Sermons

Practicing Spirit
1-2-11
Douglas Taylor

On a hot Monday in July several years ago, my family went out hunting for dinosaur fossils. This was an activity that Keenan, our middle child now 18, had requested for his birthday party. He had turned ten years old that year back in April, but there were delays. If we had been able, for example, to coordinate sooner with the paleontologist who took us on the tour, we might not have been so hot. We invited five families to join us and we explored two different sites. We drank a lot of water that hot July day.

This took place back when we lived in D.C. and as it turns out Washington D.C. sits atop a fossil band that runs parallel to the eastern coast. Our paleontologist guide told us that this is a critical point: If you are going to try to find dinosaur fossils you should look where you can reasonably expect to be able to find some. We did not find any fossilized dinosaur bones. We found sharks’ teeth, crystals, very old rocks, and petrified wood from the time of the dinosaurs. Our paleontologist guide told us that this is a second critical point: If you do not find anything it does not mean you lack special skills or have not tried hard enough, it just means you have not been lucky enough.

Our spiritual lives can be like searching for dinosaur fossils on a hot Monday in July. If you are going to try to find spiritual nourishment, you would do well to look where you can reasonably expect to find some. For example, read the Tao Te Ching, the Bible, and the Humanist Manifesto, go to church, pray, meditate, join a Small Group, increase your charitable giving, sing in the choir, volunteer to help people in need. These are tried and true places where one can reasonable expect to find spiritual nourishment. It is known that there is a rich vein of spirit runs parallel to these activities.

And if nothing special happens, or only happens for you once in a long time, that doesn’t mean you ‘don’t get it’ or are not spiritual enough. It simply means you have hit a dry time in your spiritual life. Remember that this can still be a wonderful time if you don’t worry and you don’t stop reading, attending, singing, praying, giving, and serving as you usually do. Trust also that the dry time will end and you will find that fossil or be struck by that deep personal and spiritual insight.

And here, amidst my delightful metaphor of the free and responsible search for dinosaur fossils I want to point out the metaphorical language that keeps popping up when we talk about spirituality. Much of the language we use for engaging in a spiritual practice speaks of a search, a quest, an attempt to find something. We long to find that spiritual insight, that fossil bone, or simply an inner calm and peace. When in our UU Principles we lift up the free and responsible search it is for truth and meaning – and it is the search for meaning that is the heart of a spiritual practice.

And what is meaning, after all, but the depth dimension we make of this life ourselves! “This hour is sacred because we make it so,” (a common Call to Worship I use by Jim Wickman). Meaning is a level of depth we find in our living; it is a quality of richness. How often do we slog through life or portions of our lives just going through the motions – no passion or careful thought expended; nothing of ourselves in the tasks? But our lives are like a rich fossil bed awaiting our effort and attention. With some practice, a wealth of spirit is just waiting to flow into our living.

In the introduction of the book Everyday Spiritual Practice, Editor Scott Alexander offers the guiding definition he used for deciding what to include in the book. He wrote that an everyday spiritual practice can be prayer or meditation, yoga or justice-making, recycling or quilting. “They are any activity or attitude in which you can regularly and intentionally engage, and which significantly deepens the quality of your relationship with the miracle of life both within and beyond you.” (p 5)

So, brushing your teeth or any number of personal hygiene rituals can be considered an “activity in which you regularly and intentionally engage.” But it is not a spiritual activity. Gardening can be just gardening, even though you do it every day in season. Sitting and staring off into space might be daydreaming rather than meditation even if you schedule it into your daily routine. These activities have the intentionality and the regularity but lack the depth implied in naming them as ‘spiritual’ practices. Alexander said it could be “any activity or attitude in which you can regularly and intentionally engage, and which significantly deepens the quality of your relationship with the miracle of life both within and beyond you.” Intentionality and regularity are important, but depth makes the difference.

And it seems to me one implication of this line of thinking is this: if you wish to begin a spiritual practice, you don’t need to choose a traditional form such as daily prayer or yoga or sitting Zen. You could as readily choose a practice you already have such as gardening or quilting and add the depth dimension to it. It may prove easier to add a depth dimension to a current practice than it would be to begin and sustain a new practice.

To be sure, the traditional practices we thinks of when we considers spiritual practices are excellent choices because, as my paleontologist guide offered, “If you are going to try to find dinosaur fossils you should look where you can reasonably expect to be able to find some.” But as Unitarian Universalist we are iconoclasts – doing religion the way it has always been done holds little interest for most people who gather here. Thus, Alexander’s point is well made: any activity in which you regularly and intentionally engage can serve when you add the depth dimension to it, when you use it to “significantly deepen the quality of your relationship” with life.

Listen to this story of cellist Pablo Casals that I found in the new Spirit in Practice curriculum from the UUA – the curriculum (as it happens) that Jeff Donahue will be leading next month (February.)

Pablo Casals, born in Vendrell, Spain to a Puerto Rican mother, is thought by many to be the greatest cellist who ever lived. His recordings of the Bach Cello Suites, made between 1936 and 1939, are considered unsurpassed to this day.
Casals’ prodigious musical talent became evident early. By the age of four he could play the violin, piano, and flute (having been taught by the church organist and choir director). When he first heard a cello at the age of 11, he decided to dedicate himself to that instrument, and he had already given a solo recital in Barcelona three years later at the age of 14. Five years later he was on the faculty of the renowned Municipal School of Music in Barcelona and was principal cellist of the Barcelona Opera House. He gained international acclaim in a career of such length that he performed in the United States for both President Theodore Roosevelt and President John F. Kennedy.
Yet even having attained such unquestionable mastery of his instrument, throughout his entire life Casals maintained a disciplined regimen of practicing for five or six hours every day. On the day he died, at the age of 96, he had already put in several hours practicing his scales. A few years earlier, when he was 93, a friend asked him why, after all he had achieved; he was still practicing as hard as ever. “Because,” Casals replied, “I think I’m making progress.”

So, practice! Casels found that the simple act of a daily routine was an essential part of the gift he had to offer the world. What would your life be like if you practiced something – anything – for five hours every day? I personally find this a daunting prospect. Even if we reduce the question to a mere 15 minutes each day.

I have, over the years, grumbled at myself that while I can manage to add a quality of depth to nearly any activity in my life, it is sustaining a regularity of practice that eludes me. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’ve tried everything, but I have tried a lot of different practices and nothing sticks. In my self-depreciating voice I would say I am completely lacking in discipline! Alexander says a spiritual practice should have intentionality and regularity as well as depth. I can reach the depth, but the regularity is so very hard for me.

But then I read one of the early chapters in that Everyday Spirituality book. I read the chapter (entitled “Eclectic Spirituality”) in which my colleague Barbara Wells writes about her preferred spiritual practice:

“I have come to realize that my spiritual practice can best be described as “eclectic.’ I have been fed through diverse and what may seem to be conflicting ways. I have gained spiritual knowledge in places as different as a college class-room and a New Age support group. I have journaled, prayed, meditated, danced, and sung to nurture my spirit. I have worshipped alone on a mountainside and in a ballroom filled with thousands. I have gone months without doing anything that looks remotely spiritual and have prayed every day for weeks at a time. That variety has been extraordinarily fulfilling and good for my soul.
“Eclectic spiritual practice [Wells continues] goes against the prevailing view that spiritual practice is like exercise: It must be a consistent, daily regimen, or your spirit will wither and die. Because this belief is so common, I have on occasion been called to task for not being ‘spiritual enough.’ But I believe there is no one-size-fits-all spirituality.” (p29)

And so perhaps there isn’t even a one-size-fits-me spirituality! And maybe, just maybe, that is not a cop-out on my part. Maybe this can be real because the point of a spiritual practice is not to do it the way the monks and mystics of old had always done it. The point is not to go through the motions of a spiritual practice. The point is to reach that depth on a regular basis, to develop the capacity to reach that quality of depth in living on a regular basis because it will make life better. Wells, in her “Eclectic Spirituality” essay adds this, “Spiritual practice is ultimately designed for something more: to make us better people and to bring our gifts into the world.” (Ibid, p32)

I like that wrinkle in the defined purpose of spiritual practices! To bring our gifts into the world! Certainly when I think of deeply spiritual people who spend their lives in traditional spiritual practice this definition can work: the gift they bring is of peace and compassion in their interactions with all people. That kind of peace spreads. It is good stuff! It is a gift they bring the world. But that is not the only gift a person can have. There is no one-size-fits-all gift we all have (except perhaps love – but I’ll leave that argument for another morning.)

What if your gift is for laughter or organizing things or seeing connections that others might miss? What if your gift is for song or listening or building things? There is a way to tap into your gift through regular, intentional practice. You can find and bring forth that best part of yourself.

And here I lift up a delightful paradox, at least a paradox in the words we use to describe what is going on. We speak of spiritual practice as being a search, a quest, an attempt to find something. And yet, notice in the Fulghum reading I offered this morning (from All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten, “Get Found, Kid” p54-56) how sometimes we speak not of finding but of being found. Notice how sometimes we will hide things about ourselves that are too intimate or tender to share, or would make us too vulnerable. Notice how sometimes what we are searching to find is only our own selves – and thus we are found.

When we hide a part of ourselves away in shame or fear, it may well be a deep part of ourselves that is linked to our gift. Some argue that it always is. Whatever you are after when you engage in a spiritual practice, be it God or your own gift, or the deep vulnerable core of yourself – I wish you good hunting. On hot Mondays in July or cold Sundays in January, may that spiritual insight or fossil bone turn up in your search!

In a world without end,
May it be so.

And the Wisdom to Know the Difference
Rev. Douglas Taylor
12-12-10

The serenity prayer, composed by famous 20th century liberal Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, is a mainstay of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. This prayer has been used ritually to open or close meetings for decades. So many people know this simple three line prayer. It is not uncommon for simple pieces like this to be embellished over time and amplified in many ways. Such a simple prayer says so much, it ought to have more words; it ought to take longer to say it. But there it is:

God grant me
The serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference

I know it by heart. God help me to have the qualities I need to be in control of my life again. When I was a psychology student in college I remember being fascinated by the section in personality studies about the difference between an internal vs. an external locus of control. What part of the problem do you have control over and what part do you not have control over? And do you have a realistic perspective on that or do you blame others for what is clearly within your control? Or do you blame yourself for things that are really beyond your control? God grant me the wisdom to know the difference. Knowing that prayer as I did, I thought the conversation about internal vs. external loci control was so very familiar.

I grew up in an alcoholic home and by the time I was an older teen, my father, older brother and one of my two older sisters were all recovering alcoholics. I am very fluent with the vocabulary of AA and NA. Easy Does It. One Day at a Time. Keep It Simple, Stupid. All these sayings were batted around our house during the second half of my teenage years. We would occasionally talk about the alcoholism like it was a third party in the room, an entity with whom we must deal with. “That was the disease in him,” we might say. Or, “That was the alcohol talking.” We were trying to sort out what part of the horrible things we’d been through were things we needed to seek forgiveness for and what part were beyond our control that we needed only to acknowledge.

One of the steps in the AA process, one of the 12-steps is to take a fearless moral inventory; to really look at yourself and your history with bare honesty. In that inventory, the recovering alcoholic needs to weigh all the painful and shameful truths and decide: is this something that I did for which I need to make amends? And while it is at some points along the way helpful to divide out a portion of blame for the influence of the drug or the alcohol, ultimately each addict knows that the buck stops with the person.

But addiction is one of those tricky places when we are talking about control. One of the definitions of addiction is that you’ve lost your self-control over the craving and addiction. We Unitarian Universalists prize our capacity to choose good over evil. Here we speak highly of the freedom we have to follow our conscience and to do what we know is right. But this gets muddy when speaking of addiction because addiction is a self-destruction that feeds on itself. As Unitarian Universalists we seek to be whole people, but there is no doubt that one aspect we lift high is the use of reason. Some still call us the rational religion. Yet addiction is not rational. Addiction is often about rationalizing! But it is not rational.

Thus, the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous begins with a leap of faith, a religious conversion experience. The basic outline of the story – and this works for any addiction: drinking, smoking, drug abuse, sex-addiction, over-eating … all of it – the basic outline is that when the addict hits rock bottom they realize they can’t manage it or hide it or deal with it any more. Step one says: we admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. Step two is: We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. And Step three is: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Steps 4 – 10 focus on that fearless moral inventory I mentioned earlier and the process of confession, forgiveness, and atonement with God and with other people. Step11 is for prayer and discernment while 12 is about witnessing to others about our “spiritual awakening.” But steps 1-3 outline the spiritual awakening – the conversion experience.

As you might guess, there have been many non-theistic versions of the 12-step program that have arisen over the years. For many atheists, agnostics, and humanists it is enough to do the program, work through the steps using what you can and ignoring the rest. But others just cannot work with what feels to them like a thinly masked Christian process of conversion and redemption. Therefore there have grown up around AA several alternatives ranging in theology. And interesting twist to the AA model is a Buddhist take on recovery that mixes the twelve steps with the four noble truths and the eightfold path.

The first noble truth of Buddhism says that all life is suffering. The first step in the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous says that our lives have become unmanageable and out of control; that we are suffering. The second noble truth of Buddhism says that the root of our suffering is attachment, our seemingly insatiable craving and desire; our grasping after something we think will give us pleasure but ultimately does not. And the third noble truth tells us that there is a way out of suffering; it is possible to end the craving and grasping. The second step in the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous says that there is a higher power in our lives that can lead us out of the addiction and put our lives back into control. The third step is the declaration that we have made a commitment to turn our lives over to the source of this health; that we have decided to turn our selves over to that which can stop the suffering and return us to sanity. The fourth noble truth outlines the decision to follow the path of liberation, to take refuge in the wisdom and community of the eightfold path.

The author of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (Sogyal Rinpoche) writes: “Basically, the same methods that work against attachment are effective against addiction, but one needs to realize that mental transformation via meditation and reflection can be effective, but it is not an instant-solution.”

The process of recovery, of regaining control of your life that has been devastated by addiction, is to step into a process that is both psychological and spiritual. It doesn’t need to be the traditional AA model – but the basic experience of surrendering your out-of-control life over to a power greater than your own is at the root of all of it. (For more on that thought, skim through the sermon I delivered last month on the paradox of surrender.)

But getting back to the psychological and spiritual mixture of addiction, let me finish the quote from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (Sogyal Rinpoche). “We need to realize that addiction is usually a result of underlying problems/frustrations; it is no secret that addiction and depression often go hand in hand, so apart from the physical addiction there is usually a lot of healing needed. …there is usually an underlying frustration or problem we try to forget by absorbing ourselves in something else.”

And this is the point when my sermon is not written only for those who are living with addiction in their lives or in their families. We all have frustrations and problems in life. For addicts the addiction is a problem but it is also a mask. The self-destructive behavior is a cover for the deeper pain the person does not want to really deal with.

There is an interesting connection from the philosophy and history of Alcoholics Anonymous and Psychiatrist Carl Jung. Jung was the one who broadened Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis approach through interpreting emotional disturbances through a spiritual and archetypal perspective. Jung claimed, for example, that most emotional problems were rooted in a person’s attempts to find personal and spiritual wholeness. M. Scott Peck tells the story in his book Further Along the Road Less Traveled.

(I have taken this telling of the story from a sermon by UU colleague Mark Worth from 2000 entitled “Thirsting for Wholeness.”)
Jung had a patient back in the 1920s, an alcoholic man who after about a year of therapy had made no progress. Finally Jung threw up his hands and said to him, “Listen, you’re just wasting your money with me. I don’t know how to help you. I can’t help you.” And the man asked, “Is there no hope for me then? Is there nothing you can suggest?” And Jung said, “The only thing I can suggest is that you might seek a religious conversion. I’ve heard reports of a few people who underwent religious conversions and stopped drinking. It makes a kind of sense to me.”
The man took Jung at his word and went out seeking a religious conversion. After about six years he had a religious conversion and stopped drinking. He introduced the idea to an alcoholic friend, Ebby. Ebby also had a religious conversion, and stopped drinking. Not long after that, Ebby dropped in one night to see his old drinking buddy, Bill W. Bill W. said, “Hey, Ebby, have a drink.” But Ebby said, “I don’t drink anymore.” Bill W. said, “That’s impossible. You’re a hopeless alcoholic, just like me.” So Ebby told the story of how he had met a man who was a patient of Jung’s who had undergone a religious conversion and stopped drinking, and how he had done the same. Bill W. thought it was a good idea. Along with his friend, Dr. Bob S., Bill W. decided that the way to fight alcoholism was through a religious conversion and in the company of other alcoholics, who shared “their experience, strength and hope” with one another so that they could stay sober and save each other’s lives. Together Bill W. and Dr. Bob S. founded Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio in 1935.
About twenty years later, once it had really gotten off the ground, Bill W. wrote to Jung to tell him about the role that he had inadvertently played in the founding of AA. And Jung wrote him back a fascinating letter. Jung said he was glad to hear that his patient had done well, and he was glad to have played some small role in the founding of AA. And he was particularly glad to get the letter from Bill W. because, while there were not many people he could talk to about these ideas, it had occurred to him that it was perhaps no accident that we traditionally referred to alcoholic drinks as spirits. Perhaps alcoholics were people who had a greater thirst for the spirit than others, and perhaps alcoholism was a spiritual disorder, or better yet, a spiritual condition.

According to Jung then, some people feel a particular spiritual hunger or craving for wholeness that is unmet. Following that line of thought Tom Brady Jr., in his book Thirsting for Wholeness, contends that some people need life to be more than just what is found on the surface. “These are the thirsty ones,” He writes. “The thirst they feel is not physical, it is spiritual. It is an inner craving for the wholeness that comes through union with others and with God.” Among the thirsty ones we find poets, musicians, artists, philosophers, writers, religious thinkers and mystics – and addicts. Brady, echoing Jung, says that all addictions have their root in spiritual thirst.

You may have just such a thirst. You’re not alone. It doesn’t mean you’re an addict or a mystic – only that you’re attuned to that deep yearning within your soul. If things are not well in your life, if indeed you have caught yourself in that self-destructive pattern of behavior, then I encourage you to reach out for help. You’re not alone in this suffering. If you have already reached out and are recovering, I encourage you now to look again at the pain and the yearning deep within you. May God grant you the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And remember you are not alone.

Perhaps you’ve heard the parable wherein someone says: I was walking down the street and suddenly fell into a hole I had not seen in front of me. It took me a long time to climb out. The next day I was walking down the same street and I fell into the same hole again by mistake. The third day, I saw the hole ahead of me but I still fell into it. The fourth day I saw the hole and made plans to avoid it, but somehow fell in again anyway. The tale goes on like this until eventual after many times I learn to successfully avoid falling into the hole.

I recently heard a version of this ‘falling into the same hole again’ parable that is delightfully mixed with the Christian parable of the Good Samaritan. It goes like this:
A man was walking down the street and he fell into a deep hole. So he started shouting for help. A doctor walked by, and the man down in the hole yelled out, “Can you help me?” The doctor wrote a prescription on a piece of paper, and dropped it in the hole. Then a clergyman walked by. The man in the hole shouted, “Can you help me?” The clergyman wrote out a prayer on a piece of paper and dropped it in the hole. Finally the man’s best friend walked by, and the man in the hole said, “Can you help me?” So his best friend jumped in the hole with him. The first man said, “Why did you do that? Now we’re both in the hole.” And his friend said, “Yes, but I’ve been here before, and I know the way out.”

In a world without end,
May it be so.

A People So Bold
Rev. Douglas Taylor
12-5-10

It is inspiring to me to realize that we, as a denomination and as individual congregations, continue to make important contributions toward the establishment of justice. Ours is a religious tradition which has often played a prominent role in social justice issues throughout the past few centuries. It has been this willingness to engage the real problems of the world that has caused me to be most proud that I am a Unitarian Universalist.

This congregation, before my time, had developed a strong history of activism by sending its minister to Selma during the Civil Rights movement and by serving as one of the starting places for the Binghamton – El Charcon Sister City project. And there are a variety of ways we do the work of Justice in this congregation today.

For example, the Green Sanctuary committee has been doing a great deal around earth justice, projects ranging from petitions to end gas-drilling, to weatherizing our own church building. And we just had solar panels installed on our roof. Another example is found in the group of members that joins with other community members on the court house steps each Monday protesting the current wars. Yet another group pulled together and planned last year’s annual interfaith worship service affirming gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in religious life. We host an annual “Justice Sunday” with a worship service and program each spring. We provide and serve a local green salad each month for the free community dinner in downtown Johnson City, and once a year (on election night) we provide and serve the entire meal.
The Children’s Religious Education committee has adopted the Rescue Mission’s Men’s Shelter – the only homeless shelter for men in Broome County – and every first Sunday after services we’ve been making meals for the shelter to serve. We take a special collection once a month for a local charity or organization that is doing good in our community. We have a corporate-level membership in the NAACP, and there are regularly members of our congregation on the local NAACP board. There are so many ways to make a difference.

That’s an exhausting list. There are so many ways to get involved, so many ways to make the world a better place. It’s exhausting, but I doubt it is an exhaustive list! I’m sure I’ve left some important things off my list – someone will come up to me after service and say I forgot to mention something.

But the huge impressive list is not really what I wanted to talk about. Really I want to ask: Why do we do all this? What compels us as individuals and as a community to work for justice? James Luther Adams, our 20th century Unitarian theologian, called for the liberal church to be a prophetic church, to boldly declare liberation against all oppressions of the mind and body. And he called for the Prophethood of all believers. In his essay by that title, Adams writes that religious liberals shy away from the claim that a prophet is one who predicts future doom, and instead we emphasize the interpretation that a prophet is one who speaks truth to power:

Religious liberals are accustomed to emphasizing the prophetic task of the church. [He writes] But we have long ago abandoned the whole idea of predicting the future by means of interpreting the biblical prophecies. In conformity with the findings of modern historical research, we have held that prediction is a secondary and even an unimportant aspect of Old Testament prophecy.

He goes on to talk about our view of prophets not as foretellers but as ‘forthtellers,’ meaning people to speak forth the truth with love. A prophet, Adams tells us, “stands at the end of a community’s experience and tradition, … viewing human life from a piercing perspective and bringing an imperative sense of the perennial an inescapable struggle of good against evil, of justice against injustice.” We see a prophet, not as one who predicts the future, proclaiming doom and impending destruction. Instead, we see a prophet as one who stands forth to announce a crisis, to demand that the ethical decisions be made here and now.

But a short way into the essay we discover that Adams is challenging this liberal view as truncated. He writes:

But we fall far short of understanding the full nature of prophecy if we think of prophets merely as critics dealing with religious and ethical generalities. In the great ages of prophecy the prophets have been foretellers as well as forthtellers. They have been predictors.

And here I am reminded that Martin Luther King Jr. was not merely a critic of culture and our country’s race relations record. King never said “I have a critique.” He said “I have a dream.” He was a foreteller as well as a forthteller. King dreamt of a better land, a beloved community. King was a critic but he was more than that, he interpreted the signs of the times and predicted where we were going and called us to a better place.

And James Luther Adams wants our congregations to be prophetic churches filled with prophets. What would that look like? Do we have prophetic-minded people? Are we merely critics dealing in religious and ethical generalities? Or is there a vision leading us?

So I put it out there. I asked the individuals on the Social Justice Council to tell me, “Why do you do this work?” What is it that makes us so bold? The first response I got was from George McAnanama who said, “I have an overdeveloped sense of right and wrong. Therefore Social Justice work keeps me both sane and out of jail.” Though, he did allow that there were those who would argue with his assertions about it keeping him sane. And I would argue that it might be keeping him out of jail, but working for justice is the sort of thing that has seen others sent to jail.

Eric Loeb responded to my question of ‘why’ saying, “like the Boy Scouts (‘though I’ve never been one) I want to leave my “campsite” better than I found it. Doing so gives me great personal satisfaction as well as helping me develop satisfying relationships with other people. It’s unquestionably spiritual, though, having been raised by atheists of Jewish descent, that’s not a word I use very often.” He acknowledged that working for justice was just something he grew up with; his parents were doing it around him all the time. “I guess I’ve been a social activist since, as a pre-teen, I was “Number One Boy” for The Council for Community Action.”

Chris Niskanen also wrote about the example from her parents. In her e-mail she added, “I do social justice work because I firmly believe in fairness & equality for everyone, as well as helping those people who are less fortunate than myself. I feel I can best do this in a group. As Margaret Mead said a small group of thoughtful people can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”

This note began a theme I heard from several of the people on the council. Toni Norton wrote: “The little I can do, together with the work of others, can make a huge difference in the world.” Sue McAnanama wrote: “Working in community with others to accomplish what I cannot possibly do alone is a path that goes to the heart of my religious beliefs.” And Carol Miyake said it like this:

Often there is a sense that one as an individual can do little to help create a more just and peaceful world, but joining together with others in our faith community gives a sense that by working together, it is possible to make real progress. I find rich spirituality in working together with others towards a better world for all.

Several people spoke of doing justice as a core part of what it means for them to be religious or spiritual. Toni Norton said, “Helping those less fortunate and those affected by widespread social injustice, goes to the core of my being and belief.” And Sue McAnanama said, “I try to incorporate the core values of equality, non-violence, and peace into my daily life.”

Petra Stone also responded saying this:

To me, doing social justice work is the essence of my spirituality. One of my core beliefs is that we are ALL connected. So if my fellow travelers suffer, I suffer. If I work to improve the lives of those around me, I will be better off as well as will future generations. Although sitting on a mountain and connecting with God/dess can be helpful at times, I see little value in it, if I do not then spread the love that such a connection to the divine affords me to others. “Let you light shine, so others may not feel so alone and in the dark and know that there is always hope.”

I imagine that for many of us, the reasons we strive to make the world a better place has been articulated well by these statements. It is a core part of being religious for many of us. It is how we engage spiritually. Putting our faith and beliefs into actions to help others is not only an ethical thing to do it is also a spiritual thing to do. And I do hear a vision, a far-sighted goal in what people are doing. We are working toward a world with more “fairness and equality.” We are working in community to help those in need because peace, equality and compassion matter. And we all want to shine. And we all feel the suffering of our neighbor. This is the prophetic element in our justice work: the shared vision of a better world that we work to build.

Rema Loeb sent me a very inspiring and deeply spiritual response to my question, why do you pursue Justice?

A large part of social justice for me is the recognition that we are all a part of the natural world, that there need be no division among us, whether we are two leggeds or part of what many native people recognize as all of our brothers and sisters. That we cannot harm the Mother without harming ourselves seems so clear.

It should then be easier to recognize the pain and suffering that we cause to others, often in ignorance. Social justice is simply accepting the fact that we can be more in touch with the balance of life and therefore be a helper on this great journey.

It is easy to get discouraged, even apathetic, and feel that there is so much to be done, too few to do it.

Maybe we just need to realize that whether a simple sharing of food or of time, of leaning more about the needs of others and sharing that knowledge, of signing or launching petitions or lobbying, of working for peace or healthcare or the elimination of poverty, of helping to build a world of more love, more inclusion or even just encouraging others, we can all have a part in creating the world of which we dream. It is a journey of patience, a journey that holds much joy even through difficulties; and always with the knowledge that if the 99th monkey gives up, we will never arrive at the 100th monkey.

You don’t have to be a great and stirring speaker like Dr. King to be a prophet, and you need not be a wild-eyed woman wearing a sandwich board sign declaring the end (or the beginning) to be near. You can be an ordinary soul with a conscience and a voice and a heart. You don’t have to be super-amazing. You can be just regular-amazing like most of the people around here. I don’t think Adams meant for the ‘Prophethood of all believers’ to be an impossible task. He explains a little further in this passage:

We have long held to the idea of the Priesthood of all believers, the idea that all believers have direct access to the ultimate resources of the religious life and that every believer has the responsibility of achieving as explicit faith for free persons. As an element of this radical laicism we need also a firm belief in the prophethood of all believers. The prophetic liberal church is the church in which persons think and work together to interpret the signs of the times in the light of their faith.

Adams is saying the key ingredient is the capacity to interpret the signs of the times in the light of our faith. He is saying that as a community we can and should evaluate our world, weigh it against our shared vision and dream of what we can be.

The prophetic liberal church is the church in which all members share the common responsibility to attempt to foresee the consequences of human behavior (both individual and institutional), with the intention of making history in place of merely being pushed around by it. Only through the prophetism of all believers can we together foresee doom and mend our common ways.

We are builders and doers and planters and seekers. We are lovers and dreamers, makers of institutions and rebels against institutions. We cry out in frustration and we wait patiently through the labor for daybreak to come. We stand in witness we sit in protest, we walk in solidarity and we run the race in faith. We are the ones who see what can be and start the work of building that dream into a reality. We are the ones who critique the injustice – yes! – and also boldly declare what the world can be when we see justice rolls down like water and peace like an ever flowing stream.

Our shared vision of a better world is why we do all the justice work we do. It is a spiritual path for many of us because it is not mere critique we are offering – but a prophetic declaration of a better world. The world we dream of, our prophetic vision is of our world made more beautiful by fairness and equality and peace; it is the world we are boldly working to build together.

In a world without end
May it be so

For the Good of the Community
November 28, 2010
Rev. Douglas Taylor

Last year at this time I was on sabbatical in Chicago. One of the many experiences I had was visiting other churches. A colleague I had been in seminary with was starting a church on the north side of Chicago in which he has been attempting to break out of our dominant UU culture and appeal strongly to young adults: he had no hymnals, no Principles and Purposes, no talk-back or joys-and-sorrows. But the theology was distinctly UU. The faith was clearly UU. It just didn’t look like any UU church I had ever walked into before.

The other interesting experience I had attending church during my sabbatical was after I had returned from Chicago and had a month here in Binghamton while still off-duty. During that month I attended services at an evangelical black church. It was a very spirited experience which I got a lot out of. The theology was different but still valuable for me. The cultural difference was also very different and feed a part of me that is hard to explain.

And with all of that experience there, I assure you I was pleased to be back in the regular worship life of this congregation. I don’t tell you of these experiences because I want us to change and be more like something else. I tell you because they offer an interesting light on our topic of culture and community this morning.

Unitarian Universalism is a non-creedal faith. We are not bound by a set of common beliefs, we have no single sacred book we all read or holy founder we all admire or statement of faith to which we all submit. Instead we have a commitment to allow each individual to uncover and declare their understanding of faith and meaning. This steadfast devotion to the freedom of religious conscience is a hallmark of our way of faith. We form a community through covenant – we are covenanted seekers with a wide range of individual beliefs and a share promise to encourage, challenge and support one another in the search of truth and understanding.

But it does lead to some difficulty when it looks like we are saying that at our center is a big question mark and you can fill in the blank with whatever you want. This, of course, is not accurate. But without a central creed or shared belief it can mistakenly be concluded that we have no common theology or anything even vaguely religious at our center. When our non-Unitarian Universalist friends and family wonder what this place is all about and hear that we have no creed and that we in fact have a wide range of theology together, then it can seem confusing.

But then a few years back I stumbled upon a statement that could offer great relief to this conundrum! In his book The Purpose Driven Church, Rick Warren admits that most people make a decision to participate in a church not based on its theology but on its culture. If people walked in and felt like they fit into the culture of the church then they were likely to stay.

This indicates that the culture of a community is remarkably important. I have a slim handbook in my office that has, as its primary premise, the statement that most people reach a conclusion about if a church is the ‘right fit’ for them within the first 30 seconds of their initial visit. Clearly we’re talking about culture here.

For many people the initial draw to a religious community after they’ve walked in the door is: Do I fit? Are these my people? Is this my culture? And I have to admit it really bugs me that this seems to be the case! I mean, we’re a religious community not a cultural center. Right?

But that’s the trick. Every religious community has a distinctive culture. Teasing out the elements that are cultural from the elements that are religious is sometimes impossible. It should be easy to do, but in reality it is tricky. Consider the jokes that peg different religious communities with questions like how ‘many Baptists does it take to screw in a light bulb’ or what was the response of the Seventh Day Adventists when the building was on fire. The Methodists serve jell-o and the Episcopalians process, the Amish ride in horse buggies and the Lutherans resist change. At least that’s what the jokes tell us. But none of that has anything to do with religion and belief. That is all about the culture of each denomination. Well, it’s a parody about the cultures. I’ve heard the joke we tell about Unitarian Universalists and take a seed of the truth about us along with an healthy exaggeration of our culture.

So what is the UU culture?

That was actually a focusing question for our UU World magazine back in their 2010 Spring and Summer issues. It started with an article in the Spring issue by the Rev. Paul Rasor in which he asked, “Our tradition has always been responsive to the needs of its time, but are we ready to adapt to our increasingly multicultural society?”

In that article, Paul Rasor defined our Unitarian Universalist culture as being inexorably linked to the culture and values of modernity. He writes this:

In adapting to modern culture, Unitarian Universalism has for the most part adopted the core values of modernity, including its emphasis on human reason, the autonomous authority of the individual, and the critical evaluation of all religious truth claims. We want our religious beliefs and commitments to make sense, so we examine them and reexamine them, taking nothing for granted, and especially taking nothing on someone else’s say-so. These are important values, and we rightfully treasure them. Yet this legacy encourages us to keep our religious commitments largely in our heads, where we can hold them at a comfortable arm’s length. This gives us a sense of control; it allows us to feel spiritually safe.

Rasor offers what I see to be a clear sense of our shared perspective on how we do religion. We are seekers. We are doubters and questioners. We hold our truth-claims tentatively. When we go too far with that we are keeping faith and spirituality dampened and under control. I think that is fairly accurate. We have a tendency to think through our beliefs and our faith, and we can over-think it.

But how much of that is core to our way of being religious and how much of that is just cultural proclivity that is not essential? How much of our focus on intellect and the individual right of conscience is too much? Listen to a blunter listing of our culture from the same UU World magazine issue. It is Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt’s response to Rasor’s remarks. Where Rasor offers a clear sense of our shared UU perspective on religion, McNatt offers a clear sense of our common perspective on the rest of culture.

She writes:

Many of us are the people who brag about not owning televisions because there is nothing worth watching, unless it is PBS. Many of us are the people who refuse to listen to popular music because it is misogynistic and violent, and more than a few of us regard rap music as nothing more than noise and confusion. Many of us change the channel, and listen to NPR and love Garrison Keillor and Prairie Home Companion, and laugh when Keillor makes fun of us. Many of us are unapologetic nature lovers, and the only thing we might love more than hiking in the woods is building our congregations in the woods, complete with tiny elegant signs that blend in well with the natural environment but cannot possibly be seen by a seeker on the highway. Many of us eat locally, we shop at farmer’s markets, and we would never be caught in Wal-Mart, unless it was a dire emergency. Many of us do look ahead in our hymnal to see whether we agree with the words, and forget that the person sitting next to us may need exactly the words we are refusing to sing. Most of all, many of us love our UU congregations because they represent for us places of respite and peace and sanctuary.

This is certainly not all there is to us. We are not wholly described as people who listen to NPR and shop at the local Farmer’s Market. There is more to us than this cultural snapshot that McNatt offers up. But again, how much of this can we tease out as of religious importance and how much is merely cultural?

Certainly there is a great value here for education, for curiosity, for a willingness to ‘have all the answers questioned.’ The part of that we can hook onto our way of being religious is seen in the Unitarian Universalist emphasis on the search for truth and meaning, the freedom and the responsibility to uncover and articulate what you know of faith and meaning. The part of that we can hook onto our culture is the way we tend to be highly educated, the way many of us are professionals with a predominance of teachers and social workers, and the way many of us are middle-class.

Our particular UU congregation has a certain flavor, to be sure. Our particular culture shows through in some ways amplifying the general theme of Unitarian Universalism and in other ways contradicting it. When I go to the mall I don’t find a lot of people I recognize from the church. But when I’m in Wegman’s my kids and I will sometimes compete to see who can spot the most people from the congregation. I know there are people in this congregation who shop at Aldi’s and at the rescue mission’s Thrifty Shopper used clothing store. But I also know I am more likely to bump into someone from the congregation when I’m at Barnes & Noble or the farmers market at Otsiningo Park. That’s part of the culture of this congregation.

In the Binghamton community I have heard us referred to as the Gay church, the old hippies’ church, and the pagan church. We’re also seen as the church for the activists and the intellectuals. (And it doesn’t escape me that today’s sermon is more like a ‘lecture’ than a ‘sermon.’) Interestingly, in some contrast to that, other UU churches in the district see us as not nearly intellectual enough; we’re the warm-fuzzy church, the touchy-feely church, and more recently the spirituality church. In some ways the answer depends on who you’re asking.

I’m not even talking about race and ethnicity here. And even though this conversation is often aimed in that direction, I believe there is so much to understand and to be gained just by exploring our own UU culture without getting hung up on trying to explain what it means to be white.

When I tell you about my visits to the church of a good colleague and I want to highlight the differences, I am less interested in the differences of skin color and more interested in other cultural differences. For example, both this congregation and my friend’s congregation have an organ – but we each play that organ very differently. Our worship is one hour long, theirs is three hours. I wear a suit and tie here and am usually the only one. I wore a suit and tie at my friend’s church and I fit right in because 50 to 75 percent of the men were wearing suits and ties. We have an order of service, they don’t. I have a Masters Degree from a seminary; my colleague felt the call and started preaching.

Theologically there are a lot of differences between us, but so far these are just the cultural differences I’m listing now. Theologically, my friend’s church is evangelical: they believe that through Christ all are saved – and they mean “all.” Now, with a little translating, I think most of us could get behind such a message. But I think the cultural differences are a bigger gap than the theological ones.

I don’t mean to down play the theological differences. The theological distinctions of a community are the core of the community; they are the permanent elements of the community. The cultural distinctions are the transient overlays that should not be that important, but in practice they are very important. I wish it were otherwise. I think one of the distinctive theological elements of both this church and my friend’s church is the call to become the beloved community, the universalist and evangelical inclusion of everyone.

A Unitarian Universalist colleague I admire greatly, Marilyn Sewell has said of our faith that “What distinguishes us, if anything, is our fervent wish to become better than we are and to heal a broken and suffering world.” Surely that is a wish many religious people – though clearly that is our wish. Theologically, there should be a great many congregations that share our principles and would in sympathy with our covenant. And yet my colleague Marilyn Sewell goes on to explore the cultural differences in a letter she wrote in response to Rasor’s and McNatt’s articles.

She writes:

A growing body of research shows, for example, that higher diversity results in less interaction and cooperation among people.
Robert D. Putnam, the Harvard political scientist and author of Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital, completed another significant study in 2001, this one regarding the impact of diversity on trust and community-building. Interviewing 30,000 subjects, he found that “in ethnically diverse neighborhoods, residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down.’ Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.”
Putnam did not like the results of his study—and neither did his colleagues. It was an inconvenient truth. So colleagues suggested to Putnam that he look again, retest, reconsider. And Putnam did, for five years, and found that his original conclusions were confirmed. Finally in 2007 he published his paper, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century” (PDF; 38 pages). A sense of community can grow amid diversity, he argued, but it takes a long time and requires extended interaction between groups.
Racial and cultural integration comes when people actually get to know one another, and the built-in fear of “the other” is dissipated through experience. It will come, as it has already, when people are brought together by institutional necessity, as in our armed services, in sports, in integrated schools where young people learn and play together. In these settings, people find themselves engaged in common tasks where they encounter more than surface skin color and unfamiliar traditions, settings where they can observe their common humanity.

What I hear in Sewell’s words is an appeal to relax about the angst we have around racial and ethnic diversity. Diversity is still a good and noble goal that we shall continue to strive towards. But it is more important to lean into the really important theological distinctions first.

In the mid-1800’s Unitarian preacher and activist Theodore Parker wrote a landmark sermon called “The Transient and the Permanent in Liberal Christianity.” He was trying to cull the transient cultural elements from Christianity so as to develop a pure religion. It is my considered opinion that we need our transient cultural elements because they help us engage with the lofty important theological pieces.

So go ahead and laugh when someone says UUs are bad singers because we are busy reading ahead to see if we agree with the words; or that when you cross and Jehovah’s Witness with a UU you get someone who knocks on your door but has nothing to say. That’s our culture. We actually are very good singers and we certainly do have a message to share. But it is also true that we tend to read ahead because we believe that words matter; and that we don’t force our religion on others because we believe faith cannot be coerced.

But at the root of it, we are not working to preserve a particular culture from going extinct. We are working to offer a message to the world. It is a message about trusting your own inner knowing and your own curiosity. It is a message calling us to help heal a broken and suffering world. It is a message that every soul has an innate worth and dignity. To be sure, community has its own hang-ups and foibles, its own particular practices and culture. But the ultimate common bond we have is our shared promise to encourage one another in faith and to share in the work of building a better tomorrow.

In a world without end,
May it be so.

Surrender, Never Surrender
11-7-10
Rev. Douglas Taylor

Veteran’s Day (or Armistice Day) is coming up this week – the concept of surrender in war is not what I am talking about. But it looms over the conversation significantly no matter what I say. Today I wish to discuss the concept of Surrender from a religious perspective. Surrender is a topic that comes up in pretty much all the world’s major religions in one form or another. In many cases, surrender is integral.

In the Gospel of Luke (18:18-30) we hear Jesus exhort a young nobleman to ‘sell all you have, distribute it to he poor, and come follow me.’ Surrender everything and follow me. There’s an old spiritual that talks about how I’m gonna lay down this world and shoulder up my cross. Surrender the world and follow Jesus. But Jesus himself is shown having trouble with this. In all three synoptic gospels, just before being arrested Jesus goes to the garden of Gethsemane to pray saying ‘remove this cup from me, yet not my will but thy will be done.’ In Matthew’s Gospel he even says this prayer three times. Jesus is having a really hard time surrendering, but it is lifted up as a good and great virtue!

And beyond Christianity, the concept appears again and again. The Buddhist effort to release from attachment as described in the four noble truths is all about surrender. The point is to surrender the worldly things, to let go of attachments, so you may find yourself free to live a life of spirit. Buddhists do not surrender to the will of Buddha in any way comparable to the way Christians surrender to the will of God. Instead they follow the eightfold path that they may be free of attachments. Buddhists do not typically speak of this as ‘surrender,’ and if we think of surrender only as surrender to another’s will, then it does not fit. But that is not the only rendering of surrender. We can surrender our attachments; we can give up our clinging to things and expectations.

Perhaps this is a distinction that resonates as one of the basic differences between eastern and western religions. When we look, for example, at another western religion, we see that the word “Islam” in Arabic is literally translated as ‘submission’ or ‘surrender’ and is meant as submission to God. In western religious traditions the idea of surrender is wholly caught up in the idea of surrender to the will of God. Yet in the eastern religions, such as in Taoism where we read that ‘to yield is to overcome [and] to empty out is to be filled,’ (Tao Te Ching 22) it is clear that surrender is an act of liberation.

It is perhaps too much of a simplification to say that the west sees religious surrender as synonymous with the secular war-related concept of giving your freedom up to another’s will, to be captured and constrained. And the east sees religious surrender as the opposite: as an act of liberation, of freeing oneself from constrains. It is too simple to say the western religious traditions all see it one way and always only see it that one way, while the eastern religious traditions are the opposite.

But we can say there are two nearly opposing views of the concept of religious surrender. And for the sake of a simpler conversation I will say they are an eastern concept and a western concept

But what is being surrendered? I think in both concepts, both surrender as giving over your will to the will of something greater as well as surrender as liberating yourself from your attachments, the root of what you are surrendering might be best called your ego. Religion asks us to surrender our egos that we might have life and have it more abundantly.

But for all that surrender is a common and often central concept in religion we don’t talk about it much in Unitarian Universalist circles. Largely this is due to our having grown out protestant Christianity and we kept the protest going. Unitarians in particular, and Universalists in their own ways, were iconoclasts. We refused to worship anything that was a partial truth, anything that was set above the eternal. We held the Bible and all creeds and rituals as transient forms of religion but not the truth of religion. We held Jesus as human, not God. Only God is God.

The Transcendentalists such as Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, and Henry David Thoreau were then iconoclasts within an iconoclastic tradition. The Transcendentalists were in effect saying, “Surrender? Why?” When Emerson wrote in his great essay Self-Reliance, “Trust yourself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” And in the Divinity School Address he admonishes, “Refuse all good models and dare to love God without mediator or veil.” He is in effect saying, ‘do not surrender to the precepts of another person’s notion.’ Do not surrender to the will of another, but go learn for yourself what your soul finds needful for true living. “When we can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings.” (American Scholar) And so, do not surrender yourself to them.

In our responsive reading this morning (#660) Thoreau proclaims the wish to live deliberately. “I wish to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” Does that sound like surrender? Does that sound like passive acceptance of another’s will? “I want to drive life into a corner,” he writes, so that he may learn of it and know if it be mean or sublime. This is the sentiment Unitarianism cut its teeth on. This is the precursor of the 1930’s Humanism that boldly declared itself through with superstition and supernatural theology. That declared not only was human nature not cosmically flawed but indeed the human endeavor shall progress onward and upward forever! To never practice resignation or surrender!

And before I get too carried away with this, let me pause and note a small section in Thoreau’s reading that speaks directly to this. He writes, “Nor do I wish to practice resignation, unless it is quite necessary.” When would it be necessary, according to Thoreau? I must admit I am not sure I can answer that with authority, but I do know that one of the prime examples of Thoreau’s life that is lifted up again and again was his willingness to spend a day in jail rather than pay taxes to support what his conscience told him was an unjust war. Certainly spending a night in jail is a form of surrender, of resignation. But it is resignation to the will of society and government but not a resignation of his conscience.

And this gets at the crux of the paradox for me. What some will call living a life of surrender; other will call living a life of fierce commitment. When, in this religious sense, I surrender – am I not at the same time, clinging fast to something? To surrender is not to quit. Indeed to surrender is to commit to something particular! It is to find that central and ultimate value in life worthy of your surrender and then to never surrender again.

Buddhist non-attachment does not say we no longer care or that we can ignore the world and everything in it. But by making a commitment to the elegant eightfold path, we can surrender everything else because everything else will fall into place. The Christian and Islamic calls to surrender my will to the will of God is not about never thinking for myself again, it is not about becoming a puppet or pawn for God’s power. But by making a commitment to live by God’s will in our lives, we can surrender everything else because everything else will fall into place. At least, that is what it seems as it would be like. I don’t know for certain because I am not a Buddhist and I am not a Christian.

I am a Unitarian Universalist. This does not mean I can just make up my own religious path willy-nilly on a whim because there are not creeds or rules to follow. But by making a commitment to live with integrity by the lights of my own conscience, I can surrender everything else because everything else will fall into place. To surrender and to never surrender are two sides of the same coin. Indeed, I cannot surrender until I have uncovered and made that ‘never-surrender’ commitment to a central and ultimate value in life worthy of my surrender. In this way, I can begin the work of letting go of my ego so as to have life and to have it more abundantly.

Perhaps this formula is more familiar in some other topics. Consider the phrase, “If you love something set it free.” There is more to that quote, but the gist of it is right there in that first phrase. You can surrender even what you love. For if it is true it will remain. I think it is easier to look at this from the example of relationships because we are so primed by our culture to notice relationships. All the books and TV shows and magazine articles about relationships makes it a very recognizable topic.

So consider relationships. Perhaps the most obvious one is the parent-child relationship when the child is becoming an adult. This is classic. The stereotypical parent will continue to treat the child as a child despite growth, creating tension in the relationship when the child wants to be treated like an adult. If you love something set it free. Let go. Is the pattern familiar to us?

I experienced the reverse of the pattern when I was in college. I remember trying to connect and relate to my father who was (and still is) a recovering alcoholic. It occurred to me that I was trying to have the relationship I’d lost with him when he left he house when I was four. We had each grown and changed and it finally dawned on me that I needed to give up on having the relationship I wanted to have with him so that I could have the actual relationship that was beginning to grow if I would only let it. I had to surrender by expectations.

Another popular expression is, “You’ll fall in love the minute you stop trying to find the perfect mate.” It is the same concept. Surrender your expectations of how things ought to be to discover what is actually there and likely has been all along.

So, the trick, I think, is to have as broad and transcendent a value to commit to. If your ‘never-surrender’ commitment is to this particular relationship, then you will have a lot of trouble when you grow or your partner grows or your children grow. But if your ‘never-surrender’ commitment is to Love, capital ‘L’ love, love that can be nurtured but never forced, love even at the highest level known as the transcendent power some call God, or at least love in the sense that you want what’s best for the other – then you have the freedom to surrender everything else to love.

In another chapter of the Tao Te Ching (number 76) we read:

A tree that is unbending is easily broken.
The hard and strong will fall.
The soft and yielding will overcome

And in a delightful parallel from within Judaism, we read: (The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan XLI.III.1)

One should always be as soft as a reed
And not as tough as cedar
In the case of a reed, all the winds in the world
Can go on blowing against it but it sways with them
So that when the winds grow silent
It reverts and stands in place
But in the case of a cedar it will not stand in place
But when the south wind blows against it
It uproots the cedar and turns it over.

The reed is a natural example of surrender to the wind while having that ‘never-surrender’ commitment to ever remain in place through the strongest of winds. We can be as tenacious as the reed. But we’d best know just where we have planted ourselves. We can be strong and live with deep integrity, but we need not be unyielding or uncompromising. Better the bend in the wind, better to learn the art of surrender while holding fast with a fierce commitment to something of ultimate value and power.

Indeed, go drive life into a corner that you may learn both the mean and the sublime. Refuse all good models and exemplars and creeds and rituals, daring instead to love God without mediator or veil. Stand forth with only your conscience and conviction and say “Here I stand, I can do no other.” But notice what you bind yourself to and be ready to yield all else. For if the commitment you have made to Love or God or Life is true than steel yourself to surrender everything else and trust that all shall be well.

In a world without end, may it be so.