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Dr. Laurel Hallman
Senior Minister of First Unitarian Church of Dallas
03 April 2005
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
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SERMON: SPIRITUAL, NOT RELIGIOUS
Some of you have found this church through Beliefnet.com. You took the quiz on the website to see which faith your profile resembled, and found you were closest to Unitarian Universalist, or perhaps to Secular Humanist, sometimes Quaker, in some order of the three. Then, I’ve been told, it’s true at my church, I’m sure it’s true of yours. I’ve been told-that, some of you-not knowing what Unitarian Universalist meant, moved to that website, then linked to this church’s website, and here you are.
Almost every time we have a group join our church in Dallas, someone in the group has found us through Beliefnet.com. I have to believe it is also true here.
It may interest some of you that Beliefnet.com now has a feature called “Soulmatch”, a matching service to help you meet people online with your same values, and characteristics
In the initial quiz, to introduce you to the service, you can check, among other things, what faith you would prefer your matches to have. The list starts with “Any”, and after the second on the list, shows all the usual main religions of the world. It is the second one that caught my eye. It is, “Spiritual but Not Religious”.
I know exactly what it means. I’ve heard many in my church use just that phrase to describe themselves. I expect that a large number of people check that box on Soulmatch, so your chances would be good to meet someone if you also checked it, I would think. And I also might guess that if those people who checked “Spiritual but Not Religious” met, fell in love and decided to marry, they would have a high probability of having the wedding at a Unitarian Universalist church.
Because many imagine that we are also . . . “Spiritual but Not Religious”.
I had a young man, in my first meeting with a couple planning their wedding-I had a young man tell me that they came to our church for their wedding because they didn’t like organized religion.
I chose not to explain to him that we, in fact, are an organized religion, even knowing that John Buehrens who preceded me as Sr. Minister of my church is known to have said, “You don’t have to worry about organized religion around here. We’re not that organized.”
I didn’t go into details, because I knew what he meant. I know what people mean when they say they’re spiritual but not religious. They mean that they choose not to affiliate with any religious body of beliefs, doctrines, rituals and activities, perhaps because they have found them oppressive, or perhaps because they’ve never experienced them. There are, now, many people known in church-lingo as “the unchurched”. They might say they are spiritual but not religious because they are the adult children of people who left organized religion long ago, never exposing them to any organized religion-making them wary of all of them.
People who say they are “Spiritual, but not religious” mean that they have found meaning and purpose and even a set of beliefs about life and its mysteries, outside Catholic, Jewish, Protestant Christian, or the “other” faiths on the Soulmate list. They have found them in the writings of people like Jack Kornfield, or Ram Dass, or Thich Nhat Hanh-(interestingly, each of them speaking out of a religious tradition, but not directly representing that religion-and speaking more to people outside religion altogether, than those who are churched)-or these seakers have found their spiritual path in the midst of poets like Rilke, or Rumi, or Rabindranath Tagore who speak eloquently of the life of the spirit, and give guidance about how to live that life. Some have become spiritual but not religious because they have found more truth in nature than in church.
Whatever the source of this spiritual awakening–whatever the source of their spiritual awakening-I know it can be transformative, sustaining, deeply meaningful and purposeful.
It is, as we heard in the reading earlier-the call to go within. It is the call to pay attention to what is close at hand. It is the call to notice the feelings we have in the moment, and to move beneath them, to a deeper response, a deeper connection than our usual reactions and responses in life. It is an invitation to dip into the underground river-(Ira Progoff called it,) or the singing river -( Harry Scholefield called it)-it is the call to greet life with open hands-( Henry Nouwin) suggested, telling us to move into the “inner space” of our lives.
I have a postcard I keep on my desk. I received it in 1995 from a colleague I barely know, who had heard me preach, and said the picture on the postcard reminded him of my sermon. On the postcard is a reproduction of a painting by a contemporary Italian painter, Wainer Vaccuri. The painting is titled “Deep Down”. In very clear imagery, a man is poised on his toes at the top of a cliff, like a diver on a high diving board-arms and hands pointed straight down, body bent as if he is already beginning the fall-his head is turned to the side away from us-he is looking at a figure floating above him. The figure has one outstretched arm pointing straight down. The horizon of the sea off in the distance, but about even with our diver is pale blue. But the sea into which he is about to dive is deep and dark. We know he’s diving anyway.
I keep that postcard on my desk in a plastic envelope to protect it, because it reminds me when I am tempted to scoot along the surface of things-that my call is to the depths. Not to the darkness per se though sometimes that’s what I find-but to the depths of life’s purpose and meaning. To dive in. To dive off. To dive. The man’s head is turned as if to say, “Are you sure?” And the angel, no frilly wings in sight-the angel’s posture says, “I’m sure.”
I say this because it takes courage to live the spiritual life. It takes a willingness to face reality- to stop and face reality. It takes courage to take life on life’s terms, and to dive deeply into its truths.
It takes discipline to live a spiritual life. It takes silence, and practice writing fears and hopes and yearnings and thanks and regrets and joys, and being willing to start each day anew, as if it were your first.
I will admit that once in a while when someone tells me they’re spiritual but not religious, I can sense it is a cop-out. They live in the world of shallow affirmations, and drippingly sweet words of inspiration. They live in the world of imagined joy, where tragedy never visits, and where love overcomes every difficulty-To be sure, our bookstores are chock full of books to sustain that vision.
But today I want to honor the spiritual path which has depth, meaning, discipline, and willingness to live without knowing what exactly is expected of us in the present moment, and living that moment as fully as we can anyway.
I understand that religion has failed many people who have found their spiritual path on their own. I understand that religion has failed many who put their faith in belief systems and have been broken by them. I understand that religion has bored people until they couldn’t stand it any more. And I understand that religion has excluded, restricted, ruled over many people until they said “no more” and left.
So if you get anything from today it is that I understand why people say, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” I get it.
I understand why people say it in our churches.
But lest you find yourself embarrassed because you don’t understand fully where you are, I want to add some thoughts about being religious.
One of the problems with being spiritual but not religious, (and it may be why some of you are here) One of the problems is that it’s hard to find a group to join. Some find a meditation group. Some who are spiritual but not religious will have found their way into Group Therapy, or into a 12 Step group, and it will satisfy their need for companionship along the sometimes difficult road of life-for we will gather in groups-it seems to be part of human nature-to find others like us, to find others facing the same questions and challenges we are-to celebrate our joys together. We will find groups.
Now that it’s on Soulmate, and couples are encouraged to find each other, perhaps a larger “Spiritual but not Religious” movement will begin to emerge. Because eventually some of those couples will have children, and want to raise their children in a setting which is congruent with their world view, and then they may want to get together for spiritual practice, and then they may discover that others throughout time have done similar things, and voila! they’re spiritual and religious at the same time.
Or they can come here for their religion.
If you take anything else home today from this sermon-first I will remind you that I know what it means to be spiritual but not religious. But second, I need to say that coming here is a religious act. This is a religious place. We encourage you to be spiritual and religious here.
But, you may say, this is a “dogma-free zone (we actually have little cards you can give to people when they ask about our religion-they’re linked to a UUdecide.com-one of them says on it “dogma-free zone” Doesn’t dogma define religion?
Sometimes.
But more definitive is the history of grappling with theological questions. We have that.
More definitive is a defined set of values. We have that.
Even more definitive is the institution which is dedicated to a certain path, a certain set of activities (like teaching our children, and meeting here every Sunday to sing and pray and for this brief time, order our lives together) and probably most definitive, is the extended past and future in which we honor those who have gone before, and invest ourselves in the people and events which will follow us.
Someone said to me recently, “If you want your life to have meaning, invest in an institution.”
Invest your time and resources in the structures of society which have depth and meaning and purpose beyond your individual life.
Last month, a friend of mine died. He was the husband of one of my best friends. They belong to the Unitarian Universalist Church in Bloomington, Indiana-where I was the minister for six years. Our friendship has continued over the 18 years since I was there.
My friend was 70. He was an ecologist who taught at Indiana University. He also more frequently than he liked, gave expert testimony in cases around ecological issues-usually about wetlands, his specialty.
His life was invested in the preservation of wetlands, in the students who would carry the work forward, in his Unitarian Universalist church and in his family. He sang in the choir-not always on key. He played the banjo in a string band. He first questioned, and then agreed with the building of a sanctuary for that church. More recently he questioned and then agreed with the hiring of three part-time ministers for that church. He was chair of the “Grounds” committee, and spent untold hours at the church planting, trimming, mowing, and tending the grounds of the church. . He mentored my son, in the Coming of Age program 22 years ago. And a better mentor I could not have found. My son would travel to Bloomington to see his friends during his college days in Minnesota–and he would stay with Dan and Melinda. He had a home there with them.
Dan did not claim to be spiritual or religious. He chided me frequently about my use of traditional religious language. He found his refreshment in deep sea fishing-or more specifically ‘catch and release’ deep sea fishing. He sided with Emerson and Thoreau about the power of nature to feed our souls.
In the last months of his life-far too brief a time as far as Dan’s friends were concerned-in the last months of his life-in a specific shift of theological stance, he said that he had found God in the community which surrounded and sustained him.
The choir at their rehearsal, one Wednesday not long before he died-the choir called his home and sang one of their pieces to him through the phone. He wasn’t speaking by then, but he smiled (I’m told) through the whole of the singing. The string band made regular visits to his home to the very end. Almost every Christmas card I received this year from Bloomington mentioned Dan and his illness. The church in Bloomington lost one of their pillars.
I tell you this personal story because it is my most recent experience of what it means to be religious.
It is to be spiritual within the context of a living, breathing, sustaining, historically grounded institution with babies being born, and old ones who are dying-and everything in between. It is to be spiritual within the context of pot lucks and discussion groups, Sunday School classrooms, Christmas pageants and choir practice. It is to be spiritual and to take on a mortgage for expansion, and it is to be spiritual and then burn that mortgage.
To be spiritual and religious is to show up here each week. To bring your discouraged and sometimes battered spirit to this place to be lifted up, to be challenged, to be sustained here among all these others, and to be blessed back into the world to continue your work, the investment of the time and resources of your life in things which matter.
To be spiritual and religious is to show up here each week, in this place where the two come together, where we search the inner space of our lives together. Where we, one more time, make space for hope to emerge, together. Where we are not alone in our grief. Not alone in our search. Where we are not alone.
Last week I spoke with my friend Melinda to find out how she was doing. She’s all right. She is overwhelmingly sad, but she is all right. She said the flowers are coming up.
They always had flowers blooming all around their home. Dan had, years before, torn up the lawn, to plant native plants and flowers. So I knew it would be time for their flowers.
But she added, “Last fall he kept buying bulbs. He would sit out on the deck because he was already weakened by his cancer-and point to where he wanted the bulbs to be planted by the men who had come to help. He kept saying he’d be here to see them, even though we both knew he wouldn’t.”
I remembered the poem I read earlier-and I recited part of it over the phone. We both had a good cry. Because it is about Belief-not the belief that we will be here in the spring-everything is too transient for that-but the belief that spring itself will be. With or without us. It is a belief, not in the shallows, but in the deep movements of life that renew and sustain us even when all is lost.
So… all this is to say that the next time someone speaks to you about your faith, tell them your have found the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, where your spiritual life is nurtured, and where you have found a religion of inclusion, freedom, faith and hope for your life, for your family, for our future together. Tell them you are spiritual and religious, and that it has made all the difference.
