Many Voices

© Davidson Loehr

April 9, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER:

Sometimes when we seem to hear too many voices in our lives, we wish they’d all go away except for just the one most comforting voice.

That seldom happens. We might be better off realizing that we aren’t made of just one solo voice. We’re a chorus of voices and wants and preferences, each speaking up at some time, the whole lot of them seldom agreeing.

And we live as part of this sea of voices, trying to find a good path through the clatter. Sometimes we can just decide and do something whether the other voices like it or not. Ideally, we can be creative enough to do it together, bringing the whole choir along. That takes great talent and great patience. But if the Buddhists are right in saying we’re more like choruses than soloists – and I think they are – then we need a home in our soul and in our world for all the voices within us. The brave, clear-thinking ones, the compassionate voices that want to do the caring thing more than the right thing, voices that need to understand, and those wishing they could love even where they can’t understand. And so many more voices within and around us, looking for a welcoming home.

In the meantime – and it seems a long meantime – we stand where we are, silently praying Oh God, Life, the Universe, let us find a home where all of us, all of us, can live together in creative compassion. Just that. Just that.

Amen.

SERMON: Many Voices

This was the first time I’d heard the Chichester Psalms. But when Brent told me about the music, and then when I read the Psalms from which Bernstein took his lyrics, I recognized one of Bernstein’s greatest and most unusual gifts as a composer. He made a space for a huge variety of voices in his greatest works. The voices don’t agree and aren’t squeezed into a forced and phony kind of harmony. Instead, they are presented as a slice of life without a simple and clear solution.

Here’s what I mean. When I read through the six Psalms from which he took the lyrics for this piece (2, 23, 100, 108, 131, 133), I wrote down the different voices and moods I found.

There is the voice of God as conqueror, sounding very triumphal. The voices of his people cover a huge spectrum, from excited, devoted and loved, to fearful, rejected, abandoned by God, and inadequate. In the next lines, they are joyful, praising God, sounding comforted and fearless. Then they are very angry – you heard this in the music, when the men’s voices came in under the calm and peaceful sound of the women’s voices.

There is also a voice of self-righteousness, eager to condemn outsiders. This is a voice speaking for a wrathful, furious, vengeful God, one that is offering dominion of the earth, granting power to break opposing nations with a rod of iron and dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.

And these lines are followed by voices that are thankful for God’s goodness and mercy, which are followed by despondent voices.

Then there’s a withdrawn voice saying it’s just not concerned with high and hard demands, but is satisfied to be calm, self-contained and quiet. Finally, there is the voice of simple happiness, happy to be dwelling in unity with others. You could get whiplash three times, switching moods to keep up with the many voices in just these six psalms, even though you suspect they reflect the real human condition in all times and places.

There’s a normal human tendency to want to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, or at least to harmonize all the voices to our own voice, our own beliefs, our own style. And that’s what most musical settings of the Psalms do.

But one of the characteristics of Leonard Bernstein’s music that’s most appealing – or troubling – was his ability to create a musical space within which many voices could co-exist without being homogenized.

He did this in West Side Story, that marvelous musical of violence, murder, love, and surprising vulgarity in the “Officer Krupke” piece sung by street gang members.

But he did it most dramatically and best in his greatest stage work, the “Mass.” The piece was commissioned by the Kennedy family for the dedication of the Kennedy Center. Rose Kennedy, JFK’s mother, hated what he wrote. Cardinal O’Connor wanted it banned as a heretical work. I saw the touring company production in Detroit around 1976, and could see why they might have hated it.

How many here have seen a stage production of the “Mass”? Here was a mass, but – with music by the 53-year-old Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by 23-year-old Steven Schwartz – it was not a Catholic mass. While it did go through the traditional parts of the mass, it contained scathing critiques of both the Church and the mass, for being irrelevant and incoherent.

Showing a wonderful knowledge of history, Bernstein included “tropes” as solos inserted into the mass, to make his critiques. In medieval times, the tropes inserted into the masses could even be to the tunes of drinking songs, so there was the precedent for bringing very secular elements in, and Bernstein exploited it brilliantly.

One soloist interrupted the “Credo in Unum Deum” to sing “I’ll believe in one God; I’ll believe in three; I’ll believe in thirty if they’ll believe in me.”

Another interrupted the priest during the Gratias Deo, to say that she once thanked God. “But now, somehow, it’s strange,” she sang, “though nothing much has really changed, I don’t sing Gloria, I don’t sing Gratias Deo. I can’t say quite when it happened, but gone is the Thank You.”

In a choral piece called “God Said,” the choir only sings the real lyrics after the priest leaves the stage. These include the chorus “And it was good, brother, and it was good, sister, and it was good, brother, and it was goddam good.” This isn’t your grandmother’s mass, unless she was one heck of an outspoken woman!

Also in that song, the lyricist Stephen Schwartz wrote these words:

“God said take charge of my zoo, I made these creatures for you. So he won’t mind if we wipe out a species or two. God said that sex should repulse unless it leads to results, and so we crowd the world full of consenting adults. God said it’s good to be meek, and so we are once a week. It may not mean a lot but oh, it’s terribly chic. God made us the boss, God gave us the cross. We turned it into a sword to spread the word of the Lord, we use his holy decrees to do whatever we please. And it was good, Yeah! And it was good, Yeah! And it was goddam good.”

Finally, the protestors torment the priest to the point that he flings the chalice down, smashing it, tears his robe off and throws it at them and leaves the stage. Then all the protestors, who have been harassing the priest throughout the Mass, fall to the stage like puppets who have had their strings cut. They really didn’t have a message, just complaints and needs, and needed the priest to play off of. A child takes the guitar and plays the Simple Song with which the Mass began, then the priest returns to the stage, in blue-jeans, takes the guitar and leads them in the song – it seems, after all, that they need to be led. Oh, maybe it will be a happy ending after all – but no. One of the protestors is disgusted by this and won’t join. He goes upstage in his fury. At the end of the Simple Song, the priest says, “The Mass is ended, go in peace.” But the lone protestor gives the priest and the audience the finger and exits. And that’s the end of the Bernstein Mass.

Many voices, given space to coexist: brought into proximity, but not harmony. Just like in real life.

You can understand why Rose Kennedy might have hated it. Leonard Bernstein gave her a masterpiece that was more than she’d bargained for. He gave her not an orthodox mass, but many voices, brought together on the same stage, to sing their very different songs in their very different passionate voices, and to be heard – perhaps even revered – but not resolved.

Cardinal O’Connor thought that was bad. Most churches would think it was bad. But not any real liberal church worth its salt, and not any Unitarian church in touch with its history.

The range of voices we have in Unitarian churches is immense. And like the voices in Bernstein’s works, they are not resolved: they’re in proximity, but not necessarily in harmony, on a huge range of topics.

A couple months ago, we learned what a wide range of opinions we have on 9-11. I believe our government either let it happen on purpose or made it happen on purpose. Some others agreed. Still others thought that was an absolutely crazy idea, that our government could do such a thing. Others were somewhere in between, and others – perhaps the majority – don’t spent time thinking about who did 9-11 or how, because there are just too many other things going on in their lives that demand and deserve more attention.

But the whole range of voices exists here, as it does throughout the country and the world. No matter what you believe about 9-11, you know there are people sitting around you who don’t agree with you. And those different beliefs aren’t going to be harmonized. They exist here in proximity but not in harmony, and that’s one of the frustrating things about liberal churches – or any honest church. We live in a world with people who sometimes disagree violently with us on really important matters, and the challenge of civilization is the challenge to learn to live together creatively.

But the different political beliefs in this room absolutely pale compared with the differing religious beliefs here! We have members for whom Jesus Christ really is the son of God, at least in deep symbolic and poetic ways. We have members for whom religion is and will always be about God, by which they mean the God of the Bible. Others have bad memories of that god, but find inspiration through stories of some of the ancient goddesses.

We have others for whom the whole idea of gods or goddesses is somewhere between useless and repulsive: people who might say we’re called to be decent people and to make the world a better place, but who do it without ever thinking about Jesus or God. We have some for whom the structures of Hinduism are their center – with its rich tapestry of stories, its rich array of so many imaginative figures symbolizing the many aspects of the creative, sustaining and destroying forces in the universe. And others who, if asked, will identify themselves as Buddhists – though not all the same kind of Buddhists. Some here believe in an afterlife, and some don’t. Some believe in reincarnation, and believe that they are not now in either their first or their last incarnation. Others think that’s just crazy, that it all starts, happens, and ends here in this life. And if you haven’t heard your own belief yet, you can add it, then add another fifty or so to cover all the permutations and combinations of beliefs sitting right here in this room, all around you, in proximity but not in harmony.

That’s the world that Leonard Bernstein kept putting in his music: that world of many differing voices in proximity but not in harmony. So I think some of Bernstein’s greatest pieces were practically written for liberal churches.

But this is not only for us. Our whole country would be better off if they had that ability to tolerate profound differences. Like they were to Rose Kennedy and Cardinal O’Connor, too many divergent opinions on important matters like religion are very upsetting to a lot of people. The truth is, most of us would be more comfortable in a world created in the image of our own beliefs. And during the past few years, we have all heard some of these strident voices insisting that America fall in line behind the one set of right beliefs – which always, coincidentally, just happen to be theirs. They want harmony in our country, and think that can only come from getting all voices to sing the same song.

They’re wrong. That would be boring music, as well as a foolish and dangerous society. We need to learn something, and Leonard Bernstein could teach it to us.

He could teach us that the real art, in music and in life, doesn’t come from trying to stamp everyone with the same cookie cutter, to make them as alike as dead interchangeable machine parts. The real art lies in the ability to create an atmosphere in which all God’s children, all the wonderful and crazy variety of Nature, can live in creative proximity.

The kind of harmony we need in life isn’t that of pretending that all opinions or all people can be made to fit the same mold. They can’t. The kind of harmony we need in life comes through the art of creating the atmosphere that lets our many differences exist together in creative proximity. It’s a much higher art than just stomping on people with cookie cutters. It takes grown-up people secure enough in their own beliefs to welcome people who don’t share their beliefs, though they share our humanity, and our need for peace, understanding, justice and compassion. And in this great mix of life, no deep harmony is possible unless we grow past the clamoring for shallow harmony, which can never exist anyway.

That’s the vision needed, and the art – to see past superficial differences of thought and belief, into that deeper and more enduring level where all God’s children got a song to sing, and it’s our collective job to provide the chorus that can cradle all these many voices in its heart and accompany them with the music of the heavens, the rhythm of justice, and the beat of the human heart – all our human hearts – trying to find our way back home together, trying to find our way back home together, and to know the place for the first time.

God's Fool

© Jack Harris-Bonham

April 2, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and Mystery beyond all naming, we are gathered this morning in early spring to celebrate the mystery with those that are a part of this community.

The colors this spring are so vibrant – were they also that brilliant? Is this just one more spring or is this the only spring that ever will be? Can we appreciate the beauty of the verdant meadows if, in fact, we hold all previous meadows in mind, or look to meadows not yet blossomed? Is there something profane about neglecting the miracles of the falling rain and greening meadows?

May we see with the eyes of a child, and understand with the heart of one who knows that death is not something alien to us as human beings. May our prayer echo the mourning doves cooing, may it reflect the streaming morning rays upon the newly fallen dew, may our breath be a true exchange between what the green needs and what the green is feeding us.

May we be humbled by the magnificence of the moment. Following our breath we dwell in the midst of the most high, staying with the moment we participate in the holy, refusing to go back to the past – an impossibility any way – we likewise hold ourselves back from projecting our thoughts into a future that exists only in our worried anticipations.

Resting in the arms of the NOW, we breathe easily, fully and miracle of miracles anxiety vanishes in the face of this magnificence. This is a gift that we can give ourselves; this is a gift that we can accept from ourselves. No one else can do this for us. It is our birthright.

Praise be to this Mystery. We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

It may seem foolish to begin writing a sermon before you know sort of what you want to say, but that is precisely how I am beginning this sermon. Hopefully, at the end of it, you will not all agree, “Yeah, he should have had something to say before he started writing – that would have been a good idea.” So, I’ve left myself open, but it occurs to me now that this is exactly what a fool would do, and I think it’s important for you to know that I am a fool. But I’m not just any old fool, I’m God’s Fool and proud of it. I’m not going to explain exactly what I think it means to be God’s fool at this point simply because I don’t know – but hopefully, as this sermon progresses I will know and so you will, perhaps we can make that discovery together.

Now I know that some of you out there will think that this is all highly organized and that this rambling about not knowing where I’m going, or how I’m going to get there is a sham – I’m acting, I’m pretending that I don’t know what I’m going to say or what my point is in saying it, but let me assure you – if, in fact, this can be seen as an assurance – I have no idea what I’m doing, but yes, I do have an inkling of why I’m doing it.

Let me explain. When I was in my writing frenzy – that is, when I wrote 30 screenplays in seven years – I had a motto that I lived and died by. I guess you could say that I still have that motto. I read it almost 20 years ago and when I read it I knew – this is my motto and I will live and die by it. I found the motto in a book entitled Das Energi by Paul Williams – not the singer songwriter, but the new age writer, Paul Williams.

Do I recommend the book, Das Energi, hey, I don’t remember anything about it save this one quote, which became and still is my motto. Are you ready? I carry my motto in my glasses case and it’s written with a typewriter – you remember the typewriter? It says, “You will receive your next assignment soon; and you will know it when you receive it. Wait quietly, and trust your source.” Do I need to repeat that? Did everybody get that? “You will receive your next assignment soon; and you will know it when you receive it. Wait quietly, and trust your source.”

Surely, you can understand the importance of such a motto for a writer of fiction. Oh, when you’re in the middle of the process and the characters have taken on a life of their own, and the story is unfolding so fast that you feel like you’re taking dictation, well, of course, the motto is forgotten for as Chang Tzu says, “When the shoe fits the foot is forgotten.” Who needs a motto for writing when one is immersed in writing, who needs encouragement when all one really needs is the energy to continue with what one is being handed.

And believe me when I tell you that there were periods – sometimes up to months – when I would be done with a project and no new project was insight. I remember I read once that a famous writer – really doesn’t matter who – was often asked what he was working on – he always replied – “I’m working on my next best seller!” He’d say this even though he was lying fallow as a harvested field and hadn’t the foggiest notion what was next on his agenda. When I read that I took it to mean that he was waiting quietly and trusting in his source.

Trust isn’t something that’s valued much any more. Top executives were asked what they valued in new employees 97% agreed that loyalty was number one while only 3% suggested that perhaps integrity was something important in a new employee. It’s often assumed that loyalty and trust go hand in hand, but when something like this comes from business employers it says to me that loyalty is 94% more important than Integrity and what or who are we trusting in when integrity has nothing to do with loyalty?

I trust in Providence. That’s a 19th Century Unitarian way of saying I trust in God. I don’t seem to be alone in this – it says something very similar right on your paper money. On the back of all your paper money it says, In God We Trust. The new ten dollar bill with its red tinged paper and flaming torch, its We The People with an empty oval on back and front that if you hold it to the light you’ll see a ghost image of Alexander Hamilton – with all that new fangled, post-modern stuff it still says, In God We Trust right on the bill. Now, I know that probably offends some of you that your money would express something that you yourself would not espouse and I can help you out there – in fact – the church can help you out.

After this sermon there will be a collection and I’m encouraging all you out there who do not trust in God to simply put that nasty, outdated slogan in the collection plate and thereby rid yourselves of the duplicity of consciousness. And you might as well throw the change in there, too, cause it says the same thing on all that pocket change – In God We Trust stamped on each one of those coins. Maybe that’s why some of you use checks, credit cards and debit accounts – you simply don’t want anybody thinking that you might trust in God.

We read in the great prophet Isaiah’s book this morning that there was a highway – a way – for fools to travel upon. And Isaiah reassured us that, that highway – that way – would be safe from danger. There is a story of a 19th Century traveler in France who once asked, “Are there any brigands – thieves – on the highways?” To which the Innkeeper answered, “Oh no, set your heart at rest on that point, why should these fellows stay on the highway when they rob much more effectively, and at their leisure, in the offices of the government?” At this point in our history as a nation the highways may be the safest place to be – after all it’s harder to hit a moving target!

I saw a fellow the other day that was walking north in south Austin. He had on a nice leather jacket, a felt hat – a fedora to be exact, his feet were shod in good hiking shoes and on his back was a pack filled with whatever he needed for his journey. And I thought, no matter what is wrong with the USA, it is still a country where a person can gather the belongings they think they might need and set out on the highway – to see America – to find what the soul and heartbeat of America looks and sounds like and if this is sounding too much like a Chevrolet commercial, then think back on that time in your life when you weren’t sure what to do next – God, I hope you’ve experienced a time like that. What did you do when you felt like that? Did you sit around and mope, or did you take to the road, get out of town, go somewhere you’ve never been before and simply let the rhythm of your own feet match the rhythm of your heart beat.

One day when I was living in Chimayo, New Mexico. If you haven’t been to Chimayo, it’s between Santa Fe and Taos. If you turn off the Taos highway in Espanola and travel toward Truchas you’ll see the cut off for Chimayo. They have a wonderful restaurant there and of course there is the Sanctuario de Chimayo.

The Sanctuario has a backroom off to the left of the altar and in that backroom there is a hole in the floor. The little room’s walls are covered with crutches and other articles of ill health, prosthetic devices and all sorts of implements that humans need when they are encumbered by sickness. You see, that hole in the floor is filled with holy dirt.

And even though thousands of visitors visit there every month the hole never is empty and the priests swear that they are not the ones filling the hole. But I’m not asking you to trust in the dirt of the Sanctuario de Chimayo I want to tell you a little story that happened to me when I lived there.

One day when my wife, Viv, was at work I decided to take a walk. We lived on the Romero compound. The entire compound was surrounded by a tall coyote fence. Joseph and Maria lived there in a ranch style home. Their son lived in a trailer and we, Viv and I, were forced to live in a one hundred year old adobe house with walls three feet thick and a charming porch and a pedestal bed that was built up from the floor. From our bedroom window you could see Los Alamos glowing in the night. I think it was the lights of Los Alamos that we were seeing, but maybe it was just glowing.

This particular day was partly cloudy and cool. I took a blanket, some water and some crackers. When I left the Romero compound Lupita, a smallish black and white shepherd-type dog, followed me. I tried several times to get her to turn around and go back, but she insisted, she wanted to go with me.

It took me almost an hour to get to the foothills behind the house, and then I decided to climb to the highest foothill I could see. These were typical New Mexican foothills with Juniper and Sagebrushes growing here and there. At one point I had to cross between two peaks of these foothills. There was a small land bridge that connected the two peaks and on either side of this narrow walkway there was a drop off of some hundred feet or so.

I was thinking about turning around and finding another way to this higher peak, when Lupita simply took off and raced across the land bridge like it was the easiest thing in the world. Well, I thought, that sure looks easy. So – I took off across the narrow strip of land with the precipice on both sides. Half way across here comes Lupita; tail wagging, happy that I should attempt to follow her, since she had been following me most of the morning. In her exuberance she was jumping up and down and bouncing off my legs. I tried to get her to stop, but my attempts at that were causing me to lose my balance, so I skirted by her and made a hasty crossing to the other side.

It occurred to me at the time that Lupita and I resembled the Fool and his dog in the Tarot deck. That card is also known as The Fool. There on the card is the little dog, mindless of the precipice that his master walks toward, wagging her tail and encouraging the fool onward. In the Mexican Tarot deck the fool, El Loco, is being bitten on the leg by his dog as he approaches the precipice.

When Lupita and I got to the top of the highest peak we sat down and shared my water. The wind had picked up and the clouds had gathered and turned rather dark. It began to drizzle. I covered myself with the blanket and Lupita ducked her head and joined me under my blanket. Together we watched as the thunderstorms roiled in over Northern New Mexico and as the storms progressed we watched several strikes of lightening that set off forest fires in the Kit Carson National Forest, which is, of course, in the Sangre de Cristos Mountains – the blood of Christ was on fire! Yes, I continued to play the fool with Lupita by my side and lightening striking all around us.

Within the writings of Marcia Eliade there is the notion of the mysterium tremendum. The mysterium tremendum expresses the idea that we can be – at one and the same time – attracted to and repulsed by the very same stimuli. This occurs often in nature. In fact, one of the examples that Eliade gives is a storm. We realize that the storm may kill us, but there is something in us which wishes to witness the storm in person, first hand. People who study tornadoes – storm chasers – know exactly what I’m talking about.

This is the same way, Eliade says, that we feel about God. We are both attracted to God and repulsed by God. The divine impulse then is to stay somewhere between the two extremes. When Moses sees the burning bush that is not consumed, he is in the midst of the mysterium tremendum.

I like being a fool because I feel that I am in good company. If you take a close look at the world’s religious sages you will find that the great majority of them were considered foolish and out of step with their culture and society. Many of these saints – not called saints at the time, but only after their deaths – many of these saints said things that greatly upset the status quo, their congregations and those in power. Some of the things that they said were so upsetting that the powers that be removed them from the living.

The Chinese sage Lao Tzu was hip to this and he told his disciples that the man who was worthy would be used up, and that they only way to live and be ignored by those who wished to use or abuse you was to be like the twisted trees that grew in the mountains.

Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu:

I have a big tree,

The kind they call a “stinktree.”

The trunk is so distorted,

So full of knots,

No one can get a straight plank

Out of it. The branches are so crooked

You cannot cut them up

In any way that makes sense.

There it stands beside the road.

No carpenter will even look at it.

Such is your teaching – Chuang Tzu

Big and useless.

Chuang Tzu replied:

Have you ever watched the wildcat

Crouching, watching his prey –

This way it leaps, and that way,

High and low, and at last

Lands in the trap.

But have you seen the yak?

Great as a thundercloud

He stands in his might.

Big? Sure,

But can he catch mice!”

So for your big tree. No use?

Then plant it in the wasteland

In emptiness.

Walk idly around it,

Rest under its shadow;

No axe or bill prepares its end.

No one will ever cut it down.

Useless? You should worry!

The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said, “The eye wherein I see God is the same eye wherein God sees me.” This is significant enough for a Christian mystic to say, but it was often quoted by D.T. Suzuki in his attempts to get Westerners to understand the Buddhist idea of prajna. Prajna is translated as wisdom, but the prajna that Suzuki and Zen Buddhists are speaking about is the wisdom that we all have Buddha nature, or Buddha mind. In other words, if you wish to see the Buddha look into a mirror. For the eye wherein I see the Buddha is the same eye wherein the Buddha sees me.

Foolishness is something very sacred within many traditions. Those from our culture see the swirling dervishes of the Islamic tradition as slightly crazy and at the very least foolish. Yet, they maintain that by swirling in endless circles they reach a state in which they experience the divine. Besides, when was the last time you watched small children play? Sooner or later they will get to the point where they simply turn in circles until they fall down, or if they’re close to a hill they will climb it and roll down until they are convulsed with laughter. Are these children crazy? Are they fools? Or are they participating in their birthright as children – able to do that which seems ridiculous simply because it feels good.

No, I am not suggesting that a return to childhood would render us wise fools. That argument presented by Rousseau and the Romantics that civilization merely covers up the Eden of childhood with the layers of social sickness has been proven wrong by a generation of baby boomers. The Romantic argument that healing is merely uncovering that which society has placed upon us as children is also radically refuted in William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies.

Yet at the same time, the rationalism of a Thomas Hobbes? exemplified in statements like “the life of mankind is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” although opposing the Romanticism of the Enlightenment still does not approach – as rational as it is – a complete refutation of Romanticism.

Real life lies somewhere between these two extremes – somewhere between no limits and total limitation. Children are not enlightened beings because they are pre-rational and the New Age philosophies that are rampant among baby boomers are filled with these pre-rational notions of a return to the earth, and a return to our original enlightened natures.

There is an experiment that is conducted with small children. A ball is placed between the child and an adult. One half of the ball is painted green and the other half is painted red. The child is shown both sides of the ball. The green side is placed so that the child can see it, while the red side is facing the adult. The child is then asked, “What color are you looking at?” The child answers correctly that she is looking at the green side. Then, the adult asks, “What side of the ball am I looking at?” All small children will answer that the adult is also looking at the green side – even when shown the ball again and asked the same question.

The problem is not one of perception but one of not being able to place herself in your shoes. Typically, children below the age of seven are not able to take the role of the other. They are narcissistic and egocentric. It is generally only after the age of seven that they can go from egocentric to sociocentric – from me to we.

This is a huge step for children because they are going from what is known as preconventional awareness to conventional awareness. Then, somewhere around adolescence the youth goes from conventional awareness to transconventional awareness, which means that they are no longer concerned with only the happiness of their family, tribe or country, but the happiness of the entire world – the Cosmos.

The Buddhist idea of the bodhisattva is a person who has attained enlightenment -they know that their happiness, their enlightenment is inextricably tied up with the happiness and enlightenment of all sentient beings. Hence, the first vow of the Bodhisattva;

Sentient Beings are numberless, I vow to free them.

Conclusion: So what kind of fool are you? I hope you’ve come with me on this journey into the fool’s paradise. It is not a journey back in time – we are not becoming children again. Every time I hear someone say they wish they were younger I can just about bet that they do not remember the difficulties of youth. I am fantastically enamored by the fact that I am about to turn 59 years of age. I have always believed since I was in my 20’s that I would reach my stride in my 60’s.

In conclusion I want to state something that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am God’s fool. And I need to quote scripture here – and yes, I’m talking about that pesky old Bible again. There have been so many famous paintings done on this scripture, this subject that perhaps you know one of them Henri Rousseau’s The Peaceful Kingdom.

The prophet Isaiah when talking of the coming of the Messiah and the restoration of the people of Israel speaks of a time that will be like no other time before or ever again. The verse I’m talking about is in the 11th Chapter of Isaiah the 6th verse;

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a child shall lead them.

(Isaiah 11:6 KJV)

Now, I may be God’s fool, but I’m not a literal fool. The Bible is written mostly in metaphor. When it speaks of the wolf dwelling with the lamb, and the leopard lying down with the kid, it speaks symbolically of a time when people who prey upon others and people who are preyed upon will one day live next door to each other and actually get along. Those that destroy will live adjacent to those they would at one time have been destroyed, and they will get by famously with one another. Can you say, “A Palestinian State?”

Naturally, this sort of metaphor also applies to us, our divided selves, those parts of us that wish we would fail combating those parts of us that strive for success. In a peaceable kingdom, in a world inside ourselves that is ruled by those things high and holy, a reconciliation between opposing forces happens. If you’ve seen the Russell Crow movie, A Beautiful Mind, and you know the ending, that’s the sort of reconciliation I’m talking about. You reach that point in your inner self where the bickering between opposing forces ends and life is allowed to go on. As a recovering alcoholic of 27 years I know exactly what this feel like. The process of life is a balancing act between the negatives and the positives.

Finally all this means is that if you believe in this metaphor then you imagine a time when peace will rule the people of this world, when the disenfranchised will be brought back into the circle of community, a time when the poor will be clothed and the hungry fed, a time when life will one day take a turn that reveals that all are looking with the eyes of Buddha and all are seeing Buddha in return. And regardless of the mounting evidence to the contrary, I believe this with all my heart. And that, my friends, is what finally and utterly proves that I am, perhaps along with some of you, God’s Fool.

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb!

Being Human Religiously

© Davidson Loehr

March 19, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

If we must fail, let us fail at high endeavors. Let us not fail to be mediocre when we could instead fail to be absolutely brilliant. Let us not fall short of being moderately compassionate. Let us rather fall short of being fully compassionate.

Of all our failures in life, perhaps the saddest are those in which we failed even to try and serve the highest and noblest ideals.

It is a sin to fail at low aims. Not because we failed, but because we aimed too low.

But it is not a sin to fail at very high aims, like aiming for truth, justice, compassion and character. Because even our failure puts us into the company of the saints, the company of those who also believe that rising to our full humanity and rising to our full divinity may be the same rising.

Striving after low and mean ends is a boring sin, not worthy of us. Let us have greater ambition for our failures. Let us vow never to fail at anything that wasn’t noble and proud, never to settle for lower aspirations for ourselves, our lives, our country or our world.

We will all fail at some things. But let it not be a failure of vision, a failure of aspiration. If we must fail, let us fail at high endeavors, and then let our failures bless us – for they will.

Amen.

SERMON

Today’s sermon is really prepared as a companion to the program I’ll be doing here in two weeks, “Being Human Religiously,” which is a look at the soul of what the liberal style of religion – as opposed to literal religion – has been about for more than 2500 years.

I’m also continuing to think about the idea of Spirit that I started last week with the sermon about bringing the horse in the house. That story has now been written out for the first time, and posted on our website – along with the photograph.

Last week the treatment was partly in fun. There is a spirit of life that can appear without warning and break through our boundaries like all the trickster figures in all the world’s religions, opening us to some unexpected and life-giving possibilities. And since we can find stories about it everywhere, we can call it transcendent, enduring, maybe even infinite and eternal.

But religion is about deciding to live in relation to that transcendental spirit. Religion is, as one great Hindu mystic put it, “the whole soul becoming what it believes.” (Vivekananda)

This morning, I want to think about what on earth that means, why anyone would want to do it, what we could get out of it, and how we do it. That’s a lot of area to cover; I have tried to cut the sermon down from its original length of nine days.

Many would say that being human religiously is about standing before God, and that’s one way to put it. You could also say that Well, that would depend on what sort of a god you meant; and that’s also true. If you think of the God of Western religions – at least the version that makes the world media most often – this could be a pretty unattractive idea – frightening, even.

That God so often seems to be about judging and punishing, even wiping out whole peoples who displease him. And the thought of being judged by the God who created the whole universe and has these terribly high standards and this fearful punishment – it’s no wonder so many people don’t want to go to church or take religion very seriously. A lot of what passes for religion, and for God, doesn’t deserve to be taken very seriously.

Many people think it would make a lot more sense to reverse it and try to be religious humanly, to take religion down to a human scale, to reduce it to what we understand, even what we like.

And there is a lot of that going on. God and religion are dragged down to echo and endorse what we come up with, including some of the worst of what we come up with. Then religion is used not to expand us, but to strengthen our own biases and dangerous behaviors.

Sadly, you can see this by looking at almost every single instance where religion has become combined with the power of the state, both at home and abroad. Again, it’s enough to turn people completely off on the whole subject of having anything at all to do with religion, and you can’t really blame them.

Think of the Muslim women in Iran who have been shot in the face by men for refusing to cover their faces with a veil. Or what may become several states following South Dakota’s lead, criminalizing women who get abortions, while also cutting social support programs, pre-natal care, post-natal care, and health care. It’s good to be pro-life: I think it’s even a sacred command.

But to be pro-life means to honor and be willing to pay for all the social structures and services that are needed to support, nourish and honor human life. These include sex education, because it is so much easier to take advantage of ignorance than of knowledge. They include pre-natal care, post-natal care, universal health care, day care, and a host of things that are done much better in some European countries who have a much higher notion of serving human life than we do.

The programs are expensive, and have to be provided for all, especially for those who need them the most. But without them, criminalizing abortion is little more than a vindictive policy that turns some of our poorest and most defenseless girls and women into just breeders. And that isn’t pro-life. That’s an anti-life program, wrapped in misleading religious rhetoric, and we should all be ashamed of it.

But in any country where the power of religion is combined with the power of the state, we see people dragging religion down to the lowest level of human greed and bigotry, rather than trying to be human at a level of high and loving ideals.

So let’s put it another way. If religion is about choosing to live in a commanding kind of relationship with very high ideals, why do it? What do we get out of it? Isn’t it like sailors following the North Star, even though they’ll never reach it? Why torment yourself with ideals higher than you’ll ever be able to satisfy?

Once we ask it this way, the answer is kind of surprising. I’m going to say some things this morning that may seem surprising, and you may want to check them out against your own life this week. Here’s the first one. The reason we put our lives in the service of the very highest and most demanding ideals is that it is the only way to become fully human, and we know it. We choose this route over and over, whether we care about religion or not – I’ll convince you of this. For example, let’s take a few secular professions.

Lawyers, I’ve been told, are really supposed to be committed to serve three different levels of responsibilities. First, but lowest, is the responsibility to serve their client’s wishes. Second is the responsibility to serve the law, and the quality of law. They shouldn’t act in ways that will weaken the rule of good laws. And that leads to the third and highest level of allegiance, which is to the good of society. They shouldn’t take cases that can set precedents that are likely to weaken our civil boundaries or make our world a worse place.

The popular conception of lawyers is often that they only care about doing what their client wants. And there are some like that. But I’ve never talked with any of those, and am not sure I’d enjoy it, though it could be interesting to challenge them on this. However, I have found a lot of very high idealism in the lawyers I’ve known. They believe that if they serve the highest of these ideals to the best of their ability, it is a noble profession that will make the world a better place and fulfill them both as professionals and as people. And I think they’re right.

Teachers also hope to serve different levels of ideals, but are the most fulfilled when they feel they have served the highest ideals. At the lowest and perhaps least satisfying level, they teach students to pass the tests that will rank their schools.

But good teachers also have a love, a passion, for education, learning, growing, expanding their own horizons and the horizons of their students. They love the pursuit of truth in one form or another, and give their lives to serving it, one one class at a time, one student at a time. I’ve not met many teachers of whom this wasn’t true.

If there are teachers who don’t care about anything but getting students through the tests, I can’t imagine that teaching is a very deeply fulfilling profession for them. At the highest level, teachers hope and believe that they can be positive influences in forming the character of their students, helping to make them better people, partners and citizens. I’ve had teachers who absolutely did that. So have you. And we will never, ever forget them, will we? So this too can be a noble and fulfilling profession, but only when it is striving to serve very high ideals. Nobody gets much credit for just putting in time – they don’t get much fulfillment from it, either.

Doctors have the same kind of ideals that drew them to give their lives to medicine. Not pushing pills, but serving health, being part of a profession that cares for the quality of the lives of their patients, one patient at a time.

We could go down the list with more, but the most important things in life – things like justice, truth, health and character – must always be served by holding ourselves responsible to these terribly high ideals. The higher the ideals we serve, the more gratifying we can find the act of serving them. See if this isn’t true in your own life.

And all this is true on a more personal level, too, in our personal lives rather than our jobs. All weddings, oaths of office, all professional and personal standards we make a big thing of or dress up to do, are always committing us to serve only the very highest ideals. If they weren’t, it would feel tacky, and we wouldn’t be interested.

I’ve never officiated at a wedding where the couple swore to more or less like one another for awhile till they got bored, then to split. There was a hit song in the 70s that sold millions of records, where the lyrics said “We’ll sing in the sunshine, we’ll laugh every day; we’ll sing in the sunshine, then I’ll be on my way.” I never heard it sung at a wedding.

At a wedding, couples make bold and daring promises, amazing promises. These two people who really don’t know anywhere near as much about each other as they think, stand in front of all their best friends and families and all that is holy to them. They stand there and promise to love, honor and cherish, keeping themselves faithful to the other for as long as they both shall live. Without aspiring to a commitment of that quality, it wouldn’t even be worth attending a wedding. If all they aspire to is to sing in the sunshine then be on their way, most of their friends and family would suggest they just get on their way. But nobody does that.

Without the transcendent promises that call us to become more, the whole idea of a wedding loses its magnificence of spirit, its nobility of human aspiration, its magic and its blessing.

Still, why do we do it? These aren’t even religious examples I’ve been using, but any time we do something that feels deeply important to us, we seek out the highest ideals we can find, and swear to put ourselves at their service. If that isn’t a religious commitment, I don’t know what is. But why? What do we get out of it? Why bother?

This isn’t just a rhetorical question; there’s an answer to it. Here’s the reason for being human religiously. It’s because – and see if this doesn’t ring true for you – the highest satisfaction and deepest comfort in life come from being committed to the highest and most compassionate ideals, because it is the act of commitment that transforms and blesses us. This is expressed in so many ways in different religions.

It is seeing ourselves as being beloved of God, knowing Jesus loves us, feeling engulfed in the compassion of Allah, the Buddha or Kuan Yin. Just trying to serve these things blesses us, even if we don’t do it perfectly. Because perfect ideals, and perfect gods, have forgiven us in advance for being merely human, as long as we’re trying to be the best kind of humans. This sounds all poetic and foofy, but it is absolutely true. Compassion, acceptance and forgiveness are key attributes of every god worthy of the name.

You may know Christians, as I do, for whom one of the most profoundly loving facts in their lives is the fact that they can say “Christ has accepted me just as I am.” If they hadn’t felt that, they would probably have just kept looking. It’s ironic. We can fail at trying to serve high ideals and still feel blessed by our aspirations. But if we just try to get by, get away with what we can, drag religion down to our lowest expectations so it will be easy to meet them, then when we look back on it there is no blessing for us at all.

When a Buddhist tries to see all others through the eyes of the Buddha’s or Kuan Yin’s boundless compassion, it rubs off. They also come to see themselves through the eyes of that boundless compassion; it rubs off. They have become what they tried to serve, and it transformed their lives. A Jew, Christian or Muslim who tries to serve the God of Love in honest and earnest ways, lives a far more loving and beloved life than they might otherwise. As the Hindu mystic Vivekananda put it, “Religion is – the whole soul becoming what it believes.” Not what it achieves, what it believes. We become what we most truly believe. If you believe the search for truth trumps lesser concerns, you become a person with more truth about you. The magic of serving high ideals – truth, justice, health, compassion and the rest – is that in part we become what we serve, even when we fail to serve it perfectly.

We say this to ourselves in so many ways. “At least I tried; it was worth trying; Well, I did my best”.” Think about this. There is some deep magic here, in the fact that just choosing to serve high ideals is transformative. We’ll never do it perfectly. I suspect no marriage has ever quite lived up to the poetic vows of the wedding day, and no professional ever really finished a whole career without being able to remember several times, maybe a bunch of times, that they failed, even failed pretty miserably, to live up to what mattered so much to them. But in the long run – and hopefully even in the shorter runs – we don’t condemn ourselves for the inevitable failures that come with being human. We are blessed by the ideals to which we give our lives, the compassion to which we give our hearts, the gods in whose service we enlist our souls. Think about it this week, and see if it isn’t true for you too.

It is one of the greatest miracles in life, really.

It is kind of like that picture of sailors steering their courses by following the North Star. No sailor will ever reach the North Star. It isn’t possible. But just following it changes their course completely. And when we align our hearts with the promise to love till death do us part, it changes our course as far as you can get from just wanting to sing in the sunshine then be on your way.

And it doesn’t take great wisdom; we don’t have to be saints, or like Mother Theresa or Gandhi – almost nobody can do that! We just have to try to be human in the best way we know how, try to follow that path, like steering on the North Star. Just that is transformative. And that is one of the greatest miracles in life.

I’ll tell you about a young couple I met during my first years in the ministry. They weren’t members of the church, didn’t have a church, but asked if I would marry them. They were both eighteen years old. I asked them to write their wedding vows, as I ask all couples. We don’t have to use those vows – many couples prefer more traditional vows, and sometimes what they are promising each other is really too personal to share in a public ceremony. But I want them to know what their vows are, what their promises are.

All couples find this is harder than they thought, but this young couple found it to be nearly impossible. One or the other of them phoned at least three times, asking more questions. Finally, they asked to come back in and talk about it. They were completely frustrated! “We can’t do this!” he said, and she agreed. “We don’t know enough to write anything good enough for a wedding.” In fact, they agreed, they hardly knew anything. “Well,” I said, “this does sounds serious. But you must know something. Tell me, what do you know about yourselves and what you’re bringing to this marriage?”

Between them, it started tumbling out. “We don’t know anything about the future. We don’t know what we’ll be doing for work even in two years, let alone in forty. We don’t know yet if we’ll have children, or even if we want children. We don’t know where we’ll live. We just know we love each other like the other half of our own souls, that we’ll be together for the rest of our lives, that together we can figure out anything we need to, and by God, that has to be enough!”

Yes, that’s what they decided to use for their wedding vows, and I suspect nobody who was there will ever forget it. I don’t know what happened to that young couple. He had just enlisted in the armed forces, and they were leaving in a week for some military post. But I hope they’re still together, and still know those wonderfully profound lessons they had already learned as 18-year-olds in love. High ideals bless and transform us, even if we serve them haltingly.

But when we reverse it, and drag religion down to the level of our most undeveloped parts or our greed, bigotry or the rest of it, then we’re not serving anything big enough to cherish us, or cradle us, or forgive us our sins, since we”ve not tried to forgive the sins of others, or serve them. That’s when God becomes a fearful and capriciously vicious judge and punisher. Because it isn’t God at all, but only our own smallest untutored biases, writ large. As contradictory as it sounds, we rise or shrink to the size of the ideals we serve. Just serving high ideals is transformative.

It’s all about living more wisely and well here and now, not elsewhere and later. As you’ll learn when you come to the program at the end of the month, almost all of the best religious thinkers from all religious traditions for the past 2500 years and more have tried to help us become human religiously, by orienting our lives to ideals as high, as luminous, and as beyond our reach as the North Star. When religion is taken seriously, as I think all the best styles of liberal religion have done, it is never about pie in the sky. It’s about pie here. And love here. And justice, compassion, truth and salvation by character here. It’s what Jesus meant when he said that the kingdom of heaven isn’t coming, isn’t in the future, but is within and among us. It’s here, or it’s nowhere. The magic, the miracle and the transformation are also here, or nowhere. There’s really quite a lot at stake for us.

The attraction of becoming human religiously is simple, and I think it’s powerful. Understood correctly, it is saying, “Here’s the deal. If you will believe in very high ideals, the kind that make high demands on you, and if you use your life to try and serve them, you will be blessed, accepted, and forgiven for your failings. You don’t have to earn salvation. You just have to enlist in the service of the highest ideals of truth, justice, love, health and character, and let them direct you. Even when you fail, you will be blessed for trying, and you will feel it.

The power of faith, and living that faith, can transform you, and your whole soul may become what you believe. And that may be the greatest miracle of all, now or later, here or anywhere.

I can’t guarantee to persuade you. I can only testify, which is what I’m really doing here. The rest can only happen inside of you, as you turn these things over in your heart and mind. If it happens, you might experience it as a kind of miracle. And those kinds of miracles, luckily, do happen: every day.

Oh, Go ahead: Bring the Horse in the House!

© Davidson Loehr

March 12, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

STORY: The Horse in the House

It happened in the summer of 1955, and was both logical and necessary. We lived in Colfax, Iowa, a town of about 1800, twenty miles east of Des Moines. Formerly located on Highway 6, the Interstate bypassed it when it went in in the early 1960s, kind of leaving it where it was.

But where it was – at least in 1955 – was a wonderful place, at least for a 13-year-old boy with a horse. My younger brother also had a horse, named Spooky. Spooky was white, and hot-tempered, at least to me, though my brother seemed to get along with him.

My horse was brown, with a big white line running up the back of his left hind leg, around his rump and back down his right leg. He was laid-back and cool, and his name was Louie.

The horses were our freedom. We could come home from school, throw a saddle on, and just ride, ride, anywhere. A couple times on weekends, we left on horseback to make camp for the weekend. I had a Marlin lever-action .22 caliber rifle and a saddle holster, just like I knew all real cowboys had, and would hunt big game for our vittles. OK, squirrels. Whatever. We”d make camp, cut down some saplings, or cut branches, make a corral that straddled the small creek, so the horses wouldn’t wander off. Then I’d shoot a squirrel or two, which we”d cook on a stick over an open fire, then retire to sleep using our saddles as pillows, just like in the movies. I don’t think cowboys really used saddles as pillows. It’s very uncomfortable.

When my brother Peter and I were 13 and 10, our horses were sometimes our best friends. We fed them, cleaned their stable in the barn, and rode them around the fenced pasture next to the house almost every day. I had a paper route that went from downtown straight out Main Street about two miles out past our house. Every day, summer and winter, I’d get to our house, saddle up Louie, and we”d finish the route together. We were close.

My brother Peter and I used to like to give the horses sugar cubes, which they gobbled out of our hands almost too eagerly. That was until the vet said the sugar cubes would rot their teeth and we shouldn’t do it any more. Bummer. They liked carrots and apples fine, but they also had a sweet tooth. We understood.

We were looking for a loophole in the “no sugar cubes” deal. I think we found it by chance one morning, when my brother didn’t want to finish his grape juice because it was too sweet. The words hit like a revelation straight from the gods – or at least the god Poseidon, who was also fond of horses.

After our mother left for the day, we poured some grape juice in the dog bowls on the rickety back porch. The horses loved it! But there was an unexpected bonus that made it all even better. The grape juice made their noses and tongues purple. Now that was cool! Horses with purple tongues and, in Spooky’s case, a purple nose!

The occasion giving rise to the center of this story came on one of those days when both horses were up on the back porch, drinking grape juice out of the dog bowls. When Pete took Spooky back down, he broke the wooden steps – really, it’s amazing that both horses didn’t fall straight through the porch.

Well, now Louie was stuck up there on the back porch. He wouldn’t jump down, there wasn’t any other way off the porch, and our mother would be coming home in an hour or two. This called for quick thinking, which kids mostly know they’re pretty good at. We had two friends over, who would help with the horses in return for getting to ride them. I shared my plan. Joey could take Louie’s halter, I’d go ahead to clear away the furniture, and we would lead the horse through the house and out the front door, over the new porch with its sturdy cement step. Oh yes, and Jimmy would walk behind Louie, carrying a metal bucket, just in case. Jimmy protested, but he was the littlest, so it was only fitting.

No sooner had I announced this grand and eminently logical plan than my brother jumped on Spooky and rode away as fast and as far as he could.

The plan worked beautifully. I cleared the furniture out of the way, Louie was very well-behaved, and Jimmy whined all the way through the kitchen and dining room about the sorry hand that Life had dealt him.

When we got into the living room, the television was on, and Louie stopped. His ears shot forward, his eyes got big, and I could feel him thinking “Hey – we haven’t got this out in the barn! The Big House is a whole other thing!” I saw the family camera sitting on a hall table – a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye with flash bulb attachment – and quickly took a picture of this scene.

But I wasn’t as quick as Jimmy. When he saw me going for the camera, he walked up by the horse’s shoulders, and set the bucket down.

This was not good timing. It was not good timing because when the flash bulb popped, it startled Louie. And Louie pooped on the rug.

I yelled at Jimmy – his duties had been made very clear. But he snapped back – petulantly, I thought – “I am not going down in history holding a bucket behind a horse’s butt!” It was a good point, well taken.

Still, there was the poop.

We took Louie out the front, got him back into the barn, and both Joey and Jimmy disappeared as quickly as my brother had a few minutes earlier.

I scooped the poop, but it wasn’t going to be that simple. There was a stain. Not dramatic, but noticeable. I went into the kitchen and looked under the sink, where wondrous and mysterious Chemicals are kept. And there was a big bottle of Glamorene Rug Cleaner. It was, I’m quite sure, the only time in my life I ever saw or used that product, but its name was stamped in my mind forevermore.

Luckily, I had a bucket. Of course, if it had been used in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to use it in the second place. I filled the bucket with water, dumped in a lot of Glamorene, got a brush, and scrubbed.

Glamorene Rug Cleaner was truly miraculous! Unfortunately, there was now a large wet spot, a couple feet across, which was even more noticeable than the original stain. My mother had never been accused of being a good housekeeper, though this was the first time I saw that as a good thing. I took a throw rug from the other side of the room and covered the wet spot.

She never noticed. Neither did my father. And Peter knew better than to say one single word. During the day, I’d take the rug off, covering it again before my mother came home. In two or three days, the rug was dry, and looked like its scruffy old self again. When I moved the rug back where it belonged, both parents suddenly noticed it had been moved, though I assured them it had always mostly been there.

In short, I pulled off the caper of the century. I got away with bringing Louie through the house, even though he had had that little accident in the living room. In the days to come, both my brother and I would laugh about it while we were out riding. Certain kinds of kids live for moments like that.

It was – I don’t know, maybe two or three weeks later: a long time later. I came home from some serious playing, and no sooner had the screen door shut than I heard this Mother Voice shouting “Howie! Come in here!” Every kid knows that voice, and knows what it means.

I stood a little paralyzed there by the front door, wondering – not what I’d done, but what anyone could possibly have told her about. Nothing. There was nothing. I’d either been quite good, or left no evidence. I was sure of it. I went into the kitchen, and every kid knows just what comes next. With my most innocent look, I said “Yes, Mother?”

She was not a happy woman. “What do you mean, bringing that horse in the house?”

This took really quick thinking. Could she possibly know about that? It didn’t seem likely. Pete wouldn’t dare tell. And Jimmy and Joey knew if they blabbed, they”d lose their ticket for free horse rides. And Louie didn’t talk. That’s it. She couldn’t know.

So again with the innocent kid look, I said “What horse?”

The next line was the Voice of Damnation and Doom: “I just got the pictures back from Walgreen”s!”

Poop. That horse. Louie, the cool, laid-back horse. Ah, yes.

The next moments were a bit awkward. Denial seemed out of the question. But explaining the logic of it – and especially how responsibly we brought the horse into the house, with moving the furniture and Jimmy and the bucket and all – that was a little trickier. And then there was the matter of the poop. I couldn’t really leave that out. And the Glamorene, and the wet spot – which finally cleared up the mystery of the moving throw rug. It was actually quite a complex story. And telling it did sound a bit odd, even though it was all quite logical from beginning to end.

As I stumbled through the story, I suddenly saw a gift from the gods, a shot of pure Grace: the corner of her mouth twitched. She was on the verge of laughing! Oh, Hallelujah!

Again, every kid would know what move to make next. “What’s the matter, Mom? Are you going to laugh? It’s really pretty funny, isn’t it? Huh?”

Her expression was one of those that should have been filmed. She needed to be serious – it was still Serious Parent time – but she could barely keep it in. Finally, she blurted “I have no idea what to say to you. I would feel ridiculous saying “Don’t bring that horse in the house again”!” I look back on that as about the most ideal way a parent could handle this situation – not that more than like one in a billion parents will ever have to face this situation. As for the back steps; they were rebuilt, but I don’t remember anything about it. Maybe Pete and I had our allowances docked to help pay the carpenter, but I don’t think so. I think the family absorbed Louie’s Big Day as one of those Memories we’re always trying to make – or perhaps as the sad sign of a child too far gone to save.

And that’s the story of how the horse was brought into the house, way back in the summer of 1955 when both I and my world were a lot younger and simpler.

But as logical as it is, I have learned through the years how filled with Basic Disbelief many people are. Like you. You don’t quite believe it – at least not all of it – do you?

Oh, come on. This is better than most history. Even if you don’t believe it, can’t you pretend to?

But no. No. And so, for those too cynical to accept the simple truth of a childhood memory from a half-century ago, a gift for you too. I carried that photo in my billfold for over twenty years. Louie was with me through the Army, in Germany, even through the Vietnam War. Then sometime in the mid-70s, while I was spending a weekend with my brother’s family, he picked my pocket as I slept, stole the picture, and sent it off to have it copied. At Christmas, he gave me a 16×20 print of that old photo, complete with its fading and scratches, which I then had mounted and framed. It still hangs on my office wall today.

PRAYER

There are little sparks of life around that we often miss: a special person, a twinkle in the eye of someone who just seems to very real to us.

Little lights are scattered here and there in our lives: people, places, even things that can awaken our own spirit in ways large and small, but in ways we wish for.

So often when life seems dull or we seem to be in a rut, we’ve lost sight of those sparks, or lost touch with them. Spontaneous things, unplanned fun, or contact with those people who have such a young spirit, no matter how old they are.

There is an old mystical story that says all these sparks are parts of God, and that our task is to find them, draw them to our lives, and use them to transform ourselves and our world back into an image of God.

Drawing the world back into an image of God sounds like a task far beyond anything we can do. But we do recognize those moments, people and places that make us feel more alive, that seem to make life offer more options, that open us up.

Let us start there, attending to the sources of inspiration that make us feel more alive, more thankful, more joyful. Let us claim those sources and the little sparks of life they offer, even if they offer them only to us.

The task of reconstituting the world is too big to imagine. Let us bring it down to a level we can see and feel: reconstituting one spirit at a time, one life at a time, one relationship at a time, to make them show forth more light, love, and joy.

It’s a start. A good start.

Amen

SERMON: Oh, Go ahead: Bring the Horse in the House!

There is a wonderful story from medieval Jewish mysticism about how in the beginning, God existed just as undifferentiated infinite light. But God wanted to behold himself, and so he created the world; the world is the image of God. Then God withdrew, and the world was no longer the image of God, but a fractured, separated place. But spread throughout this world, there are billions and billions of sparks from that divine light that can connect us with all that is sacred.

Our task in life is to cherish those sparks that it is our good fortune to encounter in life, and to raise and spiritualize them, so we can reconstitute the world as an image of God. Each of us, they say, encounters those persons, events and things that contain sparks that we are uniquely suited to redeem.

And our sacred task in life is to find those sparks we are lucky enough to come across, to cherish and embody them, to lift them up and spiritualize them, and by doing this to reconstitute the world so that it can once more take on the image of a God of love, justice, happiness and peace.

There are a lot of ways to describe those sparks, but when you’re around one you usually notice it.

Mostly, we seem to notice those sparks when they’re gone.

I think of the final lines from a poem written 150 years ago by Thomas Hood, called “I Remember, I Remember.” It’s looking back to a childhood when the world seemed to be whole and sacred, but looking from a present where it isn’t. The final lines of the poem say,

I remember, I remember,

The fir trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky:

It was a childish ignorance,

But now ’tis little joy

To know I’m farther off from heaven

Than when I was a boy.

He’s talking about heaven as though it were above the sky. But the real “heaven” he’s talking about was that state of spirit in which we were close enough to the soul of life nearly to touch it.

And when we miss that – well, missing it has produced a lot of great tragedy and poetry, including some poignant funny poems. One of my favorite of those is a great favorite of women, at least women who think that one day they might become old. You’ve probably all heard it. It was written in 1961 by an English woman named Jenny Joseph, and her original title for it was simply “Warning”:

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple

 with a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

 And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

 and satin candles, and say we’ve no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired

 and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

 and run my stick along the public railings

 and make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

 and pick the flowers in other people’s gardens

 and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

 and eat three pounds of sausages at a go

 or only bread and pickles for a week

 and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

 and pay our rent and not swear in the street

 and set a good example for the children.

 We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

 But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

 So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Sometimes, it seems that we lose the ability to see and save these sparks just by growing up. Thomas Hood’s poem longs for his first childhood; Jenny Joseph’s poem seems to be looking forward to her second childhood. That’s a big part of why it’s so much fun seeing the children come up for their story each Sunday: they bring that sense of wonder with them. They seem to do so easily what we grownups sometimes have trouble doing at all.

During my first year in the ministry, in 1986, I witnessed such a scene: one I’ll never forget.

It was after the third sermon I had preached there. I had written a series of children’s stories for those three weeks. They were like a serial, and were a simple story, if not a great one. It was a story about a bush that became unhappy just being a bush because all those darned birds kept taking it for granted and it didn’t have a starring role like the big trees did. The more unhappy it got, and the angrier it got at having to be a bush, the more its roots withdrew from the soil, until at last they pulled out, the wind blew, and it became a tumbleweed.

Now it roamed everywhere, but never had a home, and began feeling lonely. When the wind stopped for awhile, it found itself resting not far from a lovely little river, in a beautiful meadow. It was grateful for the rest, and to be in such a beautiful place. And soon, it put down roots and again became a bush. Now when birds came to sit in its branches, it was thankful for the company. It came to love the place, and all the other creatures in its world. And as that happened, it grew and grew, and finally became a very, very big tree. The End.

I wasn’t prepared for what happened after the service. In the foyer, a church member who was a physics professor came up to me, raging mad. He was actually red in the face, as he accused me of having done a ridiculous and shameful thing. My crime was that I had told the children a story that could not be scientifically true.

I could hardly believe it! It was ridiculous, he yelled, to say that a tumbleweed could again put down roots and become a bush. Though he didn’t know the scientific names of the plants involved, he was quite sure it couldn’t happen. And then, as though that weren’t bad enough, I had gone to absolutely stupid extremes by then telling the children that the bush could become a tree!

“It’s ridiculous!” he said, getting pretty worked up. Then he shook his finger at me and said “Do you actually believe that a bush can become a tree?”

I said Yes. Now he turned nearly purple. He was almost shouting, as he said “Well, I would like to know how in hell a bush can become a tree!”

That’s when the six-year-old boy who had been standing behind me waiting for his turn finally had all he could take. He stepped forward, looked up at the physicist, and said “It’s easy, Mister. It just has to learn how to love!”

You hear something like this, and it can be easy to feel like Peter Pan, like you never want to grow up if it means losing the ability to understand even the simplest of stories. The little boy had been waiting to tell me how much he had liked the three stories, and that he would never forget them. The man was in his fifties, with a Ph.D. in physics, yet actually seemed to think the story had been about a bush! If we must lose the ability to see even the simplest magic when we grow up,

But of course we do grow up. We have to grow up. Eventually, our parents want us to move out and get a job. And to do that – well, we have to grow up. You know, it’s one thing to have your kid bring a horse in the house once. But if every role of film you got developed had a picture of your child with another large heavy animal standing in your living room, you”d be looking for a good therapist.

There’s a famous passage from the Christian scriptures, written by St. Paul, where he says, “When I was a child I spoke as a child I understood as a child I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.” (I Cor. 13: 11). When you think about it, it’s an odd thing to say, after Jesus had said that you can’t hope to enter the kingdom of heaven unless you’re like a child! Maybe Paul didn’t get it.

I don’t know quite what happens to us when we grow up, but something does seem to change – that change that Peter Pan was so afraid of. I remember stories on the old hippies of the 60s and 70s who had tuned in, turned on and dropped out, then growing into investment bankers and organization men and women, becoming the new incarnation of the very Establishment they had earlier hated, as they raised their own children and suffered through their teen-aged rebellions, wondering why they didn’t grow up.

Sometimes, it seems that part of growing up is losing touch with that spark, the almost magical and transformative insights of even the simplest fairy tales and stories – about a beauty that remains asleep until wakened by a loving kiss, about frogs turning into princes the same way, or tumbleweeds turning into bushes and then trees, just because they’ve learned how to love.

But without seeing the sparks within these stories, and being open to them, we really are farther off from heaven than when we were young. And the “heaven” in this story isn’t a place, you know, but that kind of life where it feels the sacred dimensions, the sparks, are right there near us, close enough to touch. That’s what we seem to lose.

Of course, growing up doesn’t have to mean just growing old, and we all know some people with both plenty of years and plenty of sparks. In fact, they are probably some of our very favorite people in the whole world. They’re some of the vessels carrying those sparks for us to find, and claim, and embody, in our own sacred task of trying to reconstitute the world so it can once again be the image of God, of all that is holy and life-giving.

When I was a graduate student, in a very arid, intellectual and sometimes impersonal graduate school, there were a few of these living sparks around, and they were absolutely magical for me.

My teacher was one of them. He was a man in his 60s who wore beads, had an earring, wore jeans, sometimes sandals, and open collars that somehow survived from the hippie movement, and shoulder-length hair, except on the top where he didn’t have much hair at all.

He looked like a walking refutation of grown-up seriousness. We became close, I had many dinners with his family, and still remember the feeling that one of the greatest living theologians was also an over-sized elf.

I had another professor who was much more sober and quiet, very grown-up. During the week, if he wasn’t teaching an advanced seminar or discussing the footnotes of footnotes, you would find John in the library, meticulously digging up even more footnotes.

Ah, but on Sunday night, after the sun went down, some of the students would gather in the lounge for an evening of playing Dungeons and Dragons. And there was John, playing the Dungeonmaster, dressed in a wonderful brownish medieval robe with hood and rope belt that his wife had made for him, his eyes twinkling like a six-year-old boy, and more excitedly alive than I ever saw him at any other time. On Sunday nights, he was just full of sparks.

And I suspect that if someone were to have asked John whether he actually believed in that ridiculous Dungeons and Dragons stuff, he might have said he actually believed that letting ourselves expand in imaginary escapades we’ll never be able to encounter in grown-up life can open up whole new and wonderful avenues for our souls to take flight.

In religious studies, you often call figures like this Trickster figures. Those are the figures that don’t follow grown-up rules, that bring spontaneity into life whether you want it or not.

Even the more official and restrained parts of the University sometimes welcomed in these Trickster figures, and there would be a quiet explosion of sparks that could just take your breath away.

The most memorable came one Christmas Eve, in the big formal service in Rockefeller Chapel. Built with the money of John D. Rockefeller, this huge stone building was over a hundred feet high inside, seated two thousand people, and seemed modeled on the magnificent cathedrals of medieval Europe. The Sunday services were so dismal it seldom drew more than fifty.

But on Christmas Eve, it was packed. Organ, huge choir, medium-sized orchestra, priests in formal robes, everybody being very sober and pious.

Then, into the middle of this great pomp, they staged a re-enactment of the old Bible story of Joseph and Mary looking for a place to stay. And slowly, from the end of the long stone aisle all the way to the front, came this year’s Joseph, and Mary – and real live donkey! A donkey! The little donkey didn’t know the story, didn’t care for the music or the costumes or much else besides the carrots Joseph would try to slip him unnoticed.

The donkey had no costume, no pretense at all, couldn’t have cared less about Christmas, and completely stole the show! Finally, when the donkey entered, there was something that was simply real. I don’t remember much else from the program that night, but the donkey, at least, was sacred, and everybody there with eyes to see could see it. There was one of those magnificent sparks, clip-clopping down the aisle: just clip-clopping and looking around.

Bringing the donkey into the temple revealed the temple in the donkey. And if even a little donkey could contain a temple, then surely we could, too. And just knowing that helps to accomplish the sacred task of reconstituting the world.

Sometimes just telling these stories is like bringing a donkey into the temple. That’s the role that stories, fairy tales, movies and some imaginative fantasy games can play for us, and it’s a role we need, if we’re going to find any of those sparks at all.

I don’t know if Mardi Gras or Burning Man or the others offer more escape than transformation. But anywhere that spirit is present, it can offer transformation, because it shows that power of life, that power that represents life unchained, that most powerful force anywhere.

How many of you have thought some version of “When I’m older and no longer afraid of what people might think, I’ll wear purple. I’ll do the harmless but outrageous things I don’t dare do now”?

What would those things be, that would let your soul take flight? Do you think perhaps it might be wise to practice them a little now, so that when you get older and have the nerve to do outrageous things that let your soul soar, people won’t be so surprised?

In the beginning, God, the divine and magical dimension of the universe, existed just as infinite light. But God wanted to behold himself, and so he created the world; the world is the image of God. Then God withdrew, and the world was no longer the image of God, but a fractured, separated place. But spread throughout this world, there are billions and billions of sparks from that divine light that can connect us with all that is sacred. And our sacred task in life is to find those sparks we are lucky enough to come across, to cherish and embody them, to lift them up and spiritualize them, and by doing this to reconstitute the world so that it can once more take on the image of a God of love, justice, joy, and peace.

My story about bringing the horse in the house may not be about much more than dealing with a problem you will never, ever have: what to do with a horse that’s stuck on your back porch before your mother comes home. That’s not a spiritual quest at all. Yet there’s something in it that still has some magic about it, a spark to it, even fifty years later, isn’t there?

Let’s not grow up without bringing with us that child’s ability to feel pure joy, to expect magic everywhere, and to find it. These sparks can come through so many different doors. They can arrive like a little donkey. They can be like a spark, or a lightning flash. Sometimes they come announced by that “still, small voice” that prophets have written about. And sometimes – you can trust me on this one – they even whinny.

Virtually the whole story is captured in this photo. At the far right, you can see the edge of the console-style television set. Louie’s alert eyes and ears speak for themselves. That’s Joey on the sofa, and Jimmy, derelict from duty, peeping over the horse’s shoulders. On the floor, you can still see the top of the metal bucket – which, like Jimmy, is about four feet from where it should have been.

What Are We Doing Here?

© Davidson Loehr

and Jack Harris-Bonham

March 5, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER:

Davidson Loehr

Let us not hide our lights under a basket. We meet in this room with the sculpture of a flame in the wall, with a small burning light in our chalice, and with 150 more little personal lights sitting over in the window, waiting to be lit by members and visitors. We’re surrounded by symbols that say what we’re about here is finding and sharing a certain kind of light. So let’s not hide it under a basket.

All religions say they offer a light unto the world. But nobody cares what goes on inside those churches, or what the people in the little buildings think. The rest of the world wonders if we will have some light to share with those outside of our little building.

We have so many kinds of light – even more than those 150 little lights in the window can signify. And the world needs light of many kinds in many dark areas. Who will take light to the world if we don’t?

And so this symbol of light that surrounds and cradles us. Let us take some with us when we leave. Let us not hide our lights under a basket. Light deserves more, and the world needs more. Let this be a place where we learn to light our own lights, then take them out of here to offer to our larger world, each in our own way.

Just that could change the world. Just that.

Amen.

HOMILY: SANCTUARY – A Safe Place For You, By You & Of You,

Jack R. Harris-Bonham, Ministerial Intern

I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3 NIV)

The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! Or, lo there! For behold, the kingdom of God is within (among) you. (Luke 17:20b-21 KJV))

 

Introduction:

Kids – and I’m speaking to all the kids here not just the ones who are from the 1st to 6th grades. There’s a whole lot more kids here than that. In the reading from the Bible that I just read Jesus says that unless you change and become like a child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. So where is this kingdom of heaven?

The answer to that question is in the second reading – “for behold, the kingdom of heaven is within, or among you.”

Throughout history human kind has tried to represent the kingdom of heaven through the building of sanctuaries like this one. Why do you suppose there are windows way up high here in the front of our sanctuary? It’s pretty simple really.

Down through the ages we humans have been a lot more literal than we have to be. We tend to take things exactly as they are said. When we hear the words, “kingdom of heaven,” we tend to look towards the heavens – the sky. So a whole lot of cathedrals and churches tend to have light pouring in from above – from the sky.

When you enter a room you eyes tend to follow the light and so when a church, or sanctuary like this one is entered our eyes, our heads and our thoughts tend to go toward the heavens – the sky. So architects and builders of churches have given us a literal interpretation of the kingdom of heaven here on earth. They build sanctuaries that take our thoughts out of this world into the next world – the so-called kingdom of heaven.

But that’s not what Jesus meant when he talked about the kingdom of heaven. He was talking about a place that’s right here on earth – a place that’s easier to get to, if we have the mind and heart of a child.

The Zen Master, Shunryu Suzuki, once said, “In the experts mind there are few possibilities, but in beginner’s mind there are many possibilities.” When Suzuki-Roshi said “beginner’s mind” he was, in fact, talking about the mind and heart of a child.

What is it about the mind and heart of a child that helps us enter the kingdom of heaven? I mean here we are in a representation of the kingdom of God right here on this earth. We are in a sanctuary and this sanctuary is designed so that we can realize the kingdom. But the part that’s missing in most adults, the part that can help us realize the kingdom here on this earth is the imagination and wonder of a child.

In the child dedication ceremony that we do here at First Church, we say at one point in that ceremony, “Nothing is strange to the children for whom everything is new. Children do not yet know what belongs and what does not; therefore for them all things belong. Their ears are open to all music. Their eyes are open to all arts. Their minds open to all languages. Their being open to all manners. In the child’s country there are no foreigners.”

This gets at the heart of what it means to be in a sanctuary. For truly all things are holy and wonderful. It is in that spirit that we gather here in this sacred space. We gather to recognize each other as part of ourselves. We gather to have the imagination of a child’s heart and mind to see past our differences into the heart of the matter, which is that we all – each and every one of us – belong to one another.

There was a man once who wanted to learn to meditate. Meditation is like praying, but there are no words. Meditation is sitting quietly and doing nothing.

But the man didn’t know how – he didn’t know how to just sit and be quiet. Maybe you can understand this? Sometimes it’s hard to sit and be quiet. So a friend suggested that the man go to a place in his mind, in his thinking, a place where he would feel safe – a safe place.

But everywhere he thought of – the golf course, his job, his car, his home – none of these places felt safe to him, then, he remembered the way he felt in his mother’s arms. When he was a little boy and he got scared, he’d run to his mother and do this! (Hold arms up to be held.) She would take him into her arms and she would hold him tight and talk sweet to him. It didn’t matter much what his mother said, what really matter was the way she smelled – like perfume and cookies – and the way he was able to totally relax in her arms.

It’s that feeling of being safe and protected that best explains sanctuary. To be lovingly embraced by the warmth of a room full of friends.

And now I want each of you kids out there to open the special packages that were handed to you when you entered the embrace of this sanctuary. Inside you’ll find color crayons and a piece of paper. There’s going to be a number on one side of this paper. I want to invite you now to begin coloring on the side of the paper without the number – we need to be able to see that number.

Color your hearts out! Make those pieces of paper bright, bold and beautiful and hold on to them because those pieces of paper will be magically transformed at the end of the service.

HOMILY: What are we Doing Here?

Davidson Loehr

In most ways, asking what kind of religion we’re doing in this or any other liberal, non-creedal church isn’t a tricky question at all. We’re doing about the same thing that all religions try to do: help ourselves find better paths through life, and the courage to take them. And like all religions, we remind ourselves of this mission through the use of symbols and metaphors.

I think of this place in mixed metaphors. The symbol of light is our most powerful and persistent symbol, but I also think of this as a “garden of light,” where light seeds can be planted and grow, then we can take them out of here and bring our own kind of inspiration, our own kind of light, to the larger world around us.

In some ways, all of this is contained in that large symbol of the chalice with the flame in it, that Jack will be telling you more about in a few minutes. There really isn’t anything Unitarian in that symbol. It points back to a Roman Catholic priest of six hundred years ago who thought the spirit, the power of religion, symbolized by the Communion chalice, should be offered to all, not just to those approved by his church. There’s the spirit of liberal religion in one symbol: a chalice offering communion, a communion of light, to all the world, not stopping at the walls of a church or at the walls of a nation or at the walls of belief.

And that flame, that light, is what we like to think we have to offer: more light, a different and better way of seeing things, even if it is often highly unorthodox. That too is in the style of that old priest whose life and death we celebrate every time we look at the symbol of the flaming chalice. The flame has a much darker meaning, too, but I’ll let Jack tell you that.

But it’s all about sharing what we have with others outside these walls. Because until it’s been shared with others, there’s no communion. Nobody cares what Unitarians think. Nobody cares what Presbyterians busy themselves with inside their walls.

The world only cares whether our religion has filled us up enough so that there is some overflow that might share light and sustenance with those outside our little walls. That’s the “communion” the world needs from those who style ourselves “religious.” So the big light sculpted into the wall is to remind us of that high and hard calling. And the single flame that we light in our small chalice up on the stage is that same symbol, brought to life, to light.

But we also have 150 personal lights over there in the window, for you to light. And that’s like sharing the big communion cup with you, then letting you make it your own, in whatever form you give it.

Where do you take your light? Into your lives, into your families, into your jobs, into your thoughts and dreams, to let it shine there. But you know you have to take it out of this room before it can do any real work.

For many of you, the larger world you most want to share light with is your children, and they are probably the most important larger world we have. The children are the future of our families, our faith, and our world. That’s why so much of what we try to do here is meant to be of help to parents and children.

Not all of us here have children, so we try to share our light in different ways, usually through work or friendships. Artists try to bring more beauty; lawyers and lawmakers try to bring more justice; mechanics and engineers try to bring more creative efficiency; teachers and preachers try to bring more understanding, more light, more compassion. We all try to bring more of some kind of light into the parts of the larger world for which we have passion.

For me, it’s largely about finding patterns to things that make them more understandable, more useful. I love stories, and look for the plots that hold actions together. For almost all the sermons I do here, I’m looking for patterns that you can use within your lives, like the wonderful old story of Gilgamesh last week.

But I also have some passion for the world around me, because I think being an aware and responsible citizen is a civic duty that has almost sacred status. And as a veteran of the Vietnam War, I have a lot of passion for the subject of war, and a deep disgust at seeing the lives of soldiers wasted through illegal and dishonest wars. I have some interest in all sorts of things that define the larger world around us, and these too find their way into my sermons, as you know.

Three weeks ago, I preached a sermon trying to assert some patterns in that larger world outside our walls, and it was a good example of how this business of “light” works in this very bright and animated church.

As you know if you were here, it was a pretty contentious sermon, because I said during it that I thought our government was responsible for the awful attacks of 9-11. Well, it’s hard to touch such a powerful and important subject without having done some good homework, and without figuring out just how to frame it, and for what audience. And I must say none of that was done well.

But the uproar that ensued was all part of the process of offering our light out, then listening to critiques from people who don’t like that light, or don’t think it illuminates. It didn’t take long to realize that I had done it poorly and needed to do a lot more work before offering it out beyond these walls, and I did a lot of work during the past two weeks.

But this past Friday, that work had grown into a brand new essay, and a long one, about four sermon lengths, that I offered out to the Internet, and which is now posted on the first of what I suspect will be many web sites around the world, to see if it can stimulate further discussion of some of the important issues raised there (www.propeace.net).

Some of you liked the version of three weeks ago, some hated it, but it turned out to be just a “light seed” that got cut back, then grew into a very different kind of light. I’m happy with the new piece, though it has very little to do with the sermon of three weeks ago, and am happy to see it out where it will draw more comments and certainly more criticisms from that larger world beyond these walls.

I am trying to articulate the “frame” story that I believe is the plot that helps explain not only 9-11 but also our imperialism, our rapacious economy, our growing indifference to the poor, two rigged elections and much more. I think I’ve done it, so it is time to offer it out, to see what comments and critiques it will draw, and whether it can spark a good and ongoing discussion. It is bound to draw some angry criticism, no matter how many concurring sentiments it gathers, because that’s the price of sending offerings out into the larger world.

But I think informed and passionate attacks are exciting and positive, because I see that Spirit operating, and trust the process that can sort the grain from the chaff. The new title of the piece is “The New World Order Story,” and it will be posted on enough websites that I won’t post it on the church website because it isn’t a sermon, isn’t about religion, and is now really intended for an audience I might describe just as “citizens” or “Americans,” rather than just us. Like about five or six other sermons I’ve done in my six hears here, it wound up being intended for a larger audience, the one outside these walls.

But it grew here. It grew in this atmosphere where we come to seek more light – and yes, to criticize the quality of light that is sometimes offered. But this was the light garden where it grew, just as it’s the light garden where so many of your own lights grow, and are taken into so many other directions.

The faith of this liberal style of religion isn’t about all believing the same thing. That’s for religions of creeds and orthodoxies, religions that exalt a position. Liberal religion doesn’t exalt a position, but a process. It is about trusting the light, trusting people, and trusting the act of open communion. We believe that it is our job to share the light we think we have found with others outside the walls here, to make a positive difference in the world around us so that we might all find better paths through life, and the courage to take them. And we trust that people will use that light as they need to, as they see most fit, and that even if they use it in ways we wouldn’t have, I think there is a trust that it’s still a good thing to have more light in the world.

When we do it right, the light in that chalice really can symbolize light, enlightenment, illumination, and the spirit of life. When we do it wrong, that chalice light can revert to its original meaning, which Jack will tell you about shortly.

Now watching these light seeds grow can be kind of exciting, in a frustrating way, even when it’s done very awkwardly. It’s more fun when there aren’t so many birth pangs. But it is a sacred mission, this business of giving birth to more light, and taking it into the many corners of our many worlds, to try and make a positive difference, and to illuminate better paths. And that’s a good thing.

HOMILY, PART TWO: Sanctuary,

by Jack R. Harris-Bonham

Now, if the ushers will collect the beautifully colored pieces of paper. Kids just pass them down to the end of the aisle and the ushers will bring them up here.

Now, while that’s going on I want to show you something – it’s a sort of word puzzle. The older kids have an advantage here, but that’s okay – that’s how we learn by watching older kids give answers – answers that maybe we”d thought of, too, but were too scared to speak up and give.

(Hold up the sign with this on it: CH_ _ CH.) What’s missing in this word? (Wait for answers – hopefully some kid will have the right answer – if not – wing it!)

That’s right! What’s missing in “church” – U R! You see it’s like a joke, a pun, a play on words. What’s missing, what church is, wouldn’t be church, unless you are there!

I remember this hand game that I was taught when I was a kid. (Do the hand game about church.)

“Here is the church, here is the steeple. Open the doors and there are the people.” You see, without the people – there is no church. (Say while closing your hands) And it is the church, which lovingly embraces the people.

Back in the 15th Century there was a priest Jan Hus. He had a church in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Part of their church service was a meal – they shared bread and wine together. But back then the priests were supposed to speak in a foreign language, Latin, and only the priests were supposed to drink from the cup or chalice. But Jan Hus spoke the church service not in Latin, but in his native tongue, Czech and he passed the cup around and let everyone in the church drink from it. He was punished for doing that – in fact – he was burned at the stake.

In 1939 the Unitarian Service Committee that was helping people escape Nazi Germany had an artist named Hans Deutsch design them a symbol that would represent how Unitarians felt about the world. Hans Deutsch designed a chalice – like the one that Jan Hus passed to all the people, and in the middle of the chalice he put a flame – and the flame was Jan Hus as he was being burned alive at the stake. The message is clear. We Unitarians believe that the cup of knowledge, faith and love is intended for all people, and to back this statement up we put someone who died for that belief as a part of the chalice.

Now, I notice that some of you have been watching what’s happening over here. We’ve put together a giant puzzle from all the pieces that you colored and what have we made? Who can tell me?

(Wait for answers – or give clues)

That’s right! It’s the chalice. Chalice is just a fancy word for cup. The chalice or cup is a symbol for Unitarian Universalist because when we come here we are nourished, feed from a single cup or source.

So what you’ve made here today with your individual efforts is a coloring of the cup that nourishes – the symbol of our faith. Each of you work independently, but by putting together your efforts you made something larger and greater than any one of us – and that’s as good a definition of church as you’ll probably ever get.

Gilgamesh: The Oldest Religious Hero

© Davidson Loehr

February 26, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

PRAYER:

Let us seek our fullest humanity. We may be about 1/3 beast, 1/3 human and 1/3 divine, but none of the three parts is whole enough, or wise enough, to guide us.

Let us try to become integrated in every way – all our parts, all our people, are the necessary elements of our fullest humanity, and our most complete strength.

The excellence we seek is a fragile, beautiful thing. We seek the ability to live our passing lives, alive with awareness and compassion, excited by the human-scale joys that come from fully participating in the passing but precious splendor of people who have come alive to the challenges of life and the joy of living them.

As the theologian Howard Thurman has said, “Let us find what makes us come most fully alive, and go do it – because what the world most needs is people who have come alive.”

Amen.

SERMON: Gilgamesh, the Oldest Spiritual Hero

One of the ironies of religion is that we go to our faith traditions to seek what we feel are the most important truths – the truths we should guide our lives by – but what we mostly do is tell stories. Those stories can structure our lives, determine how we live, what we take to be sacred. Yet, at bottom, they’re stories. And if we change our stories, it can change our life. That’s what a conversion experience is about: changing your center to live out of a new story.

In Western religion, we’re trained to explore and interpret stories from the Bible for insights into reality, ethics, etc. In Hindu countries, they don’t use the Bible, but use the many stories in their Mahabharata and Ramayana stories, and some of the philosophical writings like the Upanishads, etc.

Like the Hindus, the ancient Greeks used lots of gods, while the Buddhists used stories without any gods at all.

But for most of us, religion is about forming the right kind of relationship with God, much as subjects form a relationship with their master. Not to care about God is seen as not caring about life, goodness, character or ethics – and, of course, our eternal future for most of those in Western religions. For this God controls eternal damnation or reward, though the terms of it are made by the priests and rulers, since this God, like all gods, isn’t really part of our world except through the stories about him.

But long before the Hebrews, long before the Greeks, over 1500 years before the Hindus, there was an earlier high civilization in Sumer, with a very different kind of story about life, the gods and immortality.

It is the epic of Gilgamesh. It was only unearthed and translated in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I don’t think you can overstate just how deeply different and disturbing it is to all Western religious thought. First, it disturbed Western thinkers because it contains the ancient story of a flood, and a couple who made an ark to survive it, told centuries before the Genesis story and generally accepted as the main source of the story of Noah and his ark.

That was in the 1870s. But by the 1890s, some scholars were making far bolder claims. They said this myth is not only older than the Bible, but also better than the Bible, that it was a mythology to which we could relate more naturally in our modern world.

So this morning, I want to introduce you to this story that’s older than all of the world’s religions, older than all their gods, and explore a little of what it’s saying, and why it may well fit our modern world better.

Ironically, even the Gilgamesh story seems to be claiming that their modern world is no longer served by the ancient world of gods and stories of immortality. Their central concern is with the reality of death, and the stories of immortality, which they finally reject as belonging to ancient times, but not their modern age.

Gilgamesh was a historical figure, from the dawn of our recorded human history. He ruled about 4600 years ago in the city of Uruk in what is now southern Iraq. He was an ancient Sumerian. He knew he was a Sumerian, but he did not know that he was ancient. In fact, he saw himself as very modern. He lived about two centuries after the Sumerians had been the first to invent writing, so they rightly felt that they were far more advanced than any people who had ever lived before them.

In the century after his death, the historical memory of this ruler was transformed into myth. At first, his story was recorded in a series of short poems. 1,000 years later, these stories were woven into an epic, and became known throughout the near East.

Thousands of fragments of this epic have been recovered, and we have about 3,000 lines of this story, which achieved its final form around 1300 BC.

The two main characters in the story are Gilgamesh, who is described as 2/3 divine and 1/3 human, and Enkidu, a kind of mirror image, who seems about 1/3 human and 2/3 animal.

Enkidu was created as a kind of wild anti-hero to Gilgamesh, as his opposite. Gilgamesh sent a woman out into the woods to tame him. Enkidu stays with her for just a week, and is transformed into someone human and urban. I know women who hear this and think doing that in a year, let alone a week, would be a miracle, though I don’t know too many men who think so.

Once he becomes more human, Enkidu challenges and fights with Gilgamesh, and it’s a draw: they’ve met their match, their shadow side, their complement. They become companions, and friends. It was through this bond with his complement that Gilgamesh first learned true friendship – and some of the modern psychological readings of that seem pretty obvious.

Together, they go to kill an evil monster that belongs to the gods, to prove themselves more powerful. And they are: together, they can defeat evil.

The great goddess Ishtar wants Gilgamesh to marry her, and promises him love and peace – she is the goddess of love, fruitfulness and war. But he isn’t interested, says her love leads only to war, and recounts many stories of how she has betrayed her lovers. She is furious, and sends the bull of heaven to kill them both. But Enkidu kills the mighty bull of heaven.

Here are men – or one man who has integrated his animal, human and divine natures – with no fear of the ancient supernatural powers. In fact, they can hold their own against them, and defeat most of them. I don’t know of another religious tradition with such a story.

Enkidu, however, dies from wounds suffered in the fights with the supernatural monsters – at least partly as retribution demanded by the gods for their destruction of the Bull of Heaven – and Gilgamesh discovers loss, grief, and death.

Gilgamesh now roams the earth wondering if it’s possible to avoid death. He finds the old Noah-type figure (Utnapishtim) who, with his wife who survived the great flood, were granted immortality.

Utnapishtim says he was warned by the gods of the flood, so he, his wife and artisans built and survived on the ark. But he says this cannot happen again, and the gods’ granting of immortality was a one-time deal, long ago but not in modern times.

Gilgamesh still wants to gain immortality. As he prepares to leave, the old Noah tells him of the plant growing at the bottom of the sea, called “the old one becomes a child,” and says if Gilgamesh uses it, he won’t grow old. Gilgamesh finds the plant and is going to use it. (This is like taking a pill to solve the problem.) But the plant falls into the water, and a snake steals it, which is why snakes can renew their skin.

You might ask, “Well, what would have happened if Gilgamesh had eaten that plant?” The answer is that then he would have to have discovered, either that the plant didn’t work or that he did something wrong, and lost his only chance at it. Because the story, remember, was written by people who knew that we don’t have immortality, and wrote an imaginative story to say that there are irreversible reasons why we don’t and can’t.

So Gilgamesh knows that he can neither get the cure or the pill, and has accepted that the quest for immortality is in vain.

Now Gilgamesh confronts reality anew. This is his conversion experience, and it changes everything. Here was his spiritual journey:

1. First, he seeks the cure for the fact that we must die – having the gods grant immortality. But that doesn’t happen any more; the gods are useless for this. And even Ushnapishtim, the last human to become immortal, is lonely and grieves for his lost son, so immortality can’t be the answer to human yearning anyway.

2. Then he wants a “pill” – a magic way, not involving the gods, to become immortal, to eat of the plant called “he who is old becomes young again.” But that also only worked once, with the snake, and isn’t available in his modern times.

3. Finally, he understands that neither gods nor natural routes can lead us beyond the fact that we’re born, we live, and we die and become part of the world of the irretrievably dead. Even kings die: even the rich, even the talented, even us.

4. What, then, does the human condition offer? What is a reality-based solution to this longing? Many things. Friendship, sex, relationships, families, children who survive us, the fact that we can memorialize friends, heroes, beloved people – and that we can aspire to become a memorable person. We can achieve things that will live on in the memory of others. We can build things. We are part of cities and states that live on and carry our passions and memories and the tales of our deeds forward.

When we integrate our animal, human and divine aspects, we have great power; we can even destroy evil. And that’s a good thing. Even when gods send the evil against us, we can destroy it. Still, we die.

The Gilgamesh story is saying that the gift of immortality, either from the gods or from a “pill,” belonged to the mythic past, not the reality-based present. Whether it once happened in stories, it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t happen now; it isn’t the reality in which we live.

How is this good news? Because it empowers us in the real world. If we enter the fantasy worlds, we’re subject to those who control the stories, but who have no real information that we don’t have: just stories.

Gods have their own rules. We need a world with human-sized rules and dependable friendship and love, not subject to the whims of gods who wouldn’t care about us. And we don’t need the gods – we can simply refuse to deal with them (Ishtar), or make perfunctory bribes to them (Shamash) without caring about them.

We can live a human-scale life. We lose good friends, we lose those we love, but can memorialize them, tell their stories, write poems, build statues. We can create families, cities, and seek to become a memorable person in the lives of others.

Like one of our own modern authors (Borges) has said, we die twice. The first time is when our body gives out. Then the second and final death comes when there is no one left to tell our story. Gilgamesh accepted the first death, but said the human condition offers us chances to postpone the second death through telling our stories, writing poems, epics, memorializing those who have mattered to us, building families, cities, and participating in the joys of this fragile, transient, precious life.

The goal of human life is not absorption into the moment like other animals, and not an immortality that would breed indifference to transient things, like the gods we have sanctioned. What is available to humans is an excellence located between the beasts and the gods, and available to neither of them. It consists of participation in life, joy, creativity and wisdom.

So the gods prove to be useless, and Gilgamesh must learn to deal with life and the world the way they really are in these modern times of 4600 years ago. This isn’t atheism, it’s growing past the time when it was useful to think in terms of gods; it’s outgrowing the gods by coming into our full humanity.

What, then, is the “divine” part of us? We don’t share the gods’ immortality, or their aloofness to human pains. Perhaps it is our imagination, our ability to gain a kind of fragile wisdom available neither to animals nor gods. Gods don’t need wisdom, animals don’t either: they are living too much in the present to need a perspective that can reach beyond the present.

And what is wisdom? Perhaps it’s dealing with the fact that we live, love and will die, in ways that can lead us to that lost Atlantis of the coordinated soul and a more integrated and authentic existence that magnifies our life force rather than dissipating it. The love of gods who don’t live within our human constraints isn’t helpful, precisely because they don’t empathize with our limitations.

What is essential about human excellence is precisely its fragility. We who live and will die nevertheless love, make friendships, build cities, find joy, create children and invest our love and lives in them. We can watch them grow, as we also grow through the stages of life. Gods can’t do that. But like the gods, our imaginations can range far beyond us: that’s the “divine” part of us. We can create things that were not there, that are tender, beautiful, precious and passing, as we also are. Gilgamesh chooses this fully human and participatory life over gods and immortality.

Nearly two thousand years later, in Homer’s Odyssey Odysseus will also choose his wife Penelope over an immortal existence with the goddess Circe. These choices of the human over the immortal are rare in world literature, and among our most courageous and hopeful stories.

After all, as Gilgamesh might have said, he was a modern man, and nostalgia for the ancient ways no longer serves us. It is time to grow up, time to grow beyond the gods and into our full humanity which is, in its way, even better than the gods.

Listening to Hearts

© Davidson Loehr

February 19, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER:

Let us be willing to listen to our hearts when we are in pain. Not our anger, not our complaints, not our fear or the litany of life’s failings, but the still, small voices of our hearts.

Sometimes, it is the wishes of our hearts that cause our pain, when we expect the world to grant those wishes.

Let us not go through it alone unless we have to. Let us find a safe place, a safe person, and ask them to listen, as we try to listen, to the cries of our hurts and of our hearts.

Whether things around us can be changed, or we’ll have to change our demands and expectations, it often starts with the painful honesty that can say, “This is not what I expected in my life.”

Some times the wisdom we need is just what we don’t want to hear, but what we need to hear – not from others wagging their self-righteous fingers at us, but from ourselves, in our own voice.

Religious miracles aren’t about changing the world around us. Those are social or political endeavors. Religious miracles are about changing our hearts, our expectations, changing what we are willing to accept.

They are among life’s hardest miracles, and they seldom happen alone. When we are in pain, when we need someone just to listen, let us try to find them.

The heart does have reasons that reason does not know. And sometimes, if we will listen carefully, we can hear them. Let us learn to listen.

Amen.

TESTIMONIALS

This service about “listening to the heart” used our own Listening Ministry as an example of church members who have been through nearly six months of training as listeners, and church members who have used these services. For this posting, I’ve removed the last names of our members, but included their comments.

Mike – A Listening Minister:

1. What was the best thing about the listening ministry program?

One of the best things about the Listening Ministry program for me is the training. In the beginning it’s a frustrating and unnatural process, but it gets you thinking. You think about listening, which is unnatural, because most of us listen in order to respond with answers or anecdotes. As a listening minister you learn to respond with questions, to clarify, or by paraphrasing, to comprehend.

The training by itself is good enough. I’d do it again just for that. But, I joined this church for many reasons. One reason is for community, another is for personal salvation. By salvation I mean that I want to live a healthy life in the moment. For me, the two are joined.

A perfect illustration of this for me started in the New UU Covenant group. Everyone in the group gave a talk that summed up their personal spiritual journey. Well, I grew up fairly un-churched. Our family suited-up for Easter or Christmas Eve services at a mild Presbyterian church. I couldn’t tell you anything about it really-other than feeling awkward and stiff in church clothes. So, for this covenant group, I wrote about my life-the emotional ups and downs, the demons, the struggle to forgive myself and others. Before I spilled all of this out in the covenant group, I confessed that I’d written a rather long piece on my spiritual journey. The leader of the group, Nancy G., said quite seriously something to the effect: Take as long as you need, we’re here for you.

We all start coming to church for one reason or the other, but I personally returned to this church for the gentle inclusiveness found in Nancy’s words and in that group’s willingness to listen to my story. This to me embodies one of the listening ministry principles. Bearing witness. Everyone needs a witness to the ups and downs in their lives. At times, friends, family, and co-workers cannot fulfill this role. Sometimes you just need a neutral person to listen respectfully with compassion to your story. You need a witness. I believe that being heard, no matter what you’re suffering, can help with the healing process.

 

Dana – who used our Listening Ministry:

1. What was the best thing about your listener or the listening ministry program?

Having someone listen without judgment or “helpful” comments. Simply allowing the words from my pain resonate in the room and echo back to my ears. This echo came back to me with acknowledgement, affirmation and confirmation of my feelings. The listening minister likewise, reiterated my feelings, and somehow my feelings were annotated and enlarged, no longer being fuzzy thoughts are hurts… But a solid that could be seen and managed.

2. What would you tell someone who was hesitant to call for a listening minister?

That managing pain alone is a choice, but not the most effective and beneficial. Sharing pain as in sharing joy, a good meal, a good laugh, brings an expanded dimension and allows space for healing….That being heard by someone who can hear, is sensitive and supportive is the very best to bring about resolution.

3. What surprised you most about the listening ministry?

The ease, simplicity, of someone accommodating my time schedule, being available to me, to be with me, and support me in finding positive resolution to my issues.

Caroline – A Listening Minister

I signed up for the LM training soon after joining the church. The training required introspection, openness and sharing among other trainees. This continues throughout one’s participation in the program. Serving as a LM has helped me understand why I respond to situations as I do, what I’m feeling and why, and how to better put it into words – not a forte of mine. So I have learned both from my listenees and my fellow LM”s. Another benefit, I have also come to know quite well a caring, open, diverse group of church members whom I care about greatly. Six of the trainees from my group still get together on a monthly basis. I cherish these get-togethers.

For someone who is hesitant to request a LM, I would say think of it as your time, a time when you give yourself permission to talk about what is on your mind without worrying about whether you are imposing on the listener. The old saying “get it off your chest” works: talking something through in your head is harder. Situations are clarified, emotions may not have the same grip once they are spoken. New perspectives and insights emerge.

The LM is a real win-win situation as far as I’m concerned. I have gained as much from my listenees and the program as they I hope have.

 

Rebecca – who used our Listening Ministry:

1. What was the best thing about your listener or the listening ministry program?

I liked that my listener had some experience with my specific issue. It made me feel like she would understand my problems from the start.

2. What would you tell someone who was hesitant to call for a listening minister?

I found it to be very effective one on one counseling for a time that was difficult. My listener gave support that I was not able to find in friends or family.

3. What surprised you most about the listening ministry?

How helpful it was. She just listened to me spew out all of my stuff. She never really gave advice or guidance. She just accepted me in the place I was in. It’s a world full of judgments but it’s a very powerful thing to just be accepted.

SERMON:

When I looked for a training program for a listening ministry program after I arrived here in 2000, I chose the one we’re using for two reasons. First, it was the hardest and demanded the most training, and I thought both our members and our volunteers deserve that kind of first-class treatment.

And second, I liked the philosophy of this training, which saw our role not as curing, not as solving, but as listening, in the faith that the wisdom most of us need is the wisdom of our own best selves, and that can happen – sometimes almost magically – just by being able to tell our story. Listening is work, always, and it’s hard work. But when one person can be honest and the other can be attentive, sometimes miracles occur.

I first saw this magic performed twenty-four years ago, and to the end of my days it will remain one of the most miraculous things I have ever witnessed.

I was taking a ten-week chaplaincy training program at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in downtown Chicago, learning how to be a chaplain, which I finally realized meant learning how to listen. I had signed on for the leukemia ward. As soon as I found the ward and told them I was the new chaplain intern, three nurses jumped on me and said “Wonderful! It’s your turn! Go see the woman in room 19!” I asked what this was about, and they said “We have all had all we can take of her. It’s your turn!”

I went in to meet this woman, and a nurse closed the door behind me. The patient was 29, married with two children, dying of leukemia, and furious. I heard her whole story: very loud, punctuated with furious profanity, along with being told that the fact that I dared to be a chaplain was a cheap abomination, because in case I hadn’t heard, there was no God, there was no justice, and there was no love!

I have never been around anyone as deeply furious, or loud, profane and vulgar as this woman, and I had no idea how to help her. I listened to her story. She and her husband had had a stormy beginning to their marriage, with some painful fights and threats of divorce going both ways. Then one day they decided to begin talking through their angers and their differences. They worked hard at it for a year, she said. They were vulnerable, honest, and serious. They were willing to be heard, and willing to listen.

And finally, as they could hear each other’s pain and anger, they began to understand where the resentments were, how the angers had arisen and how they had each nursed them in the dark, where they gained strength until they had nearly destroyed their relationship.

Slowly, painfully, they found each other again, and they found the love they had lost. They fell in love all over again, with each other, with their marriage and their new baby. They recommitted themselves to one another for the rest of their lives, and soon their second child was on the way.

The past three years, she said, had been the happiest either of them had ever imagined. They had worked for it, they had earned it, they deserved it. There was a justice about it – this was a very important phrase for her.

And now, she said, her voice rising again, she was going to die. She was going to die, leaving behind the husband she loved, the two young children they both loved and had so looked forward to spending the rest of their lives raising and loving and watching grow up.

Within seconds, the profanity and vulgarity were back, screamed almost as loud as she could scream from her desperate, hopeless pain. I had absolutely no idea what to do. After she finished, she told me that I was to return at the same time the next day. I asked why. She screamed that I would hear this story every damned day until she died, that’s why, and if I wasn’t there she would have me paged.

I had failed miserably with the very first patient to whom I’d been assigned. I felt awful, and I was in that room at that time for five full days, feeling worse for her and worse for myself every day.

I was depressed all that weekend, and partly because I knew Monday was coming and I’d have to go back into that room again. So Monday morning, in the group when the ten chaplain students met with our supervisor, I confessed. I told the story, said I had completely failed at this, and didn’t know what to do.

Our supervisor was a Lutheran minister named John Serkland – good people deserve to have their names told with their stories. John listened to my miserable story, and said “Do you want me to save you?” I said “Do you honestly think you can?” He said Yes, he thought he probably could. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t even know what that could mean. I said “John, this woman is going to die, she’s furious and I don’t blame her. What on earth can you possibly do?” He said that tomorrow he would go with me to visit her.

So that day, Monday, I spent another painful and miserable fifteen minutes in her room, hearing the same story, with more volume, more profanity, more vulgarity, more hopeless fury, and that night I didn’t sleep well.

The next day, John wore his chaplain costume, with the Lutheran backward collar. I thought, Man, she’s going to throw the bedstand at you in that costume! That afternoon, we walked into her room. She took one quick look at us, and sized the situation up immediately. “Oh I see,” she yelled, “the little moron is stumped, so he brings the big fat moron!” Her actual words were far more colorful,

John sat down in the chair by the head of her bed. He said, “My name is John. May I hear your story?” That’s all he said for the next ten minutes. She laid into him. She called him names, told him what an abomination his costume was, then told him her story, the story I had already heard six times. It seemed even more angry, more desperate, more hopeless. When she finished, John said just three words. He looked at her and simply said, “You expected more.”

She was prepared to throw whatever he said right back in his face, and she formed her mouth for a response, but nothing came out. She mustered more energy, more anger, and again tried to say something, but again nothing came out. Then tears ran down both her cheeks; she looked at John and simply said, “Yes.”

“Yes,” he repeated. She reached her hand out, and he clasped it for a few seconds, then said “I would like to come back tomorrow.” She nodded. We left.

The next day, we returned, and the spell had been broken. She apologized for her behavior, her anger, her language, and John said she had nothing to apologize for. “I expected more,” she said, “I expected more than this. But there isn’t more. There’s just this. Just 29 years. Just this. I was just so angry! I didn’t know what to do. It didn’t seem right. There was no justice in it. I wanted more. But there isn’t more. There is just this.” She thanked John, then said “You don’t have to come back.” She nodded toward me and said, “He’ll do.” We laughed, and left.

John and I went to the hospital cafeteria for some coffee and conversation. I said “How did you know what to do?” He said, “I have a confession to make. About ten years ago, I was assigned to a patient much like her, in the same condition, and she was also furious. Each day she would scream at me, call me names, tell me chaplains were a disgrace, and the rest of it. I had no idea what to do. I kept wanting to help her, to solve her problem, and I couldn’t solve her problem because she was right: she was dying, and it wasn’t fair. She died, angry to the end, and I knew I had failed her. I thought about it for years. A couple years ago, after I’d had a lot more experience, I finally realized that I hadn’t needed to fix her, I’d just needed to hear her. I wondered if I would ever get another chance to do it right. This time, it was your turn. And because you failed as I once had, I got the chance to say those three words I wish I had said ten years ago.”

All John did was listen to her heart. It was all she needed. Most of the time, it’s all any of us need. It’s our own wisdom that we need, but we can’t hear it because our fear, our desperation and our fury keep us from hearing ourselves. Sometimes, it just takes someone else. Not someone to fix us, not someone to give us wise answers like dishing out pills. Not someone to listen to our symptoms and diagnose a medication. Just someone to listen to our heart. Just that.

And what a gift it is. That young woman died a few weeks later. During those weeks, she spent every minute she could loving her husband, her children, expressing her appreciation for all that others had been able to do. She had found a peace I didn’t think possible. It was certainly a peace I couldn’t have led her to. But she didn’t need to be led; she just needed to be heard – and to listen to herself.

Of all the thoughts I’ve had about that experience, two stand out.

The first was realizing that virtually all of our frustrations, angers and disappointments in life result from the fact that we expected more. Our friendships or relationships aren’t as satisfying as we want: we expected more. Our parents, our families, frustrate us with their scripts, their expectations, their badgering. We expected more from our family. Our job drives us nuts: we expected more from that! We’re not attractive enough, not successful enough, not happy enough: we expected more.

Sometimes, of course, there can be more. Every social action, every political action effort in history has been the demand that our society be more. The American colonists expected more representation for their taxes, demanded it, fought for it, and got it. A century ago, women expected more of a voice in elections. They fought for it, and got it. The civil rights movement, the Vietnam era anti-war movement, the movement to remove President Nixon from office, and hundreds of other movements came precisely from the fact that we expected more, worked for more, and got more. So this isn’t about urging a spineless passivity. Some things can be changed.

But not everything can be changed. Some things must finally be accepted. Then it’s time to look for spiritual miracles. Those miracles don’t change the world around us; they change the world within us. That’s what religious miracles are about: not walking on water, but learning to walk on the earth for as long as we”ve been given: awake, aware, and grateful.

The second lesson I learned is that it usually won’t happen unless we can listen and hear. Not only chaplains, ministers and listening ministers need to listen and hear, but those telling their stories need to listen and hear, too. I don’t know how many times that woman shouted her story, but she never heard what her heart was saying, and she put others off so much that they didn’t even want to listen. If both she and John had not been willing to listen to her heart, I think she would have died in that same painful fury.

When we can get our hearts and our heads together and listen, sometimes miracles happen. They really happen every day, all around us, in quiet conversations and quiet reflections going on everywhere. Life can have profound disappointments, but it also has its miracles. Indeed, miracles abound. Sometimes all we have to do is listen.

Demons of the Heart

© Davidson Loehr

February 12, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Eric Hepburn, Worship Associate

The year is 1948, India has just won independence from the British Empire on the strength of a massive campaign of non-violent civil resistance. However, in the wake of this victory comes the separation of India and Pakistan along religious lines. Hindus and Muslims violently clash as the harsh realities of separating a people set in.

Amidst this chaos, Mohandas K. Gandhi, plans a peace mission to Pakistan to plead for the reunification of India. In an interview with Margaret Bourke White he says of his planned journey, “I am simply going to prove, to Hindus here and Muslims there, that the only devils in the world are those running “round in our own hearts, and that is where all our battles ought to be fought”

Miss White asks, “So what kind of warrior have you been, in that warfare?”

Gandhi replies, “Not a very good one. That is why I have so much tolerance for the other scoundrels of the world.”

Shortly thereafter, Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist during a prayer meeting in his own garden.

The only devils in the world are those running “round in our own hearts. And that is where all of our battles ought to be fought

I believe that this is profoundly true. It is for me, an article of faith and a cornerstone of compassion. We, all of us, all the brothers and sisters of humanity, share the same devils, and for each of us they reside in the same place. In here (gesture to heart).

I struggle against these devils, against greed, and against hate, and against delusion. I struggle against them the same as you do, the same as everybody else does.

And when one of my brothers or one of my sisters succumbs to one of these devils, I am filled with sadness. When one of my brothers raises a hand in violence, I am filled with grief. When one of my sisters takes more than her share, I am filled with disappointment. When I act on the behest of any one of these devils, any one that is not among the better angels of our nature, then I am filled with remorse.

And the devils know, they know when we are grieving, when we are remorseful, when we are feeling bad about ourselves and our brothers and sisters. It is then, that they come again. Spurring us to feel hate against our brother who suffers already from his violence, spurring us to feel greed towards the possession of our sister who already suffers from her attachment, spurring us to delude ourselves that our actions were not the result of low motives.

So this is my article of faith, to have compassion for myself, to have compassion for my brothers and sisters, by believing that these devils are not US, that they are not inevitable, that they are not part of the world outside, but part of the world inside of each of us.

PRAYER

Let us help one another in facing the demons of our hearts. Those dark feelings, the selfish impulses that tell us we can take what we want and treat those who get in our way merely as obstacles rather than as our brothers and sisters. These are the demons of our hearts, and they are hard to face alone.

We are all guilty. We have all done things to others we should not have done. We have all refrained from doing things for others that we should have done. We were listening to the wrong voices. We didn’t hear the voices of understanding and compassion because we were too full of what we wanted.

And so we have committed sins of commission and sins of omission, and have not been our best selves, either alone or as a nation.

For on a national level, we also need help in facing the demons of our hearts. There too, we have plundered others, as though their only purpose was to provide us with cheap oil, cheap labor, even cheap thrills of torture and humiliation, at Abu Graib and other hell-holes.

Both angels and demons reside in us as possibilities, but we must choose wisely, or the wrong choices may be made for us by others. It takes courage to choose wisely. It also takes vision.

Let us strive for the vision to see who we are as individuals and as a society, and the courage to change into who we would be more proud to become. Demons, like evil, love the dark. Let us shed light on our demons, that we may begin to expel them. It is a brave prayer, and we offer it with both trepidation and resolve. Amen.

SERMON: Demons of the Heart

I believe in demons. I believe in good spirits, too, but also demons: selfish spirits, dynamics that are destructive to others, even to life.

If “angels” are messengers from our better nature, demons are their shadow side: the messengers from those selfish parts that have always been with us as well, hiding right there in our hearts.

This morning, I want to talk about some of these demons. I want to talk about the scripts, the demons, directing and defining who we are and what forces seem to be loose among us and growing in strength, at least abroad.

A year ago, I read a new book about these demons. The author is confessing his role as one of those who served the greedy interests. The book is called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins. I’m surprised that it’s been a year since I read the book, because I remember thinking that I needed to preach on this immediately. Perhaps I didn’t want to acknowledge some of these things either.

The book is a confession. For over ten years, Perkins was an economic hit man, and he describes the plan in great and disturbing detail – and even hints at bigger and more current places in our own country where these demons have operated.

To cut to the chase, an economic hit man is an economist employed through a consulting firm paid by major corporations, but working hand in hand with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. government, to reshape the economic profile of the world in ways that benefit us at the expense of everyone else. It is an attempt to dominate the world, one economy at a time.

When a country has oil, cheap labor or strategic location we want, some of these economists do a study to prove to the leaders of the target country that they are on the verge of a huge bonanza from oil or exports, that could make an unbelievable amount of money – figures they often used were a 15% return on investment for the next 25 years. It’s the chance of a lifetime.

Normally, they said we wouldn’t much care what happened to your little country. But with that kind of money to be made, a lot of people would be willing to invest in it. And the World Bank and International Monetary Fund might well even be willing to provide loans.

The loans are necessary, very big loans. Because before this country can take advantage of the bonanza that awaits them, they must develop infrastructure: roads, electricity, water facilities and so on. That’s expensive, and not the sort of work they’re able to do. However, there are corporations in the US that can and will do all the work to give them their needed infrastructure, and it can all be paid for with the loans from the World Bank. The corporations include Bechtel, Haliburton, and other big ones you may have heard of. So most of the money never leaves the U.S.

If the economic hit men are persuasive enough, the country takes the loans. Yet without exception, the bonanza never turns out to have been there after all, and the country always defaults on the loans. That’s not a failure; it’s how the plan is supposed to work.

An Economic Hit Man’s (EHM) job is “to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire – to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs. In turn, they bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. The owners of U.S. engineering/construction companies become fabulously wealthy.” (xi) And the foreign leaders also become wealthy by selling out everyone else in their country. In fact, this whole scheme depends on finding a few leaders who are willing to get very rich by selling out everyone else. History seems to show an unending supply of such people, in all countries.

While hit men worked in many countries, Ecuador provides a typical and revealing case of what happens.

Because of the work of John Perkins and other Economic Hit Men, he says, “Ecuador is in far worse shape today than she was before we introduced her to the miracles of modern economics, banking, and engineering. Since 1970, during this period known euphemistically as the Oil Boom, the official poverty level grew from 50 to 70 percent, under- or unemployment increased from 15 to 70 percent, and public debt increased from $240 million to $16 billion. Meanwhile, the share of national resources allocated to the poorest segments of the population declined from 20 to 6 percent. (xviii)

“Nearly every country brought under the global empire’s umbrella has suffered a similar fate. Third world debt has grown to more than $2.5 trillion, and the cost of servicing it – over $375 billion per year as of 2004 – is more than all third world spending on health and education, and twenty times what developing countries receive annually in foreign aid. Over half the people in the world survive on less than two dollars per day, which is roughly the same amount they received in the early 1970s. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of third world households account for 70 to 90 percent of all private financial wealth and real estate ownership in their country. (xix) – much as they are beginning to do in the U.S.

“For every $100 of crude oil taken out of the Ecuadorian rain forests, the oil companies receive $75. Of the remaining $25, three-quarters must go to paying off the foreign debt. Most of the remainder covers military and other government expenses – which leaves about $2.50 for health, education, and programs aimed at helping the poor. Thus, out of every $100 worth of oil torn from the Amazon, less than $3 goes to the people who need the money most, those whose lives have been so adversely impacted by the dams, the drilling, and the pipelines, and who are dying from lack of edible food and potable water. (xx) And yet, among the options facing the targeted countries, the Economic Hit Men are the kindest.

When they fail, an even more sinister breed steps in, known as the jackals. “The jackals are always there, lurking in the shadows. When they emerge, heads of state are overthrown or die in violent “accidents.” And if by chance the jackals fail, as they failed in Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq, then the old models resurface. When the jackals fail, young American soldiers are sent in to kill and to die.” (xxi)

So first, the false economists are sent in to trick the country’s leaders. If they fail, the jackals, the older-style hit men, are sent in to kill the leader, as we did with Allende in Chili, Roldos in Ecuador, Torrijos in Panama and others. And if the hit men fail, our military forces invade the country, as we invaded Panama to kidnap its leader, and as we invaded Iraq, twice.

Some of the major corporations that pull the strings to make this scheme work include United Fruit Co. (owned by George HW Bush), Bechtel and Halliburton. (73) When Perkins worked this scheme, Bechtel’s president was George Shultz, Nixon’s Secretary of Labor. And Bechtel was loaded with Nixon, Ford, and Bush cronies. (74) Today, we know that Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton before becoming Vice President.

Religion is involved in these demonic activities, as well. And Perkins talks about how a front organization called the Summer Institute of Linguistics, an evangelical missionary group from the US, was in collusion with the oil companies. The organization had entered Ecuador, as it had so many other countries, under the pretext of studying, recording, and translating indigenous languages.

But whenever seismologists reported to corporate headquarters that a certain region had characteristics indicating a high probability of oil beneath the surface, SIL went in and encouraged the indigenous people to move from that land, onto missionary reservations; there they would receive free food, shelter, clothes, medical treatment, and missionary-style education. The condition was that they had to deed their lands to the oil companies. (142)

While the sophistication of the economic hit men was new, nothing else about the scheme was, for we have used hit men and soldiers to serve the bidding of large corporations for a century or more.

Seventy-five years ago, General Smedley Butler gave a speech about this to the American Legion convention in Connecticut – later included in his book War is a Racket. The speech was given on August 21, 1931, when he said:

“I spent 33 years – being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism”.

“I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street”.

“In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested”. I had – a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions”. I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents.” (from Joel Bakan’s The Corporation, p. 93)

An EHM Failure in Iraq

Perkins wrote his book because after our illegal invasion of Iraq, he again saw Bechtel and Halliburton getting unbid contracts, and realized this was simply part three – the military invasion – of the same scheme he had served for a decade.

We wanted Iraq for many reasons. It is important because of oil, because it controls the most important sources of water in the Middle East, and because of its strategic location. It borders Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey, and has a coastline on the Persian Gulf. It is within easy missile-striking distance of both Israel and the former Soviet Union. Today, it is common knowledge that whoever controls Iraq holds the key to controlling the Middle East. (184)

By the late 1980s, it was apparent that Saddam was not buying into the EHM scenario. This was a major frustration and a great embarrassment to the first Bush administration. Like Panama, Iraq contributed to George HW Bush’s wimp image. As Bush searched for a way out, Saddam played into his hands. In August 1990, he invaded the oil-rich sheikhdom of Kuwait. Bush responded with a denunciation of Saddam for violating international law, even though it had been less than a year since Bush himself had staged the illegal and unilateral invasion of Panama. (184)

Bill Clinton continued pressuring Saddam into following US interests, by placing the sanctions on Iraq that prevented them from getting the chemicals needed to make their drinking water safe. As a direct result, over a million Iraqis died during the 90s, including over half a million children.

When Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright was asked about the deaths of those half million children near the end of Clinton’s presidency, she told the press “We think it’s worth it.” In fact, while the two Bushes invaded Iraq, Clinton’s sanctions caused far more deaths than those from both Gulf Wars combined.

Perkins’ revelations are disturbing – as is the fact that he played along for a decade, and benefited financially for years afterwards. The philosophy he’s describing is a brutal one, in which the profits of a few are felt to justify any and all means necessary to get and protect them, including deceit, assassinations, piracy, murder and mass murder. Perhaps we can say, “Well, at least this isn’t our government doing this, just some greedy people.”

But can we really say this? Can you? I don’t think I can. I don’t think that kind of a philosophy can be stopped outside our borders. I think it must continue within our borders, as well.

—————–

When I originally delivered this sermon on 12 February 2006, I had added a section on 9-11, expressing my belief that agencies of our own government had orchestrated the attacks of 9-11. But that suggestion was and is so shocking, so repulsive, that it would take a very convincing exposition to make it at all persuasive, and I didn’t do that. It was a sloppy and slapdash addition that I shouldn’t have tacked on – as several members of my church were quick to point out. During the next two weeks, I removed that section and rewrote it, pretty much from scratch, creating a stand-alone essay. That essay, however, is not a sermon, not about religion, and I’m not comfortable having it on our church’s website. It is a passion from other areas of my life, where I am simply operating as an American citizen, concerned with what has happened to our country.

If interested, you can find that long (11,600 word) essay, titled “The New World Order Story,” online at www.propeace.net and other sites.

I do apologize that this isn’t a proper sermon, and lacks a hopeful ending. But when I delivered this sermon I didn’t see a clear path ahead. Now three weeks later, as I edit it for posting on our church website, I still don’t. It will come, as it always has – but not yet.

The Church vs. The Super Bowl

© Jack Harris-Bonham

February 5, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, here we are again sitting in the house that speaks of mystery, but does not define it. May we be glad to be a part of a tradition that allows us to think for ourselves, may we remember that it is the rich tradition of these churches, both Unitarian and Universalist, that came together that each would be stronger and each would survive.

And when we remember let us remember that Christianity was a big part of the Universalist movement. That the universalism spoken about in its name was a universalism of grace – a rebellion against the Calvinistic notion that there were only a select few who would be saved and a statement that grace was for everyone in all places, in all times. And these precursors of our tradition go all the way back to the middle ages when there was a hue and cry for the Holy scriptures to be translated into the vernacular. Yet, those who so protested and changed things did not do so to dissipate faith, but rather to deepen it.

Now we would remember all those who have come here today in search of answers, in search of questions, in search of comfort. Let their very presence in this assembly be the balm they need, let the communal energy of this sanctuary bask them in love, understanding and companionship.

Let us now remember that there is a world much larger than this community. A world so torn by strife, war, famine and disease that it hardly seems fair for us to be in despair over anything.

Yet the human spirit is one that continually strives for better and more. May we, this morning, consider our blessings, consider our wealth – monetary, spiritual and emotional – and let us find the space to rejoice.

Rejoice that we have enough, rejoice that enough is enough and finally rejoice for the sheer sake of rejoicing. We pray all this in the name of everything that is holy and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

The Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, David Mamet, says, (quote) “Only two legitimate national holidays remain. By “legitimate” holidays, I mean this: holidays with a specific, naturally evolved meaning, the celebration of which we find refreshing and correct, and in the celebration of which we, as a people, are united. Those holidays are the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl.”

Our Middle English word, sacred, comes from the Old French, sacer, which means; dedicated, holy, sacred – set apart – pertaining to religious rites or practices – devoted to a single use.”

Dr. Loehr got an email from a colleague shortly before the Rose Bowl. The colleague wrote, “Now let me get this straight, you’re going to show a football game on the large screen at your church?” Dr. Loehr wrote back, “What is it about the sacred that you don’t understand?

I’m seeing similarities between church and football. The mega churches have noticed this already – why do you think that Fellowhip.com in Dallas is built like a stadium and has a large screen that projects the pastor’s face in 30 foot close-ups? What church will never duplicate is the originality and complexity of how football passes the plate. Heck, I’ve watched Super Bowls just to see the commercials. And halfway through the service we have our centering ceremony, but at a Super Bowl game we are likely to see a portion of the anatomy of a vestal virgin, or what passes as one. Perhaps if the stadium churches get big enough they’ll bring back the lions. That was a big hit at the Roman Coliseum.

But I’ll give the evangelicals their due they do play by the rulebook, that is, the game of religion, the game of church that they are playing has rules. If you’re saved, you win. If you’re not saved – you lose. And it’s not just any old game. Here is probably the only place the evangelicals outdo the NFL. The evangelicals are playing the game of eternity. The saying, “It’s only a game!” hardly applies here. You lose this game, – the game of salvation – you lose forever. The logic of the eternity game turns ordinary folks into people who want to save your soul now that they found peace with Jesus. They become bean counters for Christ. When you say you’re saved, when you say you’ve found Jesus, their score increases. And the rules of the game have been written down in a book, the author of whom just happens to be The Lord God Almighty!

Believe me, they know how the game is played and they know who wins and who loses.

But today we, all of us the evangelicals and liberal religious folks alike, get to practice our religious freedom in this country when we gather around our television sets, put out the sacramental chips and salsa, pop open that beer, near-beer, soda or pop the cork on that fine wine. Yes, we celebrate this naturally evolved meaningful game with bread and wine.

And the church – what does the church have to offer? I am cognizant of the fact that number one: you know what cognizant means and number two: I know that I am addressing the refugees of all the world’s great religions, refugees from all of what the great religious traditions have had to offer are gathered right here in this sanctuary.

So – let’s not kid ourselves – I hate to mix my football and baseball analogies, but hey – the churches struck out hundreds of years ago, but they refuse to leave the plate. Bat in hand the church waits for someone – anyone to play her churchy games.

Football is American. I mean by that, that we in the USA know exactly what we mean when we say American. Americans made this sport. From the Knute to the Gipper to the Super athletes of today, we have molded this sport, we have injected this sport to make it bigger, we have dreamed this sport into being. In a world that seems to fight us at every play we needed a concrete model – a game – in which we could choose clearly delineated sides, and then participate either directly, or by watching the two clearly delineated sides fight for the control over and general misuse of a strangely shaped cylindrical ball filled with air and covered originally by the skin of a pig. This sport was definitely not designed by Jews.

And by picking sides, dressing up and showing up we participate in an all out hour battle for control of this pig’s skin!

If your team brings home the bacon more times than theirs – yours wins. Life is good. But if your team loses – it’s the end of the world, as you know it.

David Mamet again, “The Super Bowl, it seems to me, is a celebration of our national love of invidious comparison.” “Invidious comparison? Are you still with me, Unitarian Universalists?

Invidious – tending to cause ill will or animosity; offensive, yes, yes, the Super Bowl is doubly invidious – it is offensive as well as defensive.

When and if you watch the game this evening you will be participating in a celebration of union – yes, union over diversity, but still union – you will be setting aside, making sacred – you will be practicing religion because you will be answering, or trying to answer the two big religious questions; Who am I? And what am I doing here?

I am a Dallas Cowboy’s fan and what I’m doing here is celebrating the quite human and obvious world-weary fact that the more powerful dominate and that sometimes, but only sometimes, wily, sly and creative can substitute for strength – I will celebrate the clear cut delineations of a game and I will see life, mine and yours, reflected there.

And as I look into the game and see our lives mirrored there what do I see? I see conflict, fear, rage, tumult, but also I see strength, fearlessness, hope, camaraderie, the end of fighting, peace, stillness, brother and sisterhood and finally the exaltation of the most high.

Yet – there is more to this game than meets the eye. This game is classic in a purer sense.

Aristotle supposedly wrote two books on drama. The first is the book of Poetics. It is a study of tragedy. The second book dealt with comedy, and it has been subsequently lost.

No wonder it was lost Aristotle himself says of comedy – and I quote – “Its early stages passed unnoticed, because it was not as yet taken up in a serious manner.” Comedy wasn’t taken seriously; I hate that when that happens.

Aristotle turns around and says this about tragedy and he might as well have been talking about football.

“Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents arousing pity and fear.” Listen the next time a good hit is laid upon a player – the crowd expels air involuntarily (make the sound). It isn’t something they rehearse like a cheer, its visceral – it’s a gut reaction (make the sound again). Aristotle continues, “Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly.” A punt returned 80 yards for a touchdown – a tipped pass bobbled and then pull in by our side – Vince Young glibly side stepping his way into the end zone winning the Rose Bowl with 18 seconds left – hook “em horns! Again, Aristotle, “Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly and at the same time in consequence of one another.” First down followed by second down followed by third down followed by touchdown.

The Super Bowl is not only theatrically tragic – it is great theatrical tragedy. Some would like to say that football is comedic since it is, in fact, a celebration of the winners. But this is not the Greek definition of tragedy and certainly not Aristotle’s. In the Poetics Aristotle says “comedy aims at representing men as worse than in real life, and tragedy better than in actual life.” It doesn’t matter that we celebrate the winner, what matters is that these men are bigger, faster, stronger, meaner and more talented than men in actual life. Do yourself a favor the next time you see a football player in person – collegiate or professional – go and stand beside them. Your spouse, those standing around and yourself will automatically make the necessary invidious comparisons.

In some ways it can be said that football surpasses the actual theatre. In a play there is usually only one protagonist.

In a football game we have each team playing the protagonist and the antagonist simultaneously. In a play such as King Lear who ever roots for Goneril or Regan, the gold digging daughters of King Lear? Compared to football the theatre is two-dimensional.

Aristotle again; “the story – must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole.”

In football each action has a direct and irrevocable reaction. Cause is followed neatly by effect and each effect engenders a new cause and subsequent effect – provided there is no indisputable video evidence. Each game is perfect unto itself and taking any play from the game would be tantamount to Emperor Franz Joseph’s suggestion to Mozart that the opera was fine, but there were simply too many notes.

No part of the game is irrelevant which is a perfect segue to the church.

The evangelicals – even with their “game of eternity? cannot out spectacle the tragic theatre of the NFL. But where do we stand in all this invidious comparison? Where are we UU’s?

The evangelicals have a saying, “I need a witness!” Are we their witnesses? Is our part of the religious game nothing more than skeptical, talking mirrors? Are all our put downs both explicit and implicit, all our education and degrees but spiteful pedigrees for the judgment game at hand? Is our game of religion just a game of the superiority of intellect? Are we doing something besides looking at the world of evangelical religion and finding it wanting, not satisfactory for our high intellectual, sarcastic and totally invidious tastes? And I realize all my earlier quips concerning the evangelicals fit into this category.

So – the question boils down to this: Does the Unitarian Universalist Association have a game plan? Does the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin do we have game plan? And if we do have game – what are the rules? How do we win? What would constitute losing this game?

In the Wizard of Oz we were warned, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

As Unitarian Universalists we have paid a great deal of attention to the man behind the screen and some of us have gone behind the curtain into the holy of holies. And what have we found besides our insatiable desire to know?

Dr. Loehr this past Senior Luncheon decried the UUA’s lack of center, their lack of anything that smacks of a truly religious center. As Dr. Loehr is fond of saying, “There is no there, there.” In other words the UUA has no game.

Paradoxically, in the UUA’s efforts to be hip, left of center and politically correct, paradoxically and ironically those who wished to save us by introducing us to ourselves, via the seven principles and a leftist political agenda, ironically and ultimately we have been left in the position of having to define ourselves – who are we? What are we doing here? These are the two great religious questions.

What is holy is the process of life itself. And the process cannot be made into a game because it has no beginning and no perceptible end. Any interruption in the process – any freezing of a stage of the process – any product from the process is itself not holy. One cannot be said to win a process – one can only be two things to the process. We can resist and suffer or we can accept and suffer. Suffering is our lot, but acceptance is like manna from heaven. Acceptance of the ontological process exudes a sacramental value often described as grace. But the question remains how would one, could one, pay homage to a process, celebrate a mystery, participate in the ultimate?

The cathedral is gone and ex cathedra we are free to see all of life as sacred. The task before us is impossible – the tools we have are at best primitive, our swords keep outnumbering our pruning hooks, yet it is we, us – all of us – who are called upon to play the game, to expect grace/manna, to expect nothing else and that gladly, remembering, as Aristotle states in t he Poetics, character may determine the quality of our life but only our actions can prove whether that life is finally happy or wretched.

On my walks with my dogs I often find beautiful shells of varied colors and some with stripes. They were the home of something once – a snail – a slug – life – but that life is no longer occupying that edifice and I can’t help but think of the great cathedrals, temples, synagogues and mosques of the world. The Spirit, the one called Holy, lived there once, or perhaps it was only a magnificent home built to entice the god’s inside?

My father, Jack Sr., felt uncomfortable with the idea of God inside a building – any building.

My father found God in a stubbled field on a crisp November morning with a Browning Over and Under resting easily on his shoulder. No, God didn’t have the Browning that was my dad. There was more grace in Dad’s easy swing to aim and shoot than I’ve ever seen in any preacher. My dad would have liked the cowboy’s prayer.

Lord, I’ve never lived where churches grow,

 I love Creation better as it stood

 That day You finished it so long ago

 And looked upon Your work, and called it good.

 I know that others find You in the light

 That’s sifted down through tinted window panes,

 And yet I seem to feel You near tonight

 In this dim, quiet starlight on the plains.

In the dim, quiet starlight of the hill country we at FUUCA, we refugees from the world’s major religions, are asked to celebrate something that has no perceptible beginning and no perceptible end – we are asked to celebrate the process of life itself – life as something sacred, holy and most high.

We love games, the theatre, movies and novels because limits are set, structure us present and we can hold the magnitude of life in our hand, our head and our hearts.

And yet even refugees must make a camp at the border. And this camp we have chosen to call camp UUA. In order not to be lost in the magnitude we have carved out our corner and declared it a safe zone.

Within this safe zone we are free to believe or not to believe, free to suspend judgment, free to honor life, free to care for those on the margins of society, free to agree to disagree.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Harvard Divinity School Address of 1838 said, “Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit, and not give bread of life.”

So – if you’ve been wondering amidst the football analogies and the laying of Aristotle over the game where the bread of life comes in, or what the good news is, then I will go beyond inductive reasoning, beyond inference and simply tell you.

The game played well within UU campuses like this one is a game of teamwork. The first definition of team is still the harnessing of draft animals to do work. Yes, we can agree to disagree and laugh about it, but at the same time as teammates we must agree to be harnessed to what we see to be the truth. And this truth is not heaven sent. It is rather a truth wrought from life. And this truth that we together as team members, harnessed to one another in a common effort, this truth is nothing more or less than our lives passed through the fires of thought.

We live this game of UUism by never forgetting that what is best gives us to ourselves. The sublime is excited by the great stoical doctrine, know thyself and obey thyself. That, which shows God in us, fortifies us. That, which shows God out of us, makes of us merely receivers of the divine instead of its very source.

Yes, we have game – we are the gamest – we are ready and willing – resolute and brave. We are all children of chance. What we believe may be unexpected, random and unpredictable, but we must never forget that our hearts and minds are open, open to the revelations of life, open to opportunity, open to change, open to life, itself.

There’s only one-way to know process – realize your part in it – that’s what covenant is about – that’s what union is about – that’s what love is about and hopefully, that’s what we at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin are all about.

Forgive Me For Not Talking About Forgiveness

© Jack Harris-Bonham

January 1, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, we sit here today at the very beginning of a new year.

Whether you believe in cyclical time or the linear version today is a new beginning for all of us. Perhaps it’s time to set down our burdens and examine them. With the weight off our shoulders let’s take a good look at those indispensables that we’ve carted with us for the past umpteen years.

George Carlen says that wherever we go we need to take a little of our stuff with us. Are the burdens you’re been carrying around just too large to be considered a little of your stuff? That argument you had last year – you know the one I mean – the one that was never resolved – the one that still gets replayed in your head first thing every morning.

Perhaps it’s time to bury the hatchet and call that person up and tell them you don’t care who’s right, you just want your friendship restored to its former luster. I’m thinking now of those rooms at the various concentration camps during the Holocaust – those rooms filled with the detritus of a hurried exit – those rooms filled with things that had no life in and of themselves. Holocaust means a whole burning.

Maybe it’s time to burn all the burdens we’ve been carrying all these years. Ask yourself this question, Who am I without these burdens? You might be surprised to find yourself facing a new you.

It’s a new year and a new time to rub the slate of resentments clean. In a hundred years who will know the score you’re keeping? Better to wipe off that slate and use it for a grocery list – at least that would feed you.

And now let us all promise to honor our feelings this coming year – to honor our pain, our anger, our love, our joy, to honor all the feelings that come our way and to stop imagining that we can control any of this thing we call life.

Make us all non-anxious presences in life – create in us the loving space to simply watch and not judge – prepare us to meet life on its own terms, remembering that how we think things should be and how things are rarely line up together.

In the name of everything that is holy and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen

(Text of Carolyn Grimminger’s Affirmation of Faith on forgiveness is not available.)

SERMON

“Frankie and Johnny were lovers. O my Gawd how they did love! They swore to be true to each other, As true as the stars above. He was her man but he done her wrong.”

When I was a bad boy – that is – when I was a practicing alcoholic I did a whole bunch of folks wrong! As a consequence I bathed in a font of forgiveness day and night. When you’re a blackout drinker and your nightly activities are related to you by those that you insulted, harassed, and otherwise abused you get used to saying things like, “I’m sorry, I really don’t remember that.” Or “I can’t believe I said, did, or acted in that manner and I sincerely hope you know that it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with my drinking.” Whatever! You get to say, “I’m sorry? a lot, and you know what, people are generally willing to say they forgive you.

The forgiveness factor is directly related to how long people have known you. If it’s an old friend, a close relative, a spouse, brother or sister, then the forgiveness font is fairly plentiful. You can bathe there night and day if you wish – if you can stand the looks of disgust as they say they forgive you, if you can bring yourself to face them one more time, or if simply you can take any more forgiveness.

This a point that a lot of people don’t get, understand, – there comes a point at which you are so full of forgiveness that you can’t take anymore. How many times can you go back to a spouse and hear her say, “I forgive you, but I’ll never forget” – until you’re dreaming of the day when she’ll have Alzheimer’s. And by saying that you’re full of forgiveness doesn’t in this case mean that you’ve been forgiving a lot of folks it means that you have been forgiven umpteen times and the forgiveness of others is beginning to look bad on you – like a cheap suit.

And speaking of cheap suits I can’t help but free associate to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace. And in the end that’s what forgiveness of those multiple transgressions begins to feel like – cheap grace. You’ve gotten away with murder – once again.

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

(Luke 23:24 KJV).

Jesus supposedly said this from the cross while he was hanging there, nailed up so that the weight of his body would slowly suffocate him. His feet nailed to a support with his knees bent so all the weight would be on his arms. In all that pain Jesus said, Forgive them, they know not what they do? Luke’s one of the later Gospels. Lots of additions and traditions got blended into the good doctor’s book.

The earliest gospel, Mark, was written before Luke. And on the cross Jesus is reported to have said only one thing, Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani! Aramaic for “My god, my god, why has thou forsaken me?”

So – Which story do you buy?

In Luke Jesus forgives his murderers as he is being murdered. In Mark Jesus? only voice on the cross is a voice of anger, rage, resentment and hurt!

My thesis for today is simple: If you think forgiveness is a difficult problem – you’re right, but probably not for the right reasons! Forgiveness is a symptom – the real problem is anger! Because we can’t forgive someone without first being angry with them. And not many people want to own their anger!

Traditionally anger is considered to be one of the seven deadly sins – remembering that sin is simply separation from God or from the source of our being. Do you remember your seven deadlies – let me refresh your memory; Pride, Envy, Anger, Avarice, Sadness, Gluttony & Lust.

The American Buddhist Monk, Phillip Kapleau, said “Anger is the means of staving off the fear of the isolation of dying.” The solitariness of death scares the Be-Jesus out of us and that fear inspires anger.

In psychological circles it is believed that anger, pure anger, never happens and that anger is a cluster emotion – secondary to and combined with fear and threat.

The reason we have trouble forgiving is that we have not allowed ourselves the luxury of our anger. Acting out our anger can kill others, stuffing our anger can kill us. We seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place.

If the source of anger is threat or fear, then we must understand what threatens us, what we are truly afraid of. It is rather human-like to defend ourselves when we are being threatened.

Recently a president of a prominent Democratic nation has built his entire regime around being threatened. 

My friend the Buddhist monk, Claude AnShin Thomas, who is also a Vietnam Veteran, said that after 9/11 we had an enormous opportunity to turn the dharma wheel. Turning the dharma wheel is a good thing for Buddhist – it’s sort of like teaching peace. The world post 9/11 was on our side – the world was reaching out to us. What would have happened if when we flew over Afghanistan we had dropped, instead of bombs, food, medicine and supplies? What if the better angles of our natures had responded?

In her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Gilead, Marilynne Robinson, has the old, dying preacher writing a letter to his seven-year-old son. In part of the letter he says, “I would advise you against defensiveness on principle. It precludes the best eventualities along with the worst. At the most basic level it expresses a lack of faith. As I have said, the worst eventualities can have great value as experience. And often enough, when we think we are protecting ourselves, we are struggling against our rescuer.” Another problem – how do we see Osama bin Laden as a rescuer?

Perhaps the heart of this problem surfaces best when we get away from the world of morality and enter the world of aesthetics. John Calvin, pre-eminent among the 16th Century Reformed theologians, says that each of us is an actor on God’s stage and that God is our audience. This gets at the point in a more convenient and expedient manner. For if our actions are not to be judged morally by those who surround us and go to make up our lives, but rather they are to be judged as a performance – then we get closer to the problem. Is an actor forgiven a bad performance? Do we feel a need to forgive a painter for a bad painting? When we hear someone play the violin like it’s a cat being tortured, do we even begin to think that we need to forgive that person their bad playing?

When an actor has a bad performance they are encouraged not to dwell on it. The best way to do this is to be in the moment and the next time the curtain comes up to begin again, to start over as if it were the first time the actor had ever performed that play.

Joel Gregory who used to be the preacher at First Baptist in Dallas calls this beginning again the final stage of forgiveness. Imagine you’ve got a daughter that you’ve disowned and simply telling her one day, “I’d like to be your dad again, and I’d like you to be my daughter again.” Or say you’ve got an old friend that you’ve fallen out with – you’d say to that friend, “Hey, let’s start over, let’s be friends again.” Sure you run the risk of being rebuffed, but is that any worse than waking up every morning with those same tapes of resentment and bitterness running through your heart and mind? Starting over again would be akin to beginning a new chapter in the story of your friendship, a new chapter in the narrative of what it means to be a father who has a daughter.

We all tell ourselves stories – that’s how we make our lives meaningful – everyone does it from childhood to old age. These stories are sometimes known as core narratives. They are no more or less true than the narrative of Jesus itself. The stories we tell ourselves are there to keep us in a comfort zone – whatever makes us happy or strokes us is in. Whatever we don’t like we either keep it out or expand the story to contain the discomfort.

To forgive one must first realize what has scared us into being angry – what has pushed us out of our comfort zone.

Reality has a way of not cooperating with our comfort zones. If you’re angry a lot or feel powerless to forgive those that have dumped upon your dreams then the stories you are telling yourself might sound like this, “This isn’t fair, I’m a good person. Things like this don’t happen to good people. Where is the justice in what has happened to me?” You see the problem doesn’t lie in the events themselves – in reality. The problem lies in your interpretation of the events – how well you have or have not included these threatening events in your core narratives. For in the end the only thing that actually counts is your interpretation of reality.

Feeling anxious, angry, unforgiving – it’s probably time to rewrite your core narrative.

Do you remember the way you felt when the Beatles went from the loving mop heads of The Rubber Soul Album to the freaks of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band?

The Beatles had met the Maha-Rishi, they’d gone to India, George had taken sitar lessons, and oh yeah, they’d dropped Acid.

Their psychological experiences caused them to rewrite, refigure, reformat, reinvent who the Beatles were and if you loved them because, as John said, they were more popular than Jesus Christ, himself, or if you loved them in spite of this statement, then you – who could have been threatened by their change – you changed, too. You and I helped rewrite the core narrative of who the Beatles were. And, of course, it didn’t hurt if you had also dropped acid.

Can’t forgive someone for what they’ve done to you, how they abused you, discarded you, betrayed you. Rewrite your story. Put their actions in perspective, deal with them, their actions, your reactions, detriangulate yourself, redefine yourself so that your understanding of grace and justice is not so narrowly construed.

Try to remember if you’ve allowed someone to stomp on your dream there was a time when you thought that person worthy of your dream. It helps to again give that person as much credit as you can for being a good and worthy human being. Don’t forget the minute community is posited – the second you have an alliance, a love, a relationship you have automatically given the other person the trump card of betrayal. People act out from their fears/threats/hurts. Can we even know why someone chooses to play the trump card of betrayal? Perhaps it would help to remember when we have in times past played such a card?

So – let go of the story that hurts you. Write a story that heals and blesses you.

Frederick Nietzsche once said, “That which does not kill me – makes me stronger.” We must, if we are to survive, optimize the possibilities for survival.

And it’s not as simple as either you see the glass half empty or half full – no!

You’ve told yourself the same stories for so many years – are you happy yet? Do you still have fear? Do you still feel threatened?

You’ve got to expand your repertoire. Write some new material for God’s sake. If you were a comedian you’d be booed off the stage!

Again, Marilynne Robinson in her Pulitzer Prize winning book, Gilead, suggests that looking at our relationship with God in this actor/performer mode, a la John Calvin, is one way to see how God might enjoy us. In other words, God isn’t passing morality judgments on us. The book of life isn’t full of black marks; it’s full of bad reviews.

And what is the difference you might ask? Glad you ask that! We can’t learn anything from a moral judgment – other than the fact that we are in fact wrong! But from a bad review – my god the possibilities are endless.

In the first play I ever wrote, entitled, “The Valley of the Shadow? the reviewer from the Tallahassee Democrat, John Habich, raked me across the coals. At one point in the review he said that my play had more tragic flaws in it than the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. Did I cry over this review? No, I contacted the paper, had a meeting with John and began to learn more about playwriting as a product of that review.

What if we had been taught that God was really a life-coach, that God was on our side and somewhere along the way she had suggested ways in which we could, you know, enhance our performance?

But what if you feel that you are literally caught in a hellish situation – caught in a performance not of your own design? What do you do then?

Concentration camp survival literature consistently shows that even in that environment the way the people in the camps reacted, responded to that horrific environment made all the difference in the world. You’ve got to look for the cracks in the door of fate. You’re the salesperson for your life – you see the door of fate crack open – stick your foot in there. Impose yourself – sing, dance, whatever the situation calls for.

In conclusion I’d like to offer you an easy formula for forgiveness – a way for you to know how to deal with your anger, whom to forgive and how to forgive them – unfortunately no such formula exists. Like much of life, the manner in which we deal with our anger at people, situations and even our anger with inanimate objects brings a great deal to bear on the people that could benefit from our forgiveness, never forgetting that we are one of those people.

I want to reiterate the fact that you are the dealer in your life. I want to remind you as the dealer of your life you can reshuffle the deck any time you like and start a new deal. But you need to keep in mind that no matter how many times you shuffle your deck, once you enter relationship, community or any sort of intimacy the card at the top of the deck, the one you’re about to deal out is always the trump card of betrayal. It looks like a card trick, but it turns out the trick may be on you.

If you simply don’t want to deal with others, then you can play solitaire. Lots of people have done it, some have actually won at that game – Zen Masters and some religious mystics of every order come to mind. But I must warn you there is a danger in playing solitaire. You just might deal the trump card of betrayal to yourself. State institutions are full of people who have dealt themselves this card and I can only conjecture that suicides are holding this card in their hand for years before they actually play it.

Forty-five years ago Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen had a patient who had been lost in a snowstorm during a skiing trip. When they found him he was badly frost bit. It looked like he was going to lose both of his feet. He waited for a world-class vascular surgeon and with this doctor’s help his left foot became better while his right foot took a turn for the worse. This surgeon and a team of other surgeons all recommended the amputation of the right foot. He refused.

Finally when the toxins from that gangrenous foot were surging through his body and he was on the edge of death, the doctors and his finance made one last effort to get his permission to amputate. Again he refused. At which point his finance pulled the brilliant diamond ring from her finger and thrust it upon the black little toe of his right foot. “I hate this damned foot,” she sobbed, “if you want this foot so damned much, why don’t you marry it!” He had the amputation. They are still married.

There’s a parallel between our resentments, our betrayals, our inability to forgive and get on with life and this man’s gangrenous foot. I guess the question boils down to; what are you married to – the baggage of your life, or life itself.

2005 Sermon Index

 

2005 Sermons

Sermon Topic Author Date
Christmas Day Stories, 2005 Davidson Loehr 12-25-05
Love Stories Davidson Loehr 12-18-05
Magic Davidson Loehr 12-11-05
The Word Was Made Flesh and Dwelt Among Us Jack R. Harris-Bonham 12-04-05
Secular Wisdom Davidson Loehr 11-27-05
Thanksgiving 2005 Davidson Loehr 11-20-05
T. T. T. Davidson Loehr 11-13-05
Gifts For All Occasions Jack R. Harris-Bonham 11-06-05
Happy Halloween Davidson Loehr 10-30-05
Liberal Religion, part 3: The Religion of Jesus vs the Religion About Jesus Davidson Loehr 10-23-05
Liberal Religion, Part 2 Davidson Loehr 10-16-05
Media Addiction Davidson Loehr 10-09-05
Finding Ourselves, Our Souls & Our Religious Center Jack R. Harris-Bonham 10-02-05
Liberal Religion, Part 1 Davidson Loehr 09-25-05
Who is Your Audience? Davidson Loehr 09-18-05
Size Matters! Davidson Loehr 09-11-05
WWJD? Davidson Loehr 09-04-05
Farewell Musings Victoria Shepherd Rao 06-26-05
Behind the Scenes Davidson Loehr 06-19-05
The Priesthood of All Believers Davidson Loehr 06-12-05
Knowing Your Nugget Victoria Shepherd Rao 05-29-05
The Cost of Money Davidson Loehr 05-22-05
Transforming Liberalism of James Luther Adams Rev George Beach 05-15-05
When You Love Someone: HS seniors bridging service Victoria Shepherd Rao 05-08-05
American Myths Davidson Loehr 05-01-05
Growing Up and Finding Ourselves: Annual youth service Davidson Loehr 04-24-05
Earth Day Celebration Victoria Shepherd Rao 04-17-05
Life Shrinks and Expands in Proportion to One’s Courage Davidson Loehr 04-10-05
Spiritual, Not Religious Dr. Laurel Hallman 04-03-05
Eastering Davidson Loehr 03-27-05
Coming of Age – Constantly! Davidson Loehr 03-20-05
Finding Your Own Voice Davidson Loehr 03-13-05
Women’s Wisdom, Women’s Work Victoria Shepherd Rao 03-06-05
About Schmidt – About Life – About Aging Nathan L. Stone 02-27-05
Walking the strait and narrow Rev Chuck Freeman 02-20-05
On Tolerating Bad Religion Davidson Loehr 02-13-05
God Davidson Loehr 02-06-05
Myths to Live By, Part 5 Davidson Loehr 01-30-05
Finding Our Way Through The Dark Victoria Shepherd Rao 01-23-05
Myths to Live By, Part 4 Davidson Loehr 01-16-05
On Spiritual Practices Victoria Shepherd Rao 01-09-05
Reclaiming Our Ultimate Concerns From Religion Davidson Loehr 01-02-05