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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April, 1, 2012
What do UU jokes tell us about ourselves? How true are they? Some sting: a UU family moves into a new neighborhood. Their little girl finds a new playmate, and they are happily getting to know each other. One day, the playmate says, “We’re Episcopalians, what are you?” The UU child thinks for a minute and says, “I’m not sure, but I think we’re League of Women Voters.” Let’s laugh and think together!
In honor of April Fool’s Day I’ve been reading UU jokes. I have to say some of them sting. Like this one:
Q: What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Jehovah’s Witness?
A: Someone who goes around knocking on doors for no apparent reason.
I would have a reason, and I know a lot of you would too. I would want to say “Did you know there is a faith community that doesn’t believe God would send anyone to hell? That there is a tiny bit of the Divine in everyone? That everything is connected, really, everything is one, and what I call God is the connection between one thing and another – that which connects us all, the one soul of all things. I believe that the Bible has some sacred things in it, and so does the Koran and the Vedas and the poetry of Mary Oliver and the lyrics of Townes Van Zandt. We’re here on this earth to learn to love and be loved, and appreciate the earth and the sky and the stars and try to alleviate suffering when we can and add to the joy in the world when we can do that. And that you don’t have to believe things that don’t make sense to you, and that you can believe in God or not, but definitely you should not believe in a God who doesn’t believe in you. And that is just what I believe. What do you believe?
This next one stung too:
A UU family moves into a new neighborhood. Their little girl finds a new playmate, and they are happily getting to know each other. One day, the playmate says, “We’re Episcopalians, what are you?”
The UU child thinks for a minute and says, “I’m not sure, but I think we’re League of Women Voters.”
In this Religious Education program, we’re going to try to teach the kids what it means to be Unitarian Universalist. That this is not a “non-denominational” church. UUism is a denomination with roots in the early church. It is not a church where “you can believe anything you want.” You can’t believe that one skin tone or sexual preference is better or more blessed than another. You can’t believe in hell. You can’t believe that if you’re rich and healthy it means that God loves you more than other people. You can’t believe that it doesn’t matter how we treat immigrants. Well, what you can’t believe and be a UU is another sermon.
We don’t have a creed to recite, though, that is true. That is the main factor making UU confusing to people. In Of Human Bondage, Somerset Maugham said: “A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves in almost everything that anybody else believes, and he has a very lively sustaining faith in he doesn’t quite know what.”
I just don’t recognize that description of Unitarian Universalists. You know, with the hectic flow of life, we sometimes don’t take the time to think about what it is we believe. It is easier, sometimes, to say what we don’t believe. This winter Cyndi Stein kindly offered a ten-week Wednesday night class called “Building Your Own Theology.” The students in that class are given the opportunity and the language to begin to carve out a statement of what they believe. Some of you know a lot about what you believe. For some it’s all about energy and thought and love, for some it’s about believing in a loving God, and for others it’s about doing your best to live ethically with the support of your community. For many of us, a big part of it is about the democratic process, making sure people are heard, making sure everyone has a chance to say their say, making sure the loudest don’t obliterate the quieter souls, talking until the sense of the group is heard. That’s difficult! Democracy is a demanding spiritual path. It’s much easier to shame people into shutting up, to disapprove of them until they subside, to talk over them or accept their silent offer to stay out of the discussion. It’s hard to slow down a process enough to hear the voices that don’t agree with the majority. It’s a big temptation to ride roughshod over objections and pretend that the sense of the group is unanimous. But Democracy is another sermon.
It feels to some people that the UUs believe nothing because most of our talk of believing is done one on one, or in smaller groups. I think part of why we like discussion so much is that we get to feel the presence of people who agree with us. Maybe that explains the old one about the Unitarian Universalist who died, and was off on the great journey. He came to a crossroad in the lane, with three directional signs. One said, “This way to Heaven.” Another said, “This way to Hell.” And the third said, “This way to a discussion about Heaven and Hell.” Of course the Unitarian Universalist went to the discussion. Conversation is one of our sacraments, along with child dedication, marriage, memorial services, coming of age, doing community service and drinking coffee.
In the UU church you don’t get to feel the presence of like-minded people in the experience of a whole congregation reciting a creed together It’s in discussion. that you get to hear people who agree with your views, seeing the heads nodding as you say something can be very validating, if you have felt like a Lone Ranger before that. I like that, but it can be confusing to new folks. One year, a professor of Religion at Wofford College forwarded me a paper one of his students had written. This student came to the service here and enjoyed it, but he said:
“The service was very different than any service I had ever experienced before, mostly because of the absence of any particular deity or central text. Instead, the sources for inspirational readings or authority seem to come from great thinkers or writers in world history, such as Rilke, Thoreau, Dickinson, Martin Luther King, Jr, and even occasionally the Christian Bible. The ideals were somewhat hard for me to wrap my mind around since there was no unifying feature other than feelings of love and acceptance.”
There is this joke:
A visitor to a Unitarian Universalist church sat through the sermon with growing incredulity at the heretical ideas being spouted. After the sermon a UU asked the visitor, “So how did you like it?”
“I can’t believe half the things that minister said!” sputtered the visitor in outrage.
“Oh, good — then you’ll fit right in!”
At the end of the paper the student writes:
“The church celebrates its diversity and the love and bond between its members is cultivated through the services and rituals of the church. Although it is an extremely interesting experience, I felt it difficult to understand what holds the members together religiously, but I appreciated the chance to fit the service into my own religious beliefs and personal spiritual context. The feelings of the members of the church are best expressed in the Affirmation. “Love is the spirit of this church, and service is its law. To dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another, this is our great covenant.””
We do like to support one another’s responsible search for truth and meaning. That’s one of our principles.
Why did the Unitarian-Universalist cross the road? To support the chicken in its search for its own path.
Our principles come closest to unifying us. Only a black-belt UU can recite all seven, but most of us know the first one: “to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” That’s a hard one, because we have to feel our way into whether we need to see as worthy everything about a person or just maybe that teensy spark of the Divine that is in each person. We can have people who seem as rigid and judgmental as the Pharisees themselves about being sensitive in our language and affirming of differences. That leads to the light bulb joke:
How many Unitarian Universalists does it take to change a light bulb?
Three – one to write a solemn statement which will affirm the following:
1. This light bulb is natural, a part of the universe, and evolved over many years by small steps.
2. There must be no discrimination against dark bulbs in any form, and means must be found for all “dark” bulbs to take their place alongside light bulbs on a basis of equality.
3. We affirm the right of all bulbs to screw into the sockets of their choice regardless of the bulb’s illumination preference.
4. UUs seek for each light bulb the fullest opportunity to develop itself to its full electrical potential.
Two to write this one:
We chose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the light bulb. However, if you have found in your own journey that light bulbs work for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your personal relationship with your light bulb and present it next month at our annual l light bulb Sunday service in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, three -way, long-life, and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.
Other UU jokes poke fun at the Biblical illiteracy of some church members. Too true. We’re trying to fix that. Two UUs are having a conversation about it:
UU#1: “UUs don’t know enough about the Bible.
UU#2: “Some of us are self-taught, and know a lot. Like me”
UU#1: “Oh, yeah? I’ll bet you five bucks you can’t recite the Lord’s Prayer.”
UU#2: “You’re on. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
UU#1: “All right, I was wrong, you’re right — you win.”
In The Big Book of Jewish Humor, the authors (Novak and Waldoks) quoted Martin Grotjahn who suggested that part of what Jewish humor is about is telling enemies, “You do not need to attack us. We can do that ourselves – and even better.” Let’s end by singing another ancient folk song together – this one was recorded by a group called the Limelighters. “Zen Gospel Singing.”
