© 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.

© 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.

First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin

Austin, Texas

Revised for Print

Copyright – 2002 by Jim Checkley

© 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.