Last Things First
Last Things First
Rev. Douglas Taylor
1-1-12
Eschatology literally means “Last Words”, speaking of final things. It is the theology of how it will all end.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice. [Robert Frost reminds us]
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.-Robert Frost
Well, fire or ice – it is fair to admit that apocalyptic visions of the destructive end of all things are an ever-present topic of consideration for more than a few people. The Mayan calendar is supposed to end in 2012. Not one to pay too much attention to apocalyptic predications, I had not realize the calendar is set to run out with the Winter Solstice, December 21. So, we have a little more time. But I hadn’t tuned into that detail of the 2012 buzz until preparing to speak today. Besides, January 1st is our time for beginning not endings. Thus my title leads us to speak first of last things. Mayan or otherwise, end-times are forever on the minds of many people these days.
Progressive religion has its own versions of the end-times, of the ultimate outcome. Unitarian Universalism, my favorite iteration of progressive religion, has much to say about eschatology. Does that surprise you?
Here is one trick to remember. Some eschatological visions are dystopian while others are utopian. It is not always destruction. Hell, for example in a dystopian vision, while heaven is utopian. Some imagine the Mayan long-count calendar running out as a prediction for the physical world to end in fire or ice perhaps. Others eschew the dystopian prediction and declare the event will be a global transformation, a grand spiritual awakening into greater consciousness. Or as gamers say: we’ll all level up.
Me, I suspect December 21, 2012 will be the same sort of experience we had last night, or when 1999 rolled along into the year 2000: no big deal except for the paperwork. I suspect it will be neither dystopian nor utopian. It will be another beautiful day with all the variety of possibility spread out before us as usual. And that is the wondrous vision of the end of all things that I cast based on my faith and understanding of the world.
Let me explain.
Over the years, progressive religion has cast several compelling eschatological visions – none of which involve Armageddon or an apocalypse. Everyone here in the room this morning (or everyone reading this sermon online) shares some version of an eschatological vision, however subtle, undeveloped or subconscious. Such visions give us a sense of how the world should be, of what we are aiming for, perhaps even what we are striving to co-create. Our visions of the future – good, bad, or indifferent – inform how we act today. The eschatological vision of the Christian radical right certainly has an impact on behavior and what is going on in the world today.
Rebecca Parker, author of the reading I used this morning, writes about this in her chapter on eschatology from her co-authored book A House for Hope: the promise of progressive religion for the twenty-first century. She says:
Scripts about the end of the world tend to become compulsive, self-fulfilling prophecies. They feed what theologian Catherine Keller calls the West’s “apocalyptic habit,” the predilection to see the impending end of history in one’s own time and to act it out. Mesmerized by stark, apocalyptic either/or choices in a complex world, people drive toward solutions that place hope in destruction. Such theologies imagine that the promise of a new heaven and a new earth – a new paradise garden with its river and trees of life – will arrive in a future on the other side of apocalypse. In the meantime, they bless war and offer no resistance to environmental abuses. Journalist and commentator Bill Moyers notes that “people under the spell of such potent prophecies” represent a significant voting bloc in U.S. politics. As one leading U.S. senator aligned with this theological perspective put it, people cannot be expected “to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine, and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible?” [Parker, Rebecca & Buehrens, John, A House for Hope, p5)
The vision of the radical right has so infiltrated U.S. politics and culture that it is hard to imagine a positive alternative. It is tempting to think their version is the only game in town. But that simply is not true. Rebecca Parker contends that there are at least three compelling alternatives offered by western progressive religion alone. And that doesn’t even get into the Buddhist, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and other visions. So please don’t get caught thinking the version sold by the Christian radical right is the only vision of what we are aiming for.
Parker lists three progressive alternatives, all of which are utopian rather than dystopian, all of which are grounded in a paradise here on earth rather than after we’re all dead, all of which offer hope not through destruction but through compassion. She identifies them as “Social Gospel eschatology, universalist eschatology, and radically realized eschatology.” (ibid p 6) She goes on to give three one-sentence synopses: “We are here to build the kingdom of God on earth,” “God intends all souls to be saved,” and “Paradise is here and now.” Let me unpack these for us. Perhaps you will find your understanding of it amidst these visions.
Over the years I have regularly used the phrase “Beloved Community.” It is a phrase that comes out of the Social Gospel movement. The Social Gospel is the vision that Jesus’ compelling message to the world was to create heaven here on earth by lifting up the oppressed, by having compassion for those in need, and by loving our neighbors as ourselves. We can build a better world because that is what God wants of us; our work is to co-create the Kingdom of God on earth. The term Beloved Community is the egalitarian, non-monarchical version of the Kingdom of God. The vision is that through justice and compassion we can make paradise for everyone in this world.
When we work for fair immigration policy, when we petition for safe drinking water rather than water laced with fracking chemicals, when we campaign for marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples, when we speak out for peace among nations, when we hold vigil in solidarity with Muslims on the anniversary of 9/11, when we educate ourselves about racism and oppression, and when we send our money to local and global agencies working to build a better world, chances are we are living out the eschatological theology of the Social Gospel movement. We are doing these things, working for justice, because we hold a vision of a world made fair and all her people one. “We are the hearts and minds, hand and feet,” as our responsive reading by Kathleen McTigue (#544) reminds us.
Rather than thinking we can ignore environmental collapse because there will be a big cosmic battle in which flood and famine are signs that the righteous are about to be raptured, we are thinking we must respond to the environmental collapse because that is part of the beatific vision of the beloved community in which nothing and no one are considered disposable or unworthy of redemption and restoration.
If you have a sense that we are working to create the beloved community then that is your eschatology; that is what you offer the world as an alternative to this fuss of rapture and Armageddon.
Now, you might be thinking: “Hey, beloved community sounds perfect. We’ll take that one. We don’t even need to look behind door number two.” Ok, but I should warn you, there’s an edge to this one. You might want to hear about the other two progressive alternatives. And quite likely, we have a general mix of all three in practice, but I’m getting ahead of myself with such comments. First let me say: there is a down side to the Social Gospel eschatology.
If paradise is defined as the beloved community and our work is to eradicate injustice and to usher in an era of peace and equality, then clearly we have traded the pie in the sky heaven hereafter for a pie on earth ideal that is equally unrealistic. The efforts we offer to make heaven on earth will never be enough. We’ve ended slavery, for example, but that wasn’t enough. We’ve legally stopped Jim Crow laws and racial segregation but that wasn’t enough. We’ve achieved civil rights and voting rights for racial minorities but that wasn’t enough. We elected an African-American as president but that wasn’t enough. Racism is still alive in our society. We have not arrived at the beloved community.
In the Social Gospel model, God’s great vision is the beloved community, but we are the ones to build the better world. “We are the hearts and minds, hands and feet.” In the Social Gospel’s message, it is we who create the beloved community. And despite generations of labor, we have not worked hard enough or smart enough to bring it into reality yet. The hoped for future perpetually judges the present as still wanting. We strive to realize ‘the dream’ but it remains hauntingly out of reach. As an ideal it is glorious and worthy of our efforts. But the demands it holds when lifted up as THE ultimate end are exacting ones. It feeds us the same line of dissatisfaction the consumer culture kills us with: all you have and all you have done is not enough, and by all the evidence of history and experience, it never will be.
So let me tell you about a few other eschatological alternatives. They mix well with the Social Gospel message and allow a way through the fix that a thoroughgoing Social Gospel message traps us in.
Universalist eschatology also has deep roots among us, obviously. It is the vision that all souls will be united with God in the end because God’s love demands no less. This does, quickly, get tangled up with the Social Gospel message because as Rev. Gordon McKeeman puts it, “We are all going to end up together in heaven, so we might as well start learning to get along now.” This eases the pressure applied by the Social Gospel message. We don’t have to accomplish the full vision now and it doesn’t all rely on our work. God’s plan is for us all to be together in the end – that part is set. It’s going to happen. Our work now is not to make it all happen here on earth but to start it, to take the steps that are before us now toward that ideal, that vision.
A universalist eschatology does not let us off the hook. We can’t rejoice in war or ecological destruction as the Christian radical right’s version does. We can’t sit back and let God do all the work, but neither does God sit back and let us do all the work. In a universalist vision, God has set the course, has defined the arc of the moral universe. We still have a role to respond to God’s love and God’s vision by helping to usher in more justice and compassion here on earth. In a way, the universalist eschatology takes the whole question of eschatology off the table. It’s already set. No cosmic battle is needed. No earthly striving for justice will change the ultimate end. Instead, the striving for justice is our response not our duty.
Of course, the old critique against universalism still stands: why bother. If my efforts don’t change the outcome, if I and my loved ones will end up in heaven no matter what, if building the beloved community here on earth is not a condition by which I can experience heaven then why bother. “Brother Ballou,” one circuit riding preacher said to Hosea Ballou, “If I believed your theology there would be nothing stopping be from knocking you off your horse and stealing all your belongings.” To which Ballou responded, “Brother if you believed as I do, such a desire would not enter your mind.” A lot rests on trusting good and beloved people to act as good and beloved people. And history and experience teaches us that this is not always something we can count on. But then I suppose that is why it is called faith.
Let me offer the third vision of progressive religion, radically realized eschatology. The “realized” part is to say, the hoped for end is already happening. It’s not something that will happen in the future, we’re in the middle of it right now. The “radically realized” part pushes this further saying not only is it already happening, it is always happening; not as some transhistorical grand performance but in every moment of history. It is not the end of all things, but the ever unfolding transformation of all things.
Rebecca Parker says this:
Radically realized eschatology … begins with affirming that we are already standing on holy ground. This earth – and none other – is a garden of beauty, a place of life. Neglecting it for some other imagined better place will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. … Our religious framework can shift from hope for what could be … to hope that what is good will be treated with justice and love and that what has been harmed will be repaired. [ibid p 12]
In the Gospel of John, Jesus says “But the hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship god is spirit and in truth.” [John 4:23] “The hour is coming and now is.” I’ve always loved that phrasing. It is about to happen and it is already happening. I could perhaps spend a sermon on the second half of that verse, but today I am caught by just that opening phrase: “the hour is coming and now is.” It is ever unfolding anew. Or as Peter Mayer sings about it: “everything is holy now.”
All three visions fit our progressive liberal religious understanding and faith. “Social Gospel eschatology, universalist eschatology, and radically realized eschatology.” “We are here to build the kingdom of God on earth,” “God intends all souls to be saved,” and “Paradise is here and now.” [ibid p 6] Perhaps you will find your understanding of it amidst these visions.
In any case, you need not resign yourself to a terrible vision of what we are hoping for. You need not resign yourself to either nothing or the Christian religious right’s dystopian destructive version of the end of all things. You need not set your hope for the future as the end of the world.
As progressive people of faith we can cast our eschatological hope for a world made fair by our work of justice and compassion with room for all and beauty abounding. Indeed, perhaps we are already here.
In a world without end
May it be so.
Occupy Church
Occupy Church
Rev. Douglas Taylor
12-4-11
In the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus tells The Parable of the Persistent Widow (Luke 18:2-6).
He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!’”
This little parable has grown on me over the years. I imagine a small older woman who keeps showing up each day in this judge’s court to plead her case. Every day she shows up. “Oh, great here she is again,” he probably thinks to himself. “Doesn’t she ever take a break?” The passage says she “kept coming to him with the plea.” It may be she would follow him home some evenings. She’d see him in the grocery store, “Grant me justice against my adversary.” They would bump into each other at the post office, “Grant me justice against my adversary.” He would check his facebook page and she’d have posted on his wall, “Grant me justice against my adversary.” Constantly, incessantly, relentlessly she keeps after him.
Finally he throws his hands up and says “I’ll see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out.” It says, you will win not simply because your cause is just, but because your cause is just and you are persistent. One of the things I really like about scripture is that there are layers of meaning and interpretation. One interpretation of this passage is that it is not about seeking justice at all, that it is really a metaphor about seeking a spiritual life and how we need to be persistent and constant in that. But the interpretation I want to work with this morning says that seeking justice is exactly what this passage is about.
The persistence of the people who seek justice, who accomplish reform, who make a difference, is remarkable. The persistence of those who stand up to injustice though the odds are stacked against them, of those who stare unjust authority in the face and say, “grant me justice against my adversary,” is remarkable indeed. The persistence of those who strive for justice is the key to accomplishing justice.
This story reminds me of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Occupy Wall Street movement is nothing if not persistent! Day after day after day the people keep saying to those in power, “Grant us justice against our adversaries.” Grant us justice against a system that has failed to care for the common good; that has allowed such injustice to flourish. Grant us justice against the corporate greed that has poisoned our civil government.
I think the Occupy Wall Street movement has been a long time coming. Occupy Wall Street began on September 17th 2011 when people gathered on Wall Street in New York City to demonstrate against the financial district. It was preceded by the similar demonstration in Wisconsin earlier this year as well as the revolutionary events in Arab countries and the protests in Spain, Greece, and other locations. The Occupy Wall Street movement is a grassroots effort against economic inequality, corporate greed and corruption, and the financial sector’s undue level of influence on government. A month after it launched in New York City, it had spread to include a multitude of cities. By the middle of October over a thousand “Occupy” locations were listed, (including in other countries) forming a single, massive, unified protest.
This Occupy Wall Street movement is a new thing. It reminds some of Dr. King’s “Poor People’s Campaign” of 1968, in which poor people of all races established a tent city in the nation’s capital. But this is happening in several locations and several weeks so far. It is a landmark experience in the life of this nation. The media and pundits can’t figure out how to critique it and dismiss it effectively because the Occupy Movement is a new style of civil engagement. It is the new generation’s moment. And I believe it is shaping into the biggest protest event this nation has seen and will have a revolutionary impact on our nation.
What is the Occupy Wall Street movement all about? What are the demands? I talked about this in a recent newsletter column. The complaints are that the group has no clear leaders, no clear issues, and no clear focus. “They are too various,” the criticism goes. “They are unfocused, all over the map.” They are against hydro-fracking here and against poverty over there; some are anti-war, others are anti-greed; and many just want to tax the wealthy. So which is it? What is the focus?
And that is a key difference in the new generation. The older style – the style the media knows how to critique and dismiss with boilerplate scripts – the older style of prophetic activism was to rally people around an issue, build a protest event, demand change, and when the event is over people go home. The new style is to gather people together first, listen to the ways things are broken, allow the issues to arise and a consensus to emerge – all of which is happening while people are doing what looks like traditional protesting.
But we do have demands, a general consensus has certainly emerged that the focus is on corporate greed. We are frustrated with the economic inequity created by a broken economic system, a system that has allowed corporations to destroy the underpinnings of our society while largely avoiding its share of the consequences and dodging any meaningful new regulations. These corporations are “holding onto more than $2 trillion in cash and liquid assets–assets that could be used to put people back to work but are instead being hoarded by the already wealthy.” (According to William Schulz, CEO of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee in his article, “Why the Left Is Often Late to Tea”)
Oh, the Occupy Wall Street movement does have a focus, but it is a dangerous and radical one. It has a real focus. I’ve been preaching against greed and corruption regularly. We often have an emphasis on the commons, on our interconnectedness as Unitarian Universalists. Unitarian Universalism and the Occupy movement is an easy match up.
Unitarian Universalists have been supporting Occupy protest movements in cities and towns around the country, joining protests, providing food, and leading worship. I thought it was delightful when the local paper was reporting on the various types of protesters at the Occupy Binghamton events. There were the anti-fracking people and the labor coalition and the Unitarian Universalist Church and the Vets for Peace. I love it – we were listed as a cause-base!
But that’s what’s been happening for UUs all over the country. The Unitarian Universalist Church of Ogden, Utah has been allowing protesters to camp on the church’s front lawn a few blocks from city hall. Similarly, the front lawn of The UU Society of Northampton and Florence in Northampton, MA has been an Occupy site with a few tents up since mid-November. It helps that they are located right next to City Hall.
Occupy protestors in Grand Rapids, Mich., are camping in the portico of the Fountain Street Church, a non-denominational liberal church that has been led for many years by Unitarian Universalist ministers. The protestors had been camping in the church parking lot, but were invited to move under the cover of the church portico for a bit of shelter from the oncoming cold.
Unitarian Universalist principles and values line up very well with what is happening in the Occupy movement. Our prominent position on plurality and our easy acceptance of ambiguity are two examples of what our faith communities share with the Occupy movement. It’s an easy fit.
There was an article in our UU World Magazine Online from November 11, 2011 entitled “The spiritual Heritage of the Occupy Movement” by Daniel McKanan. McKanan is a historian and is the Emerson Chair at Harvard. One particular line in the article says this: “As the twentieth-century economy built on cheap oil and mass consumption unravels, [the] challenge is to create social and cultural wealth with fewer material resources. If [we] succeed, it will be because [we] have embraced the sort of cooperative and spiritual practices that so many are now trying out in the Occupations.”
The spiritual practices McKanan is referring to is aspect whereby the people’s voices are heard, people gather and are empowerment by sharing the commons. But it is more than simply an individual desire for empowerment. Were that the case I would not find it remarkable. The remarkable aspect is the way this activism is tangled up with public space, with what used to be called ‘the commons.’ As the Occupy folks gather and searching out the root of what went wrong with our country, they do so in parks and on public lands.
A key part of the message is that as the people are reclaiming the people’s land, they are also reclaiming the people’s place in our government. We have as a deep part of our American democracy a promise of equality and liberty, yet evidence of this equality and liberty is grossly absent these days.
The Occupy movement is seeking to reestablish our society as a fair and just society, a place where values such as honesty and shared responsibility can bring us a new day with room for all. We are occupying the commons, those locations where we all have a stake in the land – the parks, the schools, the bridges, and these public locations are also metaphors. It is about what these public locations represent. Thus, the movement is also about occupying the voting booth and the public conversations in our society. The movement is about reclaiming the common good for the people.
As it gets cold and as some local officials crack down on the tent cities that have sprung up, some worry that the movement will fade away. But I say the movement will live on because the occupying of a location was always only a symbolic act of getting the people together, of reclaiming the commons, of reminding ourselves that we are not impotent in the face of corruption and shameless greed.
As winter settles in, the movement will not die when most of the people pack up their tents and go home. The movement will not die as local officials crack down and evict the people from the public spaces. The movement to occupy will shift as it already has to the movement to march across bridges. The movement to occupy will shift as it already has to the movement to post and blog and tweet. The movement to occupy will continue because the people are right and it has been noticed and it is working.
Go down to our local Occupy Binghamton movement. By all lights it looks that our Occupy is not going to be moved by cold or cops. So go down and, (as it says in our new mission statement,) Explore, Encourage, and Act. The people involved in the Occupy movement have started what we may hope is the biggest peaceful revolution in our country’s history, restructuring our government to serve us rather than ruling over us. “Grant me justice against my adversary,” the movement is saying over and over again. Though some in power care not for the high principles on which our country was founded, though the powerful and wealthy who pull the strings care not for god or man, we shall persist until we wear them out. Grant us justice against the inequity and greed. Grant us justice and grant us peace.
In a world without end
May it be so.
Opening Words
Mic check
Mic check
We gather as a people of faith
To engage with spiritual issues
And to wrestle with ethical topics
We hold this space open
For all who will come in peace
To worship with us
We stand firm in the conviction
To walk together
In the ways of truth and affection
As best we know how
And that there is mutual strength
In willing cooperation,
And that the bonds of love
Keep open the gates of freedom.
In that spirit we gather
In that spirit we pray
A Charter of Compassion
A Charter of Compassion
11-6-11
Douglas Taylor
Reading: Charter for Compassion
The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.
It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.
We therefore call upon all men and women
- to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion
- to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate
- to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures
- to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity
- to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.
We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.
Sermon
The root of compassion is found within yourself. Compassion is a relational word, I am not denying that. Compassion is about thinking about another person’s needs or feelings. It is something that happens between individuals. But the root of it is found within each discrete individual. In the book of Leviticus we read “…thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Leviticus 19:18) The grammar of this phrase reveals what I am trying to say. It begins with thyself. First, love thyself – then love others. Compassion is a relational word that begins in each person’s private experiences of life.
There is no way to fully understand another person’s experiences. You know your own experiences. Someone may be able to tell you about their experiences but you can’t fully understand them the way we like to think we can. Truly the goal of walking a mile in another person’s shoes is impossible in a literal sense. Compassion is the exercise of getting out of yourself, stepping outside your familiar self to consider the needs and perspective of another.
Our word “Compassion” is often seen as synonymous with “Pity.” Pity means a feeling of sadness because of another person’s trouble or suffering. Pity is sympathy tinged with embarrassment. Compassion also means a feeling of sympathy and sadness for the suffering of others, but it also tends to include a desire to help. Of course one can be moved by Pity to be of help. So it is easy to see how compassion and pity are seen to be nearly the same thing. In her most recent book, The Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, religious scholar Karen Armstrong takes umbrage with this conflation of compassion with pity. Compassion, she likes to point out, has both a Greek and Latin root that offers a very different connotation than “pity.”
“Compassion derives from the Latin patiri and the Greek pathein, meaning ‘to suffer, undergo, or experience.’ So ‘compassion’ means ‘to endure [something] with another person,’ to put ourselves in somebody else’s shoes, to feel her pain as though it were our own, and to enter generously into his point of view.” (Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong, p 9)
Compassion is to endure with, to suffer with, to experience with another person. And this will lead us to behave in certain ways toward each other. A Buddhism text puts it this way – compassion is to ask oneself: “…a state that is not pleasing or delightful to me, how could I inflict that upon another?” (Samyutta NIkaya v. 353) Greek philosopher Socrates said “Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you.” All the world’s religions offer this message. All the great philosophers wrestle with a way to name this deep truth. Compassion is the heart of the Golden Rule and the base of any serious ethic.
Evidence from scientific research points to compassion being a deep aspect our humanness. We are predisposed to being compassionate. Now, there is of course a wealth of data to the contrary saying that humans are self-focused first, that we are inescapably selfish. The idea of altruism is considered a quaint error by a generation of scientists. And it is certainly true that the most basic part of our thinking, what happens in the reptilian brain as some call it, is indeed the model of selfishness. But that is comes from the basest layer of our brain, hardly the part worth raving about when discussing the best qualities to be found in humanity.
Of course the reptilian brain is interested in only the most basic needs. That’s its job. Yet we have art and a yearning for beauty and goodness. There is more to the human brain than the drives of self-interest. If you see someone else burn her hand, if you notice a child about to fall off a wall, if you see a car careening toward a stranger, you react. It is instinctive. The urge to reach out is in your gut, it’s visceral. Neurobiologists are studying what they call “Mirror Neurons” located in the frontal cortex that light up in such scenarios. Humans have a natural capacity for compassion. A Confucian philosopher from over two thousand years ago named Mencius (c. 371 – c. 289) argued that one could lose the natural capacity for compassion and sympathy in the same way one could lose the natural capacity to walk or speak. Likewise, one could exercise that aspect in oneself to full development as one might exercise one’s memory or one’s muscles.
Thus we are truly born with an innate capacity for compassion and for selfish cruelty. From an evolutionary perspective one is superior as it is biologically located in the more advanced areas of the brain. And philosophers and prophets have been saying this for millennia. What these neuroscientists are discovering is what religious sages have been calling the Golden Rule. It’s just that now, science can add its own version of the Golden Rule to the poster hanging on my office door. The scientific quote for my poster would say something about mirror neurons. I’ll have to look and see if I can find a good science quote for my Golden Rule poster, tape it up there.
“The first person to formulate the Golden Rule, as far as we know, was the Chinese sage Confucius (551-479 BCE) [over 2.5 thousand years ago] who when asked which of his teachings his disciples could practice “all day and every day” replied: ‘Perhaps the saying about shu (consideration). Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.’ [Analects 15:23] This, he said, was the thread that ran right through the spiritual method he called the Way (dao) and pulled all its teachings together.” (Ibid p9)
And all this fits into our own Unitarian Universalist theology as well when we speak of the Inherent Worth and Dignity of Every Person. We acknowledging that everyone has the capacity to choose either good or evil actions, but at an innate level we are loved and loving. The evidence of humanity’s evil and cruelty does not negate our capacity to be compassionate.
All the world’s religions make clear that compassion is at the heart of how one is to live faithfully. Yet time and again those same world religions are cited as the reason for wars and violence. These two statements seem to contradict each other. Religion is either about violence or about compassion, which is it? Let me say unequivocally: all the major world religions are about compassion and the misuse of any of them to advocate violence is a perversion we bring to it ourselves. War and violence are caused by greed, egotism, pride, fear, and a lust for power and control. We spray a perfume of sanctity and religiosity over such unhealthy drives within us to pretty them up. But in so doing, we misuse and abuse the true nature of our religions.
Karen Armstrong, whom I mentioned earlier, has a book out on the topic of Compassion that is a companion to the Charter for Compassion she helped create. This book, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, is a deliberately titled book. She meant it to be heard as a link to the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step program. She was intending to make the point that we are normally compassionate people – that compassion is a basic state for us but we are addicted to egotism. We get a high, she argues, from out pet hatreds. We get a self-righteous rush from our own clever displays of triumph over an annoying store clerk or a rude colleague. We are addicted to the opposite of compassion. We are drawn to behave in the reptilian brain ways because there is a bigger buzz to being right than there is to being kind.
And so, Armstrong wrote this book as a tool to help people to choose to be more compassionate. It is a lifetime’s work – not unlike being sober. Armstrong includes steps such as “Learn about compassion” and “look at your own world” early in the 12 steps. “Concern of everybody” and “Love your enemies” are found near the end. When she was invited to speak to the gathered Unitarian Universalist general assembly delegates this past summer as our distinguished Ware Lecturer, she focused on the seventh step which she titled “Who little we know.” I thought that very apt.
I would like to spend a little time today in her third step: Compassion for Yourself. There is a tendency we have to project our own shadows onto others. All of the cruelty, depravity and violence we have simmering around in our own psyches unacknowledged is fodder for what bothers us most in other people. All of us have less savory drives and desires, and left unexamined or unacknowledged these shadow inclinations color the world we see – and I will then see in others what I refuse to see within myself.
So, the solution is to acknowledge my depraved and vile urges? No. It’s harder than that. The path to a compassionate life is to have compassion for myself in the face of my shadows. Often I am harder on myself than I would ever be to another person. I make a list of all the terrible things about myself and I acknowledge the ways I am depraved, the ugliness I hide from others, my capacity to be cruel – even listing examples from the past. And then I dwell on it, I feed this list of inadequacies to myself regularly, and slowly poison myself on my own failings. Simply acknowledging them is not enough.
My anger, fear, and selfishness are all there within me, a part of me. And when I can acknowledge it all – but not be consumed by it or defined by it – then I can have compassion for that in myself … and in others. By having compassion for myself, I see all that I can do to offer compassion to others.
Karen Armstrong tells a very good story to illustrate this point.
“The late rabbi Albert Friedlander once impressed upon me the importance of the biblical commandment “Love your neighbor as yourself.” I had always concentrated on the first part of than injunction, [Armstrong tells us] but Albert taught me that if you cannot love yourself, you cannot love other people either. He had grown up in Nazi Germany, and as a child was bewildered and distressed by the vicious anti-Semitic propaganda that assailed him on all sides. One night, when he was about eight years old, he deliberately lay awake and made a list of all his good qualities. He told himself firmly that he was not what the Nazis said, that he had talents and special gifts of heart and mind, which he enumerated to himself one by one. Finally, he vowed that if he survived, he would use those qualities to build a better world. This was an extraordinary insight for a child in such circumstances. Albert was one of the kindest people I have ever met; he was almost pathologically gentle and must have brought help and counsel to thousands. But he always said that he could have done no good at all unless he had learned, at that terrible moment of history, to love himself.” (Ibid, p75-6)
To be an agent of compassion in the world you must first have compassion for yourself. Rabbi Albert Friedlander did not say he learned, in the face of oppression, to love humanity or his oppressors, or even just his fellow Jews more deeply. No, he said he learned to love himself. The rest flows from that. Compassion is rooted in the individual experience; it starts with loving yourself. Islamic texts say, “None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” (Number 13 of Imam “Al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadiths.”)
So, what do you wish for yourself? What would you have done unto you? The Golden Rule is a call to compassion that – as I said at the beginning – is a call that is rooted first in your experience. To love your neighbor as yourself you start with a love of self. Without this you cannot possibly offer love or compassion to another.
Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) is considered to be one of the foremost theologians of the western Christian world. He insisted that scripture taught nothing but charity. Charity was the word used in older English interpretations of the letter by Saint Paul to the early church in Corinth – “Faith, hope and charity abide, these three. And the greatest of these is charity.” Today we use the English word “love.” Augustine argued that this charity was the sum of all scripture.
Now, he was not blind to all violence in scripture. Augustine was not ignoring the passages that speak of war and hate. But he had a method of interpreting scripture that allowed for multiple styles of interpretation – literal interpretation was only one style. Augustine argued that whenever a passage in scripture seemed to be talking about hatred or hurting others then it must be interpreted allegorically and made to speak of charity.
This is not unlike what I describing earlier when I spoke of having compassion for oneself. It’s not that these negative, non-compassionate qualities are not present. It is that we can and must interpret them in life-giving ways. We seem to have lost the capacity to do that these days. The line in the Charter for Compassion that most struck me was the line that proclaims, “Any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate.”
Let me offer you as I close a brief story Karen Armstrong shared when she spoke to the Unitarian Universalists this summer.
“There’s a Sufi philosopher, Ibn Arabi, in the 12th, 13th century—great, important Sufi Sheikh. And he says that every single human being that has been born into the world, whatever his or her religion, is a unique and unrepeatable revelation of God to the world. Every single human being is an incarnation of one of God’s hidden names.
“In a sense, this is an exercise to help you realize the utter indescribability and mystery of God. If you just think of all the people in this room and that each of us expresses one individual aspect of God, you see how impossible it is to sum up God. Our task is to look beneath the frequently unpromising exterior to that sacredness.”
We are living in a remarkable age. We are on the edge in so many ways. But I tell you this: we can participate in the movement of our human venture forward though compassion rather than remaining in the rut of selfish, self-defeating greed and ego. Compassion is a dynamic force of clarity and illumination in our polarized world. Compassion can break through the dogmatic and ideological boundaries we have built up around ourselves. Compassion is that essential bridge of human relatedness that we need to employ to become a full humanity together.
In a world without end,
may it be so.
Evolving Myth
Evolving Myth
10-16-11
Rev. Douglas Taylor
I used to get excited about an old book with the word “myth” or “mythology” in the title, but usually it was really a story book of old Norse or Egyptian or Hindu gods. Unless it was written by Eliade, Jung, or Campbell, I’ve learned to ignore books with such titles. So, when I talk about myth here I am not talking about old stories of the Greek gods and goddesses. I also do not mean “myth” as a falsehood or a superstitious untruth. I speak of myths as deep truths, deeper that fact, that give us information about who we are and how we fit in the world.
Religious scholar and history Karen Armstrong wrote a small book a few years ago titled A Short History of Myth which offers a cultural anthropology survey of myth. Armstrong covers the broad sweep of human history from the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras, through the birth of city-states and the rise of civilization, the Axial and Post Axial ages into the great Western transformation of the Enlightenment and Modernity. She explores the evolving nature of the myths through these different eras in the evolution of humanity.
According to Armstrong, myths were not told or written once and then left unchanged. “There was never a single, orthodox version of a myth,” (p11) Armstrong contends; and then she backs this up throughout the book. Myths served a purpose. The word ‘myth’ is commonly used today to mean ‘an untruth.’ But throughout time, the word ‘myth’ held a deeper – more nuanced – meaning. A myth is not meant to provide factual information or eye-witness history. The purpose of a myth is to guide people in understanding problematic aspects of the human condition and the world we live in.
When we hear of gods walking the earth, of dead men striding out of tombs, or of seas miraculously parting to let a favored people escape from their enemies, we dismiss these stories as incredible and demonstrably untrue. Since the eighteenth century, we have developed a scientific view of history; we are concerned above all with what actually happened. But in the pre-modern world, when people wrote about the past they were more concerned with what an event had meant. A myth was an event which, in some sense, had happened once, but which also happened all the time. Because of our strictly chronological view of history, we have no word for such an occurrence, but mythology is an art form that points beyond history to what is timeless in human existence, helping us to get beyond the chaotic flux of random events, and glimpse the core of reality. (p 7)
Throughout the living history of humanity, we have needed our myths to guide us through different situations. The needs and questions of the stone-age hunter-gatherers were different from the needs and questions of enlightenment era people. As humanity grew up, so did the mythic stories. Let me walk you through some of what comes up in Armstrong’s Short History of Myth
Paleolithic Era
The earliest period is ten to twenty thousand years ago, a time before written history. It was a time before cities and civilization, a time preceding the agricultural revolution. The tribes of people were dependant on hunting the major migratory mammals around them. The myths supporting the lives of these hunter-gatherers were so potent they survived beyond their era, which begins to explain how we can write about things that happened before written history. Also, there have been several living tribal cultures that have not taken the step into the agricultural revolution and their stories and myth parallel those of Paleolithic times. The myths from this time focus on the deepest questions of life and death. The people were living at a time when all activities were considered to be what we today might call ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ activities. There was no divide between sacred and secular. Everything they did had a sacred component to it. And that sounds nice, but the consequences were significant.
The first and earliest myths dealt with the hunter who went away on a journey to bring home food for the tribe. These myths were not just about going out and returning a hero – a hunt was dangerous and death was an inescapable part of what would happen – either the possible death of the hunter or the hoped for death of the prey so the tribe would have food. But the animals that were their prey were just as much a part of the sacred world as the people. “Anthropologists note that modern indigenous peoples frequently refer to animals or birds as ‘peoples’ on the same level as themselves.” (p28) Ancient myths and rituals served to help the people understand what their life meant when life was so dependant on “the destruction of other creatures to who they felt closely akin.” (p29) Myths and rituals of a First Hunter would serve to help the people come to terms with the complicated emotions. It helped them understand the meaning of death and life.
Of course an even more powerful myth arose at this time too, a myth of birth and creation. While the hunter leaves the security of the caves and the tribe to face monsters and wilderness to back what is necessary for life, every infant would likewise journey through the narrow passage of the birth canal into a new and frighteningly unfamiliar world. Each hunt the men went on was an echo of the heroic quest. And that is nothing if not an echo of birth or re-birth.
As powerful as the male hunters were, they must have known that the women were the source of new life – life that would ensure the continuation of the tribe not just through the next hunting season but into the next generations. Again, these are not quaint stories to be told around a fire for entertainment. These myths and rituals conveyed deep knowledge about the meaning of life and death.
Neolithic Era
And then things changed. With the agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago, hunting was no longer needed. Leaving the village to embark on a dangerous journey became a less compelling story. “Every time men and women took a major step forward, they reviewed their mythology and made it speak to the new conditions.” (p 11)
Now the people were farmers. “As they watched the seeds descending into the depths of the earth, and realized that they broke open in darkness to bring forth a marvelously different form of life, planters recognized a hidden force at work. … The earth seemed to sustain all creatures – plants, animals, and humans – as in a living womb.” (p42)
The Neolithic period gave rise to new stories about gods and goddesses and heroes who would travel underground and return from death with new wisdom, new life. “Where once people had imagined themselves ascending to the heights [during a hunt] in order to encounter the divine, they now made ritual contact with the sacred in the earth.” (p44) Through these new myths and rituals, people came to terms with the ebb and flow, the waxing and waning, the living and dying of the world and of people and of all life.
Stories of Demeter and Persephone, Inanna and Dumuzi, Ishtar and Asherah and Tammuz and Adonis – they all taught the people that death, while fearful and inevitable, was not the end of the story. The seed had to die in order to produce grain. A confrontation with death could lead to spiritual renewal. It was not about immortality, it was about learning “to live more fearlessly and therefore more fully here on earth.”
Do you begin to see that these stories arising from their own time and circumstances were most useful to that time and circumstance … but in a very powerful way they each continue to offer important information about life even today? The Paleolithic and Neolithic eras provided the foundational myths and myth-structures into the future which formal religions picked up and made their own. For the people in the Neolithic era, the myths taught them about life and death, seeds and harvest.
Early Civilizations
And then things changed. Some six thousand years ago, human beings began to build cities. With the building of somewhat permanent and magnificent cities, a new type of myth began to emerge among the people. “Every time men and women took a major step forward, they reviewed their mythology and made it speak to the new conditions.” (p 11)
The cities they built were actually fare more fragile and subject to decay ad decline than one might at first imagine. These new city-dwellers were constantly concerned that life might revert to the old agrarian ways – as step backward into barbarism by their lights. The new urban myths mediated on the endless the struggle between order and chaos.” (p60)
If you read the biblical books of Genesis and the Gospels, you can pick out the Paleolithic stories of the Hero’s Quest and the Creation Goddess, the Neolithic stories of rebirth and of the God who dies to the earth and is reborn, and the Early Civilization stories of the God who mediates order and chaos. And in some ways, each new era’s myths stand in critique against the previous era as well as absorbing and carrying forward the old myths. Rituals grew in which the city-dwellers play-acted times of chaos – times when there were no cities – and then order is restored or order rises up to save them. The myths and rituals helped them learn the value of fitting into the system of order and civilization that now existed.
Axial Age
And then things changed. During a brief period of a few hundred years between 800 and 200 BCE, in a variety of locations, a remarkable array of prophets and sages rose up – all with a similar compelling message: “It would not be sufficient to perform the conventional rites meticulously; worshipers must also treat their fellow-creatures with respect.” (p81). Thus a new type of myth began to emerge among the people. “Every time men and women took a major step forward, they reviewed their mythology and made it speak to the new conditions.” (p 11)
It is German philosopher Karl Jaspers who called this time period the “axial age” because it was a pivotal time in the spiritual development of humanity. It is seen “with the Hebrew prophets of the eights, seventh, and sixth centuries; with the sages of the Upanishads, the Buddha in India, with Confucius and the author of the Dao De Jing in China; and with the fifth-century [Greek philosophers,] Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.” (pp 79-80) It used to be enough to go through the correct rituals, to enact the mythic story or take on the role of the First Hunter or the Great Mother. It used to be enough to offer up the sacrifice as prescribed in the story. But as humanity matured, more was needed.
I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! (Amos 5:21-24)
We had to treat each other with respect, with justice. To survive and still be useful, all the myths needed to be recast with a more personal and interpersonal interpretation. Ethics became important. It was Confucius who first promulgated what has become known as the Golden Rule: “Do not do unto others as you would not have done unto you.” (Analects 12:2) The Axial age demanded inner reflection so people could know their own motives and needs. What would you have done unto you, or not done unto you? This is the first step in understanding the motives and needs of another, in knowing what others would have or not have done unto them.
Post Axial Age
The period that follows is largely a time of response to the Axial Age. The Post-Axial Age is the creation of Christianity and Islam and living into the powerful stories of the three great monotheistic traditions. For the sake of time I am glossing over a lot, but between the advances and regressions in culture over the nearly two millennia that are known as the Post-Axial Age, “there would be no comparable period of change. … The status of myth remained basically the same until the sixteenth century CE.” (p104)
Great Western Transformation
And then things changed. Over the past five hundred years we have been in the modern era.
The long process of modernization … involved a series of profound changes: industrialization, the transformation of agriculture, political and social revolutions to reorganize society … and an intellectual ‘enlightenment’ that denigrated myth as useless, false, and outmoded. (p 120-121)
The modern heroes of Western modernity were the technological and scientific geniuses, not the spiritual geniuses as in previous eras. Enlightenment and modernity were the embodied destruction of mythology. Mythological thinking was diametrically opposed to rational, logical thinking. An anti-myth became the new myth. The tool humanity used to understand who we are and how we fit in the world was a tool that dismantled mythical thinking altogether.
But has this lead us to a new maturity as a species? Has this taught us, guided us to a new way to manage the complex emotions underlying the anxiety of existence we now live in? If we answer yes, it is only a tentative yes, a yes that affirms our intellectual and scientific advances and maturity. Spiritually, Karen Armstrong contends, we are still working through the myths of the Axial Age. (p 136) We are myth-making creatures, but the myths we have been creating continue to fail to meet the Axial Age criteria found in the spirit of compassion and justice.
Today?
The next era is overdue. We need to unfold our next myth. Dare I suggest that the mythic story coming will indeed carry a message of compassion and justice but will be a reinfusion of the ancient understanding of the sacredness of all things, the interconnectedness of all things, and an appreciation for the whole over the parts and pieces of life. As Joseph Campbell said (from the reading this morning in Hero with a Thousand Faces) – we can’t revert or ignore the current enlightenment science. We need to move forward by addressing our current condition.
The new condition we need our myths to speak to is a condition of fragmentation. We need a myth of connection, a ritual of connection. We need to learn how to integrate the great scientific realities we live in with a renewed depth of spiritual connection. The stories of God & science in harmony are out there. The stories of God as love and justice are present. The stories of God in the connections among us are here – but to rise to the level of myth these stories must also be enacted in the life of a community. A myth is not just a good story; it tells us how to behave in a complex and evolving world.
When we see a thread of spirit in everything we do, when we feel we are interconnected with all that is, when we stand up and speak out and gather in witness to the call of justice and equality, when we step back and take in the beauty, when we do these things we are enacting a new story that sets us on the path of life with both integrity and imagination. The current anti-myth continues to fail to serve. It fails to help us resolve our anxiety and fragmentation. But we can enact a new story of connection that sets us on the path of life with both integrity and imagination.
In a world without end
May it be so.
For Fixing What Is Broken
For Fixing What Is Broken
Rev. Douglas Taylor
10-9-11
Have you ever broken anything? Surely we can think back to a childhood experience of a lamp or a vase or a window that you broke. It’s almost archetypal in how the scene would play out. You were trying to be helpful or maybe you were just horsing around having fun. Your elbow bumped the vase, or you trip on the lamp cord causing the lamp to crash to the floor, or maybe your aim was off and you threw the ball right through the window. And when your parents discovered it they were sorely disappointed in you. Of course, we all came from different family systems and we each grew up in whatever healthy or unhealthy, functional or dysfunctional home we had. But the archetypal pattern is out there. A child breaks something of some value to the parents and the parents have an opportunity to teach the child about making an apology and making amends.
Learning to work through the mix of emotions surrounding relationships is a lifetime of work. Love, Justice, and Forgiveness are the larger elements that keep our relationships alive and healthy. And forgiveness is perhaps the most complex of the three. Fraught with guilt and shame, the process of seeking forgiveness is not an easy one. It is, however, one of the best things we can do for our children to help them learn to apologize and make amends when they have done something wrong. And of course, modeling is the optimal way to teach our children anything. Have you ever broken anything? No one would ever consider seeking forgiveness to be a good experience to look forward to. Yet, wisdom helps us know that it is worth it to be on the other side of the process.
I have been much impressed by the way all the world’s religions offer a healthful perspective on forgiveness. And I like how some scientific studies have begun paying attention to this as well. The Templeton Foundation funds an ongoing Forgiveness Project. Interestingly, however, I’ve discovered that much of the Templeton Scientific research and other research projects that focus on forgiveness do so from the “how to forgive” side of it. Little is studied along the lines of how to be forgiven, how to seek forgiveness. And so, for that I must continue to turn to the world’s religious traditions and other practical sources for stories and understanding.
Yesterday was Yom Kippur, a holy observance in which forgiveness is a significant element. Technically, this year Friday evening was the beginning of Yom Kippur which is a 24 hour observance from sunset to sunset. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the Jewish year. It comes as the tenth day of the Days of Awe, the first day of which is Rosh Hashanah, the new year. The ten days of the new year are called the Days of Awe because people feel fear as well as reverence during this special time of judgment and forgiveness. Observant Jews spend the days reviewing their year, naming their sins as well as the ways they bless the world, the good things and the bad things they have done, weighing it all, seeking to repent from the bad things and encourage the good things. At the end of the ten days, Yom Kippur is a day for fasting and for the seeking and offering of forgiveness. After the self-reflection and efforts to atone and make amends comes the forgiveness.
As Unitarian Universalists, we can take part in an observance like this. As a semi-observant non-Jew, I have taken part in the fasting some years, the full moral inventory most years, the seeking of forgiveness every year. Have you ever broken anything? Religion, at its best, helps us to come to terms with what is broken in life. On the Jewish calendar there is an opportunity to work through a personal moral inventory every year. The fasting is a bodily reminder to give your attention to the task. Fasting is a spiritual practice common to many religious groups. Fasting is both an outward expression of repentance and even solidarity, as well as an inward process of preparation and realigning. It is a way to set oneself on a path to do God’s work or to follow a disciplined path of love and justice.
The times I have fasted I found the physical hunger to be a regular refocusing exercise. I would be doing the dishes or driving the car, checking e-mail or talking on the phone – and I would notice my hunger. But rather than going to the cupboard or refrigerator, I would silently say a prayer for peace and justice in the world. I would also set time aside to meditate and pray through the hunger for all that is broken in my life and in the world, and I would offer up my hunger as repentance for my part in it all, for my sins and also for the ways I heal others and our world.
Looking at my faults and sins is difficult and I find that on any given day I completely ignore them or excuse them. It’s pretty easy to do that. Have you ever broken anything? Do you think about it all the time? I don’t. But when I fast – which I don’t do very often – I find my body calling my attention and I can use that to turn my thoughts to seeking repentance and forgiveness. There are some in the world who cannot forget their sins and the things they have broken. There are people who do not need to fast to remind themselves of their failings and their own best longing to make a better world. Not because they have too much of what some call Old-fashion Catholic Guilt, but because they have committed a major sin or have broken something of great consequence. Consider the extreme example of a murderer with a conscience.
This weekend I watched a movie about Restorative Justice called “Facing the Demons.” The one hour documentary tells the story of an Australian teen murdered during an armed robbery at a suburban pizza store. Through a series of interviews we meet the four perpetrators and the family of the victim as they lead up to a facilitated encounter orchestrated by a senior police officer. At the end of the movie there is nothing really tangible that has changed – the two perpetrators who agreed to participate went back to prison to complete their jail time. And all the participants walk away with mixed feelings – some saying it was positive or saying they could now move on, and others expressing disappointment and how the hoped-for feeling of closure was not found.
Yet it remains a remarkable demonstration that face-to-face encounters between offenders and their victims or the families of their victims are possible in some cases. Restorative Justice is focused on repairing the harm caused by crime and violence rather than on punishing the criminals. It allows the criminals an opportunity to apologize. It is important to add that such work is outside of the regular criminal justice system, no one was thinking the participants would be released from jail as a result of the conference.
In the movie one of the criminals – Karl – talks about how he had wanted to write to the family of the victim. He wanted to apologize. But he agonized over it and did not write to them because he didn’t feel he had the right to communicate with them, to intrude further on their lives with his need to apologize. When he is finally in the room with his own mother sitting next to him, he looks across to the parents of the murdered boy and takes responsibility. He doesn’t offer excuses or say “I only did this part and not that part.” He doesn’t minimize his role in their son’s death. He shares with them the facts and owns up to the thoughtlessness and depravity of his actions. And he apologized.
Leading up the conference Karl spoke in the interviews about being anxious about the possibilities. We open ourselves up without shield of defense when we offer an apology. The one we apologize to is certainly supposed to accept the apology, but that is not how it always works. The person may be angry, hurt, sad, scared, or even bitter. The other person may be vengeful and happy to see you in a position of vulnerability, standing there with your apology and nothing else. As one Unitarian Universalist author, Dwight Lee Wolter puts it: “To err is human, to forgive is an option.” Offering forgiveness is the spiritually mature thing to do, a deeply religious activity. But it is not something to jump into lightly. My colleague Rev. Tom Owen-Towle (in his book Theology Ablaze, p 264) tells of the time early in his ministry when he invited a grief-stricken parishioner to begin the process of forgiveness concerning the person who had murdered his wife. The man plaintively cried: “Oh, Pastor Tom, not yet, not yet!”
It is a noble theological perspective to call for forgiveness even when the hurt is fresh. Some are certainly capable of doing that, the Amish from Lancaster County, PA who forgave the man how murdered five girls and himself in the West Nickel Mines School a few years back. They forgave almost instantly. But for most people there are complex emotions, raw emotions to work through. To offer forgiveness when you don’t really mean it is not fair or just to anyone.
That is important to accept when you find yourself in the position of needing to apologize to someone. Offering forgiveness is a freeing act and is a step in the direction of reconciliation. But it cannot be forced. It is a choice anyone can make, but it must be real. But here is the great part of all this: Yes it is hard and painful and it makes you vulnerable and the other person may not even accept your apology. But it is worth it. It is freeing. It can change your life.
How do you seek forgiveness? How do you fix what is broken? Through confession and repentance. Admit or confess the fullness of your transgression, apologize for it, and try to make amends.
The starting point is to seriously accept your responsibility in the situation or in the relationship. No ‘politician’s apology’ will do. “Mistakes were made” is not going to cut it. “I’m sorry people were offended by my words” is not enough. “I am sorry I said offensive words” is a good start now. Don’t minimize it with excuses or candy-coat it with rationalizations. Everyone has broken something and can relate to the need to address it. And yes, every scenario is unique and complex and it is rare for fault to lie with only one party – but focus only on your part. Seriously accept your responsibility for the break. The next step is to apologize. Open yourself to the other person’s just anger and hurt. Say “I’m sorry” and give the other person time to consider what they do with that. No need to grovel or turn over your dignity; simply say “I’m sorry” and give the other person time to consider what they do with that. And then offer to make amends; offer to do whatever can be done to make it right.
There a story of a boy who had a hard time controlling his anger. He would often lash out when he was angry. Finally his father told him that every time he lashed out in anger he should go out to the back yard and pound a nail into the fence. During the first few days, the boy was out in the back yard pounding nails several times a day. Over time, the boy went to the fence less often. Then the boy went an entire day with out going out to the fence to pound in a nail. The boy said this to his father who replied, “Now every time you control your anger and do not lash out I want you to go out and remove one of your nails from then fence.” And this the boy did. Sometimes he would still pound a nail in, but more often he removed nails.
Eventually there came a day when the boy had not pounded a new nail into the fence in weeks, and he had removed all the nails from his earlier visits. His father then took him out to the fence and said, “I am proud of you, you have learned to control your anger. I want you to remember, however, that although you have removed the nails you had pounded into the fence, the holes from those nails are still there. You cannot take those away. You can always remove a nail that you have pounded into the fence but you can never remove the hole that you make with the nail. So it is when you lash out with your anger. You can apologize and be forgiven, but the damage you cause will always remain in at least some fashion. It is good to apologize, better to not need to, but you will need to. No one can move through this life without creating a few nail holes.”
What’s done is done, but how we respond is what matters most. This leads me to perhaps the most important part of seeking forgiveness that I have not mentioned yet, although it was part of the litany we did early this morning. What’s done is done. But in order to be free to respond at our best we need to forgive ourselves and begin again. “We forgive ourselves and each other, we begin again in love.”
Don’t beat yourself up for what you have done, don’t dwell in your sins and failings. Own up to them, acknowledge them, apologize for them and make what amends you can, and then move past them. In order to do that, early in the process, you need to forgive yourself. It may feel a little counter intuitive. “How can I forgive myself,” I imagine myself responding. “Isn’t that a bit self-serving? I’m not the victim – I’m the one who hurt someone else. The other person is the one to offer forgiveness.” But consider the offender who does not believe their crime is forgivable. We must be at least willing to admit the possibility of being forgiven for us to even pursue it. Don’t dwell on your sins and failings, forgive yourself and begin again in love.
Like the murderer who longed to offer apology to the family of his victim; like the father who realized his part in the estranged relationship with his son; like the person who remembers taunting others in school, remembers being a bully in grade school and is now a kinder, wiser, more secure person; like the countless other examples of people who have hurt someone or broken something – we can learn to forgive ourselves and each other. And we can begin again in love.
In a world without end,
May it be so.
Rev. Douglas Taylor 