Happy Halloween

30 October 2005

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 not be scared too easily. Not all who come in costumes are monsters. Sometimes the new forces that appear in our lives are forces of healing and of life, that we just need to learn how to recognize.

The voices most familiar to us aren’t always good voices. And new, unfamiliar voices may be those of friends we really need to make.

This Halloween when so many wear masks, let us be reminded that we all wear masks. So let us try not to be impressed by the masks, including our own.

Let us look behind the masks, including our own, and ask Who goes there? Who goes there in our dreams, our relationships, our families, our country. Who goes there, that we may know their heart rather than their mask.

The masks are parts of children’s games we play. Behind them are people who need to connect with others in authentic ways, at levels of both mind and heart. Let us look forward to and be ready for, the great unmasking when we shall see and be seen, face to face, in both truth and love.

Amen.

SERMON: Happy Halloween

Like nearly all Christian holidays, including Easter and Christmas, Halloween – a shortened form of the Eve of All Hallows, or All Saints Day – is a “cover” of a much older pagan festival. Some scholars say that November 1st was the beginning of the new year in ancient Celtic reckoning, and that the evening before it – called “Summer’s End,” or “Samhain” – was the most important holiday of their year.

Samhain marks one of the two great doorways of the Celtic year, for the Celts divided the year into two seasons: the light and the dark, at Beltane on May 1st and Samhain on November 1st. Some believe that Samhain was the more important festival, marking the beginning of a whole new cycle, just as the Celtic day began at night. For it was understood that in dark silence comes whisperings of new beginnings.

With the rise of Christianity, Samhain was changed to Hallowmas, or All Saints’ Day, to commemorate the souls of the blessed dead who had been canonized that year, so the night before became popularly known asAll Hallows Eve(ning), or Halloween.

A night of glowing jack-o-lanterns, bobbing for apples, tricks or treats, and dressing in costume. A night of ghost stories and seances, tarot card readings and trying to see the future. A night of power, when the veil that separates our world from the Otherworld is at its thinnest. It was a ‘spirit night.’

The most interesting belief was their belief that on this night, the spirits of the unseen world – usually the dark spirits, the spirits of the dead – came through to our world. A Jungian psychologist might rephrase this by saying that we are invited to confront our shadow sides, the unexpressed part of the world that is less obvious than the part that we’re living. Usually, that means that we live in positive images, suppress or deny the fearful things – that’s how we make it through the day, you might say. But on this one night, the veil between layers of consciousness is lifted, and we are given a kind of ritual permission to let our unconscious become conscious.

You may be sitting here thinking “Well, that could be scary!” And then you’ll have a much deeper appreciation for the kinds of costumes people wear on Halloween. They are mostly the costumes of our fears, let loose for one night of the year – though by now, they’re so dressed up as cartoons they hardly scare anybody.

This is why Halloween is so spooky: because it is trying to reach through the cartoons to let us confront our own shadow sides. And that’s spooky.

Preachers often love a chance like this to get all morbid, to delve into all the deep suppressed things we carry around, drag them out and whack you with them. You may have experienced that in church before. It’s part of the sadism of this religion business. We say “Have a spooky Halloween!” – then we snicker.

This year, I’ve decided to do it differently – even to risk being too optimistic. Because this year the times are “out of joint,” as Shakespeare put it. There are signs that this may be a different kind of Halloween – not a spooky Halloween, but a Happy Halloween. So I want to use Halloween as a lens for looking at our world today. And I decided to use what might seem like a very unrelated and unlikely symbol as a kind of teaching aid: the Yin-Yang symbol of ancient China:

Most of you probably didn’t even know that the ancient Celts knew about ancient Chinese philosophy. Well, they didn’t. But all the best religions and philosophies are trying to give form and substance to some of our enduring questions, the things that just always seem to be part of the human condition. And sometimes it’s useful to mix the teachings of different cultures, to let them illuminate each other – and, hopefully, us.

This symbol (Yin-Yang) represents the ancient Chinese understanding of how things work. The outer circle represents “everything”, while the black and white shapes within the circle represent the interaction of two energies, called “yin” (black) and “yang” (white), which cause everything to happen. They are not completely black or white, just as things in life are not completely black or white, and they cannot exist without each other. Each carries within it, at its strongest, the seeds of its own undoing, so the dance goes on forever.

While “yin” is dark, passive, downward, cold, contracting, and weak, “yang” is bright, active, upward, hot, expanding, and strong. The shape of the yin and yang sections of the symbol, actually gives you a sense of the continual movement of these two energies, yin to yang and yang to yin, a kind of nonstop dance, an undulation, causing everything to happen. The yin/yang symbol isn’t meant as a snapshot, but as a dynamic image of the forces whose movement define nearly all reality.

If you think about it, the weakest position you can be in is to be at your strongest and fullest position, for it means that you will soon be giving way to the kinds of forces you have suppressed. And the strongest position to be in is the weakest, the force just beginning to come up, because it just gets better during your turn to lead in the next round of this dance.

Yang (white) is the strong force, and Yin is the weak force. Is the strong force always good? No, just strong. Back in history when both Halloween and the yin/yang symbol were born, I suspect the strong forces were seen as good, because they were identified with the planting and growing season, where the dark forces were identified with winter, when the seeds lay fallow in the ground.

But today, they’re psychological and social and political symbols and forces. And the strong forces aren’t always good. Just strong.

You can find some of our most timeless sayings reflected in the dynamics of this yin/yang circle. At the top, when the strong forces are at their peak, you can think of saying “pride goes before a fall.” And at the bottom, when the darker forces have become out of balance, you remember the saying that it is always darkest just before the new dawn.

You experience this rhythm in your own life, with its ups and downs. You experience it in your relationships, with give and take, strong and weak moments or periods. It’s what Hindus and Buddhists have called karma, the cosmic law of cause and effect.

All actions have consequences. You can see this in nature, especially now. We have allowed a very high level of destructive omissions from vehicles and factories for years, to increase the profits of the owners and stockholders. Those emissions led to global warming, which has led to the melting of the ice caps. Many scientists are saying these changes in the balance of the atmosphere were the root causes of the record number of destructive hurricanes we have been having. Not only is it not nice to fool with Mother Nature, you can’t get away with it for long. All actions carry within them the seeds of their own undoing. It is about as cosmic a law as we have.

These risings and fallings of strong and weak forces are the dynamics of all life. If you are in a relationship and you fail to address important issues for too long, forces will rise from the depths of one or both of you that will become more dissatisfied until something erupts.

Want a faster and worse eruption? Try betraying the trust of your partner. Lies, betrayals, brutality, violence – all these things carry the seeds of their own demise, as the forces of yin and yang do. And the opposing forces represented in the “seeds” – those small circles – will arise in time to reverse the direction of relationships, even nations.

And it works the other way, too. Plant seeds of trust and compassion, and see how they change the people around you, and the atmosphere of your life. Take advantage of people, you plant seeds of uprising and vengeance. Empower and educate them, and you can raise citizens and neighbors with strong bonds.

I grew up in such an empowering time. The GI Bill after WWII let more Americans go to college than ever in our history. The Marshall Plan invested huge sums of money to help the people we had just defeated in the war get back on their feet and rebuild. Those were the actions that earned America the respect of most of the world, as a moral leader.

Now, the tide has turned, as it does, and our nation’s spirit is greedier, harsher. How can we be the only developed country that doesn’t provide health care for all its citizens? How can that have happened in America? How can we possibly be arguing, as the Vice President did this week, for the right to torture prisoners without restraint? How could leaders lead us into a war by manufacturing claims about weapons of mass destruction and a tie between Iraq and the attacks of 9-11 that they knew never existed? All these actions are strong, but they carry the seeds of their own undoing. How can leaders ask our young soldiers to die in a war of imperialism and greed, and then vote to cut veterans’ benefits by $25 billion? Such deceit and betrayal carry their own undoing in them, just as Hindus observed in their law of karma thirty centuries ago.

Well, you can extend this list of questions as well as I can. In the yin/yang picture, these are pictures of yang at its fullest and most arrogant size.

These are very strong forces, but they are not forces of life. Every new news story carries more facts about the deceit at all levels.

But the other voices are rising. This week, the first indictment came, for the Chief of Staff of the Vice President of the United States. And Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, also had a meeting with President Bush’s criminal defense lawyer, the content of which was not revealed.

The media are starting – though weakly – to write more critically of the President, and to show him in more awkward poses rather than the staged photo-ops. This is a shift in emphasis. It’s rounding the top of the circle, moving from one kind of force to its opposite.

Cindy Sheehan’s witness has had a big effect. I was visited this week by a local woman who won a Best of Austin award for her idea of putting up billboards of conscience along I-35. She came to talk about billboards and posters outside many church entrances that might simply say “Thou Shalt Not Torture.” That is a very different kind of voice. You can feel the difference. 70% now disapprove of the war. By a three-to-one margin, according to a Washington Post poll, the public now believes that the level of ethics and honesty in the government has declined rather than risen under Mr. Bush.

And the rise of fundamentalism isn’t as strong or enduring a force as the media and others are trying to make it. It is tempered, for instance, by the seldom-publicized fact that new studies are showing that only about 21% of Americans attend church regularly. We are a far more secular society than we are being led to believe. (Studies done by Kirk Hadaway, who has written a dozen books in the field.)

I’m speaking this Wednesday from the capital steps for a group that is part of a national effort to move for the impeachment of President Bush. Does it have a realistic chance? I don’t know, but it’s important that these voices be heard, and it feels right to be a part of them.

Europe is rejecting the US control of the Internet. That’s a huge move. China holds so much of our debt it could bankrupt us in a heartbeat if it thought it could find other adequate markets – or calculated that it was worth making that power play. Citizen groups and lawyers around the country are rising to take on corporations, to try and get corporate money out of elections – the things that our elected officials haven’t had the gumption to do.

I think all of these new voices are voices of truth, of life, of justice and compassion. Proposition 2 will probably pass by a large margin: its counterpart passed in Michigan earlier by a vote of more than 60%, as it has done in a couple dozen other states. At least we’re just following the parade it bigoted Bubbadom, rather than leading it. But the bigotry and hatred that produced these bills carry the seeds of their undoing, too. I think the rise of this new bigotry is a sunset, not a sunrise.

Why does this matter? For several reasons. First, these are the forces that make up the atmosphere of our society and the stresses in all of our lives. And to feel that we’re passing over the top of this yin/yang circle, is to feel a surge of life coming.

All these voices of life and compassion are holy voices, and should be encouraged. You’ll hear those voices of life and compassion in this church in as many ways as we can manage. You heard these voices singing out through the piece the choir sang this morning, that wonderful piece by “Sweet Honey in the Rock.”

So I am optimistic this Halloween. I think we see the signs of turning toward a more honest, healthy and empowering direction that we’ve needed for a long time.

It is almost impossible to kill the human spirit. Life is profoundly good, and that goodness may start to define us in the near future. People are still falling in love, parents are still having children and excited by their coming and their being. And while it’s easy to blame “the government,” we have many people in this room who work for the government. And most people who work for the government are good people who want to make a positive difference. After all, Patrick Fitzgerald works for the government, too.

The beauty of the universe isn’t playing to a passive audience. It’s an interactive game. We’re all a part of it, each in our own small but important way.

Halloween is about bringing the shadow sides up to the surface, to restore balance. Usually, those forces are a little scary, and Halloween is spooky. But the point isn’t to scare us; it’s to help integrate us and help us become more authentic and power-filled. Because an authentic person rejuvenates the world.

And so I hate to risk upsetting you with this big bunch of optimism, but I’m optimistic. Happy Halloween!