think anyone else will suffer. The old adage of “what they don’t know won’t hurt them” is a familiar one. So what if I stretch the truth a little on my income taxes. So what if I was undercharged. So what if they gave me back too much change. So what if I speed a little. Nobody is getting hurt, are they?? Integrity is easy to think about, but I believe it is more difficult in practice. Maybe we don’t spend enough time figuring out HOW to have integrity.

So, today I will talk about several aspects of living a life of integrity. These are maintaining wholeness, freedom as a fundamental value, acting on the courage of our convictions, and the willingness to take risks. Wholeness, freedom, courage, and risk. These are all central to integrity in our spiritual and personal lives.

First, we will deal with wholeness. By definition, integrity is the act of maintaining wholeness. Integrity shares the same Latin root as the word integer, or whole number. A person of integrity is a whole person. There’s an interesting 19th century form of the word that illustrates this point. It is “Integralism,” which means “the belief that one’s religious convictions ought to dictate their social and political actions.” – Integrating the religious, social and political aspects of our lives. This is maintaining wholeness.

While we are thinking about definitions . . . I’ve often used the word integrous as an adjective to describe the quality of having integrity. But I’ve noticed that no one else ever uses this form.

Being the educational product of the South Carolina public school system, I often question my own grasp of the English language. You won’t find “integrous” in any American dictionary. But, it is in the Oxford English Dictionary – as an obsolete and rare form. How ironic, or how unfortunate, that we don’t have a commonly used adjectival form of integrity in English. So I will continue to use integrous, in my own hope that it comes back into to our common vocabulary.

So, we have the first concept of wholeness. The second aspect of integrity, especially in liberal religion, is the concept of freedom. Freedom is at the core of Unitarian Universalism. We have emerged from the free church tradition — rejecting prescribed doctrines and creeds, while simultaneously affirming freedom of belief and freedom of association. In 1960, on the eve of the consolidation of Unitarianism and Universalism in the U.S., Rev. David Parke, Unitarian historian and then minister of the Unitarian Church of Peterborough, New Hampshire, addressed the issue of integrity in Unitarian Universalism in a series of sermons. He noted that some of us find fulfillment in the fact that we are free. Others of us find fulfillment not in freedom, but in faith. For the first group, faith is the means to a life of integrity, freedom is the end. For the second group, freedom is the means, faith is the end. Parke said in 1960 that humanists fell into the first category, while Unitarian Christians fell in the second category. He said that Unitarian Universalists – then a new breed – fell somewhere in between. Faith, freedom, and fulfillment — three aspects of integrity for a liberal religious faith; not unlike “Integralism” and integrating the religious, social, and political aspects of our lives. The elegance of Unitarian Universalism is that we are not boxed into absolute categories when it comes to freedom, faith, and fulfillment.

This brings me to the third primary element of integrity – the courage of our convictions. We have addressed the essence of integrity -which is wholeness. We have addressed core of integrity in liberal religion, which is freedom. The courage of our convictions addresses the question of HOW we live integrous lives.

In his book, titled Integrity, Stephen Carter explains that living an integrous life requires discerning what we believe is right and what we believe is wrong. At the foundation of integrity is our values system. Values systems are represented by our emphasis on freedom, by our seven Unitarian Universalist principles, by the Torah and the Talmud of Judaism, by the gospel teachings of Jesus for the Christian and so on, as each religious tradition has tried to discern that which is of utmost importance.

Beyond knowing what we believe, integrity includes acting on our convictions, even at personal risk. Our own UU principles are a covenant to affirm and promote – these are actions which we agree in principle to take on.

The courage of our convictions also includes articulating our faith — openly saying that we are acting on our understanding of right and wrong. Even if our saying so is unpopular. We must be willing to tie our actions to our principles and say “I’m doing X because I believe Z.” This is what Hosea Ballou was trying to illustrate in his example of loving an orange. We don’t do things because we are told to, or for the sake of doing them. Living with integrity means that we understand what we believe, have the courage to act on our beliefs, and are able to articulate our convictions even in the face of criticism and disagreement with others.

I spent many years being openly critical of Christianity because I felt that its foundation was weak. But when I truly came to understand what I believed as a Unitarian Universalist, I realized that I could not, with integrity, dismiss Christianity or any other belief system that has as its basic assumption the goodwill of everyone. I recognized that Christianity was central to the lives of my mother and father in law, and that they are the most integrous and most service oriented people I know. I know what I believe and why. I act on my convictions. I let others know why I am doing so, but I must also hear and accept the differences and whys of others’ beliefs.

So, now we have expanded our definition of integrity beyond the idea of wholeness, beyond seeing integrity in our value of freedom, to conviction in understanding right and wrong, acting on those convictions, and being able to articulate our faith.

But we are not finished yet. I’d like to add the idea of risk-taking to our understanding of integrity, especially as it relates to liberal religion. My experience with risk-taking comes from an unlikely source, but I find a certain synchronicity it all of it.

I’ve been keeping you in suspense with the title of this sermon – Watertight Integrity. I learned about risk taking as a component of integrity in the Navy. I spent 11 years as an active duty Naval Officer, and recently retired from the Naval Reserve. Four and a half of my 20 years of service were aboard ships. In ships and submarines, WATERTIGHT integrity is essential. Without it, the ship risks sinking. Each door and hatch is lined with a rubber seal, treated with petroleum jelly and tested periodically for its integrity. This ensures that there won’t be any leaks into the next compartment in the event that one side is flooded. Some compartments are called voids and they stay constantly sealed, so that the ship can float. In a submarine it is a little trickier, because they purposely fill these voids with water, and then expel it so that the sub can surface or dive.

We constantly trained in the Navy to ensure that our watertight integrity remained intact. During General Quarters, the level of alert that we go to when danger is imminent, all doors and hatches are closed and sealed. No one is allowed to move around the ship and open any of these doors. We would time how long it took to report “Condition Zebra,” Meaning that everyone had reached their station and all watertight hatches and doors had been secured! There is a Navy ship somewhere right now who is going through this drill, I am certain. They are testing their integrity.

But, Condition Zebra is an extreme condition in which we take no risks. Everything is locked tight. We don’t go to that condition of watertight integrity very often and don’t stay in it for very long. So, we also had condition Yoke, Xray, and modified Zebra – all different degrees of watertight integrity. Each hatch was marked with an X, Y or Z and allowed to be open at certain times and not at others. Just like in life. Sometimes we open doors and take a calculated risk, sometimes we don’t.

Fundamentalist or conservative faiths might be considered to be more often in condition Zebra, relying more on certainty and allowing for very little risk. But they deny their wholeness in the very act of trying to maintain it – People don’t function as well if they are constantly locked down. As believers in a liberal tradition we allow for less rigidity in our knowledge and beliefs, and are more affirming of others’ beliefs. We take calculated risks, but need to have a keen understanding of why we are doing so, and a plan for when we might tighten up a little.

We often TALK about integrity in terms of honesty, of right and wrong. We THINK of it in terms of shoulds and should nots, cans and cannots – but we PRACTICE integrity in degrees. It isn’t PRACTICAL to stay in Condition Zebra all of the time.

Part of integrity is attending to life and to being whole, knowing what is going on around us and what watertight condition we are in at any given time!

Integrity isn’t a question of either/or, it isn’t a question of should or shouldn’t, can or cannot. Integrity is more complex than that. Critics might say this is a slippery slope – .that it is moral relativism to explain away integrity as other than pure and certain. To them I say, we can lock down every door. Or we can live our lives paying attention to our wholeness, maintaining our commitment to freedom, having courage in our convictions, and knowing when to take risks.

Know what you believe. Act courageously on your beliefs. Say publicly and without shame why you are doing so. Have the sense of awareness to know when to take calculated risks, all the while maintaining your wholeness. If we do these things perhaps we will be more integrous people.

May it be so.

———————

Copyright © 2003 – Dr. Matthew D. Tittle, Ph.D.

Except where otherwise cited, the material presented here is the intellectual property of the author. Use and reproduction of this material for non-profit personal, academic, or religious purposes is encouraged with appropriate citation. Any other use requires the expressed consent of the author.

On the Outside Looking In

by Posted in Guest Speakers, Sermons

© Becky Harding

17 August 2003

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

SERMON

“Atticus stood up and walked to the end of the porch. When he completed his examination of the wisteria vine, he strolled back to me.

First of all, he said, if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird

It’s 1:28 a.m. on Wednesday, April 23rd and I am sitting in chamber room 105 at the state capitol building and I am thinking about this passage from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I am waiting to testify against a house bill that, if passed, would remove all foster children from the homes of any person deemed homosexual. Earlier in the evening, state representative Robert Talton introduced this legislation and actually said that the children of gays and lesbians would be better off in orphanages than in their homes. I am sincerely trying to understand things from his point of view but failing miserably.

Weeks later, I am reading Reason for Hope, by Jane Goodall and I stumble on a possible explanation for Mr. Talton’s attitudes. Goodall suggests that “cultural speciation in humans means that the members of one group, the in-group, see themselves as different from members of another group, the out-group. In its extreme form, cultural speciation leads to the dehumanizing of out-group members, so that they may come to be regarded almost as members of a different species. This frees group members from the inhibitions and social sanctions that operate within the group and enables them to direct acts toward those others which would not be tolerated within the group. Slavery and torture at one end of the scale, ridicule and ostracism at the other.”

This certainly helps me understand why Mr. Talton, as chimpanzees for thousands of years before him, feels the need to figuratively twist my arms. His legislation failed, by the way. When asked what do gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people have in common, transgender professor Jenny Finney responded, “We all can get beat up by the same people.” Dehumanizing indeed.

I am flooded with thoughts. How did I get here? Here, in a chamber room at the Texas State Capitol. Here, in the pulpit of the First Unitarian Universalist Church. Where have we come from? We all carry legacy of some sort. What’s our role in the apparently second civil rights movement? And where are we going? Was that the Newsweek cover asking, “Is gay marriage next?”

With apologies to Sappho and Greek art, I’ll start with June 27, 1969. Legend has it that the Greenwich Village tavern, the Stonewall Inn, was frequently raided by lackadaisical police officers who would gently nudge the queer crowd to move on to another locale. But that night, June 27th, stricken with grief over the death of the beloved Judy Garland, the folks, not only refused to move on, but became increasingly agitated at the thought of not being permitted to gather and mourn their diva. The riot lasted three days, and the modern g,l,b,t revolution began. Before the Stonewall riots, about a dozen gay publications existed and in just a few years, over 400 organizations and publications were out and about.

You can easily identify the club members by the rainbow stickers and flags plastered everywhere – a tribute to Judy Garland who helped start it all. Remember her theme song was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”?

And if you don’t see any rainbow strips on cars, you might find a pink triangle. If a prisoner was deemed homosexual, Nazi concentration camp officials would have a pink triangle sewn on his shirt. A black triangle identified lesbians. These symbols have, obviously, been reclaimed to honor the legacy of those before us.

And, if you are wandering through Home Depot with your good friend, Juanita, and her “gaydar” spots two women talking, she might nudge you and say, “family.” This code word comes from the concept that so many members of the g,l,b,t community have been rejected by their biological families, so they claim friends as family. Yes, the dance floor is always overrun when “We Are Family” comes on the sound system.

In the early years of this movement, so many members felt isolated. So a joyous, once-a-year, tradition of PRIDE festivals began. Simply, this is a gathering where folks can be themselves and celebrate. Music, dancing, and food abound as do paraders. The idea, naturally, is that there is nothing to be ashamed of and why not be proud of yourself. Stop the dehumanizing, as it were.

So in the early days, role models were sorely lacking. Liberace used a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach. Elton John even proclaimed bisexuality for years in fear of hostile reactions. And, if you were a g,l,b,t teen during this time, it would be difficult to find any role models in a mainstream movie.

Certainly, films were made. As early as 1963, Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour featured a young Shirley McClain wrestling with her feelings for another woman. Her character, of course, upon deciding she is a lesbian, shoots herself. But lesbians didn’t fret because they got a gift in the legendary film, Personal Best. Exotic Mariel Hemingway experiments with a relationship with another female track teammate and her character doesn’t die, there is that career ending knee surgery.

The gentlemen didn’t fare much better. The compassionate yet somber Long Time Companion chronicles the deaths of a group of friends from AIDS. Huge strides were made in understanding the gay community when Philadelphia, a beautiful and loving film, premiered, yet Tom Hanks does, indeed, die a difficult death in that film as well.

The transgendered world was opened up to us all so much more with the poignant, Boys Don’t Cry. As you can tell, the not so subtle message is that g,l.b.t people do exist in the world, but it isn’t an easy life. Until lately.

Slowly and surely, winds of change have blown in and we can see The Bird Cage on television or the wildly popular Will and Grace. And no one dies in the awesome Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, a delightful and kind makeover show featuring five fabulous divas.

G,l,b,t supporting characters abound on Friends, ER, Spin City, Dawson’s Creek etc. And let us not ever forget the first million dollar Survivor winner was out and proud, Richard Hatch.

So what caused the change? Lots of complex elements. Acceptance came in small doses over time.

On October 12, 1998, a young gay man was hung up on a fence post and bludgeoned to death with a pistol. Matthew Shepard’s death shocked and saddened almost everyone – gay and straight. Maybe people across America put themselves in his shoes – or his parent’s shoes and a new commitment to tolerance and compassion seemed to be born on that cold plain in Wyoming.

So where are we now? This summer we have seen the Episcopalian church elect the first openly gay bishop. The Rev, Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, took the office with his partner standing next to him. The parishioners said they chose Robinson simply because he was the best candidate.

This summer, the United States Supreme Court overturned all sodomy laws in the Lawrence versus Texas case. According to the Lesbian, Gay Rights Lobby, “the sodomy law is used as a front for all brands of discrimination” When the Court overturned the law, it also took the opportunity to overturn all of the sodomy laws in the United States, further protecting the right to privacy between two consenting adults.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy, reading from the bench, said, gays “?are entitled to respect for their private lives.” Some of the gay activists and lawyers wept as they listened. This ruling gives us constitutional protection – and can be sited in other g,l,b,t court battles.

According to the July 7th edition of Newsweek, “the battle over gay marriage, gay adoption, gays in the military and gays in the workplace – will be fought out court to court, state to state for years to come. Nonetheless, there is no question that the Lawrence case represents a sea of change, not just in the Supreme Court, a normally cautious institution, but also in society as a whole.” David Garrow, a legal scholar at Emory University said, “The case is maybe one of the two most important opinions of the last 100 years.”

For the first time in my lifetime, the talk of gay marriage seems very attainable. Gay marriage that would give my partner and I our civil right – a marriage license that gives individuals access to the responsibilities, protections and support government provides to families.

We are fortunate that her company offers health benefits to same sex couples, but what about most of our friends whose companies don’t? There are many advantages to gay marriage but healthcare tops my list

All of this is wonderful and I don’t want to spoil the celebration, but you and I both know that backlash is a powerful wave. The conservative forces are going to, in all probability, push for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Jerry Falwell has said, “the only way to put the traditional biblical family form of one man married to one woman safely out of reach of future courts and legislatures, is to pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” Dehumanizing indeed.

My friends, I think we are preparing for a war. So what can you and I do? Clearly, we all can reduce the climate of fear and create an environment of acceptance. Those of us in the g,l,b,t community need to be “out,” showing the world, our next door neighbors, the letter carrier, that there is nothing to fear from our community. Our similarities are probably more abundant than our differences.

The straight community can speak up when “dehumanizing” behaviors prevail. Even the smallest acts send a message. So I was glad to se that when Jeremy Shockley called Dallas Cowboys coach Bill Parcells, “a homo,” most people were disgusted. But not enough. Cathy Renna of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said, “It’s a reflection that it’s still ok to use that language.” Esera Tuaolo, who came out after he played nine seasons in the NFL added, “To the players and coaches, it’s no big deal, but for someone like me, it is a big deal. That’s one of the things we need to change. It’s a spoken language we need to change.”

As a school teacher, I suspect I heard the word “gay” or “lesbian” or some other slang form used in a derogatory way nearly every day I taught. Each time, I would stop and take the time to, in a nurturing way, teach the child a little bit of tolerance. The sad piece is that most of the time, these children really didn’t think they were saying something wrong.

We must all speak up! A good friend of mine was telling another mother about her two and a half year old daughter’s kissing episode with another little girl and the mother smiled and said, “Oh, don’t worry – that’s age appropriate.” My friend smiled back and said, “Yes. At any age.” That’s speaking up.

Of course, when the amendment process heats up, we must all join together and be activists. Write letters, make phone calls, send emails, join the Lesbian and Gay Rights Lobby. Get involved and get other people you love involved as well because GAY RIGHTS ARE CIVIL RIGHTS! In the days of Apartheid, Nelson Mandela argued, “No one is really free until all those in South Africa are free.” I believe that applies here! No one can enjoy the freedom of governmental rights until all of us can. Maybe this is the second wave of the civil rights movement. I remember white people died beside black people. Hopefully no one will die this time.

“An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness,” Margaret Atwood suggests. We must use tolerance and compassion to overcome ignorance and hatred. The Taoist believe “these three qualities are invaluable – a sense of equality, material simplicity, and compassion for all creatures.” The Delany Sisters, two African-American women who lived well into their 100’s wrote, “The most important thing is to teach your child compassion. A complete human being is one who can put himself in another’s shoes.”

It is important to remember that Matthew Shepard’s parents forgave their son’s killers. In that spirit, I have invited Rep. Talton to my home for dinner. Twice. So he can see us, know us, and not fear us. So far, I haven’t heard back but I’m going to keep trying.

As I drove home from the evening at the capitol, I asked myself why was I there? What did I really accomplish? The answer is simple.

I was there because of Claire. Claire is my two and a half year old daughter who I love very very much. I want the world to be a better place for her. I dream a world for Claire where she can marry anyone of any gender, not just someone approved by a small group of small minded people. I dream a world for Claire filled with tolerance and compassion for EVERYONE. Dream with me. Dream with me.

All Things Buffy

by Posted in Guest Speakers, Jim Checkley, Sermons

© Jim Checkley

August 3, 2003

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

SERMON

When Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended its seven-year run this past May, I knew I would make it the subject of a service. My first thought was to call it “Requiem for a Slayer.” But I quickly realized that Buffy did not need a mass for the dead, but rather a proclamation for the living. Because while Buffy the Vampire Slayer is ostensibly a show about the supernatural battle between good and evil, at its heart, it is really an exploration of all things human, a celebration of the best that we can be.

I’ve seen all the episodes of the series – some more than once. I saw most of them on Tuesday nights with my daughter Kathleen, who earlier sang for you the love ballad from the musical episode “Once More With Feeling.” She and I had a standing date for a number of years and watched the show together as she passed through her teen years. The show acted as a wonderful catalyst for our relationship during those years. Subjects like high school, dating, peer pressure, drugs, sex, friends, or lack thereof, rejection, personal responsibility, moral choices, loyalty, love, all these and more were explored on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Now I know it’s just a TV show, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer was special. And you don’t have to take my word for it. BTVS, as it’s known on the Internet, has generated over 2000 Internet sites, many of them devoted to the deeper aspects of the show. There are two scholarly books I am aware of: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy and Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both are collections of essays by noted academics on subjects like philosophy, ethics, sociology and religion. I had a nice e-mail correspondence with one of the authors, a professor of philosophy, regarding issues of love and friendship on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and William James’ philosophy, in particular his “will to believe.” There’s even an Internet site called slayage.com where papers that didn’t make the books are posted for reading and comment – and more are posted all the time.

During the months leading to the series finale, people were coming out of the woodwork to praise BTVS. The Sunday Times had a spread written by a woman who did the TV beat for a Boston paper similar in spirit to our Austin Chronicle. I had to laugh – there probably wasn’t anybody at the blue-blood NY Times who knew enough about Buffy to write the piece. The Austin American Statesman also did a wrap-up piece, one that featured where the best parties were in town. That is where I copied the handout you received today. Buffy is the best show that wasn’t accepted by the mainstream – at least not until its demise.

Let’s face it, the name of the show does not inspire confidence and series creator Joss Whedon admits that the studio begged him to change the name, but he refused. Plus, Buffy the TV series was spawned from a rather mediocre 1992 movie of the same name. Joss Whedon wrote that movie too, but did not care for how it turned out. So when 20th Century Fox gave Whedon the opportunity to do Buffy on TV, he jumped at the chance.

And the difference was remarkable: the dialogue was hip, crisp, and articulate. Hillary, who has now seen two episodes and is a convert, asked me to emphasize the humor. There is humor, lots of humor, but the show took itself seriously enough that all the supernatural aspects were played straight up. That is, BTVS is not a spoof. This combination of wildly creative, supernatural material explored in an honest, straight forward way produced a marvelous canvas upon which to explore what it means to be human, and how to best live one’s life in the company of others. Amidst the demons and the vampires, the deep humanity of the show shined like a beacon. I have always said that science fiction and fantasy provide the best opportunity to explore our humanity. Buffy the Vampire Slayer proved the point with style and aplomb.

BTVS is a show primarily about teenagers as they moved through high school and college, but it was not just a teen show. The teen years are an intense time in our lives and during those years we make choices and experience events that set our path for much of the rest of our lives. And I frankly don’t get it when people reject out of hand shows or movies that focus on teens or the teen years. While it is obviously possible to portray the vapid, hormone driven side of teen life, and a lot of Hollywood producers do just that, it is also possible to use the teen years and the choices they present as a rich canvas to explore life and the struggle we all face to become the persons we want to be. In this sense Buffy is very real and taps into the deep emotions of growing into adulthood.

And here’s a surprise. We may fool ourselves into thinking that we only get or need to make fundamental choices once. But I don’t think that’s true. Chronologically at least, I am a middle-aged man, and yet I found myself time and again identifying with those teenagers and the choices that confronted them about how to live their lives. It turns out that I looked around to discover that my children are grown and my needs, goals, and hopes for the future were very, very different from when I was a teenager, or even in my thirties. I realized while watching Buffy that I too have fundamental choices to make about how I live the second half of life. This resonance with the teens on the show was often quite powerful and helped me to “think outside the box” about the rest of my life.

I have brought a prop with me today. Some assembly is required so give me a moment. Here, larger than life, is Buffy the Vampire Slayer – or at least her cardboard cutout. I don’t know if I should tell you this, but she was given to me by my son for Father’s Day. Now, of course, this a picture of Sara Michelle Gellar, the young woman who played Buffy. Pretty cute, huh? It’s easy to see why some people might assume that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is just another show about a scantily clad young thing and thus dismiss it. It also explains why I got so much grief from my colleagues and friends, and why my son, TJ, told me I was taking a risk doing this service.

But anybody who gets stuck on Buffy’s appearance is missing the entire point of the show. For underneath her Vogue and Maybelline exterior lies the heart and soul of a super hero. The whole point is that Buffy is not what she appears to be. The whole point is to get beyond stereotypes and superficial appearances and discovery what lies beneath. As I will discuss throughout the rest of this talk, what matters is who we are inside – our strength as a person – and the choices we make when confronted with the challenges of the world.

British psychologist Cynthia McVey says Buffy’s appeal as a character is that, while looking frail and girlish, she is deeply powerful. In this respect, Buffy has a lot in common with that celebrated British teenager, Harry Potter. Nobody would suspect that beneath those round glasses and slight build is a great wizard. Therein lies, I think, much of the appeal of Buffy and Harry with young people: those young people are hoping against hope that inside of them there is something or someone special, just like Buffy and Harry.

As a female super hero, Buffy belongs to the recent pop cultural movement that is entwined with the empowerment of women. We can start with Diana Rigg, who, as Mrs. Peel, was partners in the spy game with John Steed in the 1960s British TV series The Avengers (recently reprised by Uma Thurman), and more recently recall the likes of Wonder Woman, Ripley, Xena: Warrior Princess, La Femme Nikita, Charmed, Witchblade, Electra, Lara Croft, Dark Angel, Birds of Prey, the PowerPuff Girls, Charlie’s Angels, and Sidney Bristow of Alias. Our culture is currently flooded with images of outwardly powerful women.

And yes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer blows the lid off female stereotypes and the message is clear: women are as powerful and independent as men and deserve to be treated with just as much respect. But Buffy is not just an adolescent boy’s dream on steroids, someone who can fly through the air on wires and never get her make-up mussed, like some of the images out in our culture today, those that I call the “adolescent empowerment of women.” Buffy represents an “adult empowerment of women,” one that empowers on the inside as well as the outside and comes complete with responsibility, moral dilemmas, and a real person.

In adult empowerment, the power I am talking about goes beyond physical strength and magical abilities, although these are fun and admirable. Buffy – and several of her friends – are powerful in this way, of course, but the power I am talking about is the power inside, the power of the heart and the will. Buffy, many times with the help of her friends, overcomes obstacles that would crush most of us. And often it is not Buffy’s supernatural powers that save the day. They are a mere instrumentality. What saves the day is Buffy’s dedication and indomitable will.

For example, at the end of the first season, Buffy discovers that an infallible prophecy says that the Master Vampire will kill her on Prom Night. Her initial reaction is to want to run away, of course, and she asks her mother if they can go away for the weekend. But after her fiend Willow discovers some boys at the high school who have been horribly killed by the gathering vampires, Buffy changes her mind. Willow, shaken, and lying in bed, tells Buffy:

I’m not OK. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be okay. I knew those guys. I go to that room every day. And when I walked in there, it was… it wasn’t our world anymore. They made it theirs. And they had fun. What are we going to do?

Buffy answers simply: “What we have to.” In that moment, Buffy decides to confront the Master even knowing that it will mean she is going to die. Those moments of courage and responsibility go beyond any external strength or beauty. She then confronts the Master and is killed. Only this is TV, and so she drowns, and, as luck would have it, is revived by one of her friends who knows CPR, and comes back stronger than ever to ultimately defeat the Master.

You see, while the Buffyverse is supernatural, the lessons are not. The lessons touch us in the most real ways possible. This is one of the great truths about how we interact with our stories, whether they are from the Bible, other scriptures, mythology, or, yes, even television. We will translate the lessons to our lives and to our hearts, if those lessons – even if they are in a supernatural setting, an unreal setting, an impossible setting – if those lessons touch our souls.

Moreover, the lessons from Buffy are positive lessons, including self-reliance, self-knowledge, and self-exploration. Let me give you one example, my favorite example, among many. At the end of Season Two, in the two part season finale I think is Buffy’s best, Buffy loses everything she cares about in her life as a consequence of her battle against evil. She is kicked out of school, kicked out of her home by her mother who cannot accept her calling as the Slayer, she loses her friends, is accused of murder, and must, in the final analysis, literally send the man she loves to hell in order to save the world.

At the absolute nadir of the episode, when all seems lost, the evil vampire Angelus approaches a fallen and apparently beaten Buffy and says: “So that’s everything, huh? No weapons, no friends, no hope. Take all that away and what’s left?” “Me,” says Buffy as she catches his sword just before it would have killed her. What’s left is me. Self-reliance. Self-confidence. Self-esteem. No Ophelia Complex here. From that point, Buffy battles back, and at great cost to herself, does what is right, what needs to be done. For seven years Buffy always battled back, always had the will and resolve to do what was right, always did what needed to be done. I can’t think of a more positive lesson whether you are a man or a woman. I can’t think of a more positive empowerment for a human being.

I only have a few minutes left and there are any number of things I could talk about, but let me talk about an overarching theme: the power of choice. Because in a world where beings are defined by what they are – demon, human, slayer, vampire – it turns out that the most important aspect of life is the power to choose.

Have Yourself a Very August Christmas

by Posted in Guest Speakers, Jim Checkley, Sermons

© Jim Checkley

4 August 2002

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

SERMON

When I told my friend John I was doing another service, he asked, “What about?” I told him I had always wanted to do a service called “Christmas in July” and was finally going to do it – albeit in August. His reaction was quick and decisive: “Oh Jim, don’t do that.” “Why not?” I asked. “Because it is a clich”,” he said. ‘too late,” I said. “I”ve already sent in my blurb for the newsletter.” There was silence on the phone. “Oh no,” he said finally. Then he quickly added, “I’m sure you’ll be OK.”

Well, that remains to be seen”I will be making some fairly radical suggestions in a while. But part of the reason I wanted to talk about Christmas, and do it at a time when we are removed from the effects of the holiday – both euphoric and toxic – is precisely because so much about Christmas has become a clich”, or worse, a bah humbug. The Christmas season presents us all with challenges both practical and spiritual, and that is what I”d like to talk to you about today.

Speaking of bah humbug, lately I”ve been focused on stories as they define culture and provide meaning to our lives. And I”ve been thinking about our Christmas stories, especially the ones we’ve created since Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol. Besides the stories of St. Nicholas – we’ll deal with him later – what popular Christmas stories have we created in our culture?

Being a child of the 60s, the first one I thought of was A Charlie Brown’s Christmas. This is basically the story of a misfit boy and his misfit tree. The most enduring feature might be Vince Giraldi’s theme music. There’s Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. How many here know how Rudolph came into our culture? Rudolph and his animated television special – also from the sixties – have outlived his creator. Montgomery Ward, now bankrupt and gone from the retail markets, introduced Rudolph to the world in the 1930s as a marketing tool. And then there’s The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. My memory is of the 60s animated TV show, with Boris Karloff as the narrator, although Jim Carry played the Grinch in the recent film.

Then there are movies like Home Alone – a violent though comedic piece set during the Christmas season. And speaking of violence during Christmas, there are Die Hard and Die Hard II, both set during the Christmas season. In fact, in Die Hard, after Bruce Willis and his pal kill the bad guys, but not before those bad guys kill some hostages and blow up a building, and while bearer bond certificates float down from the sky, the end credits begin with a rendition of “Let it Snow.” Frankly, I cannot invent a better image of what Christmas has become in our culture than that: money – not just money – bearer bonds’s nowing down from the sky while the triumphant heroes get in their cars leaving death and destruction in their wake. Now that is an American Christmas!

If a culture is defined by its stories, then ours is often pretty sick. But you already knew that. But what you may not have thought about is the fact that all of these stories – including Dickens – have (with one tiny exception) nothing to do with the meaning of Christmas. I make a distinction here between the meaning of Christmas and the spirit of Christmas. The meaning of Christmas is the birth of the Christ child. Period. The spirit of Christmas is how we feel about the season. The spirit of Christmas is about joy and glad tidings and parties and gifts and time off from work and drinking the finest liquor and seeing heroic truth justice and the American way movies and stuff like that. Our Christmas culture is like a James Bond martini’the tapestry of our cultural images feels like it has been shaken, not stirred.

Even in American culture, however, as bad as it is in many ways, Christmas has its moments. In fact, it has many moments. We all have wonderful memories of Christmas somewhere in our hearts. One year when I was a kid, we got our tree early (in my family, we often got the Charlie Brown tree on Christmas Eve), had it all decorated, and I got a robot toy called Mr. Machine. I had really wanted it and I was overjoyed when it was there on Christmas morning. But looking back, the best part was there was no stress that year, none of the terrible pressure that Christmas often puts on parents and families to be happy, giving, cheerful, and a little – or a lot – materialistic. Talk about performance anxiety. The Christmas season excels at inducing it, that’s for sure. But for this one time, it felt like we were in the spirit of Christmas as we were taught it should be. My favorite Christmases as an adult were when my own kids were young and I had survived cancer and having both hips operated on, and I was living vicariously through them.

I say living vicariously because for me Christmas was often more a dark time than a time of light and joy. I don’t do Christmas trees; the kids and I have a Christmas fern. And as you might gather from my talk thus far, the whole Christmas season as currently practiced in our culture leaves me not just cold, but a little bitter and a whole lot sad. I know I am not alone in those feelings. Indeed, many people feel far worse than I do. I know that because both the incidence of depression and the suicide rate go up during the Christmas season.

Christmas is a very powerful holiday that gets to you one way or another. I said in my newsletter blurb that it gets in our pores whether we are fer it or agin” it. And I sincerely believe that is true. I sometimes think that as we approach the Winter Solstice and the end of the year, the gestalt and ambience of Christmas itself causes us to look deeper at ourselves and our society and often we don’t like what we see. But I am even more inclined to think that a lot of the negativity is a function of culturally imposed expectation “why isn’t my holiday season like the Walton’s?” and the stark contrasts with reality that result at the edges of life. Misery loves company, and it is truly miserable to be miserable when society and family and friends tell us ’tis the season to be jolly. That really hurts.

And this explains in large part why Christmas is both the best and worst of times. Dickens had in mind the French revolution when he penned those words. I’m talking about the

Christmas season, which, emotionally and psychologically, at least, is just as powerful a time. And that time is getting longer and longer.

I used to get mad at stores that put up Christmas displays before Thanksgiving. In the 70s and 80s I had a policy of not patronizing those stores. Well, if I put that policy in place today, I would have virtually no place to shop. Christmas has become such a huge economic imperative that it is almost a year long undertaking. Christmas is a global secular holiday. Talk about getting out of the way of a freight train.

I have a report I found on the Internet called 2001 Christmas Sales in Major Overseas Markets and Retail Outlook for 2002. Here are a few choice excerpts: – the 2001 Christmas sales situation in Hong Kong’s major overseas markets commands special attention…” I caught you, didn’t I? You thought the report was about markets overseas from the United States. This report, based in Hong Kong, talks about sales in Europe, the US, Asia, even Japan and contains this interesting sentence: “In Japan, Christmas sales were not encouraging.” I guess not. I shouldn’t say this but I can’t resist: do you suppose Japanese children would write letters to “shinto Claus.” And how about this one for confirming the rise of Christmas as a world wide secular holiday: “While Christmas is not traditionally celebrated across the Chinese mainland, it has begun to catch on in more sophisticated urban cites. A growing number of retailers have started to promote the festive season by putting up Yule-tide decorations and offering discounts on related merchandise in the hope of boosting year-end sales.”

In the US, many merchants count on Christmas shopping for up to 25% of their sales and 50% of their profits. Thus, every item of commerce imaginable has become grist for the Christmas mill – power tools, vitamins, electronics, magazine subscriptions, pet accessories, furniture, carpet cleaning – you name it, I”ve seen a TV commercial for it. And the madness goes beyond mere retail sales.

My favorite example of the American business spirit of Christmas is a Federal Express ad in the Wall Street Journal in the late 1980s. It was a full page ad that compared business to war and made the argument that if a General moves his troops during a truce, he gets an advantage in the war. Well, said FedEx, a good business person knows that you can’t just sit around idly during Christmas. Packages need delivering. Advantages need to be claimed. So, like Santa,

FedEx is going to work on Christmas Eve and deliver on Christmas Day. Because even on Christmas, FedEx knows you have to get it there overnight.

In one ad we get business compared to war, FedEx compared to Santa, and the reality based notion that only an idiot would consider not doing business on Christmas. Scrooge would be so very proud.

Christmas has become so commercial, so ubiquitous, that both it and its economic symbol, Santa Claus, have been declared to be secular by the federal courts.

A couple of years ago a Cincinnati attorney named Richard Ganulin filed suit in federal court in an effort to have the federal government’s recognition of Christmas as a national holiday declared unconstitutional as an impermissible establishment of religion. Federal District Court Judge Susan Dlott disagreed with Ganulin and dismissed his lawsuit declaring that there were “legitimate secular purposes for establishing Christmas as a legal public holiday.” Judge Dlott issued her ruling in part as a poem. While it’s not The Night Before Christmas, I wanted to read you a verse or two:

The court will address

 Plaintiff’s seasonal confusion

 Erroneously believing of Christmas

 MERELY a religious intrusion.

The court will uphold

 Seemingly contradictory causes

 Decreeing “the establishment” AND “santa”

 Both worthwhile CLAUS(es).

We are all better for Santa

 The Easter Bunny too

 And maybe the great pumpkin

 To name but a few!

There is room in this country

 And in all our hearts too

 For different convictions

 And a day off too!

So we have a federal court flatly stating that Santa Claus is a secular rather than religious symbol and that Christmas itself is enough of a secular event to avoid any entanglements with the establishment clause of the Constitution.

I suspect many of us in the sanctuary today have problems with the commercialism of Christmas, with the hectic nature of the season, the unreasonable expectations, the cultural pressures. But we UUs have another problem with Christmas. It is a fundamental problem faced by many religious people, but not in the odd way we do. Although Unitarian Universalism is considered a Christian sect, by definition we reject the notion that Jesus was the Son of God and that he was sent by the Father to save mankind through a substitutionary salvation. Unitarian does not mean we are looking for one world government.

I don’t know about you, but this situation has always puzzled me. Jews don’t believe in the divinity of Christ and they simply don’t celebrate Christmas. Yet somehow, we Unitarians want to have our cake and eat it too. We disavow that Jesus was the Christ, but still have a candlelight Christmas Eve service. If we’re just celebrating the birthday of an important guy or the season, then why don’t we celebrate Sir Isaac Newton’s birthday?

Isaac Newton was born on December 25th, something we are certain is not the case for Jesus. In fact, this (fictional) coincidence of birth inspired Newton throughout his life and he felt that it was a sign from God that he was meant to be a giant among men. Back in my undergraduate chemistry days, we used to put a big banner along the halls of the chemistry department that read: Happy Newton’s Birthday! On the last day before winter break, we would have a birthday cake and drink punch and sing Sir Isaac happy birthday in absentia.

Although we had a good time and reveled in the goof on society we had invented, it would not be fair in any sense to say we had come up with a substitute religious holiday for Christmas. We merely changed the focus of the day.

So where does that leave most thinking UUs? We reject the divinity of Christ and hence the inherent meaning of Christmas. And we, as much as any sensitive, thinking people, reject Santa and the economic hold that Christmas has on the world. Yet at the same time, we all yearn for the hope, happiness, and joy we felt as kids and sometimes, almost by accident it seems, experience as adults.

I”ve been thinking for some years that there may be a way to reclaim the Christmas season in a way that will make it more meaningful for us. I hope you will find my suggestions helpful, recognizing that Christmas is an emotional and psychological battleship that is slow to turn.

My plan involves doing something that I spoke about in a theoretical sense in my last service – creating new stories that speak to us today in order to provide both context and meaning to our lives. Because, you see, the energy is already there. Christmas has more energy than you’d care to shake a stick at. That energy makes the Christmas season the perfect place to start to invent new stories, new mythologies, new ways of seeing ourselves and our lives.

I honestly believe that Christmas Day itself is too far gone to salvage. It is an economic juggernaut and my advice is to just get out of the way. But there is a holiday that can be salvaged. And it falls just twelve days after Christmas: the Epiphany.

The Epiphany, celebrated on January 6, is the day that the three wise men arrived at the manger, guided by the Christmas Star, declared Jesus to be the Christ child, and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Their arrival marks the end of the real twelve days of Christmas, not the last 12 shopping days before Christmas Day that Madison Avenue wants you to believe.

The Epiphany is a day all but lost in our culture, although it was and continues to be an important holiday in the Russian and Greek Orthodox churches and in other Christian countries. In fact, when I talked about this service with a number of people, I found that a surprising number of them did not know what the Epiphany is.

I know about the Epiphany because my uncle was a Russian Orthodox priest. When I was a kid, I used to sometimes be an altar boy with my cousins, especially around the Christmas season, when services were crowded and my uncle could use the help. My family always celebrated the Epiphany and we did not take our Christmas tree down until January 7. Of course, by then it was a fire hazard and the object of ridicule by the neighborhood kids, most of whom had taken down their trees either right after Christmas Day or right after New Year’s . So I have practical experience with the holiday, experience that convinces me that the Epiphany contains considerable meaning that we can mine and use for our own lives.

The Epiphany, not Christmas Day, is the real religious holiday. Until the wise men arrived and revealed to the world that this infant was the Christ child, Jesus was just another poor kid in the manger. The word epiphany means to reveal or recognize that which is already there, but which we cannot or do not yet see. There is a universal aspect to the epiphany, beyond the manifestation of Christ to the Magi. And that is simply this: it represents the recognition of the light within all of us, whether you call it divine or simply the spark of life. While we do not believe that Jesus was god, many of us believe that we all – him included – have the divine within us. As Robert Heinlein said in Stranger in a Strange Land: “I am god, thou art god, and all that groks is God.”

Here is a ready made myth that is overripe for the taking by Unitarians. What is more Unitarian than a holiday that reminds us that we all have a light inside ourselves, a light that must be uncovered and revealed to the world in order for us to be fully human and perhaps approach the divine?

And here is another benefit. For the first time in 16 services I am actually going to talk about one of our Seven Principles beyond noting they exist. Our very first principle states that we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. During the Christmas season, we can honor this principle by first, reminding ourselves of the spark within ourselves, and second, by honoring it within others.

In the first instance, we can connect with – or perhaps find for the first time’the divine spark within our own hearts and souls. Of course, none of us is a king; and none of us is the Christ. But we are all aware, spiritual beings. We all have a light inside of us, however you choose to describe it, and when we reveal it to ourselves at the Epiphany, we are reminding ourselves that we, like Jesus, are sons and daughters of the cosmos. Once we have revealed our light to ourselves, then we can follow the words of Jesus who said that one does not light a lantern and then put it under a box. Our light must be nurtured and allowed to grow and to illuminate ourselves and the world around us. We can use the Epiphany to remind us of that important task.

The wise men gave gifts to Jesus because he was the King of the Jesus and they worshipped him because he was the Christ. And the gifts they gave him were the gifts of a king: gold, frankincense and myrrh. The spiritual aspect of gift giving, then, is that it is a tangible demonstration of the worth and dignity of the other person. So when we give gifts to each other at Christmas, it should be for a better reason than to make housework easier or to accumulate stuff in the “whoever dies with the most toys wins” mode.

The best reason I can think of to give gifts at Christmas is to demonstrate to the person to whom you are giving that he or she is important, that he or she matters to you, that you are not just thinking of him or her, but will honor their individuality, and that they, like Jesus, deserve to be given a gift. In our society gift giving has gone from a special gift that symbolized the gifts of the magi, to trying to outdo each other in a materialistic shark feeding. My kids used to have so many boxes from relatives, and to be fair, us, their parents. that their mother and I decided to hold some back and dole them out over the year. There is something wrong, I think, with kids having 30 boxes waiting for them under the tree.

Here is where the thought really counts. The why of Christmas gift giving has been lost in a crass commercialism that knows no bounds. You are a daughter of the cosmos, my friend, my lover, I will honor you today with a gift of – a blender? See, it doesn’t work. Not if you are trying to connect to this universal truth I am talking about and our first UU principle. And just to be fair, it doesn’t work for a three-quarter inch drill either. If gift giving at Christmas is to have any meaning, the gifts we give must be the gifts of the human spirit, of the light that shines within all of us. On this day, at least, and for one special gift, at least, let the thought be noble, the heart pure, and the gift divine.

So, in the practice what you preach department, this is my proposal. Follow Jesus’ advice and render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. I have abandoned Christmas day to the merchants. It really has no meaning for Unitarians anyway, and I think in popular culture it lost whatever meaning it had as a spiritual holiday long ago. December 25 has for millennia been a day that belonged much more to Caesar than to God. If we can believe its press, it started out as a pagan bacchanalian festival – we, in our capitalist bottom line society have simply perfected it.

The spiritual meaning of the season and I think, the Unitarian meaning, might be recaptured by allowing December 25th to instead mark the beginning of a 12 day reflective period. Twelve is a magic number in many cultures, so we can keep it as part of the new story. Then December 25th can become a symbolic beginning of the quest to understand who we are and to find the sacred within us. The period in between, which now is just a stretch of dead time until New Year’s Day, will allow us time to think about and be quiet with this most important of spiritual subjects.

And then, on January 6th, let us celebrate the Epiphany, the revealing of that which was already there, and rediscover, rekindle, and reveal the light of life within us all. Then we may rededicate ourselves to honor that discovery within ourselves and allow – no insist that – the light inside shine outward the entire year through. And in conjunction with transforming this inner discovery into an outward expression of love, compassion, connection, and simply being, I suggest we use the giving of gifts to acknowledge the light in others with a gift from the heart and soul, a gift that honors the light in the other, a gift bought during the symbolic twelve day journey of discovery, and thus a gift that allows us to beat Caesar at his own game by buying it during the secular after Christmas sales.

I even think it would be nice if Unitarian churches thought about celebrating the Epiphany with its own service of light. Instead of celebrating the godhood of Christ, however, we would celebrate the spark of the divine within us all. After all, we UUs have a Christmas Eve candle light service. Frankly, it feels even more appropriate to me for us to have a candle light service on the Epiphany. The candles are obvious symbols of the light of life we carry within us, of the divine light the wise men revealed in Jesus.

The power of Christmas is undeniable. That power reflects our deep longing to know who we are, where we came from, and what is the best way to live and connect to one another. This is my suggestion for taking the energy of Christmas, so much of which is either lost to us or has become negative, and transforming it into our energy through a new story and a new commitment to ourselves and each other. If we can do that, then perhaps we can all have a very august Christmas indeed.

 

Presented August 4, 2002

 

First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin

Austin, Texas

Revised for Print

Copyright – 2002 by Jim Checkley

A Most Unlikely Unitarian

by Posted in Guest Speakers, Jim Checkley, Sermons

© Jim Checkley

8 July 2001

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

It’s the summer time, and when we are young, anyway, it is a time of simple play. And yet, when I think about being Unitarian, “simple” and “play” are two words which don’t really jump out at me to define who we are. In one of those wonderfully irrational moments of clarity that happen from time to time, I recognized in a rather famous character a cartoon-like mirror of us – or at least the more parochial us – and just knew I had discovered the jumping-off point for a service. So this Sunday, in hopefully a lighthearted way befitting the season, we will explore ourselves through the example of this most unlikely of Unitarians, a veritable self-proclaimed super- genius, whose very essence, and lifelong behavior, more than qualify for admission to our denomination.

I love comic books and cartoons. Reading comics and watching cartoons is a pleasure I have not – and hope I never will – grow out of. When I was young, I had a paper route which supplied me with more than enough money to indulge my comic book passions. There was a place on Main Street in Passaic, New Jersey, called the Passaic Book Center. In the late-sixties I was there at least once a week buying primarily comic books, science fiction paperbacks, and various cinema and monster magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland. Those were some of the happiest days of my life.

In those days of stone knives and bear skins, we didn’t have cable TV with channels like Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network. TV was broadcast and even just outside of New York City in New Jersey where I grew up, we only had the three networks and a few independents. Neither did we have videotapes or DVDs or the Internet. So there were basically only two ways to watch cartoons: either on TV, and there mostly on Saturday and Sunday mornings, or sometimes at the movie theater on the weekend before a feature film. I cherished my cartoon time and actually seeing a cartoon at the movies was a real thrill.

In case you can’t tell, I was then, and still am, an animation junkie. With our computer technology, today’s animation technically far outstrips that of the past. But I still have a deep fondness for the old cartoons. And among my all time favorite cartoons was the Road Runner with his perpetual antagonist, Wile E. Coyote.

Wile E. Coyote is one of my two or three favorite cartoon characters of all time. He has been chasing after the Road Runner for decades. The set-up for the cartoons was always the same: Wile E. would try his best to capture the speedy, elusive, and almost mystically lucky Road Runner. But no matter how hard he tried, no matter how clever the trap he set or sophisticated and complicated the devices he used, Wile E. always failed. Always. And yet, I, and millions of others, fell in love with Wile E Coyote. And although we may not have ever wanted him to actually catch the Road Runner (well maybe just once!), we certainly did not want to see him fail. But fail he did, gloriously, constantly, and in ways that simply astonished and delighted us.

I had no idea then that Wile E. would someday inspire me to do a church service focused on him and his escapades with the Road Runner. But one day recently, I had this odd revelation that Wile E. Coyote, self-proclaimed super genius and absolutely, hands-down, the world’s worst predator, would be my candidate as the most unlikely of Unitarians. In that moment I saw in Wile E. so much that I see in myself and many of us in our denomination and decided it was too good a vision to pass up. Because as amusing as my thesis may be, I hope today to show you that there is also something equally profound.

Wile E. was always plotting behind Road Runner’s back, but I prefer to talk about him as if he were here with us today. So here we have Mr. Wile E. Coyote, or at least a bean bag version of him. The Latin name for coyote is Canis latrans, but for today, and for our purposes, we will refer to Wile E. as Toomuchus Intellectualis, although we could just as easily refer to him as Pitifulis Predatorus, because both his high IQ and his abysmal record as a predator provide us with insights into ourselves and our lives.

And although the focus today is on Wile E., we must not ignore the Road Runner. I couldn’t find a bean-bag Road Runner, so my daughter, Kathleen, kindly painted his picture for me. He’s just a little guy, but is fast as lightning. His Latin name is Geococcyx californianus, but for today, and for our purposes, we will refer to him as Veritas Elusivaris, that is, the elusive Truth. Road Runner has eluded Wile E. for over fifty years often through sheer speed, but also through a good luck streak that borders on the supernatural. Like any good symbol of Truth, Road Runner doesn’t say much except “Beep Beep,” and is in most ways totally inscrutable. And although the notion of the Road Runner as mystic will have to wait for another day, for today, at least, I want you to bear with me and view our friend Wile E. here as a most unlikely Unitarian in search of that most elusive of prey, the Truth.

By the Truth, I mean that which resonates with our souls and provides us with meaning in our lives and makes us feel like it is worth getting up in the morning and worth living. We all have different truths – today I am talking about the one you seek.

Now you might be asking yourself, what credentials does Wile E. have that gives him credence as a Unitarian? Well, first of all, we have no idea what Wile E. Coyote believes – which makes him perfect for Unitarian Universalism. That really wasn’t fair, I guess, but the fact is that we are a creedless church and what each one of us believes is a matter of personal conscience. Yes, we have our principles, and they are printed each week in our order of service. But those principles do not dictate that we believe that X or Y is or is not true.

But even more importantly, we know that Wile E. is most proud of his amazing intellect and places rational intellect over emotion and other ways of dealing with the world, and isn’t that at the heart of the Unitarian movement? Aren’t we famous for being the great religious rationalists? We differ from traditional religion with the latter’s emphasis on revealed truth and the necessity to have faith and belief in that truth no matter how far removed it may be from our empirical understandings of the world and our place in it. If we believed in revealed truth then we wouldn’t have to be running around like Wile E. Coyote trying to capture it – it would be served up to us on a silver platter. But on some level, I think, our love affair with the rational intellect goes beyond our demand that our religious truth be consistent – and perhaps more than that – with scientific truth.

I have been going to Unitarian churches for twenty-five years and it has always seemed to me that we claim every smart person who has ever lived as Unitarian. And if we’re not sure, then at the least we claim they were “closet Unitarians.” I went on the Internet and found – within minutes – several Unitarian sites which provided list after list of famous Unitarian Universalists. Politicians, scientists, philosophers, social workers, you name it. And I had a revelation: We brag on the famous in our ranks in much the same way that other religions brag on their version of revealed truth. So I think I am within my rights to claim Wile E. Coyote for the ranks of Unitarianism. He is, after all, a self-proclaimed super genius, is quite famous, and his beliefs are, to be kind, unclear to us. I would say he is perfect for the position.

But wait a minute. If Wile E. is so smart, how come he has never caught the Road Runner? This is a good question, a seminal question, and the one that brought me here before you today.

The simple answer is that Wile E. makes everything complicated and in the process thinks himself out of a meal. Wile E. is incapable of merely catching the Road Runner. He has to use some intellectual artifice, some Rube Goldberg contraption, to catch his prey. So instead of just grabbing the Road Runner when he is standing out on the road, Wile E. uses his Acme Rocket Sled to try to cut the Road Runner off at the pass. He devises complicated traps which depend on magnetic bird seed and quick opening Star Trek-like steel doors. He constructs or purchases complicated devices that would make any Aggie engineer proud. And then he fails. Time and again.

And he doesn’t just fail. He fails miserably. Who can ever forget the image of Wile E. Coyote suspended in mid-air, a look of sad resignation on his face as he pitifully waves good-bye, and then with a high pitch whistle, falls to the desert floor and crashes with a muffled but sickening thud? Whether flattened like a pancake, scorched and burned to a golden black crisp, or squished like an accordion, our resident genius Mr. Coyote is left scratching his head – assuming he can still move his arms – wondering what went wrong.

Unitarians – and many others – believe that if we are smarter, then we will get to the Truth faster. I have nothing against being smart. It’s a good thing. But don’t we sometimes, like Wile E., tend to construct complicated intellectual paradigms or buy into far out or marginal theories in our such for Truth? Honestly, when we look back over our lives and the methods and fruits of our spiritual quests, how often do we discover we believed we could find the Truth using the equivalent of an Acme Rocket Belt only to end up, like Wile E., crashed into the side of a mesa? I want to suggest that like Wile E., we sometimes lose ourselves in our complicated intellectualisms and paradigms and in the process, we miss the Truth. You know, we laugh today at mediaeval philosophers who argued about such arcane topics as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or whether God – all powerful and omnipotent creator – can make a four sided triangle. But are we much different than they were when we rely on intellectual artifice or extreme and complicated theories to capture the Truth?

Over seven hundred years ago, William of Ockham wondered about these same issues within the context of a medieval culture caught in the thrall of the sometimes wildly weird pronouncements of the Roman Catholic Church. His law of parsimony, also known as Ockham’s Razor, became a cannon in the development of science and even today exercises great influence on scientists as they grapple with explanations for the workings of the universe. But Ockham’s Razor is much more than a rule to apply to scientific theories. The notion that all things being equal, the simplest answer is usually the best, if not the right, answer is one that comes into play in almost everything we do – including the quest for Truth. I think you would agree with me that Wile E. Coyote can use a little razoring in his approach to catching the Road Runner. It is a lesson I know I need to remind myself of all the time in my own life.

I don’t mean to pick on Wile E. and just focus on the negative. Indeed, one of the things that Wile E. teaches us is that what matters, ultimately, at least as much as success, is the character of the attempt. One of the reasons Wile E. is beloved is that he is sincere in his quest, never gives up, and despite his boasts that he is a super-genius, suffers the humiliations of the universe (and the Road Runner) with equanimity and grace – if you can call walking into the sunset with an accordion body waving in the breezes graceful. It is precisely because we identify with Wile E. and his quest, and recognize his sincerity, that we love him. Is there a better lesson to learn in life than to persevere in the face of persistent failure, to remain at peace with yourself and the universe, and to try your best, despite the odds?

And yet, while we may admire Wile E. for his perseverance and character, we wonder about his methods. It has been said that the very definition of neurosis is to repeat the same behavior over and over again, each time expecting a different result. Wile E. qualifies under this definition as he tries one after another of his contraptions, each time with the same result, and yet each time believing that the next attempt will succeed. If we acknowledge that Wile E. is smart – and we do – then we have to wonder what is going on here. Because as easy as it is to conclude that Wile E. has simply gotten caught up in his own complexity, it is puzzling to see him rely on the same methods, the same behavior, the same misplaced hopes, time and time again. It’s not like the universe hasn’t been sending him the message that the bombs, the rocket sleds, and the spring powered shoes, aren’t working. It has. But he is stuck repeating familiar behavior, hoping for a different outcome – a condition I suspect many of us today can identify with.

I think it is difficult to try something new, whether you are Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner, or you are an ordinary person trying to make sense of the world. Wile E. is so committed to his intellect as the path to his salvation, that it never even occurs to him that maybe there is another way. His search for the right device, the right tool, causes him to escalate his attempts, both in terms of complexity and creativity – for Wile E. is nothing if not creative. But he either never sees – or never has the courage – to try another way. Because it takes courage to seek our own Truth, and to try new behavior in hopes of a different outcome.

Don’t we all sometimes do the same thing? Whether it is being stuck in a job we hate or the habits we bring to a relationship or even the way we find pleasure in our lives, how often do we repeat the same behavior, thinking that if this time we can just fix this or that little thing, or make

this or that a little better, then everything will be different only to discover, once again, that it is the same?

My favorite anecdotal example of this behavior is our diets. We try diet after diet, many of them as funny and complicated in their own way as Acme Rocket Sleds, remote controlled aerial bombs, and spring loaded shoes. We convince ourselves that if we eat nothing but cabbage soup, or substitute pickles for ice cream, or don’t eat any carbohydrates, or eat nothing but carbohydrates, except on alternate Tuesdays when the moon is full, we will lose weight and look just like the beautiful people in the ads. But it never works. And yet there we are, going from diet to diet each time expecting a different result. William of Ockham would tell us that we simply need to eat less and exercise more. But no, not us. We have to complicate things with multicolored cards and counting systems that would make a Las Vegas gambler squeal. I sometimes think we Unitarians tend to do the same thing with our search for meaning and spiritual truth that we do with diets and other aspects of our lives.

And then what does Wile E. finally do when all his grandiose plans fail? According to Ian Frazier, like any good red-blooded modern American, Wile E. puts the blame for the failure of his complex intellectual plan to capture Road Runner not on himself, but on Acme.

I mean, what could be more American, more rational, than for Wile E. to sue Acme for damages? And he has good reason, doesn’t he? After all, no Acme product purchased by Wile E. Coyote has worked as advertised in more than half a century. But although those devices were defective, I for one have little sympathy for anybody who would actually strap on a pair of Acme Rocket Skates and blast through the dessert at 200 miles per hour thinking everything will turn out roses. Sounds to me sort of like putting scalding hot coffee between your legs as you drive.

Although Acme may have sold Wile E. defective products, I am of the belief that Acme is not responsible for Wile E.’s failure to catch the Road Runner. There is another, more interesting, possibility that I want to explore. I think it is possible that Wile E.’at some subconscious level – really doesn’t want to catch the Road Runner. I think it is possible that he is actually sabotaging himself. Now I am not trying to impugn Wile E.’s integrity. Not at all. But think about it: in 50-odd years, he has never caught the Road Runner? Come on. Talk about being a pitiful predator. I happen to think there is more here than just defective rocket belts and catapults. I think this goes much deeper than that.

I think the reason Wile E. Coyote has become such a poor predator is the quest has become the meaning in his life and if he actually caught the Road Runner, that meaning would be lost. What I mean here is that the quest, the search, the attempt, is what gets Wile E. up in the morning, it is what drives his spirit and his intellect, it is the very essence of his life. The accomplishment of the goal – getting a good meal – has long ago taken a back seat to the quest itself.

It’s easy to see how this might happen. Just imagine you are Wile E. Coyote and you feel deep in your bones that if you actually catch this Road Runner creature, fulfill your avowed quest, then the cartoon will be over. The world as you knew it would be gone and your life would be transformed in ways you could scarcely imagine. What might you do with this internal conflict? Even if only subconsciously, might you not invest the quest with your emotional energy, with your intellectual energy, and find in it the meaning and substance for your life and in the process make sure you never caught the Road Runner?

I believe that a similar dilemma often faces us in our own search for understanding and truth. I think it is sometimes tremendously difficult and takes a lot of courage to truly put yourself on the line when it come to embracing and being engaged with issues of the spirit, the Truth as I have been referring to it. Because actually facing and embracing the Truth can be a dangerous thing. Any real encounter with Truth will transform us, sometimes in ways we neither understand nor are able to anticipate. That prospect of transformation, even though we may say we want it on an intellectual level, requires us to change and often to give up some part of ourselves – in some real sense allow a part of us to die – and to then leave our comfort zones and change the way we behave. And what is more scary than that?

We often hear that the journey is more important than the destination. I agree that sometimes it is – but only so long as it is the journey that is transforming. But what I am talking about here is not transforming at all and actually allows us to maintain the status quo and keep the transformative power we say we are searching for at least at arms length. When the quest becomes a way to provide meaning in our lives without ever really opening the door to the possibility of true change by actually finding, embracing, and believing in something we find to be true and real, it has become our shield, our suit of armor against change, the ever elusive notion of Truth always just outside our grasp or down the next path.

These notions have special meaning for Unitarians because we have no creed and what we believe is really up to us and our personal consciences. While this is one of the fundamental reasons I am a Unitarian, this circumstance does place each of us in a much more uncertain and difficult place than having a set of beliefs mandated by the church. So thinking about Wile E. and his quest for the Road Runner got me to wondering whether any of us Unitarians ever use the phrase ‘I am searching after Truth,’ as a code for the notion that so long as we are engaged in the search, then we don’t need to actually risk believing in something, we don’t have to make a choice. We can revel in the excitement and safety of the quest forever.

There is something deep and universal here that defies articulation in mere words. Yet these examples at least suggest that our motives are not always what they may appear to be on the surface. We would all do well perhaps to take time to examine our lives, to try to discover what gives them meaning. Do we have a Road Runner that gives meaning to our lives simply by remaining forever outside our grasp? Is our quest a real one or are we simply window shopping for truth, the quest itself becoming a shield or armor within which we actually protect ourselves from a real encounter with Truth and all the transformation and uncertainty that comes with it? Is our habit of using intellectual artifice and engaging over and over again in the same behaviors just another way we avoid having to deal with the big issues of life, be they spiritual or practical? Do we actual want to find and believe in something? I cannot, of course, answer these questions. But they need answering and I am delighted that a simple cartoon like Road Runner could act as the catalyst for our exploration of such important issues.

I will close by saying this. If we pay attention, and remember Ockham’s rule of simplicity and economy, then maybe when we become like Wile E. Coyote and begin to go down the path of creating every more complex intellectual artifices, of repeating past behaviors, and seeking along distant paths, we will recognize that something is wrong just by the complexity of what we have wrought, and seek a simpler path. For not only are we sometimes too intensely committed to our intellects, and clothed in the protective shielding of our quest, the fact is that the world around us, and more importantly, the world inside of us, is more often than not amenable to a different approach – a quieter, simpler approach that lies within our grasp, but often just outside our finely constructed frameworks of reason and logic. Because when reason and logic are at wits end, when all the equations, rocket belts, and nuclear powered catapults have failed, oftentimes the best hope for finding our answers is to take a walk around the pond, where we can lose all those artifices, become quite, and listen.

It is one of the great challenges of life to sense when that time has come, and in the spirit of adventure, and keeping our friend Wile E. Coyote in mind, have the courage to let go of our toys, our shields, our crate loads of weapons, and just let it be.

Amen and Amen.

 

 

Presented July 8, 2001

First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin

Austin, Texas

Revised for Print

Copyright 2001 by Jim Checkley